A couple of weeks ago someone asked me if I had any kind of cause in my life that I was very passionate about.  These days it seems that everyone has some kind of cause they stand behind from saving the planet to ending animal cruelty, stopping drinking and driving, curing cancer or any number of the tens of thousands of causes out there.

I had to really think about this because even though I don’t want the planet to self-destruct, and just thinking about someone abusing a dog makes me want to vomit, I’m not really inspired to pursue any of those types of causes.  Meaning, logically they all make sense to me but speaking directly from what I am naturally inspired to be passionate about – none of those causes really inspire me.

After thinking about it for a bit I came up with an answer.  The one thing that I’ve been really passionate about, especially in the last few years has been to help the Lightworker’s in this world to embrace the Internet as a way to expand their global reach and to stop playing small.

In the last five years I have scoured the Internet researching the websites of and meeting countless talented Lightworkers, who are absolutely amazing at what they do, but who also have some of the most hideous and most unoptimized websites I have ever seen in my life.  Like looking at a bad 80′s haircut, every time I come across yet another hideous website I cringe in horror.

Honestly, there are 12 year old kids out there with better looking websites about their favorite video game than most of the Lightworker sites I’ve seen.

The challenge isn’t so much that Lightworkers don’t know how to build good websites, because I wouldn’t expect them to waste their time learning how to do that when they have more important things being the amazing Lightworkers that they are.  The real challenge I have constantly run into with Lightworkers revolves around one or more of these issues – which I have only slightly over exaggerated below:

• Lightworkers don’t value web sites, the Internet, and are largely unaware of the amazing potential the Internet has for connecting people.
• Lightworkers don’t realize that helping people 1-on-1 is great, but they could also balance that out with 1-to-1 million type work by publishing content, Blogs, writing eBooks etc. and help a lot more people.
• Lightworkers sometimes carry anti-technology sentiments, somehow equating technology with evil so deep down they don’t want to have a “good” website.
• Lightworkers often use the “I don’t have time” excuse for not building a good website with good content, yet when their clients tell them they don’t have time to meditate they lecture them on the importance of making time.
• Lightworkers often don’t realize that one Blog post can reach millions of people across the Internet and potentially inspire people for generations to come.
• Some Lightworkers actually still think that the Internet is a fad that will go away soon. They’ve been thinking that since 1995.
• Lightworkers don’t realize that you can outsource pretty much every technical aspect of building a good website.  All they need to do is to create the content, which is as easy as using a word processor or turning on a video camera.
• etc.

Of course not all Lightworkers fall into the statements I listed above, but for years now I have had this passion for helping Lightworkers to embrace technology instead of fighting it and it’s something that I have a blast doing.

So after some thinking about this I realized that this has been my “cause” for quite some time now, with my Blog, my businesses, my coaching/mentoring etc.

Best Way to Help a Cause

Once I realized that I did in fact have this cause that’s been in my blood for years now I sat down and did some meditation on how I could be of best service to this cause.

At first I started thinking about all the good in the world we would have if energy healers had websites and marketing strategies as awesome and effective as those of pharmaceutical companies, and if dog rescue shelters knew how to use the Internet as effectively as dating websites do to match up dogs with owners.  I imagined a world where Lightworkers had awesome websites and I saw that the wold would completely change.

The Internet is the ultimate equalizer.  Everyone now has the same opportunity to reach everyone on earth with their YouTube channel as only a small group of people did just a few decades ago in the mass media.  I saw a vision of a world where Lightworkers dominated the “airwaves” with awesome Blogs, awesome YouTube channels, and all the other amazing opportunities to connect with and communicate with people available today with the Internet.

While I was visualizing this, something strange happened.

For a brief moment while seeing all these Lightworkers with awesome websites I felt a moment of panic – “Oh no, now what do I do with my life?!” – popped into my head.

I opened my eyes and in a moment of enlightenment I thought to myself – “Oh oh… am I creating this problem?”

The following words from “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace Wattles came to mind:

“Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.  Health is never attained by studying disease and thinking about disease; righteousness is not to be promoted by studying sin and thinking about sin; and no one ever got rich by studying poverty and thinking about poverty.

Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease; religion as a science of sin has promoted sin, and economics as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.

Do not talk about poverty, do not investigate it, or concern yourself with it.  Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing to do with them.  What concerns you is the cure.

Do not spend your time in so-called charitable work or charity movements;  most charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate.”

These are very powerful words and can easily be misunderstood, but in that moment of enlightenment I understood my part in perpetuating the “Lightworkers have crappy websites” problem that I’ve been so passionately wanting to fix in this world.

I realized that perhaps it is my own need of feeling needed, and having some kind of purpose in this world that has been creating this problem in the first place, so I decided to do a little experiment.

Becoming Cause-Less

What if the best way to really help a cause is to solve it at the highest level of consciousness, instead of trying to fix it in this world of effect?

Psych-K teaches us that what we see in this world we live in is like a printout from a computer.  It teaches us that trying to change the printout is futile because even though you can grab a pen and scratch out any mistakes in the printout, the second another copy is printed it will once again have the same mistakes.

A much wiser thing to do is to go into the “source” of the printout – the computer program that contains the data that is being printed out and to alter the program itself.  In Psych-K, the programs are our beliefs and by changing our beliefs we can alter the printout we see in our lives.

So I decided to experiment with this.

Instead of living with the belief that there are all these Lightworkers out there with crappy websites that need my help, I decided to see what would happen if I changed my belief structure to believe that Lightworkers have now begun to truly embrace the amazing power of the Internet and are going to totally change the world by embracing technology, instead of avoiding it or being scared of it.

Furthermore, I also released any beliefs I had about me needing to have some kind of “cause” out there to fix in the world.  Instead I chose to believe that the world out there is already perfect with or without me.

Instantly I felt like a big burden has been lifted off my shoulders.  I didn’t even realize it was there.

I decided to no longer pursue solving this “cause” I once had.  Of course I would not ignore anyone who would seek out my help, but I wouldn’t go looking for “work” out there helping any Lightworkers with their websites.

Amazing Changes

Almost instantly I started seeing amazing changes in the world, even though I didn’t “do” anything short of changing my own beliefs and healing the parts of me in global consciousness which needed healing to let go of this issue.

One of my good Lightworker friends sent out an email to her list the very next day announcing that she is going to be taking her online presence to the next level and no longer playing “small”.  Her email contained some of the exact same words and descriptions of what I wished Lightworkers would do which I wrote out in my journal the day before.  By healing the consciousness within me, instantly I saw things being reflected “out there”.

Another friend of mine also emailed me the same day with a similar set of goals for his website.

Yet another friend of mine emailed me a link to a new Lightworker coaching portal now being developed by the likes of Deepak Chopra and Bob Proctor.  I took a look at it and although I didn’t like the setup of it so far myself, it showed me just how powerful it can be to go to the source of the cause you’re trying to put yourself behind, instead of trying to change things “out there”.

Every day since this has happened, I have seen wave after wave of evidence that I am not needed “out there” to solve this problem.  I simply need to keep forgiving, and accepting the parts of me that I am attempting to cure “out there”.

How Will I Make Money Then?

If what I’m saying actually does work – and I know it does – then how will I make money then?  Meaning, prior to this realization I could charge a Lightworker money for consulting services related to helping them with their online presence – but how do I make money if I end up solving these problems at the level of consciousness?

I mean, if I can change my beliefs and affect consciousness directly which makes it way easier for a Lightworker to launch a successful website quickly and easily, can I send them an invoice for that?

Like if you came to me asking for consulting help with your website and I helped you with your website, it would be easy for you to accept that there would be a fee for that service.  If however I said to you “I will meditate on this and eliminate that within me which is making it difficult for you to have a wonderful website”, would you be willing to pay a fee for my “meditation session”?

Not to mention the fact that when I address this problem and do healing on it at the level of consciousness, I’m healing ALL Lightworkers out there not just one.  So can I invoice all of them for services rendered?

Somehow I don’t see that happening (yet).

Evolving to a New Paradigm

I realized that my old ways of making money, by solving problems for people “out there” aren’t going to work any more.  I can’t make a living solving any problems “out there” because every problem I solve I also helped to create.

