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Scan your body with awareness.

Seek out a place of tension or discomfort,

And rest there with your attention.

Feel this place exactly as it is.

Feel it, be with it, just as it is.

Feel it not so that it will go away,

But with an invitation that it may stay forever.

Kiss the tension with the softness of awareness.

Bring the breath all the way into this place,

As though you are pouring water into a dry sponge.

Wait, linger, until the flower opens,

Until your awareness is completely there.

Move on to another place of tension,

And then another.

Discover the lotus growing in the mud.

We generally have an unfriendly relationship to sensations in the body. Tension and pain are the body’s cries for attention, just like the call of a newborn baby who knows no words. When we try to ignore the body’s signals, whether directly with painkillers or just blocking them out through distraction, we cut off our connection to the real, to the world that can be truly known only through the senses. This tendency to block out the sensations in the body goes so deep that we rarely even know what it means to experience the body as it is. A fleeting feeling arises, and it is met with an immediate thought that it should not be this way.

This sensation is bad; this one is good.

One single thought can set in motion a pattern of tension, for instance in the pelvis, solar plexus, or chest, that shuts down the flow of blood and energy in such a way as to almost completely inhibit our capacity to feel. Only numbness and thoughts are left. When this knee-jerk reaction occurs, stop for a moment. Retrace your steps. Whether you’re sitting in your office, waiting in traffic, or lying in bed, return to that which has been locked out. Open the door with welcome, and consciously linger with that which has been banished. If we acknowledge and welcome tension and pain, not in an effort to make them go away but with a loving embrace, they will transform themselves. It is in this embrace of our greatest discomfort that we are initiated into the body of bliss, into wisdom of the body.

You cannot try to relax: it is only counterproductive. The more you try to make any part of your body relax, the more tense it will become. The body relaxes through just the opposite: through feeling tension and welcoming it completely. It is a paradox: the more you are all right with being tense, the more relaxed you will become, and the more you try to relax, the more tense you will become.

Relaxation is the natural state of the body. It is where it returns to when it is left alone. A relaxed body is the natural temple for relaxed and natural consciousness: free, limitless, and experiencing spontaneous Oneness with all that it encounters.

This is an excerpt from my book, “Leap Before You Look.” It is available for purchase on Amazon.

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Imagine for a moment that you are walking on a busy street in a small town you are visiting. You pass the travel agency, and see posters in the window for Corfu, or Hawaii, or the Grand Canyon. You hardly notice, and you walk on by.

Then you pass the flower shop. Bright yellow tulips, flown in from Holland. Orchids. A dozen red roses, going for a deal.  But it does not move you, you walk on by. 

Then you pass the clothing store. “50% off – latest colors and fashions.” Sweaters, pants, hats, shoes. Yes, shoes! All kinds and colors and sizes of beautiful, sexy, sophisticated and on-sale shoes.  But again, you walk on by, hardly noticing.

And then you come to the restaurant. You can smell the aroma of the food wafting out onto the street. You hardly notice what kind of restaurant it is, you hardly glance at the menu once you get seated, and you eagerly order the first thing you see.

Why? 

Why were the flower store and the travel agent and the clothing store all uninteresting, but the restaurant drew you right in, with only a minimal glance at the menu? You know the answer. It is because you were hungry, right? If you are hungry enough, you don’t even care about the decor, or the customer reviews on Yelp!, or whether the salad was locally grown. If you are hungry enough, you just want to eat, and as quickly as possible.

There is another kind of hunger as well.  It is not a hunger for food, or a thirst for liquid, or even a desire for anything tangible at all. I like to call it by a different word, to make the distinction clear, I call it “longing.” Desire is for something that you have already defined in your mind. “I want more money.” That is clear. Take some action, and maybe eventually you’ll get the money. But there is still desire, for even more, or for something different.

“I want to be in a relationship. I’m so lonely, I want to find the Right One.” And again, either you keep on desiring, from one dating site to another, or you find someone to be in relationship with. But almost always, after a few months, the desire changes. “I want my partner to be different, to be more caring, more available, more like I wanted in the first place.” And then a little later another desire appears, “I want to be alone.” 

I want to be powerful.

I want a BMW. 

I want to be famous. 

I want to be a rock star. 

I want to rule the whole world.

All of these desires lead to more desires. Longing is different. It can be very, very strong, it can eclipse the interest for anything else in your life, but we don’t necessarily know, clearly and logically, what the longing is for.

