I first heard about the idea of inner growth because the Beatles had gone to India to meditate in 1968. I was 19 and was a major fan. Their trip to see a guru seemed really cool, like the hip, next stop on the magical mystery tour, which had already been a great ride so far. And that’s about as deep as my interest in anything to do with consciousness went.  

          But within a few short, but high-impact years, I found myself seriously involved with personal development, and it’s only grown since then. So, I go back pretty far.

          As you can imagine, as a researcher, I’ve accumulated a tremendous amount of material over all these years, which brings me to this one particular folder that I have in my archives.

          Back in the early 80s, I came upon a paperback booklet of some quotes on personal growth that I found to be truly insightful. They were short and sweet, simple but profound, and every bit as powerful as they were wise. There were probably about fifty in all, but fourteen of them really stood out and I wrote them down and put them in a folder.

          As time went by, I grew more and more impressed with them, but then something unfortunate happened. I lent the booklet to a friend who seemed opened, but not really interested in the subject. I thought the quotes might help spark his interest.

          A week later, when I called to see if he had read it, he didn’t even remember what I was talking about. After I reminded him, he said he’d look around for the booklet and return it to me. But after a few days, he called and said he had no idea where it was and he had probably thrown it out by mistake.

          So that was the end of my precious booklet. I was pretty upset, but there was nothing I could do. It was spilled milk, gone for good and that was that.

          It had never occurred to me that the booklet might be lost, so I hadn’t even written down the title or the name of the author. All I had left was my list of these fourteen quotes, along with some notes that I had made.

          Even though I’ve always regretted what happened, in a certain way it’s kind of cool. Because I don’t know anything about their origins, the quotes are left to stand on their own. And for me, they’ve stood up quite well.

          I seem to come across them a few times each year, and every time I do, they strike me as being more profound than ever. They seem to deepen as I evolve. Of course, the quotes don’t change. What deepens is my understanding of their meaning. And that evolution just seems to continue.

          Recently, as I working on some podcast episodes, I started considering the idea of just presenting these quotes pretty much as they are and letting them stand on their own. Afterall, that’s the way I have them and they I always do a lot for me.

          So, I’m going to go through them now, one by one, along with the earlier notes I made, as well as some current observations. Again, I find them to be very special, but they’re deceptively simple, like icebergs of insight, from the surface, all you see are the tips.   

          My suggestion is that you consider each one as a stand-alone idea. Take your time, give them some thought and see how they hit you. For me, they’re still packing quite a punch.

So here goes -

1. Do not compare and you cannot be unhappy.

My God, this a deep one. Can you imagine what life would be like if we could simply stop comparing ourselves with to other people? It’s almost impossible to picture. For me, it seems like I do it all day long.

But on the most basic level, comparing yourself to others is the very root of envy and jealousy, and if you could take those two nasty culprits out of the human playbook, probably over 90% of our suffering would just disappear. And that’s just for starters.   

1. We are punished by whatever we hide from ourselves.

          While this may seem pretty obvious, on a deeper level, the root of the problem is probably fear. We hide things from ourselves because we don’t want to look at them. And we don’t want to look at them because we’re afraid of how bad they may actually be. But that’s just due to our limited understandings or our own potential, which, many authorities have told us, is far greater than we currently know. 

          Under this quote, I wrote a one of my own, “When you go inside and look at what’s really in there, you’re not going to like what you see. Your gonna love it!”

1. The suppression of unhappiness is not the same thing as happiness.

          Although it may bring some temporary relief – just suppressing inner turmoil doesn’t lead to lasting happiness. Bring the moldy poison of pain out of the dark basement of your mind and with relief, watch it vanish in the light of your higher understandings. Then the real happiness, which is a part of our true nature, can begin to shine.

1. It is imaginary self-pictures which cause pain, not results.

          This one really got me on a few levels. The thinking part of our mind is uniquely tied to our imagination, which literally means the image-making part of the brain. We all picture things all day long. That’s how our imagination works.  And a lot of the times, we create negative pictures that bring us pain.  

          Now it’s a subtle, but powerful idea that the root of most of our pain is actually coming from our imagination, because one thing we’ve all learned about having a bad dream – at some point you wake up! Mark Twain had an interesting thought about point of view and imagination.  “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” Pretty deep…

1. Any man can sense that his problem is himself, but the extraordinary man goes beyond that to sense that the solution is also himself.

          For me, I’ve always found it pretty easy to get a sense that I am the cause of my own problems. But you don’t really have to do anything with that realization, you can just keep playing around with it.

          Once you start to get the idea that you also have the solution to your problems in your hands, things get a little different. Now you can do something about it, but you have to act, rather than just think. Here’s a quote I wrote next to this one - “In order to do anything, you have to do something.”

1. There is no difference between sleeping men except in the ways they pretend to be awake. To be awake is everything.

          So many wisdom traditions say that our normal mind dwells in a kind of dream state, processing an unending stream of thoughts and concepts. To wake up to the larger part of our intelligence seems to be the name of the game in this life.

          For me this is pretty tricky, because even though I could swear I’m awake, how do I really know? Afterall, when I’m asleep and dreaming, how many times has it occurred to me that this is just a dream. I’m going to wake up soon and it will all disappear without a trace? As I said, this is a tricky one for me, but it’s all part of the fun.

1. An unawakened man speaks to convince himself that his illusions are realities. The enlightened man speaks to show others that their realities are illusions.

          At first, I was struck with how clever this quote is, until I went a little deeper and started examining how much like the unawakened man I actually am. It’s really subtle, but how much of the time am I just trying to convince myself that my illusions are real? In psychology it’s called confirmation bias.

          On the other hand, I’ve had the great good fortune to be exposed to some enlightened information, both spoken and written, and it it’s always such a relief to see that my “so-called” realities are actually illusions, because something wonderful always appears once that bubble breaks.

1. Observe how you unknowingly create your present world, for then you will be able to knowingly create a new world.

          This one’s still a little beyond my reach, but I’ll keep trying to get it. It probably has something to do with growing from ignorance to knowledge, and using what you have and practicing what you know. I know I have the idea down, I’m just waiting for the understanding to grow.

1. We cannot see above our own present level, but we can open ourselves to a higher level, which permits that level to impress us with its power for healing.

          I always find comfort in this idea. With inner growth, you can never really know what the next level holds in store for you. And the nice thing is, you don’t need to know. You can just open up to it and let it start affecting you. I’ve always been a big fan of the “relax and let go” approach, so I love that idea. All I have to do is open up to the greater good that is coming to me and let it come.

1. The necessary is always possible.

          Wow. What a comforting idea and wouldn’t it be great if it really is true. I think I’ll just move along in my life like it is and then, as they say, act as if.  

1. A planted seed is quite capable of developing in the dark.

          This is another comforting one for me. You don’t need to understand everything that’s going on. In fact, you can’t. And a lot of the time, you’re in the dark and you know it. But the seed of consciousness that has been planted within has its own power. And it finds a way to grow, no matter how dark the environment may be.

1. The only answer to “who are you?” is complete silence.

          This seems to speak to the idea of growing into the larger part of our intelligence. Although there doesn’t seem to be any silence in the framework of the ordinary mind, in the higher state, which some call “the heart,” because it is connected to the infinite, you can rest in the comfort, peace, and silence of being home again. And I guess, that’s who we are. Sure, feels like it.

1. The only thing we have to do for our spiritual progress is the very next thing.

          Gandhi said something related that is seemingly counterintuitive, “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” It almost doesn’t make any sense. If something is insignificant, why it is important that I do it?

          Maybe it’s because of the way our intelligence works. It grows by doing. And when it comes to growing into our highest potential, the more consciously we live, the easier and happier the growth process becomes. So, the secret might be, if you do the very next thing consciously, then being conscious is all you need to do for your spiritual growth.

1. He comes and goes as he pleases, unattached, yet truly compassionate, aware of everything and afraid of nothing.

          Because I don’t have the source material, I have no idea who or what this was referring to. But I’ve always liked the idea of using it as a role model. To go through life in absolute freedom, unattached yet truly compassionate, totally aware, yet completely unafraid. What an image! Something to strive for. Reminds me of the old Gershwin song, “Nice work if you can get it.”

          So, that’s all fourteen of the gems that are in that random file in my archives. For me, they always require a little deeper focus than I use in my everyday life, because there are some real pearls of wisdom there, but you have to dive deep to get to them. But that’s okay because, to finish where we started, as the old song Beatles song says, “The deeper you go, the higher you fly.”

          Well, that’s it for this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

We all love to grow inside. We each have an intuitive desire to become a greater and wiser being, and this growth is actually critical to our long-term happiness.

          When it comes to inner growth, experts agree that one of the best things we can do is maintain what’s called - the mind of the beginner, which basically means to open up to new understandings without the baggage of our preconceived concepts. But in today’s world, where opinion far outweighs fact, that’s pretty hard to do.

          Yet, sometimes we run into some unusual things that show us that we live in a world that’s much greater than our tiny doll-house filled with outdated assumptions.

          With that in mind, let me tell you about something unusual that happened to me many years ago and I’d be lying if I said I fully understood it, even to this day.

          It was around noon on Sunday, December 5th, 1965, which was the beginning of one of the most difficult hours of my life. I was sixteen years old and it was at my father’s funeral. He had died two nights earlier of a massive heart attack that had killed him instantly.

          He was a widely respected attorney and civic leader, as well as the founder of the Philadelphia 76ers and he had died at a game that was televised. So, his sudden death created quite a stir and seemed to affect the whole city. His funeral was being held in the large synagogue where he and my mother had been founding members. About 2,000 people were expected, including the mayor and all the local media. So, on top of all the sadness and grief, I found myself in the middle of a pretty intense scene.

          My mother had decided to have an open-casket viewing so our close family and friends could see him and say goodbye. Now it’s against the Jewish religion to have an opened coffin in the sanctuary, so the viewing was being held in the wide lobby of the entranceway.

          The opened coffin was placed in a far corner. My mother, brother, sister and I stood next to it to greet the line of mourners as they came to pay their respects. I happened to be the last one in line and was standing right next to the coffin.

          Of course, I was completely devastated. As a father and son, we had been as close as can be and my whole world had been completely turned upside down. I felt like I was sleep-walking through a living nightmare that just wouldn’t stop.

