Television emphasizes for us the extreme – the beautiful and the ugly, the wondrous and the shocking.
I’ll save the ugly and the shocking for some other time and focus on the wondrous and the beautiful for now.

The same “beautiful” that makes us aspire to new heights, invokes jealousy, and forces us to recognize our faults and shortcomings. The products we can’t afford to purchase, the places we can’t go for vacation, the houses we can’t even rent for the weekend, and the men and women that look so beautiful on the screen.

Now let’s examine things from a new point of view.
We’ll start with accepting what we have and what we don’t have right now; Genuine and complete acceptance, with no shame or disappointment. Then, just for a moment, we’ll bathe in the dream, in the beauty and wonder.

Just for one moment, we’ll welcome in blessing the opportunity to take a peek at the wonders of creation, even though we can do no more than watch them from afar. For just one moment, we’ll enjoy the sight of the sunset in an exotic island or a beautiful model on the screen.

Without judgment, without trying to demean that which we cannot achieve; we’ll enjoy the experience of watching as television allows us, in wonder of the magnificence of nature and the divine touch which is reflected in all that is around us – nature, men and technology.

Then we’ll move on without attachment and with no remorse or sorrow, thankful for the opportunity we were given to watch something special and wondrous. Like a visitor in a museum, watching a piece of art and then moving on, carrying inside the wonder and appreciation to both creator and creation, whomever and whatever they are.

We enhance talk by talking

We enhance walk by walking

We enhance dance by dancing

And so we enhance Love by loving

Yesterday I found myself explaining that Love is not an emotion but a state of being.

“Being in Love” means being in a place of Love, a state of Love, in a being of Love. It’s not at all about romantic love or falling in love, but an existence in a state of Love. Just as we don’t feel peace, but experience and exist in a state of peace, so that we are at peace.

Love as a state of being is very basic and resides beneath the emotional and the mental layers. Therefore, existing in that state makes it easier for us to avoid getting swept up by the effects of thinking patterns or combustible emotions. An emotional combustion that in many cases leads to words and actions we may not have chosen were we in a reasonable state, in which the distance between the occurrence and the reaction is larger. Large enough to leave us sufficient time fragments for choosing the reaction, or even inaction, instead of just reacting impulsively.

Of course there are other side effects to being in a state of Love. People around us seem to look prettier (a strange feeling at first, but once you get used to it, it’s quite amusing), the future seems rosier and less troublesome, we are calmer, our thoughts are less bothersome, and so on and so forth.

We all (I hope) know and remember this feeling from times when we were in love, with excitement, butterflies in the stomach and little hearts in our eyes. So the excitement, the butterflies, the hearts and the intoxicating feeling do indeed pertain to falling in love, but the beauty around the excitement is that state of Being in Love.

So how do you enhance Love – you practice Love.

You find the state of being of Love once, and then you aspire to return and stay in that same state as frequently as possible. At first for a few minutes, in a low stimuli environment with music that makes you feel loving and loved. The more you practice entering and staying in that state, the easier it becomes to find it again and enter it in every day life too, and just be in it, Be in Love.

(Written with a lot of Love)

A few days ago, someone gave me an answer like: “Never mind, things always happen for the best, don’t they?”

Significant events (more or less) that happen to us in the course of our lives are meant to teach us something new or reinforce something we have already learned. The lesson can come in different ways but is meant for us to get something out of it. There’s nothing to worry about, a lesson we have missed is guaranteed to come around again. But who among us likes to repeat the same lesson more than once?

This applies to school, work, relationships and any other area of life you can think of. The lessons are varied and infinite, everyone has their own, and I will not presume to know with certainty what somebody else’s lesson is to learn or why they received that particular one and not another.

I knew someone who let her commanding officers in the army transfer their work load to her, while convincing herself every time anew that it was a great honor. This girl worked herself ragged, and even when she eventually realized they were just taking advantage of her in order to make things easier for them, she didn’t want to rock the boat. Time went by and something similar happened at her work place; her commanding officer was replaced by a manager, the previous tasks were replaced by new ones, and once again she found herself doing someone else’s work out of all kinds of expectations and wanting to prove herself. It took two more work places until she figured out her pattern and changed her attitude about what she was and wasn’t willing to take on. Of course there was a blow out and she left, but at her next work place the phenomenon did not repeat itself. Her management was different and never demanded anything similar. Ever since then, she smiles more and is tired less.

