Almost twenty years ago, before I launched my first magazine, I walked away from a job I truly loved. That job was an amazing experience that gave me opportunities to speak in front of thousands of people, meet hundreds of natural medicine practitioners, and discover a passion for treating health issues naturally, which would eventually be the catalyst for starting Natural Nutmeg. But why would I leave such an incredible position? My passion for my work was crushed after I realized that the owners of the company did not share the same morals and business ethics as I had. I was completely devastated – it felt like a divorce. I couldn’t understand how this could happen to me because I had truly believed I would work for this company forever.
It seems that so often, a crisis like this is what ends up sending you down a path to finding your true soul purpose. That is exactly what happened to me, and to this day, I am so grateful for that experience because it sent me down a path to discovering and creating a spiritual practice. To heal, I devoured every book I could find on intuitive guidance, life coaching, soul purpose, and spiritual healing. It totally changed my life.
Spirit Having a Human Experience
Then, the most profound insight came when I met the director of an Energy Medicine school shortly after I launched Natural Nutmeg. She said to me in a whisper, “You see, Diane, at this school, we believe that we are all spirits having a human experience.” What?! I still remember sitting there staring at her, with my jaw open, as I wrapped my head around what she said. I’d never heard anything like that before. But there was a part of me that statement resonated with so clearly and profoundly, I knew it to be true to the very core of my being. This further inspired my journey into spirituality, mysticism, metaphysics, and the understanding that we are so much more powerful than we realize. We ARE spirits having a human experience, and we do, indeed, have the power to change our reality through thought. The proof is right in front of our eyes – if we’re awake enough to see it.
Because of my realization that we are all spiritual beings made up of energy and it’s what we do with that energy that creates the life experience we have, this is an article I should have written years ago. So, what finally lit a fire under my butt?! You may remember from my Spring publisher letter that I was attending the Dr. Joe Dispenza Week-Long Advanced Retreat in April. I’ve been to many personal development workshops and spiritual retreats over the years, but this one was by far the best I’ve ever attended. It’s hard to put a lot of what happens there into words (you just have to experience it!), but I’m certainly going to try.
I’ve always been a big believer in the ability to heal your body with your thoughts – but after attending this retreat, there is not a shred of doubt in my mind. Not only did I see people get out of wheelchairs and walk with my own eyes, but there was also extensive research on the healing effects of meditation and energy medicine presented by Dr. Hemal Patel, MD, PhD, from UC San Diego.
They showed us study after study examining meditators at these retreats whose blood plasma shut down cancer cell metabolism, where tumors were eliminated on follow-up scans, where autoimmune markers for MS and ALS disappeared, where cells had literally been changed in a seven-day period, and where diseases ceased to exist – even in people who had a particular disease for most of their life! The power of our mind to heal our body is a power I believe we all innately have, but sadly has been forgotten. And quite honestly, most of us were never taught how to access and apply this ability.
Directing the Energy
It starts with the understanding of energy. We know we’re made up of energy and vibration, and everything we do and create daily requires energy. Yes, physical energy, like hammering nails if you’re building a house, but also the energy you can direct that you can’t see – the energy that is created from thought and emotion.
The first experience I had with directing energy from thought was when I was 14 years old. And no – I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, but I remember it clearly. There was a boy at school who I had a huge crush on, but I’d never even spoken to him. A school dance was coming up, and I was just dying to go with him. Every night for what seemed like weeks, I would lay in bed visualizing him calling me on the phone and asking me to the dance. I would imagine us slow dancing and his arms around me with my head on his chest. I could feel his body next to mine, and my heart would pound with excitement. I think I even made up a scent of what his cologne would smell like. I was creating an image in my mind that was so close to reality that my brain didn’t know the difference.
A week before the dance, our house phone rang. My mom answers it and then yells up to me, “Diane, it’s for you.” I picked up the phone and who do you think it was? Yep – the boy I’d been dreaming about, and he was calling to ask me to the dance. Do you think that was a coincidence?
Fast forward thirty years, and I started learning about how I literally made my dream a reality. It’s similar to the law of attraction, but it goes much deeper than that. Directing energy requires tapping into and connecting with the quantum field or what we can call consciousness. The definition of the quantum field, according to Dr. Joe Dispenza, “is an invisible field of energy and information – or you could say a field of intelligence or consciousness – that exists beyond space and time. Nothing physical or material exists there. It’s beyond anything you can perceive with your senses.”
These quantum fields really do exist throughout space, and experiments show not only that they do exist but the magnitude of their effects as well. To connect with this field of intelligence, you must raise your energy to a level equal to it. This requires staying in the present moment and feeling elevated levels of joy and love.
Albert Einstein summarized this nicely, “Everything is energy, and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get into that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics.”
