After this episode, our “Stop Making Yourself Miserable Podcast” will be taking a Holiday/Winter hiatus. We will begin again sometime in late January. As I have mentioned in a few previous episodes, I am busy working on The Higher Mind Training, and in particular, I am adapting it for use in a halfway house for people suffering with alcohol and drug addiction. The training for this facility should be in place by late-February. As I am working on it, I am looking through some of the notes that I have made over the years, and I have found a few phrases that I have written that I would like to share with you at this time. Like a lot of other people who are involved with writing, I always keep a file opened where I can drop in random thoughts that occur to me as I am working. They don’t necessarily relate to anything in particular. If something occurs to me that I feel I should keep, I just write it down and put it away, possibly for later use and possibly not. So, before we take our hiatus, here are a few of those random thoughts for your consideration See if they do anything for you. The first one is, “Follow the heart, not the herd.” In this, I was pondering how powerful the herd mentality factor is for us. I remember watching a documentary that featured a holocaust survivor.  He told a story about something that happened to him during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. An enormous rally was going to be held with 100,000 Nazi loyalists. They had gathered up about a hundred Jews and seated them near the podium so Hitler could vilify them and spew hatred on them during his speech to the crowd. They were instructed to remain in their seats throughout the entire proceeding and they would be taken out at the end. At one point, the gate to the stadium opened and Hitler came riding into the stadium in an opened car. Instantaneously, everyone rose, giving the Nazi Salute and started chanting, “Heil Hitler.” The survivor then said that the energy of the crowd was so powerful that it took every bit of will power that he had within him not to stand up, give the Nazi salute and join the crowd in chanting “Heil Hitler.”  I never forgot that story because I had spent my entire childhood at basketball games along with 10,000 fans and I was all too familiar with the power of a crowd. For some reason, for the most part, we humans basically like to be just like everyone else. But as the Nazi rally story illustrated, the feeling of safety in numbers is often what it seems to be. Around the same time, I had written myself a note that pretty much speaks for itself: “Get your information from the horse’s mouth, not from the horse’s ass.” As the Gershwin brothers wrote, “Nice work if you can get it.” Then, in a completely different framework I noted, “A quick look can reveal a treasure.” This is especially true if you ever get the opportunity to be in the presence of someone who has attained a truly elevated state of consciousness. A lot of times they don’t need to say a word to lift you up a little, or a lot. Just a look will do it. Two things I had jotted down about moving along the journey of life. The first one was, “To do anything, you have to do something.” Sometimes it can be very small, but everything takes effort and even if it’s just something small, something big often starts from something small. But small or large, the step of taking action has to happen. Still, it often takes persistence. You just have to keep going, so I had written, “In the long run, it’s a long walk.” Guts or glory, up down or sideways, you just have to stick with it. Along those lines, here’s an anonymous quote that I’ve always admired called, “Press On.” Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence, it starts. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. And when it comes to going through inner obstacles that we might encounter, I was focusing on the idea of inner growth and the thought occurred to me that “It’s not so much a matter of going through it that counts. It’s more a matter of growing through it.” But along with growth comes the necessity of practice and I noted, “The practical becomes impractical if it’s not practiced. So, to wrap things up, I wish you a very happy and healthy Holiday Season, and I am going to leave you with two of my favorite quotes from two of my most treasured influences. When it comes to giving Parmahansa Yogananda gave us this advice, “Spread rays of hope in the hearts of the poor and forsaken. Kindle courage in the hearts of the despondent. And light a new strength in the hearts of those who think they are failures.” Now, that’s quite a high bar for giving, but for me, it certainly seems like something to aspire to. And Prem Rawat, who is a master of the art of expressing a profound truth in a rather understated way once said, “Within you resides the essence of every single scripture ever written.” That one always gets me. So, this will be the end of this episode and the beginning of our holiday/winter hiatus. We’ll pick it up again in late January. As always, keep your eyes mind and hearts opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

April of 1965 was a relatively uneventful month in western culture. If you research it, you’ll see that nothing particularly critical happened during those thirty days. However, even though it never showed up on any of society’s radar screens, one event did take place that was to change the entire world. John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles went to dinner at their dentist’s home and unbeknownst to them, the dentist slipped LSD into their after-dinner coffee. They had no idea of what was going to happen, but according to George, although things were a little rocky at first, it turned out to be quite a night. As he put it, "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience within twelve hours. It changed me, and there was no way back to what I was before." He also said that as he was coming back to normal consciousness, a thought occurred to him that had no connection to any part of his life and he had no idea where it had come from. This thought, that came to him completely out of nowhere, was simply this: “The yogis of the Himalayas.” Now LSD was relatively new and still legal at the time. An extremely powerful psychedelic drug, many famous celebrities had taken it and had profound experiences including Carey Grant, Groucho Marx and Jack Nicholson, along with renowned Harvard professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. And speaking of Harvard, there are still rumors that JFK took acid several times as well, with his longtime companion Mary Meyers. Timothy Leary hints that he played a key role in those events in his autobiography, “Flashbacks.” Again, it was still legal and there were no prohibitions to it. Anyway, a few months after the incident in their dentist’s home, whether or not it had anything to do with his thought of the “yogis of the Himalayas,” George introduced Indian music to pop culture when he played the sitar on the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood.”  This was the early beginnings of a revolutionary change in popular culture as the band began to introduce a new genre that would eventually become known as psychedelic music. Not only did their sound change, but their songs took on a new depth of meaning, with primary examples being “Nowhere Man,” “The Word,” “In My Life,” “Elanor Rigby,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Within You, Without You.” They were all part of a remarkable string of three groundbreaking albums: “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” and “Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Now, it’s nearly sixty years later and all of these songs are looked at as just great classics. But back then, they were incredibly revolutionary and the Beatles themselves were even more so. Along with their radical appearance and their welcoming approach to marijuana, psychedelics and the expansion of consciousness, they were at the forefront of an astounding cultural shift that would radically alter not only England and America, but every other country throughout the entire civilized world. And it all went to the next level in February of 1968 when the Beatles travelled to India to study meditation with a guru named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And as usual, they weren’t shy about telling the world what they were doing. The massive publicity surrounding their trip created a major sensation that rocked the whole world. Now as earthshattering as all this was, it wasn’t the first time that Indian spirituality, with its reverence for the expansion of consciousness, had made a profound impact on western culture. Far from it. In one way or another it had been going on since the 1500s. Unfortunately, it came about as the result of a rather brutal societal development. Certain European nations established superior military might and mixed it with ever-increasing naval reach.  And with an appalling display of the greed-driven, incredibly destructive delusion that “might makes right,” they began to conquer and subjugate as much of the world as they could get their hands on. They would routinely invade a foreign country, enslave its people and plunder their resources. All in the name of civilization, of course. A prime example of this arrogance of power is what England did to India. Although the British had been in the land for centuries, they finally conquered it completely in 1876. Queen Victoria became the Empress of India and the exploitation of the country moved into full swing. But something unexpected happened as well and it became an example of something extremely positive resulting from something extremely negative. Along with all the horrors that came with the conquest, an inevitable interaction of Indian and English cultures got underway along with it.  And nowhere was the distinction between the two cultures more evident than in the realm of religion.   The difference was somewhat stark. Western religion was basically a societal matter, where people would gather at houses of worship, sing songs of praise to God and hear sermons from clerical leaders that promoted higher ethical, moral and religious standards. In India it was a little different. Their religion had been around for over five thousand years and was the oldest in the world. And although it did have many similarities to its Western counterpart, it had some significant differences as well. For instance, according to its teachings, not only is there a God, but rather than being far away and unapproachable, it is actually within you right now and is completely accessible to you at all times. If you wish, you can evolve your consciousness to the point where you can become enlightened and actually merge with it. So, you didn’t have to die to go to heaven, you could do it while you were still alive. In fact, doing it was the actual point of being alive. And also, given the idea that it was possible to reach this higher level of consciousness, rather than having clerics who could only give speeches and sermons about the higher realms, they had beings who had supposedly attained the enlightened state and were talking about something they actually knew, rather than something they just believed. And not only that, they had the ability to show you how to get there as well. They called these teachers “Swamis,” “Yogi’s” or “Gurus,” which was an interesting term word because “Gu” means darkness and “Ru” means light, and a true spiritual guru can take you from inner darkness to inner light. And this isn’t supposed to be just a bunch of words and concepts, it’s experiential. In other words, if you were thirsty, you weren’t confined to just hearing stories about people who had gotten to drink water, you could actually drink it yourself.    