Living Authentically in a World Steeped in Illusion

by Alan Cohen - 

Sitting backstage at a network television studio in a large metropolitan city, I waited to go on the air for an interview. My segment was scheduled right after the noon news broadcast, which began with a gory account of a murder, then a rape, then war footage, followed by bad economic news and a political scandal.

I began to feel depressed, but consoled myself that the broadcast would get to more positive reports. It didn’t. The entire fifteen minutes was filled with gloom and doom, nothing anyone in his right mind would want to get up in the morning and face.

Eventually I just had to laugh. The news was beyond depressing. It was ridiculous. It was unbelievable. Finally, after the closing sortie of auto accidents and snarled traffic, the broadcaster announced, “. . .and now for a great new book by an author who is going to tell you how to live a happy life.”

The camera turned to me.

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

Suddenly I became Neo in the movie 'The Matrix', in which wizard Morpheus extends two open hands, a red pill in one palm and a blue pill in the other. If Neo ingests the red pill, he will awaken to his true self and the real world. If he takes the blue pill, he will remain in a familiar but oppressive world of illusions.

I sat up straight and reached for the red pill. I told the audience that love is our birthright and fear the imposter. I took a stand for living authentically in a world consumed by illusions.

I told the viewers that they deserved better than the world showed them, and they held power over their lives regardless of the insanity around them. It was the only news I knew how to broadcast.

After the program, the anchor, a highly-respected lifetime journalist, took me aside and told me, “I agree with you completely. I get depressed coming to this job. There has to be more to life than the world we are telling people there is.”

Is That All There Is?

The reality we have been shown by the media and other seemingly authoritative institutions has been twisted into the polar opposite of truth, championed by people more committed to bondage than freedom. 

You have likely told someone about a valued vision of yours, to which he or she responded, “Get real!” Suddenly your excitement was reduced to ashes and you either gave up your quest or you had to once again build up the courage and momentum to forge ahead.

Take care to share your sacred visions with people who will empower you, not attempt to gobble your hopes in the shredder of doubt.

If you have even one or two good friends who understand you and believe in you, that is sufficient. If it seems that no one understands or supports you, Higher Power has your back. Even when you do not have faith in yourself, God has faith in you.

When most people say, “Get real,” they mean, “Get small. Get limited. Get stuck. I am trapped in my little fear-bound world and your expansive vision is threatening to me. So I demand that you grovel in the mud with me. How dare you rock my tiny world with greater possibilities!”

The premise is that success and happiness are unattainable illusions, while struggle and suffering are realities we must adjust to and live with.

Step Into Your Greatness

Most planetary game-changers were told, “Get real.” They were branded insane, shamed, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The Catholic Church sentenced Galileo to house arrest for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun. 

Soon afterward Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno proposed that the sun was a star and that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. Giordano was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake. When the judges issued his death decree he told them, “Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.”

Jonathan Swift later noted, “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him." Einstein echoed, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Every person is potentially great. Are you willing to step into your greatness, claim it, and live it?

Get Real and Be Authentic

You have many opportunities to get real in the presence of people who fear to get real themselves and call you to play small with them. Regard their resistance as a call for love and an invitation for you to be authentic.

When you stand for truth in the presence of illusion, you break the illusion for yourself and for everyone who subscribes to it. Your mission is to remain alive in a world preoccupied with death; to walk tall when others are compromising their integrity; to be who you are while others have forgotten who they are.

Reality is not for sissies. To live authentically in a world steeped in illusion is the gift of a lifetime, spreading light in ripples from your own life to the lives of everyone you touch.

About Author: Author of  I Had it All the Time: When Self-Improvement Gives Way to Ecstasy. If you would like to become a professional life coach or incorporate life coaching skills in your career or personal life, join Alan’s celebrated Life Coach Training Program. For information about this program, Alan’s books, free daily inspirational quotes and his weekly radio show, visit alancohen.com.

