Truth-Seeker | Teacher | Healer | Mother | Compassionate | Heart-felt |
Rena Greenberg
Rena Greenberg is an author, healthcare expert, and educator whose programs are sponsored by over 75 US hospitals and 100 major US corporations, including Disney, Home Depot, and AT&T. She has helped over 200,000 people find their journey to health.
Rena’s weight loss and smoking cessation programs as well as her organic CBD line of wellness products, have been featured widely in the national press.
https://renagreenberg.com
My 10 Best
(In no particular order)
Manifesting Miracles
Neville Goddard’s work has been a great inspiration to me. Goddard was born in the early 1900s, to a family of 10 children in Barbados. He came to New York City and by the 1950s Goddard attracted large crowds to his lectures about metaphysics. He was one of the first new thought teachers of our time. His message was simple. God is inside each of us and this God power lives through us and creates the world we experience through us. If we want our world to change, we must not only change our thoughts, but the way we feel. If we want to manifest something else, we have to start from the end, is how he would put it. We have to feel as if we already have the thing and what our life would be like having already achieved it. One of my favorite teachings from Neville Goddard is the idea of imagining that you are telling a friend what already happened, as a symbol that you have already manifested your heart’s desire. The work of Neville Goddard has been a great influence to me in helping people to achieve their ideal weight, break free from addiction and step into greater wellness.
A Course in Miracles
A Course in Miracles is an amazing spiritual classic. The books authors, who were two professors at Columbia University, apparently were experiencing a lot of conflict at the time. One of the professors went home and started receiving “messages” about life and the meaning of life, that seemed to be coming to her from Jesus. This was very ironic to her because she was not a religious woman at all and up until that point had no relationship to Jesus. The next day, back at work, she told her co-worker of these “channelings” and he suggested to her that she write them down. I love that they kept the author of the book anonymous as, to me, this deepens the value of the brilliant message they imparted. The book is about love and forgiveness and the path forward in all relationship. All interactions are either an expression of love or a call for love, and are best seen in this way. My favorite message on forgiveness in A Course in Miracles is not so much on how to forgive someone who hurt you, but rather to forgive your younger self, because you are no longer the person who that incident could happen to again. I love that concept, that we grow out of being the one who could have been hurt in the way we may have been. I also love the deep message in A Course in Miracles inviting the reader to look at all the ways we judge others and to see that judging others is in reality judging ourselves—that there is no separation—we are all one child of God. The key take away for me is that in any given moment we are at a choice point—should we choose love or fear?
Touching Peace
Thich Nhat Hanh’s peaceful spirit is a great inspiration to me. His messages are simple and clear and come from his study of Buddhism. He talks about the transformative power of love. He speaks of the teachings of the Buddha as a practice that needs to be nurtured each day. The four aspects that lead to happiness that need to be cultivated are love, compassion, joy and equanimity. I especially like Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaches about being in the moment and having awareness of the impact people and life have on us. He talks about internal knots that are formed when we have judgments about people or when they do something we do not like. Through meditation and mindfulness, we can become aware of these knots and find ways to unravel them so they don’t cause us to close our hearts. He suggests meditations and breathing exercises to help release tension and return to our natural state of love and openness. More than the words in his books, I have been so inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s peaceful presence—the way he strives to resolve conflicts in his community of Plum Village, with open-hearted communication (emphasizing deep listening) and compassion.
The Dynamic Laws of Healing
Catherine Ponder’s writings have been near and dear to my heart for decades. She teaches with profound clarity and story-telling about the power of affirmations and prayer. Her affirmations are clear and bring an immediate feeling of peace and healing. Her background is as a Science of Mind minister and she speaks on making prayer a significant part of one’s daily routine. She believes and teaches that all situations in life can be transformed through affirmative prayer. There is no dogma and no religion in her work, only the essence of praying as a method for complete healing for ourselves and all those we love and care for. Her work has been truly inspirational for me and I have incorporated her scientific affirmations in my self-hypnosis and hypnosis sessions.
You Can Heal Your Life
Louise Hay was one of my first spiritual teachers. The simplicity of her message which she garnered from her work as a Science of Mind Minister in New York City, was profound for me. Her guidance was to use affirmations on a daily basis and speak kindly to yourself while looking into the mirror. Her unique affirmations always brought me back to the knowing that I am perfect, whole and complete exactly as I am. One of my greatest inspirations from Louise Hay was learning about her life. She had a very difficult childhood as did I. I remember in my early twenties reading about how Louise would collect every self-help and personal growth book that she could get her hands on. Louise went on to say that at the time she didn’t know that she would one day become a new thought leader and author herself. Her story was so comforting to me, because, like Louise, during my twenties and thirties, I spent every extra dollar I earned on self-help books and audios. I later saw the parallel. How ironic that Louise Hay would two decades later publish my very first book, The Right Weigh—a spiritual and practical book about six steps to permanent weight loss.
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
Dr. Joseph Murphy’s work inspired my career in a big way. I have spent over thirty years helping many thousands of people to lose weight and stop smoking using the power of the mind through hypnosis. Each time I read Murphy’s work, I develop a greater understanding of the power of the subconscious mind. Though Dr. Murphy does not call his process hypnosis, I have come to understand that there is no difference. Hypnosis, as I use it, is impressing upon the subconscious mind the life that you want to live. He believed and taught that the only block to happiness is in your own thoughts and mental imagery, and that each of us has the power to change that. Dr. Murphy also taught that happiness is attained by focusing on and bringing out the best in yourself and practicing being your virtues. I have found his guidance, particularly on gratitude and employing the visualizing power of the mind, to be extremely beneficial in attaining great success in many areas of my life as well as helping others to turn their own lives around.
