May 2007

Decision making plays a big part in how successful one’s life is. What to major in at college, what career to choose, where to live, what to invest in, how hard to work, to marry or stay single, to save or to spend. The list is endless as everyday we are confronted with decisions. Some are significant and some aren’t. Some people put a lot of thought into their decisions and some people are spontaneous, or even impulsive. For example, some people put in days deciding what to pack for a trip and some pack in five minutes. What kind of decision maker are you? When you look back over your life, do you wish you had made some different decisions?
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Living in the Present Moment
Enjoying the Richness of Life
May 3, 2007

I often find that my next step in life is rervealed by living in the present moment, wholeheartedly, enthused, and unabashed. How so? Because it is in those moments that I am free from the limited perspective of my mind. Consciousness takes over control of life from the mind in those moments. If that is too abstract, imagine that you are an amateur chess player competing in a chess match for a multi-million dollar prize against a world champion Grand Master. Sounds overwhelming, doesn’t it? But let’s say you were allowed to have an advisor, such as former world champion Garry Kasparov, sitting by your side. Would you take his advice? You know for a fact that Kasparov is your only chance to win the match. But what if he recommended a move that just went against all logic, like a queen sacrifice? Would you take the advice?
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Life of a Spiritual Being
May 4, 2007

Why is it that one of the most disgusting creatures -- a cockroach -- has such a strong survival instinct? And while they are scurrying around trying to survive, thousand of human beings are committing suicide. If any living creature could feel justified in suicide, I’d think it would be a cockroach. Think about it, if you woke up one morning in a Kafkaesque kind of way, as a cockroach, wouldn’t you want to kill yourself? But they want to live. I’ve heard it said that if the world exploded in a nuclear holocaust that cockroaches would be the only survivors.
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Follow Your Bliss
Advice to Students in Budapest
May 6, 2007

The other day I received an e-mail, asking for advice, which forced me to reflect back on an earlier chapter of my life. As a young man graduating from college, could I could have benefited from any words of advice? A simple question that provided me with some invaluable soul searching. I have reprinted the e-mail which is followed by my response:
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Leadership Development
May 8, 2007

Leadership development traditionally is aimed at individuals who want to advance their career. But is that aspiration, by itself, enough to make a true leader who can change lives? For example, let's take someone we all know about who made a difference in the lives of millions, South Africa's Nelson Mandela. He didn't just open the newspaper classifieds one day and see an opening for leading his people out the Apartheid system. He didn't say to his wife, "I'm going to start a new career because we need more money."
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Past Lives -- The Sojourn of the Soul
May 8, 2007

Past lives have always fascinated me. This fascination became most intense 22 years ago when I had an overwhelming sense that I was home again when I arrived in India on my first trip there. The experience was so strong that it brought tears to my eyes.
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Successful Time Management
May 9, 2007

Awareness is crucial for successful time management. Everybody has heard the expression that time is money. One of my favorite writers, essayist Michael Ventura, once wrote that time is life, meaning that how we use our time defines our life. And if we are unconscious about how we spend our time, then our life is going to be pretty unconscious. Have you ever taken a long road trip of about 500 miles and you figure that based on the highway speed limits and stopping to go to the bathroom and stopping to get a bite to eat, that you should be able to make the trip in about eight or nine hours? You don't stop at every visitor's center you come to. And you don't stop and explore every city you drive past.
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Communication -- The Vibration of Who You Are
May 10, 2007

To put personnal communication into perspective, it's helpful to recall an Emerson quote: "What you do shouts so loudly in my ears I can't hear a word you're saying." That sheds light on why lovers don't have to speak to each other when they are so deeply in love. Silence speak volumes. There is a gigantic difference in communicating with words that are not your truth and communicating from the deepest part of your being. Even if people don't agree with you, they will listen to you, because you are authentically real. Truth has power. A clear example of that comes from the life of Swami Vivekananda. Addressing the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, on September 11, 1893, Vivekananda looked out on the crowd of seven thousand people. Most of these people had never heard or seen a Hindu monk before. But when he addressed them with the words: "Sisters and Brothers of America..." the whole audience went into an unexplainable divine rapture--a standing ovation that lasted for more than three minutes.
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The Yoga of What Is
May 14, 2007

This phrase, The Yoga of What Is, was coined by a friend of mine. It has to do with not being resistant to what is happening. It's about acceptance and living in the present moment.
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The Passing of My Mother
May 16, 2007

It’s been about seven months since the passing of my mother. I’m still making the adjustment. When a happy event happens in my life I still have the thought, "Call Mother." So I just talk out loud as if she is in the room, hoping that somehow she can hear me.
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True Success
May 17, 2007

True success isn't luck. Doyle Brunson, the famed poker player who has won numerous World Series of Poker titles in his career, recently said that he would risk everything he owned on a single bet if he felt it was a reasonable bet. He wasn’t afraid of losing everything. He said that was because if he lost it all, he had faith in his ability to rebuild his bankroll. In fact, he had already done that once earlier in his career. He went broke. He then gathered a small amount of money, and started rebuilding his bankroll, and became the legend that he is today.
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Saying Yes to Life
May 18, 2007