I know what I’m saying is not easy to accept.  It can actually be quite depressing to think that all the problems that we try to solve out there only exist because we created them so that we could solve them.  However, if it is the truth, then there is no sense in hiding from it.

Think about it this way.  What problems have we, as humans really solved by trying to solve anything “out there”?

We discover the cure for Chicken Pox, and all of a sudden a new disease pops up.  We fight for peace in one area of the world, and fighting erupts somewhere else.  We solve the problem of food production with modern farming practices and technology, and we create one of the most overfed and undernourished populations ever.

I’m not saying I know all the answers, but I have been given a glimpse of an awareness that goes beyond trying to fix things “out there”.  It’s as futile as trying to change the printout when the software is what we should be addressing.

So if the solution is not trying to “fix” the world “out there”, then what?

Well, first of all I have always believed that there are many levels to life.  You can’t ignore the physical reality world right in front of you – which is why I said I will gladly help anyone who comes to me for help.  However, in my “spare time” I will expend my energy on solving the root cause of the problem at a higher level.

What this means is that if you are presented with a problem in your life such as a person in front of you is drowning – don’t go and meditate on the situation – save their life!  Then, meditate on why you are creating emergency situations in your life later.

Testing This Out

If what I’m saying scares you or just doesn’t sound right – why not test it out?  If your cause has always been to “save the animals” from animal cruelty for example, why not let go of it for a month.  Instead of fighting for that cause, try letting it go.  Try embracing, forgiving and loving the part of you that is abusive and destructive in some way.

You may say that you’re not abusive at all, but do you smoke cigarettes?  If so, you are abusing your own body.  Do you lose your temper and yell at your spouse?  Then you are verbally abusing them.  Where in your life are you “abusing” something precious and beautiful?  What “abuser” part of you are repressing?

I’m not saying that “abusing” your own body by drinking alcohol for example is the same as kicking a dog.  What I’m saying is that by acknowledging and healing the part of you that is abusive in some way – even in the smallest way – you will be able to lessen the abuse on animals automatically because we are all connected as part of the same consciousness and whatever you heal within yourself, you heal in the world.

What if your cause is saving the planet?  Well, the “cause” that is creating an imbalance on this planet is over consumption right?  It’s the fact that we are squandering and overusing the precious resources of mother earth and not respecting the natural balance of things, right?

So where in your life are you not respecting the natural balance of things?  Where are you squandering resources?  I’m not talking about installing energy efficient light-bulbs.  I’m talking about it from a deeper level that you are perhaps not seeing.  You may not be using any “toxic” cleaning agents in your house, because you’ve switched to products that don’t pollute the environment, but what about your attitude?  Do you bring peace and tranquility to your relationships with people or do you “pollute” their energy the second you enter their “environment”?

If you’re not ready for working on things at this level yet, I totally understand.  Just keep working on the causes you’re inspired to get behind, but if you’ve been finding yourself “cause-less” lately or very uninspired to pursue your cause, perhaps it’s time to evolve to another level.

Perhaps it’s time to let go of having a “cause”, and embrace self-love, self-healing and self-forgiveness.  It may just help the world “out there” more than chasing that cause.

Where to From Here

I’ll detail where I’m going from here in a future post, but the short version of it is that I’m exploring a much lighter side of life.  Instead of trying to “fix” things out there in the world I’m much more interested now in “playing”.  I am loving the idea of playing in this world and maintaining a sense of playfulness, fun, excitement, joy, relaxation and creativity.  This is why I’ve been so drawn to things like playing with my Savage Flux RC Truck and painting my Warhammer miniatures.

The way I see it, the more fun and peace and creativity energy I maintain throughout the day, the more I affect the world “out there” with the same kind of energy.

And on that note, off I go to enjoy painting the my squad of Ork Nobz from the Assault on Black Reach starter set I recently bought.

Last night I went through a huge spiritual shift that I believe is going to completely change the way I live my life from this point forward.

To properly explain what it was I need to provide a bit of background of how it came about.

I’ve always had an incredible thirst for knowledge and wisdom.  Although I’ve slowed down lately, I used to devour books on many topics from personal development, to finances to health and nutrition to spirituality and beyond.  Over the last 15 years I’ve easily read well over 1,000 books.

One of the benefits to reading all those books is that you get exposed to an incredible variety of different opinions on many different topics.  Instead of just reading one opinion by one person, you get to expose yourself to different points of view and then you get to choose the “best-of-the-best” from all these different opinions.

As I’ve mentioned in the last few posts I’ve been going through some incredible shifts in my personal life in the recent while, and it’s been both a very enlightening and incredibly frustrating time for me as well.

Yesterday my frustration reached an all time high, and out of that sheer frustration I finally became aware of the mental battle that has been plaguing my consciousness all this time.

The Downside of Reading 1,000+ Books

Although there are some incredible upsides to reading books, and being exposed to a variety of different opinions on different subjects, there are also some possible down sides to consider.

One of those downside is that by being exposed to so many different opinions, you can become paralyzed by seeing the truth in all of them.  For example, let’s use losing weight as a quick example.

I have read many books by nutrition and diet oriented authors who are convinced that the secret to losing weight is through diet.  They acknowledge that exercise plays a part in the equation, but more than 90% of the solution to them revolves around nutrition and diet.

I have also read many books by exercise oriented authors who are convinced that exercise is the key to weight loss and that dieting doesn’t work.  They do acknowledge that eating fruits and veggies is better than filling up on Twinkies, but they are convinced that without exercise diets don’t work at all.

The challenge with this type of situation is that you can get into a mental battle of trying to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong, because you see both sides getting results, instead of just picking one direction and going with it.

Exercise and diet may not be the best example because they can actually be combined and done simultaneously to achieve optimal results, but what if you read 20 different opinions on diet alone and they were all equally convinced that they had the right answer, but they all had different paths that can’t be merged together into one.

For example, what if one diet book was convinced that the secret to weight loss revolves around completely cutting out animal protein from your diet, while another claimed that animal protein is exactly what will help you to build muscle and burn fat.  And what if another book said that protein is irrelevant and that the real issue is chemicals found in food, while yet another said that the chemicals don’t matter as long as you count your calories.

I’m sure you can see that after a while, each opinion you hear actually adds to the confusion of things rather than adding clarity to your life.

In fact I can visualize inviting 20 or 30 diet experts to my house and assigning them the task of creating one single “ultimate” solution to a “perfect diet”.  If I locked them in a room and told them that they must all agree on a single solution, kind of like how a jury must agree on a verdict, I would be willing to bet that a war would break out.

I can see huge debates would ensue, and massive arguments, and after a few hours we might even see fights breaking out and chairs flying across the room etc.  I may be over exaggerating a little bit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.   Putting twenty “Gurus” in the same room sounds more like a recipe for disaster rather than a recipe for clarity.

Well, now imagine having a few hundred “Gurus” in your head, all arguing who’s right and who’s wrong.

The Opposing Opinion Conflict

Besides having too many opinions floating around in your head, there is an even worse situation that can happen that can be very draining on your energy.  The most energy draining situation you get into is when you are exposed to two equally believable, yet totally opposite points of view on a situation.

For example consider these two beliefs:

(1)    “Penny wise, pound foolish.”

(2)    “A penny saved, is a penny earned.”

Seemingly they are both correct.  The first belief points to the challenge of being penny wise, but pound foolish which means that you are focusing way too much of your energy on minor things, like trying to save pennies while at the same time that is causing you to lose money on a much bigger scale.

One example of this is wasting your time trying to figure out the best time to fill up your car with gas.  Instead of just going to a gas station and filling up when your car needs gas, you spend boundless amounts of energy keeping track of the best gasoline rates and only filling up when “gas is cheap”.  We all know that one person who will drive 100 miles out of town to fill up his gas tank with gasoline that’s 10 cents cheaper than the one closest to his house.  By the time they get back home, they’ve already burned through any savings they generated and they’ve wasted their time as well.

But if we consider such actions to be a waste of time and energy, then why do we also believe in statements like “A penny saved, is a penny earned?”  In this case the belief states that we should always try to save money, even if it’s just a penny because all those pennies eventually add up to a lot of money and it’s not about the penny but rather about the mindset of being a “saver” instead of a “spender”.

