Emerging Women Live Coverage Part 3: Gabrielle Bernstein – Miracles Now

Posted on by Tammy

On Sunday of the 2nd annual Emerging Women Live conference “Changing the World Through Feminine Leadership and Entrepreneurship,” in New York City, Gabrielle Bernstein, New York Times bestselling author of “May Cause Miracles” and “Miracles Now,” took the stage to discuss the power of our presence.

Bernstein shared how she was once running a PR company and on the outside it looked like she had all she desired to be successful and happy — but on the inside her world was falling apart. She was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and when she woke up at 25 years old in a stranger’s apartment not knowing where she was or how she got there, she realized she needed to change.

She went home, opened her journal and wrote — “there has to be a better way.” She then heard the voice of her intuition for the first time — an inner voice — tell her to “get clean and you will live a life beyond your wildest dreams.” She realized she needed to stop looking outside herself for what she already had within her.

“I got clean. I found a recovery group, and immediately spun back into this childlike faith I had forgotten,” she shared with the audience. “Within a month I was guided to a beautiful mentor in my recovery group who said, ‘I have a book for you.’ She handed me Marianne Williamson’s ‘A Return to Love,’ which is basically the cliff notes for a metaphysical book ‘A Course in Miracles.’ I read the entire book in one night.”

Bernstein decided to become a student of “A Course in Miracles” and began doing the workbook. The Course teaches that “through the experience of forgiveness we reorganize our beliefs systems and shift to love…the moment we choose again, to forgive, to see as situation with a loving lens instead of a fearful lens,” is when miracles occur, she said.

She shared five principles with the audience that she has been using to change her perceptions and shift from fear to love for the past nine years. These include:

1. Become the Non-Judgmental Witness of Your Fear — She asked the audience to be willing to take a fearless inventory of what is going on in their lives and take full ownership of what it means to be in negativity and fear. “Yes I am an addict I’m not stepping into my power. I’m talking a lot of shit about people. I am stuck in fear. I am stuck in a bad relationship,” she said. “But in a non judgmental way so you don’t get stuck in fear. Get brutally honest with yourself and your notebook. What is it that you want to transform?” It’s about owning if you are not showing up for your husband, business, etc. and accepting where you are first.

2. Invite In a Higher Power — She shared a line from the Course that says: The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are relying on your own strength. “How are you blocking and controlling the natural flow of your life by relying on your own strength, and how do you get to a place where you can start to redirect?” she asked, explaining we can all tap into a higher presence, whether we call it God, inspiration, energy or the Universe. She shared a daily prayer she uses every morning directly from the Course: “Where would you have me go, what would you have me do, what would you have me say and to whom?”

She also urged the audience to take up a meditation practice, as she has found it to be the most important tool she has in her life. “What I find to be most important to me in my life, more than husband, work, family and friends, is the time I spend on my meditation pillow,” she said. “My meditation has offered me everything. Why I’m standing here today, why I’m a New York Times bestselling author, why I have a healthy relationship, why I have a healthy body, and why I can live in this city [New York]. Do you want to go big in your life? My answer is meditate.”

3. Measure Your Success By How Much Fun You Are Having — “Joy is your responsibility,” she said. “We need to elevate joy in our own lives. If you are feeling powerless, lean toward joy . . . release the littleness, the story of ‘I’m not where I want to be yet,’ or ‘my guy sucks’ and say I’m going to show up.’”

4. Our presence is Our Power — It’s not how well we are dressed or what it says on our business card or even what we say or do for a living — our power is how we be, said Bernstein. “Have you even been in the presence of someone who is really embodying who they are? You feel good. Because you can recognize yourself,” she said. “ In every given situation, if you are leaning toward joy, you will be guided to show up, and you will be guided to your power and to be.”

5. Be the Light — “In any given moment we have the capacity to show up with our darkness or we can be the light,” she explained. “Any given moment offers the opportunity to show back up, to choose again. You can smother the darkness and dissolve all boundaries with love. Take ownership and bring the light.”

As a result of practicing these principles, Bernstein said she truly has created a life far beyond her wildest dreams and just celebrated nine years of recovery and one year of marriage. She also shared a mantra mediation for people to use to bring them out of negativity. It is “Ek Ong Kar Sat Gur Prasad,” and the music she played was from “Meditations for Transformation: The Expansive Spirit,” by Jai-Jagdesh.”

