The future shaman sometimes takes the risk of being mistaken for a madman.

but his madness fulfills a mystic function; it reveals certain aspects of reality to him that are inaccessible to other mortals, and it is only after having experienced and entered into these hidden dimensions of reality that the madman becomes a shaman. ~ Mircea Eliade

Introduction
This book is a compilation of blog postings from my blog, Blessed Madness, written during a three year period of personal crisis when my twenty-four year marriage was unraveling. It was a time of spiritual ripening, which removed many of my previously held beliefs and opened my heart to new ways of relating to life, love and truth. The selfreflective pieces and essays that capture the insights gained during that time. Translating intuitive knowledge and awareness into words is one of the greatest challenges of any writer. My hope is that Ive done so with openness, honesty and integrity, in a way that mirrors and validates the readers own knowledge and serves as a reminder that we are not alone.

The book contains windows into my own journey. It does not need to be read in a linear, cover-to-cover way. Rather, it can be explored in the same way it was written: intuitively and spontaneously. Opening to a random page may yield a glimpse into something new or bring clarity into an issue that invites further investigation. Some pieces may resonate and some may not. Read it with an open mind and heart, and may it light a spark somewhere within that even for a brief moment brings you a gift of clarity or peace.

Taking Back Y Life our

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning . ~ Carl Rogers Is it possible for you to lose your life but still be walking, talking, breathing, thinking, moving? Have you ever considered the possibility that during the course of your life that youve given bits and pieces of yourself away? Do you hold all the power in your life? Are you fully seated there, embracing and embodying it without reservation? Or are you holding back? Do you feel whole and full, or do you feel fragmented and scattered? These are big questions and their significance came to me when a friend of mine boldly exclaimed in the middle of a late-night conversation: Im taking my life back. Something in this statement resonated and got me thinking: What would it mean to reclaim our lives, and how did we lose it in the first place? How exactly does one give ones power away? After sitting with these questions for several days, the answers starting fluttering in, forming a vivid picture. I saw scenes from my life and the lives of people I knew, engaged in numerous encounters throughout our lives addictive or co-dependent relationships, authoritarian work situations, time spent with energy vampires, being dishonest with ourselves and others all causing us to fragment. A piece dropped here, another piece given away there, a big chunk taken from us there. From the smallest incident to the largest trauma, we chip away at ourselves until we are so unbalanced that were moving through life out of touch with ourselves and out of sync with the world.

Anytime you betray yourself by giving or doing something you dont want to, anytime you lie to yourself in order to please someone else, and anytime you are willing to put yourself in harms way on someones behalf, you are losing pieces of yourself. Before I get any further down this road, let me pause here for a moment. Of course, I am not speaking literally here. Our natural state of being is wholeness. Our natural state of relationship with others is oneness. Beyond that, there is no need to speak. However, since we perceive and experience duality and separateness, the experience of soulsoul fragmentation and loss can feel quite real. The reason to even speak about it in this way is that framing something in a particular vein can actually activate a major shift in both perception and experience, regardless of whether or not what were speaking about is real. What matters is: Does it work to promote a state of well-being? If so, then use it. SoulSoul retrieval has been practiced by shamans for centuries, so theres obviously something to the idea of gathering up the pieces of your life and reclaiming them. Take a brief scan of your life. In what areas of your life are you currently giving your power away? In small ways? In big ways? Then look at the past for incidents, events and relationships in which you felt that you lost or gave away some of your power. Consider your power to be your voice or your say in a situation or relationship. Consider how many times you censor or mute that voice or betray your own needs. What do you think this does over time to your state of being? The image that comes to mind is one of erosion. I see a persons life force being worn down by this type of compromise. Im not advocating blatant self-absorption or narcissism here. It can be a beautiful expression of love to give of ourselves to others. No, Im speaking about the habitual tendency to deny the self and therefore deprive the soulsoul of regular life-sustaining nourishment. This is what, over time, leads to depression, illness, burn-outburnout and feeling generally put upon by life. What Im suggesting here is stopping this pattern of leaking your precious life force all over the place. Go ahead and take your life back, piece by ever-loving piece. Find out where you left those precious pieces and grab them up. I think you might be a bit surprised how empowering this little exercise is. You begin to get reacquainted with long-forgotten strengths, interests, ideas, dreams, likes and dislikes, quirks, talents, preferences, etc. What does that feel like? I can only describe it in this way: You begin to feel like you again. Besides feeling kind of homey and cozy and familiar and all that, it is also just such an incredible relief. Its like coming home.

The Care and Feeding of Y Soul our

There is one thing one has to have: either a soulsoul that is cheerful by nature, or soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche What does it mean to live life authentically? What does it look like to be coming from the Truth? What are the ingredients for a life worth living? One approach would be to look at your decisions, specifically the ones youve made in the past. Ask yourself a simple question: Which decisions have enslaved, exhausted and starved your soulsoul and which have freed, energized and fed your soulsoul? This is a completely different way of reflecting on your life and it should give you some very clear messages about how you got to where you are at this moment in your life. The key now is not to beat yourself up for making decisions that created hardship. Instead, take responsibility for making them, forgive yourself and release them. Beginning right now, wipe the slate clean, empty your cup, open your arms and decide to make all of your current and future decisions with a new state of consciousness about the well-beingwell being of your soulsoul. This action alone will create one of the single most significant shifts in your life, because it will unlock the door to an authentic life. This simple way of looking at your decisions will make it impossible to hide from the Truth about who you are and what you desire. Knowing what feeds your soulsoul and making ALL decisions based on that criterion is the simplest, most direct, way to

create a life worth living. Once you discover this, you will look for the quickest exit plan possible from all those decisions that are currently enslaving, exhausting and starving you. Life is a precious gift with a limited number of life hours allotted to each of us. It is the greatest currency we have, and it is up to us to spend it wisely, not wasting it by feeling victimized. We are our own worst enemies. We are constantly getting in our own way. Once were able to own this fully, we are then free to make new choices, choices that are in line with who we are choices that nurture and feed and inspire us. This can be applied to all aspects of our lives, our work, our relationships, our living situations, our creative expression, etc. The beauty in this is that we can start fresh at any time right where we are. Each moment is a new beginning. What new decisions can you make right now that will nurture your soul?

Weve Never Been Here Before

Men are not disturbed by things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen . ~ Epictetus We are all arriving at this moment in time together. None of us has ever been here before, which means that anything is possible. None of us is an expert about this moment or the moments that lie ahead, because there is no way to know for sure. We like to pretend we know; we like to act as if we know, we like to rest in the feeling of security that our plans give us. But, the trick in all of this is that we have no idea whats going to happen next. The present and the future are both up for grabs, and no matter how much we think we have control over the way events unfold, life has a tendency to blindside us with any number of small and large unexpected events that remind us we are at the mercy of the unforeseen. We cannot account for, or even factor in, the unexpected. We must forge ahead regardless of the surprise(s) that may be around the next corner. It certainly keeps life interesting and exciting to not know whats next. But it also can work against the best-laid plans. We cannot live without plans and simply drift around wherever life wants to take us. Nor can we be too attached to any plans we do have. There must be a happy medium in here somewhere. If change is the only constant and the only thing we can count on, how do we navigate from the past to the present to the future? By staying focused on the moment. Receiving it as the gift that it is, because it, like all the other moments, will soon be gone. Forever. Dont you find it fascinating that we are all equalized by the very common experience of having never been here before? It is new for all of us. No one has been able to jump ahead and report back on the future. No, were all entering it together, at the exact same time. This is profound when you think about it. Funny, how most of us have never even considered this as the most common bond that we all share. It is universal and cuts across times zones, cultures, ethnicities, religions, age and sex, and locates us all in the same moment in time, on the edge of the next moment and the next. All moving forward together without anything to prepare us for whats ahead. We are so busy acting as if we know what were doing all the time that weve forgotten how vulnerable we all are in this. Its as if weve forgotten the most fundamental truth about existence; in burying it, like some deep, dark secret, were all walking around in the dark, in unknown, foreign territory, simply through the act of being alive. Each moment is always new, never like the last, and forever filled with the potential for change. We buzz right through the moments as if weve got plenty to spare, tossing them aside here and there, like waste, never realizing they cannot be gathered up again. Instead of approaching each moment as if it were a new and precious gift, we recycle our assumptions and concepts and projections over and over again, missing whats right in front of us, cluttering the present with the past. In doing this, we dont notice how stale the air has gotten or how dead we feel as we skim the surface of life, ignoring the birth that is happening within and around us each and every moment.

Not to worry, because right now, you have another chance. As you finish reading this piece and before you go on to the next activity, Id like you to stop, take a breath, and remember that you and everyone around you has never been here before. This moment is newborn, breathing with new life and unseen possibilities. What will you do with this gift?

Game of Life
A good scare is worth more than good advice. ~ Horace, 65 - 8 BC How do you like to learn your life lessons? The easy way or the hard way? Didnt know you had a choice? Thats the beauty of the gift of free will were givenwe always have a choice. Welcoming, inviting, allowing and embracing life lessons is certainly the easier way to go. Running away, ignoring, resisting and fighting the lessons that occur will often ensure a rough ride. We hold most of the cards (more on that later) that determine whether our path is one of joy or suffering. Now, Im not knocking suffering. Its an incredible teacher, but we dont have to get a degree in it. The key is to volunteer for the lessons, rather than make them pursue us. A life lesson thats been avoided is no fun. By the time its become painful, quite a bit of time has passed, and its intensity now resembles a two by four or bulldozer rather than a nicely paced challenge. Far better to meet this thing halfway and invite it in for tea rather than wait until it breaks our door down. Whether we like it or not, these lessons are coming, one way or another. What the SoulSoul needs, the SoulSoul gets. Period. And if necessary, it will use the override button to circumvent whatever dalliance or detour or distraction has led us off our path. Typically, this avoidance occurs when we listen to the mind instead of our intuition. The fact that the mind is often referred to affectionately as the drunk monkey is no accident. If left to its own devices, it behaves in a way that is clearly not sober or sane. In fact, following the path the mind takes is like following a raving lunatic without a map. After exhausting yourself by going around in circles and meeting endless dead ends, youll only end up back where you started or, even worse, lost. Better to stop moving and check in with a more reliable source: your intuition. Weve all been given this incredible internal guidance system; but, sadly, most of us dont trust it enough to cultivate it or learn how to use it. This creates all kinds of problems because listening to our intuition is the only reliable way to hear what our SoulSoul wants. It is an internal system of checks and balances that allows us to sort through the massive quantities of information presented to us at any given time and to discern what to put our attention on. Without that, we are walking around with no sense of direction or purpose, just wandering aimlessly in a state of constant reaction to whatever we encounter. To significantly reduce suffering in our lives, we have to learn to establish clear boundaries around ourselves to eliminate lots of meaningless stimulation and distractions. From there, we can then determine what our sSoul needs for growth and expansion. This is a more proactive way of living, in which we move toward our lessons rather than away from them. It saves a lot of time and trouble and heartache. I see the mind as a rebellious teenager, constantly trying to find a clever way into the drivers seat of our lives. The only way to deal with its juvenile antics is to be firm, direct and, most importantly, consistent in reminding it that its place is in the backseat, or even the passenger seat, but never the drivers seat. No, that seat is reserved for the sSoul or, as some people refer to it, the Higher Self, the part of us that has a map, can see the bigger picture and knows the best route to where we need to go. So, take a moment and scan your life right now. Do you have a vague awareness that there are some things that need your attention? Do yourself a favor and address them right now before a gentle, easy lesson becomes a brutally difficult one. If youre in the middle of a painful lesson right now, dont beat yourself up. We all have blind spots and issues we sweep under the rug. We all have lessons that have required varying degrees of pain before we were willing to learn

them. Do what you can to finish the lesson,lesson; recover and restore balance to your life; then comfort yourself with the idea that this type of thing can be avoided in the future. While life may very well be a game, one thing its not is a game of chance. As I said earlier, we hold most of the cards. The rest are influenced by other factors, including, but not limited to, other peoples free will, laws of physicality, subconscious scripts, and past actions and intentions not to mention the Almighty Dealer. The first step is acknowledging that fact in the present moment, and then working from there to minimize future suffering and to evolve to a place where some of those other factors can be addressed, increasing our odds not of winning, but of enjoying the game.

Notes on Waking Up
As with yoga, this culture has taken a sublime, complicated mystical system, designed to birth the divineDivine, and turned it into a form of decadent entertainment. ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Sun at Midnight The underlying process of waking up is the removal of anything and everything that is in the way or interferes with it, remembering that the true and natural human state is this place. The rest is a trick, a lie, an illusion, a trap, a prison, etc. We need to remember who we are. We are DivineDivine , and our natural state of being is wholeness, perfection, health, prosperity, peace, joy, love, connectedness, oneness, etc. We move back and forth between remembering and forgetting, between expansion and contraction, between love and fear. The path is about spending less time in the place of forgetting, contracting and fear and more time in the place of remembering, expansion and love. Why is this so difficult to grasp or to put into words? Why is it so difficult to experience at will? It is what we all know exists, what we search for and long for but often miss. When we do find it, for whatever brief period, we rejoice; when its gone, we feel devastated. This is why people use drugs and alcohol they are looking for this sensation or place of being in the flow this place of joy and bliss and connectedness. Drugs and alcohol simulate it, but its not nearly as good as the real thing, and when you come down from a drug high you are even farther from the real thing. It can become a vicious circle with the only escape being one or more of the above paths at work in your life. The place is the place where miracles and healing and manifestation happen. To be human and remember your Divinity is about as good as it gets its like being in love with lLife. When someone is in this place it affects everyone around him/her. They can feel the energy because that person has tapped directly into Source and has become a clear channel for that energy. It is electric and intoxicating. To access this Source requires nothing more than clearing the channel and removing whatever is in the way physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, energetically, etc. This will allow us to access this Source more at will rather than randomly. Sometimes it seems so random. Ive worked hard for years with all the techniques, but lately it just seems to happen without anything specific preceding it, as if Im just finding the location and then the channel opens up. Maybe my son was right, and there are two earths, and one is underneath the other. One is REAL and the other is a lie, a simulation or game. There are doors and escape hatches from the matrix earth into the real one, and perhaps we slip into it when we dream or meditate or take hallucinogenic drugs or sometimes just randomly have a peak experience. But then we always come back into the matrix the limited earth, the painful earth, the challenging earth. Finding the doors is the key to a better lifelife. Death is one door, but there are many, many other doors, and within this false earth there are clues everywhere about how to access the REAL one. Its tricky and requires lots of work and removal of the false persona that weve been led to believe is real. When we remember who we are, we automatically have access to the REAL earth. But remembering aint easy; luckily there are lots of catalysts around that can trigger a memory.

The Paradox of Transcendence

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers. ~James Arthur Baldwin The physical world we live in is thick, heavy and dense. We are weighed down by bodies that are weighed down by gravity, and surrounded by physical objects. The density and weight of the three-dimensional world we live in is a blessing and a curse. A whole spectrum of experience exists that allows us to engage our senses and partake of sensations that range from great pleasure to severe pain. When the pain outweighs the pleasure, as it is does far more often than wed like, the overwhelming urge is to escape. This leads us to take any measure we can to change the way we feel: drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, television, spending money ANYTHING that alters our mood and allows us to transcend the moment or situation were in. We all long for transcendence, though some of us more than others. We want a break from the density of this world. We want to feel light and free and at peace. In fact, many of us seek this out to the exclusion of all else, as if were looking for the exit or the escape hatch, so convinced we are that we are trapped and there is someplace better. The problem is that we are spinning our wheels. This plane of existence the schoolhouse we call earth doesnt appear to be designed for extended vacations. If it were, then all those hardy attempts at long-term escape wouldnt have such an exorbitant price tag and always end up backfiring. After three decades of studying this topic relentlessly, my best guess is that the whole point of being here at all is about learning and growth, with some of the best ingredients for human evolution being struggle and pain. If everything werewas easy and all the edges were smooth and soft and pain-free, we wouldnt learn very much. Instead, we would atrophy into soft blobs of clay, malleable but not of much use for anything. Still people want out or at least want relief from the struggle. They treat life like an evening at the movies. They invest the time to select a movie, get themselves to the theater, stand in line, pay for the tickets, buy their snacks, find their seats, watchand watch the previews. Then, after watching the movie for a while, decide they dont like it and get up and leave the theater. Oh, ifwere it was only that easy. Life is designed with such a heavy coating of amnesia so that we dont even remember agreeing to any of this in the first place. It is as if we were born in the theater itself and want to find out what lay outside its dim lighting and soundproof rooms. Weve suspended our disbelief to such an extent, at times, we are so immersed in the idea that life begins and ends inside that movie theater, that escape seems the only viable solution to what seems such a small and limited existence. Perhaps, though, none of this would even be possible unless we forgot most of what we know about life prior to and beyond this one. Perhaps thats the whole point: forgetting so that we can engage fully in this mysterious mirage we call life. Regardless, the joke is on us if we spend the entire time were here trying to escape or transcend it. Again, using the movie theater metaphor, if we spend the entire time looking for the exit, we will miss the movie. The desire to transcend is a paradox and it is also ironic. The paradox is that two things are true at the same time: We want to be here, and we dont. It is this tension that can make us nuts. The irony is that attempting to transcend the density of the 3-D may defeat the whole purpose of being here. This is especially true if we chose to be here in the first place, but somehow forgot about it. In that case, who could blame us for being curious, or even furious, that we dont know whats going on or what were doing here. Knock someone out and drop them off at a location where theyve never been with no instructions or map, and chances are theyre going to be a little upset. I have loads of compassion for those who want out of this place. I have often felt that way myself. But, instead, I busy myself with my quest to figure things out. Like Truman in The Truman Show, Im determined to find the truth, not by finding the door out, but by somehow penetrating the lies deeply enough that I stumble upon something that hints at some answers. The irony in that is that the layers of illusion probably never end, but only shift to accommodate the search. In the meantime, little by little, Im learning to enjoy the show, laughing at myself and my folly, and realizing that not knowing is what keeps things interesting. That may be my favorite paradox of all.

