Category: Guest Authors

By John Ptacek

Dear Ego,

I’m breaking up with you.

No more circular discussions, no more eleventh hour recriminations. We’re through.

This is not an emotional decision. Actually, it doesn’t feel like a decision at all. We’ve been drifting apart for quite some time now, and more than anything I’m just acknowledging the distance between us. Whatever kept us together just isn’t there anymore.

It won’t do you any good to turn on the charm. Don’t bother trying to fill my head with thoughts about how great we are together or how lost I’ll be without you. You no longer have that kind of power over me. I see right through you now. I look, and there’s nothing there.

It took me a long time to figure you out. Like so many other unhappy couples I know, we drifted into our own little world and for the longest time I mistook it for reality. If you asked me to pinpoint the day this shift occurred, I couldn’t, because it happened so long ago. But I vaguely remember what life was like before I met you. Actually, it’s more a feeling than a memory. A feeling of freedom. Not a “I-have-a-whole-weekend-in-front-of-me-with-no-plans” kind of freedom, but something different altogether. It’s more a sense of spaciousness, the kind children must feel before their heads become filled with worldly nonsense, before their sense of wonder contracts, before they begin to imitate the behavior of the troubled souls around them.

I can feel that sense of spaciousness right now when I close my eyes and forget that I have a body. It’s like I’m not even a person anymore, I’m just this space that goes on forever.

I don’t expect any of this makes sense to you. It never has before. You always have to define things, slot them into categories. But this isn’t something that is easily explained. It’s beyond words– I know, I know, you hate it when I talk like this, when I challenge your black and white view of things. You always get really quiet.

In the old days I would have misinterpreted your silence. I would have felt wrong, even a little crazy, for expressing myself like this. Now that silence suggests something different. It suggests that I threaten you. Am I right? And your silnece tells me something else, something really important. It tells me that I’m perfectly capable of living on my own. When your voice dies away, my voice appears. It’s just there. It’s probably been there the whole the time, but you were always drowning it out. It’s a clear voice. A strong voice. I’m going to be just fine without you.

My friends think I’m crazy. They wonder what I’m going to do without you. They’ve seen what happens when we’re together, the crazy highs and lows, the bizarre behavior, but they still question my decision. This really throws me until I remind myself what it was like to live in an unhealthy relationship. You don’t know it’s unhealthy, and that’s the problem. You talk about happiness but you never never get to touch it. It’s something that’s supposed to happen in the future. Month after month, year after year, you think – it’ll get better, we’ll work this out. But it doesn’t get better. It can’t. Sick relationships like ours don’t get better, they just get sicker.

It’s a small world and no doubt we’ll be running into each other. I guess it’s more “see you around” then it is “goodbye”. At the right distance, we’ll be fine. I need to be far enough away from you to hear the sound of my own voice. I actually wouldn’t mind your company once in a while, like when I’m fixing the sink or packing for a trip. We get along pretty well in those instances. But this time around, you’ll need an invitation. You can’t just come barging in. You don’t live here anymore.

Pack up your things and leave your key on the table. When I come home later, all I want to hear is the sound of you being gone. I to melt into the silence. I want to lose track of where I begin and end, and this time I will do it with my eyes open. You said something once. You said I’m nothing without you. Remember? Well, you were right. I am nothing without you. Thank you for helping me discover this important truth.

Love always.

About John Ptacek:
My life has been enriched by the teachings of wise men and women, and my essays attempt to demystify these sometimes cryptic teachings so that more may be exposed to their wisdom. They appear on my website, On Second Thought, www.johnptacek.com. I live in Wisconsin with my wife, Kitty.

by Isha Judd

In our society, people view comfort as king. Anything that makes life easier and requires less effort is prized. We have learned to refrain from speaking our truth for fear of conflict and to avoid confronting our fears whenever possible. We have come to value routine over the unknown, and security over spontaneity. Yet often the things that make us uncomfortable — the hard knocks, the disappointments, and the losses — are what challenge us most in our lives. We wish we did not have to weather these storms, yet they are what make us strong. They give us maturity and responsibility, and after all, what better teacher can we have than our own direct experience?

Life becomes stagnant when we remove or avoid its challenges. If a child is spoiled, her parents or servants doing everything for her, when she finally faces the world, she will find herself without the skills to function in society. Similarly, if we overprotect ourselves and try to avoid the inevitable conflicts of life, we may find comfort, but we will not build the skills that lead us toward growth. We may find distraction, but not self-realization.