          When the line began, one by one, every adult that I had known my whole life came up the line, greeted the rest of my family, looked at me and then looked into the coffin. I watched as each one went into a violent emotional earthquake of shock and grief. Most broke into tears, but they all broke, one way or another.

          Sudden death is a real killer. Along with all the sadness and pain, it adds a stark reminder of our own mortality. Once again you realize how fragile life really is and that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, it can all end at any second. No exemptions.

          After about an hour, the endless line of deep sorrow finally came to an end and for some reason I was standing next to the coffin all by myself. I knew they were about to close the lid and I just stood there, looking at his face for the last time.

          Then something unexpected happened. An unusual thought appeared in my mind. “Listen to me, David,” something said, “you’re sixteen years old and this looks really bad. This is going to be a very tough time for you, but trust me - you’re going to be alright. You’re going to go through a lot of things that will help shape you into who you’ll become when you grow up. It’ll be hard for a while, but it’s all going to be fine and I promise you that you’re going to have a very happy life. You will. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about and you’re going to be absolutely fine. This will all pass and things will be bright for you once again.”

          Then abruptly, whatever it was, stopped, like a radio show going off the air.

           The whole thing had surprised me and I felt kind of amazed. “Wow, he was talking to me from the beyond,” I thought, figuring it must have been my father trying to console me. “No that wasn’t him,” I knew intuitively, without a doubt. It just didn’t seem like him. Still, it felt incredibly familiar. “I know that voice,” I thought, but I had no idea who it was.

          A second later, the funeral director came over with an assistant, paused for a moment, then closed the coffin lid. We all went into the sanctuary; the somber proceedings began and that’s the end of the first part of the story. 

          The next part takes place about twenty-five years later. By then, I had become deeply involved in personal growth and the expansion of human consciousness. Also, as a writer, I was working on a movie idea and one of the main characters was going to be a psychic.

          I had begun researching some famous American psychics and had recently come upon a medium named Jane Roberts and her writings called, “The Seth Material.” It was kind of long, but it had some pretty interesting stuff.  

          According to it, we are far greater beings that we know and our intelligence isn’t limited to time and space. Then it went into some ideas about time itself, which was something I had never really thought about. As far as I was concerned, time only moves in one direction, like the George Harrison song said, “Yesterday, today was tomorrow. And tomorrow, today will be yesterday.” There didn’t seem  much more to it than that.

          But the Seth material presented a radically different point of view. It said that our normal idea of linear time is just that - an idea. And it gave an interesting quote from Einstein, "…the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Wow – Einstein said that time was just an illusion? That was news to me.  

          Then it went a little deeper. It claimed that our past, present and future selves are all part of one larger identity that we have. They all exist together, outside of time and can communicate with each other to foster healing and growth.

It went on to suggest a short exercise. Remember an event in your past that was particularly traumatic. Then communicate with your earlier self and assure it that everything works out fine and that there’s nothing to worry about. Not only would this help alleviate the pain of the past trauma, it would also have a positive effect on our present life, as well as our future one.

          Now I was primarily doing research for a movie and although the ideas were interesting, they didn’t really fit into the plotline of the film.  So, I made some notes and filed them away.

          A couple of months later, I was driving through our old neighborhood and was approaching our old synagogue. We had moved away many years earlier and by this point the entire neighborhood had changed and the synagogue was clearly on its last legs.

          I thought about how many important events had happened there - weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and of course, my father’s funeral.

          As I got closer, I noticed that the downstairs office door was opened. I pulled over, walked in and introduced myself to the cordial receptionist. She told me the building had been sold and would be closing soon. I asked if I could take one last look around and she kindly said to help myself.

          So, I began to walk through the whole building. After about ten minutes filled with memories, I emerged into the lobby outside of the sanctuary. I looked at the plaques on the walls with my parents’ names on them, then I glanced over to the corner where my father’s coffin had been. A flood of sad memories washed over me as I remembered everyone sobbing and how difficult it all had been.

          I went over and stood where I had been, next to his coffin. I remembered that poor, devastated sixteen-year-old kid, and how completely lost and abandoned I had felt.

And then, I suddenly remembered the Seth material and got the idea to try to comfort myself back then.  Who knows? Maybe it might help. There’s certainly nothing to lose.

          “Listen to me, David,” I said to myself, “you’re sixteen years old and this looks really bad.”

          I immediately froze on the spot and a light went on inside my mind.  “Oh my God, it was me!” I realized, incredulously. I always remembered that I had heard words of comfort at the coffin that day, but I could never figure out where they had come from. It was definitely someone very familiar, but that’s as far as I ever got. Now the mystery was finally solved. The words of comfort had actually come from me. I can’t really put in words what that moment felt like, but it was completely astounding.

          Even though I was having this amazing realization, my mind had continued on with the speech…that was running on automatic.   

“This is going to be a very tough time for you,” I continued.  “But trust me, you’re going to be alright. You’re going to go through a lot of things that will help shape you into who you’ll become when you grow up. It’ll be hard for a while, but it’s all going to be fine and I promise you that you’re going to have a very happy life. You will. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about and you’re going to be absolutely fine. This will all pass and things will be bright for you once again.”

          The strange moment ended and I just stood there, absolutely flabbergasted. Of course, that voice had sounded so familiar to me back then – it was my own voice. How much more familiar can you get?

          But there was something even more incredible to me than that. I had just spoken words that I had heard twenty-five years earlier. Somehow, the event had crossed the barrier of time. Figure that one out! The whole thing was too much.  

          I later realized how synchronistic it all had been as well. By chance, I had recently read the Seth Material.  And again, by chance, the door to the synagogue office had been opened as I drove by. That had never happened before. And on top of that, my tour happened right before the place closed. A few weeks later, it became a church. Without all those things in synch with each other, the magical event would have never happened.

          So that’s the end of the story. Personally, I don’t want to presume any theories about it. Maybe it was as cosmic as it seemed to be or maybe a psychologist might say I am remembering events in a slanted way to make myself feel better. It doesn’t matter to me because the whole thing left me with far more questions than answers.

          What is the real nature of consciousness? Is it unbound by time and space? Is everything connected in ways I don’t yet understand? Can I tap into a larger intelligence with more wisdom, love and fulfillment than I currently think is possible?

          Again, a lot of questions, but that’s the nature of the beginner’s mind – it’s always open to new understandings and it never hurts to expand your horizons.  Just when we understand one level, we find there’s a greater one. It never seems to stop.

Sometimes I think my last thought in life is going to be, “I think I’m starting to understand this whole thing!” But maybe not. Maybe my last thought will be just a deeply heartfelt “Thank You.” Maybe that’s what you feel at the end of a life well-lived.  

Well, so much for this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

Transcript of Episode

Sometimes you hear something when you’re younger and subconsciously, your mind files it away for later use. We all do it, but why? How do we unconsciously decide that some information might be valuable for us down the road, when we don’t even know where that road might lead? 

          We just don’t know. But we don’t know a lot of things. As Edison once said, “We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.” And he was a genius. Of course, we’ve made some tremendous progress since he said that, so maybe now we do know one millionth of one percent about something.

          Anyway, when I was in about 4th grade one of those little things slipped into the back of my mind. I was in Sunday School and I heard a story that had the Golden Rule in it.  

          By way of a little background, Sunday school was just one part of the rather extensive religious training that I received. It was far deeper than most, and it happened by a complete fluke.

          My family had moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, but we still belonged to our old synagogue, which was about a 20-minute drive away. I was about to enter Hebrew school and my parents wanted a place close to us so they wouldn’t have to deal with the drive all week. The only place that would take me was the Suburban branch of an ultra-orthodox synagogue called Mikveh Israel, which was founded in 1740 and is still the oldest functioning synagogue in the United States.

          On top of being strictly Orthodox, hardly anyone went to the suburban branch and while the rest of my friends were in classes with 20 or more students, for me it would be me, the teacher and maybe two other kids. As you can imagine, it didn’t leave me much wiggle room. They were pretty strict and I really had to learn the stuff. So, I got a fairly major dose of orthodox religion during my younger years.

          Well, on this one particular Sunday, the teacher told the story of this legendary rabbi from about 2,000 years ago named Hillel. He was a widely respected teacher and someone once challenged him to teach him all the deepest tenants of Judaism while he stood on one foot. 

          Hillel simply responded, “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you. The rest is commentary.” Speaking of commentary, my teacher had a lot to say about Hillel’s version of the Golden Rule.

          We all know the traditional saying, “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you,” which basically tells us to do good to others. But this one puts a different spin on it and tells us not to do bad to others, which brings up an interesting wrinkle.

          The underlying idea here is that as human beings, we are inherently good on the inside. That’s the essence of our nature. But the unenlightened side of our mind is out of control and causing major problems. So rather than urging us to do good, we actually need to change our direction and stop doing bad.  It’s not so much a matter of doing, it’s more a matter of not doing, because at the essence of our being, we’re already good. In fact, we’re much more than that.

          The whole discussion wasn’t a huge deal to me, I just found it interesting and filed it away for possible review down the road.

          It was about 1958 when this happened. Now flash forward ten years later to 1968. I was a normal American Baby Boomer and like the rest of my generation at that point, I just basically did whatever the Beatles did. To call me a fan would have been a gross understatement. They had recently gone to India and started meditating, which generated an enormous amount of world press. Naturally, I thought I’d give it a try, even though I didn’t know a thing about meditation and couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to be a fifth Beatle.

          I went to a class and learned a basic technique. But I was really bad at it and quit after a few weeks. Even so, I had gotten introduced to the idea of going beyond your thinking mind. I learned that one part of the mind is like a nervous monkey, endlessly jumping from tree to tree. But there’s this other part that is far greater, where peace and realization reside. You have to calm the monkey mind to get to the greater part. Although it seemed impossible, I had never heard anything like it before and the idea of a higher mind made me curious.

          A few years later, in the early 70s, it seemed like a tidal wave of spiritual and psychological insights started to hit America on a constant basis. I learned a different form of meditation that worked for me and I started investigating every interesting idea I could find about inner growth.   

          The first one that really got me was that the human mind can never really understand God. The mind, by its nature, is a finite tool. And God, by its nature, is infinite. So, no matter who or what, the one can never truly understand the other.  It is simply impossible.

