In a world where intelligence often equates to acclaim, one woman’s extraordinary IQ score—higher than those of Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk—should have made her a universal icon. Yet, despite setting a record that still stands unmatched, her correct answer to a seemingly straightforward question sparked an avalanche of ridicule that overshadowed her brilliance. This is the woman with the highest recorded IQ who, in spite of the fact, found herself at the center of a controversy that questioned more than just her intelligence. What was the question, and why did it provoke such outrage?

The Infamous Monty Hall Problem

The Monty Hall Problem is one of the most fascinating riddles in the history of brainteasers. This mathematical puzzle, which takes its name from the host of the well-known game show “Let’s Make A Deal,” captures a situation that seems straightforward at first glance but is full of unexpected options.

Here’s the essence of the problem, as sent by a reader to the “Ask Marilyn” column in Parade in 1991:

“Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the other doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then asks you, ‘Do you want to switch to door No. 2?’ Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?”

The roots of the problem trace back to its namesake, Monty Hall, and the game show dynamics where contestants faced similar choices, albeit without explicit reference to the underlying probabilities. The puzzle taps into fundamental aspects of probability and human psychology, where the correct choice defies our intuitive expectations.

The puzzle’s ongoing appeal stems from its defiance of common sense; although mathematical analysis shows that switching doors really doubles the likelihood of winning the car, intuition indicates that there is no benefit to doing so. Because of its illogical solution, the Monty Hall Problem is frequently discussed and examined in both scholarly and popular contexts.

A Woman’s Answer That Sparked a Firestorm of Ridicule

Marilyn Vos Savant, the woman behind the popular “Ask Marilyn” column, inadvertently ignited a firestorm with her straightforward response to the Monty Hall problem. When posed with the dilemma of whether to switch doors on a game show, she replied confidently: “Yes, you should switch. The first door has a 1/3 chance of winning the car, but the second has a 2/3 chance of winning the car.” This advice, however, did not sit well with a broad swath of her audience.

The backlash was quick and severe. Vos Savant’s column typically addressed a wide array of questions with crisp, clear logic, but this particular answer drew unprecedented ire. Over 10,000 letters poured in, many from incensed readers who vehemently disagreed with her logic. The criticism ranged from pedantic corrections to outright insults.

One particularly harsh letter stated, “You blew it, and you blew it big! Since you seem to have difficulty grasping the basic principle at work here, I’ll explain.”

Moreover, the controversy wasn’t limited to lay readers. A The New York Times article noted that among the disparaging responses, “close to 1,000 carried signatures with Ph.D.’s, and many were on letterheads of mathematics and science departments.”

“Your logic is in error, and I am sure you will receive many letters on this topic from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for help with future columns,” read one letter from Georgia State University.

Another letter from Georgetown University said, “If you can admit your error you will have contributed constructively toward the solution of a deplorable situation. How many irate mathematicians are needed to get you to change your mind?”

A PhD doctor from the University of Michigan even invoked the Father of Modern Physics, saying, “Albert Einstein earned a dearer place in the hearts of people after he admitted his errors.”

This academic uproar reflected not just a misunderstanding of the problem’s underlying statistics but also deeper biases.

One letter even suggested a gendered difference in mathematical reasoning: “Maybe women look at math problems differently than men.” Another simply insulted her, proclaiming, “You are the goat!”

She Was Right All Along

The response Marilyn Vos Savant gave to the Monty Hall problem caused an uproar that necessitated not just one, but three follow-up columns to clarify her reasoning.

When initially presented with three doors, the chances of choosing the car were 1 in 3. After the host, who knows what’s behind each door, opens one to reveal a goat, the likelihood doesn’t split evenly between the remaining two doors as intuition might suggest. Instead, Vos Savant explained, “The winning odds of 1/3 on the first choice can’t go up to 1/2 just because the host opens a losing door.” Mapping out various scenarios reveals that switching doors indeed offers a two-thirds (66.6%) chance of winning, while sticking with the original choice gives only a one-third (33.3%) chance.

This counterintuitive outcome is better understood through a more exaggerated illustration. Imagine the game show presented you with 100 doors. You pick door #1, giving you a 1/100 chance of finding the car. The host then opens 98 other doors, all hiding goats, leaving just door #1 and another, say door #100. Although it might seem your odds have improved with fewer doors, the probability that the car is behind door #100 is now 99/100, significantly higher than the slim 1/100 chance that it remains behind your initial pick.

Monty Hall himself commented on the psychological aspects of the game, which further complicate player decisions. He noted that the more he offered contestants cash not to switch, the more convinced they became that their initial choice was correct—a psychological anchoring effect that clouded their judgment.

This cognitive dissonance—where new information (like the improved odds of switching doors) conflicts with existing beliefs (that each remaining door has equal probability)—explains much of the resistance to Vos Savant’s correct explanation. People tend to cling to their initial beliefs, even in the face of contradictory evidence, leading to widespread public and academic error.

Ultimately, computer simulations and classroom demonstrations across the country validated Vos Savant’s logic. Over time, the tide of opinion shifted dramatically: by the end of 1992, support among readers rose from 8% to 56%, and among academics from 35% to 71%.

Robert Sachs, a math professor who initially criticized Vos Savant, epitomized the changing attitudes when he later wrote to her, acknowledging his mistake: “After removing my foot from my mouth I’m now eating humble pie,” he admitted, vowing to personally respond to those he had led astray. “I vowed as penance to answer all the people who wrote to castigate me. It’s been an intense professional embarrassment.”

Getting to Know Marilyn Vos Savant

Marilyn Vos Savant, who gained widespread recognition not only for her prolific “Ask Marilyn” column but also for recording the highest IQ according to the Guinness Book of World Records, has been a subject of fascination and respect. Her IQ, reportedly higher than historical geniuses like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and contemporaries such as Elon Musk, places her in a unique position within the public and academic spheres.

Born in 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri, Vos Savant made headlines in the mid-1980s when her intellectual achievements were first publicized. Her exceptional cognitive abilities became the cornerstone for her weekly column in Parade magazine, where she solved complex mathematical problems and answered queries from readers about various subjects, demonstrating her broad range of knowledge and analytical prowess.

The Monty Hall problem brought her an unusual kind of celebrity, primarily due to the overwhelming flood of criticism following her counterintuitive but correct solution. Despite being correct, her response drew sharp rebukes from both the public and professionals in the fields of mathematics and science. The criticism was often harsh and personal, challenging her intellectual capacity and integrity. Yet, Vos Savant handled the situation with remarkable grace and patience.

In addressing the criticism, Vos Savant maintained a composed and educative tone, using the opportunity to further elucidate her reasoning in subsequent columns. Her responses were clear, methodical, and maintained a focus on educating her detractors, rather than defending her ego. She illustrated the principles of probability with simple, understandable examples, and invited readers to test the scenario themselves, promoting a deeper understanding of the problem.

Vos Savant’s demeanor during this period exemplified her grace in rational discourse and education. Rather than retreating or responding in kind to often vitriolic attacks, she continued to engage with her audience, patiently explaining and expanding on her reasoning and standing firm on her analysis. Her approach not only underscored her intellectual integrity but also highlighted her role as a public educator.

Beyond the Monty Hall controversy, Marilyn vos Savant has authored several books, imparting her wisdom on topics ranging from general intelligence to personal philosophy. Her work continues to inspire those who value intellect and reason, and her life remains a testament to the virtues of intelligence, patience, and resilience in the face of public scrutiny.

Inspiration From a Woman’s Triumph

Marilyn vos Savant’s encounter with the Monty Hall problem not only showed a fascinating statistical puzzle but also spotlighted deeper societal issues, such as the persistence of sexism and misogyny, even within educated and intellectual communities. The backlash she faced, steeped in gender bias, as evident from dismissive comments about “female logic” and overly personal critiques, underscored a troubling reality: intellectual arenas are not immune to the biases that pervade society at large.

Despite the storm of criticism, vos Savant navigated the controversy with remarkable grace and steadfastness, focusing on educating rather than retaliating. Her method of dealing with criticism—utilizing clarity to explain her reasoning and encouraging skeptics to test the problem themselves—transformed a contentious debate into a valuable teachable moment. This approach not only demonstrated the power of education in overcoming misinformation but also reinforced the importance of standing by one’s understanding and knowledge, even when faced with overwhelming opposition.

This goes to show that her story is a compelling chapter in the broader narrative of women in science and academia, offering inspiration and important lessons on resilience, clarity, and integrity in the pursuit of truth.

Featured image via @VirtualMvS on X

When NICU nurse Katrina Mullen first met Shariya Small, a teenage mother navigating the overwhelming challenges of caring for her premature triplets, she couldn’t have imagined how their lives would intertwine. Earlier this year, their story took a remarkable turn: Mullen, 45, legally adopted Small, becoming both a mother to the teen and a grandmother to her three toddlers.

For Mullen, this act of compassion carried profound personal meaning. Nearly 30 years ago, she had been in a similar position, a 16-year-old facing the difficult decision to place her own son up for adoption. “My life has come full circle,” Mullen shared with PEOPLE, reflecting on the unexpected path that led her to build this unconventional family.

Now, in their Indiana home, the days may be unpredictable, but their bond is steadfast. “Every day is different, and every day we just love each other through it and we figure it out,” Mullen says. It’s a testament to resilience, love, and the unbreakable connections forged in the most unlikely circumstances.

A Journey of Unexpected Challenges: Shariya’s Story

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For Shariya Small, motherhood came as an overwhelming surprise. At just 14 years old, she discovered she was pregnant over Mother’s Day weekend in 2020—a revelation that left her grappling with fear and uncertainty. “I was 14, I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a mom right now,’” she candidly shared with PEOPLE.

What began as a single shock soon escalated. During her first ultrasound on August 3, Small learned she was carrying not one, but three babies. “I was speechless,” she recalled. “I was panicking, but I had no time to panic.” Just weeks later, on August 30, 2020, the triplets—two girls and a boy—arrived prematurely at only 26 weeks.

The early arrival of her babies thrust Small into a whirlwind of medical complexities, sleepless nights, and a crash course in parenthood far earlier than she’d ever anticipated. It was the beginning of a challenging journey, one that would test her strength and resilience in ways she couldn’t have imagined.

Finding Connection in the NICU

Life in the NICU was isolating for Shariya Small. As her premature triplets battled to grow stronger at Community Hospital North, the teen often found herself alone, navigating an unfamiliar and overwhelming environment. “I felt like I couldn’t relate to all the other moms on the floor,” Small admitted.

Amid the solitude, Katrina Mullen, a seasoned NICU nurse, stepped in with a compassionate gesture. She introduced herself to Small, offering not just medical support but an understanding ear. “I wanted her to know that I was a teen mom, and that I knew how scary it was,” Mullen shared. As a single mother to five boys and someone who had once faced the challenges of teen motherhood, Mullen’s words carried a resonance that Small desperately needed.

In the sterile halls of the NICU, a unique bond began to form—a connection built on shared experiences and a mutual understanding of the trials that come with young motherhood. It was a bond that would soon evolve into something far deeper.

A Growing Bond of Trust and Support

The connection between Katrina Mullen and Shariya Small grew steadily, built on moments of kindness and trust. Mullen frequently checked in on Small, offering her presence and a listening ear. Gradually, Small began leaving the confines of her room, seeking out the nurse who had shown her unwavering compassion.

On quieter nights, when Mullen wasn’t directly caring for the NICU’s tiny patients, Small would join her in her office, sitting by her side. These moments offered a rare reprieve from the isolation. “It felt really good to finally have somebody to talk to that wasn’t on my phone,” Small shared, reflecting on the comfort of their conversations.

Through these shared moments, Mullen became more than just a nurse—she became a mentor, confidant, and source of stability for a young mother navigating an uncertain path. Their bond deepened, setting the stage for the extraordinary decision that would change both of their lives.

From Hospital Halls to Lifelong Connection

In January 2021, Shariya Small’s journey in the NICU reached a milestone as her triplets were discharged one by one. While leaving the hospital marked a new chapter, it also meant stepping into an entirely new set of challenges as a young mother of three. Before their final goodbyes, both Small and Katrina Mullen exchanged notes, agreeing to stay in touch—a simple gesture that soon became the foundation of a deeper connection.

What began as occasional updates quickly turned into daily calls. “I started hearing from her every day,” Mullen recalled. For Small, those calls were lifelines in moments of uncertainty. “I was really overwhelmed,” she admitted. “I would just call Katrina and she would talk me down and tell me what to do.”

Mullen became a steadfast presence in Small’s life, offering guidance, reassurance, and practical advice. Even beyond the walls of the NICU, their bond continued to grow, proving that the connection they had formed in the hospital was far from fleeting.

Uncovering Hardships: A Turning Point

Katrina Mullen’s visits to Shariya Small’s home revealed the difficult reality the young mother faced. Mullen noticed troubling signs, including a severe eczema flare-up on one of the triplets and overall poor health among the children. The situation raised alarms, leading to a CPS investigation.

When it was determined that the children would be removed from the home, Small made a heartfelt request to stay with Mullen. “Would you be willing to take them?” Mullen recalls being asked. Without hesitation, she agreed. Just two days later, Small and her triplets moved in with Mullen, beginning their journey as a foster family.

This pivotal moment marked a dramatic shift in their relationship, transforming Mullen from a supportive friend into a parental figure navigating the complexities of fostering four children under one roof.

Shariya’s Journey: From Adversity to Aspiration

Shariya Small’s resilience continues to shine as she pursues a brighter future for herself and her children. In June, she celebrated a significant milestone by graduating high school, a testament to her determination despite the challenges of young motherhood. Now, she’s setting her sights on Marian University, where she plans to study social work. Her goal is to support other teen moms, drawing from her own experiences to guide others through similar hardships.

Balancing education and parenting comes with its hurdles. While the university’s daycare program accommodates her daughters, her son requires specialized attention due to a feeding tube. True to her unwavering support, Katrina Mullen has adjusted her work schedule to ensure Small can continue her studies. Together, they’re navigating this new chapter, with Small’s aspirations serving as a beacon of hope for what’s to come.

A Grandmother’s Love: Mullen’s New Role

For Katrina Mullen, becoming a grandmother to Shariya Small’s triplets has brought immense joy and fulfillment. Reflecting on her new role, Mullen shared, “They make me smile and laugh so much every day.” Their infectious energy and progress have become a source of constant happiness in her life.

Now approaching their third birthday, the triplets are thriving. The girls have successfully graduated from therapy and are preparing to start preschool, marking a significant milestone in their development. Meanwhile, their brother continues to make strides with occupational and physical therapy, demonstrating resilience and determination.

Mullen’s commitment to her growing family is unwavering, and her perspective as a grandmother is one of pride and gratitude for the laughter, love, and hope the children bring into her home.

A Story of Love, Growth, and Resilience

Katrina Mullen beams with pride as she reflects on Shariya Small’s transformation. From a scared teenager navigating unexpected motherhood to a devoted and capable parent, Small has blossomed into what Mullen calls a “fierce” and hands-on mother.

For Small, her journey is defined by love—the unwavering bond she shares with her triplets. While her children are unaware of her age, they know one truth that matters most. “All they know is that they have a mom that loves them,” she says, a sentiment that encapsulates the strength and heart of their family.

