Personal Empowerment

How To Write Your Memories In Air

Memories are cherished or feared, depending on whether they are good or bad memories, so it makes sense to have as many happy experiences as possible. We can call this sound psychological advice, but spirituality is different. From the ancient Indian tradition comes a saying: “First experiences are written in stone, then in sand, then in water, and finally in air.”

In this one sentence the path of enlightenment has been encapsulated, once you unravel what the sentence means. It concerns the ability of experiences to stick with us as memories. If a memory is so strong that it makes a deep, even lifelong impression, it is like words engraved in stone. To find freedom, to live in the present moment, you can’t be bound up in the past, which is what strong, sticky, stubborn memories do. Therefore, the spiritual path isn’t about getting as many positive memories as you can. It’s about whether your memories are holding you back, overshadowing the present with ghosts from the past.

The past is a mental illusion created by memories. The present moment is free from the past, and as we live in the moment more and more, our memories loosen their grip. As the Indian axiom says, they are no longer engraved in stone but are like writing in sand, then water, and finally air. If this sequence sounds mysterious, that’s chiefly because modern Western science hasn’t solved the mystery of memory in the first place.

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Stop Running and Bumping and Start Seeing

Guy Finley

Self-observation is the key to a higher order of awareness; it is how we learn to become inwardly vigilant to our own thoughts and feelings, even as they pass through us. When we can observe ourselves in this new way, our higher nature naturally prevails over any troubling thoughts or feelings that want to drag us down into their lower world.

Self-observation allows us to understand what we witness in ourselves, instead of being washed away by our reaction to it. This new and higher interior “position”—as the observer of what unfolds around and within us—is at once a part of the proceedings and, at the same time, untouched by them.

When we are awake this way, we always make the right choices because we are acting from a level of consciousness that has no past investment in any event or its possible outcome. This means that it is free to select what is intelligent.

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Moody People Nearby? Let Your Energy Make Them Smile!

John Holland

I recently made plans to meet a few friends for dinner. It’s been such a long time since we’ve gotten together and we were all feeling upbeat and ready for a night out at our favorite restaurant. As we were all catching up with each other’s lives, the waitress came to take our order.

It was pretty obvious that our waitress was having a bad day. She was less than friendly and not hiding how irritated she was. Instead of getting upset, irritated or angry myself, I decided to use a technique that I was taught many years ago. I still use it whenever I encounter someone who is angry, annoyed or just in a bad mood.

I decided to send the waitress positive, calming energy with my thoughts and surround her with white light. I took a moment to imagine this positive light entering her heart center. I did this as she took our order.

When our food was ready, the waitress brought it to our table and you could see she was more engaging. Her face was less tense and she actually began to laugh with us!

When the waitress left our table, my friends looked at each other and then at me. “Did you do something, John?” I told them I just sent her positive energy to help ease her mood, and possibly help her have a better night.

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Quiet Genius: SAYING YES TO WHAT MATTERS

Temple Hayes

If you are human, you have a calling: to live your genius. —Gay Hendricks

Two of the most significant teachers during my career in the time management field were Stephen Covey and Gay Hendricks.
With Stephen’s work, I began to realize how much time in each day I spent in conversation or in action with events and things which were really not that important to me. I also started to see the value in training my mind to only focus on the actions needed to support my heart remaining open. I no longer wanted to fill my days with irrelevant topics.

When I would find myself stressing about a particular topic, I would ask myself, “Will this make my eulogy? Will someone mention this at the end of my life?” Ninety percent of the time I would get a resounding “no” and so I would let it go.

Focus is a key factor in our lives. You can be in traffic and focus on how slow it is moving, or you can enjoy being in the flow. You can look at your relationship and see how challenging it is or you can celebrate the other ninety five percent, which is powerful and amazing about the relationship. Spending time on the important attracts more important moments into our lives.

Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant. —Stephen Covey

Gay Hendricks taught me to categorize my day-to-day tasks into four zones: Incompetence, Competence, Excellence and Genius. It is crucial to learn how to make the distinction of how you spend your time and how you express your excellence and your genius. It requires an honest inventory of noticing which tasks and events we engage in, and noticing which are falling into the incompetent or just competent zones. Remember there is always someone else who would love to do the things for you that you are incompetent in, because for them it could be a task that fulfills their excellence and genius zones.

Gay gave an example of how he was at the post office one day and waiting in a long line to mail his package. As he reflected on what he was doing with his package and his use of time that day, he came to the following realization: he was competent to mail his package but his excellence and genius zone was to be at home writing his book. It was at this moment he realized he could engage someone else to mail packages. This someone else would free him to stay at home and work on his writing and stay in his zone of excellence.