          On the surface, the idea seemed logical enough, but coming from my strict religious background, it hit me pretty hard.  It meant that all these human conceptions about God that I had learned were, by their very nature, flawed. As sincere as they might be, they were still a finite view of the infinite, which had been manufactured by the human mind. And furthermore, I was learning that the mind can be really tricky. Even though it can never comprehend the infinite, it will still swear on a stack of bibles that it can. And I usually believe whatever it says. Now, at least it seemed a little suspect.

          I soon ran into another idea that brought me to a new perspective. It was called the “Indwelling God Presence,” and the concept was that God, the Infinite, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t far away at all. It’s much closer than we think. In fact, it dwells within us. It’s been in there all along, welcoming us to come to it.

          For all my life I’d been steeped in standard western theology, along with a good, strong dose of the Puritan ethic, and I always thought that God had basically kicked me out of Heaven. Maybe it wasn’t just me, maybe it went all the way back to original sin, but something had pissed the big guy off, and now here I was, making mistake after mistake trying to beg, steal or borrow my way back into his good graces. Or at least get to the pearly gates and see if I could charm one of his guys to let me in. At that point, I’d gladly take a dog house if I could get it.

          Now, suddenly I was exposed to this new idea, which opened me up to the possibility that maybe this view of an angry, vengeful god, punishing an endless line of guilty sinners, wasn’t necessarily true.  Maybe it’s was just a long running myth of some kind. Who knows?

          But what if this indwelling thing was real? It was a pretty nice idea. Yes, there is such a thing as God. Yes, it’s infinite. No, you can’t grasp it with your finite mind, but you can feel it with your heart.

           And you can finally let go of the idea of it being a cold aloof deity, off in some distant, faraway land that you can only get to after you die, having done enough self-punishment to have whipped yourself home, whatever’s left of you.  

          Instead, you can embrace the feeling that it actually lives within, closer than you can imagine, the source of happiness, joy, laughter and all the highest and best human traits, constantly trying to encourage you to make the choice to turn to it.

          This may all seem a little trite now. It’s fifty years later and our culture’s entire cosmology has gone through major transformations. But back then, it was quite a revelation to me. And a most welcomed one at that.

          It was around this time that the Hillel version of the Golden Rule popped back up in my mind and suddenly, it all made sense…this brilliant idea that the source of all goodness lies within and all we have to do is just stop moving in the wrong direction.

          Then I got quite a pleasant surprise. I was reading a book called “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” which begins with a powerful statement, “At the heart of all religion is the certainty that there is a fundamental truth and that this life is a sacred opportunity to evolve and realize it.

          Then it goes into something it called, “The Four Faults.” It starts with a question. If we have this higher side of our intelligence that’s merged with the Infinite within, and is the source of so much joy, peace and bliss, why is it so damn hard to get to?

          Then it says that the reason it’s hard is because we make it hard. We follow the dictates of our ordinary mind, which is basically a problem solver. It always looks for problems. As the old saying says, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”  

          It went on to say when it comes to merging our consciousness with our enlightened mind, our ordinary mind has four blind spots that hinder us. Hence the four faults.  

          The first one is that our enlightened self is just too close to us. We can’t accept that we are as close to it as we really are. It’s like your own face. Even though you may not be able to see it, you can’t be any closer to it.

          The second fault is that the nature of the enlightened mind is too profound for us to fathom. We have no idea of how deep this thing is and what a profound effect it can have on our lives. If we did, we would readily accept and realize it.

          The third fault is that realizing it is just too easy. In reality, it is always within us and all we need to do is let go of our agitation and just rest in its awareness. But we think it must be harder than that, so we keep looking for problems.

          And the fourth fault is that it is too wonderful for us to grasp. It is far greater than we can imagine and the sheer immensity of it is too vast to fit into our narrow way of thinking.  And on top of all this, we can’t possibly imagine that the state of enlightenment is actually the true nature of our being.

          So, in summary, when it comes to embracing our enlightened mind, we have four blind spots. We don’t see it because it’s too close, too profound, too easy and too wonderful.

          Boy, wouldn’t it be great if this perspective was really true?  If all we had to do was let go of our own blocks, see beyond these four faults and merge into the happiness, peace and fulfillment that countless masters, teachers, saints and sages through the ages say is waiting for us?

          Sounds too good to be true. But then again, that’s probably exactly the problem.

          Well, so much for this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

We probably each have a wish list. I know I have mine and I wouldn’t even venture a guess as to how big it is. There must be more than a million things I want. And I don’t just want them. I want them all to be a certain way.

Like, I don’t just want to go to the beach. I want the temperature of the air and water to be just right. I don’t want it to be too crowded because I don’t want too much noise. And I certainly don’t want mosquitos or greenhead flies. Because after all, being a tasty meal for a bunch of starving insects is no picnic.

Anyway, my list of desires is endless. I know I probably sound spoiled, but I’m just being honest. And besides, that’s the way the ordinary mind works. It just never stops. I’ve been practicing meditation, mindfulness and detachment from desire for over fifty years now and personally, I don’t see any signs of it letting up.   

Now, we all know that as the song says - you can’t always get what you want, but can you imagine what it would be like if you actually could? What if you could keep getting everything you want? And not just that, what if it stays that way forever. Sounds like heaven, right?

So, let’s take a minor little detour here, and let me tell you about a TV show I saw in April of 1960, that went right to the core of my being and has stayed there ever since.

I was in fifth grade and this science fiction show called The Twilight Zone had taken the country by storm. It could be incredibly spooky, but the stories often had some deep existential meanings as well.  

This particular episode was called “A Nice Place to Visit.” It starts out at night, in a darkened pawn shop. The shop keeper is lying unconscious on the floor and a thief is stuffing jewels into a bag as the narrator says:

“Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Valentine, but he calls himself Rocky, because that's the way his life has been - rocky; perilous and uphill, at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running and tired of wanting. Wanting the breaks that come to others, but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine, a scared, angry little man. He thinks it’s all over now, but he’s wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it’s just the beginning.”  

Suddenly a police siren is heard and the thief runs out the back door to a large metal fence behind the property. He starts climbing it and as he nears the top, the police show up. The thief pulls out a gun and shoots at the cops who return fire. The thief falls down from the fence and lying flat on his back, he’s dirty, disheveled and seems dead.

Then, out of nowhere, an elderly, heavyset man walks over. He has white hair with a white beard and is wearing a white suit. He calls the thief by name a few times and finally wakes him up. The man introduces himself as Pip, and says he is there to help.  

Paranoid, Rocky thinks Pip is trying to con him or he may even be a cop. But Pip assures him that he is only there to help. He pulls out a notebook with detailed information about Rocky – his favorite food and drink, his taste in clothes and women and on and on. Rocky is still skeptical but says if he’s really there to help, he should give him some money. Pip smiles and gives him 7 one-hundred-dollar bills and says and he can have all the money he wants. Rocky is impressed.

Pip then takes him to a luxurious apartment house. They go up to the penthouse floor and over to an apartment door that has Rocky’s name on it. When they walk in, Rocky is delighted. The swank palace is exactly what he’s longed for all his life.

Pip tells Rocky to take a shower and shave. He says that next to the bathroom, there’s a large, walk-in closet full of clothes made just for him. A little while later, Rocky comes out, but this is a new Rocky. Clean shaven with slicked back hair and dressed in an expensive handmade suit, he looks like a Hollywood movie star.

He says he’s hungry and Pip tells him to call room service and order anything he likes. Within moments, a full course meal is brought up. Smiling, Pip encourages him to eat, but his attitude makes Rocky suspicious. Thinking that Pip is trying to poison him, he insists that Pip taste the food first. Pip says he hasn’t eaten for centuries and refuses, which infuriates Rocky. He pulls out his gun and fires all six shots into Pip, who just stands there smiling, while the bullets pass through him.

Rocky has a sudden epiphany. He says gleefully that he must have died and gone to heaven, and that Pip is his guardian angel. Pip just smiles and says, “It’s something like that.” 

Rocky can’t believe his luck and suddenly his desires explode. “I can have anything I want, right?” he asks. Pip nods. “OK, I want a million bucks in the drawer of that desk over there.”

“Open it,” Pip responds.

To his delight, Rocky finds a million in cash and his pent-up desires go into high gear. “Alright, I want three gorgeous, stacked chicks who are in love with me and just dying to be with me.”

The doorbell immediately rings and three gorgeous women come walking in, looking at Rocky like he’s God’s gift to the world. Soon Pip takes them all to a casino and everything Rocky touches turns to gold. He hits an enormous jackpot in slots and wins every bet at the roulette table. And with each win, he keeps showering the women with money, making them love him even more.

Finally, dizzy from fine champagne and drunk on the high of winning tons of money, they return to the apartment, his new lap of luxury. Rocky takes the three women to the bedroom door, turns to Pip and says, “Okay, Fats, get lost. Now, it’s time for me to have some real fun.”

The scene shifts to a month later and it’s been a month full of days and nights exactly like this. Except something has changed and that something is Rocky’s state of mind. Some of the lower elements of his personality, like selfishness, arrogance and meanness have gotten stronger.  And a nagging sense of agitation has started to creep into him. What was once such a thrill is starting to become a bore.

He asks if any of his old hoodlum friends are around and Pip explains that this whole world was created just for him and they are the only real people in it. All the rest are just lifelike projections of images that have been taken from his mind.

The news only makes things worse for Rocky, so Pip suggests that maybe he should go hold up a bank or rob a store in town. At first, Rocky likes the idea, but he quickly realizes it wouldn’t matter because everything would just go his way.  Everything always goes his way. Trying to accommodate him, Pip says he can arrange for some percentage of risk if he’d like, but the idea just makes Rocky angrier.

Pip tells him that he has set up a new pool table in the big game room. They walk in and the balls on the table are all racked up. Rocky takes a cue and plays the break shot, and every single ball goes into a pocket. Disgusted, he throws the cue down and storms out.

That night Pip takes Rocky and the three ladies to the casino, but now, Rocky hates the place. When he hits the jackpot at the slot machine, he just lets the coins fall on the floor. Same thing with roulette and craps. His winnings mean nothing to him. Finally, when they get back to the apartment, the three women start lavishing him with affection, seductively begging him to take them into the bedroom, but Rocky can’t stand them anymore. Screaming, he throws them out of the apartment.

