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Entries in Eckhart Tolle (4)

Thursday
May102018

Interview with Svetlana Meritt

Svetlana Meritt is a former high-profile journalist and long-time spiritual seeker.  During ten years of journeys far and wide, she began to tune into higher understanding. 

On route, she discovered her life mission: to revive attention to ancient sacred sites, teach about the nature of terrestrial energy and conscious expansion. Based on her direct experiences, hew book invites living vicariously through her, feel into mysteries of the unseen Earth currents that inform all life.

Amidst an busy schedule of world travel and energetic upgrades, we appreciate that you fit this in. We are eager for your views on why it is said travel is the only thing that makes you richer.

Based on your book, Meet Me in the Underworld: How 77 Sacred Sites, 770 Cappuccinos, and 26,000 Miles Led Me to My Soul,  you are long drawn to travel. It feels heart-activating to engage in your unique adventure travelogue.  So, tell us a bit about your background, what originally sparked your interest in foreign places.

The love of travel has always been a part of my life, way back in my native Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia, where I was born. While I was still in college, I worked as a travel guide at the Adriatic Sea and on tours to the Serbian monasteries in Kosovo. I’ve been told I love traveling so much because I have a Sagittarius Moon, and travel is my default program of sorts. Be that as it may, I’ve always felt most alive when I traveled, as if traveling opened a set of new eyes. I would get insights, ideas, and inspiration I wouldn’t have had had I stayed home.

I resonate deeply with your travel experiences. An avid explorer myself, I am intuitively drawn to visit over 65 countries. Your own travelogue echoes we are each living the hero's journey, creating a map of self-discovery for navigating the road less traveled. Love that your book reflects universal elements. On some level, leaving the familliar, seeing who you think you are from new vantage points, reflects the path of awakening or what Joseph Campbell describes as the Hero's journey

Only much later in life, after my travelogue was published and I started teaching a course on sacred sites, an unexpected memory from childhood floated to the surface of my consciousness – a memory that was buried for, what I still consider, mysterious reasons my whole life.

When I was seven, living in Belgrade, my mother brought me a coffee-table book for my birthday about the 7 wonders of the Ancient World and 100 wonders of the modern world – actually about the most famous sacred sites of the world! I was so fascinated by the beautiful pictures of ancient temples, mountains, sanctuaries, palaces, cathedrals, that I read the book over and over many times. For hours I stared at the pictures, noticing every detail, imagining what had transpired there, until they became amalgamated with my own image-making faculty.

Being fascinated with time, whenever life choices are linked to memory, a quote by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman jumps to mind.  He says, "We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences. Even when we think about the future, we don’t think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories."  Its like we imagine how we would like to feel and can consciously create experiences to reflect our projections.

I relate to that. When I was 26, I came to Santa Barbara, California, to do graduate studies in French Literature, and forgot everything about the book I read as a child. I also continued my journalist career and led a very exciting life, interviewing famous public figures, such as the Dalai Lama, Yoko Ono, John Voight, Allen Ginsberg.  Looking back, I think the seeds planted by the book germinated in me until many years later they led me to my own journey of exploring and researching sacred sites.

Every event the human experiences in this physical world is indeed a stepping stone to what is unforeseen and yet, on another leve, is orchestrated perfectly by the soul to learn lessons.

Its funny how we are all drawn to individuals who enable us to get more in touch with ourselves.  In the spirit of 2 Cellos who offer their version of Coldplay's Every Teardrop is a waterfall, we are each a unique droplet in the cosmic ocean, interacting with droplets that create a path home.

If you had to put it into words, what did you observe was happening in your life to trigger what an awakening? 

Simply put, I met a man I had been searching for since I was 16; a man who could answer all my numerous questions about the universe and the meaning of life; a man who interpreted my extremely vivid and exceedingly perplexing dreams. He became my teacher, then my partner, and finally my husband – Dwight Johnson. 

Any particular reason you were drawn to specific countries that you write about in your travelogue? Was it business-related or was there another voice guiding you?

I’m afraid, nothing was business-related. We were guided where we needed to be, even if at the time that wasn’t evident. The guidance for the first country, the little island in the Mediterranean Sea called Cyprus, came through a book “The Magus of Strovolos,” about this teacher and healer, a western version of Don Juan, if you will. When we read the book we felt drawn to study with him and that’s how the idea about our journey was born.