Anyone who believes in this belief will cite examples of how nobody in America saves anymore and we spend way more money than we make, and that is why we’re in this huge economic downswing because we’re all living beyond our means.

Now this sounds logical, until we throw in yet another common saying, which is “You’ve got to spend money to make money”, and that really starts to screw things up.  That belief also makes sense, so what’s the truth?  How do we save money if we first need to make money which first requires us to spend money?  And how do we save money without being penny wise and pound foolish?

I’m sure you can see how the “opposing opinion conflict” can be even more paralyzing than the “too many opinions” conflict.

Over the years I’ve become pretty good at resolving these conflicts in my mind.  Every time I read a book or take a course on anything, there is a period of adjustment afterwards where mind assimilates the new information and compares it against what I already know and I work through any conflicts to come out with more clarity than I started with.  I usually resolve any opposing opinion conflicts by using my intuition to make the final decision when my logical mind can’t decide which is truer.  If in doubt, I go with my gut.

However, what I realized yesterday is that I’ve had a pretty major “opposing opinion conflict” battling itself out in my mind for years now related to spirituality and I wasn’t even really aware of it until yesterday.

Let me explain.

Does Reality Exist or is it All Just a Dream?

If you’ve seen the movie “The Matrix”, you’ll know what one of the main ideas behind the movie is that reality isn’t really real.  The movie builds on the idea that what we consider to be reality is just an illusion.  In the movie, Neo is awakened from the computer generated world of the matrix into what we would consider the “real world”.  Of course, by the time the trilogy is over we’re left wondering if the so called “real world” that Neo was awakened to is really real, or if it’s just another illusion.

This idea that life is an illusion is not a new concept.  I’ve read new age spirituality books that talk about the concept.  I’ve read religious books that talk about the concept.  I’ve seen countless movies that explore this concept.  I’ve even read books and seen DVD’s from some of the brightest minds in quantum physics that also talk about this concept from the scientific point of view.  What these quantum physicists confirm is basically what spiritual teachers have been teaching for thousands of years – that this “reality” that we supposedly live in is just an illusion.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistant one.”

– Albert Einstein

Ok, so if reality and life is just an illusion, a dream, then what is the meaning to life when it is just an illusion?

“Nothing I see in this room means anything.”

– Part 1, Lesson 1, A Course in Miracles.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that nothing in this life means anything.  It is all an illusion.  A dream.  It is not truth, so it cannot have any meaning because it doesn’t exist.

It is this kind of thinking, this kind of energy, this kind of philosophy that summarizes the first “Spiritual Path” that I’ve been exposed to.  The path of awakening.  The path of realizing that nothing in this reality is real.  That everything is not only an illusion, but that it is also meaningless.

It is the path of transcendence, the path of letting go of the three dimensional life we live here on earth and trying to transcend it to a new way of living.  It is a path of letting go of “meaningless” material things and embracing spirituality.

I will call this the path of “Transcending Life”.

Although I believe the “Transcending Life” path to be true, I consider it only a half-truth.

Let me explain.

The Real Meaning Behind this Illusionary Reality

There is another path that is seemingly at odds with the first path.  The second lesson in A Course in Miracles hints towards this path:

“I have given everything I see in this room all the meaning that it has for me.”

– Part 1, Lesson 2, A Course in Miracles.

This second spiritual path, which I’ll call the “Mastering Life” path, acknowledges the fact that we live in an illusionary world, and that this world is but a dream.  However, this second path doesn’t use that realization to automatically assume that life itself is meaningless.  Instead it awakens us to the realization that the only thing that is real is our consciousness, and it is our consciousness that applies meaning to the three dimensional world we experience here on earth.

Because consciousness is real, the meaning that we apply to this illusion we call “reality” is real as well.  The only thing to realize is that nothing in this illusion has any meaning in and of itself, it only has the meaning that we choose to give it – consciously or unconsciously.

This “Mastering Life” path acknowledges the spiritual nature of this life we live here on earth, but instead of trying to transcend this life, it embraces our life here on earth.

For example, instead of looking at the body and declaring that it is meaningless, an illusionary shell that we should try to transcend, what if we looked at the body as a meaningful and beautiful vessel for our spirit / consciousness to reside in during this lifetime.  Instead of unconsciously attacking, destroying and abusing the body through neglect, bad diet and lack of exercise, what if we instead mastered the body?

As spiritually aware beings, we know that we are not our bodies, and I believe that it is that awareness that some of us – including myself – turn into an unconscious desire to destroy the body.  What if all the abuse and neglect we put our body through, eating crappy food, and everything else we do that is bad for us is just our way of rebelling against this “shell” we find ourselves trapped inside as spiritual beings?

What if instead of trying to transcend the body, stripping it of any meaning, we instead attempted to master the body, making it one of the most meaningful things in our earthly life?

What if we ate healthy foods, stretched, exercised and took care of our bodies instead?

The same thing can be said about our finances.  We know that money isn’t real.  We know it’s all just an illusion, and I believe many of us try to rebel against money and anything to do with our finances.  We spend money faster than we earn it.  The minute it comes into our lives, we go into a shopping frenzy trying to get rid of it.  Most of the time we spend it long before it even comes into our lives, getting into piles and piles of debt.  What better way to declare money as meaningless to us then to spend so much of it that we get into tremendous amounts of debt so that we will never have any of it no matter how much we earn, right?

Well, what if instead of rebelling against money and trying to strip away any meaning from it, we instead embraced it and poured all the meaning our consciousness could muster?

Does the thought of adding meaning to money make you uncomfortable?  Haven’t we been told that money is the root of all evil?

What if we saw building wealth as a spiritual path?  A path of mastering yet another aspect of our lives here on earth, no different than mastering the ability to take care of your body, or driving a car.

What if we did that in every area of our lives?  What if instead of trying to strip away all meaning from everything here on earth as a way to supposedly “Transcend Life”, we instead put our energy towards “Mastering Life”?  Instead of taking away meaning, we added meaning to those things that our consciousness felt inspired to add meaning to?

What if this “dream” we’re in is not some accidental mistake that we should try to awaken from as quickly as possible, but rather a deliberate “dream” that we can enjoy the experience of.

Examples from Fantasy Worlds

Let’s dive into a couple of quick examples from some of the fantasy worlds we’ve created here on earth recently.  One of those examples is going to a movie.

When we go to a movie, we know that the movie we are watching is fake.  We know that those are not real situations that we are watching on the big screen – they are actors playing their roles.  We know that there are computer generated special effects being added, and we know that those actors aren’t really flying across the screen.  However, can we not enjoy a movie even if we know that what we are seeing is not “real”?

Have you ever been to see a movie that you really enjoyed but you went to see it with some idiot who wouldn’t shut up about how the movie was so fake?  Didn’t you just want to slap that person for not seeing past the special effects and actually experiencing the story itself?  Are you doing the same thing with your own life?

Another example of this is video games.  I used to play World of Warcraft quite regularly.  I’ve always enjoyed playing video games and in my opinion World of Warcraft is the most engaging, immersive and addicting game ever produced.  I have spent hundreds of hours playing that game, and I know people who have spent thousands of hours playing it.

Now, here’s the thing – the character you play inside the game of Warcraft is not “real”.  It’s a digital avatar that is made up of pixels.  So why do so many people spend thousands of hours leveling up “fake” characters?  Why do they get all excited about getting a “fake” piece of armor?

Well, as I mentioned before, technically speaking nothing is real.  Nothing has any meaning to it.  So while some may argue that playing a game of tennis in “real life” is a real experience, while playing the game of Warcraft is “fake” – I disagree.  Neither of them are real.  They are both only as real as the meaning you associate with them.

Consider this.  One year a friend of mine was rather broke, but he wanted to give me a gift for Christmas.  This was back in the day when I used to play Warcraft a lot, so for Christmas that year he gave me a set of daggers inside the game of Warcraft.  He mailed them to me using the game’s internal mailing system with a Merry Christmas note attached.  What’s funny is that out of all the gifts I got for Christmas that year, his is one of the only ones I remember.  Those daggers may not have held any “real” value in the “real” world, but there was a lot of meaning to them.  I have also received gifts of Warcraft gold before and other pieces of armor.  All of them had meaning to me.