Now a couple of these Gurus had made it to the United States over the years and their impact had been extremely significant. The first one was named Swami Vivekananda who travelled to Chicago in 1893 to address the First World’s Parliament of Religion. The Swami created quite a stir and his talk was, in a word, a sensation. The attendees to the conference felt they had heard someone address them who was in a uniquely elevated state and seemed to be speaking about God consciousness from direct personal experience. And there was something extraordinary about being in his physical presence. It wasn’t just uplifting and inspiring. It was actually elevating.  It was palpable. Indeed, one of the delegates, Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard University told him, "To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun about its right to shine." After his ground-breaking appearance in Chicago, Vivekananda’s reputation grew rapidly and he travelled to New York and gave lectures to sold out auditoriums, where people waited for hours to buy tickets. One night, New York’s most prominent actress Sarah Barnhart held a party for him and introduced him to her friends Nicola Tesla and Mark Twain. His vast influence spread from there and even though he passed away in 1902, at the age of just 39, he continues to be a renowned and deeply respected authority on inner growth. Then in 1920 another Guru from India arrived in America, this time in Boston, in the form of Parmahansa Yogananda. He was also a powerful presence whose impact quickly grew to the extent that he was able to reach millions of people, encouraging them to evolve and grow their inner consciousness. As his life work evolved, along with remaining a powerful force in India, he became a major phenomenon throughout the West and indeed the entire world.  Not only was Yogananda a magnetic speaker, he was also a brilliant and profoundly prolific writer. He went on to establish a major center for mediation in Los Angeles and many local residents of the area studied his work. The internationally esteemed author W. Summerset Maugham cited him as a primary inspiration for his 1944 masterpiece novel, “The Razor’s Edge,” which is about one American man’s search for enlightenment following his harrowing experiences in World War I. In 1946, it became a well-loved motion picture as well.  The next truly major interaction between India and Western culture happened when Mahatma Gandhi visited London at the end of 1931, and this was quite a phenomenon. Although Gandhi was the head statesman of his country, when he came to England, instead of wearing formal western clothing, he only wore his simple handwoven Indian cloth and sandals. He always looked like he was walking through the blistering heat of India, although he was in the freezing temperatures of England, with its shivering rains. Wherever he went, he was mobbed by massive crowds who were in awe of his presence. Not only were his words inspiring, he also had a piercing wit. As he was about to depart, a reporter asked him, “What do you think about Western Civilization. “I think it would be a good idea,” he shot back. A few years later in August of 1935 Gandhi met with Parmahansa Yogananda, who initiated him into the practice of Kriya Yoga, an advanced form of meditation. But to Gandhi, the ground breaking elevation of consciousness had applications that were societal as well as individual. And in response to the increasingly harsh British domination of India, Gandhi began to institute a process he called “Satagraha” which means “holding onto truth,” with its emphasis on non-violent civil disobedience. Although it was a slow and difficult process, it was extremely powerful and twelve years later, the British were driven out of India with relatively little violence. It was a truly incredible example of the application of evolved consciousness to resolve a cruel societal injustice.   But that wasn’t the end of it. In the late forties, an African-American theology student at Morehouse College in Atlanta was introduced to these remarkable works of the Mahatma. Intrigued, the student began a serious study of Gandhi and the unique way he had been able to terminate British rule      Upon his graduation, that student was ordained to the Baptist ministry at the age of 19. And of course, that student was Martin Luther King, Jr. As his activities in the civil rights movement began to evolve and grow, he became more interested in the idea of applying Gandhi’s methods to break the chains of racial oppression that were so overwhelmingly prevalent throughout the land.      It all culminated on February 3, 1959 when King and his wife Coretta, embarked on a three-month trip to India to get more familiar with Gandhi’s approach. “To other countries I may go as a tourist,” he said upon his arrival. “But to India I come as a pilgrim.” During his stay, his study of Gandhi deepened considerably. As an ordained minister, he was taken with Gandhi’s profound spiritual understandings and in his closing remarks he said, “In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.” Dr. King returned to the United States and anyone remotely familiar with American history knows the extraordinary story of what happened next.  So, that unlikely acid trip that ended with George Harrison’s mysterious inner reflection about the Yogis of the Himalayas began yet another major chapter in the story of how the evolution of consciousness has changed the world. And changed it for the better. And even though a lot of the advances that happened came about as a result of some terrible cruelty, the truth is, the negativity had quite a silver lining.  And for me, it’s always important to remember that the only reason there ever is a silver lining, is because of the powerful light that is right behind those dark clouds. Well, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

As I mentioned in a few previous episodes, from the age of six through thirteen, I was given a rather extensive religious education, primarily in Judaism, with a focus on the Orthodox version.  During those years, I was averaging about ten hours of training a week and as you can imagine, I got exposed to quite a bit of material.           It was long ago and as you can also imagine; I’ve forgotten most of it. But among the ones I remember, there was one story that has stayed with me simply because of the way it ended. I always thought it was a Jewish story because we studied it in a class on rabbinical commentary, but I found out later that the story is also told in a lot of Christian traditions as well. Of course, the Jewish one is about a rabbi and the Christian one is about a priest.           Anyway, according to the version I heard, it was the late Middle Ages and there was a rabbi in a bustling city who never had any money, ever. Absolutely none. He was married with a family and he was so poor that he could barely put food on the table. One night, during hisprayers before bed, with deep sincerity, he begged God for financial help.           The next morning when he woke up, there was something that looked like the leg of a table, lying on the floor of his room. When he examined it, to his amazement, it seemed like it was made from solid gold. He was overwhelmed by what seemed to be the abundant answer to his prayer and was sure he could sell it for enough money that would support him and his family for quite some time.            That day, he found a gold dealer in town who was very interested in buying it. They made an appointment for him to bring it in the following day. When he returned home, he hid the leg in a remote closet in his home. He was overwhelmingly pleased, but that night when he went to sleep, he had a dream that was more vivid than any he had ever had before.           He was in a magnificent building and was told that he had reached a rarified level of religious understanding and was being admitted to a special class of students where he would be taught some of the most important understandings that would lead him to the state where he would be able to behold and realize the beatific glory of God.           The class was held in a special room where each student was given a solid gold, three-legged table to be able to write down the arcane understandings from the teachings. Each leg was symbolic. One represented the teacher; another represented the student and the third represented the knowledge to be taught. When he was escorted to his place, to his shock, his writing table was lying on its side on the floor because it was missing one leg. He was told that the leg on his table had been removed and sent to him on earth in response to his prayer for financial help. It was the leg of knowledge and he could stay and listen to the teachings, but he would not be able to retain any of it because he had no writing surface to work with.           In an immediate flash of clarity, he prayed to have the leg removed from his home on earth and put back onto his writing table so that he would be able to retain the knowledge that was about to be taught.           He closed his eyes and felt a powerful sense of connection to the Higher Power and everything dissolved into a comforting, all-encompassing white light. He then opened his eyes and realized that he had been asleep and having a dream. It was morning and he immediately rushed to the closet where he had hidden the golden table leg. To his shock, as well as his profound relief, the leg was gone. It had unexplainably disappeared during the night.           As our teacher ended the story, he gave a rabbinical explanation that whether you’re rich or poor, all the happenstances of earth life are meaningless compared to the value of gaining true knowledge of the higher dimensions. This was a fairly standard idea that I had heard many times before, but then he added an additional concept that I had never heard before. He said that according to the rabbis, the disappearance of the golden leg was more miraculous than its appearance because it is more difficult to undo something than it is to do it.           Now I was pretty young then, but something about that idea really got to me and slipped into a “for future use” file in my mind. Then, about twenty years later, as I was studying the evolution of consciousness, I came upon a concept that opened that file up again. I was starting to understand the idea that as human beings, there are basically only three things that we can do. We have three spheres of activity open to us. We can think. We can speak. And we can act. And although they may all be manifestations of the same inner feeling; they produce very different results. Let’s take a quick look at all three of them, but in the light of the idea that it is more difficult to undo something than it is to do it.             In this regard, thinking is the easiest to undo because we each inhabit our own mental world completely by ourselves. You can think anything you want and the only person who ever knows about it is you, unless and until you tell someone else. Now, we each think about fifty thousand thoughts a day, with a vast majority of them being negative and repetitive. Even though we may not be aware that we’re doing it, we just keep repeating the same negative thought patterns over and over again.           Still, we all have some great thoughts, noble sentiments of higher understandings, but speaking just for myself, a lot of them are pretty terrible. I mean some can be revolutionary, but many are just plain revolting. I used to feel pretty bad about it, but Bob Dylan made me feel a little better when he finished his 1965 classic song, “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” with the line, “If my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” I guess we’re all in the same boat on this, but what’s nice is that we never have to give outward expression to our thoughts unless we choose to. So, it isn’t difficult to undo a bad thought because as long as they stay in our own thought world, they have no outward effect.   