There have always been a few people, in every culture, in every age, who followed this longing down into themselves with enough passion that they found their way home. They found the One Thing beyond the mind, beyond the endless procession of thoughts and feelings, beyond the automatic machinery of desire. These people became the peak of what we see as possible for a human being. They are Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Thomas Jefferson, William Blake, Michaelangelo. Today there are millions of people who have tapped into the One Thing that makes everything sparkle. They may have found it only in snapshots, or they may have found it also in more sustained ways. I have interviewed hundreds of people who have shifted their consciousness in this way, and who are now leading creative lives, overflowing with contribution, making a huge difference to the world. I have surveyed thousands more. Here is the single most important thing I can tell you about these people:

Many of them had a teacher, or even many teachers, at one time or another. Many did not. Some were sometimes part of a group, read books and went on retreats. Many did not. Some were vegetarian, or did yoga or meditation. Many did not. What every single one had in common, without any exception, was that they found a way to follow their natural longing. Getting in touch with this longing, and following it home, is the single key that works every time. It may lead you through valleys of grief or despair, it may lead you to peaks of feeling good, but it will always bring you all the way to the One Thing that is your true home.

When you walk straight past the flower shop, and the travel agent, and the clothing store, and straight into the restaurant, did the restaurant give you the hunger?  Of course not.  The hunger was already there.  It was there in you before the restaurant appeared, and it was the hunger that made the restaurant interesting.

The hunger is yours, it comes from you. It is not learned, or imitated, or conditioned.  
It is very, very important to see this. The feeling of, “I want to go home,” was not given to you by any teacher or teaching. You did not get it from any book or CD, and you did not learn it from any seminar. It is yours. It was this longing, already alive within you, which made all of these things attractive. It is because of this longing, whether it is a flicker or a firework display, that you are reading this post on this blog, and not finding out how the Law of Attraction can give you more of what you want.

Now, truthfully, not everyone on the planet has this sense of longing for the One Thing. Many human beings are not really interested in this longing at all. It has been too deeply buried. Then the primary interest becomes money, the best car, a more powerful position, and more sex with more people in more unusual positions. There is nothing wrong with any of those things. We can all live this life however we want to. But once the longing takes hold, it becomes important to attend to it carefully.

I have been guiding people into the discovery of the One Thing since 1991. I have worked with hundreds of people individually, and tens of thousands of people in seminars and groups. I have trained many hundreds more in how to become facilitators of the One Thing themselves. In every case, for any of this to have any real impact, we have to wake up that longing, and give it expression. If we approach it in this way, then reading these words is serving you, and you do not need to serve or follow anything outside yourself.

I am not a teacher, or a guru, or a philosopher. My role is not to teach you anything, or give you anything, or tell you what you should do with your life. I do not represent any group or tradition. I am here in service to the hunger, the longing, that is already in you. You have the longing. You have the hunger. I have a small restaurant. Nothing fancy. Just some rice, some vegetables, maybe a little chicken, some fish. A very simple restaurant. If you come with your hunger, I can honor your hunger. That is my job. I’m an Awakening Coach.

You have already heard about coaching. Everybody says, “I’m a coach,” these days.  What kind of coach are you? “I’m a wellness coach. I’m a shopping coach. I’m a brush-your-hair-coach. I’m a find-your-mate coach, and a relationship coach, and a divorce coach, and a find-another-mate coach.”

Well,  I am an Awakening Coach, and I train other people to become Awakening Coaches too.

Last Thursday we had a very fine live tele-seminar about awakening coaching. If you missed it, you can catch the replay here.

This Thursday, May 31st at 6pm Pacific, I will talk about the seven qualities which anyone can develop to become an excellent Awakening Coach to anyone else.

Click here to register for the call

Be there. Just do it.

Seeya!

Arjuna

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Vision is vital.

It is the fuel that motivates action.

It gives meaning to our lives, the aspiration to reach beyond our limits.

Vision tells us where to put our energy, allows us to push through unforeseen obstacles, and, when a group of people work together, it is the cohesive force that keeps them motivated and connected.

Vision also seems to be innate. My son used to have two rabbits. They had never spent any time among other rabbits; they were still babies when they left their mother. We built them a fenced enclosure in our yard so that they could hop around all day on their own. Their very first day in the enclosure, they started to make burrows. No one showed them how; burrowing was hardwired into their DNA. Our cat knows how to chase birds without an instructional video. Pigs roll in dirt; dogs sniff everything. And human beings . . . they have an innate capacity to sense their own, and life’s, potential, without any outside help.