As the journey continued, however, I became more sensitive to the inner guidance. I would experience something like an inner knowing, a deep conviction that would swoop through me and I would know without having to think. It is a beautiful feeling, a beautiful way to live, an inspired way to live. I only wish everything in my life would happen that way.

On the surface, trips related to study, work, or events, visiting friends, being drawn to structures, natural wonders or mysterious sites. Only later, it hits me that spontaneous itinerary changes, seeing images on postcards and dropping everything to go, cancelled and re-routed flights always have an underlying energetic purpose. 

What shifted you from a non-spiritual motivation to feeling like you are on a spiritual journey?

Actually, it was a more or less spiritual motivation since the beginning, as we went to India to meditate in the ashrams, to study with the teacher/healer in Cyprus, and to explore the temples of Egypt. What shifted later was the rapport between the journey and myself. At the beginning I related to it as something outside of myself: there was me and there was the experience of the places, and we were separate. Later, however, the journey and I merged. My very life became the journey and vice versa.

Our readers are interested in milestones or pivotal moments.  Please share a few that stand out.

I can identify two kinds of pivotal moments: those that made me become a better person through sacrifice and deepening of compassion, caused by Dwight’s life-threatening asthma attacks in India and Rome, or his accident in a church in France that left him with a broken hip. Those were really times of trials, when I was forced to forget about myself and my little needs, and give of myself unselfishly. There is a great beauty in sacrificing the wants and demands of your personality (which always wants something!) to attend to the survival of your beloved. You feel yourself become bigger in a way. 

The other kind of pivotal moments were those that led to the expansion of my consciousness. Once it was through a weird accident I had in Antibes, France, which took me out of the body and consciousness for some time. After a night of excruciating pain, in the morning everything was miraculously gone, and I felt acutely aware of everything around me, able to merge with other people. I considered that event my rebirth. Another time it was through my victory over a deep-seated, paralyzing fear of authority, triggered and full blown by the disturbing and intimidating interaction with the woman whose house we rented in Provence. After many months of struggle, when I managed to lift myself up above the fear and look at it from that vantage point, I almost heard the cracking of the chains that held me captive in the fear frequency. The sense of liberation, of expansion, of becoming whole, was absolutely intoxicating.

As you can see, there were quite a few pivotal moments. But then again, it was a long journey – six whole years, and my inner journey was my full-time job. It was a do or die for me. I was fortunate that during those years we were financially helped, so I didn’t have to work. It would have been impossible to go through all those intense emotional trials and break-throughs if I had to work. A true and sincere inner work is a hard work, and sometimes it can spell the death of the personality, either symbolic or even physical. In fact, some incarnations are milestone incarnations, when our Soul decides to free itself from bondages we accumulate through life experiences.

Since publishing the book, you have been offering workshops and tours of sacred places. What compelled you to get into that? Also how do you choose which ones to visit over and over? After all, you have visited a lot.

Everything developed organically: one thing led to another, to the third, etc. It was part of my book promotion to give talks about Earth energies and sacred sites. Amazingly, every door opened and there was great interest in the topic, which makes me realize there is a need in the collective unconscious of humanity for this kind of knowledge. I gave talks even at conventional places like the Rotary Club to hard-core businessmen! Then my proposal to teach a course on sacred sites at the City College non-credit division was accepted, and that’s how everything unfolded.

Love that you are developing a new course around your experiences of energetics of sacred places.  Growing interest in sacred places  and visiting them reflects that expansion of collective consciousness. 

What advice would you offer our readers who are themselves experiencing spiritual revelations or transcendental moments?

Even though it may be unpopular in the New Age community, it has been my experience that the higher you go, the lower you go too. It happens both ways. When you choose the spiritual path, much will be demanded of you. The light reveals not only the heights, but the ravines and hidden nooks, and god knows what’s in them. So be prepared for the unexpected.

And above all – share what you learn.

How has your personal and professional life changed as the result of publishing your book?

By the very nature of its genre – travelogue and memoir – the book has been another journey. Even though I didn’t anticipate it, it has offered me a different perspective, from a valuable time distance, to grasp the events in a wider frame. Many times in the course of writing, I paused in front of my screen and squealed: “Oh, I missed that!”

Mastering Time is linked to self-mastery.  How do your views of time travel shift on your journey?