But then, we come to the activity of speaking, which is an entirely different matter. It usually takes some maturity before we start to understand that we have the power to choose whether or not to speak. It’s completely our choice. You don’t have to say anything, but once you do, it’s important to understand that you can’t unsay it. You can apologize for what you said and make an effort to make amends. You can try a million different things, but the truth is, once the words have been spoken, they can’t be unspoken. It’s not like water, where you can freeze it into ice and then melt it back into water. No, what you’ve said can never be unsaid. The impression has been made and the results will fall where they may.           Here’s an example that makes the point. Suppose you are speaking with someone and they say something that really makes you angry. The thought arises in your mind, “How dare you talk to me like that! I ought to slap your face!” Now if you keep the thought to yourself, no harm done. But suppose you blurt it out. The thought becomes the spoken word. It has left the confines of your own mind and gone into the mind of the one who has heard you. Now, one way or another, big or small, major or minor, you have to deal with what you’ve done.           It’s not to say it can’t be rectified, but after a lot of experience with this, you learn to be more conscious of what you allow to come out of your mouth. Here are two quick thoughts about it. While an ancient text was discussing what kind of food you should eat it added, “Remember, it isn’t what goes into your mouth, but what come out of it that will defile you.”           And the second is the famous quote that is attributed to both Lincoln and Mark Twain, that sums it up this way. “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”           Now let’s take it one step further and go from the world of speech to the world of action. Ancient Wisdom always cautions us that this is a truly major step.             Let’s look at the previous example, but take it to the next level. Suppose you get angry and think the same thought – “How dare you talk to me like that.”  But instead of thinking or even saying, “I ought to slap your face,” you actually do slap the other person’s face. Now you’re in a completely different world. We all know this and it’s really not necessary here to go into all the horrible things that can happen. But wars have been fought and millions of people have died from negative thoughts and feelings that have become words and deeds.           So, in closing, this all points to a very simple, but powerful point. Our thoughts and our feelings are entirely our own until we choose to express them. And once they are expressed, they can never be unexpressed. We can do what we can with the results of the expression, but we can’t un-express it. And in retrospect we often see that it is our words and our deeds that are not rooted in our higher intelligence that are the roots of all our problems in the world. So, it’s always a better course to consider them carefully and consciously before we let them out.  So much trouble can be avoided by doing this. Indeed, the great teachers of all times have taught that there is no need for us to let our doing become our undoing. And common sense says that the best way to solve a problem is to not create it in the first place.           Well, that will be the end of this episode. Again, these podcasts don’t present teachings, they’re just designed to offer you points of view for your consideration. If they work for you, then work with them. And if not, no harm, no foul. Once again, keep your eyes mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

In the last episode, we looked at some of the basics of the Higher Mind Training and we observed that our intelligence can be divided into two components – our Ordinary Mind and our Higher Mind.           We also looked at the famous NASA study from the early 90s that showed that an astounding 98% of us are born geniuses and we stay that way through the age of five. Then it starts to wane and by adulthood, we have only about 2% left. But it’s not gone for good. It’s still within us. We just become overidentified with the makeup of our Ordinary Mind, which for many of us has become negatively tainted, with significant Self-Sabotage.           Now, let’s go back to that genius self of ours: Our Higher Mind. This is actually our real self, our authentic identity, and it’s not based on our identifications at all. This is about our being, not about our doing. Our identifications, like the roles we play in the world, our likes and dislikes, our concepts, opinions and ideas we have about ourselves and others, are all products of our neural template, which is in the domain of our Ordinary Mind. And don’t forget, our Higher Mind existed before our Ordinary Mind even began to form, and it’s is far more powerful.           Here is a simple and easy way to get in touch with a very basic part of it. What happens if you put an adult human being in a room with a very young baby and it’s just the two of them, alone together. No one else in the room - just the two of them. And by the way, the baby doesn’t even need to be a human. A puppy or a kitten would be just fine. If the baby is happy and content, what do you think is going to happen?           Well, sooner or later, no matter how hard-boiled the adult may be, it’s going to be affected by the sweetness and innocence of the baby. And eventually it will start interacting with it. But it will do it in a very specific way. Its voice will become higher and softer, with a happy, lilting sing-song pattern to it. The person’s facial expressions and overall demeanor will become kinder and gentler, as a feeling of true caring comes over it.           Even if it lasts for a very short time, there are a few things about this phenomenon that are important to understand. First, it’s been proven that this is universal human behavior, spanning all times, cultures and geographic locations. If they do not have to be bonded to negative role identifications, all humans behave this way. And second, this behavior is neither taught nor learned. It is an instinctual component of this remarkable side of our inner awareness, which is our true nature.             We’ve all experienced this and we all know that it’s true. It’s so normal and natural that we take it for granted. But what does it tell us about ourselves? It actually tells us quite a bit. Authorities from the wisdom of the ages through to advanced neuroscience say that it is indicative of the very essence of our being, which, to use a five-thousand-year-old Sanskrit term, exists in a permanent state called, “Sat Chit Anand,” which simply means – truth, consciousness and bliss.  According to them, this is the essence of our consciousness. In the training, this is what we call our Higher Mind. Now, rather than calling it the Higher Mind, many traditions just call it “the heart” because it’s the home of love, compassion, kindness, gratitude and appreciation, along with countless other noble human traits we all admire. Indeed, this is the home of what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature and all of our highest and best human traits are there. And from the perspective of our intelligence, this is where our intuition, our wisdom and our logic work hand in hand together, forming the basis of the genius side of our awareness. And whether we’re in touch with it or not, like our breath, it’s always there.           So, to sum things up so far, our intelligence has two parts, our Ordinary Mind and our Higher Mind. The negative aspect of our Ordinary Mind is the root of self-sabotage, the source of all our suffering and pain.  And our Higher Mind, which is our genius consciousness, is the source of all our happiness and joy.  The road of life lies ahead of us. So, which way are we going? Well, obviously, it all depends on who’s behind the wheel. Prem Rawat, a renowned authority on human potential, as well as a UN global peace ambassador, had a great analogy for this. He once said that if you’re standing at a light on a street corner and you see a man driving a station wagon and he’s got a cage in the back with a monkey in it, you don’t think anything of it. It’s probably some guy from the zoo or something. But if you see a station wagon going by with a monkey driving the car, and there’s a cage in the back with a human being in it, you’re going to call the police immediately because sooner or later, there’ going to be a major problem. In the same way, due to our over identification with the negative aspects of our Ordinary Mind, we often find ourselves stuck in a cage. Now although this is a simple, rather comical analogy, it runs far deeper than it may seem. Life would be very different for us, both individually and as a society, if we can put the Higher Mind behind the wheel. Again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the monkey, which represents our Ordinary Mind. We need it to survive. It should be cared for and made happy. But it just should never be driving the car. The idea is to re-connect with our Higher Mind and let it start driving the vehicle of our life. At that point, we are able see things from a higher perspective, where we can turn our obstacles and hurdles into stepping stones leading to our larger self, which is our greater potential. Even though it may be a gradual process, everything changes because unlike Our Ordinary mind which is a purely finite tool, our Higher Mind has the capacity to experience the infinite source of creation and all the good that it inspires. Here’s an easy way to picture this infinite nature of our Higher Mind. First, consider how much real suffering and misery can you stand? The answer is – as little as possible. We just plain don’t like to suffer. We may feel we need to for some unfortunate reason, but we really don’t like it. On the deepest level, it just doesn’t feel right. It’s not in line with our inborn inner instincts.    On the other hand, how much true happiness and joy can you stand? The answer is that it’s limitless. It’s infinite. We can take as much real happiness and joy as we can ever have. And even if we become unable to do the things that bring us joy, we still keep the innate ability to enjoy ourselves. That never leaves us. Our ability to be happy always stays within our consciousness and we always have an infinite capacity to receive it. Now this may not sound like much, but the fact that we have an infinite capacity for happiness, contentment and joy is a powerfully significant fact. Can you imagine really connecting with this deeper part of ourselves?  Can you imagine living in that level of perception, where you can experience infinite clarity, elevate your problems into learning experiences and transform your suffering into wisdom and your pain into joy? Wow. So how can we make this change? The first thing to understand is that it is absolutely critical to use the right tool for the right job. We all know this. You don’t scrub your floor with a toothbrush and you don’t wash your car with steel wool. In the same way, you don’t want your Ordinary Mind to be in the primary position of running your life. That’s just not what it was made for. It’s far too limited and unstable. Instead, we want to put our Higher Mind in the lead position and harmonize our entire intelligence behind it.           But you want to be careful here because there’s a high likelihood that the Ordinary Mind has become habituated to control and we don’t want to create a war between our own states of consciousness, because whenever you’re at war with yourself, one way or another, you always lose.             Now, there are ways to do this and that is the essence of the Higher Mind Training. If we gently, but continuously prioritize our Higher Mind, we can create a United States of Consciousness, which is the ideal way for our awareness to function. Our intelligence becomes harmonically balanced and it’s finally in tune with itself. And we all know how important being in tune is. You can have the greatest orchestra in the world, with the best musicians playing the finest instruments, but if they’re out of tune, the only sound they’re ever going to make is just plain noise.           But, in the state of harmonized intelligence, there is no limit to the beauty and majesty we can create, both for ourselves and for the world around us. The prison of self-sabotage becomes the freedom of self-empowerment and this changes everything. Your intelligence is no longer out of alignment and its former state of static interference evolves into the pristine clarity of harmonic congruence. Oh, sure, you still may run into challenges, but now you’re calm, focused and facing the target. Your bow is drawn and your quiver is full of the sharpest of arrows.  Well, this is all certainly a lot to consider, so let’s finish the episode here. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

