The Time Is Now

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
~ Anne Frank

These days a lot of people seem to be holding their breath and waiting for some kind of fix for their problems, waiting for a resolution for the world’s trials or waiting for a return to “normal”. Certainly, this isn’t true for everyone, but there are those people currently beset by worry or anxiety for whom waiting does seem to be a predominant coping strategy.

For those who are waiting to be rescued and who have been in the habit of projecting happiness outside of themselves, there is a call to awaken to the opportunity of these uniquely challenging times. There is a call to be proactive and the opportunity is to stop waiting. The opportunity is to exhale, breathe into what’s going on without fear and embrace the evolutionary awakening that is going on.

The good news is that this evolutionary awakening begins with you. And it is not dependent on outer circumstances or external solutions…though favorable circumstances and solutions will surely manifest as you commit and surrender to inner work combined with inspired action.

Some strategies for transformative inner work and inspired action are:

1) When things seem out of control, control what can…control where you put your attention and awareness. Focus on what you want…not what you don’t want. Focus on what uplifts you…inspired reading, getting support from like-minded communities or wise guides. Focus on nurturing self care. Focus on FUN !

2) When times are turbulent, become a master of energy management. Take a news fast and choose to stop watching the talking heads on TV. Declare your energy field to be a complaint-free, worry-free zone. Worry can actually be a prayer for what you don’t want to create. Instead of gossip and complaining, embody the energy of kindness and compassion toward yourself and others. Choose to be happy…feel good. Choosing to feel good when life is challenging is a courageous revolutionary act that insures the flow of more to feel good about.

3) When others are singing the blues of doom and gloom, practice gratitude and appreciation for what’s working in your life. Energy follows focus and awareness of blessings begets blessings.

The time is now to realize that you always have options and your true point of power is to know that you have a choice:

Hold your breath and wait…or….exhale, breathe, take inspired action, and LIVE an awakened life worth living !!

“Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.”
~ Albert Camus

Eckhart Tolle writes in Practicing the Power of Now:

“Are you a habitual “waiter”?  How much of your life do you spend waiting?  What I call “small-scale waiting” is waiting in line at the post office, in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive, to finish work, and so on.  “Large-scale waiting” is waiting for the next vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be important, to become enlightened.  It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.

Waiting is a state of mind.  Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present.  You don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got.  With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be.  This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.

Give up waiting as a state of mind.  When you catch yourself slipping into waiting…snap out of it.  Come into the present moment.  Just be and enjoy being.  If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything.”

“When it snows, you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels.”
~ Anonymous

If ever there was a time for optimism and belief in new beginnings, it is now. Certainly these are interesting times. But, seasonally, with the advent of today’s Fall Equinox, the promise of new beginnings, new opportunities and new expansive experiences is literally in the air. It truly is a potent time for choosing to be responsible and align with what is working in your life.

It is true that we often do not have a choice about the circumstances of what happens in our life, but we do have a choice about our response to these circumstances. That is all that is meant by being responsible for your life….”choosing to respond - not react.” I am not advocating denying the feelings of your experience, but you can choose the perception of your experience. From the perspective of a chooser, any frustration, anger, worry, and even depression can be a doorway to surprising opportunities, expansive insights and true growth. In fact, what seems like a breakdown can become a breakthrough for the responsible chooser.

What does choosing to be responsible mean? Jack Canfield writes in The Success Principles that it means being responsible for “level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings….everything.” This may seem scary at first, but when you consider that you can step out of the victim/saboteur role that is the consequence of not taking responsibility and instead step into an authentic heroic empowerment role… then choosing to be responsible becomes very attractive.

Here are more suggestions from The Success Principles about how to be 100% responsible and choose positively:

• You give up all your excuses
• If you don’t like your outcomes, you change your responses
• You decide: “I’ve heard there’s going to be a recession, I’ve decided not to participate.”
• You accept that everything you experience today is the result of choices you have made in the past. Without beating yourself up, you make new life-enhancing choices. Without regrets, each day you choose to begin now.
• You know if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.
• You give up blaming and complaining
• Rather than complaining, you choose to make requests of the appropriate people and take action that will achieve your desired outcomes.
• You pay attention to “yellow alerts” - advance warnings - in the form of telltale signs, comments for others, gut instinct, or intuition that alert you to the impending danger and give you time to prevent the unwanted outcome. Alerts give you time to change your responses to life.
• You are not afraid to ask for feedback. The truth cannot harm you. You can then choose to take inspired action.
• You know that all suffering comes from believing our thoughts that don’t serve us…our limiting, conditioned beliefs.
• You slow down and pay attention. Life will always give you feedback about your behavior and your actions.
  