I also had a very unusual experience during the process of writing. At some junctures, I felt as if the very nature of time was fluid, and by reconnecting with myself in the past I was able to help myself in the present. It was somewhat like time travel: I would go back in my memory and with my present deeper understanding I was able to shift something, even if only very little, to ease the suffering of my past self.

On a more objective level, publishing the book helped me establish firmly my service activity. I fully realized that this IS my calling.

Do you envision other books or is this a springboard to other things?

Oh, yes. I’m gestating a new book on sacred sites as an outward manifestation of the Spiritual Science taught in ancient Mystery Schools. I’ve been having a growing sense the time has come when this knowledge, previously kept secret under vows of silence, is now being unlocked. The vows are lifted; the time has come to restore the Mysteries, not as they were, of course, but according to the present level of consciousness and understanding.

Readers would definitely enjoy hearing more about this sacred course you are putting together.  Keep us posted and we can add an update. Readers love hearing whether any new spiritual mentor inspires you of whether your path/ course simply feels divinely guided by light, sound or something beyond words.

By the way, what is your vision for the changes unfolding around you? How do you view life and yourself differently?

It is a continuous deepening of understanding of how things work, of the invisible laws that govern life and manifestation. The point is: learning and inner work never really stop. My learning since the book came out has been to do things more impersonally, rather than to be attached to the outcome. Ultimately, the outcome, the results, are not in my hands. What is in my hands is to do my part the best I can. It was a very hard lesson to learn – to let go of what I wanted and thought should happen. For me, the reward for a lesson well learned has been a greater degree of wisdom.

Anything else you would like to add?

So much…but most importantly to encourage your readers to realize fully that we are collectively at an important crossroads; the decisions and choices we make now will set the frame for the upcoming era. Every effort matters; every inner achievement counts. Everything we do personally will contribute to the creation of a new society (I use this term in a broad sense). And we want the new society to be built on the spiritual principles and higher values. Let us be aware that we are all architects of this new civilization.

Sounds like this vision is following a new trend of visionaries, including Eckhart Tolle's teachings and his renowned book  A New Earth among others. Many thanks Svetlana. Keep us in the loop of your travels, presentations and course developments. We are inspired by your energy and journey!

Thursday
Mar152018

Interview with Drew Tracy

 

Love how the more I tune into synchronicity, the more I connect with individuals who are clearly tuned into their destiny. Know that feeling? You know, when a wave of excitement passes through you, when you can look into a person's eyes, tune into their body language, and 'get the vibe'? 

It evokes uplifting feelings to interact with people who are doing what resonates in the heart, and inspiring others to do what comes naturally. This helps you see more of your own hidden abilities and bring them out to enable a new life to manifest before your very own eyes.

Crossing paths with Drew Tracy from  is like that. I get up one day and he arrives in my scope. I sense immediately that he is an adept observer with a genuineness and charisma that draws people in to share wisdom he has to offer. The empath in me senses a story.  As always, intuition is spot on.

Thanks Drew for making yourself available for this interview.

It would be helpful to Dreambuilders Australia readers to begin by sharing a glimpse of who you are and what you stand for. How have you reached a stage in your life where you regarded as a visualization guru? Which life experiences and/or revelations brought you here? 

People talk alot about the process that awakens them and I find those stories very inspiring. But I found them very frustrating for years as well. I now know that my awakening process began at a very young age for me (around 11) yet for the next 10 years I was living out my life through the heavily indoctrinated lens of religion that was taught to me as a child.

So I lived with a severe duality-mindset. “Never quite good enough, but still better than most” was the conditioning that I was tossed around in daily.

This inner conflict actually landed me in jail as the lack of conscious decisions I made in my life caught up with me. And it was there that I had the first divinely-appointed realization of my adult life.

That realization revealed to me that my conscious mind, my beliefs, and negatively perceived life experiences were holding me prisoner. It was actually a book that I found called “We’re All Doing Time” by Bo Lozoff that caused me to deeply feel this truth, and I felt a deep sense of relief as I studied, for the first time, things like meditation, breathing and the chakras.

But more than those practices, it was the sense of rest that I found in two traditionally terrifying questions that were stuck in my head:

  1. Who am I?

  2. What do I believe in?

That feels so warm at the soul level. As we shift to move more consciously through life, all we encounter is a lesson about ourselves. Some people test us. Others teach us, invite us to step outside what we think we know, see ourselves and our purpose differently. You can be receptive or not.  This is free will. Its one of the joys of being human: having the option to feel one's way through life.