Spiritual Disobedience

If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh The world we live in functions by using rules and laws and structure to control and manipulate our experience. Following a schedule and using clocks and calendars keep us bound to a consensus way of thinking and behaving, which at first glance, appears to be serving us in that it makes order out of chaos. However, upon deeper examination, one soon sees this order comes at great cost: our freedom and autonomy. All these rules and laws ultimately make it nearly impossible to know how we really feel or what we really want at any given moment. Thereby, the very thing that makes life feel safe and predictable also becomes the greatest obstacle in self-awareness, imprisoning us in a mostly reactive daily grind. What this comes down to is an outer-directed life versus an inner-directed one. To make the shift from outer-directed to inner-directed living requires nothing less than a monumental shaking up of ones entire belief system literally taking it apart piece by piece and holding onto only the basics required for engaging with others. What is required is spiritual disobedience: a revolution of the self. If you have any desire for freedom from the shackles of daily living dictated by the mass-shared consciousness, you will have to say No to anything and everything that is not an authentic expression of you. Anything that you do because someone else says you should has to be put aside. Im talking about shutting off the Greek Chorus (parents, teachers, friends, co-workers, the media) in your life, ceasing not only to listen to them but to act on what they tell you. The only way real freedom can exist is if you realign with yourself and let your heart lead. Trust ourselves? No easy task. The habits of doubt and second-guessing and patterns of insecurity run deep and fast within us. We have been scrutinized and judged and micro-managed by the external world for so long, for many of us, our inner voice is an unknown. Luckily, for some of us, self-denial seems to have an expiration date. There is only so long we can survive on a shallow, scant diet of people-pleasing motivations. We crave real food that will sustain us, and we can only discover what that is when we begin to listen to our own inner-directed wants and needs. The more we shift to this inner-directed place, the better our lives will flow. Sure, there may be fallout when we stop accommodating others. Relationships and situations may shift dramatically. But, to really breathe and feel at home in our own lives, we must heed our own directives. Disobeying the world and the people in it and heeding our own directive may feel foreign at first, especially if we built a life around avoiding confrontation and smoothing the edges over for others. We may make messes and stumble around awkwardly until we find our rhythm. Others may not understand our radical behavior changes; it may look like weve suddenly become selfish or narcissistic. We have. Were talking revolution here. The pendulum has swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, and it will come back into balance in time. In the meantime, enjoy the newfound freedom; and while youre transitioning, feel free to put up a temporary smokescreen by telling others youre involved in a big project that is taking up a lot of your time, and youll get back to them soon. Because for right now, the answers no.

Signs of Spiritual Maturity

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~ Henri Bergson 1. You dont take things personally. 2. You speak less and listen more. 3. You are more interested in inner peace than you are in happiness. 4. You know more than you believe.

5. You recognize that there is a lot you dont know. 6. You care more about people than things. 7. You listen to and follow your intuition more than your intellect. 8. You trust yourself more than the opinion of others. 9. You see giving and receiving as one and the same. 10. Practicing gratitude is part of your daily routine. 11. Meditation comes as naturally to you as breathing. 12. You have a direct experience of a higher intelligence.

Growing Up Spiritually
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are. ~ Arthur Golden Life essentially gives us what we ask for. How do we ask? By what we put forth. Everything that leaves our circle of being and I do mean everything our thoughts, emotions, judgments, beliefs comes back around in some way. We are all connected, and there is no place in that field of connection to hide. If we soil the ocean of existence, there is no way to escape accountability for that. Its taken me a good many years and many hard life lessons to realize that life has certain rules of operation, and the sooner we align with those rules, the easier our lives become. Those rules include showing up to do our part, being fully accountable for ALL of our actions and keeping our corner of existence clean. A tall order, indeed. Spiritual maturity is not about finding easy answers to lifes problems. It is about meeting what is head-on, without resistance, embracing it fully with all of its confusion and chaos. Its also about knowing that life is always a reflection of what is happening inside of us on ALL levels, both conscious and unconscious. Many people on the spiritual path make the mistake of thinking that prayer and affirmations are enough to shift things in their lives and the lives of their loved ones. But it takes more than that. Showing up is a big part of manifestation. In order to attract what we want into our lives, we need to demonstrate our desire and willingness to receive it through our actions. It is a way of meeting life halfway. We cannot complain that things are missing from our lives if we arent willing to put ourselves forth to meet these things fully. Hiding out in our habitual comfort zones, and then wondering why our lives are so full of lack, makes no sense, but thats what most of us do. We passively wait for the good to show up for us. To spiritually mature, we also need to put our attention on our accountability. Many of us are conscientious when it comes to our behavior in the world but lazy when it comes to our thoughts and emotions and what comes out of our mouths. This wont fly, because everything that moves from us touches everyone else and eventually comes back and touches us. If you knew that when you spoke a sharp word about someone, it traveled from you and pierced another, would you be so willing to let it go? If you knew that the reason you felt pain at a given time was due to that same sharp word you sent out, would you still allow yourself to be the originator of that pain? Of course not. But most of us have not cultivated an awareness of that level of accountability yet. If we had, our conversations with others would be quite different, as would our conversations with ourselves. Finally, how do we clean things up if we do make a mess? Its quite simple: honesty and forgiveness. Being honest with ourselves and others, taking responsibility, and then apologizing for our part in the mess cleans it up. We dont have to beat ourselves up or even hold onto the mistake, except to receive the lesson it imparts. Rather, it is really only necessary to see it, acknowledge it, clean it up, forgive ourselves and then MOVE ON. There is nothing to be gained by lingering in the mess. As we move through this process of cleaning things up, we will

find ourselves far more forgiving and compassionate when others make a mess. This creates all kinds of space and openness around us, and then there is finally room for the good stuff: love, joy, peace, etc. The magic of life comes in when we embrace life and ourselves fully, messiness and all. Growing up sounds terribly dull and boring but, in fact, is quite the opposite. All of that mess that we were unconsciously creating was blocking all the good things weve been seeking. It created distractions and constant fires to put out. When we begin to take responsibility for the mess and clean it up, this allows us to clear the channel so that we can receive what has always been there. It allows us to become childlike and look at life with wonder again. My sense is that we will also have much more access to the parts of ourselves that are mostly dormant and unused the parts of us that are able to transcend time and space. Most of us have had glimpses of that, and the possibilities are endless and tremendously exciting. But Im getting ahead of myself

The Illusion of Control

All is flux; nothing stays still. ~ Heraclitus While browsing online one afternoon, I stumbled upon an interesting article written in 1999 by psychology professor Suzanne C. Thompson. She wrote, the illusion of control is the tendency for human beings to believe they can control, or at least influence, outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over.* This belief, I think, stems directly from how much our lives seem to support that illusion. In other words, when things are going well or going our way, it appears as though we are in command to some degree, bending life to our will. However, when things begin to fall apart and our circumstances abruptly change, we usually feel as though weve somehow lost control. We throw around words such as lucky or unlucky, depending on what happens to or around us. We talk about how certain things are meant to be or that there are no accidents. The bigger the change, the more it becomes clear that we have much less control than we think we do. At any moment, without notice, our lives can change dramatically. We can have an accident, be involved in a natural disaster, get sick, lose a loved one, get fired, etc. We all know this; we have all experienced this, and yet we still behave as though we have control over our lives. According to a recent study, the illusion of control is strongest when were in a position of power. From an article in Science Daily, called Power and The Illusion of Control: CEOs of Fortune 500 companies routinely overestimate their capacity to turn mergers and acquisitions into huge profits, leading to financial losses for themselves, their companies, and their stockholders. Even ordinary people seem to take on an air of invincibility after being promoted to a more powerful position. The consequences of these tendencies, especially when present in the worlds most powerful leaders, can be devastating. In a new study, Nathanael Fast and Deborah Gruenfeld at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Niro Sivanathan at the London Business School and Adam Galinsky at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, show that power can literally go to ones head, causing individuals to think they have more personal control over outcomes than they, in fact, do. We conducted four experiments exploring the relationship between power and illusory control the belief that one has the ability to influence outcomes that are largely determined by chance, said Galinksy. In each experiment, whether the participant recalled power by an experience of holding power or it was manipulated by randomly assigning participants to Manager-Subordinate roles, it led to perceived control over outcomes that were beyond the reach of the individual. Furthermore, the notion of being able to control a chance result led to unrealistic optimism and inflated selfesteem. If control is an illusion, then why do we hold onto it so tightly? My guess is that we need this illusion to suspend our disbelief long enough to fully engage in our lives. Without it, wed be paralyzed with fear, looking over our shoulders

wondering when something bad might happen. Our illusion of control gives us a feeling of being able to do the impossible, transcend limitations and create new opportunities. Our greatest inventions come from the belief that we can create something out of nothing. If we simply resigned ourselves to our mortality or the fragility of human life, we would never attempt to do anything. Problems arise when this belief in our ability to control things goes too far. People with lots of power and/or lots of money often fall prey to this because their lives are buffered by the ability to manipulate or buy their way out of problems and suffering. This option is not available to people without authority or means. What fascinates me is that those without power or money often turn to each other to solve problems. Or to the DivineDivine[VF1] , in whatever way they understand that. They use inner resources rather than outer resources. Of course, not all. Some take a negative approach and manipulate others by stealing or simply escaping altogether through addiction. For the most part, those without power or means tend to live life with a greater awareness of change and death, and therefore approach life with respect and humility. As evidenced by our failing economy, the illusion of control at its extreme can extract a tremendous price (there are endless examples throughout history that reveal the same thing). Life is not a casino, and when it is seen as fodder for manipulation to be used for personal gain, the illusion falls down hard and fast. Life has, and always will have, the upper hand, and it has some not-so-subtle ways of reminding us of that. Anything that flies high eventually has to come down. Like it or not, theres no way to outsmart change or death. Theyre inevitable. We can only pretend theyre not, but sooner or later, theyll come knocking at our door. Is it not better, then, to meet life as it is and stop the pretending? To some extent, yes, as long as we learn to accept change and death without fear. Nothing wrong with wrapping a bit of illusion around us for comfort. The trick is to not buy into it too deeply or get too attached to things staying the same. This is where a bit of Zen acceptance and surrender comes in handy. There is some freedom in letting go of the illusion of control. We can relax our vigilance and begin to allow it all to unfold, as we would a movie. However, life is not a spectator sport. For as long as we live, we are players on the field, engaging in the game. What we think, say and do matters, but not in the personal way we typically think of it, but in a big-picture kind of way. To get a glimpse of that youll need to speak with the Director. * Thompson, Suzanne C. (1999) "Illusions of Control: How We Overestimate Our Personal Influence", Current Directions in Psychological Science (Association for Psychological Science) 8 (6): 187190

Hide and Seek

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. ~ Franz Kafka Who we are is constantly changing. We are not static, therefore, we cannot hold onto our concept of ourselves or others. To truly grow and move and flow with the river of life, we need to constantly let go of where we are and what we know. This makes us available for what is and whats to come. Many find fluidity threatening. It is unpredictable and unknown. Without a measured, structured controlled way of being, life becomes rich with possibility and also with danger. Anything can happen. And as Alan Watts [AS2] reminded us there is real wisdom in insecurity. Nothing is certain or guaranteed, and to operate as though it is leaves us unprepared to meet what life presents us in the moment. How could this happen? we ask when life takes a sudden abrupt turn, the very question revealing deep levels of unconsciousness about the nature of existence. Life simply is unfolding as it will, moment by moment, and the workings of it are so vast and complex that try as we might, we will never be able to rein it in and direct it to do our bidding. The shattering of illusions, such a quintessential aspect of waking up, reveals this unfathomable mystery over and over again. Like grains of sand in a clenched fist, no amount of our demanding the truth, brings it forth. Instead, it seems to

be the gentle surrender and dropping of resistance that allows the fog around our vision to lift. Thankfully, there is always more more to see more to know more to experience. Thinking you have arrived is yet another illusion. So many spiritual teachers have been blinded silly by that one, as they set up their tent shows promising to show us the way. What a relief to realize that stopping is not an option. Life is about movement and growth, and those whose main focus is escaping that usually end up getting yanked out of their stupor by some major jolt or challenge. Fate has a way of finding our hiding places. We all know the whispering inside our hearts, as well as the ongoing costs we incur by ignoring it. As Ive said before we can take our experiences easy and smooth or hard and straight up. There are benefits to each. Often the resistance makes our experiences and the lessons we learn from them far more powerful, indelible in their impact and level of penetration, giving them a bit more staying power. Resistance then may not be a bad choice if you dont mind higher spheres of pain, because the tighter we hold onto our illusions, the more attached we get to them, the more wrenching and severe it can be when they blow up. Life becomes quite shamanic at this level. We invite this kind of no-nonsense teacher when we really want to immerse ourselves fully in the deepest level of a particular lesson. We may even question our ability to survive travels into these depths, because they often leaving us feeling adrift without anchor or familiar ground beneath our feet. But eventually, with time, we emerge from the murky darkness and find our way onto dry land. In the process, we may discover that something within us something connected to us, something mysterious and yet familiar was there to sustain us all along, That something also is what connects us to all that is around us and lets us know that we are not alone. Once we can really see and experience that connectedness with everything, we no longer need to fight or control or manipulate the world around us. We no longer need to cling to our concepts and beliefs. We can simply let go and fall into the void and relax into the awareness that there is no death and, therefore, nothing to fear. In fact, there are no limitations at all. There is only this game of hide and seek between the truth and the illusions that distort it. The ultimate paradox is that since there is nowhere to go but right where you are, you are exactly where you should be, illusions and all.

The Universe
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. ~ Rabindranath Tagore I took a walk with a friend the other day. It was an overcast windy day, typical of fall in the Northwest, with hints of sunlight scattered amidst the fallen leaves. We were sharing the details of some personal issues when she turned to me and said, For the longest time, its felt as though the universe were conspiring against me. Wow, I thought, shes describing my feelings exactly. I imagine most people feel that way when life seems particularly challenging. But as accurate as it sounded, what did it really mean? How could the universe as a whole conspire against anyone? If it could conspire against someone, could it also conspire for someone? When things are going well, we tend to think were being rewarded or have hit a lucky streak or grace period in which were in the flow. However, when things are going badly, we assume that were being punished or that were unlucky or having a bad day. Whats behind this way of thinking? Do we actually believe that the universe is capable of taking sides? Or is something deeper at work?

Perhaps, were actually onto something when we think this way. We are living beings who interact with our environment all the time. There is no way to separate ourselves from it. We are connected to everyone and everything in the world we live in. We send out signals and we receive them. Every thought, emotion, and action carries our energy with it as it is sent out. By the same token, we are constantly bumping into the thoughts, emotions, and actions of those around usreceiving them. Could it be that the universe is made up of all this output, and it is this interaction that we feel and perceive as either positive or negative? Is there something a presence, an intelligence beyond, and its directing the show? Perhaps, its just a way of personifying the chaos. Blame our pain and suffering on the big, bad, old universe, because we certainly couldnt be to blame. Shit happens, right? No one asks for suffering. Right? Well I dont know about that. But I do know that if you look deep enough, and I mean really deep, into the hard-toreach corners of religion, science, literature and the arts, they all essentially point to the same thing: We and the universe are one and the same we are it it is us. We are moving with it all the time, whether we recognize it or not. Sometimes, we just allow that and feel totally in sync with it. Other times, we resist and feel totally out of sync with it. It is not the universe that has shifted, but us. We create the ripple that hits us sideways and knocks us down. Sometimes the effect is delayed, making it appear as though things happen to us out of the blue, but if we were to rewind the tape and look at ALL the thoughts and feelings we were having, we would see a connection somewhere. Are we to blame? No, there is no blame, because most of us arent aware of how things work, so we interact with the world around us ignorant of our role in it. But our ignorance doesnt get us a pass either. Our only option is to find out how things work, and make the changes within. Sounds daunting, doesnt it? It is, but it seems to me that if you were willing to incarnate on this crazy plane of existence, the least you could do is read the instruction manual so you dont fuck it up. Too bad it doesnt exist. No, we have to go searching for it, and rather than finding it all in once place, we pick up pieces along the way, like clues on a scavenger hunt. The whole thing feels as rigged as a Las V egas casino. Apparently, thats part of the game of being alive. A hall of mirrors. A labyrinth. A maze. Waking up in the dream. Dreaming were awake. Because of its mirage-like nature, we can never be sure were onto the Truth. Again and again, right when we think weve hit the bulls-eye, we discover were not even close. Maybe thats a good thing. Would you really want to destroy the mystery anyhow? Half the fun is not knowing what will happen next. But that doesnt stop some of us from trying to figure it all out.

Self-Betrayal
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~ Benjamin Franklin Have you ever considered the possibility that the society and culture you live in are designed to encourage you to betray yourself? That self-betrayal is considered the norm; it is what is considered acceptable and what most of us agree with and conform to? Self-betrayal is something you learned and adopted and borrowed from your parents, teachers and the world around you, absorbing it like a sponge, identifying with it at such a deep level, that to do anything different feels as foreign as learning a new language. Sabotage, folks. Thats what Im talking about. While the self-help industry makes millions of dollars from your quest to find happiness, the society you live in does everything in its power to discourage you from finding it, living it, embodying it. For every step you move forward, the very nature of the world you live in is designed to pull you back. Self-awareness, individuality, thinking for oneself, and real freedom are rare commodities in Western society. It goes against the grain of the powers that be who expect our cooperation in maintaining the capitalist machine. What is

particularly insidious about this is that we are led to believe that we are free to do as we please. So, we doubt our soulsouls cry for freedom, discount it as self-centered and complicated and impossible. We feel guilty for our discontent, our depression and unhappiness, and we blame ourselves for wanting more than we have. All the while, we hide our desperation and grieve about feeling out of place in the scheme of things; we wonder why our self-sacrifice for the good of the whole isolates us in our own private confusion, rather than at least rewarding us with a feeling of being connected to each other. We know in our hearts that something is wrong, but we fear rejection and condemnation if we speak up about it. We fear that we alone carry this awareness around, that others somehow know some deep secret about how to make this self-sacrifice work, that if we stuff our feelings and shame down far enough, well eventually discover a way to fit in, too. We recoil in horror when we see those who dont fit in or we venture into envy or jealousy when we see those who have found a way to make not fitting in work, leaving us stuck in a kind of limbo or in-between state. Is it any wonder that we might consider living on the fringe the only doorway out of this insanity? There comes a critical point when this place of limbo no longer works. Once you decide you cant take it anymore, something begins to shift, the bloom falls off the rose, and the life you were so entranced by loses its shine. The price of self-awareness is that you can no longer hold onto your illusions, nor do you feel that you have the courage to go forward. But forward you must go. Luckily, life presents us with some powerful tools to guide us and to, in a sense, keep us in line. One of those tools is our intuition. Another is our body wisdom, or visceral wisdom. Ideally, over time, the two begin to work in sync, essentially giving us an infallible barometer to use to move through the world. When something goes against our intuition and we have a bad feeling about it, the body responds by reinforcing it with feelings of great discomfort and even illness. When something supports our intuition and we have a good feeling about it, the body responds by reinforcing it with feelings of ease and well-beingwell being. This can give us a clear way to be in the flow with life, to move through it without effort. Freedoms not easy, but it is certainly preferable to feeling like a leaf in the wind, a victim of the world around us, especially a world that doesnt support who we are and expects us to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. The greater good is served far more by modeling self-awareness and freedom. Each time you do that, it gives others permission to do the same. The more of us who are free, the less resistance there is to being free, the less threatening it is, and then there is hope that soon we will all live in a world that is free. One at a time, we can change things. But it must start with us, having the courage to step to the beat of a different drummer and say no to the tyranny against the individual soulsoul.

