Act of Love

Kino MacGregor

Description

Advice and guidance to help students of life to reprogram the mind, choose a new outlook, and follow a simple roadmap to attain true love and happiness.
After dealing with a series of obstacles and life challenges, Kino MacGregor experienced a revelation. Whether eating, speaking, writing, traveling, or living, she pledged to let everything she did in life be an act of love. Just like that, the seed of a new world was planted as she began to integrate this simple yet truly life-changing principle into her daily routine.

In a guide shared to help others attain spiritual growth, love, and true happiness, MacGregor presents a new paradigm that promotes an entirely new way of living and being. While offering anecdotal stories from her own journey as well as the journeys of students and fellow spiritual practitioners, she leads others down a courageous path inward to reset the mind to overcome heartache, become more aware, and embrace the process of awakening. Through moving stories, trusted advice, and meditation and reflection points, MacGregor sets up the parameters of love, action, and the ultimate shift that teaches students of life how to truly act from love in all we do, say, and become.

Act of Love shares anecdotes, advice, and guidance that will help anyone reprogram the mind, choose a new outlook, and follow a simple roadmap to attain true love and happiness in life.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781982278717
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Act of Love
Radically Reprogram Your Mind
Kino MacGregor


Copyright © 2022 Kino MacGregor.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com
844-682-1282
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
 
Scriptures taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. The ESV® text has been reproduced in cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers. Unauthorized reproduction of this publication is prohibited. All rights reserved.
 
ISBN: 978-1-9822-7872-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-7873-1 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-7871-7 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022900162
 
Balboa Press rev. date: 11/17/2022
Contents
Introduction
 
Chapter 1 What Is Love?
Chapter 2 Love in Action
Chapter 3 Update the Operating System
Chapter 4 From Suffering to Joy
Chapter 5 Stepping Off the Emotional Roller Coaster
Chapter 6 Love and Hate
Chapter 7 Love Your Body
Chapter 8 Rewiring Your Mind for Work
Chapter 9 How to Love through Trauma and Shame
Chapter 10 Navigating Anxiety, Being Overwhelmed, and Fear
Chapter 11 The Awakened Activist
Chapter 12 For the Love of God
 
References

For all who wander,
For the seekers of the world,
And all born with an inexplicable yearning,
May the path ahead be well lit for the journey back home.
Special thanks to Lashanna Small, Melanie Klein, Beth Frankl, and Barri DeFrancisci for believing in this project, for encouraging me, for rounds of edits, and for sharing the path.
All stories shared with permission. Names changed for privacy.
Introduction
This is a book about finding love and true happiness, even if you’re brokenhearted. It’s about making the courageous decision to reset your mind and choose your outlook. The promise is simple, but the work is deceptively hard. I know from my own experience that the innate ability to feel joy can never be destroyed, even if it sometimes seems like it’s gone for good. There is nothing any one of us could ever do that would make us unworthy of feeling the gift of love. No authority sits as judge and jury and convicts us of a misdeed so terrible that our happiness is put in chains. Our hearts remain eternally free: free to search for the smile in simple things, free to forgive ourselves and others, free to fall in love with life all over again. And I present a new paradigm that has the potential to radically reprogram your mind with one simple shift—learn how to make everything an act of love.
Maybe you, like me, have spent your life searching for answers to the deepest questions of life. Maybe you, like me, have felt infinitely dissatisfied with the answers presented to you by conventional religion and spiritual self-help. I’ve always seen hypocrisy in the madness of organized religion, delusion in fundamentalism of any type, and superficiality in the culture of positivity around most self-help communities. I was starving for something real, deep, and profound when I discovered the principles that I share with you in this book. And now, I invite you to shift your willfulness to willingness and begin what will be an adventure of the spirit.
The Lotus Thrives in Muddy Waters
It would be fair to wonder who I am to have the audacity to offer something so radical as a change in the very foundation of the nature of the mind. Well, let me clearly state what I’m not. I’m not an Ivy League neuroscientist, but I do draw upon leading-edge neuroscience. I’m not an incarnate lama, guru, or lineage holder of a spiritual tradition, yet the teaching presented here is informed by the legacy teachings of the East. I’m not an ordained pastor, minister, or prophet, although I have a deeply personal connection to Jesus Christ. I have no formal training in the science of the brain or body, other than my lifelong devotion to yoga and meditation. In other words, I’m no one special. Why, at this point, should anyone keep reading; why devote one’s precious hours of life to the ramblings of an unqualified fool? Truthfully, maybe I am just that. But maybe I’ve also found something through a deep, thorough, personal quest that could help you too. Maybe the very fact that I have no formal higher education on the subjects on which I write will make what I’m sharing accessible and directly applicable. Think of me as a hacker, except instead of deconstructing the programming of a computer, I hacked into the brain and deconstructed the core principles of the software that defined my life. I set my brain and the thoughts it thinks free, and I know anyone can do it too.
I had great motivation to perform such an operation of the mind. For me, it was a matter of existential urgency. I have struggled with depression since I was nine years old. Over twenty years ago, when I was nineteen, I began a spiritual quest that has defined my life. Through yoga, meditation, prayer, and personal-growth work, I developed what I thought was a firm foundation in a life of inner peace. But then, a series of major events challenged the glass-house spirituality I’d built.
To say it was a difficult period would be an understatement. My father passed away after nearly three years of medical issues, including multiple strokes, congestive heart failure, cancer, dementia, and aspiration pneumonia. His loss opened a chasm of grief and uncertainty within me that I am still processing. A series of personal and professional betrayals resulted in lawsuits, social media wars, cancel culture bullying, and an explosion of vitriol. Physically, I was in pain from injuries sustained while teaching and a second-degree burn from my husband’s motorcycle. My cat and my parents’ dog both had to be put down. I was heartbroken and filled with a rage that would overflow like a volcanic eruption.
Until that point, I was comfortable with sadness, but I was not comfortable with anger. If someone raised their voice or got angry, I would be uncomfortable. I felt it was a personal failure if I raised my voice, yet there I was, lashing out at others, throwing a temper tantrum on a broad public platform. The collateral damage of my actions is a bill that’s still being paid. I walked away from this period of my life with a resurgence of debilitating depression, and all the tools I had previously used were inadequate to address the depth of my anguish. Now, in hindsight, I can see how the universe gave me the exact situation I needed to wake up from the dream. But in the moment, I was miserable, desperate, and lost. There was an urgency to my spiritual searching that had not been present before. Old thoughts of suicidal ideation reappeared, and there were days when I felt the only answer to life’s quandary was to press the restart button and begin again. I’m so grateful that I got the help I needed and found the way out of my misery. Now, I’m here today to share the road map, to offer up a small piece of the wisdom that I’ve acquired in the hope that someone else might find the way out of suffering too.
After the dust had settled from the onslaught of difficulties, I felt like I stood in the midst of a scorched-earth landscape. The devastation was overwhelming, and to make matters worse, I felt responsible for the devastation. I saw myself and my failures as the cause of the misery, and no matter where I turned, I was always there. While I continued my yoga practice and sought the help of healers, spiritual counselors, and therapists, I needed a major system reset. Meditation has always been an integral part of my spiritual path, and I decided to sign up for a three-day silent meditation retreat. I had completed three ten-day silent meditation retreats before, and I knew the power of a complete and total unplugging of the mind. Whenever I mention a silent retreat, I find that people are simultaneously intrigued and terrified. (Don’t worry; the teachings presented here do not require anyone to join a silent retreat. But if the desire to join a silent retreat