In this light, please highlight specific mentors along your journey and what they have taught you.

After I had that experience, I spent the next several years learning how to let go, from those much wiser than myself like Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Ram Dass and Dr. Baskaran Pillai.

Dr. Wayne Dyer:  Helped me begin to understand the incredible lessons within the Tao De Ching in his book “Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life”.

Eckhart Tolle: Educated me on how to let go of the ego that is my thoughts and to disidentify with those thoughts to view my experiences objectively.

Dr. Pillai: Leads me deeper into an understanding of my true creator-self and how to manifest that divinity into my daily life through deep meditation.

Ram Dass: Invites me to ask questions about what I understand consciousness is and reminds me to live joyously

What a group of trail-blazers. You know what they say, the five people we focus the most attention on are clues about what we are evolving into...(or accepting and manifesting that we are already).

Agree whole-heartedly that we cannot hope to teach something effectively, that is, be viewed as credible, if we are not living it ourselves.  How are you already living your own ideal life scenario?

It’s my belief that we cannot teach others if we are not living our own truth and allowing transparency to shape our words and actions. For years I struggled and suffered as I “hustled” to find success in my life. It was when I let go of attachment to the work I thought was meaningful and simply allowed my heart to speak its truth that I found things could simply emerge from the abundance of the universe.

My healing first began as I started de-identifying with the self that I used to believe was me. Then, through much meditation and quiet reflection, I learned how to begin to see my thoughts objectively, rather than identifying with them. And most recently, my path has brought me to a place of discovering and dissipating the illusion of the separateness that I used to feel so heavily.

You talk a lot about success, tweet to thousands of followers about down-to-earth stuff relevant to how people feel today, even in this moment.  You also encourage students with on-line videos to clarify their visions using different techniques.  Its all very cool. All of this reveals you sense what makes others tick.

Yet, what does success look like for you? How does this feel ? Which stages are you living in real-time and still working toward?

Success to me is listening and acting out the calling that comes from deep within. That is, not chasing an ideal of what I’ve been conditioned to think an accomplished life looks like. But rather letting my true voice emerge from within with love, and taking steps down the path that begins to be laid out before me. Success to me is helping others understand that, even if the current season of their life is negative for them, they have the power within to visualize a better future by being still with themselves.

It is feeling that leads me to manifest my accomplishments. We’re often told things like “no pain, no gain” and “sacrifice now for a better future”, but I always found those ideas to lead to more suffering.

Today, I make sure to create in this world that I find myself in. We’re all creators of our own realities, so rather than hiding my true self out of fear of rejection and judgement, rather than accepting the fate that was laid out by the economy of the society that I live in, I trust the yearnings of my heart that I find in quiet meditation and walk the path that is being laid out before me.

Creating a message in a world full of messages is not always easy though, and It’s difficult at times to become a consistent creator. I’m still working toward striking a balance between allowing and taking action. Allowing the universe, God, etc. to provide the path to walk, and taking the right action as defined by my true self.

Through all of this, the one revelation I had that has never left my mind is that, unless we allow ourselves to see and deeply feel a an ideal vision for ourselves every single day, we’ll remain stuck in our current realities.

Feeling stuck is a common occurrence. It seems to happen when people are not conscious of other options and unaware of their power to change.

How would you describe your own life purpose and has this changed? What do you wish to accomplish currently? 

I used to have chronic resistance to the natural rhythms of life. Whether you’re spiritual or not, it’s obvious that life has seasons, yet many people reject the seasons of their life and try to create a new existence rather than just going with the natural flow.

My purpose in life irreversibly changed after I successfully designed my own life as best I could… I thought “Well, I tried my best and my best design of life ended up looking like a jail cell with an automatic locking door on it… not ideal.”

Today, I stick to the basics and really focus on daily renewing myself based on the lessons I’ve learned from my deep failures. Now, my life purpose is to help people cultivate a life of greater meaning, connection and purpose, so that they can better attune themselves to the natural rhythms of life.

I teach my process of visualization that really helps people allow this process to unfold. This is the daily visualization meditation I do every day:

  1. Design My Perfect Path (I Get clear on my “goal” as my heart reveals it)

  2. Walk My Path, Open My Gate (Daily iteration of my ideal life outcome)

  3. Feel The Bliss Of Arriving (Connecting strong emotion to my goal and savoring the experience)

 

Really feeling your enthusiasm about visualisation and appreciate your willingness to share very empowering videos on this topic. Many people hear about the vision board concept, sometimes from Rhonda Byrne’s blockbuster book/ film the Secret.   What makes your approach to visualization unique?