Read Part 1 with Kris Carr on Resilience

Read Part 2 with Sera Beak on Unleashing Your Soul’s Voice

Read Part 4 with Danielle LaPorte

Gabrielle Bernstein’s Miracle Mindset Tips

Posted on by Tammy

Bestselling author Gabrielle Bernstein’s new book, “May Cause Miracles: A 40-Day Guidebook of Subtle Shifts for Radical Change and Unlimited Happiness,” offers readers a guide to create a miracle mindset. In the March 2013 cover story, she goes into detail about the book, its principles, which are based on “A Course in Miracles,” and how to retrain the mind from a thought system based on fear to one based on love.

In the Q&A below, Elevated Existence asked her to share a few quick tips our readers can use to navigate the path from fear to love.

EE: The foundation of your work is checking in with our intuition or “ing” to help guide us on our path. How can people begin to utilize this guidance on a day-to-day basis?

Bernstein: Once you connect to your intuition, it’s really just a matter of saying ‘yes’ to it. That is really the best way to use it – just say ‘yes.’ Once you start to know what your intuition sounds like, feels like and how you are connected to it, and what kinds of messages you receive, then the only thing you need to do with it is to take action with it.

The worst is when you tap into your intuition, but then you don’t listen to it. That happens a lot. People second guess it or deny it. It’s a practice to become really faithful to that voice, and the more you practice the principles of “A Course in Miracles,” or any spiritual text to guide you, the more you learn to trust that voice, and the more you know when it’s there. You get to the point that you just can’t deny it anymore.

EE: Many people are running negative patterns in their minds and they are not aware of it. Then they question why they are not manifesting or not happy. What is the first step to shift out of the pattern of fear to one of love?

Bernstein: It’s really a matter of becoming the witness to what is going on, and then having the willingness to change it. It’s the practice of becoming the witness, becoming willing, and then releasing. The first step is to write it down. ‘I thought this. It made me feel this. It made me experience this.’ Write it out because then you are witnessing it.

Then you say a prayer and set your intention. The intention is simply saying, ‘I am willing to see this differently.’ Then continue that affirmation whenever you see fear coming up, and pay attention to what comes up as a result. What opportunities come up for you? What resources come up for you? Then act on them.

EE: What tip or practices can they use to keep them on the path?

Bernstein: Every single day continue to pray for the willingness to change. I still do it every day. ‘I’m willing to see whatever I need to see differently. I’m willing to see love instead of fear. Show me what to do. What miracles would you have me perform today?’ Just keep that openness and that willingness at the forefront, and just be an open door that says, ‘Where do I go?’ That is one of the most valuable things we can do.

For more from Bernstein, see our March 2013 issue!

May Cause Miracles Live Seminar: Week 5

Posted on by Tammy

Gabrielle Bernstein is our March 2013 issue cover story! See what’s in the new issue!

In week 5 of the book “May Cause Miracles: A 40-Day Guidebook of Subtle Shifts for Radical Change and Unlimited Happiness,” Gabrielle Bernstein focuses on using the principles of “A Course in Miracles,” when it comes to money and finances. During her live seminar, she explained growing up in an affluent town, but in a home that had a lack mentality.

“When I was 21 – even before I was using these tools – I had a quantum shift in my thinking,” she shared. “I made a commitment I would figure out a way to make money, and ever since that day I have never had a fear of money. There were months when I was waiting for a paycheck to come in, and it would go right back out, but I never had the fear.”

When it comes to raising our net worth, we need to begin by raising our self worth, said Bernstein. “The biggest shift for me was the more I earn, the more I can support myself, and the more I can give,” she told the audience. “It’s the decision-making process internally that needs to change for your net worth to catch up to your self-worth.”

Many of us think we are worth a certain amount of money, such as a yearly salary, but we need to think far beyond that number, she said. We also need to move past the mindset of, ‘How dare I ask for more?” and “I’m not worthy of making money.” This is the voice of our ego, blocking abundance from flowing to us.