We are born with a sense of wonder and awe that is untouched by the limitations of the constructed world. The capacity to rest in this innocence is what makes childhood a time of wonder, for many the only time of wonder that they ever know. Although unaware of the stresses and disappointments of the adult world, this vision of our true heart is full of wisdom. It knows something about what is ultimately real. This wisdom of the heart is worth investigating. If we examine the assumptions we make when embarking on anything new — a romantic relationship, a business venture, even a spiritual practice — they can be very telling. These assumptions reveal something simple that the heart never forgets, even if the mind no longer dares to believe. This vision feels clearer, more authentic, even if it is constantly sabotaged by forces we never anticipate. If we pay close attention to how we feel and act when we are initiating something new, we can discover a great deal about our natural state, and, indeed, about the natural state of life.

This is an excerpt from my book, The Translucent Revolution. You can purchase a copy at Amazon.com, or on the Awakening World Online Store

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My new book, “Better Than Sex,” will be out this summer.  Here is a sneak peak for you:

Let me tell you a little story about a man named Fred.

Fred goes shopping at Costco.  Just like everyone else, he shows his membership card, he gets himself a shopping cart, and begins to wander among the stacks of TVs, tools, clothes, food and books.  But then Fred is a little careless, and he runs his cart into a huge display of shoes.  The whole thing comes crashing down on top of Fred, and he is thrown to the floor. For a few moments, our intrepid hero is knocked unconscious, but people come to rescue him from under the pile, and he soon comes around, with a sore bump on the back of his head. He is fine, except that he cannot remember where he is, who he is, what his name is, or what he is supposed to be doing in this strange place. 

Fred sits up.  He looks around.  “What kind of strange place is this?” he asks himself.

He sees people, almost all of them in a hurry, pushing carts down aisles, looking to left and right, and taking things from the shelves. “Batteries, I want it for me.  Five pound bucket of guacamole, I want that for me.  Jeans, give me five pairs for me and my tribe.  Shampoo, give me a gallon for me.  More more more, I want more for me.” Fred also sees other people, dressed in white coats, some driving fork lifts, putting more things back onto the shelves.

“Where am I?” Fred asks himself.  “What is this strange place?” 

He struggles to his feet, he steadies himself on his shopping cart. Fred wants to fit in, so he also starts to walk down the aisles, and, somewhat mechanically, he also starts to take things from shelves and to put them in his cart.  When in Rome…do as the Romans do. But inside himself, there is a voice. “I want to go home.  I don’t really like this place so much. I don’t mind the TVs, or the food, or the books or the clothes.  It all looks very nice. And useful. But everyone is in such a hurry. I want to go home.”

The problem for Fred is that he has lost his memory. He cant remember where home is, or what home is.  He just knows that home is not this place. He has an intuition, a memory in his cells, that home is peaceful, home is relaxed, home is familiar.  Home is comfortable. He knows that at home he needs nothing, he is missing nothing. At home, his cart is always already full. Fred is taken over by this longing, this yearning for something which his mind cannot remember or describe, but which his heart cannot forget. It haunts him. “I want to go home so much. I am tired, I want to rest where it is familiar. I want to home so badly, but I don’t remember the address, the street, even the area of town.”

Fred is deeply, painfully homesick.

Do you sometimes feel this way about living here on Planet Earth?”

Many people do. In fact, most of the people who come to us for Awakening Coaching, and all of the people who train to become Awakening Coaches, feel this sense of longing.

Longing is different from desire. Desire is for something outside yourself. Tangible. Fixed. But, as you’ve probably found out, when you fulfill one desire it just leads to more. Longing is for something deeper. Longing is for The One Thing which lights everything else up. The art of Awakening Coaching is designed to bring this longing alive in you. To wake it up so that, just like Fred, the activity of getting more and more things to put in your shopping cart seems a little less important, and the longing for home seems a little more important. The great news is that once you wake up this longing in this way, it’s relatively easy to fulfill it, at least in snap shots. Your real nature is not far away, or a distant goal at the end of a long journey. It’s already right here, just covered up under the activity of, “more for Me.”

Awakening Coaching focuses on seven specific skills, which anyone can learn and master easily to support anyone else in waking up and bringing forth this longing, and the awakening to your true nature.

Please join me for a free teleseminar this Thursday, May 24th, at 6 PM Pacific Time to find out about the 7 core competencies of Awakening Coaching.

For everyone who registers for the teleseminar, I will send you the entire first chapter of my new book, “Better Than Sex.”

See you then!

Dear Mr Zuckerberg,

 First, I really want to say that I like this Facebook thing you have put together.  I’ve been using it for a few years now, and I think you are onto something, and it might really catch on someday.  If you need any help with the programming part, my son has a couple of friends at his college who might be able to give you a hand.  And they are affordable too, if you are tight on cash.