Mastering Life as a Way to Transcend Life

What I realized yesterday was that I had some major conflicts inside my mind.  A part of me was totally focused on the transcending life path.  Every time I tried to do something in my life, I would always have this voice in the back of my mind telling me that it was a meaningless pursuit.

For example, if I wanted to lose weight, I could do it as part of a competition or some other process I attached meaning to, but as far as doing it just to be healthy I saw no meaning to it – at least not at the subconscious level.  I was unconsciously running the “Transcending Life” subroutine in my mind.

Same thing with money.  I know when I’m focused and mentally clear, I have the ability to manifest money very quickly, but then a part of me keeps sabotaging my success around money, because unconsciously I was fighting the idea of having lots of money.  It’s like part of my mind kept wanting to get rid of money from my life before I could attach any meaning to it, because money isn’t “real” so I shouldn’t attach meaning to it right?  That wouldn’t be very “spiritual” now would it?

I even stopped playing video games because I started seeing them as meaningless.  I used to want to drive a nice car, but then I convinced myself that cars are meaningless too.  Well, if you start thinking this way then your entire life becomes meaningless.

When I burned my goals last week I wanted to see what it felt like to let go of the past like that, and I really loved it.  It was so awesome to let go of old desires and to embrace new ones.

However, when I sat down to really think about what I wanted to accomplish in my life moving forward, I ran into this challenge of seeing no meaning in anything.  I tried thinking about my health, finances, relationships, spirituality, personal development etc. and I tried thinking about what I would want to accomplish in those areas of my life but I couldn’t think of anything that had any meaning to me.

It felt like I had effectively stripped away any meaning to my life.  That did not feel like the right place to be.  Intuitively I knew that this “Transcending Life” path was not the right path for me – spiritually or otherwise.  I decided to meditate on it throughout the day and after about 6 hours of sleeping and meditating, I finally had the insights I am sharing with your right now.

Maybe I needed to go through this process of eliminating any meaning to money, health, fun, and other parts of my life.  But now that I’ve been there, I know that it’s time for me to embrace a different path.  One where I’m not trying to “wake up” from this dream reality, but rather to embrace it and love life and the meaning I choose to give to its different parts.

Besides making the decision to attach meaning and master different areas of my life such as improving my health, building wealth and the other areas I mentioned before, I have also realized that even the more “Fantasy World” based aspects of my life such as playing video games, painting Warhammer figurines, or even playing with RC Cars have just as much meaning in my life as I give to them.

At different points in my life I used to enjoy those kinds of activities, but I mostly cut them out of my life because they weren’t “real” and therefore I started to see them as a waste of time which could be spent on more important/realistic things, but now I see that there is no such thing as “more realistic”.

The only thing that is real is consciousness.  Everything else is an illusion.  Our consciousness can make something real by giving it meaning, but there is no such thing as something being “more real” than something else.  Doing your taxes isn’t any more real or any more meaningful than watching a movie.  Unless of course you choose it to be.

So what I’ve decided to do now is to live my life according to the “Mastering Life” path.  Instead of shying away from life, to embrace it and live it to the fullest.  I believe that this is the true path to transcend life anyways – by mastering it.

Here’s a quote from a journal entry I made yesterday shortly after coming out of meditation.  I don’t know where it came from, but it spoke to me at a core level, and it warmed my heart.  Even reading it now, it makes me want to cry.  Maybe it will speak to some of you as well.

“What if the way to transcend life is to master it?  To embrace the fullness of life from every angle, the good and the bad, the meaningful and the meaningless, to embrace the pleasure and the pain, to live life like it means something.”

A couple of minutes ago I took out a piece of paper and wrote down every goal I have ever wanted for my life which I haven’t yet accomplished. Anything I could possibly remember ever wanting.

And then I crumpled up the piece of paper and burned it.

As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts, I’ve had a lot of alone time since my wife went on her trip across Atlantic Canada last month and I’ve been doing a lot of meditating and inner work.

In my last post I wrote about going through what I called a psychic flu, and I now believe it was a releasing process of letting go of an old version of me that isn’t me anymore. I believe I’ve gone through some kind of expansion process and I’m still trying to wrap my brain around what’s happening.

It’s like my energy has shifted, but my mind still needs to catch up.

Even though I have felt most of the changes in the last few days, I think this actually started a few months ago when I attended the PSYCH-K® course with Sandra Wallin.

Letting Go of an Old Personal Development Paradigm

I’ve been a student of personal development for over 15 years now and I’ve got a library of well over 1,000 books on different personal development topics. Once you read that many books on any topic a set of predictable patterns emerges as there is only one truth and only so many ways to describe it.

One common theme amongst most of the books I’ve read, especially some of the more recent ones related to building wealth and spirituality / Law of Attraction is that a lot of personal development gurus teach that anything a person can believe, they can achieve.

The whole premise behind the Law of Attraction is that you can attract anything in your life if you can align your energy with the belief of having that thing.

Lack of belief is the missing element in most personal development formulas for achieving anything. All the formulas vary slightly in method, but they all revolve around the central concept of belief.

Belief is an extension of faith, which Napoleon Hill states is the “starting point of accumulation of all riches”. Napoleon Hill also states that affirmations and visualizations are the keys to creating that state we call “faith”.

Different personal development guru’s have different formulas for building belief, and many of them use some form of affirmations to accomplish this task. The bottom line is that any inspired action you take towards a goal without belief/faith isn’t going to produce the desired outcome, however by having belief and faith, even the smallest amounts of inspired action (and sometimes even no action) produces results.

Ask any guru of any system why a person isn’t getting results even if they are seemingly taking the same action steps as someone else who is getting results, and it will always boil down to one thing – lack of belief.

In the past one of the main tools I have experimented with and used myself to build belief was affirmations and visualization. This is because until I learned PSYCH-K®, I had no better tool.

Even though affirmations have worked for me in my life, in our PSYCH-K® training we were taught that they have been tested to work only 20% of the time. After reflecting on that teaching it rang true for me from direct personal experience. In some instances affirmations worked, while in others – not so much.

The promise behind PSYCH-K® is that it is a technology / process where you are able to eliminate disempowering beliefs and replace them with empowering ones using a method that is not only much more effective than affirmations, but also testable to determine if the belief has been balanced or not.

Meaning, with affirmations you simply say your affirmations and then hope that they have shifted your beliefs, whereas with PSYCH-K® you actually test to see if the process is complete. If not, you can go back and re-run the process until it is complete if it is safe and appropriate to do so at that time.

I’m not going to dive too much into PSYCH-K®, as I covered some of it in a previous post, but I now live in a totally different paradigm, where lack of belief is no longer the ultimate problem – since I now have a tool at my disposal to change any belief I want.

It took me over a month to even process that mentally, but once I realized the implications of this ability, I understood that life will never be the same again – kind of like the day when proved to myself that the Law of Attraction isn’t just some crazy hocus pocus.

With “lack of belief” no longer the central problem, I had to let go of that paradigm.

With Belief, Anything is Possible

Realizing that I couldn’t blame my lack of belief as the problem to any area of my life anymore was horrifying at first.

If you truly believed that you can have anything you want in your life, what would you want?

I don’t know if it’s because I’m a scanner, but that is such a hard question for me to answer. I get the feeling I’m not the only one with this challenge.

Enter the Planning Problem

Once I realized I could do anything and have anything I ever wanted, I started looking through my old goal lists and trying to figure out which of these goals I wanted to attack first.

This is where I ran into a lot of challenges.

When I looked at my old goal list I no longer saw a list of cool things I wanted to accomplish, I saw a list of misunderstood desires.

For example, one of the things that I have always wanted to have is a personal basketball court on my property. I wanted to be able to invite my friends over to hang out and shoot hoops on a nice sunny day. For some people it’s a swimming pool, for me it was a basketball court.

Now, I started to think about that goal and I realized a few things. First of all, on my 5 acre property I have plenty enough room to build a basketball court right now. I could level a piece of the property, and lay down an asphalt court. It probably wouldn’t even be that expensive, so why haven’t I done it yet?