In the book she outlines a number of “ego tricks” when it comes to money, and went over a few during the live seminar. One example is the ego has a lack mentality. It looks at the current economy and convinces us we will never get a raise in a recession, or that we will never be able to afford the things we want.

“There is a financial blueprint that has been running your life,” said Bernstein. “This week is about going deep and clarifying the story that is keeping you stuck where you are financially. It’s about seeing where the ego has you in a headlock, and how it has kept you in a blueprint that has been holding you back for decades.”

A New Blueprint
Bernstein ends the introduction to this week in the book by asking readers, “Are you committed to releasing your fears and creating a new financial blueprint?”

Like all of the previous weeks, this one begins by taking the stance of the witness to look at our financial fears head on and identify the story we created around money. The affirmation for the first day is “I am not my lack mentality.”

“These practices get to the core of the problem and we need to heal that root cause,” said Bernstein. “We start by looking at where we are and then we make the conscious shift.”

The second day moves into willingness, with “I am willing to change my inner dialogue about my finances,” as the affirmation to take with us throughout the day. These affirmations help us detach from the fear that is holding us back, Bernstein told the audience.

“When you stare at the debt then you live in the debt. But when you stare at what you do have – ‘I can pay X amount towards the debt,’ or ‘I have a check coming in,’ or ‘I have food on the table,’ that is a different vibe. And gratitude plays a major role in that.

Using both gratitude and forgiveness moves readers through the week, and into a new perception of their financial situation and their financial future. We use gratitude by focusing on what we have, and being grateful for whatever that may be, and forgiveness comes into play by forgiving ourselves for choosing wrongly in the past.

“Your net worth is tied directly to your self-worth, and this work is cleaning up the root and core of the condition,” said Bernstein.

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 4.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 3.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 2.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 1.”

For more on Bernstein, her books and her work, visit www.gabby.tv.

May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Coverage: Week 4

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In her book “May Cause Miracles,” Gabby Bernstein opens chapter 4 with the following quote: “You practice loving God by loving another human.” – Olivia Harrison

She explained in this week’s live seminar, relationships are one of the hardest areas for many people to apply the principles of “A Course in Miracles.” It’s a lifelong practice, and we will all catch ourselves slipping into judgment from time to time.

“This is about tapping into the more loving place that we frequently detour from when it comes to relationships,” she told the audience. “It’s not about being perfect, or not being in judgment. It’s about realizing it [when we are] and being willing to reinterpret our non-loving response. I’m not asking you to be Buddha. I’m asking you to be witnesses and surrender to your inner guidance to change it.”

When we are in judgment, we are not only attacking another person, we are also attacking ourselves, said Bernstein. While the ego wants to separate us from others, the goal of relationships is create oneness.

“We need to look at our intentions in our relationships. Are we trying to get something from them? What do we want to get from other people? Sometimes these intentions create the reality. Without even saying a word, your thoughts create energy and your energy creates a vibe, and your vibe gets picked up by others,” she explained

It’s also important to look at the pretenses we put on other people and the stories we create around them. We often make others seem more special or less special then ourselves, and this happens often in romantic love.

“The special love relationship is the trippiest of all special relationships, because the ego convinces us that this one special person will save us,” Bernstein says in the book. “The ego substitutes the divine love within us with the special love relationship we’ve seen in movies or magazines. The special love relationship is based on the premise that something outside of us can fill up or compensate for what seems to be lacking inside.”

But we have the choice to surrender our perceptions to our inner guidance system. We can witness the stories we have created around these relationships and then surrender them, she told the audience.

“It’s about being honest. We are not saints, and I’m not asking us to be saints. I’m asking for us to be honest, and with that honesty comes healing, and with this healing comes new patterns and new behaviors … then comes new relationships or new viewpoints of our relationships. Love dissolves all boundaries,” she explained.

Lack of forgiveness holds us back in relationships, and Bernstein offers the affirmation: “I can see peace instead of this,” to interrupt our judging and attacking thoughts of others – whether its friends, family members or a romantic partner.

“In relationships, people bring up exactly what you need to have healed. Be it a partner or family member, when they trigger something, it is divine. The day we get triggered and we can say, “I wonder if I can see this differently. I can see peace instead of this,’ – that is a miracle,” she said.