 I am writing this to you personally, as I found your help function a bit hard to use.  It gave me a drop down menu to choose what i wanted to talk to you about, then another, and then another and finally it just led me back to a 404 message.  Seems a bit complex, Mark, why not just list your cell phone number there, and let people text you with ideas?  That’s what my friend did with his very cool Led Zeppelin retro iphone app, and he has more than 600 download now.  I’m just saying…

 Anyway, I wanted to tell you some things that I like about your Facebook thing, and also some things i think you really need to change before you go public with it. In level 1, I liked the simplicity of it, and the “friends” function.  I found I was getting really a lot of photos of kittens, and rainbows, with messages overlaid about “be the best you you can be,” and “this is the first day of the rest of your life.”  Barfo, baby. But then I switched off the “New Age Reality Distortion Filter” function, I got a few friend requests from some bikers in Detroit, and things got more balanced. I also found that liking Guns n’ Roses really helped to spice things up.

 I completed level 1 after about 2 months, when I hit the 1000 friends limit.  I still keep a screen shot taped to my bathroom mirror of the message that popped up on that fateful day:

 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Congratulations!

You have completed Facebook Level 1

You now have 1000 friends

Your time was  58 days, 11 hours, 4 minutes and 3 seconds

Highest scores are:

Boyle, Susan     3 minutes 2 seconds

Obama, Barack    5 minutes 9 second

Robbins, Anthony  6 minutes, 12 seconds  (disqualified for using a PR firm)

Cute Kitten   8 minutes 4 seconds

Teen Falling off Railing While Skateboarding:  9  minutes 4 seconds

You will now graduate to Level 2!

Fasten your seat belt for some action!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Right away I liked Level 2 much better than Level 1.  To start with, having an enemies list as well as a friends list was much more like real life.    I also loved the “spread malicious rumors” button along side the “share” button, and the addition of “dislike,” and “puke-a-rama,” as well as just the plain old “like” of level 1.  I managed to complete level 2 pretty quickly by pretending to like George Bush.  That worked well, but did fill my wall with a lot of spelling mistakes and invites to like causes like “invade Australia, and then move over into Switziland next door.  Lets grab those Aussie Muslim’s oil.”  I had to do some unfriending pretty quick, but I used the “Boris the Russian” plug in, and he took care of the bodies very efficiently. Only 9.99 for a full year!  Whats not to “like” about that?

 Level 3 was much more exciting, but also a lot more work.  I don’t know if it was such a good idea to allow my friends and enemies to battle things out on my wall.  It got very heated during the last election, and sometimes took me most of the morning to clean up all the rotten tomatoes and mud pies.  I also liked the matchmaker idea, where you could randomly put people together on blind dates.  I set up my sister with Rush Limbaugh. What a hoot! My sis is a lesbian tattoo artist with tons of piercings, and a bad ass attitude.  At least Rush scored some more killer pain meds.  You can count on my sis for crazy dope!  But finally things got out of hand. There was a fight one night on my wall, and they broke my brand new Facebook Chat, just out of the box.  Took me weeks to get it fixed, and now it still makes a funny squeaking sound whenever it is raining.

 Level 4 was where I really started to question your sanity, Mark. I mean, whats with the thing of having to respond to friend requests within 3 minutes? I did NOT think that it was reasonable to give them my phone number if I took more time.   And how come so-called friends now get to control the little camera on my lap top? Spoooooookeeeeey.  Just the other day I was having some private time with my wife.  I fired up iTunes to play her some Gilbert and Sullivan to get us in the mood.  Don’t ask, Mark, its a British thing.  Anyone, some dork switched on my camera remotely, and now I’m featured in a Viagra commercial.  “Look what old tall skinny bald guys can do, with just one blue pill…”

 When it came to level 5, after the giddy 4000 friends mark, I have to say that I feel you should have kept Facebook to an online activity.  I got up in the middle of the night to take a piss, and there was someone waiting in my bathtub to sign me up for Farmville.  People have been hiding under my bed in the morning with event invitations, causes, and fun quizzes about “if you were a household detergent, which one would you be…?”  I opted for Lysol, but now I’m thinking Ajax.  “Stronger than Dirt.” That’s me baby.  And then there are the friend requests.  A lady came up to me at the Grocery Store, never seen her before, asking to be my friend.  “Do we know each other?”  I asked politely.  “No, but we have 3 mutual friends, and FB says we SHOULD be friends.”  she glared back, menacingly. Thank God for Boris the Russian.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses bang on my door at all hours wanting me to like their FB fan page. Mark, this little FB thing of yours has become a way of life.