Well, when I really thought about this goal, I remember initially having this desire back in high-school when I used to play basketball with my friends on a daily basis. I dreamed about one day being able to play on my own court, but that was over 15 years ago!

In reality though, I don’t even play basketball anymore. And neither do my friends. It was a period of time in my high-school days that I really enjoyed and this goal of having my own basketball court just kind of stuck on my goal list all these years amongst many others.

Maybe one day I’ll start playing basketball again, but at this point in time in my life I’m not drawn to it at all, and if I was there wouldn’t be anything to stop me from playing. There is an elementary school with a basketball court 5 minutes away from my house so I could go and play there today if I wanted to.

As I went through my goal list from all these years I looked at each goal and I realized that behind each goal lay a secondary benefit or ulterior motive that wasn’t important to me anymore. Using the basketball goal as an example again, it wasn’t really the game of basketball that I enjoyed so much – but rather the fun of competing with my friends at something.

Years after graduating from high-school, I remember having X-Box parties where we would compete in playing Halo on a LAN. Sometimes there would be six or eight of us playing in teams and having a blast. Halo became the new “basketball” for me. Same energy, same competition, same fun, just a different “sport”.

Years later Halo got boring and then it became World of Warcraft. I remember playing for hours with a dozen of my friends. See the similarity?

Here’s my point. It’s not the basketball court I wanted, it was the energy/emotions/fun I had while playing basketball with my friends. The cool thing is that this type of energy is available to me right now, as soon as I realize it’s not wrapped up in a package called “basketball” or even “Halo” or “World of Warcraft”.

I used this basketball example because it’s so easy to understand for most people. In fact you might be thinking “Duh Paul!” to yourself right now. Meaning, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t see this before.

Well, the thing is that it’s not just this basketball goal that I’m talking about here. It’s EVERY goal that I had on my list.

Long term goals from 15 years ago, and even short term goals I set a few months ago. I just don’t see them the same way anymore. I see through them now and realize that they are quite meaningless in themselves. The real thing I seek is the experiences, feelings, emotions, and energy behind the goals and not the goals themselves.

Coming to this realization screwed everything up, as I had to go back and try to set new goals, ones that hopefully have more meaning and aren’t simply a means to an end.

However, this turned out to be an impossible task. I’m seeing through things so much more now that it is becoming almost impossible to plan anything. I keep trying to make some kind of long term plans – even just for this week or this month, but I can’t stick to anything. The fluidity of life changes so quickly for me now that my mind can’t plan through all the possibilities.

It feels like I’m trying to play five thousand games of chess at once when I try to plan anything, because everything is interdependent on everything else.

If Not Planning, Then What?

After my Psychic Flu on Saturday, I woke up on Sunday inspired and excited. I had zero plans for that Sunday and I woke up and just started working on whatever I felt inspired to work on. I had this urge to work on a new design for my wives Blog, so I worked on that for a while. Things just flowed for me, one after another and by the end of the day I had accomplished more that I had in weeks – all without planning to do a single thing.

You’d think that I would learn something from this, but for the past couple of days I’ve regressed back to trying to plan things again – especially long term, trying to decide what I want to do with my life and what I want to work on first. This has left me frustrated, annoyed and totally unproductive.

This is when I got the intuitive idea to burn all my goals. To let them go. To release myself from my past. To allow my spirit to dictate my future, instead of trying to cling on to old misguided desires.

I had a similar vision come to me in the past with one of my coaching students, where I saw a vision of her writing down her old identity and burning it in a cleansing ceremony to let go of her old self. In my instance it was about my goals.

Burning My Goals

Deciding to follow my intuition, I wrote down all my previous goals on a piece of paper. I wrote a lot of them in shorthand, or using acronyms which I knew the meaning of so as to fit everything on one piece of paper.

I also had the intuitive feeling that I should burn the list along with some Sage. Burning Sage is an ancient purification ritual used by the Celts, Druids and Native Americans. I felt drawn to burn sage.

I also felt drawn to make a video of the ceremony and to take some pictures for my Blog as a way to remember this day when I let go of all my past goals and plans, to instead embrace a new way of following my intuition to see where it takes me.

I honestly don’t know how long I will stick to this, and if I’ll go back to setting new goals and plans as I’ve always done, but in this moment I feel so much lighter and more free that I don’t really care about what happens in the future.  For the first time since I was a little kid, I don’t have any goals.  It feels really weird and cool at the same time.

Here’s a video clip of my goal-burning ceremony:

Now, what am I going to have for dinner now…

All entrepreneurs know that when they get sick with some kind of flu or other physical ailment, it kills their productivity.

“I don’t have time to be sick” is a common mantra of most entrepreneurs.

However, getting sick physically isn’t the only type of productivity killer that entrepreneurs face.

Yesterday I woke up in the morning feeling “off”, just like when you wake up with a sore throat or a sore back or some other flu-like symptom.  However, I had no physical symptoms.  I wasn’t sick in any way – at least not physically speaking.

What I had yesterday, I can only describe as being “spiritually sick”, “spiritually disconnected” or having a “psychic flu”.  I felt it when I first woke up, but it went away for about an hour or so while I was doing my coaching session with one of my students.  Whenever I do coaching/mentoring with students I always feel totally connected to source and spirit.

Shortly after my coaching session though, I felt disconnected once again.

This is not the first time this has happened to me, and I’m becoming more aware of it each time it happens so that I can try to deal with the situation instead of feeling frustrated.

Here are some of the symptoms I associate with being “spiritually sick” or “spiritually disconnected”:

• Feeling lethargic, uninspired to do anything
• Simple problems seem difficult to solve
• Bleak future outlook
• Symptoms similar to depression
• Physical Cravings (food, sugar, etc.)
• Lack of energy
• Don’t want to be around others
• Craving sleep
• Feeling spiritually disconnected

I am not sure if this has been happening to me more often lately due to the fact that I’ve been working on re-opening up my Clairsentient abilities, or if I’m just more aware of these feeling and realizing what they are instead of just blaming them on a “bad day”.

One of the biggest growth experiences I’ve been going through in the last month has been my growth in self-awareness ever since my wife, Drea, left on her trip across Atlantic Canada over a month ago.

Since Drea left on her trip I’ve had a lot of alone time, and it’s been an amazing experience for me because I’ve been able to really tune in and connect with my own energy.  I don’t think many people take the time to create alone time in their lives very often so they go through life largely unaware of their own energy, compared to the energy of others.

Now that I’ve become aware of what my energy feels like, it’s very easy for me to spot when I’m not connected to it – such as was the case yesterday.

I am still not sure why it happened, but I have a feeling that I “picked up” someone else’s energy, kind of like catching the flu from someone.

The energy I felt yesterday was definitely not mine.  Except for maybe enjoying food, my energy is exactly the opposite of all the ones I listed above.  I usually have a lot of energy, no problems solving complex problems, a positive future outlook, no symptoms of depression, lots of energy, like to connect with others, stay up late at night and feel spiritually connected.  Yesterday, it was the exact opposite of that.

By around noon I knew that something was off.  I actually had a scheduled psychic reading with my good friend Chris Landry at 1pm and was hoping that his reading might help me out.  Although the reading was insightful as always, I felt “off” and disconnected during the reading as well.

Afterwords I sat down and wanted to make a list of things to work on which I was previously looking forward to doing this Saturday, but when it came time to do them I had zero desire to even think about them.

Instead I decided to make something to eat and to watch some TV.

After watching TV for a while, I decided to try meditating a bit to see if I could gain some insight that way.  I ended up falling asleep instead, and waking up even more irritated.  Then once again I felt hungry, craving some kind of quick snack, and just wanted to plump my butt on the couch and do nothing but watch TV.

I did that for a while again, and then decided to try writing in my journal as that sometimes helps to clear my energy.  That didn’t help either, so instead I just resigned myself to watching pointless television and eating whatever I could find in the house.

Later on in the evening, around 2am my time I got a message from my wife to go online.  She woke up early in the morning (6am her time) and wanted to chat with me on Skype.  I told her about my day and she suggested that I listen to a meditation I received a long time ago from Angela Bear called the “Expansion” meditation.

