Authentic Living

So, you are going through life making choices all day every day. But have you ever tried to discover all of the myriad "What ifs" plaguing your backroom brain-committee meetings? Well today, author Betsy Thompson is here to help us both discover and come to terms with some of these what ifs. Betsy is the author of recently released "What Happens if I?" as well as,Walking Through Illusion, The Mirror Theory, LoveParent, LoveHuman, and You Are What You Think so Make Your Thoughts Delicious. Betsy's interesting twist on how life works forces us to ask and answer such questions as, "What if I do what I love but the money doesn't come?" She does this in order to help us make our actions and reactions work for instead of against us. The search for truth means sometimes asking the hard questions. Today, along with announcing Oprah's next Super Soul Sunday show with a special encore presentation of her interview with Gary Zukav, we are going to be asking and answering those questions.

Anger is a much despised emotion, considered by most to bring us all too close to the edge of that precipice over which we dare not fall, lest we have to consider ourselves to be bad or even evil people. For most religions, anger itself is thought of as a sin. Many New Age or even New Thought practitioners tell us of the dangers of being angry—dangers that range anywhere from anger's power to make us operate from the "lower" self or the "ego," to its supposed power to attract so-called "negative" people and events into our lives. We fear our anger. We are ashamed of our anger. Therefore, we suppress our anger so that it is left to leak out unconsciously through health problems, passive/aggressive or even aggressive behaviors. But what if all of these years we've been pushing away one of our most important transformative powers? Tune in this week to find out how anger can become a transformative force in your life.

We’ve got just about three areas of endeavor as adults at which we may feel either successful or unsuccessful: relationship, parenting and work. Two of those areas have something to do with the emotional intelligence.

Part of the problem with our concept of heaven, and one of the primary reasons why we don't live in heaven right now on planet earth, is because we suffer. The Buddha told us that we suffer because we are attached to things, people, places, circumstances, etc. That if we could relinquish attachment we would no longer suffer. Some resent that idea because it seems to give the gods of fortune their way—and why should they rather than us? After all, why shouldn't we have what we want and need? In answer to that question, proponents of the law of attraction say that if we can suspend so-called "negative" thoughts we can win over the gods of fortune. Which is true? Why do we suffer? And is it really possible to stop suffering on this side of heaven? Today we are going to give a considered answer to that question. And then we are going to hear another clip from Oprah's Super Soul Sunday in which she interviews Grammy-Award Winner India Arie on spiritual awakening. Don't miss it.

The concept of heaven has been distorted with so many of our fantasies about avoidance of struggle, suffering and pain. And since most of us can't imagine a place on earth in which there is no struggle, suffering or pain, we've put heaven up there, out there, down there, anywhere, but here, on planet earth. What you are about to learn about heaven will change your thinking on this entirely. Heaven is not a place. It is not out there, up there, down there and it isn't simply a place we go to after we die. It is right here, right now—but then it isn't about avoidance of suffering either. Tune in this week— you'll learn how to inhabit heaven NOW. AND you'll hear our clip for this upcoming Super Soul Sunday, in which Oprah interviews one of the greatest American basketball coaches in history, NBA Championship coach Phil Jackson, as he discusses both his coaching philosophy and his own battle with cancer. Don't miss it.

Our biggest problem isn't fear. It is shame. Shame defines us deep down in the recesses of our sense of ourselves. It informs us of our identity. It makes our choices for us and interacts with others through us. It dictates what we repress and what we accept. In fact, it is shame that creates our fear. And the truth is that if we really knew who we truly are, shame would simply dissolve. But we live in a world in which to not feel shame is to not fit in. We live in a world in which our children shame each other into compliance with the social agenda. We live in a world in which shame at least a part of how we choose our careers, our mates, and our lives. It is, all too often, the ruler of our lives. So, this week, along with introducing Oprah's next Super Soul Sunday with a clip of her interview with bestselling author and religious historian Karen Armstrong, we are going to discover how we free ourselves from shame. Don't miss it.

There's a lot of information "out there" right now about how to lower your stress, raise your joy level, increase your abundance and live from what some call the Higher Self—which of course means that we must do something with the lower self. There's also other talk that tells us all about what it will be like in heaven after we die. The problem with all of this talk is that we don't seem to realize that we are already in heaven—we just don't know it. Heaven is within us—but our trance state of duality keeps us from seeing this—and all the morals and codes for our thoughts, feelings and behaviors only serve to keep us stuck in the trance state. And all of the advice that basically tells us to strive to be a better person only serves the same purpose. So, today, not only will we be playing a clip from Oprah's next Super Soul Sunday with Brian Weiss, but we'll be figuring out how to inhabit heaven NOW—all based on Andrea's upcoming book, entitled "Inhabiting Heaven NOW."

Don't miss today's clip of the upcoming Supersoul Sunday, in which we get the bigger picture on today's top global headlines from Oprah, Rev. Ed Bacon, Elizabeth Lesser & Mark Nepo. And for our discussion today: There are many names for the divine including, the Jewish tetragrammaton YHVY; 'elohiym, 'el and Jehovah; the Hindu Brahman, the Islamic Allah; the Bahá'í Baha; the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda and others. We seem to have a need to name the divine. Well our guest today, Rabbi Wayne Dosick tells us that none of the names we know from the Bible for God are enough. Rather, he says, the real name of God leads to the revolutionary revelation of both the God of the universe and the inner God of breath and soul. Combining scholarship with the sacred and challenging long-held comfortable beliefs, the Rabbi's latest book entitled, "The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine" reveals what he calls the real name for God—a name that unites us in a new way. Don't miss it.

Not only are we going to get to hear another clip from Oprah's 2-part SuperSoul Sunday interview with Maya Angelou today, but we are going to answer one of the pressing questions asked by today's seeker: How do we move from the personal mind to higher mind? Oprah tells us that it's not enough to know that you should do a thing, you must also know how to do it. Well today is a "how to" kind of day. Here today to answer our question is Psychiatrist, Dr. Maurie Pressman, author of Living the SuperMind. He tells us that the Supermind is the highest level of mind—the mind beyond the mind—that carries the power of love, health, wisdom and intelligence, through which we can make decisions, access talents, growth, healing and inner knowing. One of the early pioneers in both visualization and hypnosis whose work changed the focus of Olympic sports training around the world, Dr. Pressman moved on from there to studies of the higher mind. So you are not going to want to miss this one.

This week, the Authentic Living Show exclusively announces Oprah's new Supersoul Sunday series, beginning with Mother's Day and her interview with Maya Angelou. Listen for clips of that show on Authentic Living this week. And this week, we'll also be talking about how we walk in this world and still maintain our walk in the world of the soul? How can we deal with issues of survival, relationships, work, finances, health, politics, war, etc., while simultaneously living in the world of stillness, joy, emptiness and peace? Some say that we should simply stop listening, watching, reading the news. We should just tell ourselves that this world is an illusion and the only real is the world of the soul. That way we can continue to suppress all of our so-called "negative thoughts." But more and more people are finding that that way of living amounts to a lot of pretending and a lot of repression. So, how can we live the medial life between worlds? Tune into today's show and find out.