As I mentioned in an earlier episode, I am currently in the process of producing an awareness enhancement program called the Higher Mind Training. Its goal is to provide everyday people with some simple understandings and techniques that they can use to expand their consciousness, enabling them to realize their highest potential as a human being, which is far more than we currently know.             This is great for people who are facing significant life challenges, helping them grow from the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment. But it’s also perfect for people who would just like to experience a happier and more fulfilling life.             In response to continuing requests for more information about the training, in this episode, I am going to give a quick overview of some of its basic understandings. Now please don’t be put off if that makes it sound stuffy or like it’s some kind of hard work. It’s really quite the opposite.           For starters, whenever you consider expanding your awareness, there are two basic things to keep in mind. First, it’s a good idea to adopt what’s called, the Beginner’s Mind, which just means that you start out with a clean slate. Afterall, common sense tells us that you have to empty your cup before you can fill it. And it doesn’t hurt to give it a good cleaning either.   So, in that regard, whether we’re willing to admit it or not, we all think we know a lot. It just comes along with the kind of society we live in. But Thomas Edison, who was one of the greatest inventors of all time, expressed a slightly different opinion about our wisdom when he said, “We don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything.” For me, hearing something like that from someone like him, always helps me keep an opened mind, especially about levels of understanding that are probably far beyond what I think I know.              The second thing to keep in mind is that modern neuroscience teaches that our brain has an amazing capacity to grow and change, which it does every single minute of every single day. And that brings up a critical point: Just because your mind is in one place right now, it doesn’t have to stay there. It’s not stuck. It’s never stuck. It’s far more fluid than we know. Which means you absolutely do have the ability to change it for the better, no matter where it may be right now.           So as far as an overview of the training is concerned, let’s step back a little bit and start with some basics about who we are.  Human Beings are just one of about five billion species that have evolved on earth since life began. And of those five billion species, over 97 percent of them have become extinct. Finished. Caput. Gone for good. Which brings up an obvious question – Why not us? How were we able to survive?           After all, we’re pretty puny creatures and we’re very low on the food chain. We’re not the biggest, not the strongest, not the fastest. We can’t climb very high and we can’t fly at all. We should have never made it through the sheer brutality of survival of the fittest. Yet we did. It was a one in a billion shot, but we made it. And the big question is how did we do it? What gave us the power to beat these impossible odds?           The obvious answer is our incredible human brain! Not only is it the one element that separates us from the rest of creation, but over 3.7 billion years, it is the single greatest biological evolution of all time. And think about this – you have one of your own, all to yourself. It’s all yours. And if you want to make the most of it, the first thing to understand is that it has two basic parts - our ordinary mind and our higher mind. Although we each have just one incredible consciousness within us, it’s easiest to understand it by dividing it in these two distinct parts. Now here’s an intriguing question for you. What do you think the odds are that you were born a genius? Whenever I ask people this question, almost everyone thinks that the odds that they were born a genius are slim to none. But in a famous study done by NASA in the late ‘90s, it was their conclusion that an astounding 97% of us were born geniuses.           Isn’t that amazing? And think about this – they say you remained a genius through the age of five. Actually, if you ever get to be around a child who is at that magical age, they really are in an extraordinary state of consciousness. The speed of their learning ability is astounding, their world is filled with wonder, and unless they are being bothered by something external, they are basically happy.  Indeed, they smile about 400 times a day, and they laugh heartily about eight times an hour.           So, according to the NASA study, 97% of us were born there. And the reason we lived in this incredible state of awareness is that our consciousness was composed primarily of our Higher Mind. But then, after age five, our ordinary mind, began to take over.    By way of some background about the make-up of our brain, it has about 86 billion neurons that fire together constantly, and as the saying goes, neurons that fire together, wire together. They create about a hundred trillion neural pathways, which form a vast neural grid called our neural template. This template is an incredibly complex device and it’s filled with everything that makes us who we are in the world, all of our concepts, emotions, thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, hopes, dreams and memories, and on and on. We end up filtering everything that happens to us through this vast neural network, and that filtering shapes our entire life experience.  We’ve each been basically living through this filter of our neural template since age five.                Now the ordinary mind is truly an extraordinary tool, we could never survive without it and we can never grasp how much intelligence we each have within us at this very moment. Indeed, it is estimated that it would take the most advanced computer in the world about 45 hours to do what our brain does in just one second. But it can also be a real double-edged sword, which means it cuts both ways. And it is absolutely critical to understand this about it.             For example, our Ordinary Mind is responsible for making improvements in every aspect of our life, but to accomplish this, a key part of its nature is that it is always dissatisfied. No matter what’s going on, it will always be looking for something better, something more. Innate dissatisfaction is one of the key characteristics that makes it so effective. Without it, we’d still be living in caves and every advancement in our world, from the wheel to the computer and beyond, is a result of it. But the negative side of this can be brutal. Being in a state of constant dissatisfaction can darken your entire life. You become disappointed with everything, including yourself. This can become extremely destructive, bleeding the very life out of you and turning your world into a prison of endless frustration.            The ordinary mind is also deeply connected to our limbic system, which is responsible for our safety and security. In this area, on one level, it’s in a state of constant surveillance, always on the lookout for threat, and we couldn’t survive without it. But its default signal is fear, and its general tendency is to catastrophize problems, making a mountain out of every molehill on every issue. Now fear can easily begin dominating our entire awareness, bringing devastating results to our health and well-being. Ironically, if unchecked, the very part of our mind that is responsible for protecting our life can end up ruining it.           And one other thing about our ordinary mind. It cannot operate in present time. It is always ruminating over events that happened in the past or hypothesizing about what may happen in the future. Or it’s involved in general fantasizing. But it can’t exist in present time. When we’re in present time, we’re in a different state of consciousness. Now this can be quite problematic because our real life only happens in the present. We really live just one breath at a time and the only time you are ever actually breathing is now.           This dichotomy between the ordinary mind and our existence in real life can be the source of enormous trouble for us. We don’t have time to go into depth about that here, but the primary problems begin when the ordinary mind becomes overly programmed with negative impressions and misunderstandings.           And this brings us to another famous study about the mind that doesn’t bode particularly well for us. It’s estimated that the average person thinks about 50,000 thoughts a day and over 80 percent of them are negative in nature and they are also repetitive, which means we are programming in about 40,000 negative impressions into our minds every day. We’re just basically repeating them again and again and again, which just makes them stronger.                After a while, the negative self-talk becomes just too much. When its negative aspects become overly dominant, the mentality of our ordinary mind degenerates into Self-Sabotage, and you become your own worst enemy. No matter what objective you seek or which method you use, you just keep on defeating yourself at every turn.           Now by mid-childhood, we’ve become overidentified with the make-up of our ordinary mind, this neural template, and this overidentification is the primary cause of most of our psychological pain. Forgetting that it’s just a tool we’ve constructed, we start believing that it is actually who we are, mistaking all of its idiosyncrasies for the make-up of our actual character.      Of course, we don’t have this overidentification with anything else in life. I don’t care how much you love your car, your TV or your cell phone. You never get confused into believing that they’re actually a part of you.  But when we’re still in our early years, we’ve become so bonded to the identifications within our neural template that we’ve lost touch with our actual identity. And so much for our inborn genius. According to NASA, by age 10, we’ve lost about 70% of it. But don’t worry, it’s not gone for good. It’s still there, right where it always is. Remember, we do have another side of our awareness – our higher mind. This is the one we began life with, the one that brightened those magical years we lived in through age five, and this is the one that is still with us today, far more that we realize. Due to a myriad of external factors, we’ve just lost touch with it. But it’s actually closer to us than our own breath. So, this will be the end of this episode. We’ll get into the make-up and remarkable nature of our higher mind next time. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together for the next one. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, there have been times during my childhood when I came across a concept or an idea that unexpectedly buried itself deeply within my mind and I’ve gone back to it on a regular basis throughout the course of my life. Each time I reconsider it, I derive more value from it, which makes sense, because I keep seeing it from the new perspective of a different stage of growth.           Something like this happened on the night of November 13th 1959 when I flipped on an episode of The Twilight Zone. For some reason, I often watched the show alone, on a little black and white TV set in the den of our house. I was ten years old; it was over sixty years ago and I still clearly remember that moment in time. Fittingly, it just so happened to be Friday the 13th. The episode was called “The Lonely,” and it took place in the far distant future, in the year 2046. It begins on a remote asteroid, and you’re told that it’s a prison planet. But it’s more than that. It’s actually solitary confinement.           There is an inmate named Corry, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to fifty years' imprisonment on this desolate little planet, which is completely devoid of all life.           So far, he had been there longer than three years and he is nearly going crazy from the isolation. Four times a year, a spaceship from earth lands and Corry gets to spend a short period of time with the captain and his crew. Captain Allenby brings him three months’ worth of provisions and news from Earth.           These visits are the only time that Corry gets to see anyone at all and he looks forward to them with every fiber of his being. Unfortunately, when the ship lands, Capt. Allenby tells him that they can only stay for fifteen minutes due to a shortage of fuel.           The terrible turn of events is devastating to Corry, but Allenby has even worse news. Corry’s plea for a pardon has been rejected and pardons for murder cases have been suspended indefinitely. The last remnant of hope is gone, at least for the foreseeable future and Corry is completely crushed.           However, over the years, Capt. Allenby has begun to have some compassion for Corry, beginning to believe his story that he had only acted in Self-Defense. He has started bringing Corry things to help him kill the time. A year ago, he had brought him a disassembled antique car with tools and instructions on how to put it together. It had taken Corry nine months to build it and had at least given him something to do.           Now, Allenby tells Corry that he has brought him something else, but he can’t talk about it in front of the crew. Allenby has stolen it for Corry and if it ever got out that he had done it, he would be in serious trouble. As they are preparing to leave, Allenby has his crew bring over a large crate, placing it before the metal shack where Corry lives. He whispers to Corry not to open the crate until after the ship has departed. Within another few minutes, the ship lifts off and is gone. Overcome with his feelings of intense loneliness and isolation, Corry sits down on the crate, breaks down and begins to sob.           For a few days, he doesn’t even open the crate. It doesn’t matter what kind of distraction Allenby has brought him; he’s just not interested. But finally, he opens the crate and to his surprise, he finds that it is an inanimate robot in the form of a woman.           It has come with an instruction manual which says that the robot’s name is Alicia and it says she is 100% lifelike in appearance and is indistinguishable from a normal, living person. Her brain is currently unprogrammed, but as soon as she is interacted with, she will begin to assume the language and mannerisms of her owner. She has logic and memory and is capable of expressing the full gamut of human emotions.  At first, Corry detests it, rejecting it as a mere machine, whose human-like presence only makes his isolation worse. He lets his frustrations out in a verbal tirade and mirroring his language, the female robot tries to talk to him. This only makes him angrier and every time she tries to speak, he is mean and cruel to her. Finally, in a rage of frustration he screams that he hates her. He can’t stand the sight of her and wishes Allenby had never brought her. But to his surprise, her face fills with an expression of deep sorrow and her eyes well up with tears. Seeing her deep sadness, Corry suddenly feels like he is with a real, living person, which melts his heart and he begins to accept her. Now, the scene flashes to a few months later, and not only has Corry accepted Alicia, he has actually fallen in love with her. Her personality mirrors his exactly. She has developed his sense of humor and expresses the same set of opinions as he does. They constantly laugh and have fun. She cooks him his favorite meals. They take walks at night and stare up at the stars. They are even deeply romantic together, and now, with his ideal partner, Corry is enjoying the happiest days of his life.  But unexpectedly, one day, the space ship from earth lands. It hadn’t been scheduled and Capt. Allenby comes bursting out of the ship filled with joy. He has amazing news for Corry. He’s been pardoned and Allenby has come to bring him home to earth right away. But they have to leave immediately. There is a coming meteor shower and they must lift off within 20 minutes to avoid danger. Corry is standing with Alicia and he is overcome with gratitude and happiness. He puts his arm around her and says they can leave immediately. But Allenby quickly responds, telling him that he can’t bring the robot. There are seven other passengers on the ship and they only have room for Corry and fifteen pounds of belongings. There is no room for any cargo. Corry breaks into an impassioned explanation about why he must bring Alicia with him. She’s far more than just a robot. She’s not cargo, she’s become his wife. He’s in love with her and he will not leave without her. If he can’t bring her, he won’t leave. He’ll just stay there with her.   Frantic and near insanity, he keeps begging Allenby to help him.  Allenby apologizes, but telling Cory that he must do what he must do, he suddenly draws his gun and shoots Alicia in the face. The robot breaks down, malfunctioning and repeating the name "Corry" until it goes silent. The large gap in her face where the bullet hit reveals the metal under her skin and a mass of wire and broken circuitry  Allenby then takes Corry back to the ship, assuring him that the only thing he will be leaving behind is his own loneliness. "I must remember that," Corry says in a daze. "I must remember to keep that in mind." As the show began to  close, the camera pulled away, revealing the desolate landscape of the asteroid with Corry’s metal shack, his antique car and the lifeless form of the robot lying next to it. From that vantage point, it was clearly just one more inanimate object that had helped Corry feel less lonely. Now, as a ten-year-old, the program really hit me, but I didn’t know why. It was more of a feeling than words. But looking back on it in later years, I could see a lot of levels to it. For starters, it was an excellent piece of drama. You got bonded to the character of Corry. As a convict, he seemed like a reasonably good guy who didn’t deserve the horrible punishment he was suffering, which was too awful to even imagine.   When the robot was introduced, you didn’t know what to make of her. She looked human, a very attractive woman about the same age as Corry. But she didn’t become animated until Corry began to interact with her. Then she became the likable character of Alicia. After a short time, they fell in love and Corry became incredibly happy with his lot. He didn’t care where he was or that he was alone anymore. He had unexpectedly, found the love of his life, taking him from utter despondency to ultimate happiness.  You had to feel good for him. Then when the ship unexpectedly landed and Allenby gave Corry the incredible news that he had been pardoned, it was cause for tremendous celebration until it became clear that Alicia the had to be left behind. Then when Allenby shot her, it was a total shock. But the gunshot wound revealed not blood and guts, but metal and wire, driving home the fact that the creature was a mere machine. Again, it was a great piece of drama, but it went far deeper than that. You knew that Corry had been deeply in love, but the big question suddenly became, “In love with what?” Alicia had been a blank slate when Corry had unpacked her. Then over a short period of time, she took on all of the characteristics of the kind of woman that Corry would love. She became the very embodiment of his fondest dreams and being with her made him incredibly happy. What does that tell you? Well, over the years, as my inner consciousness began to evolve and grow, some profound realizations began to flow within me. Basically, to begin with the simplest terms possible – we all like to get what we like, and the more the better. In the story, Alicia wasn’t a real person with her own mind and emotions. Rather than that, due to her make-up she became a perfect reflection of Corry. In an attractive form, she reflected all of the best parts of him back to himself and he became incredibly happy with her. But in the end, he was shown that he had been having a wonderful relationship not with another human being, but with the personified expression of himself. Now, if you want to dive into it, these waters run pretty deep. A million questions pop up like, what is the nature of human-to-human relationships? Why do we like the people we like? And what am I really looking for in life anyway? Am I just running around trying to find a reflection of my own likes and dislikes? Does that process really allow me to grow or does it just make me feel better? And given the nature of how our mind works, it’s projecting itself all the time. For instance, if you have a lot of anger in you, you’re going to see a lot of angry people in the world. People consumed by greed will live in a world filled with greedy people. Ego-centric people will generally find themselves locked in conflicts with other people bonded to their ego. Afterall, like does attract like. If that’s true, what if we are able to evolve to a higher inner level and our awareness becomes filled with what is known as the better angels of our nature? Will the people in the world around us begin to reflect these higher understandings and feelings back to us? And taking it one step further, what if the concept of the Indwelling God Presence is actually true, as thousands of teachers, masters, saints and sages throughout the ages have told us that it is? What if we’re really able to truly connect with this amazing part of our inner awareness? If we’re experiencing that and constantly giving it out, what will the world be like for us?  And what kind of a life would that be like to live? We certainly don’t have enough time here to cover all this, but if you ponder it a little, I am certain you will come up with your own valuable conclusions. And these are questions that can only be answered on an individual basis anyway. As the wisdom information tells us, they can’t be explained or taught. To be understood, they have to be felt and experienced.   Well, that’s a lot to consider and it seems like the perfect place to stop, so this will be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and hearts opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

