Have you ever found yourself standing in line for a ticket, when someone pushes in front of you saying they’re going to miss their train if they don’t get their ticket quickly? You have two choices, either to be really annoyed and irritated or to show compassion and extend forgiveness. Of course, you don’t know whether they would miss their train or not, as you don’t know their situation … but to extend your forgiveness by trying to put yourself in their shoes, to appreciate their situation is much harder to do. For all you know, they might have young children in daycare or school, and if they miss their train, they won’t be back in time to pick them up.

I’m fascinated on a spiritual level that many of us don’t always see that compassion is all about that deep level of connectiveness between ourselves and others. Being able to demonstrate compassion proves that we can push the boundaries of our tolerance and understanding beyond what we believe. It’s worth the time and effort to explore how to push that boundary of understanding further, and with practice it’s possible to become even more compassionate.

I’ve written in previous newsletters that you and I are incredibly blessed because we are part of the greatest revolution in history: The Consciousness Revolution.

This revolution has come none too soon. Because humans are navigating our fragile space station, Earth, towards disaster, it is imperative that we reboot our navigational systems – our consciousness and perceptions about what it means to be human on this planet.

Many years ago, as I’ve written in several of my books, my life was saved and forever changed by plants served by a Shuar shaman deep in the Amazon rain forest. I’d never heard of ayahuasca at that time. All I knew was that it had a profound impact on my consciousness. For me, the most important thing I learned that first night and many afterwards, as I trained to be an ayahuasca shaman, is that plants have a consciousness and they are insisting on sharing it with us humans.

The more we believe that our frequency is responsible for our reality, the more we become afraid of the moments when we feel less than cheerful. These are usually the moments we feel we can’t afford to be down. I.e. I need to raise my frequency so I can pay my bills.

Herein lies the dilemma. When we’re experiencing an off day emotionally, we then decided it is wrong, and attempt to fight it in an effort to change it. This is really just adding fuel to the fire.

Have you ever left an inspirational seminar or a retreat only to find that the days after are emotionally heavy and maybe even depressive? This is because you had spent time in a heightened frequency and raised the bar of what you expect for yourself and your life by setting new intentions and goals. When a person does this, it creates emotional upheaval and a systematic purging of all that was holding the lesser reality in place.

I’ve referred to it in the past as a garbage day of the soul. As the limiting or negative belief structures leave a person, they will feel the lower energetic qualities of them move out of their system.

This is where we give thanks and find appreciation for the less than cheerful emotional energetic stream of energy. If we look at it this way you can see the importance of not making it a bad thing or fighting it.

The best thing to do when this happens is to practice taking a step back from them and remind yourself that although you feel this way, there are still a lot of blessings to be thankful for. Take on the role of loving parent and gently redirect your thought process back to something more rational and positive. In one moment you could feel the particular issue is just the end of the world. An hour later for no apparent reason you could feel that the same issue isn’t as bad as you thought it was when the toxicity was leaving.

If you’re experiencing this level of negativity appear over an issue, it only means that you just have not yet found the right solution.

Have you ever had the experience of wanting something to work out sooooo much? You come up with an action plan, make a wish, keep praying, and visualize. You’d even do a rain dance if you had to. Yet, all the signs from the Universe are telling you to let go and stop putting your goals ahead of your relationships and the world around you. When you’re tired of all the fighting and you’re finally present in the “not knowing” of the mystery, the Divine leads you to your highest outcome… one that is often better than what you first wished for.

Humility is that place within you that understands you’re not alone and cannot live in isolation. Rather, you’re part of a greater system of energy—from your relationships and community to the Divine and All That Is. You receive information that does not come directly from you or your own personal knowledge, but instead through this greater system. And as part of this web, you also cannot just make things happen on your own, even if you keep trying to manifest and use the law of attraction. (I know, that can be a tough concept to digest.) 

Depending on which polls you consult, more than half of Americans and up to 67% believe that a person's soul goes to heaven or hell after death. This belief seems unusually strong considering that more and more Americans no longer identify with a fixed religion. "I'm not religious, but I’m spiritual" has become a common sentiment, and yet the idea of the soul continues to hold its place. One might even say it outstrips God as a matter of belief.

Look at how deeply embedded the word "soul" is in our culture, from soul music to soul searching. Once a word takes old, so does the concept it represents. To a pure rationalist, there's no reason to say that the gospels sung in African American churches are more soulful than a Beethoven symphony. When someone searches his soul, the psychological reality is that he is usually just consulting his conscience or weighing issues of right and wrong that came from childhood upbringing.

Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps that will get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than on all the other distractions that life presents to them. They think about their successes in the morning and practice day and night meditation as well.

Successful people are constantly proactive in the pursuit of their chosen objectives.

An important part of any focusing regimen is to set aside time at the end of the day—just before going to sleep—to meditate on your successes, review your goals, focus on your desired ideal future successes, and make specific plans for what you want to accomplish the next day.

There is no denying that the different versions of God in world religions has led to historical violence and conflict, which humanitarians have tried to end by saying that there is only one God, implying that such conflicts are pointless. But is there only one God? The conflicting versions of God all attempt to grasp God in reality, so every version actually is God for that religion.

Atheists claim that all of these versions are fictional to begin with, but this misses the point. Human beings have experienced the spiritual dimension of life for as long as history can tell. The need for God grew out of the same need as modern science: to explain a fundamental aspect of Nature. The problem is that there is a gap between this need for explanations and the answers arrived at.

In this gap creativity went to work. The gods and God are human creations, constructs of the mind. Faced with unanswerable dilemmas the human mind went to work to fashion a supernatural dimension presided over by a ruler, or rulers, who stand in for rulers here on Earth, being human, emotional, unpredictable, beautiful, terrible, merciful, vengeful--pick any human trait and you can match it to some version of God worshipped now or in the past. The rational God of Thomas Jefferson's enlightened God is a projection of his ideal human portrayed on a superhuman scale, just as Jehovah, the complete opposite of Jefferson's God, was an idealized projection by ancient rabbis.