Every day I’m encouraged by stories of parents who are exercising their options to make informed choices for their families. They are seeking resources and materi- als that challenge the status quo, and they are implementing this knowledge into their families’ lifestyles. I applaud all parents who are moving away from rote patterns of behavior and making a concerted effort for change.

Along with their new choices usually come challenges and seeming roadblocks, as families begin to live these ideals in a world that resists such changes. It takes a deep strength and conviction to express these new viewpoints. I’ve found that if these per- spectives are based in intellect alone, the challenges encountered may be too much to handle. Old fears and internal mental disputes are rekindled, causing us to lean back on old patterns and paradigms.

Pathways is published by parents who are walking this path, experiencing these struggles and forging an expansive, cohesive movement for all of us to grow with and in. This is why our Pathways Connect groups have formed...to nurture these shifts and support each other in our challenges as we increase our awareness.

But even more important than any assistance we can receive from outside is the vigor we can access from within. Here is a place of unlimited power and infinite enthusiasm. To claim this state of internal strength, we must shift the very place from which we make our decisions. We must move out of the mindset of informed choice, and into the realm of conscious choice. This is a movement from mind to heart, from thinking to knowing.

To do so takes some deep soul-searching, exploring the core of our deepest beliefs and convictions about life, its source and our identity within it. Do we resonate with the principles of vitalism? Do we not only recognize the presence of a universal intelligence to which all life is connected, but consciously rely on it from moment to moment?

When we shift our perspective from without (where we make our informed choices) to within (where we make our conscious choices), not only do all of our choices become easier to make, but the strength behind those choices surpasses any power we have ever accessed before.

I am reminded of a poem by Rudyard Kipling my class was required to memorize back in 5th grade. Over the years I have strived to live up to the values it espouses. The more I shift from the mental to the conscious, from the outside to the inside, the more strength I draw from within, and am therefore able to live in greater accordance with this guidance. Such strength allows me to live out the promptings of my conscious choices.

Many, many blessings,
Jeanne Ohm, D.C.

If
By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run— Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And —which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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