Starting at Zero
I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction. ~ John Steinbeck I recently began to imagine what might happen if we truly wiped the slate clean, eliminated all activities, habits and engagements with others just stopped doing for as long as it took to find out what happened. In that pure state of relaxed state of being-ness and non-doing, my guess is that eventually the impulse to do something would arise naturally, not from some kind of external pressure, but rather an innate sense that it was time to move and do time to act and to create something out of nothing. This temporary retreat from the world, if done in complete immersion, would successfully create a gap between the inauthentic and the authentic, essentially a limbo of just pure existence that is not attempting to self-express. It is within this gap that a true bridge can be built from the false to the real. This gap is what cuts the cord between the past and the future and immerses us in the present fully, and it is only from that place that anything close to being real can emerge.

By expanding fully into the space of the present, we can break free from all the things from the past that were holding us back and keeping us in bondage. For it is only when you stop doing long enough and shift into a state of just being that you begin to see what matters. Otherwise, the habitual default mode continues to operate, keeping you comfortably unconscious. There is something extremely powerful about removing old habits; it has a way of shedding instant light on whats left in the shadows to be seen and faced. In my own life, though I have come a long way, I have not gone quite deep enough. Indeed, while I give myself little breaks here and there, there is always the energetic pull of what was left undone yanking me back, because, God forbid, I might fuck something up and have to fix it later. Right now, though, Im being called out to stop all the incessant doing and just allow myself to release the judgment and fear of rejection that comes from not feeling as though I measure up. What is needed is a full-scale rebellion almost a revolution of being, in which Im immersed in the space of nothingness until Im satiated, and then able to move into the doing authentically. I need a complete break from the mundane, so that I can fully break ties with the old and then move into the future authentically and stop dragging around the balls and chains from past beliefs about myself and others. I know this and yet, Im still reluctant to let myself fully fall into that void of being. There are so many good reasons not to. So much support to stay busy and be productive. So many judgments to avoid and expectations to fulfill. But, I also know that in giving myself permission to discover the truth in this, that I can then speak about it from my own experience, which will, in turn, give others permission to do it. Most people wait until something happens to them and forces them to take a break. V few volunteer. But, why wait ery until youre ill or in a state of trauma? Then youre busy trying to get better. Why not simply move into it? What will the people in my life say? They wont allow it. They wont accept it. Ill feel guilty. Sounds like bondage to me. In fact, the whole entire way we live our lives makes absolutely no sense to me. Never has. Never will. Practically none of it is working. Our relationships. Our work. Our communities. Our environment. Our schools. Our government. My theory is that the core reason for this is that no one knows what the hell theyre doing or why theyre even doing it. Most are doing what they do because everyone else is. Most are doing what they do because they are afraid of what other people will say and do if they dont. This leaves very little room for anything real to emerge. Authenticity takes time, and time is a rare commodity, doled out to the elite, who mostly waste it anyway. A true rebellion would begin when people take the time to stop doing and listen. This is where the most power lies. In silence. In the present moment. In the nothing-ness. It is from there that real change can take place. It is there that true freedom lies. Such a simple idea, and yet so seemingly unattainable.

Psycho-Spiritual Dimensions of Awakening

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. ~ Albert Einstein The deeper I enter into my spiritual life, the more I encounter the psychological issues that keep me in bondage. My core wound (as is many peoples) is connected with issues of neglect, abandonment and feelings of overall unworthiness. When I brush up against any of these issues in my day-to-day life, they inevitably trigger very old ingrained reactions. The driving force of my life, and my capabilities as a communicator, were all defined by my need for: first, understanding; and second, attention. Thats right, attention. Had I not been ignored and neglected by self-absorbed,

overwhelmed parents, I would never have had the need to become articulate and self-sufficient, and I never would have been filled with an unquenchable thirst to understand the deeper meaning of life. The irony ofat middle-agemiddle age is to realize that for years, Ive continued to attract people who maintained this pattern of neglect and indifference, to further agitate my feelings of being unnoticed and unseen until it has nearly driven me mad. But its also pushed me to develop my communication skills even further, to build a life around those skills so that my human need to be heard was finally met. Beneath the surface of this need for attention has always been the greater need for meaning. My passion for this has defined my life since I was fifteen. These two drives, when partnered, could have manifested into incredible opportunity for me to step into a role of leadership. Luckily for me, my need for attention is not fed by crowds and adoration and admiration. Quite the contrary. it is much more anchored in my personal relationships. There is the dilemma, but also the opening. Getting to know yourself, your core psychological issues and how theyve shaped your life is the foundation upon which any real spiritual growth is built. The two simply cannot be separated. They are intertwined and dependent on each other as lungs are to drawing a breath. Thats not to say that you should get caught up in analyzing them every spare moment. But, you should, get acquainted with these issues and observe them, seeing when you have strong feelings or thoughts or reactions to something, watching for the triggers that come up. As you get to know yourself, this wont seem so strange or overwhelming; it will become second nature, part of your daily experience. Over time, you will actually begin to notice that you are evolving and growing and stretching in ways you never conceived possible. The more you are willing to invite these unconscious parts of yourself to the surface to be explored, the more insights will come; and, instead of feeling as though youre living in a small world defined by your past, you will begin to experience a world that transcends all boxes. The possibilities that once seemed limited will, from this perspective, seem endless. An evolving life is an exciting life. Growth means movement, and movement means growth. Something as simple as deciding to pay attention to yourself can change everything. It opens unseen doors that you never even knew existed. Your ability to comprehend even the most complex situations begins to expand. Your capacity to accomplish what had before seemed to take huge amounts of effort,effort now seems to move into a rhythm of effortlessness. What becomes apparent is that our entire struggle has been caused by our unconsciousness, and we alone can change it.

Cleaning the SoulSouls House

It is really easier to experience spiritual connection when your life is in the process of coming apart. ~ Anne Lamott There is so much that needs to be faced and acknowledged and cleaned up. No one can break free from bondage when they live in a state of denial or continue to run from past mistakes that have caused pain. All the things Ive tried to deny and run from still exist in my life. Ignoring them didnt make them disappear; instead, they are right in my face, waiting for me to put my attention on them. Trying to play outside the laws of life doesnt work. When things are out of balance, they need to be looked at head on. The accountability must come in, along with an opthe willingness enness to doing whatever it takes to bring it into balance. Healing is about wholeness and balance cleaning up all those areas where we have made errors not by blaming ourselves or others, but by recognizing our part in it, making amends, asking for forgiveness and finally, forgiving ourselves. Bad choices, mistaken beliefs and errors in judgment happen to everyone. However, there is a major difference in the lives of those who clean things up and those who ignore them or run away. In the end you can never really run away. The unresolved stuff comes with you whether you like it or not. It is patient and will wait until the day you die to resolve it and clean it up.

Facing the Truth (and ourselves) without the veils or stories takes incredible courage. It is our stories that make sense out of the senseless, our stories that connect the dots, our stories that make up the glue that holds who we think we are in place. But it is also our stories that keep us from experiencing life as it is. We are so busying filtering that what we see is bent and refracted in ways that fit with our beliefs and past experiences. We frame our relationships in the same way. We blast people with such a muddy cocktail of projections from our vast library of beliefs and associations connected with them, that they dont stand a chance of being seen fresh and new in the moment. To clean house, so to speak, is to drop the stories (and the justifications, rationalizations, and explanations) we put around our experiences and take stock of whats left. What you typically find is a bit of a messthings that you thought you could ignore or deny right out of existence that now need to be handled and resolved. Some of the messes are a big deal and some arent. But once we can see them, we wondered how we lived with them for so long. Cleaning them up seems like the most natural next step in our lives. Suddenly, there is no longer a good reason not to. As we move forward in this way, we begin to feel the way you do after a good spring cleaning: lighter, freer, and more able to breathe. There is more space, more light and more openness to the present. We are available now because we have unburdened ourselves, released these weights weve been dragging around for years. After all this hard work, my intention for myself, at least, is to prevent this type of laboring in the future by cleaning up my messes as they arise. A kind of clean as you go approach. Because, even though Id love to stop making messes, as long as Im human, there will always be messes made that need to be cleaned up. If I can simply eliminate the extra task of unraveling the stories around them, Ill spend far less time in the muck and mire of existence, and more in the lightness of being.

Weathering Emotional Storms

Pain makes us make bad decisions. Fear of pain is almost as bad a motivator. ~ Dr. Gregory House, from the show House, MD A friend of mine once said that anger makes us stupid. I replied that fear also makes us stupid. I would say the same thing about pain. As a rule, I try never to solicit advice from anger, fear or pain. They simply dont make good advisers. So if Im feeling any heightened feelings in those areas, I try not to make any decisions. Most decisions made when were in the midst of a storm of feelings usually turn out badly. Better to wait until things calm down, when were feeling centered or, at least, more neutral. The problem is that when were having intense emotional reactions, the desire to take action is particularly strong. For one thing, we want to change the way we feel, and making an impulsive decision can be one way to do that. Another thing, when were feeling bad, our egos are usually a little bruised and beaten up, and thoughts of retaliation readily surface. The trick is to have the feelings but not necessarily take action because of them. Trust that the feelings will change and will pass. They always do. Theyve arrived at our door, but we dont have to invite them to move in. Dont ignore them, because theyll just keep knocking, and the longer we deny them the louder theyll pound. Instead, treat them as a temporary visitor. Acknowledge them. Feel them. Observe them. Then, let them go on their way. When we attach ourselves to our feelings, we identify with them. We define ourselves by them. I am angry. I am afraid. I am hurt. But we are not our feelings. They are not who we are. Better to say, I feel angry; I feel afraid; I feel hurt. This allows us to hold them loosely, and when held this way, they will move on more quickly. If we grab onto them, they move into deeper levels of feeling that are much harder to let go of. Anger turns to rage and resentment. Fear turns into panic and terror. Hurt turns into depression and despair. We cannot escape our feelings, but we can disarm them and lessen their power. We cannot control them, but we can control what we do with them.

The next time you are brought to your knees by your feelings treat the situation as you would a bad storm. Do whatever you can to make sure you are safe and dry, and then wait it out. At the time, it may seem that it will never end. But it always does. Then, when the sun breaks through again, the world will look different, and youll be able to rejoice that this time, you didnt make any bad decisions based on that one storm. And if you did make a bad decision? Its okay. Forgive yourself and move on. There will always be another chance. You can count on that.

Choosing What Y Have ou

You need chaos in your soulsoul to give birth to a dancing star. ~ Nietzsche Why is it so easy to take the people, places and things in our lives for granted? We get comfortable with the old and familiar. We get lazy and begin to feel entitled to what we have rather than grateful. With all the collective emphasis on the Law of Attraction and manifestation techniques, there is the risk of putting too much attention on what we want or what is missing from our lives rather than on appreciating what we have. Economic crises often illuminate many things that we falsely assumed were permanent fixtures of life, barely realizing their fragile roots or that their very existence was based on a mass agreed-upon illusion. As the John Lennon lyric so aptly states, You dont know what you got, until you lose it, we are waking up to our own blindness to the incredible privileges that have graced our lives: work, housing, food, clean water, material goods aplenty, a multitude of entertainment choices the list goes on. Suddenly, these aspects of life that we assumed were a given, are now threatened, and oh, how much more precious they seem! Suddenly, our lives are not so much about what we dont have, but rather being grateful for what we do have. The restlessness and incessant need for more lessens when we shift our perspective, even slightly, and see the value in choosing what we have. It is as if a veil has come down and America has been caught with its collective pants down. No longer can we deny that people on this planet are living unsustainable lives under intolerable conditions. This awareness is now bumping up against our formerly sheltered and buffered lives. No longer can we pretend that we have transcended our humanity. We, too, are facing issues connected with our survival, and there is nowhere to escape that reality. In this context, the self-help movement with its promises of salvation and material wealth seems a bit shallow. We cannot survive this major evolutionary shift by continuing to support the every man out for himself mentality. That chapter of our story is over. There is no denying now that we need each other to survive. We have to come together to share resources, not accumulate them; to share knowledge freely, not turn it into another product to sell; to cooperate, not compete. The spiritual naturally becomes political when it involves the survival of our planet. Hiding on a mountaintop is no longer an option for anyone who considers him- or herself a member of a global community. Yes, we still need to meditate, and we still need to practice principles of conscious living, but we also need to take action. We can no longer afford to be spectators in this game of life. We are being called out to take ownership of our lives and accountability for the lives of everyone on the planet. Choosing what you have, sharing what you know, and being who you are with all of your wisdom and skills are some of the first steps in this process. Just the simple act of opening up your life to the bigger picture will shift things in miraculous ways. Human beings are tribal in nature always have been, always will be. We need each other. Even our natural affinity with online social networks reveals this. The post-WWII model of nuclear family life is outdated and unsustainable. It is a model of excess, draining resources and creating waste. Our planet and our economy will no longer support that lifestyle. Instead, we will be forced (since most of us didnt volunteer) to live more cooperatively in relationships and

networks of interdependence. Bartering will replace monetary exchange as people look for more creative ways to purchase what they need. Sharing big-ticket items among a group of families will make them more affordable and accessible. Gardening, public transportation, free local entertainment will replace their higher-cost alternatives. None of us knows how far down the rabbit hole we have to go to learn these lessons, but go we must, the window to turn things around already past. In the meantime, look at what you have and see it for all itsits preciousness, because tomorrow it may be gone.

Burning Down the House

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. ~ Anais Nin A house is a metaphor for consciousness. It represents the structure of our lives. Sometimes that structure becomes unstable or the foundation becomes weak. Sometimes the roof needs to be repaired, or it needs a new paint job. Sometimes we decide to renovate part of it or make it bigger. Some of us stay in the same place for years. Others move from place to place. Each has its wisdom and its downside. What does your house or structure say about you? What do the contents of that structure say? How attached are you to that structure? How much do you identify with it? I see the structure of our lives as the beliefs, ideas, concepts, values and perceptions we have. Much of that structure was imparted to us by parents, family members, teachers, neighbors, the media, etc. V little is based in original ery thought. I see this structure as a bunch of sentences, statements and equations that we carry around with us wherever we go. These statements make up the filter through which we view our world; they are the foundation upon which we base our decisions, and they are our greatest source of suffering. To see what structure youre carrying around, you can begin by simply noticing what you think and what you say to others. Pay attention to statements that have the words always and never in them, as well as statements that contain absolutes in them or assert a position around anything. These types of statements are rigid and typically hold a lot of power in their ability to influence your behavior. There have been studies that show that we limit ourselves to thinking repeating thoughts throughout the day. Our range is rather small. You might not notice this until you start to pay attention to these thoughts. Think of them as a ticker tape running through your life all day and night. Doesnt it make sense to find out what you actually think and believe? Once you do, you may not like what you see and you may have the impulse to burn it down. Those underlying feelings of discontent, restlessness, agitation and depression are the current of life pulsing through your being, pushing you to grow beyond these stale, outworn beliefs most of which were adopted from other people, anyway, and may not even be authentic for you. Are you more than the sum total of your history? Of course you are. But you may never know who you really are with all that clutter and debris in the way. So I say, by all means, burn it down. Or at least open the windows, let in some light and start throwing stuff out. Literally toss it out the windows if you can. Make room for whats real and authentic. The rest was only borrowed anyway. Let it go. Free yourself up. Move into the future with a lighter load. Without the past weighing you down, you open yourself up to new possibilities, new choices and ways of being not available to the person you believed you were. Wipe the slate clean. Start over. Surprise people with the new you. Release the worry about what others will think, say and do. Trust your voice above all others.

Once you burn down your old house, you are then free to build a new one. Perhaps you will choose to build a less solid structure this time. Perhaps you will live in a tent or a yurt for a while. Perhaps you will become nomadic and experience a multitude of new structures without building one of your own for a while. Whatever you decide, you will know that you can no longer return to what was. You can honor the past and grieve its loss, but there is no going back. Letting go of your personal history your story is a powerful act of rebellion. It is when you become the greatest advocate for yourself. You reclaim and retrieve what is needed and walk away from the rest. This does not mean that you cut all ties; it means that you rise above those biographical, ancestral limitations and allow yourself to express yourself as you really are. Unencumbered by the past, you are free to become a child again. You become open and receptive and teachable again. The mind and heart become energized by having new options and by no longer being restricted by our thoughts of what we can and cannot do or have or be. This childlike state makes life feel magical and exciting. This is where we find joy. Most of us had glimpses of this simple feeling when we were children, but over time, it got crushed by all the responsibilities and duties and obligations to participate in the societal machine. We can say no to this freedom-killer and yes to ourselves. We can burn down the old ways and build anew. All it takes is the desire and the courage to be free above all else. Once we have that desire, the rest will take care of itself. Begin now by paying attention to your thoughts and words. Take nothing at face value. Question everything. Before long, you will notice your being begins to stir as if awakening from a long sleep. You will be breathing new life into an old structure. This is the invitation your being was waiting for. Now follow it where it wants to go. You will be amazed at where it takes you.

Flatline
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. ~ Demosthenes Life is like a spiral and we cycle through many of the same themes again and again. Part of that cycle includes plateaus and dead zones, where our range seems void of highs and lows and seems to be one long flat line. These periods can feel dry and barren, devoid of moisture and sustenance, lacking in the high peaks of passion and joy, as well as the low valleys of despair and pain. It is the exact opposite of the way we feel when we fall in love, when all of the senses catch on fire and light up the world. Rather, this feels calm and safe and predictable, and also a bit dull. Id like to think its a lull, before a massive wave rises and slams us against the surf a calm before the storm when everything is almost too quiet. The eye of the hurricane. The hub of the wheel. Chaos all around, but theres a feeling of being inside of a bubble, protected, but cut off. In a kind of soundproof room or sanctuary, away from the maddening crowd. These quiet, dry periods devoid of drama, must serve a deep purpose. A time to regroup, perhaps, to assess where we are, where weve been, and where were going. During these times, we may recognize a need to make changes. If the fire has gone out in our lives, perhaps we need to look for new oxygen to get it burning again. A lack of excitement and energy can be restful for a time, or it can be an indication that a situation or relationship is draining the energy out of our lives. Hanging out in our comfort zones is fine for a while, but it can make us lazy and complacent. It can be so difficult to pull ourselves out of this place. Sometimes it takes a shock or a jolt to get things moving again. It is so much easier when at rest to stay at rest and when moving to keep moving. Momentum is a precious thing, but all things change and shift and require us to adjust continually to the different currents flowing through and around us. Personally, I struggle with resistance when I cycle around into one of these flat periods. I get antsy, impatient and frustrated, forgetting that it WILL eventually change. It ALWAYS does. Sometimes I just have to ride it out, be with it as it is.