Saying yes to life can make such a difference in its unfoldment. For instance, I am swimming in abundance this week. After a less than desirable start to the week with someone stealing over $3,000 from our checking account, things quickly turned around. After accepting the fact that it happened, I took the necessary steps to get the money back. Everything worked out perfectly. My bank reimbursed the amount that was stolen within 24 hours. Then we received a letter in the mail about an inheritance that was twice the amount we expected. I received a call from a success coach on the West Coast who is volunteering to help me build the traffic on this site to the top 1/10 of the top one percent of all sites within the next year. And then I found out that an investment that we made is poised to make a gigantic return on our money.
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A Viewpoint of Truth
May 20, 2007

Imagine a culture that stressed the undivided wholeness of the entire universe. Well, if that is a viewpoint of truth you subscribe to, you can start with yourself. As Gandhi so wisely said, "You must be the change that you want to see in the world."
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Career Development Help
at Career Ramblings
May 21, 2007

For career development, people need top notch advice. Career Ramblings, a website of career and entrepreneurial advice, fills that need. The site is a great tool to ensure that you don't sell yourself short. A career is a crucial part of a fulfilled life. Without the right career, life falls short. Because of the importance a career has in the fulfillment of life’s goals, any tool that you can use to help you achieve it is of immense value. And it is because of this that I recommend their site.
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Finding Meaning
May 22, 2007

I’ve been focused lately on the importance of finding meaning in life. With it comes a heightened aliveness. And today I came across these words of Albert Schweitzer from The Philosophy of Civilization: Only when we are able to attribute a real meaning to the world and to life shall we be able also to give ourselves to such action as will produce results of real value. As long as we look on our existence in the world as meaningless, there is no point whatever in desiring to effect anything in the world.
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The Purpose of Meditation
May 23, 2007

If you think the purpose of meditation is to escape from everyday life, you are mistaken. It’s purpose is so we can enter life more fully. It’s like sharpening a sword before going into battle. Once in a while I’ll put on my sunglasses or my reading glasses and the lenses are dirty and I have to clean them so that I can see properly. Likewise, the mirrors of our minds, which reflect the source of our being, become thick with layers of impressions accumulated through the vicissitudes of life. With vision clouded, we are not able to function as effectively as when we see clearly.
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Internet Scam That Has
Victims Going to Jail
May 24, 2007

Here is an internet scam that my wife almost fell into. In the end she used common sense and went to the police. But for those that don’t, jail time is a likely outcome. It’s pretty slick. It seems to be targeted at people who register with an online job placement agency. There they are able to get the e-mail addresses of people who are looking for work. Some of these people, they surely reason, are desperate for easy money. Here is the initial e-mail that they send:
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Consciousness as a Responsibility
May 25, 2007

Do you ever look upon your consciousness as a responsibility that extends beyond you and your family and friends to people you don’t even know? Perhaps you can more easily see that responsibility if you consider your level of consciousness as the amount of brightness you are able to shine onto the world. The lower levels of consciousness, people shrouded in shame and fear, live in a self-made world of darkness. The higher levels, that of advanced mystics on the inner planes of consciousness, are characteristic of light and illumination. Famous examples of this would be St. Francis, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, Thomas Merton and Mother Theresa. The principal is that in the presence of light, darkness vanishes. Or you could say that in the presence of light, darkness has no existence. It has no substance in that it has no existence except in the absence of light.
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Music is the Best Therapy
May 26, 2007

Music is the best therapy that I know of for restoring the passion of my soul. I remember years ago, while in college, coming to the conclusion that listening to music increased my productivity. I started listening to music 24 hours a day. Well, except when I was in class, and that was hard. But I would sleep with music on, study with it, exercise with it, drive with it. I found that it increased my abilities as a saxophone player. My experience was that listening to music was as important as practicing. It filled my subconscious with musical ideas. But that was not the primary thing that happened.
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Setting Goals from a Holistic Perspective
May 29, 2007

Setting goals is necessary to make progress in life. But real progress, holistically speaking, can never be made until we know where we ultimately want to go. It’s important to know if the goal will lead us in the right direction, that is, will it get us to our final goal. Here’s a true story from my life that serves as a metaphor on setting goals. In late August of 2001, I was traveling in India with my wife and daughter. At the time I was an employee of United Airlines, and at that time, United had flights in and out of New Delhi, India. Therefore, with my employee flight benefits, we were traveling on a standby basis. It was time to come home. We were at the Delhi airport and the supervisor at the United counter said we could not be accommodated on the flight to London. The flight was way overbooked and in a denied boarding situation.
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Fearlessness and Compassion
May 30, 2007

Fearlessness and compassion are opposite sides of the same coin. When you contemplate what sets apart the fearless hero or heroine, whose lives are the epitome of compassion, you will see this clearly. I love the words of the late Chögyam Trungpa on this subject: Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.
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Paradigm Shift in Medicine
May 31, 2007

I hear that a paradigm shift in modern medicine is underway. That's great news to me, but I haven't found it here. Today I had my annual physical exam. It was the first one since I moved to South Carolina last June. It was interesting to see that very little attention was paid to me as a whole person. And I found it interesting that the doctor referred to the supplements that I take as drugs. When we were done, she said, referring to the vitamin C, E, B6, B12, gotu kola and flax seed oil, “You sure take a lot of drugs. I don't know how you do it.” In actuality, I don't take any drugs.
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