He then confronts Pip in the living room and tells him that he is sure that this whole thing is a mistake and he can’t stand it any longer.

“Somebody must have goofed,” he exclaims.  “If I gotta stay here one more day, I’m gonna go nuts.” He pauses, then earnestly pleads, “Look, I don’t belong in heaven, see? I want to go to the other place.”

“Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea you were in heaven, Mr. Valentine?” Pip asks. Then ironically he says, “This is the other place.”

Rocky suddenly understands where he really is and, in a panic, he tries to open the door to escape, but it’s locked. Pip laughs as he struggles helplessly with door knob. Malevolent music starts and the narrator says, “A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he’s ever wanted and he’s going to have to live with it for eternity – in the Twilight Zone.”

Now, this was a perfect example of the genius of the show, because once it was over, it really made you think. You knew from spending a half-hour with Rocky that he was basically a jerk, and you knew that he ended up in hell, which he probably deserved. That all made sense. But whoever thought hell could be like this?

In later years, during presentations about consciousness, I’ve used this show to prompt some deeper discussions. I would ask, “How is it possible that hell could be a place where you always get whatever you want, all the time. That sounds more like heaven. How could it be hell?

Generally, people have come up with three basic answers, each one connected to the other. 

The first one is that the situation has created incredible boredom for the guy. He always knows what’s going to happen, so there is no uncertainty left for him and it ruins everything. Which is funny because in real life, most of us are afraid of uncertainty. But without it, Rocky is condemned to absolute boredom for all eternity, and regardless of the trappings, that sure sounds like hell.     

The second answer is that he knows that none of the people there are real, except for Pip, who has become his nemesis. All the others are just make-believe. They might as well be robots. So, essentially, he’s alone with himself forever, which given his base character is a real horror show.

The last answer is that his life has no challenge to it. Everything is just given to him, requiring no effort on his part at all. He gets whatever he wants without having to do anything. Although this lack of challenge is a problem, it actually points to something deeper.

While challenges can be important, its growing from them that counts. Growth is the real prize of the game. And that’s the tragedy for Rocky. He will never have any opportunity to grow. Filled with darkly negative thoughts and angry emotions, his awareness will never expand. He’ll stagnate in his personal rut and be stuck with who he is forever. My God, what a nightmare!

On an even deeper level, many sources from science to spirituality tell us that inner growth is critical to our welfare. We don’t just want it, we need it. And this need is intuitive.

We each have an innate sense that we can become something far greater than we are. And it doesn’t matter how troubling our personal situation is or how many mistakes we might have made, because of our remarkable intelligence, we each have a chance to grow our way out of it. And maybe all we really have to do is choose the high road to begin. Who knows? Maybe that choice opens the difference between heaven and hell…

Well, its certainly something to think about, but we’ve reached the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

One thing I’ve found is that wisdom is wisdom and it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Over the years, I’ve stumbled upon profound truths from every source you can imagine. Personally, I like the ones that add some wit to the wisdom and I once read a quote from Socrates that surprised me with his sense of humor. I never knew he had one.

          “By all means marry,” he said. “If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy. And if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”

          I was impressed, so I dug into him a little deeper. Now, whenever I research something like this, I don’t get too into the historical details about the person, place and time. I’m much more interested in whatever truth I can find. And I can always tell when I find it because it always helps me grow into a better person in some way.  

          So, I read up on Socrates a little. A few thousand years ago, Greece had a very advanced culture, which, among many other things, had a strong dose of the snobbery and treachery that often shows up when sophisticated people compete with each other over money and status.

          But it also had a renowned line of philosophers that started with Socrates, went to Plato, and then to Aristotle. Socrates had a brilliant mind and he could have easily done quite well for himself by plying some more lucrative trade than philosophy. But he chose to forgo the bigger payday and instead, took the road less traveled, which ultimately turned out to be a pretty rocky one.

          He was hated by much of his society, had powerful enemies and was finally executed by the state. He wouldn’t become historically enshrined as the revered “Father of Western Philosophy” until many, many years after his death.

          Now, that’s not uncommon in human history. The genius of many a master has been ignored during life, only to become venerated after death. Look at Vincent Van Gogh. He created over 900 paintings, but lived in complete obscurity, often in dire poverty and he sold only one painting in his whole life. It was just a few months before he died and he made a whopping 78 bucks from it. Of course, today his paintings are considered masterpieces, often selling for over 15 million dollars, with the most expensive one going for close to 150 million.    

          It was the same type of thing with Socrates, but to top it all off for him, he was married with three kids and supposedly the family was always broke. His constantly struggling wife got pretty miserable with their lot, and according to legend, she made quite sure that he was well aware it.

          After I read some of this, his quote about getting married seemed a little deeper to me and I decided to keep an eye out for more insights from him. I later came across one of his lines of philosophical thought that really got me thinking. It had a few, short points to it and the first one had only two words – Know Thyself.

          Of course, this can mean different things to different people, but one interpretation is that he felt that it was critical for us to understand our own intelligence, which he divided into two parts.  There is our ordinary mind, which we basically use to navigate our way through life. It’s filled with our likes and dislikes, our hopes, dreams and fears, and all the millions of things we have stored in our brain that create the self-image of who we think we are.  

          And then we have something else. Socrates called it our Eudaemonic intelligence, which has been translated to mean the “Good Genius” of our awareness. This refers to the higher side of our consciousness, the altruistic home of the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln put it. We all know it’s there, but our culture assigns such little value to it, that we hardly even notice it. Instead, we keep our attention on our ordinary mind because that’s how we get what we want.  

          So, Socrates felt it was important to understand how the ordinary mind works as it makes its way through our everyday world of give and take. He pointed out that while it’s a true masterpiece of nature, a key element of it is that it’s always in a state of dissatisfaction, and this can be a real double-edged sword.

          On the one hand, it constantly pushes us onward to improve, which is a key to our advancement. But on the other, it’s also a never-ending source of desire within us. It always wants something, and even when it gets what it wants, it soon wants more or something better. It has a very powerful appetite and you can satisfy it for a little while, but this thing gets hungry fast.

          And its hunger is far more instinctual than rational, almost like a dog chasing a car, which when you think of it, makes absolutely no sense. For one thing, a dog can never catch a car. The fastest dog in the world, the greyhound, can run only 40 miles an hour, which most modern cars can double.  

          But the bigger absurdity with the chase is that even if the dog ever catches the car, what’s it going to do with it? Absolutely nothing. If it had chased a rabbit or a squirrel, it could eat it. But if it catches a car, it can’t do a thing with it and the pursuit instinct immediately disappears as the poor dog realizes that it has gained nothing at all.

          Once we understand this desire/pursuit aspect of the ordinary mind, Socrates says we should become aware of three different probabilities that we will often encounter as it continues to chase its desires. It’s kind of like mapping important landmarks in a territory before you take a trip.

          So, the first probability is that no matter who you are, you are going to want something with all your heart, but for some reason, you’re not going to get it. There’s going to be something that you really, really want and you’re just not going to be able to get it.  A lot of people take this personally, but it happens to everyone. Nobody’s exempt. It just comes with the territory. Maybe you’ve always wanted to have a partner, but you’ve spent your whole life alone. Maybe you’ve always wanted to have a child, but you were unable to conceive or adopt. Maybe you’ve always wanted financial security, yet you’re constantly broke. This kind of thing happens to all of us and it can be very painful.

          The second probability is that you’re going to get something and you’re soon going to realize that you really don’t want it, but now you’re stuck with it. At least for a while. And this can also be quite painful.  Now you have to spend your time dealing with something you really don’t want until you can figure out some way to change it. Of course, this can vary in degree from being kind of a nuisance all the way up to being a real tragedy.

          The list of examples of this kind of pain is too long to even consider. I once read a book on Eastern philosophy that claimed there are 8.400,000 different forms of human suffering in this life. I don’t know how they came up with that number. It seems like it’s probably in the ballpark, but the idea never did much for me. Some people glorify pain and teach that you have to suffer to grow, but I like to think there’s a happier way. Maybe I’m lazy, but I’ve never been a big fan of pain.

          Anyway, on top of these two probabilities, Socrates threw in a third one to consider.  He said that you are going to really, really want something and to your delight, you’re going to get it. And it’s going to be absolutely wonderful for you. Everything you hoped it would be and more. But then, you’re naturally going to want to keep it. And the truth is, you can’t keep anything in this life. No one can. That’s just the way it goes here. So, even if you do get what you want and it’s wonderful for you, ultimately, one way or another, you’re going to experience loss.

          So, the bottom line of Socrates’s probabilities of what you’re going to get by chasing your desires is, simply - pain, pain and loss. Now if that’s all there was to this great line of thought he came up with, I’d find it pretty depressing.

          But he wisely and happily added that there’s a far better way to get the most out of life, and the first step is to realize that you want more than just always wanting more. You want actual fulfillment. And here’s where he pointed to that old forgotten friend of ours, the Good Genius that we all have within our intelligence.

          Our Good Genius is quite a bit different from our ordinary mind. It has its own, intuitive understanding and at its essence, it already exists in a state of inner satisfaction. Filled with all the higher and nobler elements of nature, it seeks to satisfy our true needs, like peace of mind, contentment, love and joy, rather than just engaging in an endless pursuit of passing wants.  

          He says if we let it, it will steer our ship with wisdom and discrimination, keeping it on course to our higher destiny. And even when we hit some of the points of pain and loss, which we will, although we may still feel them, we’ll see them in a different light, as learning tools that can help us grow into our greater potential.

          Add finally, Socrates leaves us with a choice. He urges us to explore our own inner world, plumb the depths of wisdom that lie within us and emerge with the pearls of our own self-knowledge. He says we have a great potential that is far beyond what we know, but he reminds us that the choice to realize it remains up to us. We can always go the other route and just follow the herd, but he leaves us with a word of advice that has become a world-famous axiom. He ends by saying, “The unexplored life is not worth living.”   

           Well, I thought he wrapped the whole thing up with a bow and now, we’ve come to the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together again in the next one.

