In today’s episode of Healing From Within, your host, Sheryl Glick, author of The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love, offers Sheryl’s journey from a skeptical view of metaphysical realities to awakening to a Universal consciousness which lead her to become a Reiki energy healer and medium discovering the many layers of our being and the potential to achieve goals and dreams by knowing more about who we really are. Sheryl welcomes Lee McCormick, who discovered a way out of the unclear maze of life in these times when for many, life seems empty, lonely, and many are struggling with fears addictions and are disconnected from their spirit and heart. As author of Spirit Recovery Medicine Bag: A Transformational Guide for Living Happy Joyous and Free, Lee McCormick bares it all in order to show his journey to addiction- free, spiritually enriched, mental and emotional health.
Sheryl and Lee discuss Lee’s spiritual awakening process involving time spent in treatment programs, deep honest self-examination, and a dramatic few days on a mystical spiritual journey in Teotihuacan Mexico at the Toltec Pyramids where he found his way past the fears and limitations of his earlier life as well as a way to help others.. Lee has founded two highly regarded treatment centers…The Ranch Recovery Center in Nashville and the Canyon Treatment Center in Malibu. Lee is a full time rancher, organic farmer a recovery speaker and author/filmmaker behind the book and film “Dreaming Heaven.”
Lee had an idyllic childhood surfing, playing the guitar, riding horses and being a cowboy on the family ranch, living his days amidst nature. But, he was not so comfortable in his own skin. Maybe he was a sensitive or had an emphatic quality that made him feel other sensations that were uncomfortable like anxiety or fear as we are all sensory beings but some of us who are destined to be healers later on in life are more affected by all the energy around us in the form of people’s thoughts and emotions and the actions and behaviors that are projected into the environment. While this sense of reading energy is a spiritual gift until a sensitive knows how to protect and balance his own energy field they may be overwhelmed by an overload of sensations and emotions.
Lee tells us that Spirit Recovery Medicine Bag is for anyone who has come up against an internal wall and feels stuck. It can be an addiction financial loss, a broken relationship, an unfulfilled life—you just name it. Anything that has struck you in your tracks so to speak. He says this book encourages readers to find the door in the internal wall, the one with their name on it and dare to walk through it and step into life with both feet.
Sheryl responds by telling a story from her new book The Living Spirit where she is told by International Medium Robert Brown that she has been touched differently and has her feet in two worlds…Sheryl later discovered what he meant. It seems she is able to access the world of the Seen or Physical life using intuitive sensory abilities and also the world of the Unseen or Spiritual world of energy as a Medium. As Sheryl shares her personal discoveries of Universal Energy Laws she began to understand the duality of our physical and spiritual life force. Knowing that we are spiritual beings having a physical life becomes the key and answer to living with Infinite Possibilities for Manifesting our most healthy and purposeful lives. journey.”
Lee goes on to describe how he picked the title Spirit Recovery Medicine Bag for the book. A medicine bag is an image from Native Culture. The shaman or medicine man carries a medicine bag of various tools for healing. Our medicine bag recognizes there are stuck places in life where we tend to lose sight of ourselves where we feel lost—even give up on ourselves and on life. We feel disconnected from Source..spirit eternal Universal Life. Our medicine bag contains a variety of ideas suggestions and practices for reconnecting to yourself, awakening or remembering your spirit or true self and beginning to live according to your inner wisdom or life goals.
One example is a process to help readers explore their deeply held values. The qualities they are willing to live by. These may be different from the family or town or even the religion they grew up with. Readers get encouragement to explore their personal belief system to create their code for exploring and living life.
Sheryl says…in other words they learn to look at why certain people or activities don’t resonate well with them and they find other activities or behaviors to support their way of being comfortable in the world…like when I was a child I found being asked to be like everyone else in the peer group either in how I dressed or where I spent time not a way that I could be HONEST…so I often said “no” and followed my own instincts and intuition..I am still very much that way allowing others to make their choices and standing up for the choices I make even when I know the outcome will be not always be perfect but will offer the experience to learn something valuable. So while “honesty and sincerity” are big virtues to me it is not that way for everyone…. yet I chose to value it.
It might be risky to deviate from societies or the common held views. Sheryl wonders what happens if you discover that your values are very different from family friends and culture? Lee suggests that we’ve discovered that most people share a common code of ethics as humans. We might differ in how these ethics are played out in the world, but the values we carry are not all that different and what happens if your beliefs are different from the ones you grew up with?
It’s a good thing if we discover more about ourselves transform and find joy and happiness in how we live our daily lives. It seems many people are living a mechanical or robotic physical life without an understanding of the needs of their soul and never discover their REAL SELVES The book is designed to give encouragement to explore your reality and make conscious choices about how you live your life…you must assume the responsibility and do the work necessary for change.