I try to look for the benefits of the quiet. When I think back to periods of extreme highs and lows, I can romanticize them, editing out the painful parts and longing for the good stuff. Its helpful to remember the bad parts as theyre kind of a reality check for right now. Otherwise, when the change comes and life gets really intense, I may long for this flat quiet time again, idealizing it and conveniently forgetting the downside. The crux of it is not being satisfied with the present, whatever it may be. The mind likes to imagine there is always someplace better than here, usually in the past, but sometimes daydreaming about the future. In this way, we miss where we are right now and the gifts it brings. Wherever we are, it helps to remember that we cannot hold onto anything, so why not behold it the way a child would, with wonder. Because we never know when it, or we, will be gone.

How Much is Y Life Worth? our

we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon thats so deeply a part of your being that you cant even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. ~ Paul Bowles None of us knows how much time we have in this life. Thats part of the beauty of being human and the terror of it. If you knew you only had a few hours, weeks or even months to live, those hours would be worth more than if you knew you had several more decades. But we arent privy to that information. So where does that leave us? It leaves us wanting. There is a gift in not knowing. It keeps us in the thick of things, immersed in the day to day. If we were always looking over our shoulder for the grim reaper, we wouldnt be fully engaged in living, but would be focused instead on avoiding death. However, our sometimes arrogant assumption that were going to live forever, or a very long time, can lead us to waste precious time on things that simply arent worth our attention. Our time is our currency. Once you spend it, you cant get it back. Its gone forever. Are you spending it wisely? Are you spending it doing something you hate or something you love? Are you giving your time to activities and relationships that feed your being? Or are you frittering it away on meaningless tasks and unfulfilling or even abusive relationships? In the world of work, time takes on an even greater meaning. In order to support ourselves and our families, to keep a roof over our heads and pay our bills, most of us exchange our time for money. In light of the fact that you cant get those hours back, are you getting compensated enough for that time? It can get a little uncomfortable looking at it that way. We are exchanging one currency for another. But think about the difference in the value of those two currencies. One represents our life and the other represents the legal tender that pays for goods and services. Not quite in the same continuum. Our entire economy is based on our willingness to give up our life hours for sometimes 40, 50, 60 hours per week in exchange for whatever value our form of livelihood offers. If you are an unskilled laborer, the amount you receive for your life hours is significantly less than a doctor or lawyer. Does that mean your life is worth less? From an economic standpoint, it is. In the big picture, we know that its not. Why do we agree to this devaluation of our time at all? The answer is so simple, its painful: Most of us dont take the time to question it. We simply continue to do as weve always done. Some of us are fortunate. We have an experience that jolts us out of our complacency a near death experience, an illness, an accident, or job loss something radical that shifts our perspective and typically our priorities, motivating and empowering us to do things differently.

Sometimes it happens more subtly. We meet someone who reminds us there is another way to be, or we wake up one day unable to tolerate selling our soulsouls to a meaningless job for one more day. Regardless of where we are in this process, what we want to remember is that each hour is a precious gift that, once spent, is gone forever; and how we spend it, with whom, doing what, is an extremely important decision. As Carlos Castaneda learned from his teacher, Don Juan, we need to use death as an ally, so that we always remember to value ourselves and our timeour time and ourselves. How will you spend your time today?

Procrastination
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. ~ Henry David Thoreau Procrastination is an insidious disease. We can become stuck in the thick mud of inertia, unable to move forward for days, weeks, months and, sometimes, even years. Projects lay collecting dust, abandoned and neglected, lifeless and without hope. We can see them every day without even acknowledging them, until finally we dont remember why we ever felt excited about those things. We become disconnected from our passion, because its easier; life is less complicated that way, we tell ourselves. Passion is messy, and it stirs up too many feelings. Im just fine the way I am, thank you very much. But the truth is were not fine. Not at all. Because an essential part of who we are has been locked away. Our pilot light is a mere flicker of what it once was. Were operating at a diminished capacity and dont even realize it until something jars us awake. A song, a play, a movie, a painting, a poem or some powerful trauma occurs and helps us to regain our sight. Weve joined the living dead, and coming back to life can be quite a shock, especially when we realize what weve been missing, how much weve given up. Comfort has replaced passion. It is much easier to meet our obligations and then put our attention on relaxing and forgetting about those obligations. An unending circle of monotony lulls us into a zoned-out place where we are simply existing and not living. Theres a big gap between surviving and thriving. Many of us, once past the fear of surviving, get stuck there on a kind of plateau; tired from the exertion required to deal with the wolves at the door, we want to rest awhile and enjoy the fruits of our labors. The illusion of security, at not having to struggle to survive, makes us complacent and we resist the challenge of working toward the next level. Survival makes you sharp; it gives you an edge and keeps you awake to opportunity. Take that away and the energy kicks down a few notches, the engine idles instead of revs, life becomes a slow burn. We try to minimize the ups and downs by minimizing the risks, lest we upset the comfort level weve worked so hard to achieve. Moving around the obstacles of distraction in order to get to the real stuff takes tremendous focus. Our minds jump around randomly landing on idea after idea, magnetically pulling us this way and that. We have to repel that magnetic pull with an energy that is even stronger. So often it is much easier to simply give in to the whims of our minds. Leading takes strength and motivation. Following takes only surrender. Surrender is a good thing but shouldnt be done unconsciously. Following the random thoughts our minds spit out to wherever they lead, results in a life of chaos and a deep sense of unrest. To move to the next level creatively, we need to get in touch with our passion; we need to fall in love again with our dreams. Love will move us forward with far less effort than discipline alone. We dont want to feel that it is all work. If were not enjoying the process, then we shouldnt be doing it. Repetition, habit, commitment are necessary to build strength and momentum toward our dreams. The process is at the heart of it. The feeling of accomplishment is its own reward, but that will pass, and we must begin the work again. The work itself has to be its own reward or there is the danger of being seduced by the trappings of success, which when you look at it, is simply another plateau of escape in which you run the risk of drifting away again. Then there are our inner demons, whose sole job is to fill us with self-doubt and make us ask questions like, Who am I

to think I have anything worthwhile to say? or What difference does it make if I do this or not? or This is no good or I dont have time or Nobody gives a shit. Theres nothing worse than allowing these demons to get the upper hand. Youve got to shut them out and disarm them by acknowledging them and doing your stuff anyway. Great things have been accomplished in spite of these creepy, dark parasites lurking in the shadows of our psyches. Teach them to heel and they will get out of your way. Just dont ever let them get the upper hand or theyll knock you out of the ring for days. Sometimes you can outsmart them by indulging them completely. If youre having a particularly bad day, quit, give up, say youre never writing another word, painting another stroke or playing another note. Go to bed, watch television, play computer games, but dont do anything creative. Protest, sulk, complain. The next day, youll be surprised to discover that after a day of complete rebellion, you can get up with enough energy to complete a mountain of work. The demons of self-doubt need to be dealt with just as you would children or pets. Set limitations and boundaries and keep them in their place. Denying they exist will only make them stronger. Face them and let them know that you know they want your attention, but you are busy now and have to put your attention elsewhere. What about beautiful days, outings with friends, and other seductive attractions? How do we handle those? With discretion. We need to meet our commitment first, then we can play. Our lives should be balanced enough to accommodate a healthy mix of work and pleasure. There are always exceptions, of course. But beware of the tendency to make too many exceptions and sabotage your progress. Then, youll be right back where you started. A bit of a razors edge, to be sure.

Who Am I?
You only have power over people so long as you dont take everything away from them. But when youve robbed a man of everything hes no longer in your power hes free again. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Training the ego is like training a dog no one wants to be around a poorly behaved dog. Its not the dogs fault he barks too much, bites people, chases cars, soils the carpet, etc.; he just needs to be trained. Our egos also need to be trained, to be put in their place, to not run rampant and out of control, wreaking havoc wherever they go. An untrained mind that is out of control is our responsibility. We live on a planet surrounded by millions of similar untrained, out-of-control minds; because of this, things are a mess and bordering on total destruction. Bad decisions, addictions, consumerism, waste, conflicts in relationships, boredom in work, etc., are all ego-based. Imagine a world in which we took the ego out of the equation! In a battle with two egos, there is no way to win. Its reduced to trying to prove whos right and whos wrong, and that end, once achieved, is a hollow victory. It creates a winner and a loser, but neither benefits from the outcome. Real connection and communion can only occur when both parties are open and present and egos are in check. Keeping the ego in check in a relationship isnt easy there are so many opportunities to be offended, misinterpreted, confused and so forth, mainly because we are entering into this connection with pre-conceived ideas, rather than coming to it fresh and open. We base our relationships on the past and the future, bringing with us assumptions, expectations, stories, judgments and concepts in other words, lots of baggage that we automatically project onto that person. This essentially renders the relationships both mute and blind, because instead of really hearing and seeing other people, we are actually having a conversation with our concept of them they might as well not even be there. One way to change this is to begin to break habitual patterns in our lives. But, as most of us can attest, thats easier said than done. The subterranean levels of the psyche the deep and murky shadowland of the unconscious, the really ugly, core-wound survival stuff is not an easy terrain in which to move or breathe. Thats why we need to tread carefully. We cannot actively attack the ego that only makes it stronger. Instead, we have to take our attention away from it and essentially refuse to feed it; through neglect, its power will weaken and eventually fade away. Again not simple, and thats where the need for training and undoing old bad habits comes in. Many seek a teacher for this, a shaman, a guru, a sage or monk. But let me warn you, this is a slippery slope filled with teachers whose biggest problems are their egos. There are no short-cutsshort cuts.

There are no short-cutsshort cuts. Just like learning anything else and doing it well, it takes daily and, in the case of the ego, sometimes hourly or even moment by moment practice. A wise person told me once that we have millions of thoughts per day, so dont expect to get control of them overnight. However, just knowing they need to be controlled is half the battle. The other half is a lot of blood, sweat and tears lots of trial and error two steps forward and ten back that kind of thing. Are you up for it? Unless, youve been dragged along the pavement of life and are tired of being scraped up, probably not. This type of practice isnt for the light-hearted or the lazy. Its for those who want to finally, once and for all, turn down that incessant meaningless chatter and find out what lies behind all this insanity and senseless suffering. Its for those who know theres more and are willing to do whatever it takes to access it. Yes, things have to get pretty bad, to the point where we decide that enough is enough, and we wont tolerate the suffering the ego generates anymore. With that said, there are also innumerable ways that people have stumbled upon this egoless place quite by accident. One woman whose story is circulating like mad around the internetinternet got there when she suffered a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Others simply have a sudden awakening with no rhyme or reason. Perhaps youre one of those. For the rest of us, we can begin freeing ourselves from the tyranny of an untrained mind today. Some wise teachers suggest starting with the question Who Am I? and seeing what opens up from there. Think about it if youre not your personal history, your stories, your concepts and beliefs, your daily roles in life, then WHO ARE YOU?

Blind Spots
It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it. ~ Baltasar Gracian, 1601-1656 We all have aspects of ourselves and the world that we cannot see. We are simply too close to it. Instead, we construct stories about the way it is and reel with shock when those stories get shattered or undone. These blind spots must serve a purpose. I suspect they keep us moving forward, making decisions and taking risks that would be impossible without some suspension of disbelief. We need to trust in the people and the world around us to some degree or we would become frozen and paralyzed with fear. We operate from the safety zone of our carefully constructed stories. We need these stories to make sense out of the seeming chaos of the world. Not that the world is by its nature chaotic, but rather as humans our vision is too small, most of the time, to see the big picture, which is all about order and flow. In our myopic dance through life, we grab onto whatever view serves us on that part of the journey. Our lives are always about what we put our attention on, to the exclusion of everything else. This allows us to immerse ourselves completely in an experience, a relationship, a situation. Inevitably, this intense focus blocks us from seeing other viewpoints or perspectives, such that we actually become blind to them and are often shocked when either someone points them out to us, or something changes and we can see what before was truly invisible to us. Once the blinders come off and what was invisible is now visible, we may question our inability to have seen what is truly obvious to us now. It is akin to waking up or shifting from a distorted lens to a clear one. Sometimes this shift in perception can be quite a shock to the system. Depending on the depth and scope of the blindness, it may take days, weeks, months, or even years, to adjust to a different viewpoint. If you really believed in something and found out youd been lied to, your entire sense of trust will have been badly shaken. Trust is not easily cultivated, especially after its been trampled. It is here that we can stand back for a moment and ask ourselves if we were truly unaware of all the factors when we walked into a situation or relationship, or did we see things but choose to ignore them, hoping they might disappear or change? Did we, in fact, decide to see only what we wanted to see?

What is the lesson here? Is it what I said earlier about blind spots allowing us to suspend our disbelief? Think about it. Would we ever do anything if we could see the whole picture before we engaged with it? How much truth can we handle? Most of us cling onto our ignorance-is-bliss equation for dear life. Perhaps for good reason. We want to think we have some control over our lives and our stories. If our illusions were stripped away too quickly, the delicate balance between chaos and order would be disrupted, leaving us feeling unmoored and adrift. Our illusions are like filters that titrate and regulate the inflow of the truth in doses that are manageable. Without those filters, the feeling of chaos would be overwhelming and, if too severe, might result in what is called a psychotic break, rendering us unable to engage within the world at large. The other extreme, of course, is resisting change completely. In that case, we seal ourselves tightly into a very small world that we are able to control. We reduce our range of experiences to that which doesthose that don not threaten the status quo. This keeps us in a perpetual state of vigilance, for we are afraid of losing what we have and must dedicate our energy to protecting it at all costs. The best pathway is to strike a balance in between to stay fluid and flexible and open to change so that when it comes, we can welcome it, rather than be jolted or blown apart by it. We need to trust in life. Too much disillusionment and disappointment can make us bitter and cynical. In spite of so many of my own illusions falling away in recent years, I still trust in the goodness of life and in the magic of possibilities. Sometimes I use my stories and visions to propel me forward they are nothing more than a vehicle and when its time to exit, I let them go. In the meantime, I try to enjoy the ride.

Diving Deep
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. ~ Gloria Steinem Life is a wonder and a mystery. We move through it under the strong illusion that we have some degree of control of it or, at least, our personal corner. On the surface at least, we dont, and life does not hesitate to remind of this regularly. But there is something deeper here a paradox to be sure. There is a deep place within us that is connected to the Whole of ALL THA IS. It is in this connection that we can tap into something deeper. This is the place where we can T see the bigger picture and recognize the DivineDivine Perfection all around us. It is the place where we can laugh at what is unfolding and not take it so seriously. This is also the place where we can become free of all of that drama and biographical, genetic, ancestral and societal baggage we keep dragging around with us. As small children, we are powerfully imprinted by our early experiences, both good and bad. It is where our first impressions of love, relationships and the world are made. Depending on whether those early experiences were positive and uplifting or dark and traumatic or somewhere in between they shape our perception and ways of navigating through the world. If we grow up on a starvation diet, devoid of much attention and affection, that becomes our normal, because we dont know what a full meal tastes like. Because it feels normal, we will tend to perpetuate that diet and attract people and circumstances into our lives that only partially feed us. To stop carrying those early imprints with us, we need to heal and release the thoughts and beliefs about the world they created. Often they are so much a part of us that we cannot even see them. But, in spite of their invisibility, they shape and influence every decision we make. For someone who is used to being deprived, learning to receive love and attention and affection is a major healing event.

It is a process of unwinding and unraveling all of those deeply ingrained ways of being, reacting and moving, then opening the channel for a new level of aliveness. In order to do what it believes will keep us safe, our subconscious sabotages all of our desires and needs and deep cravings to grow and change. This saboteur affects everything we do. To really heal these subterranean levels of fear, we need to connect with something greater. To reduce the imagined threat of releasing our old way of being, we need to remember who we are. This is nothing short of dying to what was and being reborn to what is. It is where we will find real freedom. It is where we will find our authentic voice. It is where we will learn what it means to be alive. We, perhaps for the first time, will be back in the drivers seat of our lives, rather than feeling like some rogue part of ourselves is behind the wheel. This is not really about control; it is about surrender and allowing, and being with what is at a very high level of acceptance. Control is about the need to survive. When we begin to taste freedom, we no longer feel in danger, so we no longer need to control things. We are no longer out of alignment with what is before us and what is unfolding. The feeling of being out of sync was simply all that noise from our subconscious trying to survive in what it perceived to be a very confusing world. There are many modalities that allow us to release our early scripts and beliefs. When we are ready to really let go, we will find them. In the meantime, take a look at your circumstances and relationships. Notice any repeating themes or patterns? Feelings of powerlessness and frustration? A sense of moving twoen steps forward and ten wo back? A gnawing feeling of being victimized, but with no clue how to shake the feeling or change your circumstances? Thats it. Keep paying attention to it. Call it forth from the shadows into the light of day. Watch what happens when a little bit of awareness creeps in. The power and intensity start to diminish. Exposure is half the battle. Its as if youve discovered a few stowaways living inside of you long-term house guestshouseguests, and its time to show them the door. For that you may need help, because these squatters arent usually so keen on leaving. They will do anything to convince you they are helping you and that you cannot survive without them. An objective person can help you hold steady and not be swayed or undermined by such tactics. Sometimes you have to sneak up on them and trick them into leaving. Whatever it takes, whatever modalities you choose, by all means stand firm. Give them a hug, thank them for serving you, but dont forget to lock the door once theyre gone.

Stopping the World

We say we exchange words when we meet. What we exchange is soulsouls. ~ Minot J. Savage Outside of the basic necessities of fresh air, clean water, food, sleep and love, theres something that human beings long for above all else: to be seen and heard. These precious morsels truly feed the soulsoul and are not experienced nearly enough. On the deepest level, this means expressing who we are without censor or hindrance and finding ourselves wholly accepted by another. Without a witness or mirror we are lost unto ourselves. Our minds and emotions become random and disordered in isolation. Its the reflections of others that anchor us in the present moment and give us perspective and meaning. Our ideas and feelings bounce back to us so that were no longer blind and deaf, allowing us to find our location in relation to our environment. We simply cannot fully know ourselves without another. The flip side is that we can also lose ourselves in another (but thats another topic).