“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.”
~ Stephen R. Covey

Canfield goes on to write: “results don’t lie.”
Are you happy?
Are your relationships joyful?
Is there balance, beauty, comfort, and ease in your life?
Do your daily habits and work systems serve you?
Are you getting what you want?
Is your net worth increasing?
Are you healthy, fit, and pain free?

If not, then something needs to happen and that starts with you. The formula is simple: be, do and have more of what is working and try on new behaviors to see if they produce better results. The time is now to choose a life that works for you.

“Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine.”
~ Sri Aurobindo

Summer is winding down, but wouldn’t it be delicious to extend the summer energy of play and ease into every area of your life especially the area of money and prosperity? That is my invitation to you…to really believe you can have playful, uplifting, expansive experiences when it comes to money and prosperity.

Money can be a heavy topic for some. But here’s a major truth about prosperity. It is our birthright. That’s not just a nice idea or a spiritual concept. All you have to do is to contemplate the abundant nature of the Universe to understand the truth of your own nature. There is no denying that Nature is abundant. Contemplate the stars upon stars in an immense night sky or the prodigious numbers of species of plants and animals on our planet or the marvelous complexity of our own human bodies. Since Nature is everywhere, what I am proposing is that it is another word for All That Is or Source Energy. And since we are a part of the All That Is then that includes us. It is all around you and it is within you. The abundance you see everywhere reflected in nature is a mirror of your own nature. Abundance is Us.

Here’s another truth about prosperity: the energy of money is love. This is sometimes a shocking idea for those of us who are holding limiting beliefs and negative programming about money….”it’s the root of all evil”, “it doesn’t grow on trees”, “acquiring wealth is not spiritual…you sell yourself out in some way to become rich.” We want money for a better life and at the same time we fear and may even hate it. The shift in consciousness here is to open to the expansive idea that money is just an exchange of energy. It is the exchange of energy in appreciation and gratitude for services, products, and purchases that bless our lives. If money is loaned or gifted to us in some way then, again, we are blessed. These blessings are the energy of love moving through your life. And that feeling of love begins with you…opening to the truth of loving yourself enough to know that you are worthy of wealth. Self-love and money are linked. When you don’t love yourself authentically, you deny your abundant nature. To deny your abundant nature is to have your foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. That’s crazy-making.

The good news is that you can shift any fears and conundrums about money. Your point of power to do so is within. That is essentially Abraham’s message. Fundamentally, prosperity consciousness is an inside job and the key to unleashing your internal power is aligning with positive beliefs about prosperity and opening to the trust that abundance can be an effortless flow through your life.

You might agree that the idea that “prosperity is your birthright” and “money is love” are juicy….and it’s comforting to think that we have the internal power to embody these truths. But how do we get beyond being intrigued by these prosperity ideas to living them, breathing them and implementing them? How do we go from an intellectual understanding of prosperity principles to walking the talk of them?

An inspirational resource I highly recommend for attracting money and prosperity is the new book from best selling authors Esther and Jerry Hicks entitled Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness. I am especially excited about this book because the Prosperity Partnership Program is one of the sponsors !! We are very proud to be involved with the promotion of this profound book. The anticipation for this book has been so high that it had one of the largest pre-sale launches in Amazon’s history. This excerpt from the book explains why it is so important to feel good when it comes to money and the flow of abundance in all forms into your life:

“Nothing’s More Important Than That I Feel Good. . .

Whenever you are feeling less than good, if you will stop and say, Nothing is more important than that I feel good- I want to find a reason now to feel good, you will find an improved thought.

Anytime you feel negative emotion, you are in the mode of resisting something that you want, and that resistance takes its toll on you. It takes its toll on your physical body, and it takes its toll on the amount of wonderful things that you are allowing to come into your experience.”

From Money and the Law of Attraction… Learning to Attract Wealth, Health and Happiness - Esther & Jerry Hick

What I’ve learned is that no one has ever had money problem. Rather the lack of prosperity is a result of problems with our thoughts about money, our limiting beliefs about money, and our negative emotions about money. The Prosperity Partnership Program and the Abraham Hicks materials are pointing the solution. The choice to be in the easy, joyful energetic flow of money and prosperity begins with YOU. The Time is Now to make the choices necessary to feel good and be aligned with playing your way to prosperity.

