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Many times we meet strangers along the way who cause us to pause, to remember who we are, why we are here, and think about where we are going.
Last month, I met a soldier…

I was coming back from speaking at the NSA’s National Convention in San Diego in July and had a stop over in Dallas long enough to grab some lunch. As I wandered down the terminal corridor, trying to decide where I could get the least carb to calorie ratio lunch, I spotted a little café/bar with an empty table and zeroed in.

I ended up sitting next to a marine who was going home on leave to attend his daughter’s wedding. He was in his 40’s, career military, 3rd generation.

As we were talking, all of a sudden he just broke down, tears streaming down his face. I listened for a while as he just poured his heart out about his frustration at what is going on “over there” in the war.

I was shocked at how open he was with me, spewing out on the two subjects we don’t speak of in “polite” conversations - you know, politics and religion.

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I was at Urban Outfitters the other day and saw this cute solar powered plastic toy called a Sunshine Buddy or Nohohon Zoku in Japanese.  I was immediately drawn to it’s peaceful smiling face, over-sized head, and the small smiling baby clinging to it. 

When exposed to light the sunshine buddy slowly bobs it’s head affirming it’s peaceful, blissful nature. Somehow this bobbing Buddha-like figure had  the effect of making me smile…

I bought one right then no questions asked.

My sunshine buddy has found its home near my coffee maker where it happily smiles and bobs when I make coffee in the morning. … Hmm…  if I could only find such bliss in my everyday life.

Maybe the way to inner peace is detachment from material things and more of a connection to other people. For some reason, the more things I buy the more I want, and the less happy I become after the “New” wears off.  Maybe the quietly bobbing sunshine buddy knows something I don’t…

Maybe it has something to do with sunlight…or just smiling more. I just wish it would tell me it’s secret.

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Anger appears when one is confronted with frustration, unhappiness or hurt feelings, or when plans don’t turn out as desired. It also shows up when coming against opposition or criticism.  Anger never helps anyone. It wastes your energy, and can hurt your health, spoil your relationships, and cause you to miss opportunities. Getting angry is acting against your best interests.

Things don’t always proceed according to plans and expectations. People not always act the way you wish them to act. You may not be always able to be in control of external influences and conditions, but you can certainly learn to control your attitude and reactions. There is no sense of allowing circumstances and people to pull your strings and affect your mind and feelings. You can choose not to let what people say and do affect your moods. You can maintain an inner attitude of emotional and mental detachment, and refuse to allow every minor event play with your feelings and evoke anger.

I often see people getting angry over unimportant and insignificant matters. Some insignificant remark or action, not getting a satisfactory reply to a question or just moodiness are enough to set fire and cause anger, snappy remarks, arguments and even physical fights. This is absolutely unnecessary. Life can be happier without this behavior.

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A few good relaxation techniques can save your life, because stress is more than just unpleasant. It’s also dangerous to your health. Disciplined practices such as meditation can help relieve that stress, but what if you don’t have the time or motivation? Maybe you need to try a few of these simple ways to relax.

1. Hug someone. Giving a hug means getting one. As long as it’s from somebody you don’t mind hugging you, this really can be relaxing.

2. Interrupt routines. Go talk to that guy sleeping on the bench, or eat lunch on the roof. Just doing anything that breaks you out of your habitual patterns can relieve stress.

3. Have a hot shower. It relaxes your muscles, and any break from more stressful activities can help too. Some find that an alternating hot and cold shower is even more relaxing.

4. Try watching your mind. Spot the stressors lurking just below the surface (hunger, worry, a phone call you need to make), and you can resolve them and feel more relaxed. If you practice this mindfulness exercise, it may become one of your favorite relaxation techniques.

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Did you know that everything in your life is a reflection of your thoughts? This particular phrase is a hard pill to swallow as some can’t grasp the “thought” that their thoughts caused the bank to make an error, or their significant other to break up with them. But it’s true and is nothing to feel badly about; it’s actually a very freeing thought because it means that you can create any situation for yourself that you desire. The good ones, too, not just the bad ones!

The incidents that we don’t want to take credit for can arise from a thought and feeling we usually had some time ago. You would have had to focus on it over and over again for this to happen, so ask yourself if there was a specific negative event in your life that you put a lot of energy towards.

The Universe will match, as best as it can, the feelings and thoughts you have been focusing on. So maybe it wasn’t the bank exactly that you were focusing on, but maybe a general lack of money. And in turn, the Universe had to fill in the blanks and find a match to your vibrational feelings and thoughts.

Focus is a key here. When you focus on your wants (or your “don’t wants”) the Universe will bring you, via the Law of Attraction, whatever it is. If you don’t have a clear image of what you want, the Universe will fill in the blanks. That’s why getting a clear image and feeling for something you want is so important, so that the Universe brings to you what you are thinking on the most.

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We all tend to have comfort zones. Comfort zones are all those situations and environments with which you feel comfortable with, mainly because it is known to you you’ve had conscious contact with it before and because of that you have a sense of certainty about what to expect and how to handle it.

Anything outside your comfort zone feels uncomfortable because inherent in the unknown lies a certain level of uncertainty.

As soon as something unknown or unfamiliar comes into your life you tend to loose your sense of certainty, and out of this uncertainty your mind starts to make up potential meanings in trying to establish a level of certainty. Most of the time this not only creates fear, but also breeds it.

