“Subscription” once referred mainly to printed magazines and newspapers (“Your subscription is about to expire—please renew”). Now it’s the backbone of online communication. If you ask a question or sign a petition online, you automatically get subscribed to a barrage of ongoing emails. Subscription has become a cyber activity, distanced from anything real or living. We don’t subscribe to, or unsubscribe from, life. It’s just there, always supporting us. We can, however, lose touch with the essential simplicity of life. We can get entrapped in excess minutia—like too many emails.

A few weeks ago, I reached critical overload with the number of non-personal emails flooding my inbox. Political and environmental groups, spiritual programs and teachers, doctors and alternative healthcare practitioners, bookstores and theaters, online businesses. What a waste of time just to delete them multiple times a day! I went through and unsubscribed from virtually everything except a few key ones. At the same time, I decided to cut back on social media, visiting only occasionally. It was a relief. I felt as if I had lifted the heavy weight of contemporary social busyness and distractions off my shoulders. At least one day a week now I don’t even turn on my computer or phone. Wow, what freedom!

I was stranded in Washington D.C. due to a storm in Chicago. It was sunny and cold and I wandered into the National Gallery of Art just beyond the Capitol. On the ground floor in the west building in two small rooms was an exhibit called In the Dark Room, which mounted examples of the early process by which photographs were developed in the 1800s.

We don’t see many darkrooms any more, given the ease of digital cameras. But darkrooms still offer a small, reflective solitude for serious photographers. The great photographer Ansel Adams had a very elaborate, expansive darkroom, while the Civil War photographer Timothy O’Sullivan refitted an ambulance wagon into his portable darkroom. Progress doesn’t limit our toolbox but adds to it, the way that master woodworkers don’t throw away their hand tools just because they have a set of power tools.

Do you know that you’re surrounded by stuff that talks to you all the time? If you have some difficulty during the holidays, (and a lot of people do) it’s an ideal time to clean up your environment before you start to decorate on top of the stuff that’s telling you stories that keep you off balance. Why could that be so? Because objects have meaning. How we get them, why we do, what they mean to us always accompanies their presence even if we’re not conscious of their constant communication. 

I remember when I was a kid, my mom would move things around while getting ready to get out the holiday decorations and would off-handedly talk to the air when she was doing it. I’m sure she didn’t realize what she was teaching me but I never forgot her reactions to certain objects. I know she loved this beautiful statue of the goddess Lakshmi that my parents’ friends, the Sharmas, had gifted her with because she would dust it and lovingly place it on a shelf above her favorite chair. I know she loved it because she literally would sigh and say, “I love this—I must call her this week!” I learned the object represented friendship and desire for meaningful connection. We weren’t ever mad at that piece of art. As I inherited it, it also is prominent in my office to remind me of their beautiful friendship. I feel wistful for connection and loving when I look at it. This statue always reminds me of the abundance of friendship. 

The first thing that comes to your mind when someone talks about ‘holidays’, is traveling. People have different hobbies and passions. Some people like to relax at home and play video games, some like to listen to music to relax and others like to take a walk in the park. And then there are some people who live their lives out of a suitcase. These people have to do so because of work related commitments and some do so because of personal love for traveling. 

Not everyone loves to travel but people who have a genuine love for traveling might not always need a reason or even a companion to set their foot out of their home. They find comfort in being uncomfortable and might plan an impromptu trip. Apart from physical and mental benefits, traveling helps you to connect with your soul. The health of the soul is linked with mental strength. To be able to maintain it, you must involve yourself in creative and constructive activities. It requires you to maintain a healthy lifestyle where you are happy, social, and take efforts to make it constructive. The health of your soul is the key to your mental health, and it is directly linked with your life’s endurance.

Harvard researchers say the first hour after you wake up in the morning is the most impactful of your day.

So how can you spend the first 60 minutes of your morning in a way that sets you up for success throughout the day?

Here are five strategies I use in my morning routine, based on my forty-year career of learning from and working with the world’s leading entrepreneurs, executives, and creative geniuses…

In our modern age, the noble art of reading has been truncated and compromised. Today, a skilled reader is judged as someone who reads rapidly, who can scan the skeleton of any piece of writing and abstract its silhouette of meaning. Yet this is like taking an x-ray of a person and thinking you now have met the whole person.

The word “read” comes from the German raten which originally meant “to guess.” So reading is always a guess at what matters, a leaning in to all that is beyond words, a bow to all that gives rise to words.

I have always been a slow reader, not because I struggle with comprehending what I read, but because when challenged or moved by what I read, I slow down in an attempt to absorb what I’m taking in. Inherent in immersing ourselves in books is the call to enter time and not just move through it. Understanding reading in this way, books become thresholds to moments of living beyond our own.

There is a story in the Talmud in which students notice that their rabbi has been quietly reading the same passage over and over for several days. Concerned, one of the students approaches his teacher to see if he is alright. The rabbit smiles and says, “When I have come upon this small window into Eternity, why should I go anywhere else?”

THANK YOU.

Perhaps two of the most potent words you could say.

As powerful as any mantra, prayer, poem, affirmation, or chant.