 So here’s the thing, Mark, I am getting to the end of Level 5 now.  And I want you to come clean with me about Level 6.  And don’t bullshit me here, I have seen the white van parked outside my house for the last week, with the antenna on top. I know its waiting till I succumb to that fateful 4999th friend.  Some people say there is no level 6.  5000 friends, and you get whisked off to Silicon Valley and made into a Facebook app.  Some people say that in level 6 all of your friends melt into one, and you finally get to have live chat with God.   And some people say that you never come back to tell.  Anyway, please use the comments section below with your answer. Mark, and I’ll keep it between us, I promise.

 And keep up the good work!  One day they’ll make a movie about you, or even have you host Saturday Night Live. You could even be a millionaire!  I know, I know, I’m a dreamer…  but what the hell, its fun.

 Your Friend

 Herb Winterbottom, Jr.

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One of the turning points of my life happened more than 20 years ago, when I went to sit with an almost unknown spiritual teacher and writer. There were just a few people gathered together meeting with her. This was the late 80’s, when “manifesting” was the latest greatest thing. So somebody asked the question, “Do you think that we create our own reality?”

There was a pregnant silence. Finally, this wise woman answered.

“Yes,” She said. “But I also think this is a disease which is curable.”

Stunned silence.

Her answer reminded me at the time of one of my favorite poems by Sosan, the third Zen Patriarch:

“Like a fish in the water, crying out “I’m thirsty,”
Like the son of a rich man wandering begging door-to-door…”

Most of us live in various states of semi-discontent. Not enough love, so we try to figure out how to look more beautiful, smell more beautiful, act more beautiful, to attract the right kind of love into our lives. Most of us feel that we don’t have enough money, enough stuff, so we try to learn the habits of success, hang with the right crowd, discover the magic formula, so we can attract more for Me. And most of us feel, in some way, that we suffer from a feeling of powerlessness: insufficient control over our lives. So we learn how to boost our self-esteem, make the right decisions, win friends and influence people, so we can have more power.

Unfortunately, the endless race towards more of everything for Me allows little opportunity to stop, pull over by the side of the road, and ask ourselves, “Well, honestly, how’s it all working out?”

That, of course, is the benefit of going on a retreat, or even just taking a long walk on the beach. It allows you to contemplate whether the ladder you’ve been enthusiastically climbing is actually leaning against the right wall.

There is another possible way of living this life, which is exactly the opposite. Instead of manifesting more, we learn to recognize the ways we were already creating stuff, and how to relax that pesky little habit. Instead of using the law of attraction to try to magnetize the right stuff to Me, we learn to relax more deeply into the essence of that Me and discover what we’ve already got, and who we already are. We learn the practice of unconditional gratitude. Instead of setting intentions for how to clarify and implement My agenda, we learn instead to recognize that there’s a bigger plan than was concocted in the little mind of Me.  We learn how to align ourselves with that bigger plan, how to surrender to it, to be available to it.

Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby is an unlikely character to write an insightful spiritual book. He’s a medical doctor and researcher. But nevertheless, his book, “To Fly Without Wings” is packed full of really great insights, written from a scientific perspective.

One of the little jewels in the book is called “The Three Wishes,” where Dr. Scott-Mumby recognizes that we are already Love itself. We are already abundant in nature. We are already at peace. That is the original wish: the first wish out of which we are born. The second wish is unconscious, and created by negative conditioning, and so we try to cover it over with a third wish: the wish to create a new reality.

Dr. Scott Mumby’s book offers us practical tools to relax backwards: back into the first wish, which is to desire that which is already here. Which is already true.

You can grab yourself a copy of Kieth Scott-Mumby’s book here.

I wl be joining a line of of stars:  Lynne McTaggart, Rupert Sheldrake, Gary Schwartz and Albert Einstein  ( well, ok, one of those was a joke!) to talk about the awakening of consciousness from a scientific perspective.  Make sure that you join the fun here.  It is free!

See you then!

When you notice yourself needing to be right,
When you notice your mind is strongly attached to any conclusion,
Stop and ask yourself, “is it true?”
Do I really know this?
Is this an absolute, objective, unchanging fact?
Would every sane person in the world agree that it is so?
Or is it simply opinion?
When the mind says, “there’s not enough time,”
Ask, “is it true?”
Do I really know that?
Can that be nailed down as a fact?
Would everyone agree?
When your mind says, “No one likes me,”
Again ask, “is it true?”
Would everyone agree?
Does everyone feel that way?
When that which had been taken as fact is seen as merely opinion,
And when that opinion is seen as an optional extra to this very moment,
Discover what remains true beyond dispute.

We carry so many unexamined assumptions in the mind. The challenge for “educated” and “cultured” humanity is that we easily confuse conclusions arrived at through thinking with reality itself. To examine and question the mind is freedom from the mind, and freedom from the mind, even for a moment, is to discover reality as it is. Pay attention to everything your mind puts forth as fact. Question everything you believe.

