Our minds and lives are just like a garden. A good gardener understands that pruning is vital to the overall health and vitality of the garden and must be done on a regular and consistent basis. When you prune the weeds or old unproductive soil, it gives room for your flowers to flourish.

As we spiritually mature, we must be willing to prune old habits, old ideas of who we think we are or were, and any weeds or outdated information that no longer serve the new idea or the emerging version of ourselves. Each breath presents a new possibility.

There is a Divine Intelligence in nature that cannot be denied. Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. I am often in awe of the trees and now they simply release their leaves. There’s no effort or unwillingness to surrender. You know I strive to be like the tree.

In this dharma talk from 1975, Ram Dass speaks of the still small voice within that serves as a constant reminder of our true nature and relationship with God.

Ram Dass reflects on the fire of the Living Spirit that exists inside each of us. A flame that becomes suppressed to just an ember by our time in the world. Ram Dass examines how that ember acts as a still small voice within that reminds us of our true nature and our relationship with God.

“Though we have lived our life totally involved in the world, we know that we are of the spirit. As you go towards God, you learn about yourself. When you return from God, you learn about the world. But when you are in the world you know not of the world. You cannot see the forest for the trees.” – Ram Dass

HOW TO PRAY FOR REAL AND STOP BARGAINING

Before I knew a better way to communicate with the Divine, I used to pray a lot. I always believed in a power greater than me. I just thought that Power was following me around with a fly swatter. 

I mentioned last week that I saw the world as ensouled, like I do today, every animal with a spirit, every blade of grass, rock or worm. So why did my prayers hardly ever work? I was serious about prayer! My prayers were so strong and so meaningful and so so so powerful!

Prayers are powerful and mine should work.

Not really, today looking back I know my prayers were totally lame, if you really want to know the truth.

And, here’s why. 

My prayers were bargaining prayers—prayers of pleading spectacles of need and serious purveyors of lack. 

Numbers play a key role in our lives, in the world, in science and technology. When you think of it, everything in the Universe revolves around numbers. From the rotation of the earth and the planets in our Universe, our calendars, to the way we keep time, everything is based on numbers.

Do numbers keep showing up in your life? This could be how your loved ones on the Other-Side are trying to get your attention.

Oftentimes, your loved ones who have passed on will attempt to communicate with you through numbers. Have you noticed any number or series of numbers that appear repeatedly in your life? It could be on your digital clock, license plate, bills, telephone numbers, or those synchronistic moments when you find you have the same birthday as someone you’ve just met. Many people will see the exact time of the passing of a loved one repeatedly appearing in their lives.

Numbers play a big part in my work, both on and offstage. For a while, I frequently used to see the number 149. No matter what order they were in, these three numbers kept popping up in my life. I searched my memory banks and scrambled the numbers in every possible combination. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it meant. No one I knew had passed at that specific time, nor did any birthdates make sense. So I figured they were given to me to play the lottery. Well, sadly, that didn’t work either!

There’s a matter of timing in Sadhana that’s important to keep in mind. We often choose a Sadhana, a spiritual practice, a little before it’s time, or before it chooses us. Before the marriage works. And we find ourselves in this “ought” and “should” predicament where you start out with great love, and within a little while it’s, “Oh, my god, I’ve got to do my practice.” And it’s just another thing like washing the dishes.

Certainly there is value in doing a practice regularly every day, even when you don’t want to do it.

Especially in meditation practice, because in meditation practice the not wanting to do it is as much grist for the mill of meditation as wanting to do it. It’s all stuff you can work with, with your mind, that’s very beautiful. But the delicate balance that has to go on inside one’s self, recognizing that if you build up too much negative tone to your practice, too much resistance, you’re going to have a reaction to it that’s going to take you away from it for a while, before you can come back later on.

Do you ever feel insecure or unsure of yourself? Have you ever hesitated to share in a discussion even though you knew the answer? Have you lacked confidence in moments when you knew you could make a difference in the lives of people around you, yet you remain silent? You feel like you know you could say something that would turn someone’s life around, and yet it doesn’t come out of your mouth?

If that is happening with you, there’s a reason.

In these moments of hesitation or withholding, your energy is dispersed out of your deep, core wisdom, and instead, you are most-likely in your head and over-thinking things. Overthinking pulls you out of your core power and strength, and can result in feeling insecure, insufficient, and create a tendency to compare yourself to everything around you.

Most people have mixed feelings about how their lives are going, which seems inevitable. Taking the bitter with the sweet is an old saying dating back to the 13^th century, but it expresses a universal experience. In the face of life’s mixed blessings, however, there runs a deep yearning for transformation. It is expressed through visons of heaven where eternal bliss is gained, in romantic literature where a perfect life is attained here on earth, and in utopian visions of every kind, including worldwide myths of a lost Eden or a Golden Age.

