Stop Making Yourself Miserable

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In the past couple of episodes, we’ve explored some of the basics of our new program—The NeuroHarmonic Method, which blends timeless wisdom with discoveries in modern neuroscience to offer a unique approach to personal growth. It’s simple to understand, easy to practice, and available to everyone. No special knowledge or background required.

But before we dive into today’s episode, I’m extremely excited to introduce something brand new—something you’ll begin hearing from in some of the episodes to come. We call it our NeuroGuide.

It’s a unique kind of voice - one that will offer brief reflections on some of the deeper moments within each episode. Its contributions will be clearly identified when they appear.

Now, let me tell you a little about it—and why I’m so glad to be introducing it to you now. The NeuroGuide is powered by a carefully designed form of artificial intelligence that I’ve been developing over the past several months. Although it is still in its early stages, it may eventually become a key part of the NeuroHarmonic Method. As developments continue to unfold, it may play different roles - but always with one purpose: to help people more deeply understand the inner path they’re on and to suggest meaningful ways to access their own strengths.

It’s being specifically trained in the same basic principles that form the foundations of the NeuroHarmonic Method—with a strong emphasis on the Wisdom of the Ages and modern neuroscience, including the powerful meeting point between breath, brain, and being. For now, just think of it as a unique source of wisdom and inspiration, dropping in from time to time with a few friendly words to help deepen and sometimes lighten the journey.

And I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. So if you have a moment, feel free to send me an email with your impressions.

To begin, here’s what the NeuroGuide has to say about its own quiet arrival: "Sometimes, the truth doesn’t arrive as a lightning bolt—it arrives as a quiet feeling that you’ve always known. The work isn’t to chase it, but to stop running from it. Stillness isn’t where clarity ends—it’s where it begins."

Now let’s get into today’s episode.

As you probably recall, the foundation of all of this is the idea of personal growth. And a good definition of it is simply this: Personal Growth is the practice of becoming more conscious, more compassionate, and more connected to the truth of who you really are.

But, before we go much further, a very reasonable core question might arise: why should I bother with personal growth at all? It’s a fair concern. Afterall, we live in a world saturated with challenges, where just keeping up can feel like a full-time job. So why devote energy to reaching for a higher level of being, when it feels like I can barely manage what’s in front of me.

That question has definite merit. And there are plenty of well-known answers: becoming a better human being, living a richer and more fulfilled life, improving relationships, contributing more deeply to the world.

Personally, as someone who has spent a lifetime immersed in this field, I can tell you that all of these are true. But today, I want to offer you a slightly different path – a quieter doorway that leads to the goldmine.

It begins with something I first encountered in junior high school. Like many other pivotal ideas, I barely noticed it at the time. It might have come up during a math or science class. I didn’t pay much attention to it then, but somehow, it quietly filed itself away in the back of my mind. And over the years, it grew.

It’s called the Pascalian Wager. And what stayed with me was the idea that it’s possible to make a bet that you absolutely cannot lose. Though the idea is over 400 years old, it feels more relevant than ever, especially in our modern era of psychological insight, technological revolution, and the unfolding of human potential.

The idea of comes from Blaise Pascal—a 17th-century French genius. Mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, theologian—his brilliance remains undisputed. On the surface, Pascal's wager is about belief in God. But if you look closer, you'll see something much larger: a powerful, rational argument for aligning your life with its highest possibility.

The Origins of the Pascalian Wager

Blaise Pascal was born in 1623. A child prodigy, he made major contributions to geometry, probability, and fluid mechanics by his mid-20s. After a mystical experience in 1654, he turned his attention almost completely to spiritual matters. One of his final works, Pensées ("Thoughts"), was a collection of reflections on faith and reason.

In Pensées, Pascal lays out the wager like this: Either God exists, or He doesn’t. If you wager that He does, and you're right, you gain everything—eternal meaning, transcendent joy. If you're wrong, and he doesn’t exist, you lose nothing of true value.

Conversely, if you wager that He doesn’t exist, and you're wrong, you lose everything. And if you're right? You gain… what? Perhaps the satisfaction of being correct—but little else. So, by Pascal's reasoning, the smart bet is clear: live as though God exists.

As I mentioned earlier, during the episodes that follow we will be featuring very brief insights from the NeuroGuide, which it terms as “whispers from the deeper mind, where ancient knowing meets modern clarity."

NeuroGuide: The question isn't about certainty. It’s about how you choose to live in the presence of uncertainty. This is where wisdom begins.