Once you recognize that the mind’s assumptions are not absolutely true, please be aware that this does not mean that the opposite is therefore true. When the mind says that there is not enough money, you can ask, “Is it true?” and realize that this was only a belief. This does not necessarily mean that there definitely is enough money—that would also be a conclusion of the mind. Neither assumption can be taken as absolute. Questioning belief allows us to drop out of mental conclusions altogether, and to experience things just as they are. This is the way that small babies know life, and how great sages know life, and it is the way that we also can know life—if we are willing to question the mind.

You can do this practice alone or with a friend. If you do it alone, use the practice for a specific period of time, perhaps five minutes, and then relax for a while. If you keep it up for too long, you may start to feel a strain. You can also make an agreement with your partner or a close friend: any time that either of you hears the other state an opinion as if it is absolute fact, you can ask this question: “Is it true?” In this way, you support each other in freedom from the mind, and the relationship itself becomes a means of liberation.

This is an excerpt from my book, “Leap Before You Look.” You can purchase the book on Amazon or in the Awakening World Online Store.

Photo Credits: mpocares.com, lapaine.com

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My 19 year old son  Abhi Ardagh just sent me a paper to look over that he’d written for a class at San Francisco State University. The paper was about whether or not there may be life on other planets. He went into a fairly well-researched account of the various attempts that have been made to send signals into outer space, hoping to connect with extra-terrestrial life. And then he went on to say this:

“Even though these messages have either not been received, not been understood, or just maybe the ETLs just don’t have a way respond, I do believe that attempts to communicate should still be made. However, knowing the human population and that fact that we are still constantly growing, and the fact that our leaders would simply only be thinking of greed, I can also see  that attempts should not still be made. My message would probably be simply “For your good, stay away.”

Looking back at history when Europeans first landed in America, you can see how the greed of man overpowered anything else and the natives were murdered or enslaved. I believe this to still be the basic mindset of our leaders. I think that Avatar, while fiction, really shows how man thinks, that even though there are some of us that want what’s good for both species, the leaders with the money and the power want to use what they can for themselves.”

I wanted to share this with you, because my son is a fairly optimistic, motivated 19 year old boy. He’s ambitious, highly disciplined, and generally optimistic about his life. But this view he expressed here sums up what a lot of people feel.

We live in a world out of balance, dominated by greed and acquisition. We recognize that the miraculous natural rhythms of the planet: the tides, the seasons, the migration of birds and animals, have all been thrown out of balance by human behavior. The very fact that we are aware of this balance means that we are also aware of the natural state of things. We are aware of what life on this planet could be like if it weren’t for…(you fill in the blank)

When I was back at University in the 1970’s, everybody was looking for a way to make a difference. A whole bunch of my friends became vegetarian, because they saw that as a more conscious way to live. Huge numbers of my friends got attracted to Marxism, and went off for the weekend to demonstrations in London. One of my friends even dropped out to volunteer full time for Green Peace. I also felt hugely motivated to make a difference, but the solution I was attracted to was a little different. I trained to be a teacher of meditation and yoga while I was still completing my undergraduate degree. When I look at economic imbalance in the world, or political oppression, or even child abuse or spousal abuse, or the way we treat our planet and it’s natural resources, these things always seem to me to be more symptoms than causes. What do they all have in common?

Imagine a man at a party. He’s talking very loudly, knocks a couple of things over, and then insults the host. When he’s asked to leave, he falls down the last few steps before getting to the front door. Driving home, he’s lucky to avoid getting into an accident, and scrapes the side of his car trying to put it into the garage. The next morning he wakes up with a terrible headache. Now tell me, how many problems does this man have? Talking loudly, insulting a good friend, difficulty with balance, driving badly, damaging his car, headache. Does each one require a separate solution? I’d say not. When you recognize that this man had too much to drink, everything else is a byproduct. Change his drinking habits and everything else cleans up on it’s own.

In a much deeper, more all-encompassing way, I’ve always felt that the essential challenge we feel as a race at this time on the planet is not so much to do with our actions: those are symptoms. It has much more to do with our collective state of consciousness. And if you feel inspired, as I have most of my life, to make a contribution, to help people, to be more a part of the problem than the solution, what are you going to do? Change political structures? Lobby for economic reform? Clean up toxic waste in rivers? Those are all absolutely good things. And, in a way, you could say that they are all dealing with symptoms.

“You cannot solve any problem,” said Albert Einstein, “in the same state of consciousness in which it was created.”

How can you show up in the world in a way that powerfully helps people to change their state of consciousness from one of separation to one of connection?

