Continue reading »]]> Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing: The Recommendation

Welcome to Joyous Expansion’s Recommendations. This is not a review because I am not going to write blogs for books I do not like. Therefore, I am only going to be writing recommendations. The recommendation this week is Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing.

Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing is a book about an enlightened dude named Jed McKenna who runs a house of enlightenment in Iowa. McKenna is surrounded by a cast of characters that are meant to represent the different aspects of spirituality. He systematically goes through each aspect of spirituality and destroys them. McKenna is not your average enlightened dude. On the surface, he comes off as a huge jerk. Actually if you read deeply you will probably still think of him as a big jerk. He is someone who is enlightened and that is all he cares about. He has little patience for mysticism or false paths to enlightenment. In his reality there is only one way to be enlightened and one way to get there.

There are two big reasons I recommend this book. First is because I find it entertaining and it made me think. I enjoyed the way the book is written. I like the tale of McKenna and the messages he had. I enjoyed the things he had to say and the brash way he said it. When I first read this book I got caught up in that aspect of McKenna. I caught myself arguing with the character in the book trying to prove myself smarter than the character. The book stood out to me.

If you’re not amazed by how naïve you were yesterday,

you’re standing still.

If you’re not terrified of the next step,

your eyes are closed.

If you’re standing still and your eyes are closed,

then you’re only dreaming that you’re awake.

A caged bird in a boundless sky.

-Jed McKenna

You can find the above quote on the right in my random quotes section. What stood out to me was, “If you’re not amazed by how naïve you were yesterday, you’re standing still.” I coupled that with his koan, “further,” I was able to take myself further in my development.

If you go to Amazon, you can read some glowing reviews and some very scathing reviews. Both are correct. . I do disagree with one point that the negative reviews kept mentioning. There is a saying, “Before enlightenment you chop wood and carry water, after enlightenment you chop wood and carry water.” I missed the part of the saying that says, “You don’t play video games, go sky diving, and all of the other supposedly unenlightened activities McKenna does.” What a lot of people who hate this book are missing is that the book is meant to make you think.

This is the second big reason I recommend this book. It will make you think. The second time I read the book I gained an understanding that the star of the book is me. The parts of the book that make me upset are the parts that I need to examine. The book is good for getting you unstuck as it will show you where you are stuck. It will challenge your ideas and if you take the book to heart you will think for yourself. A person can read this book and turn it into a bible, however that isn’t the point. Learn from it and move on. Go back if you feel you need another spiritual enema. McKenna is just a finger pointing at the moon. If you ask someone for directions and he gives them to you in a tone you do not like, do you yell at him for being a jerk?

No one knows if McKenna exists or not. Some people think he is Adyashanti. If I had to choose from all the people I have read I would choose Richard Bandler. If Richard Bandler was enlightened, I believe this is how he would act. This is potentially a very powerful book and it wouldn’t surprise me if the writer had a great knowledge of NLP.

I recommend this book to anyone who feels a little stuck in their spiritual path or is willing to challenge it. If you want to stay on your path without question, then this book is not for you. You will read it and yell at it and put it down. However, if you are looking for a book to challenge who you are, then this is the book for you.

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Continue reading »]]> Spiritual Life Coach Tip: Wave of Possibility

As a spiritual life coach, I go into the new year, I am dedicated to changes in my life to bring great change. I have gained a great awareness of who I am and where I want to be in 2011. I’m going to take me there.

I am so excited for the year 2011, because in 2011 I am going to take myself to a next level. In 2011, I am dedicated to creating not only the business that I want; I am also dedicated to being a being of pure joyous expansion. The theme for 2010 was letting go and a theme of 2011 is going to be releasing resistance and being the me that I know I can be.

One of the things that I love about the path that I am on is the fact that there is a ripple effect. It is like the world around me is a pond and the more I am the joyous person that I am the more I am throwing pebbles into the pond that is causing ripples. As the ripples flow through my life I have noticed that people around me tend to live better lives than they were before. I’ve been told by many of my friends that I have been an inspiration in bringing more positivity into their lives. That is the beauty of the world we live in. We are all connected and the more positivity you live in your life the more your ripples will affect the people around you.

The more that you live a joyous life the more you will notice how much better the world will be around you. Your friends will tell you that they have learned so much from your example and you will see how good it feels to know that you are making a positive change in people’s lives. When you live your spirituality, universal truths and values in your daily life using intentions written using my book as a template you too can be a great positive influence in peoples’ lives.