Together, Mullen and Small’s extraordinary journey showcases the power of compassion, resilience, and the unbreakable bonds that can emerge in the most unexpected circumstances. Their story is not just about overcoming challenges; it’s about creating a family built on unconditional love and support.

As people age, the desire for independence remains strong, but so does the need for support. Many families find themselves caught between traditional elder care options and the challenges of inviting aging loved ones into their own homes. Assisted living facilities can feel impersonal, while the thought of moving grandparents into an already busy household might disrupt delicate family rhythms. Enter the “granny pod”—a compact, backyard home designed to bring loved ones closer without compromising their sense of self.

Granny pods, or accessory dwelling units (ADUs), are redefining senior living by combining privacy with proximity. Equipped with thoughtful features and tailored to fit nearly any family’s space, they offer a unique balance of autonomy and care that’s hard to find elsewhere. Imagine a cozy, self-contained home with just the right touch of tech and safety features, all nestled in the backyard, allowing grandparents to stay near without fully integrating into the main house.

But how exactly do these tiny homes work, and what makes them such a powerful alternative to traditional elder care? As families seek more meaningful, flexible options, granny pods are emerging as one of the most intriguing trends in multi-generational living.

What Are Granny Pods?

Granny pods, also known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs) or in-law cottages, are small, independent living spaces designed to house aging family members close to their loved ones. Typically set up in a family’s backyard, these compact homes are usually 300 to 500 square feet, though some models range up to 900 square feet. They include essential amenities like a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, and living area, designed to meet seniors’ needs for accessibility and safety. While these units are modest in size, they are meticulously crafted with features that enhance mobility, security, and comfort, creating an ideal balance between independence and nearby family support.

Most granny pods are prefabricated and can be installed directly on a property with hookups to the main house’s utilities, including water, electricity, and sewer. MEDCottage, one of the leading manufacturers, offers these pods in several models, catering to various needs. For instance, the MEDCottage Classic is a popular standalone option equipped with soft flooring, safety railings, and accessible bathrooms, helping minimize fall risks and ensuring ease of movement. Other versions, like the Living Roo, are adaptable to garage spaces, often featuring tech-forward touches like high-definition monitors for outdoor views, making the pods feel more spacious and connected to nature.

Granny pods are gaining traction as a compassionate alternative to nursing homes, especially as studies highlight the emotional and psychological benefits of seniors aging close to family. Research suggests that seniors who remain within their family’s vicinity experience reduced isolation, which positively impacts their mental and physical well-being. Moreover, the layout and features of these pods, such as rounded countertops and slip-resistant floors, cater directly to the unique safety concerns of older adults, who may be more prone to accidents at home if these factors are overlooked​.

High-Tech and Safety Features for Senior Independence

Granny pods are not just compact living spaces; they’re equipped with advanced features that prioritize safety, accessibility, and health monitoring to support seniors living independently. These “tiny homes” often include technology for round-the-clock monitoring and specialized installations designed to minimize risks for older adults. For instance, many granny pods incorporate padded floors and safety railings to prevent falls—a significant concern for aging individuals. Features like lighted floorboards and widened doorways further enhance accessibility and reduce hazards, allowing seniors to move safely even in low light.

A standout innovation in some models, like the MEDCottage, is the integration of smart health-monitoring systems. These systems track vital signs and detect changes in daily routines that might signal health issues. For example, sensors monitor a senior’s movement patterns, notifying caregivers of unusual inactivity, which could indicate a fall or other health emergency. Additionally, “ankle-level cameras,” positioned low to preserve privacy, alert family members to potential incidents without constant surveillance, offering peace of mind without compromising dignity.

Granny pods also utilize smart home technology to provide convenience and control. “Residents can use smart technology to control the temperature, door locks, and lighting with voice command,” which simplifies daily tasks and reduces the need for physical exertion in cold or dark conditions. Other useful features include automatic medication dispensers and voice-activated virtual assistants, which assist with reminders and help seniors maintain a consistent health routine without constant hands-on care from family members.

Research indicates that these tech-enabled features can enhance the mental and emotional well-being of seniors by maintaining a sense of autonomy while ensuring security. Studies have shown that when seniors can manage their environment and remain close to family, they experience reduced feelings of isolation, a common issue in traditional eldercare settings. With these accessible, tech-forward features, granny pods are reshaping eldercare by making it possible for older adults to age in place safely, right in the familiar surroundings of their own backyard.

Benefits Over Traditional Assisted Living

Granny pods offer distinct advantages over traditional assisted living, primarily due to their unique combination of independence and proximity to family, enabling a family-centered approach to elder care. One of the most compelling benefits of granny pods is the sense of privacy and independence they offer seniors without the isolation associated with long-term care facilities. Seniors can maintain their daily routines and have their own space while staying close to family, which supports their emotional well-being. Studies show that older adults who remain connected with family often experience lower rates of depression and anxiety than those in conventional care facilities. Having family nearby can be particularly reassuring for seniors who value autonomy but benefit from occasional assistance and social interaction.

From a financial perspective, granny pods can be more economical over the long term than assisted living. While granny pods require an initial investment, typically between $40,000 and $125,000, this cost is generally lower than the annual expense of assisted living facilities, which can range from $50,000 to $90,000 depending on location and level of care. Additionally, installing a granny pod may increase property value by adding functional square footage that future buyers might appreciate as a rental space or guest house.

Moreover, the ability to customize a granny pod with high-tech safety features, such as automated medication dispensers, virtual caregiving assistants, and health-monitoring systems, allows families to provide a level of personalized care that’s difficult to replicate in traditional facilities. This customization enables families to address specific needs as they arise, offering both peace of mind and flexibility as health conditions change over time. Although traditional assisted living can provide medical care around the clock, a granny pod can be adapted to include many of the same essential safety features, allowing seniors to age in place comfortably and securely.

Despite these benefits, it’s essential to consider that granny pods don’t provide the full medical support of nursing homes. If an elderly family member requires intensive medical care, supplemental in-home services may be necessary. For many, however, granny pods represent a balanced alternative that preserves dignity, privacy, and family closeness, making them an appealing choice for those who can provide intermittent support and prefer a more personal approach to elder care.

Costs and Legal Considerations

Granny pods, or ADUs, come with a significant initial investment but may provide long-term savings compared to traditional assisted living. Costs for a basic, prefabricated granny pod start around $40,000, while high-end models equipped with advanced safety and health-monitoring features can reach up to $125,000. Prefabricated models are convenient, but custom-built or renovated options, such as converting an existing garage or shed, can save $10,000–$15,000 and allow for more personalization. For families looking to offset these costs, renting out the unit once it’s no longer needed for elder care is an option in some areas, depending on local regulations.

When considering a granny pod, it’s essential to navigate local zoning laws and homeowner association (HOA) regulations, as many municipalities have specific restrictions regarding secondary structures on residential properties. Some cities require a physician’s recommendation for a granny pod to be approved as a healthcare necessity. For example, states like Virginia have passed legislation to allow temporary healthcare structures with documentation, while other states or cities have different rules for granny pods or similar ADUs. Checking with local zoning boards, HOAs, and building authorities before proceeding can help families avoid potential legal issues and ensure a smoother installation process.

In terms of return on investment, a well-placed ADU can enhance property value by 20–30%, with some units increasing value by up to 100% of their installation cost, making them a potentially valuable addition to a property. However, factors like increased property taxes and higher utility costs should be factored in, as they can impact the overall cost-effectiveness of a granny pod in the long term. For families aiming to keep loved ones nearby while providing safety and privacy, these considerations help balance the initial investment with the benefits of personalized, family-centered care.

How to Set Up a Granny Pod

To set up a functional and comfortable granny pod, start with essential accessibility and safety features tailored to support independent senior living. Begin with entryways: keep doorways and hallways wide—at least 36 inches—for easy navigation with walkers or wheelchairs. A ground-level entrance without steps or with a ramp minimizes fall risks, making the unit accessible for all abilities. Rubber or slip-resistant flooring in all rooms adds further safety, especially in high-traffic areas like the bathroom and kitchen​.

Safety features like bathroom grab bars near toilets and showers, along with a barrier-free shower, add essential stability. Automated medication dispensers with alerts can ensure timely medication management for residents. To prevent nighttime falls, consider installing lighted floorboards or low-level lighting near pathways and around the bed​.

Incorporating technology can provide an additional layer of convenience and security. Voice-activated assistants can support daily reminders, while health monitoring systems track vital signs and notify caregivers in emergencies. Advanced options include floor-level cameras that detect falls and automated controls for lighting, HVAC systems, and door locks—all accessible by remote or voice commands, simplifying day-to-day management without physical exertion​.

Lastly, for an inviting atmosphere, opt for an open floor plan to avoid obstacles, maximize natural light with large windows, and ensure a dedicated HVAC unit for easy climate control within the pod. These thoughtful design elements make the granny pod both comfortable and secure, allowing seniors to age in place with independence and peace of mind.

Embracing a New Era in Senior Living Solutions

Granny pods are transforming the way families approach eldercare, offering a practical and personalized alternative to traditional assisted living. These innovative tiny homes bridge the gap between independence and support, allowing seniors to age comfortably in close proximity to family. From high-tech safety features to thoughtful design considerations, each aspect of a granny pod contributes to a living space that is as functional as it is comforting.

For families, granny pods provide peace of mind, knowing that loved ones are nearby and have access to both privacy and assistance when needed. And with potential financial benefits, including property value appreciation and long-term savings compared to assisted living facilities, granny pods stand out as a compelling choice for family-centered, dignified eldercare. By focusing on accessibility, safety, and comfort, granny pods ensure that aging in place remains a safe and supportive experience.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” ~Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

“Well-armed” doesn’t necessarily need to mean militantly locked and loaded. It can just as easily be a higher consciousness metaphor for knowledge. Indeed, a well-armed lamb is a knowledgeable lamb. As Doctor Who said, “You want weapons. Go to a library. Books are the best weapons in the world.”

A well-armed lamb can eventually transform into a lion. In a world of blind obedience to authority, it takes a particular flavor of courage (mostly the courage to question authority) to wake up the blindly obedient (sheep) to the extent of their ignorance, and to poke holes in the unhealthy, unsustainable and violent power constructs (sick society) built by entrenched authority.

The blindly obedient are the lambs. The entrenched authority are the wolves. And the uncommonly courageous are the lions.

As stated in the movie Robin Hood, “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions.”

MAGA is MAFA:

“Beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves.” ~Nietzsche

Making America Great Again is Making America Free Again. The only thing that is truly anti-American is anti-freedom. Lambs and wolves are afraid of freedom for different reasons.

Lambs are afraid to lose their comfort, security and safety, and thus cling to it at the expense of freedom. Wolves are afraid to lose their power and are intent upon keeping everyone divided and afraid so that they can maintain their overreaching power. The lion breaks the vicious cycle with small and large acts of courage by checking the entrenched (and thus corruptible) power of wolves.

But how does a lamb transform fear into courage and thus become the brave lion who is capable of keeping wolves in check? The lamb must first put itself in check by questioning why it believes what it believes about the way the world works.

The lamb must ask itself: Are my beliefs merely culturally conditioned by a sick society? Have I been brainwashed into believing a certain way by a religion or political party? Do I just blindly obey out of fear of losing my comfort, safety and security? And, most importantly of all, once I realize I’ve been mistaken, will I cease being mistaken or will I cease being honest?

It’s a tricky tightrope between fear and courage, and the menacing maw of the abyss is ever-present beneath it. The way toward freedom is not for the faint of heart. Which is probably why there are so few lions among men.

A lamb that can manage to question its fear-based lifestyle –which is built upon blind obedience, addiction to comfort, and reliance on wolves to keep them “safe”– is a lamb that has the potential to become, at least, a well-armed lamb, if not a courageous lion.

If a lamb can manage to become a well-armed lamb or to transform itself into a courageous lion, then the next step is to show its teeth (knowledge/courage) to the world.

Shove the first amendment down everyone’s throat:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” ~John F. Kennedy

The First Amendment gives every American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.” No matter the seeming “goodness” or “righteousness” of that government.

Freedom begins with individuals being free to express themselves. An individual who chooses to remain blindly obedient and silent to unchecked power is an unfree lamb. An individual who chooses to question the chain of obedience with the knowledge it has gained is a well-armed lamb contesting power. An individual who is willing to put everything on the line to maintain freedom in the face of tyranny is a courageous lion.

The beauty of the first amendment is that it maintains the essence of freedom: free expression. Without it, there can be no liberty. Without it, there can only be tyranny.

Well-armed lambs and courageous lions are able to take advantage of the first amendment as a platform for speaking truth to power.

Whether through peaceful protests (Thoreau’s civil disobedience), or revolutionary speeches (MLK jr./ JFK), or hard-hitting political articles, or even radical eye-opening art; the first amendment is a platform for freedom. It must be protected at all costs.

Free speech should never be controlled by an authority. No matter how popular that authority. Free speech is paramount for freedom to exist at all. As John W. Whitehead said, “If the government can control speech, it can control thought, and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.”

Lest we become a nation of mindless sheep, free speech must be protected at all costs against the wolves who seek to muzzle lambs. It is protected by well-armed lambs and courageous lions with the mettle and the wherewithal to speak truth to power.

Don’t kowtow to the chain of obedience (but don’t be violent either):

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Never confuse patriotism with blind obedience. Many a cowardly lamb makes this mistake. And many a cowardly wolf uses it to lord power over lambs.

Sometimes being a true patriot means questioning power. Especially if that power is violent, unjust, and overreaching. As Barbara Ehrenreich said, “Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”

Don’t allow yourself to be brainwashed into believing that everything the government does is for the good and anyone who opposes the government is an enemy.

The government is made up of people. And people are fallible. Likewise, the state. Likewise, the chain of obedience. As Edward Abbey wisely stated, “Since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

There must be checks and balances. Fallible individuals checking the power of systems made up of other fallible individuals is the only way to prevent the power within those fallible systems from becoming corrupt. Let alone from corrupting absolutely.

It is vital that whatever we are freeing ourselves for, and whatever freedom we are advocating for, does not violate the nonaggression principle. A truly virtuous system is never directly violent. It is only ever violent in self-defense. The moment a so-called virtuous system becomes directly violent it ceases to be virtuous.

The only moral exception to this fact is when violence is necessary to defend against direct violence –and, even then, only as a last resort. Any attempt to use violence to force others into compliance is a violation of the nonaggression principle and therefor unvirtuous and unfit for either well-armed lambs or courageous lions.

Only cowardly lambs would ever advocate violence as a means toward solving problems. And only cowardly wolves high on power would ever use it to solve problems.

Don’t be a cowardly lamb or a cowardly wolf. Rise above the “need” for safety and security at the expense of freedom and liberty. Become a well-armed lamb contesting all votes and proactively voting with your feet. Better yet, become a courageous lion and dare to become a brave David in the face of the hyperviolent Goliath of the state.

“To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.” ~Karen Horney

Find the nearest mirror. Look deeply into it. There, hidden within that fabulously flawed human being staring back at you, is the greatest teacher you will never know.

Yes. It’s yourself. And yes, you will never really know it.

