Authentic Living

Mark Nepo is an author, poet, philosopher, beloved teacher and cancer survivor who has, for thirty years, been exploring how we can stay awake and authentic when our wounds make us numb and hidden; how we can minimize what stands between us and our experience of life; how we can create a practice that wears down what thickens around our hearts and minds. And today we are going to talk to him about those very things, as we explore together the meanings and messages of his books, The Endless Practice and Reduced to Joy. The Endless Practice explores how the soul works in the world, and how by engaging our soul in the world, we are shaped by the endless practice of becoming who we were born to be. Reduced to Joy is a book of poems about the nature of working with what we are given until it wears us through to joy. This is a special opportunity to come closer to your own soul. Don't miss it.

Mark Nepo is an author, poet, philosopher and cancer survivor who, for the past thirty years, has been braving and showing us the path to the soul, to the practice of living in soul, while in body. His voice not only tell us but sings to us of the soul and its profound gravity of joy. His books, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen; The Book of Awakening; Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art; Reduced to Joy and the Endless Practice have capture of world of people looking for meaning and the actual experience of life. They have been notice by Oprah Winfrey who has interviewed Nepo on Super Soul Sunday several times, and have won awards such as the 2012 Books for a Better Life Award. Nepo is a man whose life and words demonstrate the essential meaning of life, and who teaches us all how to find it.

We have arrived at adolescence in our understanding of relationship—in other words, we have a long way to go. But, well, what do we expect? Only 150 years ago, marriages were often still arranged in first world countries. We arranged for a good dowry, good property, money, inheritance, prestige, even good teeth and good hips. So this thing of marrying someone we love is new, and we have only begun the work of understanding how to do it. But you know what happens typically in adolescence: we fall in love and out of love very quickly. Unfortunately, that's still where we are with this new understanding of marriage. But actually that process for the adolescent teaches him or her something about relationship—and so we are likewise learning. What are we learning? Tune in to find out how to have a healthy, happy relationship.

One of the most difficult challenges of any relationship is communication. How do we say what we mean without lashing out, or hurting the ones we love the most? Unfortunately, we tend to go to the extremes on this one: We either shut-down, or we lash out. Neither of those two options work, however, to create the intimacy that a relationship needs to grow. Nancy Dreyfus has come to our aid here with a beautiful book, "Talk to Me Like I'm Someone You Love, Revised Edition: Relationship Repair in a Flash" (2013) containing a set flashcards that say precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. What a beautiful idea. Nancy is a Transpersonal Psychologist who works with many relationships on this very issue of communication, and came up with this idea for her clients. But now we can all benefit from it—so today we are going to be talking about the how-to of communicating at the most difficult times in relationship. You are not going to want to miss this one.

Nancy Dreyfus

Generally speaking, we think of morality as a good thing. People should, we think, honor certain codes of behavior in order to prove that they are good people, and in order to maintain order in the world. But what we don't commonly know is that morality can often be a poor substitute for authenticity. We don't know it, but we are commonly doing the right thing, instead of doing the true thing. Yep, that's right, there can be a big difference between what's right and what's true. And today's show is going to point out that difference, as well as explore how authenticity gets us closer to a true spirituality than does morality. Don't miss this important show.

Most of us have been raised to be good. We were to share, be kind, be loving, say thank you when we didn't feel grateful, say I'm sorry when we weren't, hug people we didn't want to hug and say we loved people we didn't even know, much less love. But the idea of goodness held a magical quality for most of us. We thought that IF we were good enough, THEN we would be worthy, we would be loved and we could finally rest secure. We assume, therefore, that being real means being less than good—and the magic will go away. We know we have thoughts and feelings that we would call "bad." So, if we are real, does that mean that we will turn mean or "bad?" And what about worthiness? Doesn't being good make us worthy? But being real doesn't mean being bad, mean, unkind or unworthy. Being real means being genuine. And this show is not only going to clarify the difference but it will bring home the reasoning for why we can stop being good and start being real. It will reveal how we can begin to adopt and adjust to our genuine Self. Don't miss it.