“”The greatest success is successful self-acceptance.”
~ Ben Sweet

Why focus on feeling worthy with regards to wealth? Because a life lived to the fullest—including being wealthy—begins with you.

Of course, my personal belief is that there are larger forces at work to co-creatively support us in the experience of wealth and prosperity. It is therefore important to understand that Source Energy is your Source. But you are the alpha and the omega for transforming your life. You are the one who has the power to align with positive thinking. You have the capacity to compassionately monitor your emotions. You can choose to practice behaviors to enhance your life.

Most importantly, your journey to increase your trust that you truly deserve what you most desire begins with a realization. The realization is that when you love yourself just the way you are then you are a match to what you want. This acknowledgement of your inherent good means practicing extreme self care and nurturing yourself. It means discovering how authentically powerful it is to be responsible for your life. It means a willingness to let go of the old patterns of thinking and emotions that are based in shame, blame, denial or embarrassment. Honoring yourself in this way will serve you no matter whether it’s more money you want or peace of mind about the money you have.

Many people often equate their self worth with their net worth. Perhaps you are blessed to feel at peace in this regard. But more often than not, as Deborah Price writes in her book Money Magic:
“most of us feel trapped or measured by money; leaving the self alone and unaccounted for. Since we often do not feel good about our net worth, we internalize that feeling by devaluing our self worth.” And having more money may not be the answer either. I have had quite a few clients over the years who are burdened with thoughts of lack and limitation no matter how much is in their bank account. As suggested in Money Magic, equating what we have accumulated financially with our value is a painful way to live.

The truth is that no one has ever had a money problem. It is what we think about money and how we feel about having it or not having it that can cause our suffering. Our sense of worth related to money and wealth is intimately connected to the internal messages we run about ourselves. Deep down you may feel you don’t deserve what you want. You may not feel good enough, smart enough, capable enough to earn the money you want or manage it effectively. You may feel fear when it comes to paying bills and balancing your check book. You may think that money is the root of all evil. You may believe that you can’t be wealthy and be a good person or a “spiritual” person. These kinds of restrictive beliefs are often instilled by our early childhood and cultural conditioning. We must have the willingness to move beyond these stories from our programming. We are so much more than these limiting stories we tell ourselves

There is another concept that is helpful to consider in shifting your sense of worth related to money. We all have a subconscious money set point that is akin to an internal financial thermostat for how much money and success we can allow into our lives.

If deep down you are more of an energetic match for any limiting beliefs you may have about money, then the Universe can’t deliver what you desire beyond the ceiling that you’ve set for yourself based on your beliefs. Activating the universal Law of Attraction is what we are talking about here. It states that “like attracts like.” As Wayne Dyer would say: “You can’t attract prosperity and success from thinking you are poor and a failure.” Energy follows awareness and the focus of that awareness.

Whatever we put our attention upon will expand. If we focus on what’s not working and how bad we feel about ourselves, we become emotionally bankrupt and we are not a match to wealth. If we focus on what’s working in our lives and how we truly value ourselves, then that is what will expand.

When it comes to money, a very real way to be problem free is to have an intimate, loving, compassionate and honest relationship with yourself. Back up this kind of healthy self esteem with behaviors of competently taking care of your money, then you are golden. Your true worth embodied is your fundamental passport for manifesting what you most want in life and for savoring it when you have it.

Some ideas for boosting your self worth:

1) Mirror exercise (from Arnold Patent’s You Can Have It All):
Each day look in the mirror, face yourself and say out loud: ‘I unconditionally love and support myself just the way I am.’ This may seem awkward at first, but try it. It works.

2) Create your own Acknowledgement Journal (inspiration from colleague Natalie Helms):
In this journal, write down all the appreciation you receive from family, friends, colleagues, strangers. Record the stories around each compliment you receive. Allow in this recognition. Read this journal when you are feeling vulnerable.

3) Meridian tapping to release limiting beliefs (a gentle form of acupressure that you can practice yourself):
Above your left breast, feel underneath your collarbone toward your shoulder, locate the tender or sensitive spot. If you can’t readily find the spot, simply rub that area under your collar bone near the shoulder in a gentle circle with 3 fingers. While rubbing the spot, say out loud:
‘Even though I may feel I don’t deserve money and wealth, I deeply and completely love and accept myself and I forgive myself.’ Repeat this statement 3 times. Then hold the spot and breathe deeply in and out. Check within and see how you feel. Try this process as often as you like. Notice any changes in your sense of well being over time.