The famous inscription at the Temple of Delphi, “know thyself,” is ultimately unattainable. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to obtain it. Enlightenment is equally unattainable, but there’s nothing wrong with striving for it. Self-improvement is still healthy regardless of the fact that you will never be perfect. Socrates’ dictum still stands: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Examining your own life is always going to begin with your interpretation of it. So it behooves you to align your interpretation of it with reality. Easier said than done. Because examining the self is a tricky proposition. The Self is an elusive mystery. It’s masks all the way down perceiving illusions all the way up.

The trickiest part is that only you can experience these masks and illusions. Nobody else can experience them for you. They are subjective. Your experience of them will always be primary to anyone’s interpretation of them. Not even the best shrink in the world can know them as well as you can.

That’s what makes self-examination, and the self-realization that comes from it, so important. Therapists are, at best, guides. Self-therapy is what a therapist directs you towards anyway. So, you might as well make that attempt to begin with. A therapist is good for keeping you on track and preventing you from getting stuck, but there’s nothing saying you cannot learn strategies to do it yourself.

There’s nothing saying you cannot be your own greatest teacher. The autodidact inside you is calling.

Learn your own nature by learning about Mother Nature:

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” ~Rumi

The most powerful way to hear the “voice that doesn’t use words” is through solitude and meditation. Out away from the things of man, where No-mind is free to remind you that you are a force of nature first and a human being second.

This is perhaps the most powerful strategy for teaching your Self to yourself. Solitude and meditation teaches a particular flavor of humility that gets you over your own ego (codependence) and puts you in touch with the interconnectedness of all things (interdependence). It teaches you how not to take yourself too seriously. When you unbecome yourself, you become everything. You’re free to experience interdependence despite culturally conditioned codependence.

Allowing Nature to become your teacher cuts the uninitiated ego out of the equation and then sneaks in the initiated ego, which utilizes Soul as a tool to leverage a heightened state of awareness. From this heightened state comes the deep interdependent realization that everything is connected to everything else.

In this heightened state of eco-melting your third eye opens, your crown chakra blooms in full flutter, and your oneness with all things becomes paramount. You are suddenly out of your own way. You are free to learn what you must learn. You are free to become what you must become.

The cure for the pain is in the pain:

“Doctors study medicine. Teachers study education. Healers study darkness.” ~Mark Lundy

Just as you are your greatest teacher, you are also your greatest healer. Know thyself and heal thyself are reciprocal properties. Mother Nature teaches you this first. Pain teaches you this second.

Pain is inevitable. It’s a part of life. Avoiding pain just causes more pain. Ignoring or repressing pain just causes unnecessary suffering. Although pain is inevitable, unnecessary suffering is avoidable.

As long as you’re able to learn from the pain, it can be a steppingstone. Seen in this way, pain can be an initiation into wisdom (a sacred wound), and a flourishing into Eudaimonia. Which can be quite pleasurable.

Growth is painful (think: exercise and endurance training). Change is even more painful (think: puberty and vicissitude). But being stuck is arguably the greatest pain of all (think: the unnecessary suffering of unhealthy and inauthentic living).

Pain is a guide, a powerful teacher. And if you can gain the capacity to recognize the guideposts and learn the lessons that Pain provides, you will be more adept at adapting and more likely to grow into a healthier version of yourself.

The Daemonic and the Demonic:

“To learn to creatively live with the daemonic or be violently devoured by it. We will decide our own destiny. Let us choose wisely.” ~Stephen Diamond

The daemonic is the hidden genius within you: your latent creativity. The demonic is the hidden shadow within you: your repressed darkness. Ignore them at your own peril.

The daemon harbors vital knowledge and deep numen. It is your genius loci, your inspiring force, your attendant spirit, your guiding power. It is the quintessential teacher inside you.

It dwells in the fire of your passions, in your love and your anger, in your longing and your jealousy, in your happiness and your sadness. If you conform to your cultural conditioning and ignore or suppress its presence, these passions will eventually transform from a daemonic passion into a demonic rage, with potentially devastating results.

Hence the importance of reconciling the shadow. You do this by making the darkness conscious. By paying attention to your deepest wounds. Becoming curious with your deep wounds is honoring them with your attention. If you’re able to honor your wounds, then you will be more likely to reconcile your demons.

It’s not so much that you’ll suffer less but that you’ll suffer better. You will become healthier in the ways that you suffer. And with the demon as your diamond-backed ally, you add a streak of fierceness to your teaching/learning that can be revolutionary.

Have a good sense of humor about your own fallibility:

“Life is a matter of oscillation. Life is vibration. The question is: how are you going to interpret that. Is it tremble, tremble, tremble; or is it laugh, laugh, laugh?” ~Alan Watts

Laughter is the best medicine. It’s salve for the soul. Laughter reduces pain, forms deep social bonds, fosters brain connectivity, acts as an effective antidepressant, and protects the heart. Besides all these scientific benefits, laughter is flat out enjoyable.

It usually happens when you are having fun. But it is also a vital tool to use in the face of tragedy, fallibility and mortality.

Nothing is more powerful and courageous than laughter in the face of that which seeks to destroy you. Allow your humor to shine even as your soul is breaking under the heavy weight of cosmic nihilism. Allow it to blaze through the cracks of having fallen apart and come back together again. As Charlie Chaplin said, “Smile, though your heart is aching.”

Embrace the fact that you are a stumbling naked ape, fumbling over your barely evolved brain. You’re an anxious mammal with a mortal coil. You’re an insatiable beast with improbable reach. You might imagine that you are a mature, evolved being who is above baser animal instincts, but you’re not.

When it comes down to it, you represent a laughably young species attempting to evolve on an extremely old planet which is hurtling through an unfathomably ancient universe. In the grand scheme of things, you are a member of a floundering baby of a species.

Having a good sense of humor is embracing your own fallibility. It’s accepting that you are prone to mistakes; that you are imperfect, and always will be. It’s injecting a little humility into your human-biased disposition.

Mastering the self is mastering humility and humor. It’s embracing absurdity in a heroic sense. One is both humbled and empowered by a good sense of humor. The shadow’s “gold” and the “secret elixir” are then more easily excavated, and brought forth to others, despite the absurd experience of being a creature torn between spirit and flesh, mortality and eternity, tragedy and comedy.

If, as Karl Frei said, “Attitude is the difference between ordeal and adventure,” then having a good sense of humor is the ideal attitude to have, as your own greatest teacher, going on the greatest adventure you will ever experience: the hero’s journey.

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

If you would be alive –if you would choose to live an examined life, a fulfilled life, a self-actualized life, a life well-lived– then don’t fearfully choose the safe road, what Jung called “The Road of Death.” Choose instead the courage to face the trials and tribulations of an adventurous road, a road full of danger and risk.

On the bridge from Man to Overman, there is no place for half-assed lifestyles and herd instincts. There’s no place for fear-based perspectives and cowardly excuses. There’s no place for play-it-safers and goodie-two-shoes clinging to comfort and light. The bridge is too narrow for narrow-mindedness. It’s too shadowy for those who have not reconciled their own shadows. It’s too full of dark nights for anyone who hasn’t experienced a Dark Night of the Soul. It’s too painfully real for those who have not overcome the Matrix and embraced the Desert of the Real.

The bridge is only for courageous self-actualizers and heroic self-overcomers. If your intent is not self-actualization and self-overcoming, then simply get out of the way. Don’t block those with a full heart just because your heart is empty. Better yet: fill your heart with courage. Join the ranks of healthy progressive evolution. “I teach you the Overman,” writes Nietzsche. “Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

Taking the leap of courage:

“Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.” ~Niels Bohr

Can you feel the constriction of your comfort zone? Like a heavy life-jacket weighing you down? Like a too-safe straight-jacket keeping you out of harms way?

Can you feel the warm glow of contentedness quietly stagnating you? Causing you to feel like you’ve made it somehow? Can you feel the secure pressure of the status quo keeping you in line? Causing you to blindly accept, to myopically believe that you’ve somehow got it all figured out?

Taking a leap of courage is daring yourself to escape these feelings. It’s encouraging yourself to step outside your comfort zone. It’s having the audacity to think rather than believe, to take things into consideration rather than rely on conviction. It’s inspiring yourself to be heroic despite fear.

Look, I get it. Inside the comfort zone everything is safe and warm, solved and unriddled. But there’s also no adventure there. There’s no risk. There’s no challenge. There is everything in there to help you heal, it’s a great place to lick your wounds, but there’s nothing there to help you grow.

Healthy growth, the kind of growth that builds resilience and robustness, can only be achieved outside the comfort zone. There’s got to be risk. Like Nietzsche said, “Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.”

Inside the comfort zone there’s placation, pacification and pity. There’s everything that keeps us appeased and satisfied. There’s God with his shiny promises and glossy platitudes keeping us pampered and coddled and giving us that warm fuzzy feeling. But there’s no growth. There’s no questions. There’s no humor. There’s no furthering of evolution.

Outside of the comfort zone God is dead. Or, at least, God is a garden. A vast and vital garden filled with the compost of every man-made God to ever have existed, rotting like deified fertilizer for the future fertilization of ever-improved and ever-updated Gods.

Alas, the bridge from Man to Overman can only be built outside our comfort zones. Building the bridge is building adventure. It’s building something to grow into. It’s rebuilding God. It’s building a path into godhood and creative evolution. Indeed, we stand upon the corpse of God in order to self-actualize our place as Gods in the making.

Building the bridge out of the bones of God (and Giants):

“We are all Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be reborn.” ~Meister Eckhart

The bridge is a symbol for revivification, a creative renaissance, a spiritual rebirth, an existential resurgence. The bridge is a path, but it’s also a crossroads –a snarling juxtaposition. It’s built out of the outdated bones of God toward the updated end of creative evolution. It’s fixed into place with existential glue. It’s sturdier than any bridge ever created, but it’s surrounded by an angry abyss, and it’s never completed.

We are all architects of this bridge to some extent. Some of us are aware of it, but most of us are not. Most of us are cluttered and stuck in stopgap ideologies. We’re clustered and bottlenecked before the crossroads. Unable to self-actualize. Unable to self-overcome. Unable to see how everything is connected to everything else. Like pre-enlightened Rumis, we’re incapable of seeing that the door to our prison is wide open. And always has been.

Building the bridge from Man to Overman is proactively engaging and leveraging open-mindedness through self-actualization and self-overcoming. It’s inflicting awareness. It’s launching existential flares. It’s highlighting creative evolution through courageous interdependence.

The bones of God are sturdy and steadfast. Solid ground upon which to keep moving, ever-forward, ever-overcoming, ever-evolving. It takes the Newtonian notion of “standing on the shoulders of giants” to the next level. It’s Meta-perceptual. We stand on the bones of God in order to see further than God did. In order to perpetually propel human imagination and ingenuity. In order to grow and keep growing, despite creature comforts, herd instincts, and psychosocial hang-ups.

Building the bridge begins with each of us taking personal responsibility for our contribution to human evolution. Indeed. We all carry the bones of God. Self-overcoming is taking the reins of our life into our own hands, and proactively going about improving upon who we were yesterday. It’s a personalized Fibonacci sequence (self-improvement) striving toward Phi (enlightenment), where our own development is predicated upon an individualized progressive evolution that will ultimately contribute to the evolution of the species.

If you meet Nietzsche on the bridge, kill him:

“If you meet The Buddha on the road, kill him.” ~Linji

As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature.” Similarly, we should kill our notion of self-mastery in order to continue improving our mastery. Think of it as a kind of recycled mastery, where we recycle the mastery of yesterday into the remastered mastery of today.

This applies to the concept of deification itself. So as not to get stuck in a particular state of growth, it is vital that we “kill” the notion that we have “arrived.” That our evolution is somehow “complete.” That there is nothing further to grow into, nothing to question, nothing to overcome. For there will always be something to grow into, to question, and to overcome. There will always be a vast infinity toward which our limited finitude must strive. Indeed. The bridge from Man to Overman is built ever-finitely into the infinite future.

Killing Buddha (God) on the road and killing Nietzsche (Godhood) on the bridge is vital to keep creative evolution in perspective, so as not to get hung-up on any particular notion of Truth. The bridge from Man to Overman is filled with the outdated bones of dead Gods and the burnt-out husks of outdated truths. As James Russel Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.”

Those who are proactively and courageously building the bridge understand that Truth is a fickle beast. Almost as fickle a beast as human fallibility. It’s for both reasons that those who are building the bridge consistently recycle their own mastery.

At the end of the day, the bridge from Man to Overman is a process of self-actualization and self-overcoming. It’s the collective personification of creative evolution. We build the bridge to provide a flexible and malleable path toward godhood. We keep building, destroying and rebuilding so that past growth adds to, without subtracting from, the healthy and progressive evolution of the species. We stand and face the Abyss, honoring each other… “Overmaste: the (r)evolutionary potential in me honors the (r)evolutionary potential in you.”

Image: Source

(TMU) – Life abounds with stress-making, havoc-provoking mayhem. Did you misplace your keys when you were already late for work this morning? Was traffic worse today than after a 5-car accident on a Los Angeles turnpike? Is your boss expecting the impossible from you, while you stare into your kid’s eyes and choke back tears explaining you’re going to have to miss their game – again?

In these moments, you need a fast, effective method to chill the heck out. This simple exercise can calm you down and eliminate stress in three minutes or less.

A Stealth Breathing Technique Used by Navy Seals and First Responders

The best thing about this breathing technique is that no one will even know you’re doing it.

It is used by first responders, Navy Seals, and people who are regularly under massive amounts of stress because it has a direct, palpable, and positive effect on the way their nervous systems function.

If you were to pick someone up in an ambulance from one of those LA traffic pile-ups, you don’t have time to freak out. Maybe they won’t live. You have seconds sometimes, to make smart choices that could possibly keep them breathing long enough to get them to a hospital.

Every fiber of your being has evolved over time to signal danger. This is part of your body’s fight-or-flight response.

Counter-Acting the Fight or Flight Response   

When faced with danger or any perceived threat, you instinctively default to two choices: run or fight.

A cascade of chemical reactions occurs the minute a stressful situation presents itself. This is how the body mobilizes its resources to deal with a threat. It doesn’t matter if it is a lion about to pounce on you – as our ancestors had to deal with – or that one last email that finally breaks you. Your natural response to stress will be the same – until you learn how to interrupt it.

The sympathetic nervous systems will trigger the adrenal glands to release catecholamines, which include adrenaline and noradrenaline. This causes your heart to pound, your blood pressure to rise, you’re your breathing rate to speed up.

Your pupils may dilate, and your skin may flush. In extreme stress, your muscles tense up – literally preparing you to run away from the dangerous trigger.

Modern-day triggers are so varied and pervasive, we are almost never in a state of calm.

After a stressful event, it can take up to 45 minutes for your body to return to homeostasis.

That’s why a simple breathing exercise can literally save your life, and retrain you to face stressful situations like a seasoned, meditating monk instead of a raging lunatic.

Cynthia Stonnington, chair of the department of psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, says she introduces people to breathwork because “many people find benefit, no one reports side effects, and it’s something that engages the patient in their recovery with actively doing something.”

Breathwork is in fact, so useful, that one study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2017 found that patients with major depression who practiced deep breathing methods for three months had significantly reduced symptoms as compared to those who did not.

Another study found that our breathing is so closely linked to our emotional state, that changing it can practically negate anxiety completely.

How it Works

Sometimes called box-breathing, you can really use any form of deep, present and conscious breathing to change your physiological response to stress.

