A prick of the heart can change your life without someone trying to change YOU. As a Boston friend said, "I'm gonna prick their haaahts" - which was a way to nudge or prod his children to take action, or "do the right thing." This prick is the puncture of a small idea into another person, WITHOUT pressing. It isn't about controlling other people. It is NOT about you knowing better what someone else should do. Rather, it is about planting a seed into becoming a small gut-feeling that cares or is connected to others. Someone's sense of responsibility cannot be taken away... but I can exercise an obligation to point to LOVE. Some slight re-frame may provoke someone to think for themselves. This is a concerned and loving - but hands off - way of being present. No fixing, no doing for, no taking away one's right to handle their own lives. Leaving someone alone allows them to know when they know. What follows is the beauty of freedom. 

When you came to realize who you are, you may or may not have accepted or liked what you realized. You asked if it reflected your ideals or values, which is when you also started to question your reality and experience something different. At that point your experience became your greatest teacher. You set in motion wheels of change from within and the world responded. Situations and experiences were mirrored toward your thoughts. Teachers of your goals start showing up that you can relate to because they are only slightly ahead on the path you wish to travel. In other words, they've experienced the next step. You find out what they thought and did and you decide to follow the wisdom of their experience. Think about it - when was the last time you wanted to change and thought you couldn't but when you saw someone who DID (aka experienced it), you knew you could. Know that the experience of the highest value in your existence is to use power to stand FOR what you want to experience, rather than against what you no longer desire. When you desire to change you life, first, change your mind and then act differently. Your efforts to re-experience something new with the confidence of a higher power will win in the end, no matter how long it takes. 

The bondage of others is when someone says something - or poses a question - that makes you disturbed or propels you into over-thinking. In other words, you personalized their response to something you said, or you made up a general opinion they had about you. Certainly, people say things that make you think, or plant a seed of self-examination about your own dis/comfort level. SHOULD the things people say or [seem to] insinuate provoke you to question yourself? It's normal to be affected by your response to what others say. However, it's trying to find the parts of what they said that were relevant to you and also to feel your own bodily reactions that are the most important parts of self-discovery. When in a group setting, it's appropriate to want to be heard and to want the communication to go well. Questioning oneself after the fact can also be good...Over-attachment to a perception of negativity from another that makes you over-analyze yourself is NOT. Understand the difference so you can let go of what others think of you. Without self-examination, your thinking can go to extremes...and next thing you know you're feeling bad about yourself and you don't even know why. Being aware is finding out what's best for you to let go of. That's being truly free of the bondage of others. 

Madness, in our modern world, is doing things to each other that are disconnected and even harmful - with intellectual justification. We also insanely over-protect people from their own consequences by trying to remove or cushion their "bottoms" (aka breakthrough)--so they don't grow a willingness to change. Our relationships are peppered with back-biting and over-criticism, while talking unconditional love. Our hardness, fixed-firm lines and gaps between each other are all about "I'm right". But what does it all mean? Can we meet or understand each other in such madness? Yes. I don't have to win and humanity won't die if I seek to allow EVERYONE their point of view. The new mechanism - the only way to sanity - is to accomplish a valid purpose amongst us that can work even when we disagree. The new mechanism - the only way to sanity - is to accomplish a valid purpose amongst us that can work even when we disagree. As we continue to draw attention to our lives the path of sanity is humor...another is greater openness and willingness. These things work to create lightness and being which conquer darkness. From there, you can find an opening in communication, expression and understanding, not your own intellectual superiority. Are you trying to be a greater being? A simple way to do so is to change your purpose to greater awareness so you can see things differently. 

Understanding sameness means you find or connect with the things in you that you share with another. Being different means no matter how similar you are - in values, upbringing, etc. - there will still be things that have differed in your lives and experience. When something (job, relationship) fails due to these differences, it provokes a greater understanding of how to respect all sorts of other differences that may never make sense. If you are someone who likes order, organization and clarity, it may disturb you to find that when you look for similarities and stereotypes you still cannot understand completely what's happening with others. Yes, common threads can mean common sense. They can also remove you from the education you get being present to someone who is different in ways that intimidate you. Worse yet, when you try to find too many similarities so as to avoid discomfort, you don't benefit from finding ways to think for yourself. When you think for yourself, you are more liberated to avoid generalizations and even the need to stereotype. What follows is more openness and vulnerability to new experiences and new people. Reservations and stereotypes block love. Consciousness has needed to replace my bullshit and too-smart-for-my-own-good need to categorize to understand. I DO understand...that I DON'T understand. 

