I stumbled into a Christian Station on the radio and something struck me: that in most organized religions the emphasis is on having faith in God but I hear very little about having faith in the tools or gifts God gives us! First, let me say something about my use of the word "God". This is just how I refer to my higher power, that and the word, "Grandfather" which comes from my work with the Holy Men. So please substitute whatever definition you are comfortable with.

God has given us some incredible gifts to walk this earth with. Let's start making use of them! Number one on the list is the "gift of choice"; a theme that comes up in many retreats here in Sedona. This last two years, I have come to see in a deeper way how truly awesome this gift of choice is. It totally controls our reality.

Many clients want to know how to control their thinking; their life is dominated by too much thinking. I don't want to try and teach any client how to control their thinking but encourage them to see they can "choose" which thoughts to give life too! Big difference!

Take a moment and consider that. God or whoever your Creator is gave you the enormous gift of being able to choose which thoughts to give energy too. If you have a negative thought you can just ignore it! The divine trinity is: thought, feeling, behavior. So if you choose not to give life to bad thoughts, you won't have bad feelings and thus not behave in negative ways. And then the fourth piece comes into play:vibration. If you don't think, feel and behave negatively, you lower the attraction of negative circumstances.

Many religions encourage us to pray to God for help, "Oh please, God, help me, I am lost." There is nothing wrong with that. But what I suggest is first try and use the gift God gave you:choice. Try and see that you can choose not to pay attention to "thoughts of feeling so lost". Make sense, brothers and sisters? Those thoughts are coming out of low moods and are truly are not real. Neal Donald Walsh in his final book of the series, Home with God, talks a great deal about "choice". I encourage you to read it.

God gave you the "gift of wisdom". It's your birthright. Wisdom can be called many different things: common sense, instinct, spiritual intelligence, gut feeling, etc. We have all experienced these feelings at one time in our life. But how many of us make use of this gift? I talk to many clients about the idea of "experimenting equals validation". I encourage them to turn decisions-making moments into opportunities to experiment with their wisdom. Instead of processing that decision through their personal mind, give their wisdom a chance to offer an insight about it. And when that insight comes, and it will, you will have validation.

Faith in a Higher Power is powerful as long as it doesn't turn us away from the gifts that Higher Power gave us. I have sense I am going to write more about this idea. I will just let my wisdom guide me!