Evolving Conciousness

I'm adding to my personal destiny list, "to help the human species evolve," because I just saw a DVD called "Evolving Consciousness" and it blew my mind. So the interesting question now is: How am I going to do that?

Create Your Day

Now that I have seen the film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" and read the book Evolve Your Brain, I'm becoming excited about these ideas again because I'm seeing new layers of understanding. I'm thinking about starting a new blog called "Create My Day" and discuss what I do each day to create my day and what the results are.

Evolve Your Brain

I’ve been reading a fascinating book called Evolve Your Brain. It’s written by a man who was interviewed in the film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” -- one of my favorite films. It teaches people how to break out of old negative patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving in order to create more positive and effective thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The book and film say that most people are addicted to the image they have of themselves; they get addicted to being right, or to their drama, or to feeling like a victim. They get addicted to feelings of anger, guilt, fear, and even intense pain. It sounds extremely strange, but it’s true. That’s how they know who they are. But the same old patterns can lock a person into a prison of misery that serves no useful purpose.

Of course, the book’s not saying that people should never feel sad or angry; it’s about people who get addicted to negative emotions, people who always seem to have some drama going on, always angry about everything, afraid to step out of the house or try anything new. Speaking of which, over a year and a half ago, I actually cured myself of all feelings of depression, so I know there is something to this. As strange as it may sound, sinking into despair was my way of coping, sort of like the way a sowbug rolls up on itself (stupid but true).

So now I’m working out my brain to get the cortex thick and elastic with billions of dendrites and neural networks swimming in a soup of feel-good biochemicals. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Check it out: http://www.drjoedispenza.com/

Mythical Lovers

My latest book project is a novel titled Mythical Lovers. It was originally inspired by The Alchemist. Ironically, I was inspired even before I read the book. A woman in one of my workshops told me about the book and said, "It's about a young man who goes on a journey, meets mystical beings and learns about his personal destiny." I thought it sounded like an extremely interesting book and I begin to imagine in my mind what the story might be like, but when I read the book it wasn't anything like what I imagined it would be.

At first I felt a bit disappointed, but then I realized it was a wonderful gift because now I could write the book that I had been imagining in my mind. So I took the idea with a few slight changes (a young woman goes on a journey, meets mythical and magical beings and learns about her personal destiny) and that became the premise of my new book.

I'm excited about the idea because it gives me a chance to explore all of these different mythical and magical beings and interact with them through the characters. I think many of the gods and goddess will have a lot to say about the sensual life.

The Alchemist

One of the reasons I'm interested in Paulo Coelho's books, and in particular, The Alchemist, is because I think knowing our personal destiny and following it is what gives our lives meaning. Unfortunately, following a personal destiny is not as easy as it sounds. For some reason, the world is not structured in such a way as to promote the fulfillment of one's personal destiny. In some ways, it is structured to hold us back from doing so.

Last night I was feeling disappointed because I had planned to go home after work and do some writing, but I found when I got home that I was too tired and I felt completely uninspired and unenthusiastic. So I didn't get any writing done.

However, one thing I did was to take some time to ask myself, "What is my personal destiny?" The answers that came to me were these:

1) To bring the goddess energy into the world.
2) To be a storyteller.
3) To create beauty in the world.

The next question this brings up is, "Okay, so, now that I know what my personal destiny is, how to I do these things?"

I guess figuring that out will be part of my journey!

Paulo Coelho

I like Paulo Coelho's books because they express this idea of seeing life as an adventure through how the characters interact with life. He teaches through showing rather than telling. It helps us to learn because we can see the story and the character in our minds, which is easier for the brain to remember than abstract theory. But non-fiction is important too because many people might read a story and not really understand the importance of what the characters are doing.

It's difficult to say which is my favorite, but I think it's The Pilgrimage. I also like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello, Eleven Minutes, and The Devil and Miss Prim. I highly recommend them all, but especially the first four because he is expressing this philosophy of life through the stories.

Let Go and Live the Adventure

One of the things I've learned about manifestation over the years is that you can't always control everything that happen around you. What you can control is your attitude toward it.

In some sense, the fact that I suffered from depression was a gift because it pushed me to seek a path to happiness, joy, and bliss. But that doesn't mean that I feel happy all the time. Sometimes things happen that are out of my control and don't make me feel happy. Yet, even then, one can have an underlying feeling of bliss, which the Buddhists call "equanimity."

Years ago, in a desperate attempt to escape the pain I was in, I began to study Buddhism. I've probably read hundreds of books on Buddhism, but I finally came to the conclusion that the central message can be boiled down to this: let go.

Once you do that, it can significantly change your experience of life. As my mother describes it, it's like sitting by a river watching the boats float by. You can sit and observe, or you can choose to get on a boat. The important thing is understanding that it's a choice. If you choose to get on one of the boats, you can also choose to get off, which means that life becomes an adventure, an exploration.

I like to think of life as a trip down the Amazon River, though Paulo Coelho's image of life as pilgrimage is good too. The important thing to understand is that the geographic location of the journey is not what matters. You could be on the Amazon River; you could be on the trail to Santiago de Compostella. Or, like myself, you could be on 11th Avenue in Denver, Colorado.

Who decided that 11th Avenue in Denver, Colorado is any less exotic, exciting, and adventurous than Spain or the Amazon? Or maybe I should ask, Why would anyone decide that? What criteria did they use? It seems completely arbitrary to me.

The geographical location doesn't matter. The costume you wear doesn't matter. What makes an experience into an adventure is one's frame of mind.