In our psychotherapy society we have become so focused on the problem--as a way to find the solution--we sometimes forget where we are going, and what we really want.

From giving psychic readings and seeing how energy works in the aura, the human energy field, I see that when we focus hard on the problem, we actually cut off possibilities for a solution.

Focusing hard on the problem is an activity of the mind, it engages the mind, it creates a focus.  When the mind is thus engaged with a strong focus, the way that looks in the aura is that through virtue of that focus you are not open to receive information and guidance from your higher self, your divine self.  That aspect of your being is always with you; you are It in fact, but your awareness is elsewhere so information cannot come through.  And even your conscious mind becomes so preoccupied with the problem, it is not receptive and cannot recognize solutions.

From giving psychic readings, I see that it is good to make the effort to identify the problem, but then switch the focus to what you really want.

Focusing on what you really want sets in motion energies that will make that possible.  In the energy field, in the aura, the energy becomes very open, very receptive, and those are ideal conditions for new information--from all levels of reality--to permeate consciousness.

If you are going to use your will, your determination, your focus, your attention, the place to put that energy is on what you want.  And right now I am not talking about wanting material things, but aspects of consciousness.

If you want your pain and suffering to stop, you have to desire a life of peace, harmony, joy, well being.  You have to want that more than anything else.

The strong desire for peace, etc., will immediately bring to light how you make war.  The desire for well being will immediately bring to light the things you do to bring the opposite.

It is a brutal witnessing of the self actually creating things one does not really want--with zero awareness of doing so.  However, that is exactly the value of fervently insisting on the higher qualities of peace, joy, harmony, love, exuberance, creativity . . . and if you sincerely want those qualities, you will stand and face the things that come up, and move forward.

The interesting thing is that sometimes in this process we realize that no maybe we do not want peace or joy or well being.  The intensity and the drama of the absence of it is something we actually enjoy--for whatever reason.  But at least you will know that, and that will create other options for you.

Bottom line, as has been so often said and so often written about, where your focus is is what you will create, what you will have and what you will live.

Once in a while I get clients who really don't have a problem, though they think they do.  They know what needs to be done, but they are not doing it, thinking there is something deeper, more insidious that needs to be seen and handled before they can get on with it.

It is not so.  Sometimes things really are what they seem.  There is nothing to dig into, no dark mystery, nothing to heal.

There is always the fear of new things, a hesitation on our part, maybe resistance, perhaps doubt, when we're faced with life transitions, beginning of new things.  That is normal.

Every single person, no matter how confident, feels this fear of the unknown, at the start of new project, at the start of a new life path, at the start of anything new and unknown.

There is nothing to fix at those times.  There is only the movement forward, though the fear and doubt and hesitancy.

I am not sure, but I think sometimes my clients are disappointed when I have nothing dark and deep to tell them about their situation; maybe that would be given them the excuse they needed, confirming their hesitation has indeed had a gloomy cause.  With these clients, much of the time, it's just clarifying for them the new directions, pointing out their own habitual tendencies and character predilections, as a way to help them orient their energies more constructively, and saying, you're on the right track, keep moving forward and have fun.

Sometimes it's that simple.

I would say these clients need to feel boundlessly fortunate.  For sure they would not really want the deep and dark to be discovered in their situation.

I have plenty of deep and dark I am discovering with clients, and it's no fun because it means the client has to heal many things before they actually resolve the issue they came to see me about.  And that can be a long, hard journey.

These clients are the ones that feel most grateful for their psychic reading because that which has troubled them for a long time is finally in the light.  They finally understand what is going on, and they feel tremendous relief.  Yes, the work going forward may be hard and it may take a while, but at least they know what it's been all about and they know they can do something about it.

So, if you're facing challenges, take the approach my dad taught me when fixing cars, which applies to everything:  start with the thought it's the simplest thing that's the cause here, then work toward more complex considerations.  Maybe it's just the light bulb that needs to be changed and there is nothing wrong with the wiring system.