We each have a life story and we’re usually pretty wrapped up in it. We might be happy or sad, things might be going our way or going against us. But regardless, we’re generally involved with one basic effort – we’re trying our best to make things turn out the way we want them to be.

          And we’ve been doing this since we first learned how to use our will power. Now, as we grow older, the details change. What we care about at age six is quite a bit different from what we care about at age 16. But still, we try our best to make things go our way, because that’s how we like it. We like to get what we want and when we don’t, it can be pretty painful.  

          Something else is always happening as well – we’re breathing. No matter what’s going on for us, whether we like it or not, we’re still always breathing. No matter the circumstances, this mysterious power keeps giving us life as we travel down the winding road from one now to the next.

          Of course, most of us don’t pay much attention to it, and given our training, why should we? Your breath doesn’t cost you anything so we don’t see any value to it.  It runs on automatic so you don’t have to do a thing to get it. It’s not entertaining and you can’t sell it or make any money off it, so why bother? Sounds a little crass, but this is the viewpoint we inherited from our culture, which on one level is just a glorified version of the basic law of the jungle.   

          Yet, every once in a while, something happens, and even if it’s just for a moment, we suddenly realize the deeper truth that the value of our life itself far outweighs whatever may be happening to us.

          About twenty-five years ago, this understanding unexpectedly made itself plain to me as I was having dinner with an old friend.  I had met him at school and we were close until we were around 15, when his family moved to another city. Now importantly, he was an exceptional athlete. He grew up to be about six-one, had a muscular build and was tremendously coordinated. In his senior year in high school, he was named to the first-string all-city teams in baseball, basketball and football, which is pretty rare. 

          And he was a great guy as well, but he also had quite a temper and under the wrong circumstances, he could get very angry very quickly. Deep down, he was pretty sensitive and if his feelings got hurt, his primary defense was to get mad fast. But still, he was a really good guy and a really good friend.

          Anyway, we lost touch when he moved and I hadn’t seen him for many years, until one day in the early 90s, out of the clear blue sky, he gave me a call. He happened to be in town and invited me to join him for dinner. We met at a nice restaurant and had a great time catching up with each other. Then, toward the end of the meal, he casually told me this story, which was anything but casual.

          It was the mid-70s, right after college. He was about to get his master’s degree at a university located in the country ski regions of New England. He was living with his girlfriend. They had been living together for more than a year and were starting to talk about the idea of getting engaged.

          He had recently submitted his master’s thesis and been working non-stop, getting ready to defend it before the committee that would decide if he had qualified for his degree.

It was the night before his scheduled appearance before the committee and after dinner, with no warning, his girlfriend abruptly told him that she had been having an affair with his best friend for about six months. They’d been carrying on behind his back, and now she wasn’t sure who she really wanted to be with. Obviously they had to ice the idea of getting engaged, at least for now.

Of course, Barry, (which isn’t his real name) immediately hit the ceiling and they got into a vicious fight that quickly escalated into the most intense one he had ever been in. And that’s saying something because he had been in some major ones.

 They fought all night long, shouting and screaming at each other as every hurt that had gone on between them came up and added fuel to the fire. Finally, at 8 o’clock the next morning, with absolutely no sleep, he got into his VW van and drove off to his appointment at school. He was determined to mount his defense and get his degree. No matter what, nothing was going to take that away from him.   

As he drove along the weaving mountain road, he was in a complete rage, absolutely out of his mind. How could she have done this to him? They had been so close for so long and it had seemed like the ideal relationship. And what about his so-called friend? He was going to ask this guy to be the best man at his wedding and now he finds out that he had been secretly stabbing him in the back the whole time. The heartless betrayal was just too much.  And to top it all off, why did she have to hit him over the head with it on the very night before the most important day of his life. She couldn’t have waited one more night?  

He told me that as he drove along, he had never experienced such rage in his life. He tried to pull himself together, but it just kept getting worse and worse. Then suddenly, he felt a strange, sinking feeling in his stomach, like he was falling.

Alarmed, he looked out the window and realized to his horror, that he had driven off the road. For a split second, the van seemed to hang in mid-air and then oddly, he lost his sense of hearing and everything went silent. Then, seemingly in slow motion, the bus started to fall down, hitting the mountainside and rolling over several times before finally coming to rest, upside down at the bottom of a deep ravine.

Barry thinks he must have gone unconscious and had no idea of how long it was before he came to. In extreme pain, he was able to pry himself out of the mangled bus and crawl out. A bloody mess, with both legs severely broken, he rested on the ground for a few moments.  

Then, powered by pure instinct and guts, and using just his forearms, he crawled on his stomach over a mile and a half up the rocky ravine, which was covered with thorn bushes. Finally, he made it up to the side of the road, where battered and bleeding, he passed out.

Someone noticed him and called the police which rushed him to the hospital. Along with all his other injuries, the doctors quickly realized that he had suffered some serious head trauma as well. It was obvious that if he hadn’t been in such great shape, he would have surely died at the bottom of the ravine.

He paused with the story as the waiter came over to take our dessert order. We considered a few options but the Key Lime pie was the renowned specialty of the house, so we ordered it with some coffee. Thinking about sweets gave us a much-needed break from the incredibly intense tale. We chatted a little bit about some long-lost friends and had a few laughs about old times. Then with a serious look returning to his face, Barry got back to the story.

He said there were two major insights that he had learned from the experience that had completely changed his life and he really wanted to share them with me.     

The first one was that as he drove along that morning, he had never been more furious in his life. For over twelve hours, he had been completely consumed by the horrible betrayal he was suffering. But the second he realized that he had driven off the cliff and was coming face to face with death, the whole thing vanished from his mind instantaneously. The only thing that mattered now was to stay alive.

“Even though looking back on it, it makes perfect sense,” he said. “That immediate change in priority really showed me something. And in its aftermath my whole outlook got transformed and I was never really the same again.”

The pie and coffee came. We both had a few bites and it was even better than its reputation. “So, look,” he said to me, somewhat intently.  “This is the thing. No matter what happens to you, for good or for bad, understand that nothing even comes close to the importance of being alive. And let me tell you something, there is a power within you don’t really know, but it will fight for your existence much more intensely than you can imagine.”

  Then he added another fascinating twist to the story. He said he had remained unconscious for a few days before he woke up in intensive care. And it was a few days after that before he started to even remember what had happened. Eventually it all came back to him and in complete detail. But amazingly, even though he remembered every bit of it, he had absolutely no emotions about any of it at all. He had the memories but he had no feelings about them whatsoever. Blank.

He later learned that in some brain injury cases, like a major concussion or a serious stroke, this kind of thing is not uncommon. And even though it can be temporary, for him, the emotions never came back. They were gone for good. It was like the events had happened to somebody else and the whole thing started to fade from his mind, like a dream does, once you’re awake.

His old girlfriend and his old best friend were like strangers to him and he let them go and moved on. But the whole thing really moved him deeply and eventually, he got into some personal growth and meditation, which made sense. Afterall, it was the mid-70s and it seemed like our whole generation was on one big search for truth. 

“It’s amazing how attached we get to what’s going on with us,” Barry said. “And even though it seems so real, it can vanish is a flash. Makes you wonder about all the stuff that runs through our heads all day long. So much thought. But you know what, maybe this whole life isn’t what we think it is. I could never really put what I mean into words, but I think you get the point.”

He was certainly right about that. This was all pretty deep stuff, and as you can imagine, hearing the story directly from him really drove it home. I was completely blown-out.

He finished his pie and broke into a big smile and said, “Oh, man, that really was great!”

As I looked at him, I realized that he had basically turned out as normal as pie, happily married with two great kids and a nice home in the suburbs. He suddenly made some silly inside joke that we had in sixth grade and we both got a kick out of it. We hung around for another half hour or so, just laughing and having fun.  

His story has stayed with me over all these years and I often ponder those profound observations of his. But what an intense horror show, full of such bitter physical and psychological pain!

As I try to absorb its meaning, I always feel grateful for what a story like that can do for you. You can learn its significant life lessons without having to actually live through all the pain involved. With the right focus, you get the chance to gain the wisdom, but leave the trauma. Wow! What a deal! Personally, I’d take that any time I could get it.

Loss is a part of everyone’s life, but how we deal with it determines how it affects us. An inspiring true story of loss and triumph is presented with some great insight from someone who took his loss and used it to help hundreds of patients suffering from paralysis. We can all gain from hearing the great things he did in the face of tremendous personal adversity. 

Transcript:

We all have to deal with loss in our lives, and sometimes it can be a major one, with deeply traumatic consequences. No matter who you are, there’s really no way around it. Loss just comes with the territory here. But like so many other things we face in life, it isn’t so much what happens to us that determines our destiny. It’s what we do with it that counts.

In this regard, I have an incredible story to pass along about someone who took a major loss and turned it into a remarkable triumph.

The man was Jerry Segal, a Philadelphia attorney who passed away in the summer of 2020. At that time, he and I were in the process of writing a book about his life and I had interviewed him for over thirty hours, so I got the story straight from the horse’s mouth, which, as he always used to say, was a lot better than getting it from a horse’s ass. He always was hysterically funny, right up to the very end, which, once you hear his story, is a fact that will amaze you, but it’ll also make perfect sense.

Jerry didn’t come from a rich family, but within a few short years after starting his own law firm, he became quite wealthy. By the time he was in his early forties, he owned a large mansion with a swimming pool and tennis court, on the revered grounds of the Merion golf club. A great athlete since childhood, he was a tournament-level, single digit golfer and a champion tennis player as well.

Then, at the age of 47, he started having weakness in his right leg, which was eventually traced to a nerve being pressed on by a growth on a bone in his neck. It was soon determined that the growth had to be removed and Jerry found an expert neurosurgeon to perform the operation.    

Following the procedure, his wife was assured that the all had gone well. But two hours later, when he emerged from the anesthesia, Jerry Segal found that he was paralyzed from the neck down with absolutely no feeling in his body whatsoever. It seemed that his spine had been severely injured during the operation.  

He was quickly admitted to the Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia for evaluation and possible therapy, and this is where the story really starts. As he began a grueling regimen, trying to salvage whatever motion he could, Jerry found that being with his family for meals helped sustain him through some of his very darkest hours.