Is this yearning for transformation mere wish fulfillment, like dreaming of what you’d do if you won the lottery? If you are totally pragmatic, the answer is yes, and having abandoned such fantasies you can productively direct your energies to becoming better off by inches and degrees. Even then, modest goals aren’t always achievable. We settle for half a loaf, or less, because common sense tells us to.

But I think the issue runs deeper than pragmatism. In my new book Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, I propose that the desire for transformation is not only realistic but totally necessary. Transformation is like the total change of state when two invisible combustible gases, oxygen and hydrogen, combine to form a liquid, water, that puts out fires. The essential nature of the two gases give no hint that they could be transformed so completely. But that is what transformation means, as opposed to gradual stepwise change.

When the odds are 1 in 1 million…be that one!

Learn to bet on yourself by cultivating a Divine connection with you. We relate to life through relationships. So why is cultivating a relationship with yourself important? My beloved brother Michael once told me, “When you fall so in love with yourself, the world will have no other choice BUT to fall in love with you.” Learning to respect, honor, and trust yourself will set the tone for every relationship you will have. Because you are literally the reflection of each person that you are in relationship with. Can you see that?

You can never have a relationship with another based on love, mutual respect, and collaboration if you are not loving, respecting, or collaborating with yourself. So who are you?

Take a deep centering breath and ponder this one question... Who am I? Not who the world wants me to be. Not the titles-whether they were given to you or self-imposed. Not your affiliation to or with? Do I like myself? Do I love myself? Do I really trust in the power of the unconditional love of God. This energy and essence that permeates everything.

A number of years ago when I first contemplated the idea of going to ministerial school, my minister asked me what I wanted to with my ministry. I clearly had only one goal and it was to take my message beyond the walls of a traditional church. My minister just looked at me and after a few minutes he asked me what I meant.

I want to carry a message of truth to people who did not even know what they were looking for but were searching for something - something different than what they grew up with perhaps. I wanted to “take it to the streets - outside of a brick and mortar building; outside of an institution.

I was accepted into Holmes Institute but only lasted 2 years. I actually loved school and Ioved my classmates (still friends with most or at least in contact) but the focus everyone but me seemed to have was for a pulpit ministry and I knew I did not want to run a church or even be “stuck” behind the walls. So after a one year sabbatical and much prayer, reflection, soul searching, and many consultations, I intuitively knew it was time to travel in another direction, but with no idea about what, when, or how.

We need the matrix of thoughts, feelings, and sensations we call the ego for our physical and psychological survival.

The ego tells us what leads to what, what to avoid, how to satisfy our desires, and what to do in each situation. It does this by labeling everything we sense or think. These labels put order in our world and give us a sense of security and well-being. With these labels, we know our world and our place in it.

Our ego renders safe an unruly world. Uncountable sense impressions and thoughts crowd in on us, so that without the ego to filter out irrelevant information, we would be inundated, overwhelmed, and ultimately destroyed by the overload. Or so it seems.

In this time of chaos, uncertainty and old conditioning resisting change, what is the key to not only surviving the passage but recognizing and creating peace,  grace, heart opening and flow? 

Do we continue to transform what is not working or let go completely to a new timeline?

And is it possible now to jump?

Is love an emotion or harmonic resonance in the Space Time continuum?

Are we actually supreme influencers in the Cosmos?

Big questions...

There are many different types of symbols and messages that those in Spirit can send us. One of the more common ways our loved ones can communicate with us is through our sense of smell. Scents have an amazing power to vividly bring back memories that we may have long forgotten. When we smell a freshly baked apple pie, it may bring up loving memories of a grandmother, or the smell of the ocean could conjure up memories of happy days spent on your dad’s boat.

Stop and think for a minute right now what scents bring back special memories for you. Mine would have to be the aroma of my mom’s Italian cooking, which brings back memories of Mom giving us samples as she cooked.

All too often, these signs are quite subtle. For example, if your dad used to smoke cigars in his lifetime and one day for no reason, you smell cigar smoke, don’t be alarmed. Obviously, check that there’s no one in the house actually smoking a cigar. If not, then it might be your dad’s way of saying, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m here with you.”

It’s rare to find someone with an optimistic view of humanity’s future. The prevailing mood globally is dark, and yet David Deutsch, a far-seeing British physicist, argues that humans are responsible for everything new—we are the ultimate creators in the cosmos.

I was excited to view his April 2019 TED talk headlined “After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up” By monotony Deutsch means the mechanistic processes that have been in place ever since stars and galaxies began to form, and by waking up, he means us. We are a unique source of creative novelty in the universe, so far as we know.

To support this very original idea, Deutsch points out that humans have told themselves a story for centuries that is mistaken. We have seen ourselves caught in the middle of struggle between cosmic good and evil, which was expressed in religious terms for a long time but has been updated by science into the struggle between order (the good side of the war) and chaos (the destructive side of the war, and therefore bad).