Authentic Living

There is a form of religion that has, over the past 10 years or so, taken over larger and larger portions of the American psyche. It is a religion made up more of fear of evil than love of and from the divine. It is a religion made up more of laws and judgement than compassion and redemption. It is a religion which allows plenty of room for hate, and recrimination of other people--and it is led by a leadership that Jesus would have called vipers and white-washed sepulchers. These modern-day Pharisees are, according to Jesus, keeping people from entering the kingdom of heaven. So, this is a difficult subject, but we are going to bravely go where many are afraid to go: We are going to offer a more authentic version of this religion.

On several previous shows we have referred listeners to meditation as one of the most effective of ways to get in touch with the authentic Self. Today, we are going to be examining some meditation tools created by Michel Pascal, and used by Google, Harvard University and other major organizations to reduce stress. We will explore this from the angle of spirituality as well as physicality, mind and body. Many people say that meditation is too hard, and takes too much time. But our guest today proves neither of those to objections valid. His book, Meditations for Daily Stress, offers ten easy practices for immediate well-being. If you are stressed, or have trouble meditating, this show is for you. Don’t miss it.

To date, most religions have wanted to claim their own God. In the West the Christian religion has claimed that their God is the only God. That every other God is actually a false god. But what if, like Pope Francis says, we are all meeting the same God in different ways. What if, in fact, each religion, each language of each religion, each ritual, each path, each prayer is but a different language meant to reach but one divine entity, a universal entity who knows we each have different ways of finding our truest spirituality? Would that be such a terrible thing? Or is it that our bias is keeping us from allowing that possibility? Today we are going to learn about an interfaith/interspiritual God. Don't miss it.

Over the past 20 years or so, there has arisen among spiritual teachers a certain mythology that has sunk its teeth into the psyche of the New Age, New Thought, Human Potential Movement adherents along with those who call themselves spiritual but not religious. It is the idea that fear opposes love. This idea is translated to mean that when one loves, one should not feel fear, and vice versa. It is based in the Biblical tenet that perfect love casts out fear. But we've got some real misunderstanding about what this means, and we've added a lot of shoulds and personal judgment, that can be damaging. Let' talk about love and fear today. Don't miss it.

It is true that one of the things we fear the most is our own fear. We want it to go away and leave us alone. We want to feel safe, warm and cared for. We want to trust life. But fear just keeps getting in the way. We may try to outweigh it by being tough, strong and loud. We may try to erase it with drinking/drugging. We may cave to it by living in a small little hole for a lifetime. But fear--it is the monster in the closet. So, what can we do. This show will wisely offer solutions to the problem of fear. Particularly in this time when a majority of the country is living in fear--we need to know what to do about fear. Don't miss this important show.

Today there are many Americans who are frightened, angry and being chased around by some of the more primal emotions regarding survival. Short of everyone in the country immigrating to Canada, what can we do about these emotions? Many tell us that we should somehow make these emotions go away because they are negative. But what if there is no such thing as a negative or a positive emotion? What if we've been labeling these emotions based on societal demands for compliance for a flat-line of emotional responses? Is it possible that these difficult emotions can actually facilitate our growth? Our healing? Our ability to self-direct? Tune in to find out.

How do we manage a culture in which there is such diversity, while maintaining unity? The current political scene has revealed much about what is yet unresolved in the collective American psyche. We've seen hatred, misogyny, abuse, and profound unwillingness to even consider the option of acceptance of diversity. So, what do we do with that? How can we find unity in that? Well, the journey to wholeness that is a part of our collective unconsciousness, has not been halted in its tracks because what was always there has now been revealed. Rather this is an opportunity for us to grow into wholeness on a whole other level. Once the darkness, murky, swamp-like energy of the shadow comes forth into our vision we can then do something about it. And now is the time to do it. Don't miss this important show.

Currently many people are seeking a spiritual practice that offers real results, such as, personal transformation and life change. Today we are talking to Greg Marcus, PhD, practitioner and coach of American Mussar. His book 'The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar' will be the topic of our discussion as he leads us to understand some of the specific practices that are meant to bring everyday life into alignment with spiritual values. Mussar is a thousand-year-old Jewish practice of spiritual growth based on mindful living. Don't miss this excellent example of the implementation of spiritual practice.

What does it mean to be a woman in today's Western society? How advanced are we really over countries where women have no rights at all? The perpetuation of the Western rape culture would deny our advances regarding respect for feminine consciousness as well as the female herself. Feminine consciousness is consciousness of the inner human. It takes us inward. But many women today spend much of their mental and spiritual energy taking care of the outer image. And men are frequently obsessed with how a woman presents. We live in a society in which a woman's rights to her own body are often misunderstood at best, and at worst denied. That's the bad news. But is it possible that the recent exposures can facilitate our awareness of true feminine consciousness? Tune in to find out.