He also began to notice that there were several patients who always dined alone and he soon learned that their families couldn’t afford to eat with them. “I’ll pay for them,” he told a hospital administrator and he began to cover the meal costs for anyone whose family needed help. It quickly blossomed into a charitable foundation that he formed to include travel and hotel expenses as well.

According to him, this simple act unexpectedly changed his life forever. Inspired by empathy and compassion, he found himself filled with a new kind of satisfaction that he had never known before.  For the rest of his life, he lived by the adage that whenever you feel down, just help somebody else. He said it never failed to lift him up. 

Finally, after six months of constant hard work, he recovered his ability to move and eventually walk with crutches, but he would never regain any feeling in his body for the rest of his life.

He came home to his new normal, which was filled with constant obstacles and hurdles. But Jerry was a born fighter and immobilized with a halo cast, he had actually been had been running his law firm from his hospital bed for months, so he was more than up to the task.

At one point, three friends took him to the country club for the first time since the injury. They strapped a golf club to his hands, and he was able to make a few half-swings on a couple of holes. Then, after dinner, one of them jokingly gave him a $25 check for the hospital and said they had just played the Jerry Segal Classic.

They all had a good laugh, but to Jerry, it was no joke. The next season, he exploded the idea into the real world, and to make a long, epic story ridiculously short, over the next three decades, he developed the Jerry Segal Classic into a beloved Philadelphia tradition, raising a total of $20 million for Magee and turning it into a truly world class facility. He changed the lives of hundreds of patients and their families, in countless ways, both financial and otherwise.  

Over the years, Jerry played many roles with the hospital, but there is one that he cherished above the rest, and it holds a major teaching for us all.

He was a permanent fixture at Magee, there for regular therapy as well as needing to be re-hospitalized from time to time. And he would always visit the other patients as they were working on their rehabilitation. Most of the time, he’d cruise around the place on his mobility scooter.

Now you have to understand that all of these patients in Magee are in distressing situations and some of them are dire. Often the staff would tell Jerry that they had a patient suffering with such severe depression that the psychologists just couldn’t reach them.

Many patients struggled with a condition called retrograde amnesia, which means they had no recollection of how they had gotten there. Maybe they had been in a car or motorcycle accident, or had suffered a serious fall, but they had no memory connected to it. All they knew was that they had been going along normally, and now, all of a sudden, they find themselves in a rehab hospital being told they would be paralyzed for the rest of their lives. And of course, some of them could hardly handle it.

So, on occasion, the staff would alert Jerry, then tell the patient about Jerry’s history. Soon after, Jerry would scooter over. Now when you saw Jerry for the first time, it was disconcerting, but in a good way. Here was this guy who had suffered an incredible loss and his body was obviously severely damaged. But if you looked just at his face, you’d never know it. He always had a certain smile about him. It wasn’t a goofy, isn’t everything great - kind of smile. It was far different. It was the smile of absolute, unconquerable strength. Like hey, this is tough, but you know what, I handle it and so can you. So, let’s go.

Also, he had these steel blue eyes that stared right into your soul. And there was a light in them that never wavered, imparting that most important feeling of all for people facing a really tough situation. It’s the feeling of real hope, and for these patients, it was the most welcomed lifeline imaginable.

After a few minutes of getting acquainted, Jerry would give them all the same message, and he would deliver it with the full power of someone who really knows what he’s talking about. You have to stop looking back, he would tell them. The past is over and you have to forget about what you lost. Forget it. It’s over. Let it go. Focusing on what you once had is where your pain is, but focusing on what you have left, being grateful for it and building on it, this is where your freedom is. So, stay focused on what you have. It’s your doorway back home. 

 No able-bodied therapist could reach them like this. But Jerry could talk the talk because he walked the walk, and they knew it. He consciously imparted the strength of his experience to them and he could see them come back to life, right before his very eyes. And it always knocked him out.  

He said he could never put into words what that moment felt like for him, and he told me more than once that on one level, the injury was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him, because it opened up a side of himself that he considered to be his finest, and he may never have found it otherwise.  

 Here’s something that really drove it all home for me. Once, when I was interviewing Jerry’s wife, she told me that after dinner, he would often sit on the back porch overlooking the golf course, and watch the golfers make their way up the fairway, onto the green.  She said she used to wonder what it was like for him, this former championship player, whose body had been withered away by paralysis, unable to play his favorite sport, which used to be his passion. She added that so many of his favorite things had been taken from him, through no fault of his own, that she couldn’t imagine how painful it must have been for him to sit there and watch.

One day a little later, I finally got up the nerve to ask him what he felt as he looked out over the fairway and watched the golf. “I’m in heaven,” he said, simply. You can’t add much to that.

There’s one final part to this story that speaks volumes. There was a football player at Penn State name Adam Taliaferro who suffered a broken neck while making a tackle and had been told he probably would never walk again. It was a serious tragedy, not just for him and his family, but for the whole university as well. Adam was admitted to Magee, and Jerry immediately took him under his wing.

After months of intense therapy, along with constant encouragement from Jerry, Adam finally regained his ability to walk. He returned to school and it was widely announced that at the opening football game, the college would honor Adam, who would walk all the way out to the fifty-yard line for the presentation.

On the great day, Jerry came to Penn State to be with him. The stadium was filled with 110,000 people and Jerry, Adam and his family stood in the tunnel. As they were waiting for his introduction. Jerry turned to him and asked, “When they announce you, why don’t you run out there, instead of walking?”

“I’d love to be able to run out there,” Adam said.” But what happens if I fall down.”

“If you fall down, you get up,” Jerry replied. “If you think you can do it, then you can. Stay focused and you can do it.”

The next moment, they announced Adam’s name and he took a few steps onto the field. As the applause started, Jerry shouted to him, “Run, Goddamn it.” Adam took a few tentative skips, then broke into a full jog. The place went wild, erupting into a prolonged, earth-shattering standing ovation. Inspiration, guts and hard work had triumphed over severe adversity and everybody loved it.

So, here are two quick takeaways from Jerry, and you could look at them more as commands than advice. First, when you’re faced with a serious loss, let go of your anxiety over what you once had and focus on what you still have left. Shift your focus from what you don’t have to what you do have. Be grateful for it and work to develop it. That’s where the door to your freedom is. 

 And second, when you finally find the strength to start to make your way back, don’t just walk, run. Don’t worry about falling down. If you fall down, just get up. You’ll soon be revelling in the triumph of moving on to your higher ground.  So, run, Goddamn it!

Well, that’s it for this episode. Let’s get together for the next one!

The future is always unknown and to deal with it, our minds have evolved a system of making assumptions and drawing conclusions. We hardly ever notice this nearly automatic process, but even putting a slight focus on it can lead to some truly significant improvements in our experience of life. As with everything else in life, there’s a lot to see when you open your eyes.

Transcript

          We each have a remarkable intelligence that science is just beginning to understand. And learning some basic things about how it works can really help us boost our personal growth and improve every aspect of our lives.

          So, here are two fundamentals to consider. They’re simple, but very profound. The first one is that uncertainty is a constant factor in our lives. And the second one is that to deal with it, we make assumptions and draw conclusions all the time.  

          Uncertainty underlies all life on earth, simply because the future is always uncertain. It just hasn’t happened yet. And when it does, even though we’ve planned for it, it may be quite different from what we expected. And it can be traumatic.

          Look what happened to JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and John Lennon, to name just a few famous icons who died unexpectedly. We’ve all seen pictures of them right before tragedy struck and none of them had any idea that they had come to the end of their time on Earth. Of course, these are extremely dramatic examples, but the principle of uncertainty is always in play here, even down to the most mundane moments of our lives.

          We’re all in the same boat on this one. The truth is, no matter who you are, how much you’ve accomplished in your life, or how great you are at planning, in all things, both major and minor, nobody ever really knows what’s coming next.

          Now as rational creatures, we want to be in control as much as possible, so we don’t like uncertainty. Still our minds have evolved a basic system to deal with it. We take information, make some assumptions about it, draw some conclusions and then take action. Of course, this is a really old strategy. As a species, we’ve been doing it since we first began to think.  And although we all do it, all day long, we barely notice it. 

          Take, for example, the simple act of driving your car through the traffic light at an intersection. When the light is green, you go.  But when you do, you are actually making an assumption. You are assuming that the cars approaching the other way, where the light is red, will stop. Drawing this conclusion, you go. This is a perfect example because we’ve made an assumption that has triggered an action, while having no awareness of it at all. It’s the most common thing in the world.

          Of course, there’s an element of uncertainty here because sometimes a car will run the red light on the other side of the intersection, creating a real mess.  Which leads to a critical problem about drawing conclusions and it’s something we all know, all too well. Sometimes, the conclusions that we draw can be just plain wrong.

          Abraham Lincoln used to tell a great story that illustrates the situation perfectly. As with all the tales in Lincoln lore, there are many different anecdotes about it, but according to one popular version, he told the story in the late 1840’s, when he was a lawyer, riding the 8th Judicial Circuit in Central Illinois. This was long before his national reputation was established, but it shows his endearing genius for using humor to put people at ease while driving his point home. It was always one of his most powerful traits.

          Lincoln was defending a client in a murder case, and in the beginning of his closing argument to the jury he said, “Well, you’ve heard all the facts of the case and now it’s time for you to go into the jury room and draw your conclusion as to whether you think my client is guilty or innocent. But be careful here, because things aren’t always what they seem to be.”

          Then he went on to tell them about a prosperous farmer who owned a huge spread in Illinois. One day, as he was having an important meeting with some of his top managers, his 11-year-old son came bursting into the room, out of breath.  “Pa! Pa!” he shouted.  “You gotta come with me right now!!!”

          “What is it son?” the farmer asked. “We’re in the middle of some really important things here and I don’t think I can leave.”

          “But, Pa,” he replied. “You have to. I just followed one of the field hands to the back kitchen door and one of the kitchen maids came out and met him. They started walking over to the big barn. I followed them and made sure they didn’t see me.” He paused, catching his breath. “I stayed out of sight, but I could see them real good. They climbed up into the hay loft and the field hand, he pulled his pants down and the kitchen maid, she pulled her dress up. And Pa, you gotta come with me right now,” he panicked. “They’re about to pee all over our best hay!”

          Of course, everyone in the room burst out laughing, but the father just looked at his child with a kindly, bemused smile. “Son,” he said compassionately, “it sounds to me like you’ve got your facts straight. But I think you’re drawin’ the wrong conclusion.”