I was exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep, but since I trust my wives intuitive insight I decided to listen to the meditation prior to falling asleep.  The meditation itself was good, but much the same way I felt during my reading with Chris, I just didn’t connect with it at all.  It didn’t make me feel better, or any more connected spiritually than I have been all day.

After that I just decided to roll over, turn off the lights and go to sleep – short of my morning coaching session with one of my students – having accomplished absolutely nothing worthwhile the whole day.

Waking Up This Morning

Waking up this morning was a totally different experience.  I woke up feeling connected, energized, excited, happy, and ready to take on the world.  I jumped out of bed and was ready to kick-ass and take names. (Maybe the meditation did work?)

I felt inspired to work on my wives site, so I did a marathon session working on her new design, re-jigging some of her SEO settings, installing plugins, and just doing some overall super-cool ninja stuff to make her site better.

Then I took a quick break, switched gears, worked on publishing some articles for some SEO projects I’m working on, mowed the lawn, did some errands, cleaned the kitchen, read some blogs, posted some comments, and wrote this post.

My productivity today was through the roof.  It’s like today I wasn’t even the same person I was yesterday, and there is absolutely no physical or mental/logical reason for it.  All I can explain it as is an energy thing.

Whatever this thing was that I woke up with yesterday morning, I’m determined to figure it out and stop it from happening again.

I am thinking that it may have been some kind of residual energy I picked up from someone while I was out on Friday night (and no I wasn’t out drinking), or perhaps something I tuned into during the night.  Whatever it was, it sucked and I just wanted to share this post with others in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

I realize that catching a psychic / spiritual “flu” is a strange topic to discuss on a Blog, but I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one who’s suffered from this before.

Who else has had “psychic flu” before?

Imagine for a second what your life would be like if you have never had a dream.

Imagine waking up every morning, unable to ever recall having a dream.  Imagine if the only thing you ever saw was blackness before falling asleep and then waking up, without ever experiencing a dream.

If you went through your entire life like this, what would you think about all these people out there who were supposedly claiming that during their sleep they have all kinds of adventures while their bodies lye in bed.

The concept of dreaming would probably be very foreign to you.  You wouldn’t be able to understand how a dream happens.  Even if you believed it was possible, you wouldn’t know how real a dream can be.  You may assume that at best, a dream may appear like a movie in your mind but you may not realize that in a dream you actually participate in the events that transpire.

In a dream, when you run your legs move.  When you’re scared, you experience the symptoms of fear.  When you touch something in a dream, you can feel it’s texture.  When someone sings a song in a dream, you hear it with your ears – even though your bedroom is completely silent. It’s not like a movie at all.  It’s a total immersion experience.

Similarly, those who have never experienced a lucid dream – where you are in a dream, but consciously aware of that it is a dream – may not believe that such a thing is possible.  It’s hard to believe in anything that we can’t experience with our five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.

Cellular waves, for example are invisible to our senses except when we have a cellular telephone that converts such waves into a format that our sense of hearing can hear.

For most of us, everything we experience has to be identified and labeled within the context of the five senses in order to be understood.  We convert things that aren’t perceivable by the five senses into thing that can, using instruments we’ve built to expand our awareness.  For example, our eyes can’t see atomic particles or individual cells of a body, so we invent microscopes that make it possible for us to see that which is too small to see with the naked eye.

Beyond the Five Senses

Much the same way as it’s difficult to explain the experience of having a dream to someone who’s never had one, explaining intuitive/psychic abilities to someone who’s never experienced them is rather difficult.

Most people who have never had a psychic experience will dismiss it as hogwash or quackery to talk about such things.  Or, depending on their religious or spiritual views, may even consider the psychic senses as the work of evil spirits.  Some psychologists may interpret it as some kind of mental illness or illusion.

To me that’s like saying that having a dream is the work of the devil or some kind of mental defect.  If the world out there decided tomorrow that dreaming was against religious rules and anyone who claimed to have dreams should be admitted for psychological evaluation, would you stop dreaming?

Psychic abilities are very similar to that.  For those of us who have awakened to our multisensory perception and who can “see” beyond the five primary senses, intuitive abilities are real.  We experience them and know they are real, even though it’s very difficult to prove their existence to someone who doesn’t believe.  Not that we should ever bother attempting such a feat.  Let the skeptics stay skeptical.

Multisensory Perception

Having the ability to “see” beyond the five senses, usually comes through one of the psychic senses of:

• Clairvoyance – (Seeing)
• Clairaudience – (Hearing)
• Clairsentience – (Feeling)
• Claircognizance – (Knowing)

Most people who develop psychic abilities have one or more senses that they are stronger at compared to others.  My strongest senses are claircognizance and clairsentience, meaning I “know” things I shouldn’t know according to the five senses and “feel” things I shouldn’t be feeling according to the five senses.

I have had flashes of clairvoyance and clairaudience, but those are not as common for me as the other two senses.

The interesting thing about the psychic senses is that they don’t replace your other five senses, they simply add to them.  It’s kind of like the difference between a black and white TV and a color TV.  The picture is still there on a color TV, except now it’s in color.  Another way to think about it is like the difference between mono sound compared to digital surround sound.  Both produce sound, but one has more “information” contained in it.

More people are awakening to their extra senses every day, and I believe that within a few generations humanity will take such things for granted.

For now though, we live in a world mostly dominated by the five senses and besides it being common for a person to admit that they had a “gut feeling” or an “intuitive sense” about something, extra sensory abilities are not yet accepted as something real and tangible by most people.

Things are beginning to shift and change though, and at a faster and faster pace.

Have you explored the possibility that you may have extra sensory abilities?  Do you still explain them away as “intuitive hunches” or “lucky guesses”?

Are you ready to experience your first dream?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting and raising my awareness around how people use their minds to process events and information that comes at them in their day-to-day life.

Many of us are under the illusion that the information that our mind processed represents reality.  Meaning, we believe that our mind’s representation of the world out there is the “true” and “real” representation of what happened.  When we encounter someone that differs in opinion, we automatically think that they are delusional.  It’s hard to accept that our mind is the one that has an unrealistic representation of reality.

Our Minds Play Tricks On Us

Let’s start with something very simple.  There is no trickery here, just something unusual you may learn about your mind.  Count the number of times that you see the letter “F” in the following statement:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…

Ok, once you’ve got the number leave a comment with your guess after reading the rest of the article.

Our Minds Distort Things

I was watching a show on TV today which had a cooking competition between four regular people that were selected to compete on the show.  Each contestant brought a recipe from home and cooked it for a panel of judges.

After the contestants finished cooking their dishes, they went in front the panel of judges and listened to their feedback.

It was really interesting to hear the judges make their comments, and to hear how the contestants heard those comments.  Meaning, the judges made a bunch of statements, and then the camera crew interviewed the contestants a few minutes later in the back room to ask them what the judges said.

The first contestant went in front of the judges, and the judges said three or four positive things about the dish and two or three negative things about the dish.  When the camera crew asked the contestant what the judges said, he basically said that they made some positive comments and that’s all he could hope for.

The second contestant went in front of the judges, and once again the judges said three or four positive things about the dish and made a couple of negative comments as well.  When the camera crew asked this contestant what the judges said, he basically said that the judges were not the right people to judge his food because they aren’t the typical type of people he cooks for.  In other words, he wouldn’t accept any criticism.  It wasn’t his food that wasn’t cooked right, it was the judges who were wrong.

The third contestant went in front of the judges and in this instance they basically gave her half a dozen positive comments, and the only criticism they told her was that the steak could have been cooked a little bit less, but it tasted really good either way.  This was the best feedback the judges gave out of everyone, but guess what happened when the camera crew asked her what the judges said?  When the camera crew asked, all she said was that the judges told her that the steak was overcooked.  She completely discounted all the positive feedback she got, and her mind focused strictly on the one single semi-negative comment they gave her.

There was a second round to the competition and I watched to see if the contestants would have the same reactions.  Sure enough, each one of them reacted the same way.  The first guy was happy to get any positive feedback, just like the first time around.  The second guy blamed the judges for his mistakes, claiming that their palettes must be wrong.  The third lady once again got lots of positive feedback, and one piece of slight criticism and all she focused on was the negative thing.

Incidentally, she ended up winning the competition too.