So everything is for the best because the purpose of all the experiences and events, the joyful ones and the painful ones, is to teach us a lesson. And it is all for the best, because if we haven’t passed this test, sooner or later the lesson will come around again and with it another opportunity to make the right decision and create change. But why do it all over again if we can at least try and make more of an effort the first time around, to understand and assimilate the message and move on?

I believe that Not every little thing in our lives has meaning, but it is hard to identify and differentiate a meaningful event from a marginal one. This means that if we are not paying attention to the possibility that an event in our lives may be meaningful, we may make a wrong decision or miss the lesson.

All the wise ones always say: “No big deal, it will come around again”. But I’ve never liked having to do the same thing twice and have always preferred to put the effort in the first time around and then move onto something new. “It’s not so simple” everyone claims, and rightfully so. And who said it needs to be simple?

Indeed not simple, but out of the understanding that that is how things work, we can make an effort and try to avoid repeat lessons by a process of contemplation and paying attention. Paying attention to things we are going through and to the choices we make.

In addition, there is a variety of techniques, some simple and easy and some advanced and more complex, that serve to enhance the consciousness of what is happening to us and around us. They are usually easy to understand but not necessarily easy to apply when we are in emotional turmoil or immersed in a certain situation, and like in any area, with use comes experience and with it improvement, and then life starts to look a little different; a little better.

Good luck.

The term “ego” as used in spiritual context is the sum total of the characteristics that separate us from one another, characteristics that are defined by our mind. The purpose of the ego, is to give us self definition to differentiate us from others and thus to allow us to experience things individually. A character (one or more) of sorts, we use to identify ourselves to our surroundings, which is fine.

The problem starts when we identify ourselves with our ego and we start believing that this character is actually who we are. We forget that this is just a mask of sorts so we never bother taking it off our face. When we look in the mirror before we go to bed this is who we see, instead of who we really are. But that’s not the point I would like to make here.

It is understood that if I’m one with my ego then I have to sustain it, nourish it, and preserve it, because the result of being identified with my ego means that it is so important it appears as if I can’t exist without it. I will purchase whatever is needed, act as needed, and work hard to improve and strengthen this mask that represents me to the outside world. But that is not the point I would like to make either.

The point I would like to focus on, is the point in time when a person becomes aware of the gap between who they really are and the mask they have gotten used to portraying to the outside world and they are not happy with this gap. Let’s take for example, a person who isn’t happy because she feels that the mask she’s been wearing for a long time is in conflict with how she believes she should have behaved. For a long time she felt like a forced actor because her surroundings expected a certain something and she, for various reasons, was compelled to adapt herself to said expectation. On rare occasions of openness, she happened to reveal her true self to someone else and then got startled by the level of openness she had shown and closed up again, because the identification with the act was still there.

When she finally reaches a point where the conflict, between the act and the true self, brings her to a courageous decision to make a change, a problem she didn’t anticipate arises. It is not easy to decide to change on the outside, but dealing with the change on the inside in such a case is a little more complicated.

For a long time, the act has been set by general guide lines defined by her surroundings and according to a script that has been self written and so, the need to act convincingly has created a wall between her ego and her true self. The distance between them exists in each and every one of us, because aside from precious few, who no longer have egos, we all have an ego which from its very existence does not reflect our true self. So hopping back and forth between the true self and the ego the way we all do is one thing, but climbing a wall every time is harder, and she start asking herself if the decision to make a change wasn’t premature and if it was even worth the effort.

Dear folks, anyone, who is in a certain situation in which they are suffering, has only two logical options before them. One is to accept the situation as it is – a full acceptance and move on with their lives. In this case accepting their role as an actor and choosing consciously to live with the distance between the act and their true self.

The second option is to commit to make a change and dismantle the walls and the barriers. Any interim situation that isn’t one of these two options will be a situation with conflict and unnecessary suffering that does not serve anybody.

In a mental coaching process and with the aid of energetic healing sessions this process can be accelerated and either of the options can be aided, but for that a choice needs to be made.

Sometimes people come into our lives just like that, for no apparent reason. A chance meeting for a moment at an event or a random coincidence of being at the same place at the same time. Then a little spark is ignited and something happens.