Please join me this Thursday, April 12th, to go into this in more depth.

So many people feel this calling to be of contribution in this way, and that’s why we developed the Awakening Coaching Training, so that anybody, just as they are, can find ways to help other people change their state of consciousness. On the teleseminar we’ll go into this in much more depth, and explore how easily you, just as you are in this moment now, can become an instrument of planetary awakening.

Register for the Tele-seminar here

Photo Credits: theblaze.com, jimstrutzin.hubpages.com, bestforbeginners.com, obviousmag.org

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Consider the sad and ominous story of JasonRussell. His name may have already flashed past you by now, in the whirlwind of current events.

So let me remind you:

Along with three of his buddies, Jason created the film Kony 2012, which attracted more than 80 million hits on Youtube a few weeks ago. I don’t want to have a discussion here with you about Ugandan politics, or about accuracy in journalism, or about the finances of his nonprofit organization. All of that has been discussed ad-nausium. I want to talk to you about vision. Here was a young film maker who traveled to Africa many years ago, initially to make a documentary about the war in Darfur. There he met a young African boy, named Jacob Acaye who had been commandeered by Joseph Kony and The Lord’s Resistance Army to act as a child fighter.  Jacob’s brother had been killed by the LRA.

Jason Russell got fired up about this. As a young man, he started to feel a sense of vision. I don’t think he’s ever claimed that bringing Kony to justice would solve all of the world’s problems overnight. He wanted to shine a spotlight on one of hundreds of thousands of things which are out of balance on our planet: the thousands of African children who have been coerced into violence by this organization.

As is often the case with underfunded nonprofit organizations, it took him a while to make his film, which is why  some questions have been raised about whether it is still relevant. But still, they did it. He took a stand for what he believes to be right and true. He put his film up on YouTube, just like anyone else does, with no way to know just how many people would watch it. The rest, as we love to say, is history. With the help of celebrities like Rihanna and Oprah Winfrey sending out twitter messages, Invisible Children got 40 million hits on that movie within a week.

“Great,” you might say. “Mission accomplished.”

But Jason Russell offers us a moral tale that every silver lining also has a cloud. Getting a lot of attention about anything you feel passionate about will also bring you detractors, and these days, with the comments box available to anybody on YouTube, most blogs, and Facebook, people can get nasty. Very, very nasty.

Jason Russell’s little video drew out intense personal attacks on him, on his marriage, on his child. Three weeks later he suffered a complete breakdown, and was apprehended by the San Diego police, running naked on the streets. He’s now in a hospital, where it’s expected it will take him several months to recover his balance.

As you might remember, I had a similar experience, although my little town is so small that running naked in the streets doesn’t really get you the same kind of publicity.

Dr. Gay Hendricks and I made a little video about a year ago called “Dear Woman.” Just like Jason Russell, we didn’t expect to solve the world’s problems overnight. We just wanted to highlight one piece, which is that we’ve lived in a global culture mostly dominated by masculine energy for thousands of years, not really giving the feminine a full opportunity to express itself. We thought it would be a good gesture to acknowledge that, to offer women an apology for men being a bit pushy, running on testosterone, and to celebrate the possibility of co-creation. Just like with Invisible Children’s film, there were a few things to like about what we did, and there were plenty of things to dislike too. In our case, for example, we did it in a hurry, and on a zero budget. We grabbed a few people at Gay and Kathryn Hendrick’s Christmas party, a few more at my men’s group, and finished it up at our local food co-op. So of course all the men were living in California, they were mostly white and middle-aged, and probably looked a little bit “new agey,” (all though in fact there were many very straight and highly successful professional people among the group.)

Despite the fact that the film, granted, had it’s pros and cons, no one would anticipate the deluge of hatred that it generated. More than 5,000 comments (which we did not publish), simply accusing us of being fa**ots. Seven emails came with people saying they knew our addresses and were coming over to put bullets through our heads. Thousands of comments were unbelievably derogatory to women, along the lines of “make me a sandwich, b****ch, and then spread your legs.” And let me tell you, it’s really not as easy as it might seem to take all this with a sense of humor.

I’ve written a few blog posts on Huffington Post, which also got a lot of comments. I was sitting down last Christmas with Coleman Barks, the celebrated translator of Rumi, talking about blogging. “I love to write,” I said to Coleman, “but sometimes the comments can be really vicious.”

“What?” said Coleman, in his thick Tennessee accent. “You mean the things people write underneath? Nah. You don’t want to read them. That’ll ruin your whole day!”