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innerself.com

When to Shift

by Alan Cohen -

While teaching someone how to drive using a stick shift, my student asked me, “How do I know when to shift?” I answered, “You have to listen to the motor and feel it. When it starts to labor, it’s time to shift.”

Hearing myself say those words, I recognized an extremely important lesson for living. When your life starts to labor, it’s time to shift.

First gear is designed to get your car going and guide the engine at low levels of revolution. When your car starts to move at higher revolution, first gear is no longer appropriate. You need a different gearing mechanism to take you to higher speeds.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed, overworked or overburdened, you are trying to use a lower gear to drive at higher speed. You need to shift paradigms to navigate the next level.

Einstein said,

“You cannot solve a problem at the level of thinking that created it.” 

The problem is calling you to see, think and act in a new and more effective way. In that sense, the problem is a gift because it is moving you to a new level of living.

Jesus said,

“You cannot put new wine in old wineskins. They will burst.” 

Trying to go to new places with old ways of getting there will leave you frustrated and beleaguered. A higher gear is available to you if you are willing to use it. Then the motor will say, “Ah, that feels a lot better,” and get you where you want and need to go quickly and easily.

alancohen.com

Outlandish Ideas and Unconventional Thinking

by Alan Cohen -

Are Your Ideas Fully Baked?

Take the leap beyond conventional thought. In the classic movie 'The Graduate', Ben has just decided he is going to marry Elaine, the woman who has vowed to have nothing to do with him. When Ben tells his parents of his intentions, his father asks him, “Is this another one of your half-baked ideas?” Ben looks his father in the eye and tells him quite seriously, “Oh, no, it’s fully baked.”

When to trust God over other people’s opinions.

Like Ben, you may have to be a visionary to make your dreams come true. You may need to see beyond appearances and act in harmony with your beliefs and intentions even if other people do not agree with you or understand you. You may have to trust God more than the opinions of people.

If so, you are in good company. Albert Einstein shocked his students when he announced,

“I have not arrived at my understanding of the universe by means of my rational mind.”

Rene Descartes, credited as the father of modern science, did not gain his insight through conventional thought. In the midst of a high fever, Descartes had a vision of the formula for the scientific method. Linus Pauling (the only man to win Nobel Prizes in two different categories—Chemistry and Peace) noted,

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

Outlandish ideas move the world ahead far more rapidly and powerfully than logical steps.

Your imagination is the playground in which your prayers mature through joyful exercise. Let your mind dance in a world beyond the obvious, and you will access a cache of treasures that will spark your spirit and lead to success.

Most great inventions and positive social changes are the result of unconventional thinking. 

While your ideas may seem half-baked to others, they may be fully baked in the mind of God. Do you trust your ideas, intuition, dreams and visions enough to stay true to them even if you do not receive social approval?

I honor my inner voice.


alancohen.com

The High Road

by Alan Cohen -

When four paths appear… which one will you choose? 

Imagine a man walking along a city street when a flowerpot falls from an apartment windowsill above and crashes at his feet, narrowly missing him. At this point the man has a choice of four paths of thought and action he might follow.

THE FOUR PATHS:

1. The path of retaliation. 

He could dash up the stairs, find the owner of the potted plant, and punch him or chew him out.

2. The victim path. 

He could see the experience as confirmation that life is dangerous, and things that could hurt him await at every turn. Then he might go home and hide or wear a hard hat for the rest of his life.

3. The stoic path. 

He could decide, Well, I guess it was my karma for the flowerpot to miss me and just keep walking.

4. The high road. 

He could go to the flower shop on the corner, buy another potted plant, knock on the door of the owner of the plant that fell, and tell that person, “You may not know that you lost your plant. I thought you might like a replacement.”

Obviously the high road is the one that will bear the sweetest fruit for everyone concerned. 

"I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow." — Abraham Lincoln

At this moment you stand at a crossroads in your life where you must choose which path you will take. Keep thinking about your options until you discover what your high road is.