In the last episode, I told the story of what happened when I was standing on the platform of a train station with a large group of commuters and we suddenly realized that the well-dressed, mid-forty-year-old woman who was about to get off the train was blind. The woman was a professional, going about her business on a normal weekday morning, just like the rest of us who were standing there.  Except she was blind. As I watched her come down the train steps and start walking away with her cane, once I got over the unexpected shock of the encounter, I found myself in a world that was suddenly filled with humility and gratitude. I guess it was for obvious reasons. I’ve always taken the gift of sight for granted. For me, it just comes along with the territory of being alive. I rarely, if ever, give it any thought. But this chance encounter had reinforced in me how precious it is to be able to see and it hit me with unexpected power. I became in touch with how small of a creature I actually am, completely dependent on forces unseen and unknown by me – like having the power of sight, for example. I felt extremely humble and a profound sense of gratitude washed over me. Generally, when we experience something like this, we find ourselves in a rarified state of being, enjoying the sense of clarity about what’s really important in our lives. And then, in today’s hyper-fast paced world, before you know it, we revert back to our normal, everyday habit of trying to get the next thing we want. This is what happened to me but still, it was quite a powerful feeling and it lasted for most of that morning. Now real feelings of humility and gratitude are a little more than they may appear to be. We’re all familiar with them and something about them feels just right. But modern neuroscience has taken it to a deeper level by yielding a vast amount of data which highlights the powerful effect they have on our overall consciousness. Along with the release of a myriad of positive neuropeptides that can do wonders for us, humility and gratitude can bring about actual physiological changes in the brain itself, making it function on an entirely new level. And these changes can be quite powerful when it comes to our overall happiness and sense of well-being, transforming our minds into higher states of awareness.  And as I had also mentioned in the last episode, both Einstein and Jung emphasized how important it is for us to evolve and grow our consciousness. Now from thousands of years of contemplative traditions all the way through to modern neuroscience we are told that the ideal way to begin to enhance this growth process is to start appreciating some of the incredible things we have been given in this life, rather than to just keep on taking them for granted.             So, let’s take a little deeper dive into this. Whether we’re aware of it or not, there is a truly vast intelligence that is within each and every one of us. We don’t know the extent of it and the truth is, we will never know, because it’s just too vast. But whether or not we’re aware of it, the truth is, it’s still there. Let’s consider one small, but truly miraculous part of this intelligence – our ability to heal. A few months ago, I got a nasty paper cut one on my right index finger. Now if you’re right-handed, you probably don’t pay much attention to how you use your right index finger. But once you have a cut on it, you find out pretty quickly.             Most of us have probably had a paper cut. They can be surprisingly painful, but we all know them to be just a minor nuisance. They’re not going to kill you. They’re just an inconvenience. You take care of it, maybe you put a band aid on it and it heals up in a couple of days. I’ve had them many times where the intensity of the pain gradually decreases, then goes away completely. A few weeks later, it had healed so well that I could barely remember that I ever had it or exactly where it had been.           Just a small, everyday occurrence that happens to us all, but what is it that happened? Somehow, my body just healed it. Now here is where we have to stop and pick up our mental microscope. We’ve all had tons of physical problems that have just healed themselves. We caught a bad cold. It was a real drag. It lasted a couple of weeks until it finally healed. You get out of your car on a funny angle and you twist your ankle. You limp along for a while until it finally heals. Examples like these are endless and we’ve all had them probably thousands of times, from getting over indigestion, maybe a hangover, to recovering from a broken bone, the flu or even a major illness, we have an innate trust in the healing processes of the body and we take it all for granted.           But what is it? How does it happen that we heal ourselves from all these things? Of course, there are hundreds of medical books that will explain the process, but the basic, bottom line is that the ability to heal is part of the miraculous intelligence that we each have within us all the time. Again, we take it completely for granted, but to put it into perspective, let’s say you go out and buy a wonderful new suit. It’s perfect in every way. Maybe it even was ridiculously expensive, but you still bought it, because that’s how much you liked it. One night, you wear it out to a party and you don’t even know why, but when you get home and take it off, you notice that it has a significant tear in it. You must have caught it on a nail or piece of glass, whatever. It doesn’t matter how it happened. Your beautiful new suit is torn.           Now it doesn’t matter how wonderful it is, what kind of fabric it’s made from or how much it cost you. The rip in that suit is not going to heal. Of course, we all know that. You’re not going to hang it up in your closet and a few days later, when you come back, it will have naturally repaired itself.           No. And that’s the enormous difference between the tear on your suit and the cut on your finger. The suit in an inanimate object. It does not have the power and intelligence of life in it. But our bodies do. Again, this points to the deeper fact that our existence is, by nature, miraculous.           And this isn’t just limited to the parts of ourselves that we know. No, this intelligence goes far beyond that. Like if you’re having a chat with a friend, trading questions like, “How your family? How’s your job? How’s that new TV you bought?” All normal enough questions, but nobody asks, “So, how’s your spleen doing?”           Your spleen? Not only don’t you know how it’s doing, most of us no idea what it is or where it is. But something inside of us does. This vast, almost unfathomable intelligence within knows everything about it in real time.           By the way, how’s the Ph balance in your mouth at the moment? Does it have the right amount of acid in it given what you ate last night?  Again, this is the kind of thing most of us never think about and we have no conscious control over it anyway. But the intelligence in our body does. It knows everything about it, monitoring and adjusting it constantly.                So much goes on inside of us that we have no idea about and here’s one last example that always gets me. Let’s say you go into a public bathroom and you leave with some very nasty germs on your hands. Within another hour, by eating or rubbing your eyes or nose, you ingest several million of these toxic germs and now you have a real invasion on your hands.             But you have an immune system with precision firepower that makes Battlestar Galactica look antiquated and tame. Powerful cells called macrophages arrive to detect, engulf and destroy the invaders. If necessary, your hypothalamus directs the production of exact hormones to step up the attack and after a short while, all the invading cells have been killed. They’re then carefully escorted through your blood stream into your bladder.  An hour or two later, you go to the bathroom and pee them all out. End of episode.           Your health was protected, your life was preserved and you had absolutely no idea that it happened. In all probability, your mind was busy spinning its web of delusion, conjuring up the way it wishes things would be. According to current estimates, this kind of thing happens within us about 1,200 times each day.           So where is all of this going? It’s just going back to where we started – humility and gratitude. We are living a life whose miraculous nature is far beyond our ability to comprehend. And to close, nothing is more miraculous or important to us than our breath. You can go without food for about thirty days. You can go without water for about seven. But you can’t go without your breath for more than just a few minutes at most.           Whether you’re aware of it or not, it’s been happening since the moment you were born and it will continue until the moment you die. And all the great teachers of all time have instructed us to humbly recognize and be grateful for the absolute miracle of it. They say this is the key to opening the doorway to the higher realms. It all begins with the simple recognition of the power that is giving us life.           Now, there’s a modern-day teacher named Prem Rawat who has been a big influence on me for many years, and one of the things I’ve always liked about him is that he has a great sense of humor. He can express a deep truth in a way that makes you laugh while it delivers its profound meanings, which isn’t easy. He was once talking about how obsessed the religions of the world are with stories about miracles, which makes us dream big dreams. But we fail to see our own life as a miracle which, by definition, it is. He said once, and I’m paraphrasing, “You can spend your whole life hoping for a miracle, but would you know one if you saw it?  The truth is, you wouldn’t recognize a miracle if it was happening right under your nose.”           At first, I laughed, but when I took it in a little deeper, it suddenly wasn’t’ so funny anymore, it became more of a challenge.  That was many years ago and I’m still trying to realize what’s going on right under my nose.           Well, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m currently working on a project called Higher Mind Training, and some people who listen to the podcasts have written in asking for some information about it, so I thought I would present an overview of some of its basics for you to consider. I’d like to start out by describing something that happened to me about four or five years ago. It was a very brief moment in time. The whole thing probably took only a few seconds, but it flipped a switch within my consciousness that went straight into the core of my being. It couldn’t have begun in a more ordinary situation. I was at a train station, waiting to get on a commuter train into downtown Philadelphia. Let me give you a little background. I was doing some consulting work for a group that was trying to establish itself as an online entertainment company. I had put together a few consultants to work on the project - three talented professionals with lots of experience. As the momentum built, we began to have regular meetings at an office space in center city and we were generally meeting there about twice a week. I live on the outskirts of the city, almost in the suburbs, and the closest train to me stops at Overbrook Station, which is almost on the campus of Saint Joseph’s University and many of the regular commuters seem to have something to do with Saint Joe’s. After several weeks, I fell into a basic routine where I would get there about five minutes early and with about twenty other commuters, would board the train as soon as it arrived. It was only a 15-minute commute. It generally ran on schedule, but one morning, when I got to the station, to my surprise and a little consternation, I found out that for no apparent reason, the train was running ten minutes late. After another five minutes it was announced that it was now running twenty minutes. Everyone on the platform groaned and this changed things at the station because as time went by, there were probably about three or four times more commuters waiting for the train than usual. I, along with everyone else, started worrying about whether or not I would be able to get a seat on the train. Now I had all this time on my hands. