Last week I got the chance to see Louise Hay’s new film, “You Can Heal Your Life“. Like many recent talking films, it has a backstory: this one with a woman’s path out of despair and into love. Foreground is the story of Louise’s own journey out of foster homes and into happiness. Interspersed are a variety of other speakers such as Wayne Dyer, Esther and Jerry Hicks (Abraham), Greg Braden and more. After a turn at modeling, Louise was faced with cancer and found a way to heal herself. She began helping others and teaching. Things got very big after a some TV exposure including Oprah. She founded Hay House books. Eventually she realized that rather than working on specific problems, if you can love and accept yourself, all problems will fall away.
Louise is now in her ’80’s and obviously still active. While I am familiar with a number of authors in her stable, I have only seen bits of her own work. I found some personal resistance to the American glamour image she has, but this is natural after a modeling career. I also find the barrage of information that comes with her advertising I find annoying. But she spoke to the deeper values of the message and the group I was with all enjoyed the film.
Over on Deep Prayer I spoke about the difference between asking and allowing. The same is true of affirmations. If you are using affirmations to get what you want, you will soon find this a hollow pursuit. But if you are using affirmations to affirm what is, you can find yourself stepping out of the self-imposed box of conditional happiness and into love. The film speaks to this, although a little indirectly sometimes.
Part way into the film, Esther Hicks (Abraham) had a quote we all resonated with. We stopped the DVD to get this word for word. They said that when you are less than happy, write the name of the person or the situation down that seems to be the cause. Then ask yourself – “What is it I’m thinking about you [or it], that I am using as my excuse [repeats] to not allow myself to be who I really am.”
She went on to observe that when we say they are making me unhappy, we are giving them all our power.
Wayne Dyer said to bring love to it. “I end all conflicts with Love”.
Louise spoke of, and the backstory illustrated, how we just take one day at a time. When Hay House became big, she just continued to deal with what came up. It all happened too fast to do otherwise.
There was a few messages that weakened it. For example, the implication for women was that they would not be complete without a relationship. Love of self would bring us external love that would make us happy. This is not what real love is. Love may find expression in another, but it is not real love if it is not from within.
The real deeper message to get is that Affirming and feeling gratitude with how it is now – your life, body, your money, whatever, is the way to step out of the illusion of pain. Trying to affirm something else is not being OK with what is and is instead affirming what you wish to escape.
The key is affirming what is, allowing it as it is. But there is a subtle aspect here. This does not mean replacing one idea with another. It means real surrender or what some call faith.
Later that evening, Takuin responded to a discussion on his blog. “Many people stop with the idea of surrender. They may think, “Yes, surrender is the thing that will get me what I want.” Then it merely becomes the action of the doer, trying to get something to complete wholeness, or whatever it is. They may have heard advice from someone they trust, and “surrender” becomes the new thing to hold on to.
…Surrender may be important, but how might one surrender the person doing all of this surrendering? It is a subtle thing.”
It can be very subtle. The mind’s concepts and conditioning can be very “sticky”. We have to step back out of mind to see the dynamics of our story. As long as we are inside the story, it will never be seen clearly.
In many ways, this is the dynamic playing out on the world’s stage these days. Great drama, but within the drama is a falling away of the old, a looking to new. Of seeing fear and the hidden revealed. This is always an invitation to growth.
Davidya
Last Updated on April 27, 2018 by Davidya
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Wonderful article! I love Louise Hay and have a couple of stories about her that I would love to share with you if you’d like to get in touch! It warms my heart to see more and more people learning and discovering the truths about how to better our lives!
Thanks for the feedback, FI. And thanks for the offer. At this point, I have rather a backlog of reading to catch up on, so I’ll have to defer. But if you’d like to share it, why not think about posting the stories on a sub-page of your site? “What inspires me” or some such.
I do agree. The quality of the message people are teaching these days has improved greatly since I began my path. Keep being inspired 😉
That is a GREAT idea. Since I am new to this site I haven’t learned all of the tricks and tools! It will be fun to share some of the wonderful things that I have learned along the way.
I used to have a couple of web sites but migrated to blogs as they are so much easier to maintain. Commercial content may require a hosted blog or web site, but you may want to launch your own free blog with no ads for your sharing and link that from your web site.
Recently, it became apparent I needed an index of key posts. Categories didn’t quite do it and they were too hard to find. So I added a Key Posts page, linked on the right.
Upon viewing a You Tube preview of the film I also found the glamour initially off-putting, especially her surroundings in what I presume to be her home, rich with art; however, I am wrong to do so. We must look to the inner, not the outer and such experiences may be looked upon as tests, although I find it distracting, more difficult to learn from a teacher who puts value in “things” for it was one of the first lessons I learned on my path – that acquiring things does not make one happy beyond 30 seconds.
Yes, as I mentioned, I also found the glamor thing off-putting but things are not a barrier to opening unless we make them so. Indeed, there are practices that use things to transcend them.
This is closely related to our baggage about money. Enjoying being surrounded by nice things and being affluent can be very comfortable. But it can be a barrier. As you observe, if we look for happiness in things, we will very soon be disappointed. It has a lot to do with the financial problems we now face.
But it is also useful to note how we respond to affluence. It can trigger our residual ‘stuff’ around this. And that may help tell us why we’re not. (laughs)
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