What choice now stands before you? 

What would your high road be? I choose the path that brings the deepest reward to me and everyone concerned.


alancohen.com

Signs When You Need Them

by Alan Cohen -

While driving home one day, I noticed that someone had posted some cardboard signs along the roadside, leading guests to a party on my street. I live out in the country where there are no city blocks, with many curving roads and irregular intersections.

I saw that the person who had posted the signs, placed them at the crucial intersections. At every important choice point, there was a sign. I drove for long stretches past numerous smaller intersections, where there were no posters. Then, when I again reached a crucial intersection, there was another clear marker.

It occurred to me that this is how Spirit gives us guidance we get signs when we need them.

Whenever you arrive at a critical choice point, information shows up to help you decide. If you are not getting a sign, you are probably not at a crucial intersection.

That's the time to just keep going and enjoy the ride. When you are ready to know, you will. If you don't know, it is not time yet. In the meantime, just breathe, trust and find the blessing where you are.

If you are seeking direction, pray for guidance. Then let the universe deliver your answer in the right way, place, and time. If, upon completing your prayer, you do not hear a voice boom from heaven, shout your name and bellow, "This is what you must do!" don't freak out.

Give the Great Spirit a chance to deliver your message when you most need it. It will come.

Guidance often arrives in uncanny and synchronistic ways. I met a fellow who prayed for a sign to help him decide whether or not to accept a promotion that would require him to relocate his home and family to a distant city.

Then one night he came home late and saw a "For Sale" sign on his lawn. Since his wife was already sleeping, he did not want to wake her. The next morning he asked her about the sign. "What sign?" she asked him. "The one on the lawn," he told her. The two walked outside, and no sign was to be found.

The fellow deduced that he had indeed been given a sign. He took the job, and the move ultimately turned out to be a success for everyone.

A man at a seminar told me he prayed for direction one morning, and then that afternoon as he walked out of a restaurant, the wind blew a piece of paper against his knees. He picked it up and discovered it was a flyer for my seminar that evening. He attended, and subsequently his life changed.

Another friend decided he wanted to become independently wealthy and retire at a young age. He prayed for help with this project. The next morning when he went out to jog, as he turned a corner he saw a book someone had left on top of a trashcan: Your Money or Your Life.

He took the book, read it, and found the wisdom he needed. Now he is well on his way to riches and early retirement.

If you act anxiously to hasten your answer, you inhibit your ability to receive guidance and delay its arrival. In such a situation your wisest move is to step back from frenetic activity and return to peace.

I once needed to find a particular document to resolve a financial snafu. I searched for it nervously, and only grew more confused and frustrated.

Finally I realized I was getting nowhere and decided to sit down and meditate to clear my mind. I let go of trying to locate the paper, and relaxed.

Toward the end of my meditation, an image popped into my mind, showing me a certain folder toward the rear of a file cabinet. I looked in the folder and there was the document.

The Truth Smoke-Out

I use a very successful method to receive guidance. I call it "The Truth Smoke-Out." Whenever I am not sure what to do, I say to the universe, "Just show me what I am to do here. I am willing to do whatever is in the best interest of everyone involved. Give me a clue and I will follow." Then I release the situation. I give up any preconceived notion about how this is supposed to turn out and when I am supposed to know. Sometimes the answer comes instantly, and sometimes it takes a while. But it always comes.

In the Greek version of the Bible, the first translation from the original Aramaic, two different words are used for our word "time."

One is chronos, which is equivalent to our understanding of time in seconds, minutes, and hours. The other word is kairos, which can best be translated as "in God's time" or "at the right time" or "when the time is ripe." In our culture we are used to living in chronos.

But there is an entirely more important element of time, which is timing. That's kairos. Practice living in kairos, and answers arrive at the perfect time. God is at least as smart as the person who put the signs up for the party.

alancohen.com

We Have to Let You Go

by Alan Cohen -

I have a new favorite cartoon. It’s a rendering by James True (jtrue.com) that’s both humorous and profound. The cartoon shows a tomato stalk with several tomatoes growing on it, at various stages of development.