In 2011 I declare I am no longer going to be just a ripple. No longer am I going to accept making tiny waves and playing small. I am throwing boulders into the pond and creating tidal waves that will surround the world with my joy and my love. My mission is to create a legacy that will be felt by billions of people. The legacy starts in 2011.

Enjoy my 52 for 52 Youtube program where I will record a positive message every week of the year. Be on the lookout for the new book I am writing. Also by joining my newsletter youwill get a free book and information on new products I am making. You too can get caught up in this tidal wave of possibility.

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Continue reading »]]> The Law of Attraction has many amazing aspects that work well with living in your daily life. In my path as a spiritual life coach, I use many of them every day. I work to deepen them and learn the lessons that come from them. The Law of Attraction is not only a good law to manifest what you want, it is also a good way to learn lessons on how to live your life. This is one of the blogs that discusses how I put the Law of Attraction into action in my daily life.

Spiritual Life Coach Tip on Law of Attraction: Listening to the Whispers

As mentioned in the previous blog on the Law of Attraction, the Law of Attraction is the most effective when you are living your life through inspiration. Living your life through inspiration means that you have let go of the resistance to what you desire, thus bringing your desire into your reality. What does it mean to live your life through inspiration?

Inspiration is when you are listening to that little voice in the back of your mind. It is the whisper of consciousness that you interpret. Generally you interpret the stream of consciousness through a voice, which is why I call it a whisper. This whisper is your higher self, source, the Universe, God, and even your subconscious communicating with you. The whisper is of a greater consciousness than you are experiencing on a daily basis. The whisper understands more about the world around you than you do consciously. When you listen to the whisper and do the actions of the whisper then you are acting on inspiration.

Train yourself to listen to the whispers.

To be able to listen to the whispers, you have to be in a state where you are of little resistance. This can be either without thought or full of positive thoughts. That is why when you meditate sometimes you get thoughts you would never have before. Another time is when you are about to sleep. You have probably noticed that sometimes when you are half asleep you get an amazing idea or solution to a problem you have been facing. Sometimes the message comes when you are asleep and then when you wake up, you notice that you have had this amazing idea.

The message does not have to come when you are asleep. The more you are feeling joyful and thinking positive thoughts the more times you will experience listening to the whispers. Soon the whispers will be a stream of consciousness that you listen to all of the time.

Joyful Transition

Sometimes when you are done with your current position in life you can hear the whispers starting. You may be done with your current vocation or relationship. Sometimes there is a lesson for you to learn. For me it was letting go. This is when listening to the whispers allows for a joyful transition. The whispers will come when you are stagnate and when it is time to expand beyond who you currently believe you to be. When the whispers first occur they will be subtle. The more you ignore the whispers the louder they will become. They will get louder until you are feeling the serious discord between who you are and who you know yourself to be.
Training yourself to listen to the whispers will allow you to go through a joyful transition as you are always becoming what you have already grown into.

What has been your loudest whisper?

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Continue reading »]]> Spiritual Life Coach discussing the ego as the New Age version of Satan

When talking to people about ego, I have noticed that many create a new enemy for themselves to fight. Many people think the ego is the reason they are unhappy. Many of those who believe in self empowerment think that the ego is the New Age version of Satan or the devil. Next time someone talks about the ego insert Satan and look at the conversation from a Christian perspective. You will notice that there are many similarities. The ego is the part of themselves that is keeping them back. Even Eckhart Tolle mentions in an interview that he does not see a purpose in working on the ego.

We are spiritual beings who are having a human experience and part of the human experience is the ego. The ego is our earth bound consciousness. It is the part of us that believes that everything we are taught is true. The spirit knows that all of this is an illusion. There is no battle between spirit and ego that people tend to suggest. What battle could there be? The spirit is eternal; the ego dies when the earthly body dies. When people write something like, “when we wrestle with our ego,” what they should be writing is, “when ego, wrestles with ego.” Even trying to let go of your ego just uses your ego to try to get rid of your ego.

Your ego is not the bad guy. The ego is a concept and doesn’t really exist in the physical world. The ego is a good way of explaining a part of our human existence and a good name to get it so you will understand the concept. The ego is not something that you hold in your hand or an evil force that keeps your spirit trapped in sadness.
Adyashanti has given me one of the best ways to think of the ego. Think of the ego as a coat. Enlightenment is taking the coat off. Then you can put it back on when you need an ego such as when you are talking to people.