I once sat down for lunch at a professional conference and someone sat down next to me. What started as a coincidental conversation at the table turned into a friendship and over the years we helped each other, more then once, to find new projects, clients, and even jobs. Someone who went to college with me got in touch, surprisingly, several years later just in time to help me (completely by chance) find an amazing place to live right before I was about to close the deal on a dump at an exorbitant rate. A long lasting romantic relationship started with an encounter that required an impressive collection of coincidences and another romantic relationship that also changed my life started about a year after filling out my personal info on some social web site I never visited again.

The problem is, of course, that except on rare occasions, that spark can only be identified when looking back. This means that in every person we get to meet there may be that potential. The potential to move our lives forward, to a better place, to teach us something new, to create a blessed change the depth of which and significance of which we may only begin to understand many years later.

A holiday is always a good excuse. We have the opportunity to let go of disputes, a hurt sense of “self”, misunderstandings, unpleasant occurrences, and anything else that might be keeping us from realizing the full potential that may be in those people we’ve met along the way.

Non-forgiveness is the mind holding on to a memory of an event or a situation that happened which we disagree with, or are unhappy about.

Forgiveness comes from the heart and is related to letting go of resentment, which allows us to break free of the negative emotions accompanying the painful memory.

The easy part is asking for forgiveness of someone else. The hard part is forgiving freely, even without being asked. Choosing to leave behind the over clouding shadow, to initiate change and restart whatever got stalled.

Let’s look inward, find those memories that create a barrier between us and the people that have come into our lives, and make the choice to forgive and forget.
Because there is no reason to carry unpleasant memories with us, and because we can never know where the potential begins or where it ends in each and every person in our lives, even if they’ve only dropped by for a short visit.

The following story is based on a joke I once heard:

A man, who was crossing the desert, got caught in a sand storm and lost his horse. Exhausted from battling the storm and after crossing a great distance on foot, the thirst started affecting him and he realized he had to find a water source soon.

Beyond the next hill he suddenly discovered a man standing by a tie stand.

-  “Hello there” said the tie salesman “you’re welcome to check out my merchandise. I have all sorts of ties and of a great quality. I’m sure one of them will work for you”.

-  “No thanks” replied the man “I just want some water to drink. Could you  spare some for me?”

-  “Sorry” replied the salesman “I just finished drinking all the water I brought  with me. But maybe you’d like to buy a tie? I have excellent merchandise”

-  “I don’t need a tie right now. Would you just tell me which way to the nearest population or a place where I can find water?” replied the man impatiently

-  “Why are you in such a hurry? Take your time, go over my merchandise;  I’ll give you a good price”

-  “You greedy salesman!” yelled at him the man “you should be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage of my misfortunate situation! All you care about is selling me your ties! I don’t need a tie in the middle of the dessert! Stop wasting my time and tell me where the nearest population is”

-  “I see you’re very angry with me” said the salesman “but if you insist so adamantly I can tell you that 3km from here due west is a restaurant and you can surely find water there. Also, to show you I’m not a bad person, I’ll give you any tie you want as a gift.”

-  “Go to hell – you and your ties!” Called out to him the man and started making his way due west.

Two hours later, the man returns to the salesman and his tie stand utterly  exhausted.

-  “What happened” asks him the salesman in a worried tone “you couldn’t find the place?”

-  “I found it” replies the man “except they wouldn’t let me in without a tie”

Many times in life we are so focused on the destination or the goal we are aspiring to, that we overlook events, experiences and opportunities we happen upon along the way that are in and of themselves an important part of the journey we need to make on our way to the goal.

The point here is not “to stop and smell the roses” or “when the universe hands you lemons – you make lemonade”. The point here is that we should be aware of anything that is happening to us in this moment. Being open to all the possibilities, even when they don’t seem relevant to that which we are searching for at the moment. Life serves up a variety of experiences, opportunities and challenges at a timing that can be very confusing, mainly due to the multitude of details and the fact that we can’t see the big picture, except, sometimes, in retrospect. Opportunities we passed up for seeming insignificant may later turn out to be a big miss.

The way to recognize an opportunity worthy of our attention amidst all the events and information we are bombarded with in every day life is by connecting to our true self, our knowing self, what some refer to as intuition. In many cases we make decisions based on clues or signs that “help” us make a decision one way or the other. The sign can be a person saying the “right” words, or certain circumstances that bring us to the brink of a decision.

A common mistake is looking for the signs. Instead, what we should do is
To remember to be aware as much as possible of the “here and now” so that we don’t miss them.

To remember the destination we are aiming for but focus on every step along the way there.

To remember that the road is more than just a nuisance separating you from your goal.