Either extreme is blinding, as are the twins of selfishness and selflessness. Too much of anything is always too much. With that said, not much comes close to being really seen by another. This is the true meaning of unconditional love, even if it is only temporary or a moment in time, it is a beautiful thing to experience and to give to another. In the same vein, as with all things spiritual, it takes presence and attention, dropping the agenda and really tuning in and listening to another. Just be there. Fully. Just capture someone with your presence. There is no greater gift we can give than to soak in anothers raw, radiant beauty. Time and space stop and nothing else matters. We are all moving so fast that we often give others only a cursory glance or brief acknowledgment, so busy are we with what is rambling inside of our own heads. Running through life gets us nowhere fast, and we miss just about everything. What we are seeking is all around us, and yet we dont see it because our vision has become blurred by our rush to get to the next thing on our list blurs our vision.. Do you ever miss people right after youve seen them? If so, then you know what Im talking about. We blink and the moment and the people in it are gone, whizzing past us in a whirlwind of doing and movement. You know how it feels when someone isnt really listening to you? Theyre distracted by something, and you find yourself in the middle of a monologue? Neither one of you is really present. Just warm bodies and talking heads, but no real contact. No wonder we feel so lost and lonely sometimes. What we really need at those times is to spend sometime being fully present with someone and having someone be fully present with us. We also need to spend time being present with ourselves. Time when in which we fully listen to our bodies, our hearts, our desires, our ideas, etc. Just quality time slowing down and listening. The sweet nectar of life is all around us, juicy and delicious, waiting for us to partake.

Minding Our Own Business

Theres only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and thats your own self. ~ Aldous Huxley It is one of the greatest presumptions and violations of another to think that you know whats best for him or her. A couple of years ago, a good friend of mine scolded me in the middle of a tirade about my desire to change someone, telling me that none of us can ever really know what another person needs. This stopped me cold, and when I considered it, it made perfect sense. Yet, it is so easy to project our values and beliefs and preferences onto another. We assume that because it is good for us, it must be good for others. However, when you go deeper, you see that the people in your life are not that simple, not by a long shot. Think about it. How receptive are they when you impose your will onto them? Not very. No one likes advice, unless it is solicited. Unfortunately, the impulse to throw advice at someone in trouble,trouble comes up and is difficult to resist. We only want to be helpful, we claim. Perhaps. But I think we also like agreement and validation that our way is the right way. Then there is the uncharted territory that lies in the depths of the subconscious. This is our forbidden zone, invisible even to us most of the time, and yet powerful in its impact on our lives. It is not a place for meddling or to push into, uninvited. Yet so many self-help gurus, ignorant or at least disrespectful of this sacred hot spot, do exactly that pushing people too fast, churning up old wounds, tearing down precious structures, and leaving massive fallout in their wake, with no clue how to put the pieces back together. What it comes down to is this: trusting the process of our path, as well as the paths of others, no matter how much stumbling and suffering accompanies it. Who are we to rob someone else of their lessons? It only delays the inevitable,

perhaps even makes it worse when one finally encounters it. There is so much of life that we cannot see or know. Its part of the great mystery. Its too vast and large to grasp the methods and workings in its entirety. Instead, we must settle for our small vantage point of the whole. Therefore, it behooves us to rein in our tendencies to want others to conform to our will for them. Let them be. Let them have their experiences. Let them learn by doing. Not easy, I know, especially if youre a parent. Stepping out of the way and allowing our children to stumble and fall helps them learn how to walk and find their balance and strength. Overdoing for others only cripples them and restricts their ability to move and grow. It makes them dependent and weak. No parent wants that. However, most of us naturally want to relieve the suffering and heartache of those we love. A delicate balance, to say the least. In the end, Ive found that giving people enough space to move, but also letting them know you believe in them, works pretty well. We all want support, but no one can live our lives for us. Nor would we want them to. Occasionally, when we cant walk, we may need someone to carry us for a while. But eventually, we need to stand on our own two feet. Then, down the road, others may need us to carry them for a while. Its part of the interdependence we all need to survive. In the meantime, though, let us stay out of each others way a bit so theres more room for all of us to move.

Availability
We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh How available are you in your relationships? With yourself? A crowded house a crowded mind a crowded heart leaves no room for anyone to enter. If we clutter up our relationships with our own thoughts, emotions, opinions, prejudices, expectations and stories, there is no place for anything new to emerge in the moment. It is all a rehashing of the past or a projection of the future and nothing about what is happening in the present. This baggage is what makes our lives and our relationships unmanageable, and even impossible. Just as you couldnt live on leftovers for every meal, you cannot grow when you are only communicating the same old news to those around you. To be available means to be present and empty and open to receiving what life is offering you AND what life is offering THROUGH you in the moment. Real connection with others occurs when we put space around a situation and see what shows up. We have never been here before and though we may think we know what will happen, in truth, we have no idea. Because it hasnt happened yet! And who are we to impose our belief that we know whats next? Sounds kind of arrogant doesnt it? And, yet, this tendency to think we have it all figured out doesnt usually come from arrogance. No, it comes from fear and from a need to feel that we are in control. Imagine, though what might happen if we put down our stuff, quiet the noise in our heads and truly listen? First, we might actually learn something. Second, we might be surprised by life. Finally, we might start feeling inspired again. Remember that feeling of being excited and looking forward to something? By making ourselves available we can begin to feel that way a lot more of the time. Every moment is new. We can approach it as if we know what will happen, or we can become available and see what unfolds. So simple and so obvious and, yet, we miss it, not realizing that this is one of the fundamental differences between walking through life asleep or awake.

So if youre feeling stuck or depressed or overwhelmed, try this: Starting right where you are, get out of the way and really begin to listen to what is coming to you and through you. Become available to yourself, your relationships, your life. I suspect that very quickly things will no longer feel stale and boring and meaningless, and you will no longer feel that you are missing out on the action. Instead, you will begin to feel a deep stirring within your soulsoul, telling you that you are awake and connected again.

Permission to be Free
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. ~ Rosa Luxemburg Each person who gives himself/herself permission to be free gives the people around him/her permission to be free. The world needs mirrors and role models of freedom and sanity. It needs people to have the courage to show others what freedom looks like and that it works. Without that, were all lost and imprisoned by a reality that is insane but that were all agreeing on. It is by not agreeing to this reality that we can shift it for us and for others. Everyone is waiting for someone else to mirror this freedom so they feel safe enough to do it themselves, so they dont have to do it alone. Then, maybe if enough people do it, they might be willing to try freedom for themselves. But some of us have to go first, takes the risks, venture forth without a map and light the way for others. This is the path of the mystic, the warrior, the teacher and the guide. So few of us are willing to do this to step out of the crowd. We take a few steps and then we stop, because freedom seems impossible and unattainable. But for every one of us who almost makes it and stops it is not just we who lose, but also those who are relying on us to show them that it is possible. Theyre hoping that someone will finally figure this out. In fact, theyre counting on it. This is where the I ends and the WE begins. W hat I choose ultimately matters to the collective; it either continues to maintain the status quo or it helps to transcend it. A tall order not the easy path but for me, the only one worth pursuing.

Freedom
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. ~ Richard Bach, Illusions To be an individual, to be true to yourself, to follow your own inner rhythm is the most difficult path to take, but it is the only path where you will find true happiness and joy. Life is not about comfort or security, it is about growth and movement and sharing. Growth comes from listening and then following the message that comes from our soulsoul. At each moment we know what we must do, we are given explicit instructions on how to live our life, what steps to take, which way to turn. But fear stops us. We second-guess, we analyze, we discuss, and eventually our confusion drowns out the sound of our inner voice, and we run for the safety of the familiar. We repeat lessons over and over, because were afraid to confront

our fears. Instead, we perpetuate the same script, thinking were making progress, not realizing were going down the same road again and again, never moving forward, never reaching a new destination. No, wed rather do what weve always done see what weve always seen, end up with what weve always ended up with than take a risk and let go of what we know. Fear is what stops us from following our soulsouls path. We have responsibilities; we have duties; we have obligations. If we listen to our soulsouls longing for growth and self-expression, our lives will, we think, fall apart. Nothing will get done. Perhaps, for a time things may fall a little to pieces. But a radical shift in our thinking is going to stir things up. To go from merely reacting to the circumstances of our lives to listening to the inner guidance of our soulsoul is going to have a major impact on our lives. It wont happen overnight. It takes practice, and it takes focus and discipline. Why? Theres simply too much competition for our thoughts. Unless we consciously choose to make this shift, the seductive and easy life of the familiar will lull us back into our old way of thinking. The thing to remember is that the cost of this old way of thinking is far too great, and the rewards far too few. The fear, like a sentinel at the gate, is what keeps most of us stuck in a repetitive pattern. Well do anything to avoid facing our fear, even if it means staying stuck doing something that makes us unhappy. What we dont realize is that this fear is only an illusion. Facing it and accepting it removes its power over us, and then we can move freely through the gate to our desire. Avoiding change takes much more energy than accepting it. Our soulsouls voice has to become stronger than all other voices in our lives. This is the only way to put the fear in its place. There are no short cuts. There is only one way that will work. There is only one way that will lead to our deepest fulfillment and put an end to our struggling. To grow means to stretch. It means to put ourselves in new and challenging situations. It means to give of ourselves in ways that we never thought possible. It means to become the person we always dreamed we could become. If we live our lives in fear, we are forever held hostage by the shadows. We owe it to ourselves to choose to be free.

One-Way Dead-End Streets

There are treasures beyond compare in the ocean. If you seek safety stay ashore. ~ Sufi saying What is it about detours and dead-ends that are so appealing? Why keep returning to the same old territory? Could it be the lesson wasnt learned? Apparently so, and the cycle continues endlessly as we run to find shelter again from the Truth. We continue to believe that we can hide out, through gentle sidestepping, until at last, were cornered, the grace period is up and we must come face-to-face with Reality. No matter how far weve evolved, this universal pattern haunts our days, calling up our debt and holding us accountable for the gifts weve reaped without paying. Our in-authenticity is an insidious form of cheating, because our purpose here, whether we like it or not, is to grow, and we can either volunteer for the lessons as they emerge, or we can wait until they come in hard and fast and turn us and our lives upside down. Knowing the way this works helps but doesnt necessarily make it any easier. The amnesia and forgetting are constant companions, lulling us into complacency until something dramatic happens to make us question the meaning of it all, again. Life has our attention, for the moment; until we determine we can go underground again unobserved. We think we can skirt the lesson by simply fixing the problem or the symptoms. But, no, unless we hear the meaning of this crisis and we submerge ourselves in the opportunity for growth, another often much more difficult lesson will appear on the horizon, lurking there until it is time to strike. This is the way growth works. Underneath the surface of our individual lives is a powerful investment by Life for us to grow and awaken to our true Nature. This is probably the reason behind the perception of God as a punishing and

judgmental God, because Life is relentless in its pursuit of the highest good for us and the people around usfor all, no matter what it takes. Those who take heed to this call for growth are only a little better off than those who dont, because there is no difference in the requirement for growth. Being aware of it can actually make it more painful. The benefit is that within a moment of grace or clarity, this awareness can allow you to shift from feeling victimized by it to a state of acceptance. Non-resistance is the greatest tool anyone can have on this journey neither fighting nor running from whatever experiences Life throws at you. Accepting it and embracing it all serves to lessen its ability to move you off center. In fact, if you truly welcome it, it may simply pass you by like a strong wind. A stance of non-seeking and non-striving gives you an even greater advantage over Lifes lessons. Its a pain reliever because it removes the element of pain and suffering that is directly connected to clinging and attachment. It also relieves a great deal of exertion. Acceptance and receptivity have softness about them. The hard edges become smoother when we stop fighting the way it is and listen. We need to see ourselves as students and Life as our Teacher. The lessons can only be heard if we take the time to become still and listen. The dilemma is that we have a tendency to hold onto lessons that are outmoded or inappropriate for our growth or are saturated with too many other peoples ideas for us. We hold onto them because of old habits and beliefs and ways of thinking. They are familiar and comfortable and make us feel safe and secure. We may even feel a strong inner nudge to put them down, but we resist because we like our way of doing things, and we dont want things to change. Its best if we hold everything in our lives more loosely. Change is inevitable and far better for us to seek it out and meet it at the door, than wait until we have no choice about it. Sounds okay on paper, but to put into practice is a whole other ballgame. In the midst of any major growth lesson in life, we may feel as though our entire lives are on the line or at least our sanity. Everything may seem to be unraveling at once, and we are simply falling through space with nothing to hold onto. Everything weve ever known goes sailing past us, and we can no longer define ourselves by our association with it. We have to be willing to be born again and again, fall down the rabbit hole in one place and come up in an entirely different place. Not all growth lessons are this radical. Some changes are smaller and more gradual. But others, the life-altering ones we remember that stretch us beyond our wildest dreams, tend to split us open at the core and turn us inside out, purifying and purging us from top to bottom, a kind of spiritual colonic. But, as with a violent storm that thrashes and tears up the earth, a quiet and beautiful calm always follows, making the intensity seem dream-like and surreal and leaving us questioning its existence. We may seek out comfort in friends, but often theyre experiencing a different life lesson and they may only be able to offer us a temporary Band-Aid they cannot do the work for us. Its a solo journey. Friends and lovers, teachers and family can provide some solace, a shoulder to cry on or some kind words, but unless they have experienced the same life lesson, the comfort will only go so far. Far better to find soulsouls who are in the midst of the same lesson. If were open, life will bring these people into our lives at just the right time. What happens then is a deep recognition and communion, which will allow for deep healing. Our soulsouls sync up, and we walk together and support each other through the lesson. But, there is a risk here. We have to be careful not to become dependent on these other soulsouls beyond our need for connection. The lesson is still a personal and private one, that though it can be shared and the burden lessened through our sharing, it is still a road we ultimately have to walk alone. Our suffering makes us human and binds us to each other. Our vulnerability opens our hearts and makes us receptive to others pain. But we cannot let ourselves fall into this support and make ourselves at home there or use it as a place to hide out. Again, our purpose is to grow. We can stop and rest along the way, but the journey must continue. Otherwise we risk making the same mistake and jumping into anothers field of being as a mode of retreat, where well fall into the old trap, and the next lesson may very well be having that person yanked right out of our lives. So, what to do?

Let Life teach us and guide us. Learn to follow instead of lead. This doesnt mean being passive. Rather, it means letting go of our need to control and direct the show. Were really nothing more than players in a very large drama being played out. This doesnt mean that we relinquish the passions in our hearts. No, the drama is based on each individual expression of those passions. The trick is in knowing how to express those feelings through the part weve been given. To get out of the way and let the very essence of who we are move through us and move us to action. Letting it happen through us. Life becomes magical this way. Imagine a play in which all the actors tried to direct the dialogue and scenes and actions. It would be total chaos. The same is true with an orchestra. The symphony happens when there is one conductor who leads and the musicians follow. Each is important to the whole; each plays his/her own notes, but under the direction of one, together, they make music that is symphonic, not chaotic. Life is like this. Our lives become chaotic when we all become frantic in trying to direct things. We dont listen long enough to learn our individual parts and see how they can integrate and make music with the whole. This is why our lives are so stressful, too much doing, too much interference, too much static and not enough tuning into the bigger picture that is trying to unfold through us. Most of the time, we rush through things and miss the small details and messages and opportunities life gifts to us. We are so busy getting from here to there, trying to keep up with the endless tasks in front of us, we rarely take time to really see what is right in front of us. It is then that Life seems to hit us with a sledgehammer. From one viewpoint, it appears that this may be the only way that Life can get through to us, so deep is our sleep and our hurrying. Weve all had conversations with someone who seemed so busy and distracted that we didnt feel theyd heard a word we said. Entire chunks of life are missed this way. Many people who have had a near brush with death come out of it with a strong awareness of the preciousness of life. Their priorities shift, they take time to really soak in all that life has to offer, whereas before they took it for granted. The key is to not wait for life to bring us right up next to death for us to make this shift. What detours and dead ends are showing up in your life? Where do you feel that youre stuck in a revolving door? What recent invitation to change something are youre doing your best to avoid? You know the answers. Theyre right there. You know whats up for you right now, where youre being called out. You have a choice: to continue to say no and continue to go down one-way dead-end streets, or say yes and welcome the lessons and opportunities that Life gives you. They were designed just for you, down to every detail, every person you meet, every book you read, every opportunity presented to you, including the words you arre e reading right now. So, whatll it be? Yes or no?

Money Madness
To be deceived or uninformed in the soulsoul about true being means that the lie itself has taken possession of the highest part of himself and steeped it into ignorance of the soulsoul. ~ Plato, Gorgias (382a-b) Money is supposed to be fluid. It flows in and flows out in a steady stream. Its only passing through. Its not staying or moving in. Were nothing more than a host. We can invite it in, feed it, and offer it our attention, but we cannot grab it or cling to it or lock it away. It needs fresh air. Its is not meant to be hoarded. That is done from fear. Instead, we need to respect its need for freedom and let it breathe. Money, by itself, is lifeless and dead. We bring it to life and , give it meaning and energy. We transfer it from place to place, sending it into the world to travel and circulate. If we dont touch it or move it, it remains invisible and without power, except perhaps to comfort the owner with a false sense of security. Othe feOf course, along with that there often comes the fear of someday losing it.ar of someday losing it. Money has the power of making us react to it. It can also hold us hostage if we give it that power. Our relationship to

our money reflects our relationship to the world. It is simply a metaphor for how safe we feel. On a survival level, money can bring us to our knees. This brings most of us into an unnatural attachment to it. We become dependent on it for our security, and this blocks us from truly experiencing life. We are too focused on protecting ourselves that we miss out on the spontaneous gifts around us. Money cuts across a lot of boundaries. There are those who overspend, those who save, those who gamble, those who debt, those who chase after it, those who are satisfied with very little, and those who simply work hard, pay their bills, save, invest and give the remainder away. A major motivation for crime and violence is money; a major source of arguments among married couples is money; a major factor in career choice is money. What happened to following ones passion, marrying for love, and settling our differences? What happened to learning for learnings sake, following our convictions because we believe in something, getting involved because we are passionate about something? Having has replaced being as our primary value. We mistakenly believe that once we have enough well take time to be. This presupposes that there is such thing as security. Being uncertain and taking risks allows us to learn more quickly and on a deeper level. Always playing it safe results in a limited range of experiences. What is the point to life if not to expand our range of experiences, stretch our imagination, and touch the lives of a wide variety of people? A rich life is not a safe life. A rich life is one that is lived on the razors edge, a life full of amazing stories and opportunities, which cannot be found in the comfort of our well-furnished living rooms.

