What influences you in your life? What are the influences that you’re conscious of? Perhaps more importantly, what are the influences you’re not conscious of? The ones you’re conscious of are generally those you’ve thought through, or had an emotional reaction to or about, or that have come explicitly from friends or colleagues, or that you’ve read—for example, a book to read, a movie to see, or clothes to buy. These are all conscious choices, and because they’re conscious, you have the option of allowing them to influence you, or not.

But the unconscious choices give you no such option! Continue reading →

This blog started out to be about finding your passion and living it—creating a living from that which most sparks your energy, your enthusiasm, and your love of doing it. But the name that came to me when the blog idea first arose is “Healthy Body Mind Soul” (www.healthybodymindsoul.net). And what has emerged here is a variety of blog subjects and topics that are much broader than just finding your passion.

So, that’s OK! What I write about is what comes to me—mostly during my morning meditation—and the words seem to just flow on that topic… until they stop! Continue reading →

Close your eyes for a moment and deeply feel one or more of the following:

• You can’t stop by a Starbuck’s or Pete’s or your favorite coffee house for even a latte because that might make a difference in whether or not your child has something to eat that evening.
• You have to stop going out to lunch every day, or even once a week, because the $60 a month you’d spend for lunch is needed to pay your phone or water bill.
• You just scrape by each month paying the utilities, taking advantage of your utility company’s willingness to let you stretch your back payments over several months.
• You can no longer afford to buy organic fruits and vegetables because of the cost difference.
• You try to eat fewer meals so that you have enough to pay the rent or the utilities or for food for your children.

Sound impossible in Marin County? Think again! It’s very real in Marin County, and it’s greatest impact is on our county’s children! Continue reading →

Where did this question come from? I received an e-mail today—one of many that I get because someone who promised not to sell my e-mail address sold it anyway—the title of which was “Subconscious Mind v. Conscious Mind.” The link took me to a short video clip that was actually about the Reticular Activating System, or RAS. The speaker proceeded to talk about how all you had to do was keep your goals constantly in mind and you would sensitize the RAS to ensure that, whatever those goals were, they would now start coming true because the RAS would watch for them for you and somehow or other filter them from the 10’s of millions of stimuli you receive each day/hour/minute in your subconscious mind.

The speaker’s comments reflected the widespread popular confusion about … Continue reading →

The following appeared August 18 on the Ultimate Life Today Facebook page:

When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? Continue reading →

I have several e-mail addresses, one of which dates back to about 1993 and another to about 2004. As you can imagine, I get a lot of subscribed, solicited, and unsolicited mail in my inbox for both of these e-mails. Lately, I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails about things our illustrious Congress is doing or considering or trying to get passed—like closing post offices and stopping Saturday mail delivery, or a bill to replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen and overseen by Congress, which the sponsoring congressman wants to use as a model for every federal science agency we have.  Continue reading →

So, what is this? I thought we explored finding your passion in 1 — Empowering Yourself—Finding Your Passion!? Didn’t we? Well, we explored some ways of seeking out clues as to what your passion might be. But we also talked about your passion as coming from a deep inner resource. That deep inner resource is called many things: your higher self, your spirit, your soul, the “big” I, higher consciousness, and so on. All of these naming conventions are intended to do two things: differentiate that deep inner resource from your ego or self, and to imply its connection/relationship to the Divine force that is within all of us. It is the source of your creativity and is that driving inner force that “lights you up, ignites your fires, drives you to pursue it.” Continue reading →

What is the “truth” about Internet businesses and making money online? Over the past few weeks I’ve received a tremendous number of unsolicited e-mails about how to make a lot of money online “this afternoon” or “overnight” or make money at home on the Internet by following “a few simple steps,” and I can do this because the sender (or the person they refer to) made “$710,000 in 30 days” or makes “$428/hour” or … You’ve probably received some of these, too—if you haven’t, all you need to do is respond to one of the “make money online” links or ads that come up in Google when you search for online businesses and you’ll be added to “opt-in” e-mail lists that are then resold and resold and resold. Continue reading →

My previous blog on inner integrity was a pretty academic discussion of one way of viewing the foundations of inner integrity. Today, I’d like to look at the reality of inner integrity. How have I experienced inner integrity—or the lack of it? How have you experienced it? We’ll also look at a TEDx talk by Mike Robbins, who has written about authenticity in his book, Be Yourself: Everyone Else is Taken. We’ll look at what is authenticity—how is it related to inner integrity? Here’s Mike’s talk on authenticity: Continue reading →