The World is Meant to Be Worn Lightly

If you accepted the truth of the following statements by Dr. David R. Hawkins, how would your life change? What would be different about the way you looked at the world, at other people, and at yourself?

The world is actually entertainment. Like amusement, it is meant to be worn lightly. Heaven is

Silence Is Golden for Sam Kelly

Sam Kelly

After Sam Kelly sang Bob Dylan’s To Make You Feel My Love for his Britain’s Got Talent audition on Saturday, March 24, 2012, judge Simon Cowell commented, “I’ve got to tell you, Sam. When you’ve got absolute silence in a room like this, you’ve nailed it.”

Nail it he did. The nineteen-year-old son of dairy farmers told the judges before he sang that he “never really

Lisa Garr’s Interview with Caroline Myss

Caroline Myss

Lisa Garr welcomed spiritual author and speaker Caroline Myss to The Aware Show, a talk radio program focusing on self development in all areas of life for healing and achievement. Lisa’s 106-minute interview with Caroline is a master class in the archetypes that are influencing our lives. Caroline talks in depth about the four universal archetypes—child, victim, prostitute, saboteur—that we all have, and how learning about the light and shadow sides of these archetypes will help you understand your Sacred Contract in this lifetime.

As Lisa, who is considered an expert in the field of lifestyle and transformational programming. puts it:

Lisa Garr

Your Sacred Contract animates your life and determines how you acknowledge your own power, how you use or deny your power, and the areas in your life in which you currently feel powerless. This interview will explain why you do the things you do, help you understand why others do the things they do, and ultimately help you improve your communication in all of your relationships, especially with yourself.

Click on the audio player below to listen to Lisa’s interview with Caroline, which took

Move Over, Pavarotti, Here Comes Jonathan Antoine!

CHARLOTTE AND JONATHAN
AUDITION

Jonathan Antoine and Charlotte Jaconelli

When Jonathan Antoine and Charlotte Jaconelli walked onstage to audition for Britain’s Got Talent on Saturday, March 24, 2012, Simon Cowell turned to a fellow judge and whispered, “Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse.”

Then Jonathan began to sing. One minute and forty-three seconds later, after Jonathan had belted out a final note that was breathtaking in its power and grandeur, all four judges were on their feet and the audience had risen as one to welcome a new star to the world.

I had never seen Simon so awed by a performance, not even by Susan Boyle’s debut. All Simon could say was,

The Secret to Being a Great Conversationalist

Years ago, I read this anecdote in Dale Carnegie‘s classic work, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I never forgot it. It made that great an impression on me. Ever since, I’ve gone into conversations with the intent to listen instead of talk, and the rewards have been tremendous. Why would I want to talk about myself all the time? I already know everything I’d be saying. Instead, by listening, I get to learn about all sorts of things and creates stronger and more intimate bonds with all sorts of interesting people.

Here is Dale’s story:

I met a distinguished botanist at a dinner party given by a New York book publisher. I had never talked with a botanist before, and I found him fascinating. I literally

In the Key of Genius

Derek Paravicini

I got chills watching this 60 Minutes piece on Derek Paravacini, a blind, brain-damaged piano prodigy. I would be surprised if anyone on the planet can do what Derek does with such effortless joy. My favorite part was hearing Adam Ockelford, his piano teacher, recall the first time he met three-year-old Derek and the moment when he realized that the boy “wasn’t

The Friend Who Cares

This afternoon I ran into a few friends on the sidewalk. They were talking about the perils of counseling someone they all knew who was going through some troubles. One young man in his twenties noted that he had recently learned that, “It doesn’t matter if you’re right; if you hurt her feelings, you’re wrong.” When I congratulated him on his awareness, he acknowledged that it was a lesson that had been incredibly hard for him to learn and that he still had a ways to go.

I could relate. When my daughter was in high school, she told me about a challenge she was facing. I lit up because I had gone through the same thing myself and knew exactly what to do. But when I tried to tell her how to take care of it, she interrupted me and said, ‘“Dad, I

Spring Equinox 2012 Update From Astrologer Laurie Baum

Laurie Baum

If you enjoy astrology, you will like this Spring Equinox update written by my good friend Laurie Baum, MSW, a psychological astrologer and psychotherapist in practice in Encinitas, California.

Laurie writes a free astrological newsletter about how planetary alignments affect our lives on earth. Click here to e-mail Laurie to subscribe at no cost, or visit Laurie’s website and click on “Free Email Newsletter.”

Laurie is a former newspaper

A Dog’s Purpose

I ran across a wonderful little story about a little boy and his dog that perfectly illustrates both the nature of dogs and the natural wisdom of children.

A DOG’S PURPOSE

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog’s owners, Ron, his wife Lisa, and their little boy Shane, were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn’t do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane

All Tangled Up

Dr. Larry Dossey

Dr. Larry Dossey was kind enough to permit me to print this essay, which was published in the November 2011 issue of EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing

Some of the fascinating issues explored by Dr. Dossey include:

• The ubiquity of quantum behavior • The difference between entanglement and nonlocality • One of the most important transitions in the history of human thought • The origin and definition of consciousness • Swarm theory: the group mind of animals • Human-animal entanglement • Limbic science • Linked minds and distant communication • The need for poetry and music • The corruption of science by the church • How science can and must regain its moral center • The return of ancient wisdom in the form of modern scientific insights unconscious in spiritual healing

Please note that the superscripted footnotes in Dr. Dossey’s essay were lost in translation to this post. Nevertheless, the unnumbered footnotes can be found at the bottom of this article. Or you can read the original article which includes the footnotes here.