If all you did was say a heartfelt  “Thank you” each moment of your life to everyone you met, miracles would occur.

“Thank you” melts hearts. Let’s people feel loved and appreciated. End wars. Start new friendships. Create smiles.

The more you give thanks, the more you will have to give thanks about in your life. It’s been said that “What you think about expands”.  I like to say, “What you thank about expands.”

It is easy to say “Thank you” to those you like and are kind to you. But what about those that upset you and aren’t so nice. They give you the gift of the opportunity to practice your prayers and live your spirituality for real.

It is easy to say “Thank you” to those that give you what you want, when you want it. But what about those that don’t. They give you the opportunity to find out what you really need, what most serves your highest path and to be who you really are.

It is easy to say “Thank you” to those that love you. But what about those that have broken your heart and betrayed you. They give you the opportunity to forgive, keep your heart open, and practice unconditional loving.

The more you can thank those people and situations that challenge you, acknowledging that they served you in your growth of becoming more of who you really are, then you are free.

What you cannot thank has you, owns you, and controls you. What you cannot thank, you give power to.

When you can truly thank the person or situation, then you liberate yourself from bondage of the story, situation itself, and step into a new level of freedom. You step outside of the prison of the situation into the freedom of BEING.

Gandhi dared to live Thank you.

Jesus dared to live Thank you.

Mandela dared to live Thank you.

Martin Luther King Jr dared to live Thank you.

“It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.”  -Henry Ward Beecher


I've Been Thinking...

I can’t believe it’s December already. I mean, oh my gosh. How did that happen? I’m anxious already!

Most years, I find myself waking up a bit bummed on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I wake up feeling a bit down. Why? Because it sinks in that my favorite holiday is over again. It’s also a day when my youngest son goes back to college, and when my other kids go back to their respective lives. Ugh.

When the anticipation and excitement of Thanksgiving are behind me, I know that it means the stress of Christmas is ahead of me. It stares me down in a way that makes me feel like I’m out of breath.

I know that I need to take a deep breath as I look ahead to December. I need to ask myself, “How can I do better at managing this time of year? How can I be less anxious? How can I be more centered in joy? How can I focus less on stuff and less on checking my list?” (I don’t just check it twice, by the way. I normally check it at least 500 times…)

I’ve come to realize that the stress and anxiety of the holidays are really of my own making (although all the ads don’t help). But, I can make a conscious choice to change how I handle it all.

Animals are miraculous gifts to us. The power of an animal’s love, intuition and wisdom is greatly underestimated—whether it’s an ape that not only understands but also responds to sign language or a special cat that made the news by instinctively knowing when its nursing-home residents were about to leave this world. Then there’s the dog that helps its therapist owner detect abnormalities in her patients’ bodies and the story of the amazingly brave elephants that impulsively knew they had to save themselves by moving to higher ground when a devastating tsunami hit the west coast of Sumatra.

Animals have been our spiritual companions since the dawn of time. Humans have honored them throughout history, as can be seen in those early drawings on the walls of caves—man and dog hunting side by side. Egyptians have treated cats like gods, American Indians have honored many different animals on totem poles, and the elders in the tribe would teach the children about the importance of each living thing.

Although Thanksgiving Day has become a time for turkey and football, its true purpose lingers, often as a wistful hope that one could be truly thankful. You cannot conjure up thanks if you are focused on the world’s troubles and a constant stream of bad news. So how is true gratitude found? 

As writer and teacher Dana Arcuri has said, “The more you are grateful for what you have, the more you can live fully in the present.”. Psychologically, research has shown that practicing gratitude measurably improves your well-being and on the physical side, your heart health.

 Gratitude begins when we change our relationship with life from an attitude of rejecting and defending to one of acceptance and appreciation. We all need reminding about a truth expressed by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

Have you ever struggled to make a decision, your mind spinning constantly as it vacillates between options yet can never find a solution?  This confusion or lack of true knowing comes from the mind, or what I like to call the “Personality Self.”

On the other hand, have you ever had a “gut” feeling about a situation in your life? In a particular moment, you simply “knew” what to do without knowing why or how you knew it? This “knowing” is the wisdom that comes from the True you, or your Soulful Self.

Both the Soulful Self and the Protective Self exist, yet only one contains the truth of who we are and what we’re meant to do in our life. Our task is to learn to live from the Soulful Self, and have constant access to that deep wisdom within guiding our lives in the direction we’re meant to go. To do this, we have to start listening to the messages of our body.

Our Soulful Self speaks to us through our body and to learn how to hear the messages it sends, our mind, or Protective Self, needs to learn how to trust the body because the body doesn’t lie. It is constantly revealing truths to us, yet the mind can’t perceive these messages because it’s so distracted keeping itself busy with questions of what we should do next.

The minute we can bring the mind’s attention onto the body, the mind can begin to filter information more accurately. Once we do, we have access to deep wisdom and we begin to cultivate the power to do something about what we know to be true.

How the Body Speaks to the Mind

Have you ever felt a knot in the pit of your stomach? Maybe you assumed it was indigestion, or that the burning in your belly had something to do with you needing to take some kind of antacid to cover up the discomfort that you’re feeling.