By consciously staying in his zone of genius he could enable someone else with the patience and personal assisting organizational skills set (including mailing packages) to stay within their zone of genius (personally assisting) at the same time.

This practice has changed my entire way of working in my spiritual community. I now delegate more and empower others to fulfill many tasks that may be in my zone of competence but their zone of genius. This way, members of my spiritual community are empowered to stay in their zone of their genius while I can too. This is what Stephen Covey terms a win-win for all.

When I see myself fulfilling projects that are within my zone of (in)competence, I now realize I can create a job or a fulfilling task for somebody else who would really love to do it. This way of life—this way of living in my zone of genius (as Gay Hendrick calls it)— gives us the freedom to be a Difference Maker in someones’ life, while continually expanding our desires that keep us in our zone of excellence too.

This article is an excerpt from my new book: Being A Difference Maker: A Guide For Living Life Out Loud.

Loving Life,

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“I Don’t Fit In.”

Dr. Margaret Paul

Do you believe that you are supposed to 'fit in?' You might feel differently after reading this article!

The other morning, I opened our carton of eggs to make my breakfast. I looked at the beautiful eggs we get from our local organic farmer, James Ranch. The eggs were all different colors—light green, white, dark brown, light brown and speckled brown. They were also all different sizes. I felt grateful that I got to look at all the different colors and sizes rather than the same-size, same-color eggs that come in the cartons of store eggs. The thought occurred to me—why is sameness so important to people? Why do they want eggs that are all the same size and all the same color?

I often hear from my clients, "I don't fit in." "I'm too different from everyone else." "I'm an alien."

"I'm different and an alien too," I tell them, "and I'm proud of it. I don't want to 'fit in' and be like everyone else. I just want to be me."

Many of us grew up believing that if we were 'different,' there was something wrong with us. In junior high and high school, all I wanted was to be just like everyone else. I never was, but I got good at faking it so that I could fit in.

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Mastering Your Role in Humanity's Awakening at This Time

Dr. Sue Morter

With everything taking place on the planet at this time, are you mastering everything coming your way, or is it overwhelming you?

In this Short Answer with Dr. Sue, she reminds us that we are made of creative energy, and have the power to master any situation or environment by first mastering our energy. We have control over our internal environment, which means the external environment has less effect on us.

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It's Time To Get Creative

Maria Shriver

"The creative adult is the child who survived."

—Ursula Le Guin

I've Been Thinking...

I was talking to my brother Bobby the other day when he mentioned that a few people had told him that they listened to the podcast I recently recorded with my friends Hoda and Oprah.

On the podcast, both of them talked about getting what they called the “truth talk” from me. I think Hoda even asked Oprah, “Have you ever had one of those conversations with Maria where she just gives it to you straight, and you are like, ‘What just happened?’”

“You bet I have,” Oprah replied.

Bobby told me that he laughed when he heard that because he, too, has had those types of conversations with me. But then he said something that really got me thinking.

“You know, Maria, you have to be careful who you tell the truth to.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because most people don’t want the truth,” he said. "We want the lie. It’s more comfortable. We can’t handle the hard truth, and we sure don’t want to deal with the truth. I’m like that sometimes. And so are you!”

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Choose to Remember the Light in You

Guy Finley

Have you ever had appear in your mind the image of someone who hurt you, or run a whole mental movie about something that didn't work out, so that in recalling the event you actually relived the sense of loss?

How do such a painful images seem to stay in the mind, especially given the fact of how much we struggle to make them go away?

These unwanted images return again and again as they do because something within us keeps recalling them and drawing them to the forefront of our mind.

The the truth is we do not have to share a single moment with the memory of anything that we don't want to, this means there is something in our present nature that actually wants to recall painful past experiences.

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Tough Decision? Turn to Your Intuition

John Holland

Do decisions come easy to you or would you rather get someone else to make them? Whenever you’re facing a tough choice or need to make an important determination in your life, turn to the inner-guidance of your soul!

Whenever we make decisions based on intuition, we trust our feelings. The more we use our inner-guidance to lead us, the more our confidence builds and the better we get at it.

Try to acknowledge, honor and act upon feelings and signs that will nudge you in the right direction. That’s your soul talking! I remember a time when I was about to give a talk for a sold-out event. Several days before, I kept getting a nagging feeling to call the organizers and check on the equipment for the evening. Instead, my rational mind kicked in: “No, John, they’re professionals who have done this hundreds of times before. Let it go.” (I may be a psychic medium, but I don’t always pay attention to everything I feel.)

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Why Daily Affirmations Are Important!