One tomato is large and ripe. The tomato stalk says to the ripe tomato, “We have to let you go.” The title of the cartoon is "Layoffs at the Plant."

The profound nature of the cartoon is that the large tomato is ripe to be picked. Of course the plant has to let it go because it has no further purpose on the stalk. If it stays it will rot and die.

If it leaves, it will serve its next purpose.

The cartoon is a fabulous metaphor for why and when we need to be let go from a job, relationship, living situation or any station of life.

Life is not cruelly kicking you out of a place you still need to be. It is moving you on to where you really need to be for your joy and the gifts you can offer. You may think you are being cast aside, unfairly treated or victimized but there is a far bigger plan unfolding than meets the eye.

You have completed your purpose where you have been and your journey is about to reveal a new vista.. That’s why we have to let you go. The “we” is not your boss or your lover. It is the wise and loving collective universe.

A woman in one of my seminars reported, “Everything I have to let go of, I leave claw marks on.” If you believe there is safety in history, you will cling to the old out of fear.

If you trust in the security of destiny, you will embrace the new out of trust. As I noted in an earlier work, it takes courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real safety in what is no longer meaningful.

There is more safety in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life and in change there is power.

Paramahansa Yogananda advised,

“What comes of itself, let it come. What goes of itself, let it go.” 

If you have to struggle to get something or to hold on to it, you are trying to swim upstream of life.

There is a stream of good that flows to you, through you and around you. When you move with the stream, your good shows up in the right way, place and time.

When you buck the stream you fight to get and fight to hold on. You do not need to fight to hold on to anything that is truly yours. If it is truly yours, it will stay with you by the Law of Attraction and the Right of Consciousness. You own what you own not by manipulation but by who you are.

When it’s time to let something go, the universe will let you know. If you get laid off or your landlord sells the house or your lover leaves, despair not. 

There is a reason for the change and something better is in store. 

The more energy you spend complaining or resisting the change, the harder your transition will be, and the longer it will take for your next good to show up. Define the current change as good and helpful, and your next rewarding position will appear more quickly, easily, and naturally.

I recently saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the movie fable about a man who is born old and grows younger over time. To be honest, during most of the movie I wondered, “And the point is?” Yet upon thinking about it, I realized there is a good point to be extracted, although in my opinion the filmmakers spent a couple of extra hours to make it.

As an old man, Benjamin meets and falls in love with a little girl but their huge age difference prevents them from having a relationship. As Benjamin grows younger and she grows older, the time comes when they are the same age, and the two have a glorious love affair.

As he continues to grow younger and she older, they are drawn apart again. The apex of the movie is their thrilling love affair at the right time.

While the movie plays on the sadness of the two lovers being torn apart by time, it takes a narrow view of reality. Like many gut-wrenching romances, it suggests there is one perfect soulmate for you, whom you can enjoy for a moment but then some evil circumstance will wrest them from you and you must muddle in the pits of despair for the rest of your life.

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

It is true that good things come and go, and no one of them lasts forever. But what the Button movie and other romances do not tell you is that when one glorious experience ends, another one begins.

To think there is one moment of good for you in your life and when it’s gone, it’s gone, is to see the universe through incredibly narrow blinders.

Life is more like a square dance or a Sufi dance where you enjoy one connection for a while and then you move on to another great one.

So when your lover or the plant says, “We have to let you go,” do not interpret the event as loss. Interpret the event as “ripe.”

While in the physical world a tomato is ripe once for one purpose, as a spiritual being you have an infinite array and procession of ripenesses for many different purposes that go on literally forever, each more fulfilling than the last. Sure, there are layoffs at the plant. But the plant of life has roots that spread far beyond the stem the eyes can see.

alancohen.com

Your Thoughts, Intentions and imagination

by Alan Cohen -   How Lucky Can You Get? 