I actually first learned about the concept of vision boards from John Assaraf because at that time in my journey I was really into the neuroscience based approach to the law of attraction. Of course Rhonda Byrne’s fabulous book The Secret, inspired me to implement the concepts she teaches, but at that time in my life I really needed more structure.

I deeply believe that not enough people meditate, or at least find quiet time within their busy lives to meet with themselves deep within. That was my experience with myself at least, I kept getting distracted and forgetting to meditate and put a DAILY focus on my desires.

So that’s why I began this visualization meditation, to:

1.) Create a daily guided meditation process that I wouldn’t skip, and,

2.) To give myself a fun, yet structured way to begin to live into the best version of myself every single day.

It’s really helped me get good at spending just 10-20 minutes per day implementing the lessons that I’ve learned through the years from all of the amazing teachers that we’ve mentioned already.

 

Love how your daily regimen is so effective and also so simple that everyone has the power to step back and do it for themselves.  Recognizing the power to choose and moving through fear that prevents it, has potential to transform lives.  Taking time out for yourself, doing what nurtures the soul is essential. Trust more people listen to your insights and do it consistently.  

By the way, how do you manage your expectations about where you have been and where you wish to go?

This is a great question. Being accepting of where I’ve been is far easier for me than managing the expectations of where I should go.

What I can say is that when either of these moments in time begin to consume my thoughts it’s an obvious trigger to me that my mindfulness is not being practiced enough. Mindfulness, focusing with deep enjoyment of the Now is really the only way I can ever hope to have clarity  within the past and the future.

How do you see the role of technology currently and changing in the self-empowerment wellness field? (You certainly use it effectively yourself as a way to compress time and connect with your growing audience)

Technology is essential to allowing others the opportunity to self-empower. I receive the most beautiful realizations and education by teachers and gurus from across the globe and I’m grateful every day for the technology that brings their decades of practice and teachings to my computer.

We can now compress time to have pivotal realizations and breakthroughs in our life. For example, rather than travelling to India to experience a concept taught in exclusivity, I can simply purchase a ticket to view the same teaching online. I save time, I consume the training and I can then meditate on its meaning and allow further self-discovery in the comfort of my own home.

I will say, however, that there is, and will never be a substitute for human contact. Technology will never allow self-mastery, only allow us to open our minds to the possibilities of change--and it’s great for spreading ideas and higher-consciousness. We are social and spiritual beings that must connect with a teacher, coach, guru etc. at a much deeper level that a screen can provide if we desire to expand our lives in a deep and complete way.

As I increasingly teach and relate everything to the process of mastering time, I am interested in your view about how time influences your visualization process.  What do you sense about and the speed with which events unfold in your own life? What are your observations about your students in this regard?

I’ve gotten very sensitive to the timing in which key events in my life unfold. When I’m mindfully observing the past and the events that happened to me I always notice that just when one major change happens, the next opportunity for growth opens up for me, and I’ve learned to trust in that.

What this means to me is that I’m taken care of. Again, it goes back to the idea that, when I tried to force my life into a direction, things played out very uncomfortably. Yet when I allow life to unfold and trust in the season in which I’m a part of, things naturally bloom and die according to divine timing.

So I try not to consider time in the traditional sense when I visualize my desires and speak my affirmations. After all, visualization takes place deep within inside our consciousness, which plays by a very different rulebook than the physical plane in which we operate in.

What, in your view is the relationship between life shifts, evolving consciousness and heart-based, ideal life outcomes?  

I think that the “ideal life outcome” concept is still a very new one. The major economies in the world are incredibly wealthy and if you live in those your actual needs are very minimal. Living in this kind of abundance brings up unique questions that those who are simply struggling to survive can’t ask like “Am I doing this life thing right?” and “What is my true purpose in life?”

I actually think about this alot since I have 3 boys under the age of 6. There’s so much I haven’t had the opportunity to learn about how the global consciousness is evolving, so what I do is to listen to the lessons I learned during my times of change and consider how I can teach those around me how to use a “new” set of tools to navigate and experience life with. Things like empathy, compassion, truth and stillness are not traditional drivers of success and economy, but I feel it’s time to focus on these first, and that’s what I do with the young minds in my home as well.