The story of the Buddha is a perfect example of this. As the prince Siddhartha, he was protected from the world to the point of never seeing the aged or the sick. When he eventually discovered the things that had been hidden from him, he was unprepared for the shock he felt. He then went to the other extreme, committing himself to a life of penance and suffering, before finally finding the “middle path.” The extremes of the world are all part of life, and by exaggeratedly protecting our children from these realities, we are not doing them any favors.

How did you grow from a child into a responsible adult? Was it by not making any mistakes? Or was it through learn-ing from the consequences of your actions? Ultimately, we have to go through things ourselves before we fully understand. To flourish and grow as individuals, we must face the world head-on and embrace the losses and disappointments life brings us. Then, instead of perceiving difficult situations as obstacles in our way, we can utilize them as opportunities to grow, to push through our boundaries and expand our horizons.

It is natural to experience ups and downs in life. We are having a human experience, and that entails a wide range of feelings and situations. When we begin to nourish an internal space of security and unconditional love through the expansion of love-consciousness, we start to experience these extremes more freely. We begin to embrace the contrasts of life and find adventure in change and uncertainty. Self-realization is not about living in a permanent blissed-out state where you never feel any emotions. It is about embracing the contrasts of life fully, without fear. When we are rooted in internal freedom, the need to control our circumstances falls away and we can dance unfettered to the varying harmonies of the symphony of life.

Moving out of Your Comfort Zone

Comfort stems from fear of the unknown and fear of failure. We feel safe within its confines, but in reality comfort is a gilded cage barring us from our true greatness. When we’re not challenging ourselves to be more, we are settling for mediocrity. We lament what’s missing from our lives, but we don’t move into action in order to change it. The fear of failure clouds our perception of our full potential. The mind convinces us we are not capable of more, so we stay put.

We cling to comfort because we fear our greatness. It is safer to sit in the shadows than stand in the limelight: there we risk criticism and external judgment. Greatness requires the courage to stand alone and not compromise our truth. It provokes change and causes evolution. Greatness goes out on a limb; it doesn’t stick to the status quo. To trust ourselves, to stand in integrity without abandoning ourselves in order to please others — that’s greatness.

There is a certain level of collective complacency within society. To break with that and stand alone requires courage, but if we wish to be free from our own inertia, we must take the risk and stop worrying about what other people might think. We must be willing to make what we consider to be mistakes; to try new things and have new experiences; to dare to show ourselves and express ourselves.

If I stand out from the crowd, if I do something noteworthy, I put myself in a place of responsibility. It requires less effort just to sit back and blame my financial situation, my upbringing, or society for not fulfilling my dreams. Yet we are all capable of moving beyond our comfort zone and achieving greatness; in fact, some of the most inspiring and celebrated individuals in history have gone beyond all odds to realize spectacular achievements. They are the ones who said yes when the world said no, the ones who could have used their extreme circumstances as an excuse to achieve nothing, but chose not to.

Can a black man be president of the United States? Can an open lesbian host a top-rated talk show? Can a nonviolent ascetic liberate a nation from imperial reign? Can a man with severe paralysis inspire scientific minds more than anyone else since Einstein? Can a deaf man write a concerto? Of course they can. So why can’t you overcome your self-imposed limitations? We are surrounded by people who have gone beyond mediocrity, even though they had quite valid reasons not to. When we have passion in our hearts, when we are willing to challenge what we are accustomed to and push through our fears, nothing is insurmountable: everything seems possible, and our dreams start to become a reality. When we create our dreams, we become unlimited.

About Isha Judd:
Isha Judd is the author of “Love Has Wings” and “Why Walk When You Can Fly”. She travels the globe teaching a simple, yet powerful system that shows how to find the state of mind she calls “love-consciousness,” where every moment of life — even the most challenging and frustrating — can be filled with love, joy, peace, and self-acceptance. Visit her online at http://www.ishajudd.com.

Excerpted from the book “Love Has Wings: Free Yourself from Limiting Beliefs and Fall in Love with Life” 2012 by Isha Judd. Printed with permission from New World Library.

by Tobin Blake

Imagine yourself walking along a garden path toward a brilliant light that brings warmth and nourishment to everything it shines upon. The path is open and the way gentle, flanked by gardens brimming with life. This is a peaceful, safe place, beautiful to gaze upon.