Most of us breathe in an unconscious, stress-promoting way. Here’s what happens when you breathe deeply, and correctly for just a few minutes:

• An exhale that is longer than your inhale (deep breathing) causes the vagus nerve which runs from the neck down through your diaphragm to relay a message to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system – the part of your nervous system responsible for rest, relaxation, peace, and digestion.
• This counter-acts the adrenal-dump and flight or fight response.
• Your brain is freed to make smart choices based on relaxed concentration, a state known as Alpha that is seen on EEG scans as neural oscillations in the frequency range of 5–12.5 Hz arising from synchronous and coherent (in phase or constructive) brain activity.
• Alpha waves caused by a deep-breathing pattern create a positive feedback loop that restores harmony between your mind and body.
• This brainwave state is also indicative of those “aha” or “eureka” moments of a compelling new idea, or insane creativity. They allow you to literally create something out of nothing. And when do you need to do that most often? When you are faced with a challenging or stressful situation!

How to Do It

You can start with a box breath and expand into larger inhale-exhale ratios.

A box breath is a simple inhale to the count of four, using your diaphragm. You then exhale for a slow count of four.

Be sure you expand your lungs completely, and fill them as much as you can. If your shoulders are shrugging into your ears, you are likely doing a “stress-breath” which only keeps you in the fight-or-flight stage. This is a shallow breath that we normally do when we are agitated or depressed.

Your stomach should expand, not just your lungs. This is because your diaphragm is moving down into your belly to allow your lungs to expand more fully.

Once you can do this, you will change the ratio. You will start with a 4:8 inhale to exhale ratio, and then move to 8:16, 10:20, 22:44, or even 30:80 etc.

If you want some real inspiration for deep breathing, check out this video of the famous yogi, B.K.S. Iyengar, conducting one of the longest exhales ever.

You don’t have to be this advanced to get all the benefits of deep breathing, though. Simply have enough awareness to take control of your breath the next time a stressful situation arises, and you’ll be feeling less anxious, and calmer.

It’s that simple. You can breathe yourself into peace, in three minutes or less.

Thich Naht Hanh, the Zen Buddhist master, has some interesting advice about what it means to truly let go. Many people mistake detachment or non-clinging to be a form of aloofness, or emotional disconnect from others, but as Hanh explains, truly letting go often means loving someone more than you have ever loved them before.

The Buddha taught that detachment, one of the disciplines on the Noble Path, also called ariyasaavaka, is not a physical act of withdrawal or even a form of austerity. Though the Buddha teaches of a “non-action which is an integral part of the Right Way,” if it is taken out of context it can give the impression that we should develop a lack of concern for others, and that we should live without truly feeling or expressing our emotions – cutting ourselves off from life.

These type of misinterpretations are sadly common, since there are not always direct translations from the Paali language into English.

This form of “detachment” is an erroneous understanding of the Buddha’s message. Master Hanh states that to truly let go we must learn to love more completely. Non-attachment only happens when our love for another extends beyond our own personal expectations of gain, or our anticipation of a specific, desired outcome.

Hanh describes four forms of complete detachment, which surprisingly, aren’t about holing yourself up in a cave and ignoring everyone who has broken your heart, or ignoring your lust or desire for a romantic interest. This is not detachment. Letting go, means diving in. For example:

Maitri (Not the Love You Know)

Hanh describes the importance of Maitri, not love as we normally understand in a Westernized use of the word. He states,

“The first aspect of true love is maitri (metta, in Pali), the intention and capacity to offer joy and happiness. To develop that capacity, we have to practice looking and listening deeply so that we know what to do and what not to do to make others happy. If you offer your beloved something she does not need, that is not maitri. You have to see her real situation or what you offer might bring her unhappiness.”

In other words, your detachment may come in accepting that certain things you would normally do to make another person feel loved and appreciated may not be what the person you are actively loving now, needs. Instead of forcing that behavior on another person, with an egoic intent to “please” them, you simply detach from that need in yourself, and truly observe what makes another person feel comfortable, safe, and happy.

Hanh further explains,

“We have to use language more carefully. “Love” is a beautiful word; we have to restore its meaning. The word “maitri” has roots in the word mitra which means friend. In Buddhism, the primary meaning of love is friendship.”

Karuna (Compassion)

The next form of true detachment is compassion. When we let go, we don’t stop offering a compassionate touch, word, or deed to help someone who is in pain. We also don’t expect to take their hurt or pain away. Compassion contains deep concern, though. It is not aloofness It is not isolation from others.

The Buddha smiles because he understands why pain and suffering exist, and because he also knows how to transform it. You become more deeply involved in life when you become detached form the outcome, but this does not mean you don’t participate fully – even in others’ pain.

Gratitude and Joy

In truly letting go you practice gratitude. Mudita, or joy arises when we are overcome with gratitude for all that we have, such that we no longer cling to some other longed-for result. The Buddha’s definition of joy is more like “Unselfish joy.” It means that we don’t only find happiness when something good happens to us, but when others find happiness.

If you’ve ever had to say goodbye to a love or friend so that they could continue on their life’s path – one that may not have continued to intertwine with your own – you may have felt pain when they found someone new to love, or made a new friend that seemed to take your place. This is not true detachment. Joy arises when you find happiness even when others find joy – and it has little or nothing to do with you.

Upeksha (Equanimity)

Master Hanh describes the final quality of true love which sheds inordinate light on the true process of letting go.

He states,

“The fourth element of true love is upeksha, which means equanimity, non-attachment, nondiscrimination, even-mindedness, or letting go. Upa means “over,” and iksha means “to look.” You climb the mountain to be able to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other. If your love has attachment, discrimination, prejudice, or clinging in it, it is not true love.

People who do not understand Buddhism sometimes think upeksha means indifference, but true equanimity is neither cold nor indifferent. If you have more than one child, they are all your children. Upeksha does not mean that you don’t love. You love in a way that all your children receive your love, without discrimination.”

Hanh explains that without this quality our love tends to become possessive – a stomping ground of the ego. We try to put our beloved in our pocket and carry them with us, when they are more like the wind, or a butterfly, or a stream, needing to move and flow, or risk dying. This is not love, this is destruction.

For love to be true love, it must have elements of compassion, joy, and equanimity – and this is truly letting go.

The Art of Letting Go is Artless

The real secret is that letting go is not an art, it is an allowing, a being. A non-attached relationship is healthy, strong and filled with effortless love, kindness and compassion. It is completely selfless because your sense of ‘self’ is no longer asserted in every situation. If you want to truly let go, you’ve got to love more, not less. This is the most common misunderstanding about this priceless teaching of the Buddha.

Featured Image: Photo © Unified Buddhist Church.

“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” ~Charles Du Bos

What do you want to become? What do you want to achieve? Whatever it is, it will require sacrifice. The first sacrifice is time. You will have to decide between two contrasting options: One day, or day one. Will today be “day one,” or will you put it off until “one day” in the future?

Settling on “one day” leaves your life up to others and to fate. Deciding on “day one” gives you a little leverage, a little say so in the process. With “one day,” the day seizes you, and you’re powerless and left at the mercy of circumstance. With “day one,” you seize the day, and you’re empowered to make the best of circumstance. As Epictetus said, “Circumstances don’t make the man; they only reveal him to himself.” Don’t settle for “one day.” Cultivate the mettle for “day one” instead.

Whatever it is: writing a novel, starting a band, traveling the world, getting a PhD. Make today “day one” of that process. There will be challenges. There will be setbacks. There will be obstacles that seem almost impossible to pass. Don’t wait until you’re “ready.” Because what if you’re never ready? Fear not. Embrace the fear and begin. Use fear as a diving board and dive into your passion.

If you worry too much about what could go wrong, you’ll slip back into a “one day” mentality. If you wait until you’re ready, “one day” will consume your life. And that’s no place to be when you’re on the path toward something great. Don’t make excuses. Excuses are just you getting in the way of what you want to achieve. Get out of your own way and seize the day.

Of course, “day one” is itself a series of moments. So, seizing the moment must come first. Carpe punctum (seize the moment) leads to carpe diem (seize the day) leads to carpe vita (seize the life). Let’s break it down.

Carpe punctum (seize the moment):

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: Not going all the way, and not starting.” ~The Buddha

Here’s the thing: you have from this moment until the day you die (which could be tomorrow or eighty years from now) to live the life you want to live. But it all starts with this moment. Right now. What are you going to do? The same thing you’ve been doing, or will you try something new? Will you just keep pushing the broom of procrastination into the abyss of “one day” or will you seize the moment, toss the broom into the abyss, make today “day one” and get busy cultivating your passion?

Your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, they all begin right now. They may or may not come to fruition sometime in the future, but their seeds must be planted now. They may not grow the way you want them to grow, but you’ll never know if you don’t plant them now. They might mutate or grow awry or become a hybrid with a seed someone else planted, but you’ll never know if you don’t get busy planting.

Seizing the moment is all about embracing your inner gardener. Your seeds represent what you wish to become, or what you wish to achieve. The soil is fate, which you do not have control over. But that’s okay, because there are things that you do have control over. Like how much you water your seeds. But right now, even that is irrelevant.

Don’t worry about if the seed will take root or not. Don’t worry about if it may possibly get dug up by unforeseen circumstance. Don’t worry about if there will or will not be enough rain to help it grow. That’s neither here or nor there. Right now, it’s all about planting the seed. The action of planting the seed trumps what becomes of the seed.

Human flourishing, Eudaimonia, doesn’t just happen. It takes work. It takes perseverance. It takes blood, sweat, and tears. But it doesn’t have to be a daunting prospect. Just take small bites. Take it inch by inch. Or millimeter by millimeter, if need be. Either way it begins right now, in this moment. This is the first second, in a series of seconds, that has the potential to lead to your own human flourishing.

Carpe diem (seize the day):

“Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow.” ~Horace

Life is a series of moments. So even when you’re seizing the day, you’re still seizing the moment. The only thing that changes is that you are collecting each moment into a series of moments that are all about the cultivation of your own personal flourishing.

Where seizing the moment was a declaration against time itself, seizing the day is a declaration against that which seeks to suck up your time. It can be as simple as taking a day off from work to cultivate your garden and water your seeds, or getting away from the things of man and seeking out meditation and solitude in Nature. Or it can be as extreme as giving your boss the finger and quitting your J.O.B. to become a starving artist, or selling all your worldly possessions and striking out on a life-changing trip around the world.

Whatever it is, it’s collecting all those moments in your day and then aiming them at a particular target. It’s harnessing their collective power and then focusing that power into a leap of courage. It’s using those precious moments to turn the sound down on your life so that you can finally hear the call to adventure. It’s channeling the power of those moments and focusing them on taking a strategic risk or crossing a dangerous threshold. It’s concentrating all the moments that comprise a day and fixing them on taking the next daring step, striving for the next rung on the precarious ladder toward Eudaimonia.

Seizing the day is the proactive task of watering the precious seeds of each fleeting moment. Because sometimes you cannot wait for the rain to come. Sometimes you’ve got to risk looking foolish in your Rain Dance. Indeed. Sometimes seizing the day is literally bringing water to the wasteland.

Carpe vita (seize the life):

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.” ~Henry Miller

Seizing the life is embracing the journey. It’s allowing the journey to be the thing. There are still the precious fleeting moments to be mindful of, and there are still days in which you’ll have to collect those moments and transform them into courageous acts, but seizing the life is having a bird’s eye view of it all. It’s a big picture perspective that trumps the small picture perspective that trips so many people up.

Seizing the life is injecting meaning into your life. It’s collecting all the moments and all the days, and seeing them as an interconnected whole –the fractal construct of your life. It’s embracing your unique-as-your-own-fingerprint life task (or Immortality Project, as Ernest Becker calls it).

With a bird’s eye view and high humor in your heart, your big picture perspective oversees the tiny goings-on of the small mind and laughs at its need for attachment and inability to seize the moment. At this point, you’ve mastered the art of sacred humor. Your disposition is flexible yet robust. You’re able to forgive yourself, realizing, as Lily Tomlin did: “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

Your third eye is a cosmic owl, the symbolic overseer of your human flourishing, perched upon the high limb of the universe, putting your entire life into perspective. You see how it’s all connected like a giant web (or Indra’s Net), stretched like gossamer across all the moments and all the days that you’ve seized. The “one day” of yesterday is dust in the wind, ashes leftover from the fire of having seized all the moments and all the days of your life and declaring to the gods, “Today is day one of the life I genuinely want to live.” As Voltaire profoundly stated, “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”

Image: everst/Shutterstock.

Adopting a pet in California may soon assist in curbing an astronomical explosion in stray and feral animals, if Governor Jerry Brown signs unprecedented legislation banning the state’s pet stores from sales of cats, dogs, and rabbits not originating from a shelter or rescue organization.

Animal rights activists and advocates believe the proposed Pet Rescue and Adoption Act (AB 485) would effectively end the use of breeding operations — termed “puppy mills” (or other species), these massive operations churn out a constant stream of puppies, kittens, and other companion animals, often in abominable, abusive, or neglected conditions — and aspire to choke out retailers who insist on sourcing animals that way.

Legitimate criticism certainly exists in the law’s inherent elimination of choice from the marketplace, as far as the retail pursuit of specific pet breeds is concerned, with detractors pegging a dearth of reliable genetic and medical information available for individual shelter animals, as well as the fact many popular breeds never wind up housed in such facilities.

Proponents rightly point to abandoned and unwanted animals, as the United States continues grappling with an astronomical explosion in feral and stray populations — which the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reports ‘forced’ the euthanization of at least 1.5 million unadopted shelter companion animals — in just 2016, alone.

“California taxpayers spend over a quarter of a billion dollars every year to house homeless animals,” San Diego Humane Society CEO and President Dr. Gary Weitzman told Huffington Post in an emailed ASPCA statement pertaining to the new bill, adding the strongest potential lies in the elimination of “a main source of sales for inhumane commercial breeders.”

In fact, as the San Diego Tribune points out, well over 200 areas around the U.S. have implemented policies like the California legislation, and have indeed severely crippled pet breeding operations to the betterment of strays and mill animals, alike, over the past decade, and reports,

“California has more than 33 cities with these ordinances, from South Lake Tahoe in 2009 to Oceanside in 2015, to Los Angeles in 2016, to San Francisco and Sacramento this year.

“Most of these rules allow storefronts to sell animals acquired from shelters, rescue groups and nonprofits. In practice, many of the targeted pet-store merchants have gone out of business or been forced to move locations.

“Supporters said the bans are a local reaction to breeders, mostly located in the Midwest, who warehouse dogs and cats like livestock. They said too often, animals, especially breeding mothers, are locked in unsanitary and inhumane conditions without proper access to medicine, exercise and contact with people.”

And HuffPost expounds, “One of the most comprehensive of those measures was passed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August. Cambridge’s ordinance bans pet stores from selling any non-rescue animals other than fish — meaning that besides dogs and cats, it also covers everything from birds to snakes to small animals like mice, rats and hamsters.”

Advocates reiterate the measure only affects retail sales of pets, and anyone searching for a specific breed would be free to contact an ethical breeder privately — an obstacle critics feel places too many barriers between customer and product, thus threatening to erase the market of many popular breeds never making it to shelters.

“Pet stores represent a well-regulated and reliable source for responsibly raised animals, often breeds which are not readily available nearby,” Mike Bober, president and CEO of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, told HuffPost. “We do think that consumer choice is an important part of this.”