Like you, I and many of our readers have children and grandchildren whose existence and behaviour highly influences our choices. Children are so fun-loving and spontaneous.Did you know children laugh on average 100x per day and adults less than 10x per day. This speaks volume about stress and authenticity The more people recall feelings of light-heartedness, the easire it is to see blessings in whatever arises. My son often says, 'It doesn't matter mommy.' And it doesn't, nothing really does, except in the mind. 

Please share what makes you smile, feel more child-like. What enables you to feel most alive?

I love nature most of all. I smile when I see its perfection and laugh at myself when I say things like “I can’t wait for spring” when it’s cold for instance. The perfect timing of its life and death is what I love most.

I feel enlivened when I’m able to fall into rhythm with the days I’m given. There’s so much to see in nature if we’d only look as we practice mindfulness.

Definitely! Living in different places, even where we choose to spend time reveals a lot about our state of consciousness and level of self-awareness. Being in natrue more often brings us closer to feel our own true nature and those things about ourselves we do not always see.

If you could leave a message with our readers, or a piece of advice to take away, what would it be?

Become empowered by your desire to live your life with more fulfillment. Don’t limit yourself on account of your current and past life experiences, but rather choose to understand that you can begin to live into a limitless, powerful life today.

Our readers are always eager to hear about new ways to connect with inspirational mentors like yourself. How can they contact you? Please share whatever intuitively arises.

The absolute best way is to connect with me is to come interact with me in the comments of my free visualization series called a Visualized Life. I’ve been getting some great response via email, so I just had a comments section added to the course so others can begin to benefit from the conversation as well. Anyone can access for free by clicking here.

Thank you so much Drew for all you are and all you do. We look forward to keeping our finger on the pulse of Rune & Relic Courses and reminding ourselves how important it is to do something to inspire and uplift ourselves every single day.

Throughout the day, its also helpful to create mindful moments where you cherish something about yourself and your life wherever you are, as you are, come what may. This is a key to seeing though limiting beliefs, laughing more and finding ways to help others without asking for anthing in return. What goes around, comes around.  The universe has your back covered. 

Sunday
Mar042018

Top 30 Books to Accelerate a Spiritual Journey

Many people appreciate a guide for their own awakening or spiritual journey.  While every path is unique, it is reassuring to know that many books exist to empower you to allow a new world to appear through your own eyes and subtle senses. 

There’s a big difference between people that read loads of books, and people who integrate spirituality into their lives. Being Spiritual is about living with mindfulness, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and engaging in practices that help you listen deeply and live in greater harmony. Otherwise, you simply add to a mental knowledge base.  Living through the head cannot open the heart, change your energy vibration or transform your life from inside out.

So, empower yourself. Choose one or more of these books below—as they all offer timless wisdom.  Make a point of reflecting on the food for the senses.  Some include journal exercise or you can buy accompanying workbooks.  Read passages slowly.  Breathe deeply.  Allow yourself some quality time and watch what arises within you.  As you find authors whose words resonate with you, find other books and online talks or events that enable you to grow further.  After all, this is a choose-your-own-adventure and you are the protagonist.

In Transform Your Life: 730 inspirations, I offer glimpses of individuals who have directly or indirectly helped me see myself and the world differently. The following is a list of 30 books to help you awaken, appreciate life differently and accelerate your spiritual journey.  Some of these are included in recommendations for further reading in my new Mastering Time book. I invite comments from readers about books that help expand their perception and change their lives. 

1. Whatever Arises, Love That by Matt Kahn

2. The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening  by Steve Taylor & Eckhart Tolle

3. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

5. Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander

6. Hero by Rhonda Byrne

7. What God Said: the 25 Core Messages of Convesations with God that will change your life and the world by Neale Donald Walsch

8.  Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

9.  A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

10. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

11. Awaken Your Third Eye by Susan Shumsky

12. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

13. The Empath's Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff 

14. Mini Habits (Smaller Habits, Bigger Results) by Stephen Guise

15. Defy Gravity by Caroline Myss

16. A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman (Foundation for Inner Peace)

17. Being Mortal  by Atul Gawande

18. The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran

19. The Power of Now & A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

20. Energy Medicine by Donna Eden

21. Be Love Now (& Be Here Now) by Ram Dass

22. The Healing Self by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi

23.  The Serpent of Light Beyond 2012 by Drunvalo Mechizedeck

24. Journeys in to the Heart by Drunvalo Mechizedeck and Daniel Mittel

25. Isira (Autobiography) and Awakening You by Isira

26. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

27. The Mastery of Self by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

28. The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

29. Gifts of ImperfectionDaring Greatly by Brene Brown

30. Altruism by Matthieu Ricard

Wednesday
Feb112009

13 Illusions to shake up your awareness

Illusions are self-created obstacles to a clearer view of things. Illusions are destined to dissolve as part of learning and unlearning.  This is part of a personal journey that is guided, diverges and finds its way home. Each stage is ultimately a choice. You decide when and where to pause. Your unique view of life is yours alone. You are invited to shatter your own myths.