A Life Without Walls

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. ~ Goethe What does freedom really look like? To me, freedom means there is a lot of space and room around me and my lifemy life and me. Lots of room to breathe, to and move and be flexible as well as and spontaneous and intuitive. Lots of space for options and choices and sudden bursts of ideas. Freedom is flow; freedom is effortless doing. Is this pure fantasy? Or is it possible to have a life imbibed with joy and meaning? Yes and no. Its possible, but from where most of us are sitting, its not easy. In fact, true freedom goes against everything weve been taught and shown and told to believe. To be truly free means to question the very structures that make up the life were involved in on a daily basis the structure of work, family, community, education, government, etc. Our very lifestyle and the decisions we habitually make are all up for grabs when it comes to shifting our perspective. The problem is that we are terrified of not fitting in, of not conforming or adhering to the status quo. Perhaps we have stepped outside the box in one aspect of our lives; weve dipped a toe in the water, but when we truly question our state of being in any given moment, how many of us can truly say we are free or that our lives bring us joy and fulfillment? Where is the passion in our relationships and our work? Where is the wonder we felt as very young children when we explored the world around us? Why were we told again and again to put away childish things? Why were we required to suppress our natural curiosity and submit to the will of others? This makes no sense. From a very young age we have been on a path of soulsoul destruction. Told to deny our natural urges and interests, we lost touch with our inner voices. Instead we tuned into the cacophony of signals coming in from experts and authorities whothat told us what to do and how to think. Is it any wonder that the very idea of freedom is such a foreign one when what is natural and innate in us has been diverted and sabotaged by the very world we live in? Sounds pretty bleak when looked at with such razor-sharp eyes. However, there is a way to soften the blow a bit. You can start where you are. Examine your life and look for the small pieces of it that bring you joy, the areas where you feel the most authentic, in which you are expressing yourself without hesitation. Take that part of your life and expand it a bit, just keep adding to it bit by bit. Kind of like remodeling an old house sometimes it requires that you take down

some walls. What would a life without walls look like? Personally, it is radically different from the life I have lived for most of my adult life. It is a life that first questions, then breaks through paradigms one by one, and doesnt stop until there is enough room to express yourself freely and fully. Any hindrances must be looked at and I mean ANYTHING that is standing in the way of you being who you are and expressing it fully. For many people this typically implies looking at the work they do every day. For others, it is a relationship. And with still others, it is an overall lifestyle issue. Finally, for some brave soulsouls, it means looking at EVERYTHING. Face it, we all lie to ourselves and others about who we are and what we want. We do this, and rightly so, to survive. Our society and culture expects this of us. We want to fit in and engage, so we play along. However, there comes a point at which these lies or walls need to come down. The most likely time for this to happen is midlife. This is when many of us come face-to-face with our choices and realize they are not reflective of our innermost being. This can manifest as an existential crisis in which we make rash decisions to try to remedy the situation or make up for lost time. Our mortality looms large, and there is an urgency to make things right. The ability to suppress our desires and passions wanes, and instead this energy bubbles and boils in an almost volcanic turbulence below the surface, begging us to finally honor our need to be authentic. Unfortunately, our culture is not too supportive of breaking down walls. Many become frightened by the intensity of their discontent and seek professional help to quell it. For those who dont choose that option, and depending upon how far off the mark they really are from living authentically, the result can be nothing short of a complete upheaval. The level of upheaval is usually in direct proportion to how long and the level to which awhich a person has been holding back. I like to think of myself as being in an ever-expanding process of walking the talk. To whatever degree my life doesnt reflect my values and the ideas I put out to others, Im a hypocrite. In the areas of my life where that inconsistency exists, I need to remain silent. My words are empty and meaningless unless I am demonstrating them by embodying them and living them. This sounds harsh, I know, but without this standard there is no place for me to go. Authenticity and freedom, and especially joy, are the mile markers that let me know Im on the right track and that I am honoring my soulsoul and its gifts. The best part is that none of this is the means to an end. The journey itself is whats so profoundly beautiful about being alive. Having an epiphany, a breakthrough, a shift in perspective is part of the fun of being here. We never know whats around the next corner, and I just want to make sure my view isnt blocked by some poorly erected wall. Eventually, I would like to think I wont need any walls at all to feel safe. In the meantime, the fresh air is feeling pretty good.

The Outsider
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ~ William S. Burroughs In his revolutionary book, The Outsiders, Colin Wilson writes that Nietzsche went mad for the last 10 years of his life. This got me thinking. Why do the people who think outside the box, who challenge the status quo, and who strive to transcend the prison of day-to-day existence end up either crazy or dying a tragic death? Why do those who are desperately trying to find a way to do something great, to express a masterpiece artistically or philosophically end up shunned by the culture and society they live in? What is so threatening about the truth? What is so threatening about people who question what is? The eternal and existential dilemma of mankind seems to be just this an unwillingness to be open to the unknown, the frightening, theand the strange. From my perspective, and that of many other writers for that matter, what is unknown is the most exciting part of life. What makes people uncomfortable is what makes life tick.

We were not born to strive for sameness and security. We were born to live and grow and question it all. But this drives many people crazy these gnawing questions that eat at the soulsoul, that make our choices suspect. We know the truth and, yet, we cower from it at every turn. The vastness of the unknown feels too big to comprehend. But thats precisely the invitation: to see the mystery and welcome it with open arms and wait for it to deliver new experiences to us. Why live a predictable life? What is the point of that? Why not pull out all the stops and see what unfolds? You know why, and so do I: To do that is terrifying and goes against our carefully controlled and protected lives. We might lose something or not get something we want if we live in a fluid way, open to receiving lifes gifts and pains. We are defined by what we protect and what we need to control. We stop ourselves just short of leaving our comfort zone. We go only so far, and then we stop at the edge of that which makes us afraid. But this stopping is also where our deepest longing resides. We want so much to open to the unknown, but the boundary is too strong. We stop just short of our identification with the known. The past becomes our jailer. How we define ourselves becomes the walls that we use to keep ourselves in line. To venture outside those walls surely means what? Death? Destruction? Insanity? We tell ourselves that well lose everything if we take big risks. So we settle for mediocrity. Never being willing to risk insanity or death keeps us coloring in the lines and keeps us in line. This reluctance to take risks limits our range and narrows our experience of life. Its no wonder that so much of the population is depressed. Repression turns into depression. We rage against ourselves for the ongoing self-betrayal. Holding back our desire for change and growth creates a volcano within us that eventually explodes with all of our unsung expressions and unfulfilled desires. We become a shell of a human being operating at a fraction of our capacity. The volume and energy is turned down to a low burn, and all of our efforts are spent maintaining and preserving our lifestyles, as opposed to expanding our soulsouls into full expression. We are walking around in a state of constant starvationanorexic beings, with no hope of ever being fed. Not unless we stop depriving ourselves of the real food of life. Only then is there some hope of salvation and freedom. Only then. We must rebel against this suppression of ourselves. We must stage a personal revolution in which we stand up against the agreed-upon beliefs of our brothers and sisters break free from the crowd and start to listen to the voice of our soulsouls longing. There is no time to waste. Can we really afford to continue to let those willing to take these risks die humble, miserable deaths or crumble into the ashes of their discontent? No, I think not. We must acknowledge that we hear their cry and stop condemning them for their eccentricities and odd ways. We must stop and listen to their silent moans as they cut the pathway the rest of us fear to tread. Then we can rise up and gather the courage to follow in their footsteps not their actual path, of course, but their example, so that we may forge our own unique path.

The High Cost of Lying

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you. ~ Blaise Pascal Self-betrayal is an art, perfected over a number of decades of living. It is rooted in our early years, when our identity was branded by a well-trained team of branding specialists, beginning with our parents and extended family and expanding out to include teachers, neighbors, parents of friends and, sometimes, even the occasional stranger. Add to

that our exposure to books, movies, television, music, advertising, etc.; by the time we reach adulthood, were pretty much saturated with a dense package of pre-digested, socially approved, morally acceptable behavioral codes. Our thoughts, emotions and actions have been molded and formed to fit into the society and culture we live in conformity being the norm, individuality essentially being snuffed out. So, is it any wonder that when we get to be adults, particularly in mid-life when most of us discover weve been sold a bill of goods we conclude that life doesnt really make sense? For many of us, its as if were awakening from a Rip V Winkle nap, stirred by agitating feelings of restless discontent, and we finally admit our disillusion with an the course our lives have taken. How did we get here? More importantly, how do we get ourselves out of the mess weve made? And why is it so difficult to change? Habits. Of thinking. Of feeling. Of behaving. Deeply rooted, heavily ingrained, full-blown habits keep us in a perpetual cycle from which we feel little hope of escape. Endless numbers of personal growth teachers and self-help books and seminars promise us relief from our misery, but ask anyone who has tried this form of transformation, and they will more than likely tell you that they are still many years and thousands of dollars later a victim of their own unhappiness. In spite of their best efforts, the emptiness persists, as do the longing and the frustration with life. Why? Because most of us still believe that our restlessness and unhappiness can be addressed from the outside. We think buying the right book, taking the right workshop, or spending time with the right teacher will fix our problem. But weve got it all wrong. The answer isnt outside of us. Its inside of us. Thats where the whole thing began, and we will spin our wheels forever unless we shift our attention to where the problem lies, which brings me back to the subject of self-betrayal. In the midst of our very best intentions to improve or change or fix ourselves, we continually fail, and we do immeasurable harm to mind, body and spirit. Were fine just the way we are. We dont need to be improved or changed or fixed. That will only makes things worse. What we need is to stop the madness. We need to stop lying to ourselves. We need to step off the merry-go-round and take a good hard look at how things work. Think of your being as a toxic waste dump that needs to be cleaned up. All the people in your life that you have given permission to access your life and your thoughts and feelings and beliefs have dumped their stuff there, and now the only way to find out where you are in all that mess is to get rid of it. Piece by piece. Its not yours. Its not you. There is a genuine whole person in there somewhere, and the only way to get to it is to extract the lies and untruths until you hit something that feels real. If this feels like too big a jump, then test out what Im saying by observing your thoughts and feelings for a few days. Notice how much your feelings are influenced heavily by other peoples opinions and behavior. In fact, notice how you actually pin your well-being onto whether you get approval or attention from others. Another approach is to notice any thoughts that come up that make you feel bad about yourself. Watch them, and then ask yourself where they came from. Are these opinions you imagine other people would have of you? If so, you will do yourself a tremendous favor by asking them to leave. Our minds have been contaminated by the thoughts, opinions, and beliefs of others. We let other people vote on our lives all the time. We ask them what they think we should say, do and even think. This gives them permission to enter into our heads and take up residence there. As soon as we invite voting in, we are no longer listening and following our own path. We are at the mercy of the contingency outside of us. No wonder we feel so lost and confused and cut off from ourselves. The way back is to reconnect with ourselves by getting quiet and learning to discern between the noise of the crowd and the voice of our soulsoul. Intuition is our internal guidance system. It is the light that guides us through the darkness. Without it, we are doomed to a life of random chaos. With it, we can begin to find our footing in an authentic world devoid of lies and betrayal. Shakespeare said it well when he wrote, To thine own self be true. Christ, too, reminded us by telling us that the kingdom of God is within. Its up to you which path you want to take. The next time you feel depressed or without hope, take a good hard look at what thoughts are running through your mind at the time. Chances are they will be something that you picked up from someone else.

Negative thoughts are contagious and they spread. Treat them like juvenile delinquents that repeatedly jump into the drivers seat of your car. Tell them in no uncertain terms, that youre in charge. Wait for them to get out, then get behind the wheel and drive!

Everyone Lies
In such a period of change and growth, emergence is often experienced by the individual as emergency with all its attendant stress. ~ Rollo May I really enjoyed the show House, M.D. In addition to the witty dialogue, the show was often quite deep and philosophical. One of my favorite lines is when House says, Everyone lies. Again and again, through the various medical dramas that unfolded, he was proven right. I asked myself why this resonates so strongly. I realized that its because its the truth. We all lie. Were all equal in this. There are no exceptions. None of us is exempt. Think about it. Do the people around you really know what you think or feel all the time? Do they really know you? What motivates or drives you? What you obsess about? What you fantasize about? Of course not. We all carefully manage how much we let people into our inner thought processes. This is a form of self-preservation. Lying serves us, because it allows us to conform to what is socially acceptable behavior. So we lie to fit in, to be accepted, to feel part of things. But what about the lies we tell ourselves? These are more subtlesubtler and more difficult to detect. Over time, we believe them so intensely that we convince ourselves theyre the truth. What Im referring to are our illusions, our projections, assumptions, ideals, expectations, etc. Our illusions are so seductive. The world is much easier to tolerate when the void of existence is painted with the colored palette of our daydreams. We invest our experiences and our sight with meaning. We imagine we know best and that, if only things matched our vision, wed be happy. This is not living, but rather a simulation of living, a step removed from actual participation. Life becomes a spectator sport, and we are watching it from the sidelines. Life is happening somewhere out there, but youre so caught up in watching the movie screen of your own interpretation, that you completely miss it. It just passes you by. Looking at the underbelly of our illusions and pulling them out by the roots is a radical step that yields a new vision of the world around us. Seeing how we manipulate our experiences to fit our expectations is the best way to get honest with ourselves and break free of the mind games that hostage our authenticity. Disillusionment is a good thing, because we put the illusion there in the first place. Having it removed frees us. I didnt say it doesnt break our hearts or make us uncomfortable. But it does set you free. The trick is in determining how much Truth we can handle and which illusions we can let go of, without becoming overwhelmed. Questioning our illusions can make us feel disloyal, as if we are going against the status quo. In a sense we are. We are pruning away the dead branches and the excess fat that hides the light of our true selves. We are removing the ancestral, genetic and societal beliefs that have made up the shell of identity weve wrapped around us. We are excavating the priceless treasures of our soulsoul amidst the landscape of our personal history. Dropping our illusions is a spring cleaningspring cleaning of our interior dwelling, airing it out, making room, and putting it in order. What do we want to keep and what do we want to toss? What resonates, and what doesnt? Think about it. How often have the deepest longings of your soul been met with a dozen arguments to stop you from expressing them?

How often have you had an intuition to do something spontaneous, or out of the ordinary, only to have it shot down by all of your considerations to the contrary? How often have you wanted to express yourself freely, but censored yourself because you were afraid of being rejected or seen as crazy? This is not freedom! It is a soulsoul in bondage, and the only way out is to get onto yourself about it. Itll make you uncomfortable; itll make you squirm; itll turn your life upside down. But, once you let go of some of your soulsoulkilling ideas about what you can and cant do, youll start to feel life flowing in your veins again. And as the shackles start to come off, the energy and excitement and passion that have been dormant for so long will begin to surface. Youll be able to breathe freely again. Dont take my word for it. Try it out for yourself. Start with the simple awareness that everyone lies and see where it takes you. Then go a step further and examine what untruths about yourself and others youre holding onto. Finally, once you identify the untruths, see if youre ready to let any of them go. Do this even once, and youll never see yourself or anyone else in the same way again. However, in our mad rush to judge ourselves and othersothers and ourselves too harshly, lets remember that everyone also wants to be loved.

Like Wate r
Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it? ~ Caroline Myss Life is full of paradoxes and confusion. It feels like a complicated puzzle to solve, but the navigation through it is really quite simple. The key is in the way we hold it and our concepts about it. This is where things get jammed up. Concepts need to be fluid. Let them in. Let them create a context for you. Let them frame an experience. Let them serve you for a period of time. Then let them go. Dont hold them too tightly or until they become frozen and solid and static. Dont invite them to move in. Instead, treat them like houseguests or temporary visitors. This will keep your life fluid and flexible. It will keep the space around things like fresh air from an open window. It will allow you to stay available and receptive to whats happening in the moment. It will soften your mind and your heart. Imagine yourself moving through the obstacles of life like water around rocks in a river. There is no resistance; it just flows around them without effort, without confrontation and without getting stuck. It just flows. Sometimes the movement is quiet and still, and at other times the movement is fast and intense, but it is always moving, always flowing forward. A closed mind is a death wish. A closed heart is even worse. It is death itself. The paradox of life invites us to be invested in life, to fully participate in it, but somehow also detached from it so as not to get caught up in it or take it too seriously. A tall order. But again, if we remember the image of water flowing, we can see ourselves moving around the hard edges, softening them with our vulnerability and willingness to be open. Receiving without judging. Meeting life with our availability. Saying yes to what life brings us, gently forgetting the concepts we held about it yesterday, keeping an open mind, and really seeing and hearing and soaking in the newness of this moment. This is the place where life becomes magical, the wonderment surfaces, and were inspired to greet life with open arms again. This is truly riding life like a surfer rides waves, paying attention to the height and breadth of the wave and meeting it with everything we have, so that we can have the rush of entry into the core of life. Diving into the middle of it without

fear or hesitation, but with excitement and the joy of being. Living in the awareness that we dont know whats going to happen next keeps us fresh and available and opens the channel to bring us into the flow. In this place, life conspires to help us move forward with less effort as opposed to fighting against the tide. Letting go, and letting it carry us, opens up a much broader range of possibilities than if we were always in control and trying to manipulate the outcome. Yes, there are paradoxes and mysteries that we may never solve. There are things that just dont make sense. We can either greet those aspects of life with reluctance and resistance, or we can recognize that the unknown is where true freedom lies.

Intuition
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesnt go away. ~ Philip K. Dick When an intuition about something comes in, it comes in as feelings, scattered energy, a knowing sense, etc., making it very difficult to understand what is coming through. It often feels the same way as remembering a dream fuzzy and vague. In spite of this, theres a strong feeling that something important is coming through. The combination of the feelings and the intensity of something coming through distinguish it from something that comes through the intellect. It is precisely the messy, feeling sense that makes it clear its coming from a higher place. It may take hours or days for it to finally emerge with clarity. When it does, the fog of confusion around it lifts, and the light of illumination shines. DivineDivine timing sets in, and when the flow of insight comes through, it comes in crystal clear, as if there never was any confusion at all. The disconnected pieces suddenly fit together perfectly, and the intellect moves out of the way because it has no place when this comes through. In fact, the intellect tends to get overwhelmed and blown away by the energy of intuition. When it really moves, there is no stopping it; , its like a high-speed train bound for a destination, and its unstoppable. I dont understand this process,process; Ive just observed it as its happened. It can be frustrating when the intuition first comes in because it is so strong, but without clarity. You have to be patient, wait and listen until the pathway opens up for the insights to flow. It cannot be forced or pushed, it simply wont work and whatever comes through wont be genuine. Trusting in divineDivine timing is essential when using the gift of intuition. Not easy, but absolutely necessary. Perhaps over time, the gap between something coming in and when it becomes clear shrinks, perhaps our resistance plays a role in the amount of time it takes, or perhaps its simply a matter of preparing ourselves experientially for what is coming through. Perhaps our experience has to align with the messages we receive so the two meet, and clarity comes out of that. Though sometimes, I wish I knew things before they came in. A lot of grief and pain might have been avoided. Who knows? There is perfection to the way these things work, so it is probably best not to question the way it works. But it seems harder than it needs to be. I only hope this will change in time.