Consider yourself very fortunate and get on with it with exuberance and enthusiasm.

History was my minor in college and political science one of my majors, along with English.  I was very curious how humans lived and handled their challenges throughout history.  It didn't take long to see that the same things happen over and over again.

What I cannot help but always remember is that in earlier times, across our planet, poverty was the norm, except for the few, and that today, in a lot of the world, especially in the United States, we are, in general abundantly wealthy.  Yet, most people do not stop to notice that.

Today, we have all sorts of luxuries:

- To live wherever we want to live on the globe.  (In earlier times, there wasn't even transportation to get you to another part of the globe--and of course there was the time before people knew that our planet was a globe--let alone be free to not just travel but settle down wherever you want to.)

- The choice of jobs.  (In earlier times, no way could you have had that choice.)

- To enter stores filled with goods and so many choices as to boggle the mind.  (Yup, in earlier times, you had to make your own stuff.)

- Time for leisure, meditation, contemplation.  (Trying to get food was so pressing, it left no time to think.)

- Because of this time we've attained, we've evolved.  Our consciousness is different.  We have the luxury to change ourselves, to grow, to evolve.  (There was no time to think about self.  The choice to volitionally change did not even exist.)

- Our bookstores are filled with books to help us evolve.  We have thousands of teachers helping us move to the next level of consciousness.  (Excepts for priests and shamans who ministered to the general populace, there was no one there to help with the inner struggles.  The general population was illiterate.  When books started to be published in the 15th c, only the wealthy could afford them.)

Every day I am keenly aware of all that we have.  Our state of mind is not crowded--for most of us in the U.S., I hope--with how do I get a crust of bread today; we get to choose--all sorts of things for our daily life.  How fortunate we are.  What unprecedented opportunities we have to become more of the divine self that we really are.

The Untethered Soul: Twelve-Step Guide to Spiritual Awakening Posted: 08/04/2012 9:41 amPublished on Huffington Post.


"Spirituality is meant to bring about harmony and peace. But the diversity of our philosophies, beliefs, concepts and views about spiritual matters often leads to confusion or even conflict. The fact is that the very act of seeking spiritual freedom causes notions of success and failure, and these notions serve only to bind us to our own self judgments: Am I growing? Have I done anything wrong? Am I meditating enough?

Truth is only complicated because we pass it through our habitual thought patterns. When we step back from ourselves, truth becomes simple. There are not many paths to freedom, there is only one. In the end, no matter what particular patterns of thought we have managed to build in our minds, freedom always means transcending these personal thought patterns.

But how does one go about transcending the personal self and awakening to spiritual freedom? What is needed for this journey are succinct steps that are so universal that they can echo through the halls of any religion as well as support intellectual understanding. The following is a universal road map to Self Realization.

1. Realize that you are in there.
You must first come to realize that you are in there. From deep inside, you are experiencing this world. You are experiencing your physical body, your thoughts, and your emotions. You are conscious and you are experiencing what it is like to be human.


2. Realize that you are not okay in there.
Look to see what's going on inside. If you want to understand why you've done everything you have ever done, if you want to see what's really going on, just observe your mind and emotions--just experi­ence your inner state. If you objectively look, you will see that you are never completely at peace. You will see that you are not okay in there.

3. Realize that you're always trying to be okay.
At any point when you look at the state of your inner being, you will see that something is bothering you. You will then notice that this causes urges, drives, and impulses to do something about it. You will find yourself constantly trying to either get something or avoid something. All of this is done in an attempt to be okay.

4. Realize that your mind has taken on the job of figuring out how everything needs to be for you to be okay.
If you watch, you will see that your mind is always telling you what you should and should not do, what others should and should not do, and how things should and should not be. All of this is the mind's attempt to first create a conceptual model of what would make you okay, and then try to get the outside world to match it.

