by Maureen McElrath
I recently attended the Munay Center session, “Emotions, Energy and Reality” featuring Andean shaman Don Theo Parades. I felt called to attend because many people whose opinions I respect have spoken so highly of Don Theo. And now I hold the same high opinion! He clearly has an exceptional mind and wonderful, mellow energy. His message was given with love, humor, and hope.
I can’t recreate his whole message here and don’t want to try, (If you ever get the chance to see him in person, I encourage you to go!) but I do want to share a couple of connections I made with his wisdom. Much of his message was about changing the way we think – how thoughts create an environment in the body as well as the mind. Happy thoughts create a positive and well-balanced body and toxic thoughts can create physical problems. He talked about creating the feeling that we will have when we get what we most wish for. Of course, these are not brand new concepts. We have heard and read this before in work like “What the Bleep Do We Know” and more recently in The Secret.
He had us do an exercise where we thought for a few minutes of a time when we were very happy. He asked us to notice how our body felt. He suggested that if we continued to practice that, the memory would go away, and the feeling would remain. That way we could bring happiness from our past into our present. Imagine walking around every day feeling like you did on the best day of your life! What a gift!
That idea rang a little bell in my memory bank. Where had I heard that before? How about every child over the age of nine, and probably half of the adult population, too? Got it yet? Harry Potter! In The Prisoner of Azkaban, when Harry is visited by the dementors, the spirit guards of the terrible prison, his only defense is the Patronus charm. He has to work hard to do it – it doesn’t come with just the words. It comes with the feeling of his happiest memory. He has to let that feeling envelope his mind and his body in order to ward off the horrible, happiness-sucking creatures.
Which brings me to my point, and, as Ellen DeGeneres says, I do have one. Don Theo also talked about the cosmic consciousness – that higher level of consciousness that people all over the earth, (or Universe, as far as I know) are tapping into. So that some business people in Brazil woke up one day and realized that if they don’t replant the jungle, they’ll be out of business (to say the least) in a few years. So that Americans have finally woken up and decided to start being “green.” So that all over the world, teachers and writers and artists and mentors and friends and next-door neighbors (maybe!) are tapping into this consciousness and bringing us the same messages in an endless variety of different ways.
We are all connected – every single living thing, and we must care for all of them, including ourselves. Open your mind and your heart. Create an environment in your mind, and your body, where happiness and love can thrive.
So, heed these messages, and heed your own inner guidance, and help create a new world.