Although Bober’s latter point is again valid, the idea problematic breeding farms are the rarity rather than the rule is preposterous when examined in the context of an unending list of horrendous animal abusers calling themselves reputable to reap profit, supply the vast majority of pet stores — from the little guy to corporate behemoths.

Paul Solotaroff toured an illegal puppy mill as part of an investigation into such facilities for Rolling Stone in January 2017, observing,

“Out the back door and up a dirt trail, the worst was yet to come. A cinder-block kennel, hidden from the street, housed the bulk of this puppy-mill stock: 50 or 60 more parent dogs who’d likely never seen sunlight or spent a day outside this toxic room. They wept and bayed and spun in crazed circles as we toured the maze of cages. Some went limp as the rescuers knelt to scoop them. Each was photographed, then carried downhill to the giant rig at the curb. There, teams of vets from the Cabarrus Animal Hospital worked briskly to assess each rescue. Once triaged and tagged, they were loaded into crates on the Humane Society’s mammoth truck, an 80-foot land-ship with clean-room conditions, and taken to a staging shelter. One hundred and five dogs came out of that house, many of them pregnant or in heat. I turned to John Goodwin, the director of the puppy-mills campaign for HSUS, and asked him how many puppies sold in this country — at Petland and Citipups and a thousand other pet stores — come from puppy mills as dire as this one.”

Emaciated animals, deplorably filthy conditions, disease, parasites, and other issues plague the animal prisoners of breeding-mill hell — and with profit potential tantalizingly large, violation of regulations and animal rights comprise a risk worth taking for the unscrupulous, to the detriment of the pets.

“Most every pup sold in stores in America comes from this kind of suffering — or worse,” Goodwin insisted. “If you buy a puppy from a pet store, this is what you’re paying for and nothing else: a dog raised in puppy-mill evil.”

Matt Bershadker, president and CEO of the ASPCA, added, “Puppy mills house breeding dogs in small, wire-floored cages, separate puppies from their mothers at a very young age, and ship them hundreds of miles to pet stores around the country.”

While the proposed legislation in California might not be ideal, it could save state residents a small fortune, as the San Diego Tribune notes, since “it costs taxpayers an estimated $250 million each year to pick up, house and often euthanize unwanted animals, including more than 800,000 dogs, cats and rabbits, according to the same legislative analysis.”

To begin thwarting the animal abusers on an individual level, the ASPCA maintains a mapped and updated list of puppy mills and pointers for animal advocates on their website, in this link.

Governor Brown has until October 15 to sign the bill into law, but — as to his intentions — remained tight-lipped when the Associated Press requested comment.

(Image: Puppy Mill. Credit: ASPCA)

There are moments, days and sometimes even months where we must face our darkest hour. Sometimes this is represented by things happening in the world around us that create deep sadness, despair, and anger within us. Yet other times this can come about through our own inner world when we are going through some challenging emotions around our own personal experience. Often both the inner and the outer can intertwine and we do not always know what is our own sadness, anger and rage, and what is that of others or that of the world around us.

The first step to take is to focus on our breath while breathing in and out of our heart center. We can do this for some time, and then begin to deepen the breath by bringing it into the stomach while gently and lovingly guiding the breath as deep as it may go into the pelvis region. Then pause, and begin the inhale moving up through the body. See where the inhale stops, and then begin the whole process again. We can do this for some time until we feel at ease.

By focusing on our breath, we can tune into our very being and essence. This can be a form of meditation as well as a very healthy step to include in with other daily rituals of self-love, self-care and meditation.

Now let us tune into our heart. What is our heart trying to say? This may take some time as we are only now beginning to truly understand how important it is to listen to our heart. What is our heart trying to tell us about any given situation or emotion? The more this becomes a daily practice, the more the true safety of our very existence begins to become clear, and the more we begin to realize and make manifest our true hearts desire. On the outside, the more we practice this, the more we can become a part of co-creating a heart-based world.

“As we learn to tap into our heart’s intelligence, it increases our vitality, our resilience, and especially our health and happiness.”

-Dr. Rollin McCraty

Often the first instinct is to run away from these emotions and situations.  Now, if there is an environment or person who is unable to value and treat us as the beautiful souls we are, walking away and giving them space to heal what is going on within them can be a true act of love towards that person and our self. When we recognize that the behavior is not ours and is unwanted and harmful, we can walk away and bless them. Wish them well, wish them healing, and know that they have probably had a painful past that they need to heal. Forgive them, and move forward.

Forgiving does not mean this person or situation needs to ever be a part of our life again, yet it does allow us to create healing space for them while freeing us of the need to carry their emotions any longer.

Sometimes it can seem more difficult to let go and let the Universe handle the harm and destruction that takes place in the world around us. When there is injustice and great harm on the Earth, it is then most especially time for us to up our level of kindness, love, compassion, respect, humility, integrity and demonstrate what true healing is by being the light in times of darkness.

There is a very magical and powerful transformation from dark to light that takes place when individuals refuse to give up and give away their power, and instead up their game of self-love, self-care and kindness and compassion towards others.

“We have within us, a power that is greater than anything we shall ever contact in the outer, a power that can overcome every obstacle in our life and set us safe, satisfied and at peace, healed and prosperous, in a new light, and in a new life.”

Ernest Holmes

When we trust in our heart, follow our guidance, and discern what is right for our beautiful soul, we help the world to do so as well. There are situations and lessons that may arise, yet the more we learn to go within, and navigate them through our focused breath and heart space, the more we learn to let go and let the Universe, the more we learn to stand in our lighted power and walk into any darkness knowing by our very presence we will transform it.

Always remember, each one of us has a very beautiful and unique song to sing to the world. The more we shine our light like the stars we truly are, and the louder we sing our beautiful songs with our very own fragrance, the more the world responds with love. Let’s celebrate each other, let’s honor each other, and let us always remember that there is only one you and there is only one me. What are we waiting for, and when will we begin to light the world with our love? The time for me, and the time for you is now.

Let’s take three deep breaths together, tune in and turn up the love. Let’s follow the inner guidance of our heart so we can all arrive. We are growing, we are expanding, we are raising our consciousness and creating a new reality and thus a new world unlike any other. Yesterday already was, and tomorrow has yet to be, will you join us in filling today with hope, goodness, truth, love and beauty? We always have a choice. What will you choose?

Cover Image Credit: no more lookism discovered on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine

Ulonda Faye has a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and studied Peace and Conflict Research during her Masters program in International Relations. She survived a Near Death Experience during an accident that led her into Mind-Body-Spirit studies. She is a certified Wellness Practitioner, Rejuv Miracles Practitioner, and holistic esthetician as well as an ordained spiritual minister. Her services are available in person or through Skype and are offered in English and German. For more information, please visit fayenaturales.com

Next month, there will be two eclipses: a full moon eclipse on August 7th in Leo and Aquarius, and a New Moon eclipse on August 21st in Leo. The August 21st eclipse will be a total solar eclipse visible in the US.

This article is an astrological interpretation of what these eclipses mean.

To begin with, anyone reading this can research the following planetary placements and figure out for themselves what people say they mean: you can research “Sun in Leo, Mars in Leo, Moon in Aquarius, Venus in Cancer, Sun conjunct Mars, Sun sextile Jupiter, Sun quincunx Neptune, ect.” and find a basic foundation of info for what these things mean. Interpreting the eclipse is putting all these pieces together: and truly feeling for oneself what is accurate and inaccurate.

As I mentioned in my last astrology article about August as a whole, I think this month is finally the turning point after a long, hard year and a half or so of depressed, difficult energy for everyone.

Studying astrology for the past several years, I’ve been slowly learning about what an eclipse really means. Astrologers theorize that an eclipse kind of solidifies an energy in the air for an extended period of time: that wherever an eclipse occurs, however it aspects the other planets and stars, that energy of the eclipse’s peak is solidified in the air on Earth for some unknown period of time afterward.

I have tested this theory (as with testing the accuracy of other components of astrology), and it seems to be like this: the more exact an eclipse is, and the more exact the planetary aspects made to the Sun and Moon during the eclipse (for example, Sun and Moon square Saturn during the March 2016 eclipse, or Sun and Moon trine Uranus during the 2017 eclipse), the longer the eclipse’s energy is solidified in the air on Earth.

And by solidified in the air, I literally mean the feeling at the peak of the eclipse continues, on and on, in the atmosphere, in people’s energy and feelings, for several months after the eclipse.

I wasn’t sure that the energy of the eclipse would stay stuck in the air that long after an eclipse, before 2016.

Then, after the Total Eclipse of March 8, 2016, and the eclipse in September 2016 that locked into ultra malefic aspects, I realized the effect of an eclipse absolutely can solidify in the air for an extended period of time.

This was the eclipse of March 2016. It squared Saturn: a Saturn square is one of the most harsh, depression causing, inspiration crushing aspects in all of astrology. It also locked into the once every 10 year Jupiter square Saturn, an absolutely brutal aspect.

Guess where the next solar eclipse occurred, in September 2016? Also square Saturn: locked into the extremely brutal, once every 18 year aspect Saturn square Neptune. This eclipse was so powerfully malefic, I truly believe it made the several months following it brutal for people.

Not only that, but if an eclipse occurs on a certain spot in your personal astrology chart, such as an eclipse on your Mars, it can bring out that aspect of you for a few months: for example, if an eclipse happened on your Mars, you might feel your fire and energy rise to the surface in you for a few months. If an eclipse happened on a generation’s Neptune placement, their spirituality might all rise up at once for a few months, and they may all feel a wave of energy at once.

I will get the ultimate test of what an eclipse does in a week and a half: at that time, an eclipse will occur exactly on my Sun and Moon in Aquarius and Leo: but the peak of the eclipse is so precisely aligned with my Sun, that it is only 0.08 degrees off: the eclipse is at 15.25 degrees Aquarius and my Sun is 15.33 degrees.

So what might happen to me? I might get a blast of my own core energy, the thinking, learning energy of Aquarius, and I might feel my own core identity become dominant in my personality for a few months.

As for everyone else, this is my interpretation of what the eclipse will do. The best way to look at it is in pieces, aspects, and then the full picture of the eclipse is all of these aspects combined.

The eclipse actually makes an astrological configuration called a “Yod,” or a “Golden Finger of God.” That’s where two planets are opposing, and one of the opposing planets makes quincunx aspects to two other planets, forming a shape like the green dotted lines in the chart above.

A quincunx is a neutral, slightly positive aspect that simply fuses together two energies and mixes them. In this case, the equation is Sun and Mars in Leo mixing with Neptune in Pisces and Pluto in Capricorn. It translates to a warm, energized, human Leo energy that is filled with heart, spirituality, concern for humanity, and deep watery Piscean things. The Leo- Pisces quincunx is a particularly nice one, because when you fuse warm Leo energy with selfless, heart filled Pisces energy, you essentially get a warm (Leo) heart (Pisces).

When you add Pluto in Capricorn to the mix, it serves to add an intensity to it (as does Mars), and a serious Capricornian feel. So this configuration suggests a warm, fiery, masculine and determined (Sun conjunct Mars in Leo), solidification (Eclipse) of the desire to feel heart, feel empathy for people, and have concern for the future (Pisces), which may shed previously held ideas and change people with a serious tone of energy (Pluto in Capricorn).

Now here’s another huge sign that this eclipse is a positive, and not negative omen: it makes positive aspects (sextiles and trines) to the “positive planet,” Jupiter. If that isn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.

So with Sun/Mars sextile Jupiter in Libra and the Moon trine Jupiter during the eclipse, a massive, positive, just generally good feeling energy will guide people through the experience and give people a foundation to pursue what the purpose of the eclipse seems to be, which is found in Leo-Pisces.

I think this eclipse is an omen of increased empathy, increased concern for other people, increased interest in the nature of life and spirituality, ect.

Leo has a unique obsession with understanding the nature of life and this existence, and so do Aquarius and Pisces. However, Leo is focused on the self when it comes to this pursuit of truth, whereas it’s opposite Aquarius is focused on humanity as a whole and not the self.

Pisces is very selfless like Aquarius, so the Leo/Aquarius/Pisces mix is a perfect one, that adds warmth and common sense to the humanitarian, nature-of-this-reality-pursuing energy of Aquarius and Pisces. Aquarius and Pisces lack the warmth and common sense that Leo has, so when you mix it all together, you get a really strong equation for growing empathy and growing a desire to learn about the nature of this life and reality.

Mercury conjunct Orcus for the entire 2 week span between the eclipses is a hugely unlikely event: Mercury only stays in one position like this at the beginning and end of it’s tri-annual retrogrades. The fact that Mercury would be conjunct Orcus suggests more importance in Pisces, learning the nature of this reality, spirituality, empathy, and an extremely strong willpower toward that goal. This is why:

Astrologers don’t know much about the dwarf planet Orcus, but knowing it’s astronomical qualities can help determine what it might mean.

Orcus’ Perihelion is in Pisces, which astrologer Nick Anthony Fiorenza believes associates its energy with Pisces. Sidereally, this is called Aquarius, which is how he refers to the constellation. According to his interpretation of Orcus:

“The location of Orcus’s Perihelion reveals the area in our lives that Orcus is most influential. Due to Orcus’ 20.574° orbital inclination, Orcus’ perihelion lies north of the ecliptic in the constellation Pegasus; entering the ecliptic at 15° 04′ sidereal Aquarius, the mid-point of this sidereal sign—marking the Angel Point of the Zodiak. This is one of the purest areas of resonance in the ecliptic; a fortuitous and beneficent area of the zodiak. Humanitarianism, altruism, and an evolved humanitarian-based society beyond conflicts based upon cultural, gender or religious differences are the hallmark of this zodiakal band. The word ‘social’ is derived from the Old French or the Latin ‘socialis’, meaning ‘allied’, or from ‘socius’ meaning ‘friend’— good words to describe the essence of sidereal Aquarius. Here all are recognized as allied friends, as one human family.”

Another thing that suggests the eclipses are about heart and empathy, is the fact that Venus is in Cancer, the sign of emotions and family, for the duration of the eclipses.

This is the second eclipse: August 21.

Now here is my interpretation of the second eclipse on August 21: a New Moon eclipse at the end of Leo. It’s a Solar Eclipse that will actually block the Sun in the United States, an astronomical phenomena that many have been looking forward to.

First of all, this eclipse occurs at a “hotspot” of Leo energy: a particularly strong flavor of Leo, because the end of Leo is where the bright blue star Regulus resides.

Regulus has been revered for millennia, a star that can actually be touched by the planets because it’s the closest bright star to the ecliptic plane, the belt of all planets. Sometimes, the Moon actually “occults” the star Regulus, fully aligning with it.

Regulus has a revolutionary, bold, fiery quality to it. It’s a warrior star, an energy that is very headstrong and potentially righteous.

Another energy that is extremely headstrong and (potentially) righteous is Uranus, especially in fiery Aries: and the most exact aspect this eclipse makes is a strong, positive trine to Uranus in Aries.

As the first eclipse was in Leo and Aquarius, the second one is trine Aquarius’ planet, Uranus: thinker, revolutionary, unique energy of Uranus and Aquarius are the dominant theme in these eclipses. Fiery thinker energy.