Body Wisdom
The human body is the best picture of the human soulsoul. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein It has been said that the body never lies. And, yet, most of us ignore what it tells us. In his book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millmans teacher, Socrates, introduces him to the idea of body wisdom, when he tells him, Everything youll ever need to know is within you; the secrets of the universe are imprinted on the cells of your body. But you havent learned inner vision; you dont know how to read the body. Your

only recourse has been to read books and listen to experts and hope they are right. Most of us mistakenly place more value on the knowledge that comes from outside of us than on what comes from within. In our ignorance, we are missing out on one of lifes greatest gifts. The body is not just a machine to keep us alive and give us sensory information about the world we live in; it is much more than that. It is the conduit that connects us to inner Truth and wisdom. When our mind is running around like a drunk monkey and our emotions have gone haywire overreacting to our circumstances, it is the body that can ground us in what is real. In our Western culture, we have moved away from our trust in the body, in favor of the intellect, and much to our own peril, we are now cut off from its wisdom. So how do we read the body? How do we learn to listen to its messages? How do we reconnect with the wisdom it has to offer? Weve all had the experience of having a gut feeling or reaction to a person or place. Sometimes we heed this feeling, especially when it is strong. Sometimes we ignore it by overriding it or dismissing it with our logical mind. Whether we realize it or not, we all use this physical or visceral awareness to make many of our decisions in our life. Often this is done unconsciously. To really use it as a tool, and benefit from the wisdom it has to offer us, we need to become conscious of it. If we consider that the physical is an out picturing of our inner state of being, then by listening to our bodies, we can learn a lot about how we are doing. Ive heard it said that the physical is the last place something manifests, meaning energy flows through the filters of our thoughts, beliefs and emotions until it finally arrives in the body. Therefore, by the time it gets to the body, it has probably been there for a long time. The body, in this sense, is a barometer of our inner state of awareness. In essence, if you dont like what is happening in your body, it is probably trying to tell you something that you ignored previously when it tried to get your attention. The body doesnt like to be ignored. In fact, if we ignore it too long, it rebels and eventually stages a revolution, stopping at nothing until it gets our attention. This is what might be called a late-stage warning. If it gets to the physical and it gets really uncomfortable, chances are it has been there a long time, and our ability to ignore whatever message is coming through has come to an end. We have reached a point where we must pay attention. Ideally, it would be better to listen to our body wisdom long before it turns into a full-blown crisis. It is a powerful tool that can guide us and help us make key decisions in our lives and prevent such crises. Try it out for yourself. In any given situation, take a minute and do a scan to tune into what visceral sensations youre feeling. Is your heart open or closed? It is beating normally or racing? Is your body tingling with excitement or trembling with fear? Is your jaw relaxed, or is it tense? Are your hands open or clenched? Is your stomach loose, or is it tight? Check this out with what you are thinking or doing. Are they in sync? Try making a decision based only on what youre thinking. Then try making a decision based only on the sensations you feel. Is there a difference? Would you make a different decision after scanning your body than you would have if you had just listened to your logical mind? Again, most of us do this already without thinking about it, but by becoming conscious of it, you will discover that your decisions tend to be a more authentic reflection of your whole being rather than just what you think you should do or what might conform to what others expect of you. This is the beginning of true freedom.

Detachment
He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. ~ Meister Eckhart

One of the ultimate paradoxes of life is that the more attached you are to the outcome of a situation (the more you want things to unfold the way YOU want them to), the more it appears to move away from you, elusively drifting just out of your grasp. I was so close, you think. I almost had it. It was almost mine. But, like a butterfly that flies away, it disappears. By the same token, many things Ive wanted in the past, and I mean REALLY wanted, have come to me as if drawn by a magnet when I ceased caring whether I would get them, when I wasnt at all attached to the outcome. This phenomenon never ceases to amaze me. In fact, lately, Ive begun to test this out, first through plain observation and then through actually using it as a formula. Bizarre as it sounds, it actually works. Ive used it lately in connection with finding a place to live, in my relationships, and in my work. Caring too much actually interferes with getting the results you want. Not caring, on the other hand, allows you to take more risks, to be bolder in your decisions and your actions. Clinging to another person drives them away because they feel suffocated and restricted by your needs. Clinging to a situation energetically does the same thing. It restricts it and blocks the flow. However, if you put space around a person or a situation, it allows for all kinds of possibilities to emerge. If you want to catch a fish, throw more than one line in the water. Be okay with not catching any fish. Be open to not catching the exact fish that you want. Be ready to appreciate whatever fish you do catch. You might even end up surprised that you catch a better fish, or even more fish than you ever imagined possible. This is what keeps life interesting. As my son once said to me, Have no expectations, and you will always exceed them.

Discernment
Dont be concerned that your path is not like that of others. It takes courage to be yourself and not to live in reaction to the likes and dislikes of others. Be courageous and follow your heart. You need to walk your own unique path in order to honor yourself and fulfill your spiritual purpose. ~ Paul Ferrini There is a lot of contradictory information out there. Right when you think youve discovered some profound truth or insight, some other piece of information contradicts it. Thats why it is so important not to base any of our decisions solely on information that is external to us. Instead, it is necessary to run it by our intuition, our inner knowing, our feelings of resonance, so that we may verify its validity. This is the system of checks and balances provided to the human species. Our ability to reflect on our experiences separates us from other animal species. The problem is that we often settle for the face value of the information we encounter. To engage more deeply with an idea, we must test it against our direct experience. Otherwise, what we know is nothing more than an intellectual knowing that has no basis in Truth. All of us have inner resources that include direct access to knowledge that transcends the limits of intellectual knowledge. It is, in a sense, a link-up to the vast store of knowledge that exists beyond the limitations of the threedimensional world we live in. This has been referred to as the collective unconscious. Essentially, all knowledge and awareness in existence is available to each of us. We only have to tune into it to have access to it. How is this done? Much as one would tune into a radio station to be able to hear it, we have to slow down, pay attention

and listen. Even more important is developing the ability to discern the difference between true knowledge that is coming from within and the mental voices in our heads. A slippery slope until we can fully grasp that there is, indeed, a difference. The difference is difficult to hear without some degree of practice. The first thing to look for is the tone. The voice of our inner awareness which you may call your Higher Self, Source or God has a calm, quiet, emotionally neutral tone. The voices of the mind, or random thoughts, sometimes referred to as the drunk monkey, has a chaotic, frenetic, emotionally charged tone. The tone of our inner awareness is consistently grandfatherly and wise, while the tone of our mental thoughts is ever-changing and, in a moments notice, can shift from rebellious child to scolding parent. The second thing to look at is content. The voice of our inner awareness tends to bring us information, insights and wisdom that we need right at that moment in our lives. It is sometimes very simple and brings clarity to a particular situation. Other times, is it more complex, shifts our perspective entirely or guides us to make a major decision in our life. The content of the mind, on the other hand, is all over the place. The messages are inconsistent and leave us feeling overwhelmed and confused. It has a reactive, impulsive quality that is typically fully of judgment and demands. The information tends to lead us around in circles, rather than offer us solutions. The third aspect of discernment is the state of being that is evoked. Our inner awareness brings us feelings of expansiveness and relief that come from finally having the vision to see the bigger picture. It opens our hearts and brings with it compassion and forgiveness and trust. The egoistic mind brings feelings of contraction and limitation. It makes us feel powerless and helpless, which we quickly attempt to cover up with a false sense of power or self-righteousness. Either way, the result is that those thoughts make us feel less than or more than others. Finally, the best way to know the difference and really see each for what it is comes down to this: Our inner awareness has our best interest, our well-being at heart, while the mental monkey or ego is only interested in survival at any cost. Looking at the differences, theres no question which one wed rather trust. The tricky part is making the commitment to tune into it. With practice, hearing this inner voice becomes second nature, and it takes on the qualities of a companion that is always with us when we need it, wherever we need it, lighting our way through the unknown.

Compromise
What is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate. ~ Carl Jung How far are you willing to go to be authentic? At what point do you decide to compromise yourself and accommodate others? How much compromise/accommodation is really necessary in our relationships, our work, our lives? My answer today, in this moment, is hopefully, very little. I dont know about you, but I just cant do the self-betrayal thing anymore. My body just wont move in that direction. The resistance that comes up feels like Id have to move a mountain of bricks to do something I really dont want to do. My whole being reacts strongly if it even gets a whiff of sacrifice in the air. Does this mean I am selfish or that I dont like doing things for others? Of course not. But, when it comes to giving, Id rather step into the stream of effortless flow, where the giving bubbles to the surface naturally and just moves me in that direction. My heart expands with joy when I give from that place. Besides no one wants to receive something from someone who doesnt have it to give or who tangles the giving in a web of expectations and resentment. No, thanks. Dont bother. We all need to feed and nourish ourselves. To take time out to recharge and restore ourselves. When we are fed and nourished, the desire to give comes more readily. So many of us live on a self-starvation diet, depleting our stores of energy in exchange for money or some other commodity, that weve forgotten what really listening to our own needs even feels like.

It doesnt have to be like that, even down to the simplest level. If you hate getting up early in the morning, and that is truly authentic for you, find a way to structure your life to support that. If being alone helps you to feel grounded and centered again, make sure you have enough solitude in your schedule. If its authentic for you to be in nature on a regular basis, then make life choices around that. Too much compromise and sacrifice makes us cranky. Long periods of habitual self-betrayal can wear deep grooves in our psyches, leaving us depressed or angry or full of anxiety. Allow it to go too long enough and youre creating fertile ground for a major illness, a meltdown or both. Not a pretty picture. And certainly not worth it. So what to do? Stop it! Right now. Just stop. Take a breath and step back from your life and assess the damage. In what areas of your life are you betraying yourself? In what areas do you deny your needs in favor of anothers? In what areas of your life is it more important to be liked and approved of than it is to follow your own way? How much of yourself do you sacrifice (negotiate) in order to get something you want or keep something you have? On the flip side, how much do you expect others to sacrifice or compromise on your behalf? Can we all just put an end to this unnecessary martyrdom and suffering? I think we can, without too much fall out. Most radical change requires going to the opposite extreme. You may have to start by simply practicing the fine art of saying no. To everyone. Or at least to as many people as you can get away with, for as long as it takes to break the habit of saying yes when youd rather not. Another thing that helps is to start paying attention to your body and your energy levels. If something drains the shit out of you, by all means, dont do it. If it energizes and excites you, obviously, say yes. Sounds so simple, but most of us have developed a pretty strong override button that effectively silences our needs in one fell swoop, essentially taking us out of any equation that comes up. Because our needs are cut off, we arent factored in. Instead, we simply move into and through our lives on automatic pilot, reacting to things and putting out fires, without regard to the inner yearnings of our soulsouls. People arent mind readers. You have to know what you want and ask for it. You have to stake your claim, or you will get walked on or, at least, left out. Yes, its uncomfortable, but the juicy, fun part of life happens when we engage with it full out with our entire being. So, stop censoring yourself. Stop holding back. Stop second-guessing yourself. And, for Gods sake, stop worrying about what other people think. Create the space for the real you to emerge. Then, and only then, will you be free to give.

Emptying Y Cup our

I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and thats where you renew your springs that never dry up. ~ Pearl S. Buck Letting go of relationships, possessions, habits, activities anything weve grown attached to is one of the most difficult, yet necessary, parts of personal growth. It is akin to shedding old skin. In order to make room for the new skin or the new aspects of our lives, we must inevitably part with the old. Sometimes this means we need to say goodbye to negative relationships that are holding us back from realizing our potential. Other times it means moving to a new place in order to take advantage of new opportunities. Regardless of what it is, we are faced with severing a connection with something that is comfortable and familiar and exchanging it for something unknown. This can be a frightening experience and one that may have pain and loss associated with it. Sometimes we have to give up something that we know is in our own best interest to give up. But, we still dont want to

let go of it. We may become stubborn and resistant. We may decide to quit pursuing our dreams for a while, that success requires too much of us. Thats okay, for a while. Rebellion can be healthy if not taken too far. Holding onto bad habits or unhealthy, stressful situations can, in some cases, help us to see the cost they are exacting. We keep clinging, fighting change, feelingand feeling miserable but righteous, because we are in control. Over time, this clinging drains us of the inspiration and positive energy we once felt at the prospect of turning our lives around, of finally taking steps to make our dreams a reality. We wonder why we lost touch with our vision. When a cup is full, no more liquid can be poured into it. In order to add fresh liquid, the cup must be emptied first. So, too, with our lives. We need to make room for new ideas, new opportunities, new ways of being. If our lives are too full of clutter, there is no room for anything new. How will you know what to let got of? In a cluttered room it is difficult to see what is worth keeping and what must go. Therefore, you must begin to organize and take stock of the various elements of ones life. As you begin this process, start asking yourself Which of these things will help me to lead a healthy balanced life, and which of these things will hold me back? If you are looking at a work situation, observe your energy level when you are engaged in it. If you feel depleted afterwards, then take steps to replace it. If you still find some reward and some energy and satisfaction from doing it, then perhaps it is worth keeping around for a little while. Everything can be measured in terms of your overall, ultimate goal. What fits and what doesnt fit into the vision you have for a successful, fulfilling life? Another way to decide if you want to continue participating in something is to ask yourself, if you had six months to live, would you still do it? Use death as an ally. We are all going to die, and most of us dont know when our time will be up. Therefore, I urge you to use your time wisely. Dont waste it or throw it away. If anything feels as though it is wasting your time, eliminate it from your life. To see the benefits, find something right now that is small, that you want to eliminate from you life, some old clothes, old books or furniture. Give them away as soon as possible. Lighten your load. Now you have more room in your closets, on your shelves or in the rooms of your house. You can now leave the space open for a while or replace it with something new, something that better reflects where your life is headed. Remember that closing old doors is a signal to the universe that you are ready to open new ones. When you are willing to let go of old things, you become a magnet for new opportunities. How do I know this? Ive witnessed it dozens of times in my own life and in the lives of others. The only way you will know for sure is if you try it for yourself. Think of your life as a living experiment or think tank, and you will suddenly find it wondrous and exhilarating. Lessons surround us, and life rewards us when we respect its ability to teach us.

Equilibrium
It is not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist. ~ Giacomo Leopardi, 1798 - 1837 Lately, in conversations with friends, theyve been challenging me, confronting me, exposing me and inviting me to come out from behind my walls. I frustrate them, irritate them, hurt them, avoid them, and just plain drive them crazy with my awkward attempts at setting boundaries. I told someone the other day that I see myself living behind a moat, and Im pretty sure that moat is filled with some amphibians with very sharp teeth. How do I explain Im not doing this to cause anyone else pain, Im doing it to prevent myself from feeling pain? Kind of rough on the people close to me to have them think Im assuming that letting them get close to me means Ill have pain in my life. But its not quite that simple. Im not afraid they will cause pain, but, rather, that my recent wounds will be re-opened; not intentionally, but perhaps without knowing it, someone may bump into a sore spot, opening a floodgate of feelings feelings that they didnt cause, mind you, but just happened to stir up. In the past four years, my emotional range opened up fully which, like it or not, is what intense grief and major life

changes do and I hit notes I hadnt played since my father died, along with many other notes I never even knew existed. This opened my heart and made me aware of many levels of human experience. I touched and was touched by other peoples pain at a much deeper level. I could see and know experiences that before I had only imagined. The raw beauty of it was that prior to my marriage falling apart, my range had been very narrow and small, very contained. Then, like a suddenly active volcano, my life and my heart blew open, spilling the contents of my innermost feelings all over the place. It was a mess. I learned to live in this overheated muddy place for many, many months, my identity in pieces. The pain allowed me to connect with people, allowed them into my most vulnerable and sacred places. I had no choice. I needed people, or I wouldnt have survived. I still need people, perhaps now more than ever. Whats different is that I finally got a break from the pain, and Ive been enjoying the more neutral feeling of equilibrium. However, I have also become so attached to the absence of pain that Im now doing whatever I can to avoid it, including not letting people get too close. My range has shrunk into that narrow place again because it is what I can manage and control. The very thought of being out of control again terrifies me. All this sounds pretty foolish. The cost is quite obvious when spelled out that way. Without the full range of feelings (no pain = no joy), we miss most of the essence of life, , and instead spend most of our energy maintaining our comfort zone and protecting our small, little world. I know all of this, and yet and yet, I hesitate at the doorway of intimacy and human connection and peer in watching people engaged in the dance, and I wonder if I will ever feel safe moving in that world again. Thats what the sharp knife of grief does it puts you in a state of post-traumatic confusion and doubt that you will ever be normal again. Life, if nothing else, is about change and growth and, in all likelihood, this state of no pain or numbness, is temporary, a kind of suspended animation or existential limbo, allowing me to travel a great distance from one state of being to another. I trust that one day I will wake up and feel confident aboutconfident about taking risks in my relationships again. I trust that my friends will be patient with me a little longer and not see my withholding as a personal rejection, but rather regard me as someone who is on retreat from the world for a time, in order to regroup, refresh and restore my being into a place of wholeness. In the meantime, I will continue to linger at the doorway, reminding myself that intimacy like riding a bike is something you never forget how to do.

Winds of Change
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. ~ Charles DuBois Without change, and especially without movement, life grows stagnant. We cannot rest on the laurels of past achievements or actions. Old, stale air will resuscitate no one. Water that has been sitting is not sustaining to life. Relationships without regular infusions of new energy wither. Change is not like a bus. We cannot always stand around waiting for things to happen. Sometimes, we simple have to stir things up. Rattle the cage of our lives. Create some momentum. The movement alone can be a curative to the dead zones of our consciousness, jolting them into wakefulness again. Sameness and predictability can be lulling in the ability to pull us into complacency and dullness. We need some edges in our lives to keep us sharp and focused. So, before we get slammed by the bus of unexpected changethe bus of unexpected change slams us, it is far better to take off running into the abyss of the unknown. Do something, anything that is not the norm, something that makes you nervous and uncomfortable. Give yourself a shot in the arm once in awhile, just to feel the rush of alertness pulsing through your veins again. We can always count on things to change. We can hold onto nothing. When were suffering, this can bring us hope that

the suffering will eventually pass. When were experiencing pleasure, this can trigger feelings of fear that we will lose what we have. But, alas, you cant have it both ways. Life is always moving, changing, growing and seeking the unknown, the fresh, the new. Better not to look back longingly at where weve been. Hold it close to you for awhile, and then release it to fly into the ethers of time. Clinging to it will only delay your departure into the future. Not easy to trust this transience. It can leave us feeling a bit powerless and out of control. Like a strong wind that whips through and knocks things about, its force can be intimidating, revealing our smallness in the scheme of things. However, the humbling aspects of change are really only made worse by our rebellion against it. When we fight it, we tend to rail at its agenda, because we cannot know how the whole thing is unfolding. We havent a clue how its ultimately going to play out. Our narrow little vision keeps us in the dark when big changes show up in our lives without forewarning. Pulling the lens back a bit can remind us that we are part of the bigger dance of life, and our role is shifting to accommodate many layers of unseen dramas playing out on the large screen. Releasing our grasp so that we flow with it, rather than against it, can reduce the number of bruises and complications along the way. With time comes wisdom gained from experience, and eventually we begin to expect change, maybe even greet it at the door or, even better, go looking for it. Eventually, we can tell when were no longer being fed by our current circumstances and we recognize the call to stir things up, move them around or even let them go completely. There is something life-affirminglife affirming when you initiate change in your life. There may not even be an obvious reason to do it, except that you havent done it for awhile. The process itself introduces you to aspects of your being that were dormant or buried under layers of other stuff and are now finally coming to the surface for expression. We are so much bigger than the narrowly defined boxes our lives reflect. So, it can be absolutely rejuvenating to open all those doors and windows of our being again. The fresh air feels so good as it moves through the dank and stale rooms, the light penetrating the darkness. The invitation to change your habits, routines, ways of thinking and being and doing is always there; it is just a matter of deciding when to heed this calling out to shed those dry layers of old, dead skin, so that you can become pink and new and open again. Resurrection forever a metaphor for change, for replacing the old with the new, and rising out of the ashes of what has been burned down. Life is change and renewal. The cells of our bodies mirror this constant death-and-birth cycle. So much change is happening without our even thinking about it. It would be an worthwhile exercise then to take a moment and reflect on which aspects of our lives are stagnant and what areas could use an infusion of energy or even an entire makeover. The answers can either be exciting or terrifying, or perhaps a little of both. Regardless, whether we initiate it or not, we can always count on things to change.