I met an artist who creates crafts with four-leaf clovers, which she uses to adorn gift boxes, bookmarks, and other inventive items.

When I asked her how she finds all these prizes, she explained, “I just have a knack for it. On my last expedition, I found 150 four-leaf clovers. ”

“That’s amazing!” I replied. “How long did it take you to find them?”

“About fifteen minutes,” she answered.

I was astounded. If you have every searched for four-leaf clovers, you have likely found perhaps one or two in a fifteen-minute stint. She found 150! 

How lucky can you get?

The answer has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with belief, expectation, motivation, intention and focus. 

The universe is abundant with all things, and it will happily deliver whatever you seek; if your mind is open to receive and you are sufficiently attuned to the object of your desire.

While many ascribe the results of their efforts to luck, fate, karma, astrological influences, and a gamut of external sources, experience is determined more by consciousness than any other factor.

The artist I described is so immersed in four-leaf clover consciousness that the clovers show up practically everywhere she looks.

You, too, are finding plenty of what you are looking for. 

You can tell by what you are finding. If you are finding love, joy, connection, creativity and celebration, that is what you are looking for.

If you are finding separation, upset, fear, pain, and conflict, that is what you are looking for. The Law of Attraction is drawing unto you that which is a match to the vision you are using.

You can change what you are getting by shifting your attention to objects you truly value. 

Your attention is the strongest currency at your disposal. Whatever you point it at grows.

So quit thinking, feeling and talking about what you have gotten that you don’t want and think, feel and talk about what you do want. 

You will be amazed at how quickly the universe rearranges itself to accommodate your picture of reality!

I met a woman who had been told by a doctor that she had six months to live. She went home and decided that if she wanted to live, she would have to entirely change the way she was thinking about her life.

So she switched from resistance to flow; from disdain to appreciation; and from fear to trust. That was many years ago. Her disease disappeared and health found its rightful place in her world. 

All positive change begins with attitudinal upgrade.

Thomas Jefferson declared, “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I have.”  I would replace the “hard work” phrase with, “the more I focus my consciousness on success.” 

Have you noticed that people who have bad luck seem to keep having it?

People who have good luck seem to keep having it?

That’s because those with bad luck keep focusing on the bad, and those who have good luck keep focusing on the good. If people with bad luck started to focus on the good, their “luck” would change.

In an episode of the Northern Exposure television series, Shelly received a chain letter promising that if she sent a copy of the letter to five friends within the next day, her entire life would change for the better.

So she mailed the letters and immediately good things started to happen to her. Unexpected money showed up, she met a nice man and she felt great. The letter worked!

A few days later Shelly returned to the post office, where the postmaster handed her the letters and informed her that he could not dispatch them because they had insufficient postage. Stunned, Shelley declared, “Maybe I’m in charge of my own life after all. ”

In the Bible we are told that we are created in the image and likeness of God. 

This means that we have the power to create what we choose. 

That power lives in your thoughts, intentions and imagination. 

When Olympic superstar Michael Phelps was interviewed after winning his umpteenth gold medal, the interviewer asked him to what he attributed his success.

Phelps answered, “Partly to my imagination. I think constantly about winning the gold.” Of course he trained a great deal, as well. But his mind training is as important as the laps he swims.

How many four leaf clovers are out there? 

As many as you look for and are open to receive. This principle applies as well to wonderful mates, jobs, and buyers for your house. “Seek, and you will find. Ask, and it is given. Knock, and it shall be opened to you.”

The laws of manifestation are solid, reliable and unbiased. 

They will gladly work in your favor if you understand how to use them and apply them consistently. Then you won’t need “the Luck of the Irish.” 

You will have the consciousness of a creator.

alancohen.com

Don't Take it Personally

by Alan Cohen - 

When I walked into my aviary to feed the parrots one morning, Yogi made mean faces at me and tried to bite me. My heart sank; my first reaction was, "I must have done something wrong to make him dislike me."