There is no need to create a mystical thing to keep you from your happiness. There is no need to create a boogieman that barricades you from the life you want. Instead of creating something to blame, look for solutions. That is the beauty of life. Things will always happen. You will never be done with doing things. Done is death. Give up the illusion of being done. Be solution orientated.

Inner Way of Being Intention

With great joy I learn from all situations as I live a life being solution oriented, for the benefit of all beings.

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Continue reading »]]> Beginning of last year I wrote a series of three blogs about the biggest influences in my life. I called them placebos because they helped me and they may not help everyone. They are the sugar pills that have helped me live a more joyful life. I am recommending them in an easier to read list for your enjoyment.

A lengthier description of each one can be found on the three blogs, 15-11, 10-6 and 5-1.

1. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. The main influence I got from this book is the reminder to take a few moments each day to concentrate on my breath. Doing so just slows the world down and allows me to connect with my source.
2. Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. I put them together because they are good friends and I discovered them at the same time. They are my first taste of self development. They both presented me with so many new thoughts for me to chew on.
3. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steve Covey. I cannot thank this book enough for being the book that presented unconditional love in a way that clicked with me. The part of the audiobook where Steve was talking to his friend about his wife changed my life forever.
4. Boundary Solutions for Life by Joan Casey. Going to the series of seminars presented by Jovanna Casey was a treat. I really enjoyed her style and they were really well done. Working on my boundaries was exactly what I needed at the time.
5. News for the Soul. News for the Soul gave me a free source of many spiritual teachers I would have never heard of without. Plus it was what introduced me to the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. That has been a huge help to me.
6. David DeAngelo. I am not ashamed to say that my first foray into improving myself was to improve my ability to get dates. Without David DeAngelo I would have never discovered the wonderful world of personal development.
7. Byron Katie. Seeing Byron Katie in person was a treat. Listening to her showed me the true meaning of unconditional love and unattachment.
8. Adyashanti. Adyashanti is one of my favorite people to listen to. I really love his teaching style. He also presents the idea of ego that does not cause as much struggle as does with Tolle.
9. Esther Hicks. The studying of Abraham has been a passion of mine. When I need a boost to make me feel good I enjoy popping in one of their CDs. I love their teachings on how to feel good.
10. Meetup.com. The website www.meetup.com has put me in contact to a lot of amazing people. If you are interested in anything, join this website. You will find people who share your interests.
11. David Deida. His book The Way of the Superior Man had two major influences on me. The first one was with the ideas presented in this book I let go of my anger towards women for not wanting to date me. Instead of blaming them for not seeing what a wonderful man I am, I decided to be the type of man who they would want to date. The other was the idea of living from purpose. Feels so satisfying.
12. Invite Change. If you are looking to become a life coach I highly recommend going through Invite Change. They are never sitting on their laurels and are constantly changing their curriculum to best serve you in your desire to be a great coach. They constantly produce amazing coaches.
13. Intentions. The intention process has helped me so much that I wrote my ebook dedicated to writing them. I am also making it a huge part of my first published book that I am currently working on. Write intentions and change your life.
14. Kingpin. One of the most unlikely sources for an amazing influence, however this movie changed my life forever. You can read about it here about my blog on the day I took responsibility for my life.
15. Warriorsage. I have met many amazing people in Warrior Sage. I have also been a part of a men’s group for years from this group. The best spiritual awakenings I have experience have been through what they used to call Illumination Intensives. They have gone through big changes and I am looking forward to working with them again.

What are the big influences in your life?

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Continue reading »]]> Integrity is important if you want to live a joyful life. Having integrity means that you are living with a steadfast adherence to your strict moral and ethical code. If you are going to be a leader then having integrity is essential. It is hard to trust people who do not display integrity. Since we are all leaders in at least one way, integrity is a very important inner way of being intention for you to write. Especially since one of the people you have to lead is you. It all starts with you.

This blog series will be about three different perspectives of integrity. The third perspective is integrity with how you feel and who you are.

This perspective of integrity is one that is kind of sneaky. Having unconditional love for yourself is being able to accept yourself no matter how you are feeling at any given moment. This is very apparent in the spiritual movement. I have had conversations with spiritual people on how anger is not spiritual. This causes spiritual people to deny their true feelings and come out of integrity with how they are feeling at that moment. Not being integral with how you feel causes people to not trust you and also causes you to bury feelings instead of dealing with them.
It is like my favorite quote:

It is not that you must be free from fear. The moment you try to free yourself from fear, you create a resistance against fear. Resistance in any form doesn’t end fear. What is needed rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance is understanding fear; that means watch it; learn about it; come directly into contact with it.