We have the power to decide how we will react to others, and people will reflect back to us our intentions, Bernstein noted. We need to look how we are participating or being a match to the behavior or others.

“People will always bring stuff up because we are always learning and growing,” she said. “We just want to reinterpret it.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 3.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 2.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 1.”

For more on Bernstein, her books and her work, visit www.gabby.tv.

May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Coverage: Week 3

Posted on by Tammy

After focusing on the “self” for two weeks, the third week of the book, “May Cause Miracles: A 40-Day Guidebook of Subtle Shifts for Radical Change and Unlimited Happiness,” by Gabrielle Bernstein focuses on the body – specifically body image and physical healing. In it, Bernstein reveals how to change the perception of the body in regards to the way it looks, functions and acts in the world.

In the live seminar for Week 3, Bernstein explained we all have the spiritual power to protect and heal ourselves, but the ego often gets in the way.

“The ego tells us our body is more important or less important than the other body because it’s a certain weight or dresses a certain way,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with enjoying the body, dressing fun, taking care of yourself and enjoying exercise,” but when the body is used to try and get something on the outside, such as status or attention, this is the ego operating, she explained.

Many of us have projected false pretenses on the body, abusing it with alcohol, drugs, sex and food. We believe we are the body, and if we don’t like what we see, we start to believe we’re not good enough.

“We think, ‘I was chubby when I was little. I was too skinny. I didn’t have boobs. I wasn’t the cool girl. I was the cool girl and now I’m not.’ We attack the body to numb it out – to anesthetize the discomfort,” Bernstein said, explaining she used to be an overeater, which was a reaction to her inner turmoil.

It’s through the practices of “A Course in Miracles,” which is the basis for the work in her book, that we can begin to change. In week 3, we once again begin to get honest with ourselves, and witness the patterns of behavior pertaining to our body, and then move on to the willingness to change.

“In the ‘Course,’ there is no body. We are a spirit. The body is the learning device, and we are having these experiences in the body so we can remember we are just love, and we are equal,” Bernstein shared with the audience. “We are all on a mission to remember love, and this is a very different way of being with the body.”

The third day of this week welcomes in the affirmation, “I am not a body. I am free,” to reinforce this mindset.

Changing Perception
The purpose of this chapter is to open up to looking at the body in a new way – using the miracle mind and not the ego mind. The miracle mind looks at the body as the vehicle for sharing love with the world, Bernstein said.

“You start to realize, ‘I am here to be an extension of transformation and to be a loving person,’” she said. “You start to respect your body in a whole other way because it’s here for a whole other purpose. Through your healing you can help heal [others].”

In addition to body image, she addresses physical healing – including those dealing with chronic illness – explaining it all starts by healing the mind and welcoming in your higher self, or what Bernstein calls the “inner guide” or “ing.” In the book she states: “When you apply the thought system that your mind can aid in healing your body, you can experience many miracles. It’s not that the physical condition just disappears (though it often does), but that you’re guided to exactly who and what you need for healing to take place.”

It is the fear-based mind that creates illness in the body, so the first place to start with healing is the mind, Bernstein told the audience. By turning our body over to our “ing” we can surrender the experience to spirit.

The second day of the week asks readers to take this affirmation with them:

“I turn my perception of my body over to the care of my inner guide. Show me what you’ve got…”

“Even with a chronic condition, as you start to live with a miracle mindset, you learn how to coexist with the condition,” she said.

As with the other weeks, gratitude and forgiveness play a role, with a focus on the body. Not only being grateful for it, but also realizing forgiveness can restore our perception of the body.

“Having gratitude toward your body is one of the most important things in the whole world,” Bernstein said. “Then it’s about forgiveness and restoring our perceptions of the body to the right-minded perception.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 2.”

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar Week 1.”

For more on Bernstein, her books and her work, visit www.gabby.tv.

May Cause Miracles Live Seminar: Week 2

Posted on by Tammy

In week 2 of the “May Cause Miracles” live seminar, bestselling author Gabrielle Bernstein led the group in a meditation to start off the discussion. Based on Kundalini yoga, she explained this method was a good “inner conflict resolver,” and nice to balance out the prana or energy of the body.

