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Power of Love: Man and Lions in the African Wild
Wow…the power of unconditional fearless love! See this 15 minute video clip of a man (some call the lion whisperer) hugging and playing in the wild with African lions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MNCzSfv4hX8 His mission is to teach others about the value of lions and wild animals…..how each is important to the surrounding ecosystem. He tells us that each has a unique personality. And that their habitats are dwindling. They need our help to not become extinct.
The Unending Pursuit of Happiness
Why does happiness feel like such hard work? Why is it that as soon as we’ve achieved something that we thought would or should make us happy, we find that we’re still longing to feel happy?
Today as I found myself feeling sad, I felt inspired to add my voice to the dialogue on happiness.
The short answer to such questions is that happiness is a state we have the opportunity to create each and every moment. All moods are a reflection of the thought of the moment. Think a sad thought, and we’ll feel sad. Think an even more depressing thought, and we’ll feel depressed. Think a happy thought, and we’ll feel happy. For that moment.
When our moods are prolonged, it is a sign that we have a habit of thinking a certain way. For instance, when we struggle with depression or anxiety, it is a mirror back to us that we typically view the world with an eye on the past or future (respectively), and with an eye for what is lost or missing to us, or an eye toward how we may be harmed in some way.
I am sad right now because I’m thinking of how many of my family members have passed recently or are gravely ill. I plan on allowing myself to feel this sadness for a few moments, because it’s real, and it’s how I’m feeling about this situation.
But soon, I will switch to other thoughts, like about how the geese sound as they fly in formation over the nearby lake, how grateful I am that my family will be together for the holidays, and how soulful it feels to know I have a book coming out soon.
Happiness is not about an unending pursuit for greater success. It is about noticing the present moment, being authentic to who you are, and choosing to focus on what brings you joy.
Bankers Draining Municipal Budgets? Where is Conscious Capitalism?
My stomach sickens at the thought… http://www.nbcnews.com/business/damage-city-budgets-self-inflicted-help-wall-street-2D11603593?ocid=msnhp&pos=1 …of dozens of cities, and thousands of fellow Americans, who are struggling because Wall Street bankers duped them into financial derivative schemes that made the bankers much richer and the cities, and their residents, much much poorer. Their municipal budgets now continuously drained. Public projects significantly more costly. Fewer works being funded at all. And the domino effect…like sustained unemployment or even higher layoffs, less funding to fight crime or pay emergency workers, impaired ability to help abused children get out of violent homes, little money to repair pot holes and other storm damage…the list goes on. All due to unscrupulous, unprincipled bankers who readily deceive our ignorant public servants into signing bad financial contracts, where they ultimately agree to pay higher than market interest rates or fees well into the future. Like Oakland, California reportedly stuck paying Goldman Sachs until 2021, according to CNBC’s John W. Schoenan in his article (see link above) just released today.
This is just one example of individuals, and entire industries, creating needless suffering in the world. Imagine how much misery could be avoided if these people transformed their consciousness into a way of thinking and perceiving that was centered around love. All contracts would be win-win, instead of win-lose. This is the basis of the latest movement in what is being called conscious capitalism. Bankers would use their financial know-how to help cities fund projects for the common good in the least expensive manner possible. And they would be paid fairly for their expertise. Bankers would help citizens afford their own homes, not go bankrupt because of deceptive legal contracts where they end up paying 80% higher than the original price of the home. And not just bankers, and the banking financial industry.
In the November 2013 issue of Entrepreneur magazine, we learn of many innovative start-up companies who are ready to help transform our world, one need at a time. There is Crowdfunding, where new ideas , Homeboy Industries, Like chefs who are determined to bring high quality food to us quickly.
If each of us helped transform our own industry through our own example of conscious capitalism, we would indeed change this world.
How can you change the world?
How Can You Believe in Wi-Fi, and Not Believe in its Source?
You can believe in Wi-Fi, that there are energy or radio waves flowing everywhere, that your thoughts can be translated into data, which in turn can be transmitted into these and many other energy signals, which can be sent and received by antennae, read using your phone or computer or television.
And yet, how is it that you cannot believe in Spirit? That very energy which is everywhere, as radio waves of information, but so much more than that, so many more frequencies than that?
Spirit is the very source of all energy signals. Spirit is the sum total of all energy signals.
Every hair on your body, every cell, every neuron, is designed as an antenna. You are a living antenna, an energy receiver and transmitter, for Spirit.