          Now this is a great story for a couple of reasons. The first one is obvious. In a wise and witty way, it illustrates the point that things aren’t always what they seem to be, and the conclusions we draw can be way off, even though they may seem logical enough to us,

          But the second point is a little more subtle. Because the boy hadn’t reached puberty yet, the conclusion he drew about what he had seen was the only one that made any sense to him. The real motive behind the secret excursion into the barn would have never occurred to him at this stage of his development.

          Of course, his innocent belief was hysterical to all the men in the room because they had all grown through that most unlikely transition from boy to man, so what was about to happen in the hayloft was certainly no mystery to them. They fully understood it, and they understood it from direct personal experience, which is always the most striking frame of reference.  

          Now, there may also be a little more for us to see here, if we want to take a slightly deeper dive. According to some wisdom traditions, making the physical change from child to adult isn’t the only metamorphosis available to us in this lifetime. We can also grow through evolutions of inner awareness, which can bring about major changes in us that can be just as dramatic as the physical ones, if not more so.

          It’s an interesting idea. Look what happened when we grew from age 10 to age 20. What an enormous change that was, from how we looked, how we felt, how we saw the world and ourselves in it, and most importantly, how we thought, including all of our beliefs, assumptions, and conclusions.

          Maybe, in the same way, as we grow through these higher levels of inner awareness, we can start experiencing life in a very different way, with far less fear and frustration and far more wisdom, understanding, peace and joy alive in our hearts. Who knows?  We can always look back and see who we became, but we can’t look forward and see who we become. It’s all in the uncertain future.    Which brings us back to where we started - assumptions and uncertainty. With assumptions, we know that they’re always based on our level of development.  In Lincoln’s story, the boy really was upset because he truly believed that his family’s best hay was about to be spoiled by the rude couple. Of course, in a few short years, his whole point of view would radically change.  

          It could be the same for us as we grow on the inside. We each have a huge number of beliefs, with assumptions that we’re hardly aware of, including some existential ones about who we are, why we’re here, and what our true potential as a human being is, among countless others.

          These beliefs could all change radically, or even be replaced by actual knowledge, which would be astounding. Afterall, beliefs can be right or wrong, but real knowledge is for certain.   

          Which leads us to uncertainty and how we deal with it.  According to the teachings of some wisdom traditions, even in the face of the constant uncertainty of our outer world, there is great certainty within us. And if we choose, we can connect with it in a most simple, yet surprisingly effective way. You might want to give it a try.

          Every once in a while, just stop and ask yourself if you’re still breathing, then focus on your breath for just a few seconds. Of course, you will find that no matter what’s happening to you, for good or for bad, the answer to your question will always be – yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am still breathing.

          Now, this tiny exercise connects us to an enormous fact, which is that every single thing that is happening in our lives is completely dependent on the fact that we are still breathing. And when you pay even the slightest attention to it, you can see that the breath, which is the absolute source of life for us, is totally beyond our control. It is happening by a power all its own. And if the very basis of our life is beyond our control, even though we still need to do our very best, what does that say about how much in control of anything we actually are?

          According to the information, the more we become grateful for our breath, the more evolved our consciousness will become, bringing about changes in our being that may be unimaginable to us in our current state of development.   

          Remarkably, this understanding about the power of the breath has been around for thousands upon thousands of years, taught in every culture throughout the world, so you gotta figure that there must some reason why it’s been so popular with so many saints and sages throughout the ages.

          Personally, I’ve been trying to embrace it myself for quite some time now, and I haven’t found any downside to it yet. And for me, that’s a pretty big statement after living all these years in this realm of constant up and down.

          Well, that’s it for now. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next episode.

Our ordinary mind thinks about 60,000 thought a day, with 80% of them being based in some form of negativity. But our ordinary mind is not all that we have in our inner awareness. We also have something called our Essential Self, which is considered in many enlightened traditions to be the home of our true identity. As we become more familiar with it, we naturally begin to feel more at home with ourselves.  

Transcript

          We all want to improve our lives, and although we may look for it in different ways, we all want to be happy and content. But happiness and contentment are, in reality, inner states of being, so one of the best ways to improve our lives is to improve the environment of our inner world.

          Within that realm, we have a most unique inner intelligence and thinking is a key part of it. Actually, our extraordinary ability to think is the one major factor that separates us from the rest of the entire animal kingdom. Still, we generally don’t pay too much attention to it, with our thought processes often running on automatic. But they can also run out of control and cause us a lot of inner turmoil, which is what is happening now, according to some recent studies.   

          Current research indicates that in our society, the average person thinks about 50,000 thoughts a day, give or take a few thousand. And of these, about 80% of them are negative in nature, with about 60% being repetitive, which means we keep thinking the same negative thoughts, over and over again.

          But many experts tell us that it doesn’t have to be this way, so, let’s take a slightly deeper dive and see what we can see. Negative thoughts generally emerge from three different types of emotional feelings – anger, guilt and fear. Guilt and fear are fairly straightforward. Guilt relates to remembering the past and fear relates to anticipating the future. With guilt, we look back with deep regret on some previous behavior and we can really beat ourselves up for it. With fear, we project forward and picture that something terrible might happen. The projection frightens us, ranging from mild apprehension to complete panic. Guilt and fear can often combine and the powerful mixture of regret over the past and fear of the future can be rather paralyzing to our progress.  

 Anger, on the other hand, is a little more subtle and can take many different forms - resentment, indignation, animosity, and hatred to name just a few. But the bottom line is, with anger, we’re in an agitated state of serious inner frustration, which not only feels bad, it can also cause us serious harm on many significant levels. And when anger gets together with guilt and fear, you’re facing a real triple threat.

          But whatever causes our negative thoughts, we spend a huge part of our lives, groping our way through this shadowy inner landscape with all its pitfalls. And basically, it’s just plain sad. Here we are with the incredible potential of this most remarkable, creative mind, and instead of using it to scale the lofty heights, we’re carrying it around like a heavy burden while its constantly making us unhappy. And that covers 80% of our time which is a really big number. If a vacation company was selling a trip and all the reviews said that 80% of it was pretty awful, they wouldn’t be out in business very long.

          Now, we’ve known about our negative thought patterns for years and there are many ideas about how we can change them to positive ones and fashion a more optimistic outlook on life.  If you search the internet, you’ll probably come up with a hundred positive thinking courses in just a few minutes.   

          But sources from ancient wisdom through to modern neuroscience suggest a different way, which is actually easier and much more effective than the constant struggle of trying to change the negative into positive. It involves a deeper sense of self-knowledge, with a gentle, but steady shift of inner focus.

          When we change our awareness in this way, our thoughts will naturally change as a result. It would be similar to moving from a cold climate to a warm one. If you’ve been living in the freezing artic for several years and you finally move to a nice, warm spot, once you get there, you quickly see that you don’t need your big, furry parka, ice pick and dog sled anymore. In the same way, when you connect to this larger part of yourself, you find yourself naturally letting go of the mental and emotional defenses associated within the negative framework.          

          Now most of us haven’t been exposed to this kind of approach before, and although it’s very profound, it’s also fairly simple. It has to do with some basic self-recognition and a little understanding of our inner make-up. There are actually two parts to our inner awareness and in western culture, we’re basically trained to focus almost exclusively on the first one, with only a rather modest appreciation of the second.

          The first part can be called our “ordinary mind,” and we’re all very well acquainted with it. In fact, we’re so wrapped up in it, we often confuse it with our own selves. Most of the time, I call my ordinary mind, “me,” but in reality, it’s not me. It’s just a tool that I’ve used to help me navigate my way through my world. We all do. We have to. We’ve used it to learn our language, to store our likes and dislikes and to catalogue all of our conclusions and understandings about our existence, from the macro down to the micro. But it can be very deceptive. And even though our mind constantly changes its mind on us, we generally come to believe it to be our own selves.

          Now, this never happens to us with of our other tools. Unless you are suffering from some serious delusion, no matter how much you love your car, you never call it “me.” Same thing with your computer. As valuable of a tool that it is, we always know that it’s just that, a tool. We don’t from suffer mistaken identity with it.

          The ordinary mind also has a few other serious drawbacks as well. For one thing it doesn’t seem to have a brake, which can be unbelievably annoying. Basically, you just can’t shut it up and you never know what its going to come up with.

          Sometimes it can be like a Mexican jumping bean on steroids, or a wacked-out monkey up a tree, restlessly hopping from limb to limb, constantly churning out one thought after another, ranging from past to future, fact to fantasy, presenting countless opinions, as it pontificates on an endless regurgitation of random topics. But how much of its point of view is real?  As Benjamin Franklin said, “Who hath deceived thee as often as thyself?” And in the end, as many of us unfortunately know, the results of following its random dictates can be pretty sobering.

          Also, because by its nature, it’s a finite tool, it’s only capable of being successful when performing finite tasks. It’s an absolute wizard at figuring out how much, how many, when, why, how, where, and for how long. But tell it to picture a box so big that there is no space outside of it. Or ask it to imagine something that had no beginning and will have no end, you bring it face to face with stark infinity, which absolutely frazzles it. After spinning endless loops of finite conjecture, it will probably come up some half-cocked, miniature representation. But as every explorer will tell you, looking at even a great map is certainly no substitute for being in the actual territory.  

          And one last critical thing, which is something many of us don’t realize, a key part of the nature of our ordinary mind is that it is always basically discontented and no matter what it has, it will soon want something better. On one level, this need for constant improvement has served us well, because without it, we’d all still be living up in trees. But it can be a real double-edged sword because if you go looking for happiness within your ordinary mind, you’re in for a pretty rough time. You might find some in the short run, but don’t get used to it because it’s not going to last.

          Now, fortunately, the “ordinary mind” is just one part of our inner world, and it’s actually pretty small compared to our overall consciousness. There is another part, that for the sake of simplicity, can be called the Essential Self and in certain ways, it is almost the exact opposite of the ordinary mind.

          To begin with, a 15th century mystic named Kabir, once put it this way, “There is a drop within the ocean. Everyone knows this. But there is an ocean within the drop, and very few know this.”