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m in that kind of situation, my mind shifts into high gear, churning out thought after thought, just to kill the time. I started thinking about the consulting work I had taken on. Then about how this change in schedule was going to affect the rest of my day. Then the next thing I know I’m agitating about my golf swing and why am I having so much trouble learning this simple move that I was sure would be great for me. Then I started going over my finances and whether the juice would be worth the squeeze on this project, which was now developing a few side issues, and on and on and on, non-stop, never-ending, random mental wonderings. The Tibetan Zen practitioners have a term for this type of mental process – they call it the “Chain of Delusion” because it binds you to mental meanderings that are generally meaningless, or even worse. All the while, I was keeping my eye on the station clock, which was moving so slow, I thought it might have been broken. Anyway, it was finally announced that the train was nearby and everyone started gathering around the boarding area, which became mobbed with many more people than are usually there. Now, there is a basic routine you follow when the train stops. The first thing you have to do is let all the passengers out who are getting off at that stop. You stand as close as you can to the train entrance, while still giving them room, so that once they’ve all gotten off, you can rush on and try to grab a seat.  It isn’t particularly rude; you’re just jockeying for position. Finally, the train pulled up and we all moved in as close as we could, but still within acceptable limits. There were only a few cars, so we all knew that a lot of us would be standing up for the whole ride into town.  The train stopped and the door opened. But strangely, no one got off. Suddenly, one the conductors, a tall and sturdy looking man in uniform planted himself in the doorway. The paragon of authority, he just stood there staring at us with a rather solemn look on his face. Something seemed wrong. I was hoping there wasn’t a problem with the train that might cause a further delay or even a cancellation.    Then he stepped back a little and a woman came and stood in the doorway. She was fashionably dressed, had light brown hair that was stylishly cut and seemed to be in her mid to late forties. From her professional appearance, I assumed that she was with the University in some manner. Maybe a professor or an administrator. And she was wearing light sunglasses. She just stood there, not moving, looking off into the distance. Then I could see the conductor take hold of her right hand and put something in it. Within another moment, we could all see what it was. It was a long, white walking stick and we all knew instantly that the woman was blind. The entire feeling on the platform was immediately transformed and the moment was incredibly powerful. We had all been taken out of our normal, everyday routines and suddenly placed into an entirely different world. And this world was filled with a quick shock, followed by tremendous humility and gratitude. It might have only lasted for a brief moment, but we all felt the unspoken truth of that moment. We had learned something profound in that split second and we all knew that we all knew.   The woman was as cool as can be. Using her walking cane, she carefully made her way down the train’s steps, and walked away, looking like she had done it a million times. We all boarded the train, but it was in a most orderly and polite manner and I doubt if anyone minded that they had to stand up for the fifteen-minute ride into town. I know I didn’t, because rather than running through my standard chain of delusion, my consciousness was filled with clarity as I reflected on what I had just been shown.  I don’t who that woman was or what she was doing, but she was clearly a professional going about her business. It was nothing special, she was just getting on with another day in the life. And that’s exactly what I was doing as well, but what a major difference - I could see and she could not. I had been given the incredible gift of sight, and Oh My God, what can you say about that feeling when you understand the absolute preciousness of the gift you’ve been given? So, this quick example highlights the very first part of Higher Mind Training – the first step is to simply begin to recognize how miraculous the gift of life is. Now, it’s not all that easy to do because we each have a tendency to take all of it for granted, all day, every day. And sources from ancient wisdom all the way through to modern neuroscience tell us that having appreciation and gratitude in our hearts for the simple gift of life is the most powerful thing that we can do to begin to evolve our awareness so we can realize our highest potential as human beings. This evolution of consciousness is critical to our long-term happiness, but in our modern world, most of us don’t see it that way. We’re mainly hung up on solving our problems, which never seem to end. For me, it’s almost a joke. As soon as I get one taken care of, five more pop-up. But what if the trick to achieving real happiness isn’t to spend your whole life just trying to solve your problems, but it’s to change the way we use our intelligence, which is what’s causing 99% of our problems in the first place. In this regard, I’m going to leave you with two of my most favorite quotes about solving problems, and they’re from two of the most respected authorities on human intelligence that our species has ever produced. The first on is from Albert Einstein who said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” And the second one is from the legendary psychologist, Carl Jung who said, “The greatest and most important problems in life can never be solved. They can only be outgrown.” So, two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century tell us that it’s absolutely critical for us to evolve and grow. Years have gone by since I came across these quotes and I’m still trying to let their wisdom sink into me. And here’s one last idea to consider, which comes from Abraham Lincoln. But not Lincoln the great president, but Lincoln the great log splitter who once said, “If I was told I had four hours to cut down a tree, I’d spend the first three hours sharpening the axe.” Maybe it’s a good idea for us to keep sharpening that old axe of our awareness. But the trick is knowing how to do it. Well, that’s the end of this episode. Next, we’re going to take a quick look at the two basic parts of our mind – our ordinary mind and the higher mind. As always, keep your eyes mind and hearts open, and let’s get together in the next one.  

As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous podcasts I’m always amazed whenever I come across significant wisdom in unexpected places. You can run into it almost anywhere and the sports world is certainly no exception. In basketball Phil Jackson is a former NBA player who became a coach and won more NBA titles than any other coach in the history of the game, eleven championship titles in all, which is truly impressive given how difficult the coaching position is. Not only do you have to master the details of the game, you also have to blend the egos of some extremely talented multimillionaires into a cohesive group that thrives on true teamwork.           Surprisingly for me it turns out that Jackson has had a somewhat mystical and spiritual approach to life for many years, which he claims was a major factor in his success. In 1995 he wrote a book called “Sacred Hoops,” featuring some of his esoteric understandings and there was this one quote that I’d never heard before that really got me that stated, “In Zen it is said that the gap between accepting things the way they are and wishing them to be otherwise is the one tenth of an inch difference between heaven and hell.”           This hit me on a lot of different levels which always gets me thinking. The first thing was the idea that heaven and hell were only a tenth of an inch apart. I’d always been taught that heaven was way up there, while its opposite, hell, was way down there. This idea that they seem close enough to be other sides of the same coin was revolutionary for me.  But it reminded me of a quote from a letter that was found in Abraham Lincoln’s desk after his assassination which can still be found in the Lincoln Collection of the Library of Congress. It was supposedly a channeled message from a psychic and it said that “Heaven and Hell are conditions, not locations.” So, if heaven and hell were actually inner states of consciousness, it seemed like the pathway to heaven was somehow connected to accepting things the way they are, while hell had something to do with wishing them to be otherwise. This led me into considering a mental process that we each have called “Idealization.” Now this is where you have a desire for something and you develop a fantasy about having it. In Jackson’s Zen quote you’re wishing for things to be other than the way they are and you start weaving a fantasy about it. And we all know that there’s an enormous difference between fantasy and reality. As an example, let’s say you decide to get a new car and you start shopping for one. After a while you start to settle on this one particular kind of car, you start feeling good about it and your mind starts painting mental pictures about it for you. You may imagine a million different things. You’re driving in it with your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, kids - whatever. It can go on and on but the important thing to be understood is that your idealizations are always positive and never negative. In all your imaginations you never imagine the feeling you would have if you went to a store and when you got back to your car there was a dent in the door because somebody dinged you when they open their car door. Or you never picture getting a flat or being stopped by a policeman and getting a speeding ticket.  That’s all the stuff of real life while all these fantasies are happening within the dream world of your idealizations and once you actually achieve your fantasize desire and you get what you think you wanted, of course it turns into a whole different ballgame. Humorist Larry David put a funny spin on it in an early episode of his show, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He and his wife Cheryl had decided to buy a new home. They found a place on the beach in Malibu and when they walked in, the living room had an enormous picture window overlooking the ocean. The view was absolutely magnificent. Now, I’m paraphrasing the dialogue here but this is the way I remember it. “Oh Larry! Look at the view! It’s absolutely incredible,” Cheryl says. “Two weeks,” Larry replies. “What do you mean, two weeks?” Cheryl asks. “You won’t notice it after two weeks,” he answers. “You’ll be so wrapped up in everything that’s happening in your normal life, you won’t even notice the view anymore.”  Cheryl was idealizing the idea of moving to the home with this incredible view and imagining how wonderful it would be to live there. And Larry, with his hard-boiled New York sensibility, went straight for the reality of every day daily life. Of course, one of the main reasons his stuff can be so funny is because of his talent for putting his finger on things that can make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves but still make us laugh. Now idealization is often followed by something that is broadly termed “Buyer’s Remorse.” Before you get the object of your desire you still construct the idealization. But once you’ve actually had it for a while, you start dealing with the reality of it, which rarely, if ever lives up to the fantasy you had in your mind. It reminds me of something that happened to me about 25 years ago when our daughter was an adorable five-year-old and we used to shoot an enormous number of pictures of her.  