What we have heard and we've read in the Bible, well it ain't necessarily so. So goes the old Porgy and Bess song. Perhaps they did not read Thomas Moore's version, Gospel The Book of John, in which regardless of religion or atheism one discovers a deeper more meaningful spirituality hidden in the root meanings of the words used. Unfortunately, much of the work of John and others has been turned into moralistic dogma. But what we find in the root language is a more celebrative, deeply mystical and loving message. In Moore's book we discover a different Jesus than the one described for us by earlier translations. This new rendition of Jesus is Dionysian in his urging us toward a full and meaningful celebration of living. He tells us that we are to remember who we are, and he guides us to that knowledge with his actions and words. Come learn of this new Jesus. See if you like him now.

Thomas Moore is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Care of the Soul. He has written twenty-five other books about bringing soul to personal life and culture, deepening spirituality, humanizing medicine, finding meaningful work, imagining sexuality with soul and doing religion in a fresh way. In his youth he was a Catholic monk and studied music composition. He has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Syracuse University and was a university professor for a number of years. He is also a psychotherapist influenced mainly by C. G. Jung and James Hillman. As a Gospel theologian and a non-aligned theologian, he has published his translation of the New Testament Gospels, Writing in the Sand: Jesus Spirituality and the Soul of the Gospels, and The Soul of Christmas.

This show is a rerun, but the truths haven't changed.

We live in a social environment now in which hate is overt, active and visible. Not so very long ago, in fact, hate was hidden, covert, and only active in a passive/aggressive fashion. But there are many people out there today who are trying to tell us that hate is a good thing. That it is even a Christian thing. That, of course, we hate, for how could we feel any other way toward people of other races, other cultures, other skin colors and other sexual orientations, and gender identities. But hate is a response to fear. And fear is a response to ignorance. There is so much that we fear that we really have no reason to fear. So what do we do with all of this? We learn to find the love beneath the hate. This show is going to show us just how we can do that. Don't miss this important discussion.

THE most important thing we can come to know in life is who we really are. But most of us have not been taught to know that person. Yes, we can look in the mirror and see ourselves, but most of us are looking at ourselves through what we perceive to be the image others have of us. Indeed, most of us have introjected a projection placed upon us by parents, and later others, who unconsciously need us to carry their projections for them. And since, as very young children, we need so badly to belong in our families of orgin, we just as unconsciously take on the roles that have been assigned to us in this way. In fact, because of this innate need to belong, we have no capacity to say "no" to these projections. And so, we identify with the roles we have introjected. But who are we really? Many of us do not even begin to ask that question until we have encountered a circumstance so difficult that the old way of living just cannot be lived any longer. And then we say, "I don't even know who I am anymore." But it is possible to come to know your authentic Self. And that's what we will be talking about today. Don't miss it.

The terms spiritual abuse have, thus far, only been used to describe how Christian leaders abuse church members. But spiritual abuse runs far deeper and wider than can be described by any one religion. Spiritual abuse is abuse of the human spirit. While it's true that your spirit--your soul--can't really be damaged, it's also true that you can be split off from any conscious awareness of your spirit--and that's what spiritual abuse does. It is possible to live a life complete bereft of any conscious awareness of one's own spirit. That's what spiritual abuse can do. It can happen in any religion, in the spiritual but not religious population, in New Age followers, in New Thought followers, in the Human Potential Movement, and in our homes, in our schools and in our workplaces. Anywhere there is spirit there can be abuse of that spirit. But it can also be healed. Let's talk about it--it's time.

Caroline Myss comes again to the Authentic Living Show to bring her own understanding of intimate conversations with the Divine. Revealing her own personal struggles and enlightenment, she discusses her book: Intimate Conversations with the Divine.

Caroline Myss is a five-time New York Times bestselling author and internationally renowned speaker in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality and mysticism, health, energy medicine, and the science of medical intuition. Caroline established her own educational institute in 2003, CMED (Caroline Myss Education), which offers a diverse array of programs devoted to personal development and draws students from all over the world. In addition to hosting a weekly radio show on the Hay House network, Caroline maintains a rigorous international workshop and lecture schedule. Caroline developed the field of Energy Anatomy, a science that correlates specific emotional/psychological/physical/spiritual stress patterns with diseases, about which she and Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., published the book: "The Creation of Health," In all, she has published over 36 audiobooks, videos or print books. Her latest book, "Intimate Conversations with the Divine" is the subject of today's show.