Now, it must also be noted that people in the world who are lost or confused will feel the headstrong, electric, inspired energy as well: so people will all feel energized at once, and those who are misguided will feel the energy for perhaps a misguided purpose, while others may feel the inspiration for a better purpose. It’s everyone on Earth feeling the energy at once in their unique ways.

This is an extremely clear sign of revolutionary, warrior energy: this eclipse will solidify an inspiration in people, a revolutionary conviction, a headstrong energy, an electric, thinking, learning energy in people that is lit on fire. Surely certain powers in the world will try to utilize the energy to create chaos and frustration as well.

Similar to 2014, when the eclipses in Libra and Aries occurred in conjunction to Uranus, a very inspired, electric, thinking fiery energy will be stuck in the air for an unknown period of time after the August 21st eclipse.

So to sum it up again, this is what I think the eclipses will do:

The first eclipse will, in a fiery and strong way, open people up to their feelings more, and promote empathy, emotion, thinking about the nature of reality and existence.

The second eclipse will instill fire and electricity in people: a bold willpower, rejuvenated inspiration and energy, a warrior-thinker energy that will inspire everyone from good people, to bad people, to clear minded people, to confused people.

What you learn when studying astrology for years is this: the way the planets move, the locations of eclipses, these things occur in extremely fateful, precise, unlikely and synchronistic aspects.

It’s not likely that the March 2016 total eclipse would exactly lock into the most important outerplanetary aspect occurring at that time, Jupiter square Saturn. It’s not likely that the eclipse of September 2016 exactly lock into the same aspect, and lock into the next most important (malefic) aspect of 2016, Saturn square Neptune.

So knowing that, it isn’t every eclipse that locks into the most important, once every 20 year aspects in the sky, so that gives us a feel for how important the eclipse is. If an eclipse doesn’t really do interesting things, doesn’t happen in some synchronistic or unusual way, that’s a sign that it isn’t as significant as other eclipses.

But even if an eclipse isn’t unusual, it still seems to solidify some kind of energy in the air for months at a time: I believe an eclipse truly sets the tone for the next period of time, until the next eclipse.

To learn more about astrology or book a reading like this, follow Tryptamine Astrology here.

(Images credit: brookmarobservatory, IB Times, Space Telescope) Featured image: Photograph by Colleen Pinski, National Geographic Your Shot

We see nothing wrong with sending our kids to learn under the tutelage of a soccer, karate, or band-camp coach, but forget that coaches are available for us when we’re “all grown up.” Following are ten pieces of million-dollar advice from some of the best life coaches around.

1. If You Don’t Make a Specific Goal, Don’t Complain When Your Dreams Remain Unrealized

So many people lament that they haven’t achieved their goals, but they never truly make them. That is, they may wish for some vague outcome, but they don’t get specific enough about what they want. The subconscious mind doesn’t understand inference or ambiguity – and since its running your life, you may want to get really specific — as in write it down!

2. Be Realistic

The subconscious mind also needs to believe that the affirmations you say or think are possible. If you are barely squeaking by in a minimum wage job, you’re out of shape, and your love life is a mess, your subconscious mind is likely to reject affirmations that state, “I am a millionaire,” or “I’m beautiful to everyone I meet.” It isn’t that these things are not possible for you – they are. However, to achieve success, you must start with smaller goals, and build up to the bigger ones. Unless of course, you can commit to radical life-changes that would help these big goals come to pass.

More often, though – you’ll notice that people make incremental steps toward fulfilling their dreams, because they need to build confidence in their own abilities to make them happen. The subconscious seeks proof of your affirmations before it integrates them into a new belief system. The subconscious mind also records your successes, and then rewards you with a belief in bigger dreams as you make progress toward your goals.

3. Be Curious Instead of Critical

Trying to understand why things are the way they are or curiously thinking of a solution is how hundreds of people became multi-millionaires. The post-it note might be one of the simplest inventions ever created – but we must admit, we all need a note that sticks to something, like all the time. The person who invented sticky notes was curious about human behavior and found a solution to a problem. If you are simply critical, you’ll never stumble on your own million-dollar idea.

This also applies to relationships, and your potential to learn more about yourself and your partner through a curious mind-set. By switching your outlook to one of introspection or wonder, you’ll be less likely to emotionally over-react to another person’s behavior. This empowers you to make informed choices when dealing with them, instead of just reacting.

Alexis Robin has more advice about changing your mind to change your life.

4. Get Emotional

The subconscious mind does not respond to rote. Although the “fake it until you make it” trick may help get you into an emotional state, you need to feel excited, motivated, and charged energetically to make affirmations work for you. Simply saying, “I’m peaceful and prosperous” a million times without any feeling won’t make it so.

5. Use the Comparative Voice

Another way to get your subconscious mind to buy into your desired new belief system is to use comparatives. Simply stating, “I am confident” may not help you to achieve that goal as fast as, “I am becoming more confident every day.” It is likely you can believe in that statement, too, which means it will manifest in your life more easily.

6. Stop Trying to Be Perfect at Everything

If you keep trying to be perfect at everything you’ll never get fantastic at the things that matter. We all come into this world with a different set of gifts. Not everything is going to light you up and make you want to jump out of bed in the morning – but that’s o.k.!

Instead of pushing a Sysiphian boulder up a hill when you do certain unsavory tasks, outsource them to people who do get excited about doing those things. There are folks who love to do taxes, organize closets, plan meals, clean your house, decorate, get you physically fit, and a whole list of additional tasks that keep you from focusing on being better at something that means something to your soul. Free up your energy for more important tasks by giving another person a chance to do what you’re not great at, but that they love.

7. Stop Ignoring What Your Body is Trying to Tell You

We have profound wisdom locked up within our own bodies – which respond to just about every stimulus imaginable in a completely honest way. If you detest doing a certain thing day-in-day out. Your body will tell you. It will tense up. It will cause you to breathe shallowly, and crouch in to a small shape to avoid the pain that your infinite intelligence anticipates.

Conversely, when we are acting in alignment with our higher selves, the body will also speak. It will tell you when you are getting close to realizing your dreams. It will also signal you when you are coming into contact with people who can help you reach those lofty goals, and it will even tell you if the decision you are about to make is right or wrong. Pay attention to those messages. They don’t lie. You can try to just sit and pay attention to the messages of the body in meditation, noticing sensations that arise, or try kinetic muscle testing.

8. Make Friends with Suffering

Akshay Nanavati, life coach, author, and creator of Fearvana says, “Whether it’s for financial, spiritual, physical, or mental success, my first tip to my clients is to build a positive relationship with suffering. I have had clients that have struggled with PTSD, anxiety, depression, stress, and fear and they’re usually surprised when the first thing I tell them is ‘Great!’ The point is not to get rid of any of these as they are not ‘bad’ emotions despite what we have been led to believe. Instead, embrace them, harness them, and leverage them to work for you.”

9. When You Are Stuck, Pushing Harder Won’t Help

Einstein’s quote about not solving problems with the same mind that created them comes to mind here. Lisa Barrington says that when we feel stuck in a problem we can’t figure out, it’s the perfect time to put it aside for a moment. Pick up a new hobby like knitting or water-coloring. Go for a walk outside. The mind works stuff out better when you aren’t forcing it into the same pathways that got you into the predicament in the first place.

10. Be Open to Changing Your Life Purpose

Life coach, Allan Santos tells a friend in a podcast that finding your life purpose can sometimes be surprising. If you’ve been something most of your life, and you’ve even been exceptionally good at it, trying something new when your soul calls you to it requires an open mind. You may be called to do something you never would have imagined yourself doing, but in the end, you’ll be perfect for it. He personally transitioned from being a classical musician to being a life coach.

This article (10 Million-Dollar Tips from Top Life Coaches on How to Make Life Easier) is a free and open source and can be re-published anywhere with proper attribution to the author and Themindunleashed.com.

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Author: Elina St-Onge of UpliftedLife.com

I was about 17 years old when I first heard of the December 2012 phenomenon. Although skeptical of doomsday theories and esoteric predictions, it was the trigger that led me down the internet rabbit hole, where I spent hours upon hours of research on subjects ranging from alien beings communicating with planet earth, to our debt-based monetary system calling for a mass revolution.

I have never been the same since. I knew these ideas seemed far-fetched to most people, yet within this maze of alternative information; I still was able to find gems of truth reminding me that there was more to life than what I’d been told. That I wasn’t “broken” just because I didn’t fit in this world or had talents that weren’t valued in school. That maybe it is society that is broken… and that my mission was to help transform it.

I am now 26 years old, and I still stand by what I said. I still feel deep within my bones that we are in the midst of a mass consciousness shift where the status quo is rapidly losing credibility. I still believe that a world where we destroy the earth for profit and hoard wealth while others starve is unnecessary. I still believe I am here to shake things up and make a change. Yet I also believe that the whole new age / conspiracy whirlwind of information out there may be slowing down the very same personal and collective evolution it promotes.

“I can stand here and talk to you about the field of infinite possibilities, but what do you DO with that?” – Dan Millman

New Age & Conspiracy Information: Distracting Us From Our True Power And Purpose?

Don’t get me wrong. In no way do I want to discredit the value in information that helps highlight society’s ills and open the mind to new possibilities. It has been a crucial part of my own path… but one that I had to outgrow in order for me to truly grow up.

Let me explain. Learning about the latest government scheme, astrology forecast and health craze has its place, but ultimately; it is not the thing that will MAKE you a better human being. It is not the thing that makes you a more caring and loving person, or bring you strength, spirit and resiliency in challenging times. Dissecting the subject of quantum physics, knowing the names and colors of all your chakras, waiting for an extraterrestrial disclosure or scrutinizing a politician’s every move won’t necessarily help you be a positive player in your community, or bring you the focus and practical wisdom needed to get your life together. Information lives in your head. It is the quality of your being that determines how well you participate in the dance of life.

“Ultimately, information is as valuable as its usefulness to our daily lives.” – UpliftedLife.com

A Friend And Mentor Who Taught Me To Embrace The Basics

Ideas, words and concepts are everywhere, flooding our newsfeeds on a second-to-second basis. The trick is to ask ourselves: can I put this information to good use? Will this benefit my life? Can this help me grow into the best version of myself if I apply it?

My dear friend and mentor Kosta Stoyanoff, the founder of Uplifted Life, continually reminded me of this ever since I met him back in 2015. He would also remind me that all the inspiring quotes I post on Facebook or truths I intellectually understand will never replace the value of even the tiniest and seemingly ordinary steps I can take within my own life. Things like washing the dishes with care, eating a meal slowly, being grateful for what I have, taking more deep breaths throughout the day, being attentive and caring to my wonderful mother, and taking more time to really be there for the “little things” in life.

He would tell me that these small humbling shifts in my attention, perspective, thoughts and attitude would not only add up to a HUGE shift in my health, abundance and happiness levels, but would become the solid foundation on which I could begin doing truly meaningful work from a space of love rather than ego.

“The beginnings of all great things are small.” – Cicero

Now you’d think Kosta’s loving advice made it easy for me to commit to making those fundamental shifts. But the truth is, I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t slow down my monkey mind just yet. Although I nodded in agreement, my ego squirmed at the idea and I instead spent about one more year searching for more. For something “bigger”, more glamorous and revolutionary than simply getting in touch with “ordinary life”…

I thought I needed to spend more time digging into childhood traumas and past lives to justify my wounds. I still searched for miracle supplements that would fix the health issues I was experiencing. I got involved in ambitious projects that I believed would change the world… without me having to change. I searched for everything and anything except what would bring me face to face with my own power and responsibility to transform from the inside out.

At the end of that year, I was more confused and disillusioned than ever before. My health had plummeted. My stress levels were still high. I was everything but at peace with myself—even after all the dizzying “self-work” I thought I was doing. That’s when I reached out to my good ol’ trusty friend Kosta again and said “I finally get it. I am ready to go back to the basics.“

“You don’t truly understand something until you apply it. Same goes for wisdom.” – UpliftedLife.com

When I Finally Began To Walk The Talk

Little-by-little, I began contemplating the ways in which I lived my life. I noticed just how much of my attention was fragmented in dozens of useless places—from ingenuine relationships to mindless smartphone usage. I began observing how often I would engage in defeatist self-talk despite all my “positive” Facebook posts. I saw how my mind would create an abundance of stories about what’s “missing” in my life, while ignoring the wonderful blessings all around me. And finally, I realized that the same amount of power, belief and attention I put in negative thought patterns, I could instead use to fuel more positive perspectives and beneficial day-to-day habits. It sure sounds simple, and it is! But it seems like for most of us, the challenge of a lifetime is to let go of our attachment to an old story of self that gets in the way of us remembering and applying the most basic of truths.

“It is easy to think about complex things, but often difficult to apply the simplest things. The former can be entertaining, but the latter is where we get to grow and transform our lives.” – UpliftedLife.com

It’s Not About You

We think that “self-development” is all about getting our own lives straight. And yes, that’s a wonderful benefit! but the real beauty in becoming the best version of ourselves is how it positively impacts the lives of those around us. Whether you are a stay-at-home Mom, serve coffee for a living or are CEO of a company; evolving into your highest, most loving and kindest self is no small feat. It means children who will grow up to be wiser and more loving citizens of earth. It means customers who will go back to their workspaces and families with a lighter heart. It means companies who will shift from self-serving motives to a greater purpose.

This is why going back to the basics is more than just a “cute thought”. When applied and embodied, they change your life. And when millions live by them, they change the world.

“Whether you accept it or not, each life is linked to all life. Your state of being, thoughts, words and actions create a ripple effect; much like a stone thrown into a pond. The quality of that ripple effect… is your legacy.” – Kosta Stoyanoff

Click here to start seeing content like this in your newsfeed 🙂

If you resonate with my story and believe the world needs more of such reminders, you will enjoy what Kosta, myself and the team behind Uplifted Life have been working on for the past few years. Uplifted Life is a hub of transformational resources, but not the fluffy pie-in-the-sky type. What you will discover here are simple, practical and effective tools and teachings revealing the fundamental principles to living life well and leaving a beautiful legacy behind.

Check out our first introductory video below and like us on facebook to follow our evolution and be supported in your own journey of becoming the best version of yourself! 🙂

TheEgo is the central figure of our personal history, based upon the past and looking into the future. It is a dissatisfied, possessive small ego that often makes our life a misery. It is for certain that this small ego–or, more precisely, what we believe is our Self, our Ego–coiled up tightly in the back of our mind, is responsible for a tremendous amount of senseless and unnecessary suffering and destruction in the history of mankind.

On our spiritual Journey arises the question, how we transcend the Ego?

Here are 24 Keys to transcend the Ego

Key 1.

The Ego is not bad, it is simply unconscious.

Key 2.

The Ego is responsible for the integrity of the personality, for our inner well-being.

Key 3.

The Ego only pursues its own dreams and ambitions, and so it very often embitters our life.

Key 3.

The components of the Ego are thoughts, emotions, memories (with which the person identifies as “my story”), fixed unconscious roles and collective identifications (nationality, religion, etc.). Most people completely identify with these components of the Ego, and for them no self “outside” of this exists.

Key 4.

The identification of the Ego with things (object, the person’s own body, way of thinking) creates the link of the individual to various things. The Ego experiences his/her existence through the possession of various objects.

Key 5.