5. Realize that the process of defining how the outside needs to be is not going to make you okay.
You must seriously look at this process of trying to be okay. You've been at it your entire life--you've just tried different things at different times. While it's true that sometimes you manage to make it better for short periods of time, you know that you've never even come close to reaching a state of permanent peace. Watch very closely how you react to the things your mind has preferences about. You will see that if your mind gets what it wants, you feel joy; if it doesn't get what it wants, you feel disturbance. Likewise, when your mind experiences what it doesn't want, you feel disturbance, and when it avoids what it doesn't want, you feel relief. You will never be okay playing this game because the world will never match the conceptual model your mind has made up. Eventually, you will come to see that struggling to be okay does not work. At some point, you will try to find a different way to be okay in there.

6. Learn to not participate in the mind's struggle to be okay.
This step is about learning to sit in the witness, the part of you that notices the inner urges to be okay. You must become comfortable with sitting in there and not participating in the inner energies. You learn to relax in the midst of them. You come to see that there is a habitual process in which the moment you feel inner disturbance, you are drawn into doing something about it. You must learn to sit inside and not participate in this process. If you truly understand that going outside to try to be okay inside doesn't work, then you'll be willing to sit inside and simply allow the disturbance to pass through. It is not difficult. If you can do this, all disturbance will cease by itself.

7. Learn to go about your life just like everyone else, except that nothing you do is for the pur­pose of trying to be okay.
If you aren't so preoccupied with trying to be okay, you will be free to sit inside and quietly love, serve, and honor whatever naturally unfolds in front of you. When you reach this point, you are no longer living for yourself. You are interacting with life, but not for the purpose of being okay.

8. As you sincerely let go of the inner energies you are watching, you begin to feel a deeper energy come in from behind.
Up to this point, everything you were watching inside was in front of you. But now that you are no longer being drawn into those personal energies, you'll realize that your inner universe is actually very expansive. You will begin to feel Spirit flow in from behind. It lifts you and brings you great love and joy.

9. Your inner experience becomes so beautiful that you fall in love with the energy itself, and you develop a very deep and personal relationship with it.
It will become completely clear to you that there is an absolute trade-off between your personal ener­gies and the amount of Spirit that you feel. The more you get drawn into your personal energies, the less Spirit you feel. The more you don't participate in your personal energies, the more Spirit you feel. You now have a direct relationship with the spiritual energy, and you will find yourself constantly longing to experience it.

10. You begin to feel the energy pulling you up into it, and your entire path becomes letting go of yourself in order to merge.
Will is no longer needed. Now your path is strictly about releasing yourself into the pull of the higher energy. You must surrender deeply enough to be able to overcome the fear of losing your connection to the personal self. You must to be willing to die to be reborn.

11. Once you get far enough back into the energy, you realize that your personal life can go on without you, leaving you free to become immersed in Spirit.
This is the greatest miracle: You've surrendered and your entire life is about Spirit, yet people, places, and things continue to interact with you. The difference is that these interactions require none of your energy. They happen naturally, by themselves, leaving you at peace and absorbed in Spirit.

12. Now you are truly okay and nothing inside or outside of you can cause disturbance--you have come to peace with it all.
Because you are now completely okay, you don't need anything. Things just are what they are. At this point, you know yourself as Self. The world, mind, and heart cannot disturb you. You've transcended them all. What is more, instead of feeling drawn into Spirit, you now actually experience yourself as Spirit. You have no boundaries in time or space. You have always existed and you will always exist. You have no form, shape, gender, or body. You simply are, have always been, and will always be--Infinite Spirit."

This is so exciting!  We've beginning to live "science fiction."  The first phase candidate selection is complete, and we're on to the next phase.  Read more about this project on Mars One website:  http://www.mars-one.com

In this interview Caroline Myss talks about how you know when you're on the right track and living your life purpose.

Tony Robbins has been around a long time, but I've never looked into his work until today.  Came across this video about taking action.  I like the way he approaches the subject.