Yogi kept up this behavior over a period of weeks until I discovered that he had taken up courtship with one of the other birds and he had gone into a protective mode stemming from his mating instincts.

When I realized this, I felt relieved; it was just a genetically dictated "bird thing" and had nothing to do with me.

When someone is unkind or abusive toward you, don't take it personally. 

Anger is more about the giver than the recipient. If you accept their attack as a statement about you, you will not see clearly and the situation will be even more muddied.

Do not accept their "gift," and you will help them face their own issues.

Cultures, genders and belief systems have unique properties that are statements about the giver not the receiver. 

Just as my bird's aggressive behavior was a bird thing, there are ethnic things, man things, woman things and religion things.

Do not confuse a programmed behavior with a statement about your own value or the person who is speaking.

My friend who had emigrated from Russia was very aggressive and I often felt intimidated by her.

Then I went to Russia and stood in a crowd at a department store. The only way I was able to catch the attention of the clerk was to literally push my way to the front of the mob. 

That experience gave me an important insight into my friend's programming and I was able to understand her behavior. 

No one is mean on purpose. Since love is our nature, anything unlike love is a statement of an individual's history of pain. 

Unkindness is not an attack but a call for love.

alancohen.com

Liberating the Love Within

by Alan Cohen -

If you want to be truly free, you will have to be aware. One kind of awareness is when you are consciously making the effort to be aware of everything that you are doing.


There is another kind of awareness that is more mysterious. And you will begin to discover this mysterious awareness as you surrender more and more to your own desire to be free.

At times there will be an unexpected movement from deep within you; a response will arise that moves faster than thought.

You will do or say something that expresses the passionate intensity of enlightened consciousness, a consciousness that, a moment before, you had no awareness of. You will have the strange sense of not knowing who responded, even though it was none other than your own Self.

So our True Self is always paying attention in a way that we are usually not conscious of. And when we discover this Self we find that which is miraculous.

We discover who we truly are. It's the Self that we cannot see with the mind but when we experience it directly we will understand what it means to be enlightened.

When we liberate this Self that mysteriously sees and knows what we cannot see or know with our conscious mind, we will begin to respond to life in ways that, left to our own devices, we never could.

If we are true to the desire to be free, we will find that we always are paying attention, even at times when, in our conscious experience, it appears to us that we are not.

This happens to me often. Sometimes my own inner experience may appear to be, for a certain period of time, quite mundane. And then a response will occur to some event that is happening around me, a response that is so fast and so precise that it amazes me every time. I don't know where it comes from. I only become aware of it as its happening.

Usually when we speak about paying attention, we are only referring to that which engages the conscious mind. The problem is that it leaves the most important part of our Self out of the picture, which is that part of our Self that we can never know with the conscious mind.

Enlightenment is about the liberating discovery of the profound mystery of our own Self, a mystery that we will never be able to understand only with the mind.

The true, spiritual conscience is experienced as caring. 

This caring is a painful emotional experience but it's this caring that finally liberates us, slowly but surely, from the attachment to the ego and its endless fears and desires.

It is the emergence of this conscience that gives us the energy, strength, and inspiration to give ourselves to the most important task that there is.

 So if we want to be free, it's very important to ask ourselves: How much do I care?

The degree to which we are able to liberate ourselves from self-concern will be the degree to which we are able to recognize that our true nature as human beings is love. It happens automatically.

This is one of the miracles of human life. When you are ready to leave self-concern behind, your heart will expand and you will know a love that is impossible to imagine.

The nature of this love is not personal; it does not have its roots in the personality.

Love is literally liberated from the depths of our own being and just emerges of its own accord. Anybody can know this miracle if they really want to. They just have to be willing.

andrewcohen.com

Blissful Innocence

by Alan Cohen - 

A few years ago I attended a screening of made-for-TV video clips of paranormal and supernatural phenomena.