Which brings me to the moral of the story, dear friends. We live in extraordinary times. Some people see this time as one of breakdown, others see it as one of breakthrough. If I had to summarize everything I’d learned, I’d say this is the Age of the Unique Gift. This is the time to find what you were born to give, to harness that energy, and to give it fully and generously to the world. And if you do so, just like Jason Russell, and Gay Hendricks and myself, and just like many other people, you may, whether you like it or not, “go viral,” sometimes. Whether that means a lot of views on YouTube, or hits on a blog post, or anything else, you may find that your unique gift touches more people than you imagined.

And then, inevitably, you’re going to be celebrated by some and hated by others. If what you have to give is well tried and tested, and already familiar to the world, you may not ruffle too many feathers. If your gift is new, and unusual, and groundbreaking, you may find yourself having to deal with division, hatred, ridicule, and maybe even death threats, if you’re really controversial.

I think it’s important for all of us, whether we’ve been through this process or not, to realize that we have a gift, and we also have a huge resistance to giving that gift as well. Somewhere inside of us we know that success could be more difficult to deal with than failure.

Dropping into the infinite source of creativity and intelligence, discovering your unique gift, and giving it fully to the world, is the subject of my new Living Awakening Course. I’ve prepared a free 10 day free “mini-course” for you to get a taste of what it’s all about.

You can register for the free mini course here.

This Thursday, April 5th, at 6pm Pacific Time, I’m going to talk about the 5 keys to Living Awakening, and what it takes to overcome your fear of being judged and shine as the magnificent sun that you are.

Register here for the free tele-seminar.

Picture Credits: People.com, lewwaters.wordpress.com, drk-shannon.blogspot.com

The very fact that you’re reading this article right now, on “The Translucent View,” rather than scanning YouTube for videos of kittens, or the latest round of mud-slinging by GOP candidates, means that you probably care. You’d probably love to make a difference to the world. You’re probably aware of the enormous and growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor on this planet, you’re probably aware of the huge impact that human beings are having on the environment, and you’re probably aware of the control of the media by huge corporations.

If you’re really paying attention, you may be feeling frustrated and even angry.

You’d probably like to make an impact. Maybe, like me, you’ve also come to recognize that it doesn’t help a whole lot to rearrange political structures or change the people in command. “That,” said the philosopher George Gurdjieff, “Is like rearranging the furniture in a prison cell and calling it freedom.” Perhaps, like me, you’ve realized that the most important thing for all of us is to change our state of consciousness, from one of separation, from me-based thinking, where I take care of my needs and the rest is somebody else’s problem, to we-based thinking, where I can feel my connection to everything.

You may also, just maybe, perhaps,  be wondering how you can make the greatest impact on the greatest number of people with the skills and the motivation that you have.

People are bombarded with information these days. Your email inbox, Facebook messages, every corner of your computer screen, is crowded with people trying to persuade you to pay attention to something. So if you’ve got a real contribution to make, how are you going to let people know? How can you take the difference that you have to contribute, and make it public? The science and art of reaching the public is called “publicity.”

But here’s the rub: Check out a few of these words and phrases and see what they do to you. Be honest!

target audience
marketing campaign
bonus offer
time-limited offer
discount deadline
affiliate merchant
super affiliate
conversion rate

I’ve noticed that most people who are highly motivated to create a better world find this kind of language, and way off thinking, off-putting, to say the least. Many people have the feeling that if they really have a contribution to make, it should be naturally passed on by word of mouth. Marketing campaigns can smell of the old state of consciousness that we’re ready to leave behind.

This is the dilemma that many generous, inspired, and inspiring people find themselves in today. The choice seems to be either to hold to higher ground, be restrained, and “conscious” about your gift to refrain from aggressive marketing, and also perhaps find that nobody knows what it is you’re doing. Or to jump in headfirst, launch campaigns and get the word out, and risk being dragged into an ocean of commercialism.

I’m going to be talking this week with Chris Williams and Martha Hanlon about the possibility of marketing with integrity. They are the founders of  “Wide Awake Marketing” to support people with contribution, and who want to make a huge difference to the world, to get the word out without selling their soul.

Please join us for a free tele-seminar about this refreshingly new approach to marketing.

I’d also love to get your feedback on a video we just completed. We’re going to be offering our Living Awakening Course to a wider audience now, and we created this video to give people a “guided tour” of the course. Please go take a look and tell me what you think.

Do you think we found the right balance in informing people of what we have to offer?   Did I sell my soul and get too enthusiastic?  Is it straightforward, or sneaky and manipulative?  Am I holding back from the great gifts this course can offer?

Tell me your thoughts!

I’m looking forward to seeing you on the tele-seminar on Thursday.

Register for the free tele-seminar here.

Image credits: popularconduct.com, unitybz.com