The satisfaction provided by the sense of possession is, short, so the Ego usually carries on the pursuit for new objects. There is a powerful motivation behind this activity of the Ego, a psychological demand to obtain more, the unconscious sense of “not yet enough,” and this feeling surfaces in a want for more.

Key 6.

The content of the Ego will then be the thing with which the individual identified him/herself (my house, my car, my child, my intelligence, my opinion, etc.). The contents of the Ego (with which the individual identifies) are shaped by the environment and upbringing of the person, that is, the culture in which the person becomes an adult.

Key 7.

The thoughts such as “it’s mine,” “I want it,” “I need it,” “it is not enough,” belong to the structure of the Ego. The content of the Ego changes with time; it is replaced with new contents. No content is, however, able to lastingly satisfy the Ego as long as the structure of the Ego remains in its place.

Key 8.

The Ego keeps looking for something different, something that promises a greater satisfaction, making the sense of self of the individual more complete.

Key 9.

The Ego wants to possess more and more, wants to become more and more powerful. More knowledge, more faith, more material wealth. The Ego wants to devour more and wants to do it more anxiously. That is how the Ego becomes a tyrant and dominates our life to an increasing extent.

Key 10.

The Ego is shaped by the past, determining its structure and contents. The structure of the Ego is an unconscious factor, which forces the individual to reinforce his/her identity by joining an external object.

Key 11.

The Ego is but a mental production, a system of beliefs.

Key 12.

The Ego strives to protect, sustain and expand itself. The Ego functions in survival mode. The statement that the Ego functions in a survival mode means that it continually struggles to remain “psychologically alive,” so it regards other Egos as rivals or even enemies.

Key 13.

One of the most important strategies of the Ego to sustain and reinforce itself is the experience of “I am right.” This is the identification of an idea, position, evaluation. Nothing gives the Ego more power than experiencing that “I am right.”  It is the desire of the Ego to be right, and thus overcome the other, ensuring its own superiority.

Key 14.

One of the favorite self-reinforcing strategies of the Ego is complaining. Complaining implies the sense that “I am right.” When another Ego refuses to accept that “I am right,” it is an offense to the complaining Ego, which. in turn, further reinforces its self-awareness.

Key 15.

The Ego intends to elevate the forms (including its own form) to eternity, which is impossible. This intention of the Ego will be the source of all sufferings, because its world of forms and shapes shall collapse like a sandcastle after a while, until death snatches away the last of the forms: its body from it.

Key 16.

Our entire culture and civilization rest upon the selfish and possessive Ego and, as the Ego created the institutions of society, these institutions are also the expressions of the Ego.

Key 17.

In most people identifies with that socially conditioned Ego. At a number of people this identification is so powerful that they are unaware that their life is governed by a socially conditioned Mind.

Key 18.

The Ego must fall, as it is against the evolutionary development of the Consciousness.

Key 19.

If an individual is able to notice and observe the functions of the Ego, he or she will be able to transcend it.

Key 20.

We must reach beyond our Ego-dominated mind programs, because if we fail to do that, we will eventually destroy ourselves and a large part of the world.

Key 21.

One of the ways of transcending the Ego is not reacting wholeheartedly to the ever-changing caleidoscope of thoughts and emotions, but concentrating on the alert Consciousness in the background instead.

Key 22.

The Ego calls itself real and the only existing ”Self,” though it is nothing more than a conceptual product, the continually changing content of the space of Consciousness

Key 23.

In the space of Consciousness, in the state of pure consciousness the person recognizes and clearly experiences that Ego is a fraud.

Key 24.

The Truth is that we are the embodiment of Life, we are born into this world as a result of a miracle, and later we are lost amidst the multitude of teachings and dogmas.

~Read more: Frank M. Wanderer: The Revolution of Consciousness: Deconditioning the Programmed Mind 

Read more articles from Frank M. Wanderer

A soap bubble may serve as a good symbol of our individual, separate existence, as it surrounds and protects us, but at the same time completely isolates us from the external reality and the other ”soap bubble” people. We may try to get closer to reality or to another person, but we are never able to reach them, as there is the wall of the soap-bubble. We are only able to see reality and the other people through the wall of the soap-bubble, which is tinted to various colors by our opinions and desires.

Three Basic Motivational Factors

According to humanistic psychology, we have three basic motivational factors that determine the birth of personal identity. One is the need to belong to somebody, the other is the need of safety, and the third is the need of appreciation.

These demands or needs appear in our life in the order listed above, and they are hierarchically connected to each other. It means that the need of safety only becomes important when our need to belong to somebody has already been satisfied, at least to a minimum extent. Similarly, the need of appreciation will be important when we already belong to somebody (it can be an individual or a group), and our need of safety, stability has been met to a certain degree.

Satisfying these needs is of primary importance for us, as they provide the foundations for our individual existence and personal identity.

All this also suggests that our personal identity is basically social, as belonging to somebody, safety and appreciation all depend on other people.

 The foundations of our personal identity are constructed in the first years of our life, when we are embedded in the society of our family. Our parents are the ones who help us satisfy our needs, and in this way lay down the foundation stones of our separate, individual existence.

A soap bubble may serve as a good symbol of our individual, separate existence

In the Safety of our Soap-Bubble Castle

Our parents and teachers ”blow up” the soap-bubble for us, when they satisfy our initial needs, and we soon regard our soap-bubble as our own personal identity. In the course of our life, we develop the soap-bubble into a soap-bubble castle that we regard as safe. Since we have no idea that we are soap-bubble people, we are immensely proud of our own soap-bubble, the construction diary of which is added to our own personal history.

A soap-bubble town

Our soap-bubble castle does not stand alone in some desert; it stands in one of the streets of a nice soap-bubble town, close to the other soap-bubble castles, as the need to belong to someone, our needs of safety and of appreciation will only be satisfied in interaction with other soap-bubble people.

But, as a consequence of our soap-bubble existence, all these needs will never be completely satisfied, as the walls of our soap-bubbles do not allow real connection and contact with others.

The walls of the soap-bubble are created by our sense of separation which destines us to eternal solitude, even if there are hundreds of other soap-bubble people around us in our soap-bubble town. In order to alleviate the unpleasantness of loneliness, we decorate our soap-bubble existence with nice images made of the individuality of our life, and we fill books with nice tales of our life. The images, the tales and the alleged safety of the soap-bubble town lull us into a false sense of security, into a beautiful dream.

False Sense of Safety

There are numerous signs in our life that all indicate how false our sense of safety is. One sich sign is the confusion in our relationships with other people. This confusion is brought about the fact that as soap-bubble people we will never be able to completely understand the others, and will never be able to come into real contact with them.

We are only able to contact other people through the walls of our soap-bubble, but the wall is tinted into different, distorting colours by our desires and opinions. The distorting coat of colours will be thicker and thicker in the course of our life, making the originally transparent walls more and more difficult to see through. We therefore never see reality itself, but only something that we believe is reality.

Every single individual created their own individual reality in this way, and the reality thus created is different from all the other individual realities.

As there are no two identicial individual realities, the realities, when get into contact, often collide with each other. Naturally, there are realities which are similar to each other, and the force of collision is smaller when such realities meet, and it is likely that they are able to come into a compromise and create a district in the soap-bubble town where they enjoy a higher sense of safety.

Another sign that points at the weaknesses of our sense of safety is the fear of death, which is present in every human being.

The big unknown arrives, and bursts our soap-bubble castle in an instant

Enveloped in the false sense of security of our soap-bubble castle, we are all afraid of death, which will put an end to our soap-bubble existence. The big unknown arrives, and bursts our soap-bubble castle in an instant.

We may pretend that death does not exist, that after death we will be in a bigger soap-bubble, or the master who blows the soap-bubbles will protect us from perishing.

These tales only alleviate our fear of death somewhat, but will not fully eliminate it.

The End of the Soap-Bubble Existence

What is able to put an end to the soap-bubble existence?

The first step is the recognition that our existence is built upon false foundations, that there is something wrong with it.

Without realizing that, we so strongly identify with our soap-bubble existence that we consider that as our basic and natural state.

But if we start to wake up from the dream of our soap-bubble existence, we realize very soon that there is something wrong with us in the world around us. Then the glue binding us to the world of forms and shapes begins to melt away, a space, smaller or larger, is created in us and-detached from the forms and shapes-we are able to contemplate the forces determining our personal life as eyewitnesses.

Now we realize that this soap-bubble life, this separate world does not exist at all, it has only been created by our identification with thoughts, forms and shapes.

The obligation and urge to build up a personal identity generates this separation, this soap-bubble around us almost automatically. Society then feeds and sustains the separation.

What are we without our personal identity?

We are the free space of the Consciousness

When we wake up from the sleep of personal identity we recognize that we are the free space of the Consciousness. We are not identical with the shapes and forms appearing in this space, but we are the space itself, the space that enables the forms and shapes to appear and that keeps the forms and shapes alive.

~From the book: Frank M. Wanderer: The Biggest Obstacle to Enlightenment: How to Escape from the Prison of Mind Games?

Read more articles from Frank M. Wanderer

“Meditation is a subtle, barely perceptible stream, in which you will experience a radical shift of the center of gravity. The manifestation, limited in time and space, thick and heavy, that you have formerly regarded as yourself, changes into a weightless but ubiquitous point without limits and dimensions. The massive creature, bound to the earth that used to be you, is now free from its bonds and begins to soar.” Frank M. Wanderer

An Effective Remedy for the Overburdened Mind

Our Mind is one of the most sophisticated, most complicated instruments in the world. In this modern, rushing world, however, the Mind is bombarded with information to the extent that it virtually overflows. On those occasions the amounts of unprocessed information whirl in the Mind so fast that we are sometimes afraid of going mad. All the unprocessed information demands our attention, naturally, every single idea may appear to be very important for us. Our body reacts to the rushing stream of our thoughts, and sometime we fall ill because of the stress caused by our overburdened Mind. Is there anything that we may do to alleviate the burden of our Mind, is there a medicine to treat the problem?

Naturally, the remedy exists, and its name is meditation. A good night’s sleep in itself has long been insufficient for our Mind to rest. At night our body sleeps, but the our Mind continues to rush. The enormous amounts of information absorbed during the day are processed by our Mind at night. It is done with the help of dreaming. Thus, by the time our Mind has finished processing the information, our body is awake again, and a new day, full of stimuli begins. Our Mind therefore does not have its due share of rest, and it is soon overburdened. All this leads to a stressful life, and our body may eventually become ill.

We have to consciously find the time for our Mind to have some relaxation and to have an opportunity to shake out all that useless information. We must therefore find the place for meditation in our daily timetable. During meditation, the Mind rearranges itself, it is refreshed and revitalized and rejuvenated.

Active Meditation vs. True Meditation

In your present, isolated state of Consciousness, based upon your identification with your illusionary self, spatial consciousness is not present in your life, so you are unable to experience Consciousness free of forms.

But you have read a lot about this subject, so you wish to bring things beyond forms and shapes under the control of your Ego, in order to stabilize the Ego and make it permanent. You have read or heard somewhere that meditation is the best method to that end, so you have began to meditate diligently.

The Active Meditation

But you are approaching meditation the way you do with other objects of the outside world. You believe that meditation is also an activity of the mind, a concentration on an objects (e. g. a burning candle), or your own respiration or a mantra.

Meditation is therefore something that you perform yourself. Through active meditation you wish to reach a higher state of the Mind, which is expected to give you happiness, satisfaction and enlightenment.

You start to practice meditation as an individual self, as an Ego. You make efforts to tranquilize your mind. This activity may be successful up to a certain level, when you suppress your thoughts and emotions with your willpower, reaching transitory peace in you. That state will be lost immediately, when you stop concentrating, meditating, and no longer sustain the effort, as your mind returns to its usual activities, the old pre-conditioned patterns.

Meditation therefore has not brought you the lasting peace you had been longing for and you had read so much about, the peace independent of your mind that reinforces your existence in the world.

Your personal identity is rooted in your actions and the results of those actions. Your personal history is the chronicle of your actions and achievements.

The idea of being active is therefore a product of your conditioned mind, your Ego. Ambitions to acquire, to achieve something all work as motivations for action in the Ego-dominated mind. The desire to control, to manage are also powerful urges to act.

As you have seen, these very same forces are the ones that spur you to meditate. It is, nevertheless, not a bad phenomenon, as active meditation is the first step towards real meditation. Active meditation consolidates the outermost dimension of Alertness, that, is attention, in you.

The True Meditation

Your attempts at meditation are futile because real meditation is, by nature, effortless. It does not create an artificial quiet, but allows the deeper dimensions of Alertness to surface. This is the deep internal Silence that constitutes the real core of man.

The spatial awareness thus acquired remains with you after meditation, for longer and longer periods of time. You will eventually no longer need meditation, as the deeper dimensions of Alertness are there with you, so every moment in your life will be meditative.

Real meditation is always without object and is never the result of an activity, but Presence in the space of Consciousness. This natural, effortless Presence is meditation itself.

The deeper dimensions of Alertness, the awakened Consciousness, the world of Silence, are beyond the mind. This Silence is not forced upon us by some concentration technique, but the indescribable but experienceable of living emptiness. Conscious existence in the space of Consciousness.

A Simple and Powerful Meditation Technique

Let us take a closer look at that, how are the deeper dimensions of Alertness increase their presence in you, and how are you able to get from the state of consciousness meaning ”I am this and that” to the state ”I am,” how can you replace active meditation with real meditation?

Let us start by observing that in every waking moment you experience that you exist, you are. This experience is, however, so common and familiar that you do not dwell on it too long. Instead, you are preoccupied by “who are you” and “what are you.”

That is how your entire life story is born: ”What was I, what will I be, what I want to become”. The Ego-dominated mind keeps revolving around these questions, creating the psychological categories of time, the past and the future.

The fact that you exist means that you are alert. The fact that you are conscious and alert is the result of the pure Consciousness in you! In the following we wish to experience that pure Consciousness, we want to enable that Consciousness to awaken to its own existence in and through us.

Once you are able to keep your attention on the object of your meditation, now try to divert your attention from it to the space in which the object of your attention appears.

Then a new dimension of Alertness opens up in you. The space thus opening and the Presence appearing in it are now there for you to observe, your attention is able to grab them. You experience that you are Consciousness, sensing the work of the mind.

Now shift our attention to that contemplating Consciusness, to the “I exist,” to the pure Presence. Try to find the core of the Consciousness, the idea of ”I am,” and who the person who has done the meditations before really is.

Submerged into the Quiet of ”I am”

Submerge completely in the feeling of ”I am,” allow it to remain in itself, prevent it from being connected to thoughts and ideas, to the works of mind. Try to find the silence, the quiet of ”I am,” and stay within that.

In the meanwhile, try to locate Consciousness itself. Do not only watch what you are looking at, but also from where and with what intensity you are looking at it? In what quality are you watching? Who are you in the process of observation?

Be in the state from which recognition emerges, be at the source of recognition, where you are able to see recognition itself. Be in Sight itself.

Do not worry about the operations of your mind, just stay in the sensation of ”I am.” Do not qualify, do not interpret! Stay in the sensation of ”I am.”

Whenever your attention wanders away, trying to get into contact with thoughts, trying to be manifested in some story, bring it back to the state of ”I am,” and keep it there.