“What’s right with me is the starting point
What’s wrong with me is beside the point”
~Uranda

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

~ J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books

It can be tempting to be disheartened by the current climate of challenges regarding the state of the global economy, environmental concerns, the war in Iraq, political debates, and your own unique troubling personal issues. Any discontent you might be feeling can be exacerbated by the gloom and doom in our media, emails that warn that the “sky is falling” or even well meaning people in your life who want to commiserate from a glass half empty point of view.

Now I am sure there are those of you who are not feeling this way because all is well. You have anchored the experience and the feeling state that life is basically good. May you continue to be blessed and we celebrate you.

But for those of you feeling discouraged, the clarion call to inspired action that I want to stand for in these shifting times is brilliantly described in this meditative thought from Dr. Michael Beckwith (who appeared in the movie, The Secret):

“I want you to wake up today ! If you believe that you will be complete after you find the right relationship, the better job, the bigger house, that hotter investment, the accomplishment of a particular goal, you are asleep in the human dream of Maya, which is the sleep of human delusion.

Any such fulfillment is only temporary. The quest of looking for wholeness outside of yourself is not the way it works. It’s an inside job !”

Yes !! It IS an inside job and the time is now to wake up to what that means for you as an opportunity. I know it seems counter-intuitive to shift from a belief that some external solution - such as the relationship, the job, the right place to live, more money, a better looking body, etc - will fix your pain. But the truth is that to attract what you want, beyond any belief that you are unworthy, unlucky, or undeserving the greater wisdom is to shirt to a trust that you are whole already and that you are not a powerless victim of circumstance. In the face of any challenges, the key to claiming your authentic power and being masterful in the “inside out approach” to life is to be a chooser not a reactor - not going down the road of fear or despair.

It is true that we often do not have a choice about the circumstances of what happens in our life, but we do have a choice about our response to these circumstances. That is all that is meant by being responsible for your life….”the ability to respond”. I am not advocating denying the feelings of your experience, but you can choose the perception of your experience. From the perspective of a chooser, any frustration, anger, worry, and even depression can be a door way to surprising opportunities, expansive insights and true growth. In fact, what seems like a break down can become a break through.

A few weeks ago, I experienced a particularly “hard” week with a series of challenges (problematical business issues, a fender bender, difficult conversations). None of the things that happened were actually devastating but, taken all together, by the end of the week I felt beat up and emotionally drained. I was tempted to fold my tent, blame it on Mercury-in-Retrograde and retreat from the world for the weekend. But I knew that the real issue was to re-align to what was working in my life rather than focus on what was not. Instead of constricting, I allowed the difficult feelings around my week to be a wake up call to expand. So that weekend, I took the following action steps:

• I chose to go a friend’s birthday party and met lovely people with whom I had uplifting conversations.
• I chose to attend Dr. Beckwith’s Agape spiritual community for inspiration.
• I chose to recommit with renewed energy to my daily practice of meditatively going within. 
• I chose to record in my “receiving” journal what I was grateful for each day. 
• I chose to be out in nature more to remind myself about the essential abundant nature of everything.

My choices literally rebooted my life experience, and, by the following Monday, I was restored and rejuvenated, ready to optimistically be in the flow of what was happening in my experience. I knew that my choices would guarantee positive outcomes or, at the very least, create positive solutions for challenges… and it has worked out that way. My “hard” week was the best thing that has happened to me in awhile.

When you know that your point of power is to be a chooser, you won’t be seduced by discouraging worldly or personal circumstances. You are bigger than the events of your life. Rather than feeling mired in any problem, you become the solution to your life’s unfolding. You have the same choice that I did when faced with challenges… to expand rather than contract…to be a glass half full kind of person rather than succumb to doom and gloom predictions.  Essentially you say “YES” to life !!

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Get support for being a chooser in your life now !!

I included quite a few of my personal life enhancing choice strategies in my story above. And, if you want immediate tangible support to be a chooser, please join me and my colleague, Elyse Killoran, for our free live Energy Attunement session next Tuesday evening, 6/24/08, at 9:00 PM ET entitled “Being At Choice”.  Learn more here