The term recovery is certainly associated with addiction and does speak to that community. However we are addressing a larger readership. Again it is for anyone who feels they have hit their wall and may be finding less joy in life, in their choices or feel regret or feel unfulfilled alone depressed sad or lonely and feel there is more to life..or who have asked the question “Is this all there is???” It could be the death of a loved one mindless shopping, texting, gambling, whatever you do to numb yourself out or distract yourself so you are shut down and separated from your true personal power…
“Spirit Recovery Medicine Bag “ is not necessarily for early recovery and we recommend that you are stable in that regard. People have different entry points in recovery…called a high medium or low bottom. The suggestions we make and the processes we present would deepen anyone’s recovery adventure and we recommend you add this books suggestions to your arsenal of tools and not exchange other valuable help aids.
This book recognizes diversity and values differences and while it offers a point of view on some of the topics we address we always let the reader know it’s an opinion and invite them to use it to discover their own thoughts and feelings..It’s about you getting where you want to go with you setting your course. It isn’t about right and wrong as external criteria but about finding your internal compass and taking a first step towards your hopes and dreams
Lee speaks a lot about nature. Life is being lived in this world on earth in the body you occupy and that’s where your instructions are written—instincts and intuition are in your body, they came as your hard drive. Many people aren’t grounded or aware and do not understand “ We are nature.” Spending time in nature and appreciating its magic along with an awareness of your relationship with the earth and its life force helps you to ground or become comfortable in your body and whatever issues or situations that arise. Spirituality that is grounded in our human reality, understanding that we are spirits on a human journey, helps us to connect to our energetic soul and physical life. Nature keeps it real.
As Lee and shamans throughout time have expressed: The magic is everywhere. It’s your ability to imagine something and bring it into being. It’s about living your hopes and dreams. It’s about realizing spiritual power and understanding the responsibility that goes with it. The magician who is unaware of his spiritual power acts irresponsibly and manipulates nature to create illusions…it’s then all smoke and mirrors—a scam. The magician who realizes Spirit is present in everything is in tune with life and in touch with life’s power. Magic allows us to bridge the worlds and many realities of life to appreciate and create new beauty love and kindness within and then to be projected into the world. We want to invite readers to take the dare—to dream and dare to make your dreams come true. And to begin by reading books which explore the truth of our being and encourage courage and freedom in finding joy peace harmony and a greater view of our human and divine condition.
Lee believes and wrote “ We are standing face to face with the mystery..maybe we don’t have to have an answer but if what we learned in Sunday school is true –that God is everywhere, we’re all probably going to be okay—we’re already home. It’s hard to get beyond the right/wrong thing. We’re really steeped in it. And there is right and wrong to an extent. But when you throw heaven and hell into the equation you really tighten the screws. If we base right and wrong in natural consequences for your actions we are led by instinct to choose a wise path. When you add streets of gold as opposed to fire and brimstone the tendency is to act out of fear of reprisal and I don’t think we get our most creative ideas from that perspective.”
Sheryl says…As an intuitive healer medium downloading wonderfully inspiring and encouraging information for my clients from Universal Energy I feel the energies of souls around me and gather helpful information to empower my clients to live out their life plan and destiny with encouragement and guidance from above for conquering the fears of their ego or the many illusions of societal mores and to work more from their more intuitive heart based energetic being remembering that they are more than their physical lives and therefore capable of creating a better reality through more expansive thinking and more refined behaviors. The Law of Attraction states that what we offer into the world returns to us and “like finds like” so if you are unhappy with the people or circumstances in your life…develop your best qualities and engage in more productive activities and I assure you life will change!!
Lee and Sheryl reflected on one man’s journey of recovery self-discovery transformation in order to find a sense of self and purpose and ultimately finding that one’s man’s journey is the journey of each soul as they seek the answers to profound questions like, Is this “All There Is” We have covered a variety of topics addressing spirituality awareness and conscious and healing through nature and greater responsibility for guiding our lives towards happiness and health.
Veterans in the recovery and healing arts, believe that traditional therapies and many self-help books focus too much on the broken parts. Spirit Recovery Medicine Bag and Sheryl’s new book The Living Spirit Answers for Healing and Infinite Love, are organized around wellness and suggest practices and understandings that connect you to your inborn ability to create wholeness and your best version of your life. To that end both Lee and Sheryl feel that the power of choice awakening and recovering your sense of personal power is your responsibility and a commitment to living your own internal values. Spirituality is nothing more than getting to know yourself according to your own personal truths and values and expressing these truths in the living of your everyday life. We are all on a spiritual journey to rediscover our true essence as both physical and energetic souls and the faster we realize that fact the more rapidly we will improve our own lives and that of our world community. |