When a person is ready to question or explore his own deeply entrenched ideas, he may awaken to acknowledge the rigidity of ideas and also shift positions or attitudes. Consider these 13 concepts to ponder and reframe;

1) Ego. Part of the psyche experiences and reacts to the outside world and imagines your self-image into being. To separate yourself from the selves of others and from objects of ego, thought causes you to forget or repress the truth. From the moment ambition is born, you are prompted to quantify it.

2) Money. This takes shape as a piece of paper with random value linkedto numbers. Virtually everyone buys into that idea and allows it to control how they think: what is affordable, enough, desirable, feasible, doable, relative and inconceivable. Currency is a human invention that arose with human motives.

3) Duality. To separate concepts into two parts is a gradual denial of unity or oneness with everything. To envision poverty distracts you from wealth and abundance. Polarities of positive and negative such as good and evil fragment underlying wholeness. As one concept exists, the opposite also exists, even if you do no choose to acknowledge it at this moment.

4) Consolation. From birth, part of you is consoled when you are fed, clothed, and loved. When was the last time you fully trusted all of your needs are met from outside yourself? Faith becomes consolation during trouble. Yet, you imagine issues where none exist and imagine what you require to dissolve it.

5) Comfort. This zone is a view of a degree of tolerance for mediocrity, anxiety, worry, and stress. It also denies what soul whispers. Some people view this as an excuse to stay put, to continue fooling self and everyone of what you need. To lose what you thought you needed shifts focus to what matters. You move away from tangible things that are bought, sold, stolen, burned or bequeathed to uncover other priorities.

6) Form. Your view of the physicality of things is grounded in beliefs. You envision or hear about objects, infer about density, texture and viscosity, without necessarily touching or experiencing them. You visualize shape without seeing and create interpretations of your sense of reality.

7) Beliefs. The focus of your devotion is hidden. It has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness or, level of conscious awareness and deliberate intent. To work in the realms of expectation and assumption creates layers of illusions you come to accept.

8) Fear. There is nothing to fear except your ability to create it. What you anticipate you will gain or lose goes deeper than ideas you access in the mind. This invokes fundamental views about what makes you who you are.  What can you live without? Few people recognize your own misunderstandings.

9) Pride. A high opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority is a view that grows from fears like inadequacy and insecurity. What you think you have or not does not change who you are.  Thinking without complete awareness explains many human issues.  People reflect each others issues, differing only in degree and level of awareness.

10) Effects. Reality is something other than perceived effects, for it is part of the Cause. Beside, over and above, under and behind, all forms of Being, Matter, Energy, Force and Power, is the ever-calm, contentedness. Reconnect to inner knowing grows into absolute trust. This translates into confidence in the goodness and justice of the only Reality that exists.

11) Crisis. When old ways of thinking and doing fall short or no longer satisfy perceived needs, a person may imagine the self is threatened. Behaving as you have done is not necessarily aligned with the natural flow of energy to start with. If you take too much without giving back, this creates imbalance. A sense of urgency draws attention to issues of survival.

12) Armageddon.  It is said a final battle involving good and evil will occur before the end of the world. Another way to view significant energy movement and upheavals is to concede former consciousness is dissolving on a wide scale. Such a view helps explain geographic, environmental and climatic shifts that might otherwise be viewed as a domino effect toward catastrophe.  Life-changing transition is imminent. How you understand it is grounded in perception.

13) Perception. If you agree your outer reality reflects your level of inner understanding, then indecision or turbulance speaks volumes.  How you come to recognize and grasp each experience is based not on superficial human senses, but on deeper awareness.  Answers do not always emerge in the form of words.  Letting go of ways you sense the world is an act of growth that dissolves dogma and resistance and brings you face to face with something indescribable.

"If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction." -Eckhart Tolle