Many of you are aware that beloved spiritual leader Michael Tamura passed away on Tuesday, October 24th. There is a beautiful tribute and description of his last day, written by his wife Raphaelle on Michael’s Facebook page. Michael was a great friend of Mary Bell and Psychic Horizons Center. He trained and taught at Berkeley Psychic Institute, and he wrote the seminal book You are the Answer, in 2007. Many people have reported that every time they heard him speak, they felt as if he were reading and speaking to them personally.

I never met Michael, but many of my coworkers and friends have attended his workshops and taken his classes, or knew him from Berkeley Psychic Institute. We’ll come back to Michael in just a moment, but first:

Recently I’ve been in communication with a friend who works in a position of leadership in the Jewish community in a major US. She has friends and family members in Israel and, despite increasing feelings of helplessness, she and her peers seek daily to find solutions and ways to help in the unfolding crisis in the Middle East. She is deeply involved in supporting her local community, while also knowing that some people would prefer she participate in ways that she finds divisive. I know she’s feeling hopeless and distressed.

She expressed concern for her young adult children who are attending college in other parts of the U.S. They’re having a great time and she wondered aloud why they aren’t more concerned about the crisis. Shouldn’t they be more upset?

I recalled an article that Michael wrote many years ago, Look at the Solution. In it he talks about the role of happiness in the midst of crisis. While it’s largely focused on the pandemic, the article contains wisdom for any crisis we might find ourselves facing. Following is an excerpt:

Considering the extraordinary challenges we are collectively facing in the world today, it may seem inappropriate to be joyful or to celebrate life. Yet, it is precisely during this kind of planetary upheaval that we need to share our joy and abundance with one another, more than ever. We need the blessings of Grace to help us transform our global community. In this light, I pray that this message finds you exceedingly happy with yourself and celebrating life, regardless of circumstances. For, without joy, how are we to re-set the energy in this world for all of us to be able to receive the gifts of Grace and restore truth, beauty, and goodness to each of our lives.

You already know that everything is energy. From the tiniest sub-atomic particle to our bodies and from the planets and the stars to the myriad galaxies, our entire universe is energy. Our thoughts are energy, as are our feelings. Consciousness is energy. Energy is consciousness. So, if we are to transform anything – our personal life – or the whole world – we need to change the energy. To change the energy of the world, we need to first re-set our own energy.

When we change our mind, we change our energy and we impact all the energy around us. When the person we know as the “life of the party” enters the room, he or she enlivens the whole gathering. On the other hand, when the “party-pooper” enters the room, the energy drops. Each of us has within us the choice to be the party-pooper or the life-of-the-party in this world – to become part of the problem or part of the solution. Which would you like to be? It’s just a matter of your choice . . .

We can be happy with ourselves, even when we are not happy with what is happening in the world. The very definition of healing is “restoring to wholeness”. Whether you are seeking healing for yourself, for a friend in need, for your family, for your community, or for the whole world, you seek to restore what has been divided back to wholeness. The less we are divided and conflicted, the more whole and at peace we are, and the healthier, wealthier, and wiser we become. Yet, if we are unhappy with ourselves, how can we hope to heal ourselves, much less anyone else? Make sure that just because your life – or the whole world – seems to have been upended, you don’t take out any unhappiness on yourself. If you choose to be unhappy with yourself, you become part of the very problem that you find unacceptable in the world. If you choose to be happy with yourself, even if worldly conditions are upsetting you, you take your first step in becoming part of the global solution. So, if you are not celebrating yourself and your life today, cheer up and be part of the solution. Happiness or wholeness is our natural state of being. No matter what is happening, healing is inevitable, if you happily look at the solution and not get stuck in anger, frustration, fear, guilt, or blame by staring at and fighting or avoiding the problem.

Ah, but how can you look at the solution, when you don’t know what it is or where to look for it? First, where do we look for a solution to anything? We have to look where the solution is, not where it isn’t. Now, that may seem obvious and even silly that I am stating that here. Yet, it’s a basic truth, isn’t it? If you look at where the solution is, you will certainly find it. If you look away from where the solution is, you will not find it. If you are drowning in the ocean, in order to stay alive, you would have to look above the water where the air is that you need to breathe. Unless something has you trapped underwater, if you relaxed, instead of fighting in panic, you would naturally float up to the surface and be able to breathe. The seeming joke is that we always find our missing car key or cell phone in the very last place we look. Yet, could it be that we don’t often find it in the first place we look because more often than not, when we first discover that something important to us is missing, we tend to panic and stare at the problem – that it’s missing and what will happen to us, if we don’t find it? On the other hand, if we were to look at the solution – finding the misplaced object – we would most likely be intuitively guided to where it is much more quickly. And, if we were to look at the solution, we would be looking within us at the limitlessness of Spirit in which all solutions become possible . . .

We are each whole and limitless to start with. What makes us need healing is that somehow we’ve divided ourselves against our wholeness repeatedly. If we let ourselves be, if we trust ourselves that we do know the answer somewhere within our own beingness, we relax and we will naturally float up to find the solution we need. So, the initial step of looking at the solution, when we have no clue as to what that might be, is to have our certainty that the solution is already within us in the limitless wholeness that is Spirit. If we ask for the solution and keep seeking it, it will certainly be revealed to us. It usually comes as a total surprise and not in the way we might have expected. If we are busy trying to control what the solution has to be, we’ll miss the real solution that is given to us.”

Given the scale of what’s going on in the world, being happy with yourself might seem entirely inadequate. But it all comes down to the energy that one brings into the world, and our ability to trust that being happy creates more happiness; it raises the vibration of the planet. As we raise the vibration, the planet can heal. It may seem as if “things are getting worse”, but what if the planet is healing, and the rising vibration is exposing and pushing out the darkness? It’s Gregg Braden’s theory that we’re in the labor before the delivery, when we’re experiencing intense pain that feels like annihilation. But it isn’t the end; the miracle of new life is coming and that’s where we must tap into faith.

I know I keep talking about this but it only seems more and more important: I tell my own daughter, who’s an artist, “keep sewing/drawing/writing! We need somebody to be having fun.” She’s 19, it’s her job to have fun and so far, she’s hitting it out of the park. She’s also well aware of what’s happening on the planet, and she knows and uses her tools. She knows how to hold space and how to find neutrality. All these years, she’s been paying attention! Likely, my friend’s children have been watching her, too. They are aware, and observing their mother doing good in the world will stay with them. It’s part of who they are. Personally, it gives me great joy to watch my daughter’s life unfold, and in experiencing that joy I am raising my own vibration.

We are in a moment in which many feel that there are no solutions to many of the challenges we face. It seems as if nobody’s listening and even if they were, our leaders can’t get along with each other long enough to come to any agreements. You might feel helpless to make a difference as one person, but what if everyone who reads this devotes a few minutes a day to self-healing, to being happy? Most of you have energy tools and, even if all you do is ground, blow up different colored roses and fill yourself in, what if that’s all that’s all we need to solve a much bigger problem?

Let’s do it for those that are in the eye of the hurricane. Let’s do it in honor of Michael Tamura, who devoted his life to bringing our attention to how truly powerful we are. Maybe, you really are the answer.

Blessings,

Katie

Rt. Rev. Katie Heldman is the Co-Director of Psychic Horizons Center, and wrote this article for the November 6th, 2023 eNews.