Dr. Larry Dossey’s eleven books include The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things, Reinventing Medicine, Prayer Is Good Medicine and Healing Words. He is also the executive editor of EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing, a peer-reviewed, bimonthly publication. Dr. Dossey has become an internationally influential advocate of the mind’s role in health and the role of spirituality in healthcare.

ALL TANGLED UP:
LIFE IN A QUANTUM WORLD

[I]nconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you — and all other conscious beings as such — are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.
Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel physicist

There are conversations one never forgets. One I’ll always remember occurred around ten years ago, in which a good friend of mine, who is a physicist, and I were discussing remote viewing. In one version of this procedure, an individual somehow conveys complex, detailed information to a distant person, even though the two have no sensory contact with each other. My physicist friend is a leading researcher in this field and has published several experiments that demonstrate these phenomena beyond reasonable doubt. I asked him whether quantum-physical effects might be involved in these long-distance exchanges of information. I had in mind the 1964 theorem of CERN physicist John Stewart Bell and subsequent experiments showing that subatomic particles, once in contact, remain connected thereafter, no matter how far apart they are, so that a change in one is correlated with a change in its remote partner, instantly and to the same degree. Such particles are said to be “entangled,” a term introduced into physics in 1935 by Nobel physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Schrödinger said, “I would not call [entanglement] one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that forces its entire departure from classical lines of thought.” Might the nonlocal connectedness of distant subatomic particles underlie the linkage between humans who share thoughts remotely?

“Impossible!” my physicist

We’re Still Just Snowflakes

Years ago, I remember Caroline Myss saying during a talk, “You think your thoughts are private?” And she laughed heartily. Yes, the thought that your thoughts are not your own, that not only are you not creating your thoughts but that they are available to others, is quite the mind-blowing concept . . . until you consider the nature of consciousness.

Your thoughts are not just gossamer wisps of nothingness that uneventfully dance and dissolve in the uncharted recesses of your mind. Your thoughts (expressions of your individual consciousness) immediately connect you to all of creation through the Unified Field (the omnipresent expression of collective consciousness that includes your “individual” consciousness).

In essence, then, we are all radios attuned to different frequencies. The higher your consciousness, the more you realize that we are all just thought delivery systems, and all connected to a master consciousness grid. Here’s how Dr. David R. Hawkins put it:

Objectively, it can be seen that thoughts really belong to the consciousness of the world; the individual mind merely processes them in new combinations and permutations. What seem to be truly original thoughts appear only through

The Plane Truth About Happiness

Lenny Dykstra then

In the March 12, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated, a special report by writer David Epstein explains how former baseball star Lenny Dykstra, now forty-nine, lost millions of dollars and wound up being sentenced to three years in jail for fraud. Here’s an excerpt:

In the unreleased documentary, filmed after his bankruptcy filing, the former Met and Phillie explains the importance of a private plane to his contentedness. “I said, O.K., I know I’ll be happy when I buy my own Gulfstream,” says Dykstra, reflecting on the place he purchased in 2007. “But I got down to the end of the nose, I looked back and I said, O.K., happy, come on, come on. So it’s not about the Gulfstream. But it is about the Gulfstream. Meaning it just wasn’t as good a Gulfstream as I wanted.”

Um, Lenny, there’s something you should know. The day a Gulfstream buys anyone happiness is the day

No Striving Required

So many spiritual seekers these days are determined to reach enlightenment. Yet if they continue to strive for it, enlightenment will remain forever out of their reach. Enlightenment is achieved not through striving but through surrender. Enlightenment then becomes a natural consequence of devotion.

Dr. David R. Hawkins summarized this concept beautifully in his book, Dissolving the Ego, Realizing the Self:

Out of an unrestricted

Precedence and Presidents

In an earlier post, I wrote about the astonishing synchronicity of two of the first three U.S. presidents dying on the same day . . . and on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence no less! To top it all off, a third U.S. president died on the very same day five years later!

President John F. Kennedy

One-hundred thirty-seven years later, the death of another U.S. president was again one of three notable passings. On November 22, 1963, not only was John F. Kennedy assassinated, but two literary and intellectual giants chose that day to go to their heavenly rewards (although in light of the

Fallen Idol

In a March 2 online article for Entertainment Weekly, the newly minted Top 13 American Idol finalists were  asked, “What sets you apart from the other contestants? Jeremy Rosado replied, “I know that I have the favor of God, and that’s gonna get me farther than anything else.” Now, I don’t know exactly what Jeremy meant by that, but I imagine his comment alienated more than a few of the voting viewers. Come across as “holier than thou” on a TV talent show, even if that’s not what you intended to convey, and you might as well press the Eject button yourself. Sure enough, last night Jeremy became the first singer to be eliminated. Even though he wasn’t the most talented singer in the bunch, my heart goes out to him. I can only imagine the anguish and humiliation that come with being rejected on live TV, and especially at such a young age.

So what does “having the favor of God” really mean? Anyone can attain the favor of God simply by striving to live in attunement with peace, love, truth and beauty. As Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote:

Everyone shows harmony or disharmony according to how open he is to the music of the universe. The more he is open to all that is beautiful and harmonious, the more his life is tuned to that universal harmony, and the more he will show a friendly attitude towards everyone he meets, his very atmosphere will create music around him.

Having the favor of God is all about internal rewards, not external results. Loving God won’t directly help you win a singing contest, a football game or a book contract. What it will help you win is a

Stop, Look, Listen

At a church service this evening, the minister ingeniously applied a warning for children to the quest for divine connection. He said that when children are crossing a street or railroad tracks, they’re told to “Stop, look and listen.” Similarly, you can deepen your relationship with God by, throughout the day, reminding yourself to “Stop, look and listen”:

Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment
Look to your