One of the more humorous segments depicted "The Magnetic Family" of the Philippines -- a family that, for some unknown reason, has their bodies magnetized to such a high degree that metal objects hold fast to their skin.

The audience gasped and laughed to view paper clips, metal forks, and even a steam iron stuck to the bodies of this family, sheerly by magnetic force.

After the presentation the organizer introduced me to the group, and for a joke I called myself "the Magnetic Man of Maui". The audience laughed, and the gathering soon dispersed.

As I was standing on the porch of the house where the screening had been held, a seven-year-old girl came up to me and tugged on my sleeve.

I looked down to recognize her as one of several children at the viewing. Then, without a word, the child took a quarter from her hand and pressed it to my bare forearm.

At first I thought the girl was trying to give me the quarter, but then, when the quarter fell to the ground, she frowned, looked up, and exclaimed, "I thought you said you were magnetic!"

A moment of laughter soon deepened to a profound realization: An innocent mind is open to all possibilities. Jesus taught "if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you must become like a little child."

We have heard that "ignorance is bliss," and we usually judge and criticize ignorant people. 

Yet there is a form of ignorance that serves us well and that is ignorance of limiting beliefs.

A Calvin and Hobbes cartoon declared, "It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept. "

Every reality is available to you -- including ones far more wondrous than the one you now live in -- and you can easily step into a bigger universe if you but drop your beliefs of what you can't do.

If you think you know it all, and what you have learned is "the only truth", you cut yourself off from all the truth grander than the one you currently know.

When I wrote The Dragon Doesn't Live Here Anymore in 1981, I was blissfully ignorant about writing and the book industry.

I wrote for the sheer delight of expressing myself creatively, and I published the book myself. 

Within a few months the book became popular, and before long I was reprinting in volumes of 10,000 and traveling around the world to present seminars.

Then one day I walked into a bookstore where my book was being sold, and I was appalled at the huge number of books on similar subject matter -- they took up nearly a whole wall!

Suddenly it occurred to me that if I had walked into the store and saw all the excellent and successful work already presented in my field, I probably would never had set pen to paper. But I was ignorant -- and that made all the difference.

Later as I got to know the publishing industry, I learned all the rules; what kinds of books sell, covers that attract attention, agents who can influence publishers, formulas to appeal to various kind of audiences, etc. etc. etc.

In retrospect, I sure am glad I didn't know the rules, because most of the rules lead to the disappointing conclusion that only a small percentage of writers will succeed.

Some of the other people who did not know the rules were Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and James Redfield. Is there a message here?

Back in 1951, running a four-minute mile was considered physiologically impossible, Then Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3:58 and within six months forty other contenders beat the unbeatable limit.

A few years ago in Australia, a 61-year-old farmer named Cliff Young entered a grueling 400 kilometer race wearing coveralls and galoshes.

As the younger well-trained athletes who competed with him laughed, Cliff went on to win the race in record time -- a full day and a half before competition forty years his junior.

How did Cliff do the impossible? Nobody told him he was supposed to sleep.

The word impossible begins with an imp. Get the imp out of your vision, and you will return to your original innocence.

God created the world in perfection, and if we do not see perfection it is only because we are choosing to use a vision that is smaller than God's.

A friend told me, "I used to think I was a perfectionist because everywhere I looked I saw flaws. Now I realize that I was actually an imperfectionist. If I was really a perfectionist, I would see only perfection. "

Swami Satchidananda teaches, "We started out fine. Then we got de-fined. Now we need to get re-fined." 

Perhaps children are the happiest people on the planet because they have not learned what they cannot do. They have not been taught to fear and judge and hate and they have no concept that they must justify their existence by hard work. 

Lord, please keep me ignorant so I may remember my innocence and see the world as You created it.

alancohen.com

Seeing Higher Possibilities and Potential

by Alan Cohen -

THE ADDICT AND THE SAGE:

I heard about a psychologist who was assigned to work with a young man with a long history of drug addiction.