~From the book:Frank M. Wanderer: The Flames of Alertness: Discover the Power of Consciousness! (This books presents the path from active meditation to true meditation)

Read more articles from Frank M. Wanderer

The time between Christmas and the New Year, is a precious space where one can go within and ask valuable questions. It’s a potent portal of self evaluation and reflection. This magical week gives us the insight of the previous 365 days of the year. We can ask ourselves where we have gotten off course from our goals, dreams and visions, and we can also ask ourselves if those are indeed our true desires.

Looking forward, is there a deep yearning for something more? Yes, one can make New Years Resolutions, but by getting to know our true self and desires more, we are able to move forward with more inner awareness. What is even more sustainable is to go within and ask some valuable questions that have the potential to guide our lives into more purpose. Everything begins with a strong self, and a deep awareness of our inner purpose.

Let’s reflect on some questions. There is enormous potential in answering questions for oneself. It is not to be undervalued. We are all intelligent and creative human beings with vast potential. Sometimes all we need are good questions, time to answer them, and space to help the answers be planted into our lives as seeds that will grow come spring and bloom in the summer. Maybe it is time for all of us to go within?

What is strength? What is it to you? What is it to the society you live in? Is that the kind of strength you want for yourself? What kind of strength is calling you? It’s important to answer the question of what strength is for us by looking within in order to fulfill our truth versus that of our culture. What is strength to you?

Are there things you must do? How would it feel to no longer feel you must, but to decide that you want to do it? That is, to fully be aware and empowered in the words we speak. For example, instead of, I must go to work, we could say, I choose to go to work. This brings us into a state of empowerment where we are not a victim of circumstances, but rather a co-creator of our own lives. It also leads us into a state of gratitude for what is, which helps us create more goodness in our lives.

Another great example is the statement, I have to lose weight. How about accepting that part of our physical self where we desire to have less body weight? How does it feel? We can acknowledge it, accept and love it. We can recognize that we don’t truly have to do anything; including loosing weight. One path to take, could be to give it time, and consciously choose to eat healthier meals in moderation, and create a routine that provides us with more balance and movement in our life. If you dislike working out, perhaps join a dance or yoga class if you prefer to move that way. We must find a way to move that brings us joy for it to last.

By loving and accepting ourselves, and giving ourselves time and space to create, we receive the results we need. By force, it is often not only more challenging, but often leads to dis-empowering short-term effects that are not sustainable. By tapping into our true self, we can find answers to all our questions in life. It starts with us.

Let’s pause for a moment, and take a deep breath. Your life is so incredibly valuable. It’s more valuable than anything we could imagine to buy. Are you happy? Let’s take another deep breath, and look at ourselves with courage. Now is the time to take back our lives because we are so very precious and needed. It’s time for us all to relearn how to live from the inside out. Let’s arrive within ourselves. Let’s let go of everything outside of us in this moment. Let’s be here now.

Who am I? Who am I, really? Every step we take is motivated by this question.

We are all a beautiful flower. What kind of flower are you? What do you need to grow and bloom? What kind of environment do you need? What kind of garden do you belong in?

What brings me joy, and what are my values?

What have I grown tired of this year?

What strengthens me, and what feels good?

If 2017 was my last year to live, what would be the one thing I would feel the strongest desire to do?

Also, if 2017 was my first year of life, what would I long to begin? Imagine the possibility to begin anew. What would that be for you? If you had no fear of failure, what would you do?

Please, write down these questions, and reflect on them. Go within, and write down the answers that come to you. When you have found answers that make YOUR heart beat, then you know you have arrived at a point where you can begin to create your true vision.

At the same time, we recognize the following:

I allow myself to not have to change this year. I accept myself. I truly arrive within myself, and allow myself to be. With a strong self in the forefront, I simply learn more about myself and arrive at my true self. I give myself the space and time to go within, and in that place I feel, see, and hear my true desires.

May the answers come to us all, and may we all follow our hearts’ desire. We all have a unique calling. There is only one of us in the whole world. We are incomparable, and it is time that we all give the world the gift of our true authentic selves. If you have already done so, perhaps this will open you up to what is next in your life.

Here is one more question to ask: How can I serve? This leads our strong self into a strong us and into a strong world. Let’s affirm, I am a unique and special human being with a divine purpose. The time is now for a strong self, and a strong self knowing. We are the change that the world is waiting for, for us.

Let’s remember, we must not change anything in the coming year. Who we are is enough, and we can continue to be as we now are. What if we simply choose to be happy, and only do what makes us happy? What if I choose to be me, not the expectations of me from others, but the me that came to me when I asked myself, who am I?

You are waiting for you. The answers inside are waiting to come forth. Why wait any longer? By building our lives from the inside out, while loving and appreciating ourselves, we are unlimited in what we can do and achieve. It’s time to shine. What are you waiting for?

This is based on the first of a series of 3 Mastery of Life videos from Veit Lindau, who is a German life coach, motivational speaker, author, absolute lover of life, and a wonderful human being. He founded Human Trust together with his wife, Andrea Lindau, and together they guide, teach and inspire coaches in what is now Europe’s largest life coaching platform. His work is mainly available in German; however, some of his books are available in English. There is no dogma, but rather practical and useful information that he and his wife live out in their everyday lives. I personally love how they set an example of how we can grow and evolve through our relationships. You can follow Veit and The Human Trust Community on Facebook.

It is my desire to bring both awareness of his work and message to English speakers as well as inspiration through his words to anyone reading this piece. Almost everything written here, I have translated. These are my words that I have interpreted through his message in German. I have chosen not to use quotations as I believe once the message is in another language, that it is best approved by the author before quoting in a language he or she did not write or speak in. I hope this inspires you as it has inspired me.

Let’s move forward with a strong self, and share our individual gifts with the world. We are all divine masters.

Ulonda Faye has a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and studied Peace and Conflict Research during her Masters program in International Relations. She survived a Near Death Experience during an accident that led her into Mind-Body-Spirit studies. She is a certified Wellness Practitioner, Rejuv Miracles Practitioner, and holistic esthetician as well as an ordained spiritual minister. Her services are available in person or through Skype and are offered in English and German. For more information, please visit her FB page or fayenaturales.com

Image featured; Image 1, 2, 3

Solstice blessings to ALL. We find ourselves moving more and more into a new way of being, and this Solstice is offering up to us a time to renew ourselves as we fill ourselves up with more strength and courage to embrace all that is longing to come into our lives. It is also a time to honor and revitalize the Sacred Masculine within all of us, and to balance and nurture it with our Divine Feminine presence. We all have this need to balance the feminine and masculine within, and now is a great time to utilize this ability.

No matter what was, and what is before us, we stay strong and centered upon our trust in the greater plan that always has our highest good at heart. Trust and faith in ourselves, others, and the greater plan, are important.

Wednesday, December 21st, marks the Solstice celebration for all people (winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere). How can we bless ourselves, our lives, and that of others even more this season? How can we heal more, and help others heal and forgive during this time?

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.” -Hebrews 11:1

We can begin by acknowledging the challenges that have come forth in our lives. On this day, we can honor the anchoring in of more light as we too can honor the places where darkness has come forth. This has been a challenging time for many, and when we begin to accept and embrace what has been, we can then fully embrace the wealth of healing and love that is calling us.

The dark moments have been here to teach us, to bring things out from under the shadows, to help us grow and heal by revealing that which has been hidden from us. This is often referred to as our shadow side, and it comes forth to help us transform. It can bring forth such deep hurt and pain, but through that it also gives us an opportunity to heal something and move forth into more light and love.

Moments, that feel so very beyond our control, are ultimately here to bring us together and renew our faith.

The moments of light, and there are so many moments of light, are here to illuminate that which shines so bright within and without. We feel it, and others feel it too. It is us in our most beautiful state and nature, and it is the world as we most love to see and cherish it. No matter what happens in our personal lives or in the world, let’s be reminded of the strength of the light.

We can set an intention today, and everyday for what we desire to bring into our lives. When we write down this intention, and hold it dear to our hearts, it begins to bloom. First, we feel it inside our hearts, then we see it start to take shape and form in our outer world. What kind of intention are you ready to set for your next step in life as you move forward into greater personal power? Are you ready to listen to your heart, and follow your dreams?

“When your intention is clear, so is the way.” -Alan Cohen

We can commit to allowing the challenges of our lives to bring forth all that we need to heal. We can allow it, and let it come forth with compassion. We can see it as our teacher, and we can bless it for it is blessing us with a chance to move through yet another hidden pain that wants to be healed in order to enlighten us more.

Are you ready? I am ready. So many of us are ready. Let’s anchor in more light and healing this season. Let’s share our light with the world, and when it gets painful, let’s remember our true nature and send deep love and healing to our hearts and the world. This may be the turning point, that brings balance back into our lives. What are you ready to transition into?

“Promise me you’ll always remember:

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

-Christopher Robin to Winnie-the-Pooh (A. A. Milne)

We may be faced with challenges, but with love, compassion and kindness we can survive in strength. It is time to bless and release all fear, doubt, judgment, hurt, worry, and pain. Only allow love and inspiration to bless your body, mind and spirit.

Let’s affirm:

• Winter Solstice Celebration, Mary Kate Hagan, The Furrow, Vol. 61, No. 3 (March 2010), pp. 185-188
• The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self, by Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford, and Marianne Williamson
• The Power Is Within You, by Louise L. Hay

Namaste.

Have you ever considered that only the moment of Now exists truly?

There is no past, only memories, and there is no future either, only imaginations – the past and future are psychological concepts. Still, we tend to ponder over the remains of the past, or worry about times to come. We are wandering in the past and future, yet we are only unconsciously present at where we really are: here and now!

Oh, how marvelous of a feeling it is to go hiking on your day off after an exhausting week of work. You play volleyball, football, stir and taste the soup, your face is caressed gently by the warm sunshine, the lawn is soft and smooth, the birds are chirping, everything is wonderful. You are carefree, you enjoy the moments of existence.

You don’t ruminate on the past, don’t picture the future, but you are there, you live, you are shining with joy. But what pain it is, when the Sun sets, you arrive home and the beautiful experience ends. Your head is buzzing and filled again with innumerable duties and problems – the magic is gone.

When you completely surrender yourself to the present moment, you become perfectly untroubled. But as soon as your attention no longer embraces the present, you are going to be drawn again into the whirlpool of the mind’s unsettled thoughts.

Many people could think, that the present moment is quite short, an interval lasting only for a bit, and the whole timeline is made up of lots of, perhaps infinitely many of these quickly passing moments.

Actually, that is wrong.

The truth is: there is nothing else than the current moment, the eternity of Now.

When you are asked the question “Who are you?”, you put your thoughts together and answer something like this:

“You know, I’m a 28 years old woman, an office employee, mother of two. I’ve learned here and there, then I started working, and now I’m doing this and that. I spend my free time with this and that. I like cooking, sipping tasty drinks and watching interesting movies.” The mind is given candy, reassurance that it should explain itself as complete and as detailed as possible. It can speak about itself, about “my” story, in which “I” play the leading role, and at the same time “I” am also the center of my world.

The mind starts an endless jabber – it tells what it thinks to itself and about itself. This is me: my story. It recalls memories, and from those that are considered as the most important ones, it assembles, tacks together an identity. It edits from the more important memories, a film of the “past” – this is me, this is my past. In reality, all that was recalled is only a memory – related to the mind’s wonderful ability to remember. When we are remembering, we do it now, in the present moment. We are remembering our memories now, not in the past. When the event, named the past happened, it happened Now, at that time.  It has never occurred that it wasn’t Now.

“Sometime, when I’ve reached this goal, I will be happy. If I have enough money, I will be happy. When I will arrive, when I’ll be made..” – daydreams the mind. Of course, the moment will never come, when the mind would say: “Everything is all right. I am fine, I can rest. Everything is perfect, whole and complete. I am happy.”

The minds acts like that smart elderly, for whom Death arrived with his scythe, but the elderly wanted to make a deal with him:

-Death, I won’t go with you now. Tomorrow I will surely go with you. And to seal my promise, look, I write it here onto the door frame, that “Tomorrow I will go with Death.”

Tomorrow never came, because the next day is also “today” – and “tomorrow” is always a day later, till eternity.

The future is a phantom, a collection of memories. When I’m planning the future, or worry about it, I’m doing it Now, not in an unforeseeable moment.

I’m remembering the past Now, and I’m creating mind images about the times ahead (about the future). The past is only made of dead memories, and the future is only a personal imagination – everything happens Now. Every single thing, when they happen, they happen Now. Nothing ever has happened at a time, that was not Now, and nothing will ever happen, that would happen at a time other than Now. Life happens in the Now, all is Now.

The sole reality is always in the Now. The Now is eternal.

And when you understand the eternity of Now in depth, you also understand that you should seek happiness not in the future, but Now. Happiness is Now.

Because everything is happening Now, and in this moment, with every single thought of mine and with my body, I’m planting the seeds of the events of the “future”; therefore, the wisest thing to do is to fully embrace the present moment. The events are taking place in this moment, Now, everything is constantly transforming, and if I am not conscious enough, I will miss the concealed experiences and opportunities of the current moment.

If I direct my attention to the immediate moment, focus on the presence, I will take the entirety in, as a relaxed, cheerful observer, I will perceive the changes that took place in it, and I will smoothly blend in, become a part of the alterations. I will become a part of life, a conscious participant of the Now.

In the Eastern spiritual teachings, the practicing of the presence is given emphasized attention. The Zen – which is one of the purest branches of Buddhism – uses the symbol of a raised finger.

According to a Zen koan (tale):

The pupil was walking along with the master on the field. He grew used to it, that during the strolls, the master was not willing to utter a single word, but instead focused on his graceful steps and got lost in the observation of nature’s beauty. But on this day, the discipline lost his patience: there and then, he immediately wanted to know the secret of enlightenment.

“Master” the discipline imploringly broke the silence “please tell me, how can I be enlightened?”

The master didn’t answer, but looked at him with shining eyes, he gestured with his finger in front of his lips: “ssht!” And then he silently raised his pointing finger, and urged his discipline:

“Listen! Just listen in silence!”

The discipline did not understand the message. He’s been longing for the secret of enlightenment since years, and his master – instead of educating him with teachings – advises him to be silent and pay attention. “This is unbearable!” he fulminated against his master in his head.

“But master!”

The master answered quietly:

“Do you hear the murmur of the distant stream and the buzzing of the fly? What a remarkable symphony!”

Another stunning story also calls attention to the beauties of the current moment.

An ordinary man took a walk in the forest on a beautiful, hot summer day. He picked strawberries, collected mushrooms and gazed spellbound at the magic of the forest’s colors and shades. But suddenly he heard a huge clomping coming from behind his back. And what did he see? A gigantic brown bear stood facing him, ruthless and hungry. Quickly, our man gets on the move, starts running. He runs and runs, until he reaches the edge of the cliff. What could he do? What could he do? There’s a bloodthirsty bear behind him, and in front of him is a rift. The situation is hopeless. But all of a sudden, he saw a crispy ripe strawberry lying in the grass. He picked it with his fingers, tasted it and said:

“Oh, how flavorful this strawberry is!”

When you are completely absorbed in the present moment, you get into a thoughtless state. But as soon as you forget about yourself and about the current moment, you fall back again into the realm of problems, worries – into the mental hell, created by yourself, for yourself.

From the book: Ervin K. Kery “The Art of Mindfulness: Jump into Consciousness”