What are you transmitting right now? What would you like to be transmitting right now? As you become conscious of your transmissions, your energy signals, you become aware that you are participating in the totality of spiritual data flowing through the air waves, and through all matter, all that you can see and hear. Spirit flows through you, whether you are conscious of It or not. You can dim Its signal, muddy up its antennae hardware. Or, you can amplify Its signal, and join in conscious movement, radiating, with It, with Spirit.
Spirit is you, at its lowest and slowest frequencies. You are Spirit, in your highest and fastest frequencies.
Heaven is a great bandwidth of energy. Link up. Link in.
What is “Essential” Parenting?
I’m moved to write this post after meeting with so many clients who were raised by mentally ill parents.
They struggle with the idea of becoming parents themselves, worried that they will do what their parents did, or didn’t do. Clueless as to what a healthy relationship or lifestyle even looks like, they feel completely overwhelmed at the idea of becoming a parent.
What is essential parenting? Forget the idea of “good enough” parenting for now. I’m not sure how helpful that concept is in this moment. Let’s focus on what exactly is needed by any child.
Food Addiction: Recovery Impossible?
My colleague Jerry Casados, a nutrition coach in the Denver area, recently sent me the link to a 22 minute video clip of Larry King interviewing Dr. Pam Peeke about the science of food addiction. http://www.drpeeke.com/web/module/video/videoID/54/catid/2/sectionid/580/interior.asp The good news seemed to be that we can be addicted to food, that it is not for some people simply a matter of will power. The bad news was that there is “no cure” for addiction, only recovery and treatment. I have a different view of addiction. I do believe that addiction can be cured because I have seen my clients cure themselves of various kinds of addiction.
Coping With Difficult Transitions
I don’t care who we are, coping with periods of transition IS difficult. Stuck, paralyzed, frustrated, irritable, fearful…these are the emotions that can haunt us during the season of change. We fear the unknown, what we don’t know how to do or what it might be once we do it, the possibility that we might regret leaving the familiar behind. When we are young, the future seems open, unwritten; and sometimes the vastness of this territory terrifies us into indecision. What if we make the “wrong” choice”? What if we “fail”? As we approach middle age, sometimes we are horrified by the decisions we didn’t make, as well as the decisions we did. We may have made choices that kept us safe, but bored, unchallenged and unfulfilled.
Even when we have lived a life that has felt very satisfying, we can arrive at our fifties and feel we want a change, something new. Perhaps we’ve always been on a growth streak, which never seems to end. And we get to yet another time of transition, and we feel inspired to move, but are simultaneously overwhelmed by having to yet again learn something different. We’re tired, wonder if we have the energy for one more change, and in our pause to think, notice our melancholy. If we shift faster rather than slower, we can avoid depression. But maybe we don’t because our fatigue, lack of motivation and stuckness have consumed us. As we near the end of life, we can fear sickness and death. Our bodies don’t quite function as we would like them to, but we feel stuck with our habits of eating poorly, sitting around the house, not moving, not learning, not doing much at all. So how do we cope?
Becoming A More Conscious World
How do we become a more conscious world, when it all can seem so beyond our individual capacities to change it? In short, we do what we can, from where we are, from the inside out. According to a 2009 telephone survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, 65% of American adults express a belief or have had at least one transpersonal experience, and 72% attend religious service at least yearly. About half of us have had a religious or mystical experience or moment of spiritual awakening, more than double the 22% reported in 1962. The point being, that a solid majority of us in the US seem to identify as spiritual people.
Navigating the Spheres of Consciousness…Consciously
Are you are the driver of your experience in consciousness? Most of us are not. Through our lack of awareness, we carelessly allow ourselves to be tossed around by anything and everything. What we experience then is randomness. It is possible, however, to take the driver’s seat and direct our consciousness anywhere within spacetime, or beyond its limits and boundaries. For example, we can direct our attention to the consciousness of our cells. And in so doing, we can enter the mind of our cells. We can stay in this plane of consciousness when we desire, which we certainly will until we choose to transcend it. We can navigate our consciousness into the sphere of our soul body. And from that Self, dialogue with self. We can reach out to the Cosmic Self by driving there with specific intention, and allowing self to stretch until it breaks into Self. the blackberry
What the Shift in Consciousness Means to Us as Individuals and as a Whole
Recently I met a young man in his thirties. As our conversation deepened, he began to talk about how everything is energy, about recent findings from quantum physics, and about having felt the shift of 2012. “It wasn’t a shift like they thought it would be; it was a shift in consciousness. I felt it. Many people I know have felt it.”
The “shift” is a shift in the very fabric of our identity, our values, our motivations, our sense of self. We begin to feel different from most of society and long for change in the world. We question the very foundation upon which our culture has been constructed, and seek to re-invent our systems and way of life.