-J. Krishnamurti

Feelings are just reactions to your outside or inside world. They are triggered. Disposing of all your negative emotions would be like getting rid of pain. Getting rid of pain might sound good on paper; in reality without pain you wouldn’t know when you were hurting yourself. You might just keep your hand on the stove allowing it to burn. That is what you are doing when you numb yourself or deny your negative emotions. You have triggers in your mind and when they are triggered you feel bad. To deny yourself from feeling that way is like keeping your hand on the stove telling yourself that it is fine for your hand to be cooked.

It is my belief that this is why people like to believe that being joyful is not being authentic. It is true that not feeling your emotions will cause people to not trust you as who would trust someone who keeps their hand on the stove and tells people that they are fine. Things happen. It is OK to be sad.
The problem arises when you stay in that negative feeling. The feeling exists. Experience it, learn from it and let it go. Living this way will allow you to live with more joy and more people will trust you.

My Inner Way of Being Intention:

I experience, learn from and release all my emotions while living my ideal life.

What is your inner intention on being truthful with how you feel?

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Continue reading »]]> One thing to make sure you include with your spirituality is a sense of humor. When you take away the sense of humor from your spiritual self, you are closing yourself off to an essential part of spirituality. The part you are closing off is the part that is meant to feel good. Feeling good is essential to a healthy spiritual life. When a person makes a joke at your spiritual life feel free to laugh at it if you find it funny. There are a lot of things about spirituality that is pretty hilarious.

Getting too serious will cause you to stifle your spiritual growth. One way to know that a spiritual guru is a charlatan is if they do not have a sense of humor. If the person was connected to the joy of the source of all there is, they will be able to take a good joke.

If the joke is not good, then just let it go.  There is no reason to take it personally. In fact it is even a good spiritual practice if letting go is part of your spiritual practice. The poor joke is now one of your teachers.

Here are two youtube clips I have found recently that do a good job of spoofy spirituality.

The first one is Arj Barker who created a song called Sickest Buddhist. Very funny if you have read about Buddhism

This one is by BellaVoce123. It is called I Need A Yogi. I found this one pretty funny and it doesn’t hurt that the singer is an attractive female.

Is there a youtube clip that you find funny about your spiritual life? Please share with me.

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Continue reading »]]> On August 28th I turned 32 years old. I am so happy that I have lived that long. I am enjoying my life and enjoying who I am.

What I celebrate more though is the day I made the decision. On my 26th birthday, 6 years ago, I was a frightened man who didn’t feel close to anyone. I remember looking at my life and where I was going. I envisioned that I was stuck in a prison of fear. A prison that I created. I made the decision that day to figure out how to fix myself. I felt broken.

I am so happy that I made the decision as I am now more joyful than I have ever been. Everyday I look for more reasons to feel good. Even when outside events might look like they are going down the drain, I can look at my life and notice the joy that is in it now and the joy that I can see in my future. I know that I am living a blessed life.

What decisions have you made that have made your life better?

Also here is a youtube clip of me celebrating my birth and my decision.

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Continue reading »]]> Integrity is important if you want to live a joyful life. Having integrity means that you are living with a steadfast adherence to your strict moral and ethical code. If you are going to be a leader then having integrity is essential. It is hard to trust people who do not display integrity. Since we are all leaders in at least one way, integrity is a very important inner way of being intention for you to write. Especially since one of the people you have to lead is you. It all starts with you.

This blog series will be about three different perspectives of integrity. The first perspective is integrity with others.

It is said “if you never lie or fabricate the truth then it is easier to remember the course of events:” Not only does having integrity with other people free up space in your memory banks, it allows people to trust you. Have you ever had a boss who lied to you? I know from other people’s experience that having a boss that doesn’t follow through with their word does not make for a popular bosses.
Also if you ever had a friend who didn’t display integrity, they were someone you couldn’t trust. You label them as flaky and do not trust any words they say.

It all starts with you. You have to be a person of integrity. It feels good to be trusted and it is important if you want to live a positive life. When you are not trusted due to not constantly following through then you will not be surrounded by people with integrity. People with integrity do not want to hang around people without integrity.
Sometimes there are events that happen that cause you to not live up to your word. When that happens do not fret, own up to it and make amends.

My Inner Way of Being Intention:

With love for the people in my life, I am a person who lives up to his word, and so it is.

What is your intention for being integral with others?

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