          Although it may seem cryptic, the basic understanding here is that there is an infinite power that sustains the universe. Over the years it’s been given many names. “God,” is the most common religious one, and “Primal Energy” is a term used by physicists. But it doesn’t matter what you call it, because it is beyond finite understanding and all human concepts about it are only partial truths, at best.

          And naturally, because this power is everywhere, it also dwells within each one of us, giving us breath and animating our lives. But it is also at the foundation of our awareness, with our Essential Self being the part of our awareness that is deeply connected to it.

          As such, our Essential Self is the home of what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” - the higher human characteristics like empathy, compassion, joy and clarity, as well as a myriad of others. It is said to be the foundation of our true identity, running far deeper than any of the constantly changing identifications that we carry within our ordinary mind.

          According to a countless number of masters, saints and sages over the ages,

we will never be able to comprehend this Infinite Power, but still, we can feel it, trust it, and merge ourselves into it. And its essential nature of truth, consciousness and bliss will elevate us into becoming much greater beings. They go on to say that by taking advantage of the opportunity to evolve in this way, we will fulfill the purpose of our incarnation. In other words, they would say that this is what you came here to do.  

          Now, this all is just a bunch of words, but what counts is experiencing the meaning behind them. In that regard here’s a little exercise you can try that may give your inner awareness a quick tune-up. It’s called Doing a six pack.

          The whole thing only takes six breaths. As you comfortably breathe, just feel your breath naturally come in and go out of your body. If thoughts come up, just let them come and let them go. You can think them, but don’t inhabit them. Just let them come and go as you do this very brief exercise.  

          OK, so, sit down and close your eyes. Inhale, exhale, see the number six appear in your mind’s eye and silently say – 6. Then inhale, exhale, and see the number five in your minds eye and silently say – 5. Repeat this counting backwards 4-3-2-1, then finish with the number zero, and that’s it. That’s all there is to it. If you enjoy it, do it as many times a day as you like, especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

          This little exercise can help introduce you to another dimension of your inner awareness. It’s very subtle, but putting a little distance between your awareness of your breath and your constant thinking is one of the most deceptively powerful techniques available for starting to connect to your larger self, to the Infinite Within, which is the home of real inner freedom.

          Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together again in the next episode!

When it comes to our inner awareness, we are a creature that is born to grow. We can’t help it. It’s a critical part of our nature. A quick look at our process of inner growth is presented, along with the power that comes from nurturing the higher sides of our intelligence. Profound insights from Carl Jung, Albert Einstein, Buddha, and Abraham Lincoln add elements of genius to the practical information.

Transcript:

          One of the best things we can do for ourselves is to become more aware of our own Inner Awareness. Inner Awareness is just a term that refers to our consciousness, which carries the unique combination of our thoughts, feelings and emotions, along with our higher intuition as well as our connection to the universal power that gives us life.

          Now, that’s a lot of words, but to put it simply, our inner awareness is our actual identity. It’s beyond just our identifications with our various roles, father, mother, husband, wife, teacher, doctor, and so on.  It’s our inner essence, the very root of our intelligence, and we had it before we had even had a name.

          But, it’s more than just that, it’s also a reflection of the larger level of growth that we have achieved so far in our lives. As one anonymous quote puts it, “At any given moment, you are all that you’ve learned about God.”

          Because this is the central core of our being, and because our being always comes before our doing. it has a major impact on every aspect of our lives.  And on top of that, it has an extraordinary capacity to grow.

          Now, we’re all familiar with growth. One way or another, we’ve been doing all our lives. Usually, we barely notice it when it’s happening until it reaches a certain point. Like when you were young, you had no idea that your feet were growing until one day, when you went to put on your favorite shoes, to your amazement, they didn’t fit you anymore. You tried to put them on, but they were too tight. And no matter how much you still wanted to wear them, you had simply outgrown them you just had to let them go.   

          Our inner growth is similar. We go through certain stages of inner maturity. Each stage has its own particular set of understandings and concepts. We live in them for a while, with our likes and dislikes, and then, at some point, we outgrow them and move on. As it says in the bible, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But, when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”

          And once we’ve grown past them and we look back on ourselves, we’re often amazed at what we see. It can be hard to relate to what you used to be like and sometimes you can barely recognize who you were.

          So, how important is the growth of our Inner Awareness? Well, sources from ancient wisdom all the way through to modern science, tell us that its growth is absolutely critical to us as human beings. It has a profound effect on our clarity of vision, empowering our ability to make sound choices. And as the old adage goes, its choice, not chance, that creates our destiny.      

          Naturally, it also has a tremendous effect on our problem-solving abilities, which is key because, as most of us know all too well, most adults spend most of their adult years trying to solve their problems. And it turns out that a lot of these problems just can’t be solved until our inner awareness grows into a higher level. Then it all changes.

          Albert Einstein and Carl Jung each offered some great insight on this.  Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” And according to Jung, “The greatest and most important problems in life are all, in a certain sense, insoluble. They can never be solved, only outgrown.”

          So, the information seems to be that as we emerge into higher and deeper levels of inner understanding, we’ll be able to see our existence in a different light and face our challenges with a whole new set of tools.

          It’s actually a pretty cool idea. Like you’ve been holed up in a broken-down shack for years, and rather than having to spend the rest your life trying to fix it up as it keeps falling apart, you realize that you can just move out, into a beautiful new home, designed and built just for you. And in a much nicer neighborhood as well.  

          Sounds attractive, but what’s the catch? Who knows? Maybe expanding our consciousness is a tall order. Maybe it’s a complicated, tedious task, filled with hours of frustrating, hard work and probably doomed to failure anyway.

          Well, maybe. But maybe not. Let’s take a quick look at Neurology, which tells us that a fundamental part of our learning process is simply repetition. We’re all familiar with it. If you really want to get good at something, you have to do it a lot. You need to practice. On a biological level, it has to do with the way our neurons fire and create neural pathways. And in that process, repetition is the key. So, one of the most basic laws of consciousness is – you get what you reinforce.

          Maybe by shifting our awareness in a certain way and paying attention to what we repeat and what we don’t repeat, what we reinforce and what we release, we can naturally empower our own inner growth turning it into a much easier, more pleasant experience.

          It’s like you’re rowing a boat on a journey and you still have a long way to go. Unexpectedly, you come upon a strong current in the water that happens to be going exactly in the direction you want to go. You row your way into it and suddenly, everything magically transforms. Instead of the constant struggle of rowing upstream, against the opposition of a powerful, unrelenting force, you soon find yourself enjoying the journey.

          Sure, you still have work to do. You have to pay attention and keep the boat on course. And definitely don’t fall out. But you’re travelling with the current now and it’s a completely different trip! You’re moving much faster, as the current adds power to your efforts, enhancing your results. And even when you stop rowing, you’re still moving, gliding downstream as the current brings you closer and closer to your destination. You can relax into it, and it’s actually fun!

          So how can you bring about this kind of positive change to your inner growth? Well, like everything else in nature, how well it grows depends on the kind of light it gets.

          Buddha had an interesting take on it. One day, as he was teaching, someone asked him, “How is it that you are enlightened?” The question might also have been, “How did you become enlightened?” or “How do you stay enlightened.?” As with all these very old stories, you can never know what really got said.

          Anyway, Buddha gave a simple, but incredibly instructive answer. “I know that which should be known,” he said. “That which should be cultivated, I nurture. That which should be abandoned, I release.” Then he concluded, “In this way, Oh, my friend, I am awake.”

          For me, that opening statement, “I know that which should be known.” always brings me back to basics. I have to ask myself, what’s he talking about? What is it that should be known? Now I know a lot of things. In fact, I probably know a zillion things – I know which deli near me has the best rye bread. I know how far I can get on half a tank of gas in my car. I know which golf club I should use if I’m in a sand trap with hard sand.  And on and on, ad nauseum.

          But I doubt Buddha was referring to any of these kinds of things when he said, “I know that which should be known.”  Given his reputation, he probably meant something like, - “I know that I am not alive by my own power, but by a compassionate force that is beyond my comprehension and I’m grateful to it.” Or, “I know that all life is impermanent, that I have only so much time here and it can end at any instant, so I must use my time wisely.”  Or, “I know there is a state of enlightenment filled with heavenly bliss within my being, and rather than chasing the ordinary desires of my ordinary mind, I can access it whenever if I choose.” Or all of the above. Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine.

          But then, his answer gets incredibly simple. He feels that there are parts within him that should be cultivated – the higher stuff like love, goodwill, intelligence, understanding, and so on. And he nurtures all of them. He gives them his attention and care, and they grow. And then, there are other things within him that he feels should be abandoned, probably the bitter stuff like anger, lust for power, deluded self-aggrandizement, spite and malice and all their mean accomplices. And when he comes upon those things, he just releases them. He gives them no energy or attention at all. He just lets them go. And those seeds never get planted, they just get blown away, so they never sprout or grow.   

          Then for me, as powerful as all this is, the last part of his answer remains intriguingly beyond my grasp. He says, “In this way, Oh, my friend, I am awake.” Now he had been asked about being enlightened, but he responded by saying that he is awake. Wow. Sounds like he was equating the state of being enlightened with the state of being awake.  

          Now, in many of the traditions of ancient wisdom there is a teaching that this life is very similar to a dream. And in a dreamlike state, with our heads full of ideas, concepts and fantasies, we grope our way through our existence, wandering from one illusion to another.

          And then, within the teaching, a powerful question is asked. If this life, with all its magnificent beauty and its unending depth of meaning is just a dream, what must it be like to be awake? Boy, I wish I had the answer to that one.

          Well, again, these podcasts are just snack-sized food for thought, ideas for you to consider. One simple thing you may want to try is to gently turn your attention within and watch what happens. As different things come up, just see if it would be a good idea to nurture, cultivate and keep them, or maybe it’s better just to let them go.  

          Supposedly we each have both light and dark sides within us. The cartoons always show us with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both giving us constant advice. Things can get mixed up and sometimes it gets complicated. So how can you tell the difference between what to keep and what to release?

          Abraham Lincoln had an interesting viewpoint related to this. When he was president, it was well-known that he didn’t belong to any church and had no official religion. Once, when he was asked about it, as was his genius, he gave the simplest answer imaginable. “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.” In my humble view, you can take that one to the bank.  

          Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together again in the next episode!