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.” ~ Robert Fritz

“The   mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself.”
  ~ Seneca 

In my last newsletter I   talked about how author and spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle said that “life   is meant to be an adventure.” Well, I’m psyched because the adventure continues. Now that Oprah has concluded her 10-week course with Eckhart Tolle focusing on his book A New Earth: Awakening   to Your Life’s Power, she is continuing her Monday night webcasts with other well known teachers and scholars of conscious awareness ( Wayne Dyer, Jon Kabat-Zin,   Byron Katie, etc) and bringing her XM radio “Soul Series” to our computer screens. For the first interview in this series, beginning next Monday, May 12th, Oprah will be talking to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, who, at the age of 37, experienced a massive stroke and lived to speak about it. Dr. Bolte Taylor has written a book entitled A Stroke of Insight. But, like many others, I first learned of Dr. Bolte Taylor through an amazing video in which she explains her experience. The video is one of the most articulate and appropriately emotion-filled explanations of awakening to consciousness and being in your “right mind” that I have heard. Her skill as a public speaker, her unique scientific perspective, her sense of humor, deep humility and, literally, mind-blowing insights make this video truly compelling and fascinating. It is fairly long (20 minutes), but, if you haven’t viewed it already, it is well worth the time.

The link is: TED  | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)

For Dr. Bolte Taylor, her stroke was an entry point to greater awareness. In the video, being the professional  scientist that she is, she begins by setting the ground work for her presentation with an explanation of the  differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain and she uses a real brain as a prop no less. Simplistically, the theory of the brain is that the two different sides of the brain control different modes of thinking. The left brain is thought to be “logical, rational, analytical, objective, sequential, and looks at parts” while the right
brain is thought to be more “random, intuitive, creative, holistic, subjective, synthesizing and looks at whole picture (big picture)”.

Dr. Bolte Taylor then goes into a full description of her stroke beginning with “I realized I am having a stroke. How cool! How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study the brain from the inside out?” The deep insights come fast and furiously. As the left brain struggles to make sense of what’s happening to her and get help for herself, her right brain, stimulated by the stroke, gives her the expansive feeling of her spirit soaring. She describes in great detail experiencing what she calls “nirvana”. The feeling tone of this state of nirvana was profound peace and possibility. She experienced herself as the “life force power of the Universe” in a human body with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds that now understood that we have the power to choose moment by moment
how we want to BE in the world.

This was Dr. Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight and it motivated her to recover—a process which took 8 years to complete. But her impassioned message is that, like her, we can all choose to step to the right of the left brain and find peace. She feels the consciousness of the left hemisphere of the brain is that we are individual, separate from the flow, separate from each other with a solid story of an “I”.  I am Max Wellspring…a woman, a certain age, a life coach, a mother, etc. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a woman, an intellectual, a neuroanatomist. You get the idea. Dr. Bolte Taylor learned that right brain consciousness is a holistic awareness of the I AM which is inclusive and expansive. In our right minds we become aware that all that makes us human is at one with All That Is and that awakened awareness is the realization that everything is possible from a perspective of peace, flow and ease. This is the consciousness of the “peace that passeth understanding” that Eckhart Tolle referred to in the class with Oprah.

Dr. Bolte Taylor says that we all have these sub-personalities of the dual brain…right and left brain…what she calls “the we inside me.” My thought is that, ideally, we would want to be whole brained, balancing awakened, peaceful-beingness—that trusts the flow of the Universe—with inspired doing. And Dr. Bolte Taylor concludes her talk with a call to actions. She asks “what do you choose and when?”  Essentially, she is saying that the time is now to stop feeling separate and choose to step into the right-hemisphere consciousness of peace for yourself and the world.

~~ Here are some resources for staying in your “right mind” ~~

There are quite a few books on this subject, but besides Dr. Bolte Taylor’s book, you might explore:  1) A Whole New Mind…Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future by Daniel
  H. Pink
  2) The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block
  3) A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech
  4) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty EdwardsFrom a workshop entitled ”Bring Your Right Brain to Work” created by Michael C. Wagner, president of White Rabbit Group (a brand design company), there are some interesting exercises to stay in your right mind:To put pragmatism in it’s place:Stop censoring yourself with these statements:

Stop asking these questions up front:  1. How will you do it?
  2. How long will it take?
  3. How much will it cost?
  4. How will we get those people to change?
  5. How will you measure it?
  6. How are other people doing it successfully (stop comparing yourself to others)? For the business person,   try this in your next office meeting:
  Let your left brain answer these detail-oriented questions:  Who arrives late? 
  Who arrives early?
  Where do people sit? 
  Who runs the show? 
  Is it the same all the time?  Then ask your right-brain to find the patterns and ways to design positive changes.

“Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that.”
~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s
Power

At the beginning of the 10-week course that Oprah and Eckhart Tolle are currently facilitating with a focus on his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Power, Tolle said that his book is a process. It is always comforting to me to have a road map for such a process. In fact, here’s what I believe. For many of us this historic event has been a real “hero’s journey” with all the standard components that go with such a courageous undertaking. [For more about the hero's journey and it's traditional stages, check out Joseph Campbell's book A Hero with a Thousand Faces.] Even for those of you who haven’t been attracted to following the Oprah / Tolle course, understanding the road map might be interesting.

First there was the initial excitement of “answering the call” (always the first step in the heroic journey) to shift our lives in a transformational way supported by Oprah and Eckhart Tolle as each week we explored the various chapters of the book. There was quite the buzz. In the first few weeks, over 2 million people logged on or downloaded the weekly webcast. There was a willingness to at least “intend” to awaken to a deeper awareness.

For some, there may have been “the refusal of the call”—in other words this wasn’t for them. It was too much of a time commitment or it didn’t resonate.

For those of us committed to the 10 weeks, our allies on the journey were world-wide, connected by the magic of the internet. It was truly “one conversation around the world.”

Then as the journey continued, we collectively dove deeper with a discussion of the common pitfalls of the human condition in the form of the ego and what Tolle calls the pain body. Tolle defines the ego as the false sense of self (sometimes experienced as the obsessive voice in the head) based on conditioned, programmed mental concepts
fully identified with the past and the future and the world of form. Tolle’s definition of the pain body is pain that has become internalized because we have not faced a negative emotion. He describes the pain body almost as if it were an entity that can take us over when it’s activated. The pain body is made up of negativity and thrives on negative thoughts and situations.

This discussion of our egoic nature and the pain body began the next stage of the hero’s journey often referred to as “the road of trials.” At this juncture of the journey, there were many people I knew who had a melt down or two. I experienced my own healing release of old negativity and limiting beliefs in the form of an intense cold. Even Tolle and Oprah had colds.

“The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.”
~ Richard Leider Robert Byrne

But the good news is that the road of trials is never a wrong turn on the hero’s journey. In reality, it is an opportunity to let go of and surrender that which no longer serves in our lives. The promise of the road of trials is that it actually holds the keys to our healing and is the part of the journey that guarantees the shift of transformational insight that we had hoped to achieve. Tolle’s message is that bringing awareness into the present moment can diminish the egoic conditioning and the negativity of the pain body. Wisdom is birthed from exploring the stillness within. The truth of who you are is revealed in the conscious acceptance of the present moment and this truth of the awakened aliveness within us will indeed set us free.

Now in the final few weeks of the course, the energy feels lighter to me. Traditionally, in the hero’s journey, this is the time of “the return.” The invitation is to embody the insights learned so far on the journey and become a living
example of your new found wisdom in the world. This is an important part of the heroic odyssey which always involves the self-realization that everything we’ve been seeking is within us. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz we discover that what we were longing for was not over the rainbow but was always in our own back yard. Tolle’s message is that our highest primary purpose in life is the inner state of awakened awareness. He says the road map to walking the talk of this awakened awareness and then aligning with your outer unique purpose is to fully align with the present moment.

Here’s the rub though. In this week’s class, Tolle commented that many people live in a constant state of dissatisfaction, unhappy with the present moment because they are either stuck in a story of the past or they have expectations or anxiety about the future. This dissatisfaction is the main reason for being out of an alignment
between your inner, awakened purpose and an outer purpose in which all that you want to manifest easily falls into place. Dissatisfaction leads to fear. Fear blocks the flow of your good. You might find yourself stuck and very confused. In a state of dissatisfaction, you can’t experience what you want to be, do or have either within or without.

As Tolle said, “life is meant to be an adventure.” To claim that adventure, along with Tolle’s recommendation to come home to the present moment, I am also recommending one of the most powerful website tools for alignment created by a colleague of mine called “The Prosperity Portal“. This website will assist you in the alignment of anchoring your inner soul’s purpose with the outer, practical, in-the-world embodiment of an easy and delightful flow of abundance. The time is now for the adventure of living a life fully awake and aware filled with joyous abundance. This is the call, the promise and the gift of the hero’s journey.

(For support in anchoring awakened awareness and an increase flow of abundance, read on about The Prosperity Portal)

“The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.”
~Joan Borysenko, author

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Max was inspired to create interactive Fireside Chats for discussing the Oprah / Tolle event. If the 10-week course offered by Oprah and Tolle has you galvanized and you want another way to anchor the experience and take the material deeper, please join Max and certified Prosperity Guides for a “fireside chat” designed to support you in further exploration of this unique event.