If you turn around and look behind you, however — back the way you came from — the light is no longer perceived directly. Instead, it is positioned at your back, and suddenly the change in your own positioning casts the world into shadow. Now, the shadows are nothing more than a play of light and darkness, but in them reality — and the beauty of your natural surroundings — is cloaked; and as you gaze upon the shifting darkness, you are left to the whim of your imagination. In a world of shadows, you could see anything, pleasant or ghoulish, but either way, it would not be real. It would be merely a reflection of your own thoughts, fears, and beliefs. In essence, it would be a projection of your mind.

When it comes to the world we perceive outside of us, this analogy is not far from the truth. When you look out and upon the external world, you are turning and facing away from the great Source of life. Life did not manifest from the outside in, but from the inside out. By focusing on the external, then, you put yourself in a position in which what you perceive is so heavily influenced by your own state of mind that the reality of the world is blotted out.

Meditation is the conscious act of turning around and facing the other way — inward. For just a little while each day, you sit down, close your eyes to the outside world, and turn your attention toward the inside world, where your core self, which is a direct extension of Source, still exists. The core self is the original creative spark from which grew everything in your life as you know it. To use an analogy, it is the foundation upon which your home is built. Everyone has a core self, although they may call it by other names, such as soul or spirit. I prefer to use the expression core self only because it is more descriptive, and also it does not have the negative connotations of more traditional terms. This is the same reason why I prefer to use the word Source more often than God, although these words are also interchangeable.

Your core self exists in a pure state of being, beyond every self-concept you hold, all beliefs, your individual thoughts and mind, your physical body, and even the passage of time. Consider the consciousness of infants before they have had time to develop biases; labels; self-concepts; ambitions; thoughts about what is right and wrong, large and small, pretty and ugly, good and bad, short and tall; and so on. They may quickly develop a weak ego, but they are far freer than most adults. Infants live in a world of purified existence, in which they fulfill the role of being an infant without question. As a result, most infants are more in tune with their core self than are adults. I believe this is the reason why Jesus told his followers that they must become “like little children” in order to enter Heaven. It is also the reason why infants can be so enchanting, why their eyes sparkle with life, and why their laughter fills the heart with joy. It is also the reason why their crying and their tears can be so incredibly painful for adults. When an infant cries, it is like the sound of God crying. We can barely stand it.

Most of the things, ideas, personality traits, and thoughts we think of as making up our lives are not really life at all. They are just stuff that has been added on to the core self — that bare, essential energy of life that infants are so in tune with. Every-thing else is ego, also known as the false self, which then becomes identified with the body and the external world. You are more than this.

Think of a deciduous tree with its roots, trunk, and branches. These are like the core self. Year after year, these parts of the tree do not change much. The flowers and leaves, on the other hand, may bloom and grow, but come autumn, they change color and spin to the ground, only to be replaced by a new generation of leaves and flowers when spring arrives. One of the problems with our lives is that we have become transfixed with the changing properties of life on earth — the changing states of ego and the physical body. When you reach down into your depths, you are attempting to release all this extra stuff, if only temporarily, so that you can come into direct, conscious contact with your core. Essentially, you are attempting to liberate your attention from the pattern of changing leaves and trying to sense your oneness with the Tree of Life itself.

While it may not seem to be this way at first, shifting your focus toward the core self is the most natural direction of your mind. It takes a great deal of energy to maintain an external focus — so much, in fact, that doing so exhausts us to the point that we are forced into a state of unconsciousness every night. The moment you lie down in your bed at night and free your attention, you go speeding inward into the realm of “sleep,” which is really nothing more than an unconscious sojourn into inner space and core self. This union with core self is what makes sleep so important for both mental and physical health, even though it lacks the full power of conscious contact with core self. It is still healing and refreshing. Meditation takes you into these same inner territories, except it does so while you are fully awake and aware.

About Tobin Blake:
Tobin Blake is the author of “Everyday Meditation: 100 Daily Meditations for Health, Stress Relief, and Everyday Joy”. He has taught meditation and spiritual awakening at Unity centers, private schools, and colleges. Visit him online at www.TobinBlake.com.

Excerpted from the book Everyday Meditation ©2012 by Tobin Blake. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com