If you ever get a chance to watch something like this on TV, listen very carefully to what a judge says and then listen to how people interpret what judges say.  It’s very revealing when you hear something like that.

You see, our minds are capable of distorting the sensory input that we get to match the mind’s pre-conceived notions.  If you start to pay attention to how other people’s minds distort reality it may shine a light on your own mind as you may be doing the same thing.

Our Minds Make Excuses

One of the great things of working with a mentor one-on-one is that a good mentor will hear the excuses our minds create for us even when we can’t hear them.  In reality, I would venture a guess that we can’t hear 98% of the excuses we make because we are stuck within our own minds.

Just last week I was on a call with a mentor of mine and he caught me several times making excuses that weren’t true.  Once I am aware of what I’m saying, I don’t buy the excuses either but in most cases we can’t even hear them.  They just come out of mouths and we don’t second guess them.

As a mentor, it’s so easy to hear that with my students.  Now, I’m not saying that the excuses they make aren’t valid.  In some cases they are very valid, but that’s not the point.  The point is that in almost all cases they aren’t even aware that they are making an excuse.  By using specific follow up questions I can usually determine with a lot of accuracy whether it’s an excuse that’s valid or if it’s just a hidden fear.

What About Your Mind?

If you raise your awareness to this by listening to and watching other people you’ll be amazed at how people’s minds filter out or distort information.  By seeing it in others, you’ll eventually start seeing it in yourself.

How do you react when someone criticizes you?  Do you make excuses?  Do you filter things out?

How do you react when someone praises you?  Do you make excuses?  Do you filter things out?

How do you react when someone wants to teach you something?  Do you listen?  Do you filter?  Do you only accept things you already believe to be true?

How do you react when someone asks you a question?  Do you answer accurately?  Do you answer ambiguously?

You Are Not Your Mind

One of the biggest reasons I find people defending their minds even when deep down they know they are wrong, is because a lot of people believe that they are their minds.  You are not your mind.  You are a being that is far greater than your mind.

By truly realizing that, the need to defend your mind lessens because you no longer feel like you’re defending your whole being.  I know people who are so disconnected from who they really are, thinking instead that they are their mind, that they never ever admit being wrong in an argument and won’t ever question their minds in private.

Try This Test

Here’s a really cool way to catch your mind lying to you.  If you keep a daily journal, this exercise will be even easier for you.  If you don’t keep a daily journal, start a journal today and write your thoughts in it for a couple of weeks.  Once you’ve got a few weeks of “data” in your journal, go back a few weeks and read some of the things you’ve written.

While you’re reading, ask yourself questions like “Is this true?”  and “Was I right about this?” and “Is there another way I could have seen this?”

See, your current thoughts are hard to argue with because you’re emotionally attached to them.  However, when you read older journal entries, from at least several weeks back the emotional attachment to those thoughts usually lessens.  You are then much more realistically able to see flaws in your thinking.

Look for words such as “should”, “must”, “never” and “always” and question their validity.  For example, if a couple of weeks ago you were trying to learn some kind of new skill and you wrote in your journal “I’ll never learn this”, was that an accurate statement?  Were you in fact able to learn that skill?  Was it really impossible for you?

Another way to test your mind is to record some of your conversations.  I used to record some of my calls with my mentor (with his permission) and when I heard them back a few months later I was totally able to pick up places where my mind wasn’t being very accurate.

Why Would You Want to Question Your Mind?

So what’s the point of questioning your mind anyways?  So what if you do find flaws and inaccuracies in your thinking?  Does it mean that you should ditch your mind and just think you’re stupid or wrong all the time? No.

The whole point of not fully trusting everything your mind throws at you is for the purpose of refinement.  By seeing where your mind went wrong, you can refine it and make it a more accurate interpreter of reality.  When we are kids we take it for granted that we don’t know everything.  We listen to our parents, teachers and others and we don’t get very upset when we learn something new or when our understanding of reality is corrected.

However, as adults we often get into rigid ways of thinking, believing that we are right and everyone else is wrong.  When someone challenges our thinking we defend our minds to the death, instead of even considering the possibility that the other person might have a point.

Constantly defending your mind, your beliefs, your point of view can be very tiring, even exhausting.  It’s much easier to accept and even expect that our minds are not always accurate.  In fact, I don’t think there is a human being on this planet who is always right, so why pretend?

I have finally finished the “theory” side of the Automatic Intuition course I have been studying for the last couple of weeks.  Automatic Intuition is a Professional Intuitive Training, Certification & Mentoring Program created by Slade Roberson of ShiftYourSpirits.com.

In short, the course teaches a format for doing professional psychic readings.  The process is taught through a home-study course that combines written text in the form of a work-book, an attunement into the Universal Collective Intelligence / Akashic Records, audio lectures as well as personal one-on-one mentoring calls with Slade himself who has been doing psychic readings professionally for several years now.

In the last couple of weeks I have completed my attunement, reading and digesting the workbook, listening to all the audio lectures and had my first mentoring session with Slade.

With the “theory” side of he process under my belt, I felt that it was now time for me to get my feet wet and to move into the practical side of actually starting to do readings.

So, this afternoon I sat down, did a short meditation and proceeded to do my first “official” full length reading.  I have previously done short “mini-readings” with another mentor of mine (Chris Landry) as a warm up and confidence builder, but this was my first full on focused reading as taught in the Automatic Intuition course.

I was slightly nervous, but mostly just excited at the same time.  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised as to how quickly and easily the information began flowing for me.  It took me about an hour to complete the first part of the reading where I just connect and write down everything that comes through.    I was amazed at how much detail and information came through.  I was able to get the client’s spirit guide name, gender and a description as well as many other details.

It then took me approximately another five hours to synthesize and assemble the information into a cohesive package which I sent out to my first practice client.  There is no way it’s going to take me that long to do future readings.  It just took that long because it is my first time, I had to refer to the course materials to double check specific references and to create the format and template for the written reading.

By the time the reading was done I was wiped, but really excited about what the finished product came out as.  Hopefully it resonates with my practice client as well.

I’ve got about half a dozen more practice readings ready to roll as well which is good.  Now it’s just a matter of making time to complete them all.

I have been finding that my intuitive development has been greatly sped up by working with mentors.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Karate Kid, you probably remember when Daniel was trying to learn Karate from a book.  Yes a book can teach you things like techniques, vocabulary, terms and concepts, but I feel that things like martial arts and psychic development can only be learned from another person.

Another example of this would be learning how to ride a bike, drive a car or to swim.  You can’t learn these types of skills by reading about them or even by watching videos about them.

The way I see it, if you want to develop your Psychic abilities, there are two ways go:

1. Personal experimentation, through a lot of trial and error.
2. Working with a mentor who can guide you as you personally experiment and learn.

Over the last 3 years I’ve worked with several “spiritual mentors” to help me connect to my intuitive abilities and develop them further.  I think finding the right mentor for you is very important, and I think all the different Psychics and spiritual teachers out there all have very unique gifts and abilities.

In some instances I’ve been drawn to work with one teacher and then after a while it no longer resonates with me to keep working with them.  It doesn’t mean their mentoring wasn’t good, it’s just that I think we all need different things at different times.  Once a spiritual mentor helps you to reach another level, you may be guided to find another mentor to work with for your next step.

Working with a mentor is kind of like walking down a dark path and having someone in front of you with a lantern shining a light so that you know where you’re going.

Currently I’m working with two mentors.  One is Chris Landry from Spirituality-In-You.Net and the other is Slade Roberson from Shift Your Spirits.

I’ve been working with Chris for a few months now and really enjoy our sessions together.  Chris has been very helpful in helping me to build up my “psychic confidence”, and has opened up my eyes to things about myself that I never really knew.  Chris is the fifth spiritual mentor I’ve worked with in the last three years.

I consider Slade Roberson a spiritual mentor as well, but in a different way.  Slade recently came out with an Intuitive Development home study course which I purchased and just received a few days ago.  I am just diving into it today so I haven’t really had time to immerse myself in it yet, but I’m really excited about it.  Included in the course are three mentoring/coaching sessions so that will be when Slade and I connect more formally in a student/mentor model.  For now I’ve got a lot of course material to go through and digest.