“For everything there is a season
And a time for every matter under heaven…”
~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
~ Albert Einstein

An amazing thing happened to me last Saturday.

I was scheduled to facilitate a support group gathering via telephone for members of the Prosperity Partnership Program. (For more about this great program, check out www.ChoosingProsperity.com .) The night before I had prepared for the call and set my alarm. I always look forward to facilitating this group because there is so much delightful wisdom, insights and healing that occurs on these calls. For me, since the call happens first thing in the morning in my time zone, I have always considered it to be a wonderful way to begin my day.

However, I had no idea I was as tired as I was perhaps due to the the Daylight Savings time change here in North America (always a rough adjustmentfor my internal clock the first week or so of the change) on top of a hectic pace of late. So come Saturday morning, I was sleeping away and, all of a sudden, I heard what I thought was my housemate’s voice at the door of my room, saying to me: “Don’t you have a class to teach?” I jumped out of bed in a panic with the realization that I had overslept by 15 minutes. Somehow I probably had unconsciously turned off my alarm. As quickly as possible,and in a befuddled state, I called the class bridge line thinking I had probably missed everyone on the call and feeling terrible about that. It was like one of those bad dreams where you have studied for a crucial final exam and then you miss it by oversleeping.

The first miracle was that everyone who was supposed to attend the call was mercifully still on the line. The participants had spontaneously decided to stick around and just chat with each other…bless their hearts. They generously accepted my apologies and we went on to experience the full hour of the support group. So, thankfully,all was well.

But the second miracle was the source of amazement. After the call, I went to thank my housemate for waking me up. But what I found was that she was just getting up from having slept in herself and so she was not the one who woke me earlier. There are no other people in the house, so who was that very real presence in myroom that whispered to me that Ineeded to wake up to be on the call? I heard the voice clearlyand felt the physical presence of someone.

Well…Ican only assume it was an “angel”…perhaps one the participants in the support group conjured to get me to the call :~) or my own guardian. Whatever the case, it is incredible evidence of how protected we are and how our connection to Source can guide us from moment to moment.

Some of you may have been attracted to listening to the Oprah / Eckhart Tolle 10-week course on his book A New Earth which began 3 weeks ago. Tolle talks about how the daily willingness to access the stillness within and the present moment “aliveness within you” (that, for him, is another name for Source Energy) ensures a “peace that passeth understanding” and all the guidance we could possibly want. The peace he speaks of is a “knowing” that all is well no matter what your external circumstances and thus everything is unfolding as it should from moment to moment when you are aligned with Source.

In the Prosperity Partnership Program (for which I teach the advanced and certification programs), we talk about the fact that, if you are daily nurturing an alignment with Source in all of its manifestations trusting that everything you want can be part of an easy flow, then predictable miracles are the order of the day. Synchronicities and coincidences occur to guide us for our next steps to achieve our intentions in our personal lives or in our work. The perfect space appears in an overcrowded parking lot. And angels bail us out when we oversleep. Very cool !!

What I was reminded of Saturday is that when we trust that we are aligned with Source then, as Tolle writes, we recognize we are the space in which miracles occur and, as the Buddha taught, we already are the miracle we seek.

“I am the miracle.”
~ The Buddha

I have been very excited this month about the unique opportunity to experience 10 weeks of classes taught by Eckhart Tolle and Oprah focusing on his book entitled A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. The first class on March 3rd “was one of the largest online events in the history of the internet” with over 500,000 people world wide logging in to listen. Since Monday night, over 1.5 million people have streamed or downloaded the webcast. Obviously this event has struck a cord for many folks.

To my way of thinking, “spiritual” exploration and personal development has come out of the closet…and, from my perspective, about time too. In recent years the exploration of consciousness in the pursuit of awakening has expanded exponentially and gone mainstream. First, here in the US there was a lot of buzz about the little cult film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” (subtitled “Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality”), then came last year’s world wide phenomenal success of The Secret and now the incredible global interest in the Oprah/ Tolle online course.

There were many pearls during Oprah and Tolle’s first class, but I was struck most by some of the powerful questions asked during that webcast:

~ Tolle’s whole gig is that “present moment awareness” is what is most important. As a way to become aware in the moment, Tolle suggests taking a deep breath and asking of yourself: “How present am I in this moment !”

~ To uncover your purpose in life, Tolle encourage listeners to ask “what does life want of me?” rather than “what do I want of life?” Or, you might try the version of this question Oprah has asked for years: “God, please use me.”