Colette Baron-Reid

Powerful Daily Affirmations Have you ever wondered if repeating positive affirmations can really work?

Many of the world’s most successful people will tell you that they’ve used affirmations as a part of their spiritual journey to success. But getting results with affirmations requires more than just saying the words!

Will Smith has been quoted saying, “In my mind, I’ve always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y’all just didn’t know yet.”

This quote paints a beautiful picture of how and why affirmations work. It isn’t just about the words you say – it’s about choosing to believe and feel something before the external evidence of that thing shows up in our world.

Visualizing and believing in a reality you want before it shows up in your physical world is a magical process. Affirmations have the potential to help us shift our reality and create a prosperous and happy life, we just have to learn to use them correctly.

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Brain Stuff, Mind Stuff, And You

Deepak Chopra

If you want to experience the highest values in life—love, compassion, beauty, creativity, joy, and higher consciousness—your brain isn’t the right place to turn. These experiences exist in your awareness, waiting to emerge. The brain cannot give you these experiences, because contrary to popular belief, the brain isn’t aware. It transmits thoughts the way a television transmits pictures on the screen. No one would say that TVs produce the shows they transmit, yet we say this about the brain all the time.

It is pure illusion to mistake the brain for the mind. The basic chemicals in a brain cell are the same as in the skin cells of your big toe, and the functioning of brain cells differs very little from the functions of every other cell in the body. A three-pound lump of gray matter cannot escape its status as a batch of chemicals, and we mustn’t attribute love, compassion creativity, etc. to a batch of chemicals, either. In fact, the brain isn’t even aware that it exists. Until the skull is opened to reveal it, there is no subjective experience that says, “Here I am. I am your brain.”

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Age Isn’t a Number, It’s an Attitude!

John Holland

Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder where all the time has gone. It flies by so quickly and before we know it, our energy is waning and our gray hairs are multiplying!

Are you in the mindset that maybe you’re too old to pursue a relationship or try something new? Are you letting your age get in the way of your dreams? If you let your psychological fear hold you ransom, it will undoubtedly hold you back from what you really want to do.

It’s never too late…for anything!

A client once told me a story about her aunt who at the age of 70 went back to college to get a degree in English. I also have a friend in her mid-50s who’s now enrolled in an online program to get her master’s degree. Was it too late for them? Clearly, they didn’t think so.

When you make excuses, you block all of the positive people and situations from manifesting in your life. These people and situations could bring an unlimited amount of spirit energy, passion and joy to your soul. Remember, the soul is ageless. It’s eternal.

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We Have to Get Louder

Maria Shriver

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else."

—Booker T. Washington

My friend Steve sent me an article the other day that I couldn’t get out of my mind or my heart. It didn't make me just pause and think for a moment. It made me do a full stop in my tracks.

The piece I'm talking about came out in early September, but it still resonates a month later. (You can read it here). One of the lines that really struck me was this: “We're going to need more good people becoming louder about what is and isn’t within the bounds of civilized society. We are going to have to name what is unacceptable and demand decency and safety for all of us.”

I couldn’t agree more. Dignity, decency, and safety have got to be the mission of each and every one of us, and we have to get louder about proclaiming that to be the case. There is no doubt in my mind that everywhere we look, we are up against rage, hate, division, and fear. We are up against our fellow citizens behaving in a way that I never thought was possible in the public arena. We are up against public officials who lie, demean, and are trying to ruin the very fabric of our democracy.

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How One Blind Spot Distorts Reality

Deepak Chopra

There’s an old joke about a man who falls off the Empire State Building. As he passes an office window on the way down, someone shouts, “How are you going?” and the man answers, “I’m okay so far.” I don’t know anyone who doesn’t laugh at the punchline the first time they hear the joke, but there’s also a wince thinking about the thud that awaits the man at the end.

Science has been okay—so far—in explaining how nature works, riding the crest of success for several centuries now. But the thud is near at hand, as outlined in a very readable, perceptive online article titled “The Blind Spot,” jointly written by two physicists, Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. The blind spot referred to in the title has been of tremendous but hidden importance in your life.

The blind spot refers to science’s rejection of consciousness as a key factor in describing reality. Rigidly adhering to a belief that it holds the key for explaining everything, science hasn’t seen its own blind spot—or taken it seriously, with a few exceptions—and therefore the vast majority of working scientists don’t hear the thud that awaits them. The authors of the article do, and they go right to the heart of the problem. As they view it, science has been wrong on two counts. The first is the belief that science can accurately and objectively describe the real world as it exists. The second is the belief that physical reality is all that must be accounted for.

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The Power of Joy

Kute Blackson

“True joy is bringing your attention to the inherent beauty, inherent privilege of what it is to be alive in this moment.”