If you’ve been feeling an urge to develop your Psychic abilities, I’d strongly recommend looking for a mentor to work with.  Use your intuition to find someone that resonates with you.  Look for someone who can take you from Point A to Point B, not necessarily from Point A to Point Z.   Think baby steps.

When selecting a mentor, try not to over-think it.  Let the process of finding your mentor be one of your first intuitive development exercises.  Trust your intuition, not your logic.  For example, if you’re drawn to someone for whatever reason but your “logic” center starts making excuses of why they may not be the right mentor for you, try going with your intuition.

I believe that one of the biggest hurdles a person can experience early on in their intuitive development is dealing with the judgment and labels our society places on someone who publicly admits that they have such abilities.

It’s not easy coming out of the Psychic Closet, especially since our collective consciousness has a lot of fears around going public. I mean it wasn’t long ago that people were burned at the stake for such things.  It’s no wonder so many people have a lot of hidden fears about this.

It’s very interesting how people have cleverly hidden away their psychic abilities behind less charged phrases such as:

• “My intuition tells me that…”
• “I just have a gut feeling on this one…”
• “It just didn’t feel right to me…”
• “Somehow I just knew I should do this…”
• “A little voice in my head just told me to stay away…”
• “I had this dream about…”
• “I just had this inkling that I should tell you about…”
• etc.

These are all phrases I’ve heard most people I know say at some point in their lives, yet if you asked them point blank “Do you think you just had a Psychic impression?” they would probably say “No! I’m not saying I’m Psychic.  I just had this feeling.”

I know people who have made everything from business decisions, relationship decisions, medical decisions, career decisions to which house they’re going to buy based on nothing more than a “feeling”.  In almost all cases they listened to the “intuitive nudge” or “gut feeling” they had in direct opposition to logic or common sense.  They chose to make a decision based on this feeling or intuitive insight and it turned out to be the right decision for them.  Yet most of these same people scoff or laugh at the label of “Psychic”.

I think a lot of people still equate the word “Psychic” with a palm reader dressed like a Gypsy at the local fair who read Palm Reading for Dummies three days before the fair started, or perhaps that Jamaican lady that used to come on TV at 2am in the morning to offer you relationship advice by calling a 1-900 number.

I have nothing against palm readers at the local fair, or the Jamaican lady on TV, but there is a lot of skepticism associated with these types of “Psychics” and for good reason.  If that was the only exposure I had to Psychics and Psychic abilities I’d label and judge them too.  In fact, I used to do exactly that.

When I saw some of these Psychic hot-lines advertising on TV, my intuition told me that they were most probably scams.  The funny thing is that I had no actual proof as I’ve never called one of those hot-lines, but it was my intuition that was telling me this.  The irony of the situation was somewhat humorous.

Deep down, behind the curtain of TV Psychics I always knew that intuitive abilities did exist because I’ve personally experienced many situations in my life where my own intuitive abilities kicked in and in some occasions even saved my life.

When launching this website, I had to make a decision if I was going to register a domain name that included the word “Psychic” in it, due to all the skeptic and negative charges against that word which exist in our collective consciousness, or whether to choose a softer, more “open for interpretation” type of word such as “intuition”, “spirituality” or something of that sort.  It was actually during a meditation that my intuition told me to specifically use the word Psychic.

My intuition told me that it would take a lot more courage to connect myself directly with that label, but that it would lead to a lot of growth on my part and also help a lot more people than if I chose a “less specific” label that isn’t as charged.

I was told that using this very specific word would instantly polarize and filter my audience.  Anyone who wasn’t open minded enough to get past the label would instantly label me and my website as “scam” or “idiot” or “weird” or “crazy” and probably never visit, but at the same time I would build a much stronger connection with the growing number of people who are in the same place I am right now where they know that there’s a lot more to intuitive abilities than most people are willing to speak about publicly.

If there’s just one person out there that my site can help, who’s feeling alone, disconnected and different from their friends and family due to their unique gifts or experiences they’ve had then it’s worth it for me to take on any criticism or judgment I make have to endure due to associating myself with the “Psychic” label.

The launch of this new Blog is a big part of my decision to embrace and develop my intuitive abilities.

I’ve always felt I’ve had a strong intuition and it has helped me in various situations ranging from advancing my career goals to avoiding deadly car accidents.  However, until recently I haven’t really been using my intuition consciously for any specific reason.  I simply went about my life unaware of my intuitive abilities until a situation arose where they jumped to the surface and smacked me across the face.

The Traffic Accident Incident

One example of this happened about ten years ago when I was driving home with my Mom and younger brother.  We were heading towards an intersection down a two-lane street and all of a sudden I had this intensely strong feeling that I had to get into the left lane.  Getting into the left lane made no logical sense since the left lane had three or four cars sitting at the light all waiting to turn left.  Our destination was to go straight through the intersection, so it made logical sense to stay in the right lane so as not to get stuck in the left lane behind all the cars waiting to turn left.

This was a road I have driven every day on my way to work and every day I would be in the right lane when crossing that intersection.  On this particular day, however, I had a very strong feeling to get into the left lane and it was so strong that I just switched lanes immediately without even knowing why I did that.

Less than a minute later a pickup truck appeared behind us and I could see it in my rear view mirror.  It was heading towards us, driving erratically, but in the right lane.  Everything kind of went into slow motion for a few seconds as I watched this truck go past us in the right lane towards the intersection.

The light was red in the intersection and there was  a single vehicle stopped at the red light sitting in the right lane, and this pickup truck was heading straight for it.  I remember seeing the pickup truck accelerate towards the intersection completely oblivious to the fact that there was a stopped car in the lane ahead of it.

We watched in horror as the pickup truck slammed into the back of the stopped car, without ever hitting the brakes until after the collision happened.  As the pickup slammed into the stopped car, all the windows in the car blew out and I remember seeing little pieces of glass explode about thirty feet in the air and slowly come down like little glittering sparkles.  It all happened so quickly, just seconds after I got into the left lane but time seemed to slow down until after the accident.  I immediately called 911 and told them what happened.

Apparently the pickup truck was driven by a drunk driver who didn’t even realize he was about to smash into the car until it happened.  Luckily the lady in the car that was hit was alive, but her car was totaled and I’m sure she sustained long-term injuries.  She was driving a four door sedan, and the impact of the pickup truck hitting her car was so severe that the back seats of the car were crushed up against the front seats.  If there was anyone sitting in those back seats, surely they would have been dead.

In my car, I had my younger brother sitting in the back seat, so I’m sure you can imagine how “lucky” we felt afterwords that for some unexplained reason I decided to get into that left lane.

I’ve had other incidents similar to this that have made me aware of some form of divine protection that seems to show up in my life during situations where something like this happens.

However, even though this incident took place over ten years ago I haven’t really pursued trying to figure out exactly why I experienced this feeling and what it means until just a few years ago.  Three years ago I began working with a spiritual coach who told me that it was most likely one of my Spirit Guides coming to my aid in a time of extreme danger.  It was then that she also told me that getting help from my Spirit Guides is not something that’s limited to life and death situations.  If I wanted to, I could choose to connect with them a lot more and get their help, but it was completely my choice.

Spirituality and Personal Development

For the last 15 years I’ve been a student of personal development and I’ve read well over 1,000 books on various topics ranging from nutrition to time management to the law of attraction and everything in between.  The majority of my energy during that time was spent on the more traditional side of personal development, on topics such as finances, success strategies, entrepreneurship, etc.  However, the spiritual side of personal development has been slowly becoming a bigger and bigger part of my journey and in the last three years especially I have began to really take notice of spiritual teachings and related topics.

I’ve read numerous books on spiritual topics, worked with several spiritual teachers/coaches, had numerous Psychic/Intuitive/Spirit Guide readings, interviewed Psychics, and just generally been fascinated with everything related to Intuitive abilities.

The purpose of this Blog is for me to start documenting my journey to connect with and to develop my Intuitive abilities, and to hopefully help others who are on the same journey.

I know I’m not the only one out there hearing the call to connect more with their spiritual side so hopefully my journey can also serve as a roadmap for others as well.

I’m very excited to be launching the Blog and I’m looking forward to connecting with others on the journey.