Jack showed up in Dr. Estelle Parsons’ office with a thick dossier of troubles and dire diagnoses.

As Dr. Parsons began to interview Jack, he launched into many stories and justifications for his addictive behavior. But she did not go there with him. "Tell me about what you did this week that was not addictive," she summoned him.

At first, Jack could not think of much of his week unrelated to his addiction. Then gradually, over months of therapy, Dr. Parsons was able to elicit more and more information about the healthy Jack.

At some point the focus of the sessions shifted from Jack’s ineptitude to aspects of his life that he had mastered.

Jack began to identify with his strength and take pride in it. Eventually he dropped his addiction entirely. Dr. Parsons was the first therapist who was able to accomplish this extraordinary transformation with this patient.

RELATIONSHIPS 

We might apply this powerful technique to our relationships. Many of us have become so steeped in what is wrong with ourselves in relationship that dysfunction becomes our accepted norm.

We are so expert in why we can’t commit; or keep attracting abusive partners; or how our parents’ poor role model squashed our self-esteem; or why we can’t forgive ourselves or our partner; or; or; or . . . that we talk ourselves out of the possibility of real love... As Dr Phil might ask, "And just how has that been working for you?"

If your relationship is not working, I invite you to adopt a radical attitude, perhaps one you have not tried: You were born to enjoy a rewarding relationship and you can have one now. And your role in creating it?

Quit complaining about what you don’t want and start celebrating what you do want - and may already have. The secret of relationship is the same as living in California: Don’t dwell on the faults.

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY 

There is a new field of corporate consulting that is catching on in a powerful way. It is called Appreciative Inquiry.

In this modality, consultants do not ask their clients what is not working and then try to find ways to fix it; instead, they invite their clients to talk about what is working and why.

Appreciative Inquiry practitioners have found that once people get back on touch with the original vision they set out to achieve in their business and find evidence for its reality, they are able to solve problems from an entirely more empowering perspective.

You can never solve a problem
from the same level the problem exits;
you must step higher so you can see
the whole picture more clearly.

--Albert Einstein



Albert Einstein noted that you can never solve a problem from the same level the problem exits; you must step higher so you can see the whole picture more clearly. A Course in Miracles puts it this way: "You cannot be your own guide to miracles, for it is you who made them necessary in the first place."

CONNECT AND REMEMBER 

Before you attempt to handle a personal or relationship challenge, step onto higher ground. Get in touch with yourself, your spirit, your higher power. Before you try to correct, connect.

Remember who you are in your strength, not your fear or separateness. Recall what you love and appreciate about your partner, and why you are with them.

Claim full responsibility for igniting yourself, and let them off the hook as the source of your joy or sorrow. Bring a whole person to your partner, and that is who you will call forth in them.

I did a radio interview with Dr. George Love, a holistic health practitioner... During the interview, I asked the doctor, "Is Love your real name?" "Yes, it has been my family name for generations," he answered. "In fact, when I was a child, other kids would ask me that. When I told them it was my real name, they would beat me up... Do you have any idea why that happened?"

I thought for a moment and then answered, "I guess a lot of people are just afraid of love." In a way I was joking but I was actually being serious.

A lot of people are afraid of love – so much so, that when we come close to it, we find ways to run away from it.

I find it insane that we would turn our back on the thing we crave the most – and the thing we are the most. We are like the people Plato described, who live in dark cave for so long that when they finally see some light their eyes hurt and they run back into the darkness.

SHIFT YOUR ATTENTION 

But the darkness is not our destiny. No matter how thick your dossier of what has gone wrong, you can start a new dossier now.

All it takes is one person who is willing to see your higher possibilities. And if no one out there is doing that, let that one person be you.

Quit identifying with your difficulties, finding justifications for them and arguing them. Become a force for your own potential. Shift your attention to what is going right and how great it could be.

AFFIRMATION 

"I am always doing better than I think I am."

alancohen.com