The photo technology seems like ancient history now but this was before the digital age and we took pictures with cameras that had film.  You would shoot an entire roll of film and then take it to a camera shop to be developed into printed photograph. Every picture cost you money so you were operating within a bit of a limit on how many would take. It’s hard to imagine such a primitive time now, right?  So, I always used the same neighborhood camera store and I became familiar with the young woman who worked behind the counter. I had probably been coming in for about three years and one day she told me I wouldn’t see her again because she was about to take a new job. And she told me with enormous excitement that after years of trying, she had finally landed a job in a hardware store. It’d always been her dream and now it was coming true! She was incredibly excited. Of course, we each have our own playbook of desires and personally it didn’t hit me as such a dramatic improvement to be making the move from working in a camera store to working in a hardware store. But what do I know?  Anyway, we had a nice friendly goodbye and the next time I came in someone new was behind the counter. Then a couple months later when I came back, to my surprise my former clerk was back behind the counter. When I asked her what happened to her job at the hardware store she said with a smile, “Well, I found out that the reason the grass was greener was because it was Astroturf.” At first, I was struck by how simple and funny her comment was. But as you can see, it stayed in my mind for all these years because it pointed to a much more profound truth - the difference between the artificial and the real, which may just be that one tenth of an inch difference between heaven and hell. Maybe it’s the celebration and appreciation for what’s real, which is on the deepest level for life itself, rather than the constant chasing after the artificial fantasies of the mind’s desires which never end, no matter what you have. Maybe that one tenth of an inch difference between heaven and hell comes down to the state of our consciousness as we live our everyday lives. Whenever I ponder the idea, I’m always struck by how simple it is - that it all comes down to where we choose to focus. And I’m going to leave you with two quotes that are so simple that you might not even notice them, but they’re so profound that they always bring deeply positive changes to me. The first one is from the world renowned Indian guru Parmahansa Yogananda who said, “The minutes are more important than the years.” And the second quote takes us back to the world of sports, which is where we first began. This one is from Bobby Jones, the great US champion of the 1920s, who is still widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time. He was talking about a simple secret that he had discovered that had turned him into the great champion that he had become. And he said, “It’s nothing new or original to say that golf is a game that is played one stroke at a time. But it took me many years to realize it.” Now that is a deceptively deep concept.  No matter what has happened in the past or what you think may happen in the future, you have to focus on the present.  In golf it all happens just one stroke at a time. And in life it all happens just one breath at the time. The mind has to dwell in the past or the future. But the breath only happens in the present. And that is where the treasure of existence is. It really couldn’t be any simpler but how many of us have realized that one tenth of an inch difference? Again, these podcast just present ideas for your consideration. So, let’s just leave it there for now and let’s call this the end of this episode. As always keep your eyes mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

As many of us know, we are multifaceted beings with many different levels of consciousness and understanding within us, many of which haven’t manifested yet. One of these inner aspects we each have is an amazingly heroic part of ourselves filled with bravery, strength and inner courage. It is often surprising in its power and its emergence can be completely unexpected. But whenever it makes itself known, it’s usually a pretty transformative experience. I remember reading a story once about this unanticipated bravery of ours. It was a very long time ago, maybe in Junior High School, and I don’t remember that much about it – like how I came to it, how old I was when I read it, or in what context it was in. I don’t even remember the whole story, just one key part of it. But for some reason, that one part buried itself deeply in my mind and I never forgot it. I think it took place in a small New England town sometime during the 1870s. There was a certain man who had become the town drunk. Nobody seemed to know what had happened to him, but somehow, he had completely lost his bearings in life and was in a drunken stupor most of the time. Was it a lost love? Did somebody break his heart? Or did something awful happen to him in business and he lost everything he owned? Or had he done something horribly wrong and was now trapped in a dark chasm of guilt? Nobody knew. All they knew is that he was drinking all the time, could never be counted on for anything and was a completely hopeless, lost cause, One night as he was lying dead drunk on a sidewalk in front of a tavern, a fire broke out in a small home near the end of the street where he had passed out. In those days, fires were fought with bucket brigades. All the town’s people would gather, a horse drawn carriage would arrive with an enormous container of water, and they would line up and pass buckets of water from the carriage to the fire in a desperate attempt to try to put out the blaze. As the brigade formed, they needed every single person available. Spotting the town drunk lying on the sidewalk, one of the firefighters roused him out of his stupor, shook him, slapped him awake and brought him into the line. The drunk was able to sense what was happening and did his best to help out.  But as the fire was raging out of control, he was still pretty out of it. At one point, a couple of firefighters brought a screaming woman out of the burning home that was now engulfed in flames. The woman was out of her mind, completely hysterical and with all the strength she had, she tried to break free from the firefighters, screaming that her two little children were still in the house. Her horrific story sent the entire brigade into a panic. Suddenly and without any warning, the town drunk, who was at the far end of the bucket brigade, stood up straight, and like a soldier in battle, marched up to the doorway of the house and burst in through the flaming entrance.  It was such an unexpected and shocking moment that everyone froze for a moment, then they went back to feverishly passing buckets of water. Minute after hopeless minute went by as the poor mother kept screaming and sobbing. After about another ten minutes, it started to become apparent to everyone that the drunk wasn’t going to make it out. It was horribly sad, but at least he had died doing something noble. The bucket brigade continued its work and the house continued to burn. But then, suddenly and miraculously, bleeding and burned, the man emerged from the doorway of the home holding two little children in his arms. They were both screaming and frightened out of their minds, but they were both clearly and magnificently alive! The mother nearly fainted at the sight, and overcome with emotion ran up to grab her children.  Everyone immediately surrounded the man, enveloping him in a enormous wave of gratitude and appreciation. My memory of the story pretty much fades from that point. I do remember that it said that the event transformed his life he never took another drink again.  I’d like to think that he ended up marrying the woman, adopting her children and becoming the mayor of the town. But that’s probably just the O. Henry in me. What happened in the actual story doesn’t really matter that much because there’s something about the tale that runs a lot deeper than the details of the drama. It points to the incredible nature of the undiscovered side of our being. I mean, something had happened to this lost soul that had completely defeated him and turned him into the town drunk. It doesn’t matter what it was, but something had taken the life out of him and left him hopeless. And he had resorted to trying to numb himself to his pain by drinking himself to death. But then suddenly, the nobility and courage within his spirit  took over. Maybe he felt that his life was at its end anyway, so what did it matter if he risked what he had left to save the lives of some children? Or maybe it was just the act of doing something selfless for the benefit of someone else that produced this incredible effect on him. It could have been any one of a hundred factors like these,  but something triggered this power within him, and acting upon it created a miracle that not only helped innocent bystanders, it also completely transformed his life.  But a Now of course, this is a pretty dramatic story. But the reality is that we can come in contact with the higher and most noble parts of our character in ways that are not the result of dramatic circumstances at all. In fact, it’s often quite the opposite. It can be in seemingly small choices, made in the most ordinary of situations that can bring about significant inner growth which ultimately bring about major transformations in our character. Coming from the perspective of western culture, we are trained to define real success as coming from the accomplishment of something great. But many wise voices of the past have pointed us in a rather different direction. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great poet and lecturer, who led the enlightened transcendental movement of late 19th century America, wrote a short, but deeply profound poem about it called, “What is Success?” It’s always been one of my favorites: What is Success? To laugh often and much. To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children. To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends. To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition. To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; This is to have succeeded. It turns out that most people can relate to these simple ideas. And interestingly, most people can also relate to the story of the town drunk that became the hometown hero. We each have faced hard times in our lives, to one degree or another. And even if it’s small, we’ve each felt an innate sense of courage and strength inside. And whether we’re in touch with it or not, we each have an intuitive sense that there’s a lot more to us than we know right now. So, how many more of these positive characteristics are inside of us? Well to me, that leads to a deeper question - What is the real nature of a human being? anyway? What is our highest potential and how can be we realize it? Now, that’s a big question. Actually, it might be the big question. I think that seems like a good place to stop for now, so I’ll just leave you with that thought. Of course, the ideas in these podcasts are just my understandings, presented to you for your consideration. Like everything else on the path of growth, if they do something positive for you, use them. And if not, just let them go. So, that’s the end of this episode, As, always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.