The world is plagued by mediocrity - people living to die in a state of absolute contemplation of nothing. The path of least resistance is a well-worn road, rife with depression, anxiety, stress and lack of fulfillment. Why? Because it's EASY. And people love easy. The problem is that easy is not IT. Easy is failure. Easy is lack. Easy forgets and deserts the connection you claim to want so bad but won't work for. As you barely plant seeds and don't water the plant, you wonder why nothing grows. BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUNLIGHT. Because you let no storms in. Because you haven't surrendered your life to nature in a way that will satisfy your soul instead of your pocketbook or your vanity. What a shame-based life to live, brought on by nothing and nobody but your ignorance and unwillingness to be uncomfortable or look stupid. Life is difficult; you won't learn how much until you live it fully. The more fully you live it, the more likely you will master storms - AND the more likely you will learn how to REALLY LIVE. You'll climb mountains when you didn't even own hiking shoes. You will swim oceans when you're afraid of the tides. There is plentiful courage. You simply first have to face pain. Welcome to the mastery of your life at the top of the mountain of resistance. Enjoy the climb!

Nope, it ain't to take a new job, get married (or divorced), move or have children. It's TO LOVE. What makes it the most major decision is because the decision or choice to love creates the most amount of positive consequences. Making the decision to love is conscious and ideally balanced between logic and emotion. Many feel love is a feeling but it can also be very grounded in logic and sanity. A decision to love can produce a ripple effect of positive energy for you and others. Choice is so powerful because it clears away uncertainty and leaves a foundation of connection. To understand all this consciousness make me feel more comfortable being more emotionally loving. The decisions I made to be "in love" produced the greatest consequences and fundamentally transformative experiences for me and others. Don't think you can "decide" to love? OK--but if you don't choose--are you preparing for a grounded love that will last or, at least, produce positive movement, change and energy? Love is the greatest force in the universe...choose it for better or worse. FromTheNthPower

"What it all boils down to is __________" refers to extracting things down to their essential elements. Can this be done with people? Are we all similar when it comes to something like our values? It doesn't appear to be so. As someone who likes to figure things out and form scripts that could make it easier to understand how human beings tick, it has been virtually impossible to find a clear path through human behavior by examining values. Although I would still insist that people are motivated by the same needs, it's still difficult to match those needs to common values that make sense for everyone in the same way. Despite not having enough common values, we can still better meet each other if we grow our ability to be open-minded and to reserve simple judgments when it comes to what people do and why. The first place to start - if you want more healthy connection to others - is to meet people on their terms and from their point of view. It will seem odd, or be difficult at first, but soon you will start to see more and more how people really are very much the same despite our vast differences. 

What is "security consciousness" and why is it a sword? We all know people who have no money but who are abundant and confident. On the flip side, there are wealthy people who live an emotionally empty existence. The Sword yields force...Consciousness is powerful...Security is abundance mindset. Much of the people I know who grew up without a lot of money often work hard but still don't feel secure financially, no matter how much money you/they make. Simply put, a security consciousness is necessary for the financial freedom most seek. It means that you choose to believe that you can have abundance and that your consciousness will draw abundance to you through dreams and visions. Ideas you have about money have been taught with words and unconscious behaviors so you must unlearn them with words and conscious actions.

Also, one of the biggest block to security consciousness says that money and people who make more money are BAD. If you believe this, your own security consciousness - and therefore financial abundance - will continue to be a struggle. Deep early childhood experiences revolving around family financial drama will also prevent the level of financial (and even emotional) security you crave. Having a hard time getting ahead financially? Might be time to do some work around financial and emotional security limiting beliefs.

You may need to search deep within your heart to find security. Let me lead you there. 

Let's be honest, love is - and never should be - about keeping score. But let's play with that anyway because sometimes we don't know what we know (or don't) about love. For me, consciously, LOVE is doing/being/becoming what you love. LOVE is everywhere all the time. LOVE is living in abundant manifestation. The (imaginary AND creative) scorekeeping system of LOVE I present here is creative food for contemplation...

Love is about: TIME: if you want love, you give your time. I am a liar if I say "I love you" but won't give you my time. It is my greatest and most precious gift to give or spend.  ATTENTION: if I give you my time, I will do my best to not allow distractions to remove me. Even if I have my own emotions happening, I will come back to being there.  ENGAGEMENT: Being fully engaged means I'm on the highest level of deep listening. I ask questions. How do I engage with you to help you experience my time as powerful? PRESENCE: Being fully present means my body - mind, eyes, ears, feelings - are looking to KNOW who you are. Breathing consistently re-engages presence. I am MYSELF. RESPONSE: Am I attentive to your/our needs both then and later? How I respond to you as an individual and partner means I do my best to remember what you need. 

If you explore this type of scorekeeping, the game of competition ends and the game of LOVE remains and reigns supreme - as it should.