Personal Power Through Awareness
I’ve enjoyed Sanaya Roman’s books for years. She teaches very simply how to expand your view of yourself and improve your circumstance through changing your inner programming, and the pictures running through your mind. This is exactly what I am teaching people with hypnotherapy. She talks about healing relationship by picturing in your mind that your next interaction with any person in your life may be your last. Increasing self-awareness is the first step to healing, and that is taught in many traditions. Sanaya teaches how to stay balanced even in the presence of anger and pain. Her teachings are so simple and yet very profound, particularly about knowing the truth of the power each of us carries within, beyond any parts of ourselves that may feel victimized or hurt. She teaches about energy and how we first create what we want (or don’t want) in our energy field and then it is bound to become manifest in our physical world. Her strategies can help us to create the life we do want, and have been very influential for me in my work.
Hands of Light
I had just had my second baby, Jessie, and on our date night, my husband and I would take a drive to our favorite place, the book store. I remember stumbling on Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light and being so uplifted by her words. So much so that I ended up enrolling in the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. At the time, the Barbara Brennan Healing School was in the mountains of New Jersey, and myself and hundreds of other students from all over the world, attended for week long sessions 4-5 times a year. Hers was a four-year program. During that time, it was truly life changing to learn about the human energy field and how we relate to one another energetically, often beyond the level of awareness. Barbara’s work also draws on Core Energetics, a form of psychotherapy that is very somatically based. Hands of Light teaches about the various aspects of ourselves, including the human wound—our core feeling of separation from the whole, our lower self and our higher self—which is our connection to God. Getting trained to be an energy healer at BBSH took my hypnotherapy and weight loss systems to a new level. I will always be so grateful to Barbara’s work in helping me to become the person I am today, and bring a greater depth to my own teachings.
A Return to Love
I love Marianne Williamson and was so honored to have her endorse my Hay House book, The Right Weigh. Early on, Marianne was inspired by A Course in Miracles and most of her teachings are based on this profound text of knowledge. Her way of interpreting and explaining very thick texts and deep concepts has always been so clear and relatable to me. I’ve always found Marianne to be very authentic and down to earth in her teaching style. When my husband and I bought a second home in Ann Arbor, Michigan so I could give my wellness seminars in hospitals and corporations all around the Detroit area for over a decade, we had the joy of discovering that Marianne was minister of Unity Church in Macomb County, Michigan, about a one-hour drive from our new home. Every Sunday we would drive to the Church with our two young daughters who would enjoy Unity’s robust children’s program. Marianne never failed to inspire us. Having listened to many spiritual teachers over time, one of the things I admire most is a teacher who does not place herself above others. Marianne is such a teacher. Unlike others in her league, she does not tell a story about having “once been a mess” and now having achieved enlightenment. She tells her following the truth and I admire that greatly: Enlightenment is a process that we are constantly striving for in this life. We don’t get “there” to a specific place where we are necessarily living heaven on earth, only. Rather our experience ebbs and flows as we learn more and more about ourselves, our own level of awareness, our effect on ourselves and others while accepting both areas of triumph and places within where we can still benefit from improvement. In other words, dangling the concept of “enlightenment” to your following, and pretending you are “there” is doing the world a disservice. Instead, we must accept the duality of the physical world and strive to transcend that by living in peace. Though these are my words, not hers, I feel that Marianne’s message and who she is has been very inspirational to me as she embodies strong leadership and a commitment to better herself and the world we live in while helping others.
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is my favorite book of all time. The metaphors in the story are so incredibly profound. Dorothy’s long search for “home” only to discover that all she had to do is click her heels three times and she would be there, is so revealing. Best of all, when Dorothy finally discovers this secret—that after all she went through, all she had to do was click her heels three times, she looked up at the Good Witch and asked her, “But why didn’t you tell me sooner?” to which the Witch replied, “Ah, but you wouldn’t have believed me.” I love that – it’s so true! We spend our lives searching for something, only to find later that what we were searching for was available to us all along. In the same way, aren’t we all searching for the Great and Powerful Oz? Don’t we want to be rescued by someone or something? Maybe a Guru? A spiritual teacher? Or, a political leader? A charismatic lover? And doesn’t the story always end the same way? The curtain gets pulled back and you find that the “Great and Powerful ________” was all smoke and mirrors and most likely what is revealed (after much pain and anguish) is a far more damaged and wounded person than yourself. Yet, we abandon ourselves over and over as we search for someone “out there” to bring us the love, happiness and purpose we long for, forgetting that all along everything we are fervently seeking is within. On our journey, we meet our own version of the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scare Crow, all desperate to find what they already have. Finally, as our journey continues, we may have the good fortune to discover that we already have courage and wisdom. At last, we realize that the loving heart we yearn for is located in the last place we thought to look: a treasure buried within our deep self. The Wizard of Oz is a brilliant and colorful spiritual book, imparting to us the deepest wisdom while being wildly entertaining. For me, having helped thousands of people end addiction to nicotine, food and alcohol, with hypnosis and NLP, the metaphors in The Wizard of Oz truly depict the necessary journey each one of us makes to find and live from our own wholeness.