Fear gets constructed in the imagination by making-up meanings to events and circumstances that has not happened  and probably never will. It is only natural to feel fear as it is one of your most primordial instincts designed to protect you.

Unfortunately, we’ve come to mistreat the emotion of fear since we tend to treat a lot of trivial things as potentially dangerous by imagining the worst possible outcomes. This is what keeps us trapped in inaction and procrastination. The unknown is just too scary, so you stay in your comfort zone where you feel certain that you know what to expect and how to handle it.

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God’s heart exists within your own heart, and as you travel along the pathways of spiritual life, your own divine nature begins to emerge and awaken. As your spiritual essence becomes more manifest, your heart begins to awaken and to seek the way Home.

A heart that longs for love, and that longs to find the way home to God, opens a pathway of light from the human, embodied self to the soul that exists eternally in the realms of spirit. This important connection creates a funnel that can transmit knowledge, love, light and comfort from the realms of spirit to your embodied self.

Truly it can be said that longing is the path Home to God, for it activates all the forces of heaven and Earth to infuse you and your daily life with God’s light and love.

Spiritual longing not only activates spiritual growth and transformation, but it also activates the healing of any and all inner blockages to love that may exist within your being. Pain, resentment, anger and blame that are directed towards others eventually sap the life force from our own inner light, and so at some point on the spiritual journey, we are led to the path of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a state of being that emerges from love. Forgiveness cannot be forced, especially if you have been abused, neglected, or treated cruelly, or have suffered trauma at the hands of others. In this kind of situation, healing needs to progress in stages, first by allowing yourself to feel all the emotions that resulted from the trauma.

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Heath Ledger’s sudden and tragic death really brought home the impermanence and fragile nature of our lives.  As the years  go by, we tend to forget about our inevitable death and continue living as though we are immortal.

I hate to break the news to you, but our lives can end at any moment and we really have little control over our death.  As morbid as it sounds, I think we should all take time to focus on our death to help realize the impermanence of our lives. 

 By doing this, we learn to live each day as though it was our last and appreciate the beauty in everyone and everything.

Like the sparkling sun, we all shine in our own way and now is the time to take advantage of our unique gifts before it’s too late.

Stand in front of a mirror and what do you see? Where does your gaze go? What inner dialogue or head talk do you hear?

The inner voice is guiding and directing your actions and beliefs whether or not you are listening.

As you look in the mirror do you focus on the piece of hair that goes its own way, a facial mark, or the size of your nose? Are your inner words full of criticism and disapproving value judgments? Are your ears only tuned to rejecting messages? Do your eyes scan past your valuable features? Is your sensitivity level turned up high to faultfinding messages or tones of voice? Can you hear affirming words and caring messages?

The ability to look at you looking back at yourself and seeing your unique and wonderful aspects is a skill necessary for a mentally positive self-concept. Notice the warmth in your smile, the tilt of your brow or the dimple in your chin. Look for the features that are part of what those who care about you know and appreciate. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder and some encouragement.

Feel the shift in your physical posture, muscle tension and facial expression when you say critical words vs. when you say positive things to yourself. Be attentive to these changes and you will start to be aware of some of the physical aches and pains you feel when you get stressed.

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One question that puzzles many on the spiritual path is, “How can I be sure that this inner voice I hear is guidance and not just something I’m making up?”

Here’s an exercise to play with that can give you greater certainty. When you have the question, put your focus on analyzing where in your body you feel the source of the “inner voice”. If the source is coming from the head, most likely that is simply mind chatter. It will also have a “noisy” or clamorous “look at me” type of energy to it. There’s no peacefulness to it. It could have a high pitch or be frenetic. Ego is screaming from this source.

If the source is located lower on the body, the stomach, solar plexus or heart/chest area, that is most likely inner guidance. It will have a calmer, more peace provoking lower register feel to it. There is no ego from this source.

- The practice exercise is to move from head to your lower focus point, feeling the difference between the two. Go back and forth between the two, paying close attention to the subtlety of the differences.

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I recently decided to purchase two mind machine AVS (Audio Visual Stimulation) devices which are basically light and sound generators that alter your brainwave states through entrainment. Why do this? Altering your brainwave state can help decrease anxiety, pain, depression and even help with ADD and memory tasks. 

In a nutshell, our brain operates at different frequencies throughout the day depending on what we are doing or thinking. (see graph on left, click to enlarge)

When we are wide awake and concentrating we are operating in Beta and as we relax our brain waves shift to a slower Alpha state.  Then next lower state ,Theta, usually occurs when we are ideating or day dreaming followed by Delta which is the sleep and dreaming state. Finally, When we when we are in a deep dreamless state our brains are operating in Sub-Delta.

The mind machines in this comparison are designed to induce the desired brainwave state using pulsing tones and flashing lights which cause our brain to sync or entrain to the frequency of the chosen brainwave state.

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To all those with high blood pressure you might be interested in a study performed by the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Rush University Hypertension Center in Chicago. In this study they had a chiropractor perform what is know as an Atlas adjustment to the first cervical vertebra and study the effects over 8 weeks.  Apparently, this adjustment may reduce pressure on the arteries in the neck causing dramatic reductions in blood pressure.

The adjustment is supposed to be safe and very gentle so I might just give it a try.

Here is a link to the original study  plus the webmd article.