A Moratorium on Thinking
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ~V oltaire Thinking gets us in trouble. It takes us on the road to nowhere, spinning us around and around until we end up with a migraine or collapse from exhaustion. Far better to look and observe what is right in front of you. Act if you feel called to act, but reduce the noise in your head down to a bare minimum. Most of it is useless, repetitive chatter anyway. The mind is like a radio broadcast that is always on. The least you can do is turn the volume down so that it moves to the background. As Ive said before, the body never lies. Nor does the heart. It is when our thoughts are pouring over our feelings that clarity becomes confusion. A simple question that begins with the words, What if initiates a chain of thoughts that lead us into a place of random speculation, zapping us right out of the present moment. Thoughts can be addictive. More specifically, certain themes trigger a bio-chemical reaction in our neuro-pathways, and

we revisit those themes over and over in an attempt to relive certain experiences or feelings. The past is dead, and the future is still a dream. Life only exists in the present. Our thoughts pull us away from the present and k, keep us adrift in a sea of memories and possibilities, leaving us unengaged from what is right in front of us. Again, we can return to the body. If you want to tune into the present, the quickest path there is to tune into your body. Become aware of your five senses. What do you see right now? Hear? Feel? Taste? How is your breathing? Shallow? Deep? Are you tensing any muscles in your body? So much money spent on spirituality, personal growth and consciousness development is wasted. The truth is simple, but no one can make money on simple. Waking up and becoming aware and conscious is the simplest thing, available to all without fancy books, seminars, CDs and DVDS. It is free. It is here. It is now. Nothing added. Ram Dass, in a book he wrote many years ago, summed it up in three words: Be Here Now. Thats it. The rest is an illusion. But the mind doesnt like simple; it leaves it with nothing to do. Like a monkey in a cage, it screams and shakes the bars, demanding to be let free free to roam through the archives of your life, emptying boxes of files everywhere and making a mess. When its through there, it heads into the realm of fantasy, projecting your hidden desires and dreams in a chaotic kaleidoscope of images. Meanwhile, life goes on. Each moment we are in it, but how much of it do we really experience, so distracted and seduced are we by the thought circus in our head? Look, breathe, feel, touch, taste, listen, move, but stop thinking so much. Just allow the thinking to go on without you. Pretend youre in another room and your thoughts are just part of the background noise. Give yourself fully to the present. Its quite extraordinary when you really begin to participate in it. For one thing, its always changing. For another, its mysterious you never quite know whats going to happen next. Besides, there is a big difference between hanging out backstage behind the curtain or sitting in the audience and being on the stage performing. The rush of being part of something cannot be imagined,imagined; it has to be experienced firsthand. All that is required to make that shift from spectator to performer is to pay attention. Its what puts us smack-dab in the middle of the game.

Getting Out of the Way

It is important to do what you dont know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos. ~ Carlos Castaneda I recently read that when Marlon Brando was asked why he didnt memorize his lines, he replied, Real people dont know what they want to say. I relate to this because when I teach or give a presentation, it flows much better and more authentically when I dont prepare beforehand. I can reflect on what I might like to do and have a few triggers or props handy, but the REAL stuff emerges when I get out the way completely and just let what wants to come through flow unimpeded. Amazingly, I end up learning a hell of a lot as well its as if I tap into an infinite, universal well of knowledge and become a conduit for a greater source of knowledge than I would have if Id spent time researching, creating outlines and writing copious notes. Despite 18 years of teaching, I only discovered this recently when I began to teach teenagers. Knowing I needed to make my classes more dynamic and exciting to capture and sustain their attention, I accidentally stumbled upon a core truth at the heart of all creativity: THE LESS I TRIED to teach them or inspire them, the more I actually did and THE MORE I TRIED, the more I failed. The REAL juicy, passionate, fun stuff happens through you when YOU get out of the way. As soon as you put the I into the equation and you try to manipulate or control the outcome, your efforts flatlineflat line, and the passion gets sucked dry. My presumption that we are not the doer was confirmed by a recent conversation I had with an engineer. The engineer explained that the perception of ourselves as the doer and the originator of an idea was actually caused by a split-second

delay in the left side of our brain, the part that perceives the I. He agreed that when the I tries to do anything, it messes things up. I shared this conversation in an email to my brother-in-law, an artist, and he responded by describing his experience when he paints: When I go into a painting, you might say that I intend to be spontaneous once the brush has its first dip into the paint. When the painting is going well (here I begin to sound like Jackson Pollack) I have no idea of how it will go or come out. The more I try to intervene, the worse the result in the long run and I recognize it as a failure or simply as a bad result (since Im an old hand at this). But then, I always hear the voice of Carl Sublett, one of my favorite professors, who said. We never LOSE a painting, which means that your spontaneity can have freedom after you re-evaluate the painting and align yourself again with your original intention. You repaint the painting. In other words, it seems like intention is a program of the ego and spontaneity is when one releases oneself to that cosmic intelligence or great spirit. When the two are one, then youre on a roll. Releasing oneself to that cosmic intelligence or getting out of the way creates the space for magic to happen. Life becomes more of a dance that way, with each of us as both the participant and the observer. If you really knew that the part of you that you refer to as the I was really a perceptual trick, and actually wasnt deciding or controlling anything, imagine the freedom that would come from that! Imagine truly knowing that you could trust what is happening as its happening rather than feeling the need to control it or change it! You would be free to just experience it, to be in it without an agenda. This, of course, would not mean you would become completely passive or catatonic. Instead, you would simply shift from directing things to following where you were directed to go. The cool thing is that there is no one exactly like you, so what comes through you is a specific set of experiences that can only manifest through your particular form with all of its unique characteristics. Ultimately, what this all means is that you would remember that you are not the I, but the life force and awareness behind the I. The I is merely there as a tool to use to gain experience. Where we get tripped up is in thinking its who we are. I used to think these peak experiences, spontaneity and the feeling of being in the flow were random things that just happened here and there. Now I see that this is the natural state of our being, and the best indication that we have finally gotten out of our own way.

Stretching
Life is just a chance to grow a soul. ~ A. Powell Davies Not long ago, a friend and I were speaking about the fact that there is no arriving in life. There is no destination. Its all about movement constant movement. Yes, there are plateaus and periods of stillness and rest, but ultimately, we cannot hang onto any state of being. This is a double-edged sword. When we achieve equilibrium and a sense of contentment, we tend to want to stay there. Instead, something comes along and dashes our best intentions. We start feeling antsy or restless or bored or just plain depressed life feels off again, and we question what happened. Life happened. Change happened. Were cycling through something, learning something, getting another perspective whatever you want to call it. The break is over and its time to experience something different. This can be frustrating and even agonizing, but imagine where wed be if our feelings and state of being never changed? When were feeling depressed or out of balance, all we want is for that to change. Accepting the full spectrum of experiences seems to be the only way to navigate this 3-D world. We can either be with what is, as it is, or we can fight against it. In my experience, resistance to what is only makes it last longer and feel worse. It adds pain to our pain. This is a tough thing to get. Perhaps Im a slow learner, but most of my life has been spent seeking a solution to the way things are. The search for transcendence and enlightenment is all about wanting things to be different. Ive always

assumed that if I looked long and hard enough, I would finally find someone or something with an explanation that would help me escape the pain and challenges of existence. The answer acceptance had been there all along but, until recently, I didnt like that answer. I saw it as giving up or resigning oneself to a life of quiet desperation. I didnt see it as the powerful tool it is, until recently. A convergence of a number of circumstances in my life had brought me to my knees, leaving me with few other options, so I decided to give it a try. And to my amazement, it worked. I began to feel glimmers of peace and contentment in ways that I never had previously. Instead of working hard to change the externals, I focused on changing my reactions and overall attitude. It made a huge difference. I shifted my viewpoint from seeing circumstances happening to me to simply happening. It was as if Id found a port in the storm, a place to be in the midst of the apparent chaos unfolding around me. A huge breakthrough, to be sure. However, there is also a trap here. There is a fine line between acceptance and passivity (especially when the latter enters the territory of numbness and indifference).. This goes back to what I wrote earlier: there is no arriving. Great, I can control my reactions and experience more peace and comfort in my life, but I cannot then get stuck in this neutral zone, hang out there avoiding the ups and downs. To be truly awake and alive, we need to stretch; we need to break down the barriers of the familiar and the habitual on a regular basis. To do this requires coming out of our caves and putting ourselves deliberately in situations that keep us on our toes. Think about it: Where are you playing it safe? Hiding out? What are you avoiding? What limitations define your life and your being? To really look at this you need to take stock. Make a list of things you believe you cant do. See what that looks like. Beyond that, you can make lists of things you ALWAYS think, feel or do and things you NEVER think, feel or do. You will begin to discover how small your world is, how much of a box you live in. Basically, if youre not stretching on a regular basis, youre not living. If youre not trying new things, challenging yourself, scaring yourself and making yourself uncomfortable, you are living a limited life. Muscles that arent stretched become toxic and stagnant. So do we, when we dont stretch. Acceptance, surrender and being in the present are all beautiful tools to create peace and equilibrium. But we also need movement and change and growth. For each of us, this looks a little different. Thats what makes it so exciting. Where are you willing to stretch?

Talk to Me
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ~ Carl Jung Lets face it. Life is quite simple when you really look at it. We all want the same thing: to love and be loved. Period. Beyond that, I would add that we all want to be seen and heard and appreciated. We all want to feel connected and to feel meaning in those connections. Plus, being touched regularly is nice. Add to that some creative expression, and you have a pretty rich life. At the core of life is our communication with each other. What we say and dont say. The messages we send out with our eyes, our expressions, our body language. We crave connection. It is our lifeblood. Restrict that connection, and our being begins to wilt and wither, like a plant without sunlight. Love needs to flow. In its pure unconditional state, it is expansive and inclusive. It continues to grow and build on itself. And to do that it must be expressed freely. Love is abundant. It is everywhere. It is we who limit it with our conditions and possessiveness and definitions and boundaries. We cling to it out of fear of losing what we have or not getting what we want. We treat it as though it is a

scarce commodity that will run out and dry up. Communication is loves channel. Listening and receiving and letting someone truly express who they are and be heard is a great gift, yet it is so rarely given. Like a delicious meal, conversation is meant to be lingered over, not rushed through. You can discover hidden territories when you slow down enough to really speak and really listen. New ideas are born. Wisdom is revealed and shared. Wounds are healed. Talking, when done for its own sake with grace, is a subtle, yet beautiful, art that is often neglected. Consciousness has been shifted by those who understand this art, and who know first how to listen and then how to speakThose who understand this artwho know first how to listen and then how to speakhave shifted consciousness. Speaking up can be the most radical of actions. It can stir people up, inspire them and get them moving. Silence is just as powerful. Our voice and our words are incredible tools once we remember how to use them. Most of us hold back. We censor ourselves mercilessly, depriving others AND ourselves our deepest interiors, preferring instead to skim along the surface of life. No wonder were hungry with longing. I propose the following: Listen harder and longer. Engage. Immerse yourself in anothers ideas and being. Really be there. Speak using your whole voice. Dont hold back. Expose yourself. Be bold and brave. Whatever you do, bring something to the table. Make it worthwhile for the person listening to you. Broaden your circle. Dont talk to the same people all the time. Seek out new people. In fact, make it a point to meet someone new every week or even every few days. I guarantee you that if youre willing to expand your circle and go deep with people and really engage with them, your consciousness and your life will begin to shift in miraculous ways. New opportunities will emerge that may even take you in a whole new direction. And that is just the beginning; many great ideas have been born out of a single conversation.

Divided We Fall
Hear me, four quarters of the world a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth,a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds. ~ Black Elk Years ago, Emmet Fox wrote that the word individual means indivisible. Upon reading that recently, I decided to do a bit of research. Sure enough, indivisible is listed as one of the definitions of individual, though most of us dont think of it that way. The idea that an individual cannot be divided or separated from the whole illuminates the deeper truth that we are all connected. Though we are unique, individual expressions of the DivineDivine, we are not separate or apart from it. To think so, is to deny the essence of who we are. The illusion of our separateness is what makes our lives exciting, but it is also what gets us into the most trouble. It is a double-edged sword requiring a delicate balance between our needs and desires and the needs and desires of those around us. Selflessness and selfishness are both necessary, as long as neither is taken to extremes of martyrdom or narcissism. Navigating this fine line seems to define a lot of our experience in this 3-D world. Loving oneself is a necessary prerequisite for loving others. Giving and receiving are part of the circle of life, and when the input and output are in balance, life feels good. It is when the scales are tipped too heavily on one side or another that life feels painful. It seems we are constantly making adjustments in both extremes, in order to find our way back to the middle again. The costs of living too selflessly or selfishly are great to our health and well-beingwell being, but in order to know those extremes we often have to touch them. Some of us get stuck in those extremes and life becomes a living hell for awhile. Some of us dont ever find our

way back to a place of balance. Some of us are fortunate enough to get help and support to do it. We are not alone, and it is our belief that we are that puts us in danger. Feeling cut off from others, unloved or undervalued leads to a distorted perception of our place in the world. By the same token, feeling worshiped or overly important can create a false idea of us and our place in the world. As a friend once said to me, he neither wanted to be placed on a pedestal nor crucified; instead, he preferred having his feet on the ground. Staying grounded requires finding our place in the whole, seeing each and every one of us as significant and necessary for our evolution. This, of course, has never been more clearclearer than it is now. There is no escape from the mistakes of the past or from the current destruction of the planet we call home. We collectively created the mess, and it is up to us to solve it. The economic crisis drives this message even deeper. The era of the individual, in the sense of the word that means separate, is over. The true meaning of that word is bubbling to the surface in the midst of our turmoil, reminding us that we are indivisible, that we are in this together and that we need each other. The earth is a ship traveling through space, and we are its passengers. There are no lifeboats or evacuation plans; therefore, we must work with what we have together. Those who think only of themselves will continue to lead us astray into certain destruction. It is those who think of the survival of the whole who can save us. All the best spiritual and political leaders taught that love and cooperation are the answers. Competition implies that someone has to win, and someone has to lose. We are now past the point where there will be winners and losers because we are all in the game. The question is not so much Will we survive? as it is If we survive, how much of what we have now will remain? The answer seems to me to depend solely on how quickly we are willing to stop operating as independent agents and acknowledge our connection to the whole.

Cosmic Intelligence
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~ Henry Miller Somethings gotta give. The planet is strained to the breaking point in its ability to sustain our burgeoning human population with our ever-growing waste and toxic lifestyles. We need help. But short of an evolved extraterrestrial species arriving at the eleventh hour to bail us out of our stupidity and ignorance, were on our own. To some people, plain and simple, that would mean were doomed. However, I would like to suggest that left to our own devices, we actually DO have the capacity to transform our current situation. The problem is that weve forgotten how. Weve forgotten that, in addition to being human, we also have within us something quite extraordinary, something mostly unseen and unnoticed, but something not at all limited by the boundaries of time and space. This transcendent aspect of us is the energy or intelligence within us that created us and gives us life. Dont you find it strange how little attention we give to this core essence of our existence? Instead, few of us acknowledge that this even exists or that we have any access to it or would know what to do with it even if we could access it. Its as if life is a puzzle and were born into it with a bit of amnesia and confusion and only a handful of clues about our existence. As our life unfolds, we have many opportunities to remember and become clear, and even to work the puzzle. Our tendency is to look outside of ourselves for answers. There are so many sources of information and teachers out there who promise to answer our questions. All ultimately lead us astray, except those who redirect our query back to their source: ourselves. It is only then that we can begin to discover for ourselves not only the answers to our questions, but the source of the questions themselves. We begin at the end and end at the beginning. All of our fruitless searches return us to where we started, with the greatest discovery of all being that there is nowhere to go, and what we seek we already have. With that said, how will that discovery save us? It will not only save us but it will relieve us, finally, of the burden of having to figure it all out. Because whether we know it or not, we are not in charge of the show. We are simply playing our small role. There is, instead, a director or cosmic intelligence that can see the whole thing as it plays out. Our only

duty is to make sure we listen to that intelligence as it gives us our cues and tells us our positions in the grand drama that is unfolding.

Author Bio

My spiritual journey started when I was 15 and my father gave me books on consciousness. This ignited a passion and lifelong obsession to answer life's big questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of it all? My journey has taken me halfway across the world to India, South America, Europe and all corners of the US. Over the years, I've been blessed with the opportunity to meet and study with some of the world's greatest mystics and teachers. My work draws on a myriad of life experiences including over two decades of training in meditation, visualization, affirmations, intuitive inner work and journeying, emotional and physical healing, mystical awareness, and connecting with Source. Over the years Ive helped hundreds of people accomplish goals, bring their lives into balance, gain clarity about major life decisions and move through the changes brought about by divorce, job loss, empty nest, etc. Ive been an entrepreneur for over thirty years and began working directly with clients in 1986, first as a massage therapist, then as a group facilitator, motivational workshop leader, marketing consultant, and then as a life and business coach. In addition, I'm a published writer and blogger and I've worked extensively supporting other writers and the creative process through group work, classes and coaching. Currently, I'm busy working on a screenplay as well as a dramatic play for the theater.

My beautiful sons, Julian and Miles have filled my journey on this earth with blessings and joy. I dedicate this book to them.