Maintaining an Elevated Emotion
How we create what we want is dependent on how well we can maintain an elevated level of emotion to tap into and stay on the same vibratory level as our creation. The problem is that as we go through our day, we experience challenges, problems, and negative interactions with others, and we slowly lose our elevated state. We become unconscious, so to speak, and go back to operating at a lower vibration or energy level. If this happens day after day, month after month, year after year, our body becomes conditioned or addicted to these negative emotions and thoughts. Over the years, the body begins to create programming that keeps us stuck in these negative emotions through unhealthy relationships, unfulfilling jobs, and even chronic disease. The scary thing is that we don’t even realize this is happening!
So, how do we do this if most of the time we don’t even realize we’re “unconscious”? How do we use our thoughts to direct energy and create something out of nothing? How do we hold on to an elevated level of emotion day to day? The best way I’ve been able to stay conscious and break the programming is through the specific kind of meditation I’ve learned through training with Dr. Joe Dispenza. I also have various other strategies and tools I’ve used over the years to direct energy and maintain an elevated emotion. And let me just say, it’s an ongoing process. I work on this every day.
One of the tools I am slowly mastering is not being attached to how or when something you want appears in your life, of being so joyful and connected that I don’t even care if I have this “thing” I’m after – it doesn’t define me, it’s not my identity. I believe this is how people can create spontaneous healing from cancer or other terminal illnesses. When you’re in such a state of joy, even while having this illness – that’s when the disease will leave your body. Essentially, my understanding is that you can tap into disease OR you can tap into health. Your cells can change in an instant. When you are in this state of joy, you become a different person. The old identity had the disease; the new identity is healthy.
Extraordinary Things Have Happened
What I can tell you about my experience with these types of daily meditations is that in addition to the increase in patience I’ve had, extraordinary things have been happening in my life since I started just six months ago. In my meditations, I’ve been focusing on growing and diversifying our writers and advertisers, and over the last month, I’ve brought on 13 new practitioners. Those are unheard-of results in all the years I’ve been publishing. We increased our page count for the first time in 10 years. Unbelievable synchronicities and amazing people have come into my life to offer support and collaboration. We’ve been getting so many emails from readers saying the last few issues of the magazines have such incredible energy and have been amazing.
As for my personal life, I have healed both hip and knee pain that I’d been having for over a year and can run again without pain. My relationship with my boyfriend has deepened, and we no longer argue over the same issues. You may be aware of the situation with my mom falling and breaking her hip. Even there, things could not have gone more smoothly for both of us with her recovery, and she is able to walk with just a cane now – not even three months after her surgery!
The Tools I Use
I’ve learned I need to get up from my meditation a different person than when I sat down. And I don’t get up until I feel differently. That’s the only way I can hold an elevated level of emotion throughout the day. As Einstein said, you must match the frequency of the reality you want. Abundance and vitality have a certain frequency, but I think the easiest thing to do is just feel love. If I can tap into love and pure joy in my meditations, if I can forget my programmed thoughts, then I can begin to think differently when I go about my day. I wake up each day and ask myself:
- Who do I want to be?
- What thoughts do I need to have?
- What emotions and feelings do I need to feel?
When you start to think differently, your brain starts forming new neural networks, and over time, it becomes easier to stay “conscious.” You have more energy to create. I can attest to this because it’s happened to me over the last six months.
Another tool I’ve used that has helped me immensely is to keep reinforcing the present moment. If I feel my thoughts going down a familiar path, I’ll stop what I’m doing and take a breath. I’ve put up sticky notes around my house, I’ve played certain music, I’ll read or listen to something inspiring – because I know the longer I stay in a negative thought pattern or lower vibration, the more I’m pushing my desired reality further and further away.
Start to believe in your future more than your past. What thoughts do you want to put your intention and energy behind? If you’re able to maintain that state of being for your entire day, something unexpected and unusual should happen. It may seem like a coincidence, but really it’s the Universe speaking to you.
We all have far more control over our energy than we realize. While the number of hours in a day is fixed, the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. We can choose every moment of every day how we will respond to certain situations when something “bad” happens to us, and whether that response will be positive or negative. Being more aware of choosing a negative response is the first step in becoming better at managing our energy. Then, learning to shorten the amount of time we stay in that negative emotion is key to getting back to a more positive feeling or elevated emotion.
The ultimate measure of our lives is not how long we live, but rather how we are able to manage our energy in the time we are each given. Take a ride with me and try this for 30 days – I’d love to hear about your experiences!
Dr. Diane Hayden, PhD, is an entrepreneur, mindset warrior, perspective shifter, and unshakable optimist. She founded a holistic lifestyle publishing business with nothing more than passion, a laptop, and a dream, and has created a socially conscious print and digital platform that has touched thousands of people in the last 17 years. Dr. Diane spent over 10 years in the health and wellness industries as an Assistant Professor at Central CT State University, St. Joseph’s College, New York Chiropractic College and University of Bridgeport. She holds a B.S. in Marketing from the University of Connecticut, a Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from the University of Maryland, and is an Empowerment Life Coach. Dr. Diane travels nationally to speak and present spiritual and personal development workshops. She has her own podcast and internet radio show called The Dr. Diane Show on Transformation Talk Radio. Contact her at: [email protected]