“When you are in conflict in your mind, in conflict with yourself, or created stories about yourself that don’t serve you, your energy is in conflict and off balance,” she shared. “Also, your life is then in conflict and in an unbalanced state.”

Meditation helps us to create balance and bring us back to a state of peaceful energy, and week 2 of the 40-day journey found in the book is focused our examining our perception of ourselves. She asked the audience to place their palms facing the torso at the level just above the breast – fingers together and thumbs facing up – and to shut their eyes or keep them slightly open.

“Breath in – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – where the stomach extends, and then breath out to the same count where the stomach contracts,” she instructed. “Then hold your breath for a count of 15, and start breathing in again for another round. If you can’t hold your breath for 15, do it as long as you can, and then start breathing in again.”

The audience did a few rounds of this, and Bernstein advised taking this meditation into our practice this week to help with self-soothing and resolving inner conflict.

Changing Self-Perception
The second week of “May Cause Miracles,” looks at the way we attack ourselves with our thoughts and intentions, and how our self-perception can create illusions about the world we live in. Everything around us is a reflection of our own belief systems. In order to change the story we tell ourselves, we need to look at the story and recognize what we have been perpetuating, Bernstein explained.

“For me, from age zero to 25, the story was, ‘I need to be heard. I’m not good enough. I’m incomplete without a romantic partner. I’m not good enough unless I’m an entrepreneur and really successful. I don’t need any help.’ In this I was selfish, and it led me to drug addiction. But that story also cracked me open because I was able to look at it and recognize it, and realize I could choose a new story,” she said.

In the book is a prayer from “A Course in Miracles,” which she read out loud:

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience and
I decide upon the good I would achieve.
And everything that happens to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

“Can you see how you participated in your life’s experiences?” she asked the audience. “We say, ‘it’s his fault,’ or ‘it’s my mom’s fault.’ Get over that. It’s not about anyone else this week. Yes, people put stuff on us, but it’s because we choose to let them – we choose to engage. We have to take responsibility.”

Even if something happened to us as a child, we have the choice today to continue to live the story or to rewrite it, Bernstein told the audience. “Be a loving elder sister or brother to that inner child and choose to rewrite the story,” she said.

The affirmation for the first day of the week is, “I am responsible for what I see.” This invites us to see how we have been unkind to ourselves, and to uncover the negative story we created about our life and ourselves. It’s about recognizing how we have been abusing ourselves without judgment. Since this week can be heavy for some, Bernstein encourages readers to incorporate acts of self-care throughout the process.

“Acts of self-care were not my priority for a long time. It was about producing, creating and getting the message out, and as a result I was cutting off so many opportunities,” she shared. “It’s very easy for us to get into achieve mode and forget about self-care. Clean up your diet, take a bath with essential oil and sea salt, dance by yourself in your apartment, eat slower – there are so many ways to be kind to yourself that don’t cost anything.”

Gratitude and Forgiveness
By Day 11 of the 40-day practice, we are invited to welcome in gratitude with the affirmation, “I am grateful for this moment.” If we can’t find anything to be grateful about, we can simply be grateful for the work we are doing with the course, said Bernstein.

“Every day I wake up, and I’m grateful for my spiritual practice,” she noted. “When you get really deep into it, you realize that nothing else matters.”

On Day 11, she introduces an affirmation that she encourages everyone to use from this day on when they find themselves thinking fear-based or negative thoughts. The affirmation is “I forgive myself for having this thought. I choose love instead.”

This shifts us into a new focus, and retrains our mind to choose love instead of fear. Slowly we begin to change our feelings about ourselves and about the world around us – and this is reflected in what we see and experience.

“Our feelings about ourselves are reflected back to us,” Bernstein noted. “If I support myself, and think the universe supports me, oh my God the support is unbelievable,” Bernstein said. “The dollar sign or the love is way bigger than you can expect. That comes with a lot of self-love and a serious spiritual practice. It’s not because you have done something special – it’s that you are vibrating with the cosmos.”

This is what meditation and yoga does for us – it helps us tap into that energy, she noted. But we need to be a match for it, and we need to vibrate with the cosmos so we can help the rest of the world.

Read our coverage of “May Cause Miracles Live Seminar: Week 1.”

For more on Bernstein, her books and her work, visit www.gabby.tv.