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Our Connection To Lineage

Panache Desai

Every now and again, we get to a point in our evolution where we can’t seem to figure out what’s going on and why we’re feeling the way that we are feeling. When I get to those points, I always have to look generationally to see what’s in the lineage because sometimes it doesn’t make any sense in the context of my life.

Our lineage can be the limiting factor. It’s important that we begin to recognize our lineage. We have ancestors that feel guilty about receiving, guilty about being successful, and we don’t even know how these things can influence us.

What you don’t realize, is the sum total of your lineage you have access to. It’s all in your DNA. You have access to every potential that everyone in your lineage had access to. We get to activate that dormant recorded potential and the recorded information that serves us and switch off parts that don’t. We all have these aspects that we can’t quite access. For me, it is very powerful to look at ancestors and to tap into ancestry.

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Intentional Spirit: LIVE BOLDLY

Temple Hayes

Numerous actors, athletes and performers have told us of the years it took to develop and to be recognized for their abilities.

We forget sometimes, especially as we get older, how long it takes to become really great and dynamic at something. The people that tend to achieve their goals are the people that are willing to be uncomfortable and rejected at times. I remember reading somewhere along the way that the Beatles were told early in their career that no one would be interested in one more rock and roll group. Of course, we know the outcome of that story!

Give a few minutes every day to the goal or the project and pay attention to the people and events that will start coming together in a new way. Take a small risk in a new direction and see if life meets you halfway. Do not be concerned with the fear that naturally comes with it. Too many people stop a new adventure because of the inability to feel vulnerable. Often fear and vulnerability are interpreted as stopping points when they really mean, “This is it.” If odd feelings of love and chemistry stopped us, very few of us would be married today to our incredible beloveds.

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Receive the Gift of Unlimited Possibilities in Any Moment

Guy Finley

When a wave of negative reactions comes along, something in us that believes itself to be apart from the wave, steps in and tries to mitigate or resolve it. It never works! As long as we run into the wave, try to fight with it, change its direction, or evaporate the ocean, there's only one possibility. What's the possibility? The continuity of conflict. That's the only possibility there is. The reaction actually drives the situation deeper and strengthens the idea that: “I really don't want to be an unhappy person. I really don't want to worry, but I just have to!” That’s a lie.

If we really understood that, then what position would we take towards our painful reactions? What would be our conscious choice? I'm going to tell you what it would be. It would be to have no position at all. None. We would just be watchful instead of being tricked into being willful.

Have you ever watched a little cloud in the sky until it disappears? Where does it go? It changes form. It lives in a relationship with a host of forces acting upon it, and the very purpose of the relationship is to change the forms that those forces produce.

When the cloud disappears, nothing is lost; it has simply taken on a new role. The role that it takes on will change again and again, and eventually it will appear as a little cloud again. That's the nature of life.

What would happen if we understood that our true nature is to our negative reactions, as this broad body of forces is to the awareness of the cloud?

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An Enlightening Minute

Deepak Chopra

When you look at the traditions of higher consciousness East and West, they all seem to have one thing in common: Arriving at higher consciousness takes time, perhaps a lifetime. Along with this notion comes other, closely related ones. Higher consciousness is exceptional. It requires intense inner work. Only a select few ever reach the goal.

The overall effect of these ideas is to discourage the average person from even considering that higher consciousness is within reach. For all practical purposes, society sets those apart who have become enlightened, saintly, or spiritually advanced — choose whatever term you want. In an age of faith such figures were revered; today they are more likely to be viewed as beyond normal life, to be admired, shrugged off, or forgotten.

Much of this is a holdover from the merger of religion, spirituality, and consciousness. For centuries there was no separating the three. Most traditional societies developed a priestly class to guard the sanctity—and privileged status—of reaching near to God. But these trappings are now outdated and even work against the truth, which is that higher consciousness is as natural and effortless as consciousness itself. If you are aware, you can become more aware. There is nothing more to higher consciousness than this logical conclusion.

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How To Be Happy No Matter What (3 Myths)

Kute Blackson

You can be the happiest person you know. In this video, I discuss 3 common myths that people believe about happiness.

Stop chasing happiness. The quest actually makes us less happy.

We go after things that we think will make us happy, but we are left feeling empty. We often put happiness out there in the future and we are in a constant state of seeking it so we end up never feeling happy now. The ego has no interest in being happy. The moment it actually finds it, its role is dissolved so it keeps you distant from happiness.

Happiness does not come from what you achieve or get, it is a state of being. You can be happy regardless of what is happening in your life, regardless of what you have or don't have. You must question your definition of success. You must question your definition of happiness.

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