We have lived, since our beginnings, from the good vs. evil paradigm. If a thing isn't good, it's bad: and if a thing isn't bad, it's good. We have divided all of life up this way, with but a very few things ending up in the neutral category. But what if good vs. evil is the wrong paradigm? What if the correct paradigm to live from is the one that measures truth and lies, rather than goodness and evil? If we could stop thinking in terms of good or bad, and start thinking in terms of what is true and what is false, would we not be able to gain more clarity about any given situation? Would we not then be able to discern fact from fiction better? We will get the answers to those questions and more on this show. Don't miss it.

Is there really a knight on a white horse, who will come to save us? Doesn't love mean she can read my mind? Isn't sex the solution to every problem in our relationship? These and other like myths are going to be discussed today on this show in which we will learn the exact parameters of a REAL relationship. Don't miss it.

We’ve all heard the media reports about cult leaders causing tremendous harm to their followers. But that’s not the kind of false prophecy we are going to be talking about today. Prophecy is truth telling with regard to the nature of the divine and the self. False prophecy is lying with regard to the nature of the divine and self. We all have false prophets within us. And today we are going to differentiate the false from the true prophets within us. Where are we lying to ourselves with regard to the nature of the divine and the self? For to the degree to which we are lying to ourselves, that is the degree to which we lack clear direction, clear guidance about our lives. Don’t miss this one.

We have learned so much about how we should love, that we don’t know much about how we are loved, and how we do love. There is so much that we should be thinking, feeling, doing in the name of love, that we don’t realize how much of it is actually false, fake, ingenuous. What is really going on behind all those shoulds? Have we yet begun to be certain that we are loved, deeply loved by the divine and the Self? Have we come to understand the specific and very individualized ways in which we love? This show is going to put us in touch with love. Be here for it.

There is so much going on in our country, even around the globe right now that is all about hate. Hate of difference is the primary hate that is being manifested right now. “I hate you because you are different!” Whether it has do with color, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or political opinion, what is primarily being hated at this time is difference. So, we are going to spend some time talking about difference and about hate on today’s show. And what we are going to learn is how we might turn the fear that is hate into love. Don’t miss it.

We tend to think of prayer as belonging only to religion.It doesn't belong to life, it belong to religion. For those who don’t pray there is a tendency to believe that prayer is dependency on magical thinking. Or perhaps we say that we forget to pray. But the biggest question here is What IS Prayer? Is it just the words that we say to a higher being? If so, what are we allowed to say and what is inappropriate to say? More importantly, what will prayer mean if it doesn’t get answered as we’d hoped? And is it possible that prayer is actually very different than what we have imagined it to be? Don’t miss this show.

The global thinking has, since the beginning of time it seems, divided everything in the world up into good or bad, good or evil. The current euphemisms for this same divided thinking are the terms “positive” and “negative.” We eat good food or bad food, we have positive or negative experiences or thoughts…everything is divided this way. But if we removed these terms from our vocabulary what could we learn about ourselves, about life, and about our own potential for Self-actualization? Tune in to find out.

We Westerners got hold of this concept of Karma and turned it into a Western motif. One that has everything to do with our own dualistic thinking about good and evil. One in which if we are bad in one lifetime, then that same kind of badness will happen to us in the next life. And if we are good in a lifetime then that same kind of goodness will happen to us in the next life. This creates a kind of see-saw effect—a see-saw we never get off of. But that is not the original concept of karma—which actually has nothing to do goodness or badness. Show up for this show ready to get the real concept of Karma—a concept that has the potential to change your life.

The most fascinating truth is that both detachment and Oneness are realities of living. We talk about detachment, letting go, as if we really can let go of something or someone and, thereby, be separate from it. But the reality is that when we detach we tell the paradoxical truth of Oneness. We are never really separate from anyone or anything—though we may detach ourselves from their control over our minds. But how can Oneness really be truth if there is so much hate, so much disease, so much poverty? The shadow knows. So today we are going to be talking all about Oneness as the highest form of detachment. Be here for it.

There are many, many people out there talking about abundance. They say that if you think only positive thoughts and emotions, if you build the right kind of vision board, you will find yourself gifted with all your dreams come true. Not only is that a bargain with the Universe, but that method puts us into the future, instead of in the now. So how do we stay present and yet achieve our life goals. Today we are going to talk about what really belongs to us. And how it is that we can access it. Don’t miss it.

One of the most difficult challenges of any relationship is communication. How do we say what we mean without lashing out, or hurting the ones we love the most? Unfortunately, we tend to go to the extremes on this one: We either shut-down, or we lash out. Neither of those two options work, however, to create the intimacy that a relationship needs to grow. Nancy Dreyfus has come to our aid here with a beautiful book, “Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love,” containing a set flashcards that say precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. What a beautiful idea. Nancy is a Transpersonal Psychologist who works with many relationships on this very issue of communication, and came up with this idea for her clients. But now we can all benefit from it—so today we are going to be talking about the how-to of communicating at the most difficult times in relationship. You are not going to want to miss this one.