Rumi, the great 13th century Sufi poet, invites us to “look for the answer inside your question” and Buddhist wisdom encourages devotees to live inside the powerful questions invoking awakening? What does this mean? Tolle is saying that this means going beyond the conditioned thoughts of the egoic mind (those thoughts we run ad infinitum, over & over in our head) and let the answers birth from your deepest knowing….in the stillness of the now. The questions become an entry point to rest in that stillness where your unique answers await.

Eckhart Tolle’s life partner, Kim Eng, shared in her blog (as part of the Oprah / Tolle event - http://www.oprah.com/community/blogs/kim_eng ) that
“you are not what happens, but the space in which it happens”. So I was inspired last week to create a space for allowing these questions to come alive for participants in a tele-gathering format.

I invited people to join myself and certified Prosperity Guides (trained through the Prosperity Partnership Program – check out www.choosingprosperity.com ) for weekly “Fireside Chats” to consider the questions posed in week one of studying A New Earth. We had a rich discussion regarding the questions posed in the first webcast along with other insights and wisdom.

To listen to our first Fireside Chat recorded last Friday, March 7th, go to http://www.thewellspringsolution.com/firesidechat.html

Please join us for this Friday’s relaxed forum for discussing in community your questions and insights about this historic Oprah / Eckhart Tolle event.

When: Friday, March 14th
Time: 1 pm ET (12 noon Central, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific)
Where: Call into this bridge line: 712-580-0100 access code: 870034# (press * 6 to mute and to unmute)
Who: Facilitated by Max Wellspring (Advanced PPP facilitator) and certified Prosperity Guides

“You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.”
~ Anonymous

Well it is two months into the year and the question I have for you is: how are you doing with staying the course of focusing on your intentions for 2008?

During a month in which I was lavished with much love and appreciation because it happened to be my birthday month, what I have confirmed for myself is that the key to staying aligned with what we most want is the power of love….specifically self love. It is wonderful to receive love generously offered as I had the opportunity to do this month. It is wonderful to be loving to others. But what’s most important is to love the self enough to feel worthy and deserving in order to receive love, to give love and, ultimately, to allow the abundant flow of all that we envision for our lives. Loving the self authentically in this way means that it is truly all about you. You are the alpha and omega for anchoring the true empowerment possible with balanced self love.

How many of you indulge in the “not enough” game?
I am not successful enough.
I am not thin enough.
I am not rich enough.
I am not tall enough.
I am not smart enough.
I am not pretty enough.
I am not handsome enough.
I don’t have enough time, money, health, love.
Etc, etc.
All of these internal self judgments add up to “I don’t have enough or I’m not good enough” in some way and, judging yourself in this way, means you are focusing on what you don’t want rather than what you do want.

“How can the universe bring you anything good if that’s the way you’re talking?  That’s why I like to teach people to love themselves, just to love and adore who you are.”
~ Louise Hay

On the other hand, here’s what happens when you silence the internal judgmental chatter and choose to love yourself and claim your “enoughness”:

~ When you listen to your intuitive knowing from the heart and you are true to yourself, you build your trust muscle and you develop the confidence to stay the course. You discover you have the bandwidth to stay easily focused on your intentions. Rather than depending on successful outcomes to bolster your self esteem, you learn to deeply enjoy the journey of your life… both the good and the challenging. Energetically, no matter what life serves up, you are golden.

~ When you open to honestly love yourself with kindness and understanding for any perceived limitations, you can accept the wholeness of your humanity and your divinity without under- or overestimating yourself. There is no temptation to play it small, compare yourself to others or project limiting beliefs onto others. Pure, unconditional love and abiding joy can flow freely to all in your experience. What goes around comes around so the huge payoff is that self love is very attractive !

~ When you love yourself just as you are, it strengthens your willingness to heal all areas of your life. With an attitude of compassion towards ourselves, we can relax and realize we are all works in progress. When you have the courage to heal yourself, you become a beacon for healing energy attracting amazing people and situations into your experience. Life becomes a wondrous journey of discovery from moment to moment. Heal yourself…heal the world. When you stop holding yourself as deficient in some way, everything is possible and you are solidly in the zip code of miracle consciousness.Here’s an inspired action for nurturing self love recommended by such personal development luminaries as Jack Canfield (author of The Success Principles), Louise Hay (author of You Can Heal Your Life) and Don Miguel Ruiz (author of The Four Agreements):