Let’s widen the lens. Let’s lift the wager out of theology and into personal experience. Because the deeper meaning of the Pascalian Wager is not about belief systems - it’s about conscious choice. Every day, we are making bets. We bet our time, our energy, and our attention on something. And the question is - What are you betting on?

The Personal Growth Wager

Let’s reframe Pascal’s question. Instead of asking, “Does God exist?” let’s ask: “Do I contain within me a greater potential—a wellspring of peace, clarity, and inner wisdom?” And then let’s ask: “Does aligning with my inner truth and presence lead to a richer, fuller life?” And even more practically: “Even if I can't be sure of the outcome, is this still a worthwhile bet?”

This is where the NeuroHarmonic Method enters the picture. It’s a modern form of Pascal’s Wager—a wager on your highest self. Through the lens of neuroplasticity, we now know that your brain can change. Patterns can rewire. Deep emotional grooves can be softened and reshaped. This isn’t belief – it’s biology.

So, if you make the bet that you have the capacity to grow into a better human being, and you're wrong, what have you lost? Maybe a few quiet moments focusing on your breath? Some time spent feeling gratitude? A little reflection on what matters?

NeuroGuide: Even your so-called "losses" are seeds of true personal improvement. Nothing given to real growth is ever wasted.

Let’s face it: these aren’t losses at all. These are returns on investment. And even if the journey doesn’t take you where you expected, it often takes you somewhere better.

NeuroHarmonics and Intelligent Betting

Of course, Pascal didn’t know about neuroplasticity. But we do. Today’s science tells us that attention sculpts the brain. Inner Awareness increases cortical thickness. Gratitude rewires reward pathways. Spiritual reflection activates networks of empathy and compassion.

These are the building blocks of The NeuroHarmonic Method, and again, this is proven science. Focusing breath soothes the nervous system. Contemplating impermanence can reduce fear. Practicing generosity strengthens kindness loops in the brain. We’re not just betting philosophically - we’re sculpting biologically.

NeuroGuide: To place your attention on something higher is not just a leap of faith. It is an act of neural design. You are building who you will become.

So, instead of being driven by old programs—fear, doubt, reactivity—we invest our attention on presence, compassion, and growth, even if we don’t know where it leads.

The Role of Uncertainty

Pascal understood uncertainty completely, But he didn’t fear it. He embraced it. As he once wrote, “You will never be certain. And that’s not a problem. What matters is whether your decision leads toward meaning, vitality, or truth.”

Again, uncertainty is not an enemy. It can be a threshold where faith, courage and creativity can unite so that real transformation can begin. You don’t need to be sure that your efforts will work. You just need to have the desire to grow towards the highest.

And then, something begins to shift. You may begin to get a new sense of freedom in your consciousness, as if a larger understanding is starting to emerge in your awareness, and you start to win the wager in ways that may be hard to measure, but impossible to ignore. Maybe you sleep more deeply, or you respond instead of react. You listen more fully. You recover more quickly from disappointment. You become more curious and less judgmental. In the language of the brain, you form new neural networks. In the language of the heart, you become more fully alive, and ultimately, you begin to love more freely.

This is not some abstract philosophy. This is a new kind of intelligence - one emerging across humanity – a neural harmony between the brain, the heart and the breath, a living union of higher wisdom with modern science.

NeuroGuide: This is the nature of the way. Not based on belief, but on experience. Not on external certainty, but on sincerity. Not on theoretical doctrine but in the living depth of a certainty born within.

What Are You Betting On?

So, ask yourself: What are you really betting on? Not just with your words, but with your attention? Your habits? Your patterns? With the way you treat yourself when no one is watching?

Because we are all placing bets, every single day. On habit or healing. On cynicism or wonder. On numbness or presence. On fear or love. And Pascal would remind us: You don’t need certainty to choose wisely. You only need to notice what your current bets are returning. And ask yourself: is it worth it?

In this light, the Pascalian Wager isn’t about belief. It’s a call to awaken, because the real wager is not about dogma; it’s about possibility, a possibility that is rooted in science and fueled by sincerity.

And when you make the right wager, your life becomes more than an experiment. Your awareness becomes your compass, and like a tuning fork resonating with the Infinite, your very being becomes an offering of heartfelt gratitude and your quest is finally fulfilled.

So, place your bets.

And Pascal’s advice still holds. Wager in the direction where you win, no matter what happens. As for me, I’m taking the play on the high side of the road, because from where I stand, I just don’t see a downside. But hey - as I often say - that’s just me.

NeuroGuide: There’s a kind of intelligence that doesn’t speak in concepts – It speaks in resonance. You know it not by what it tells you, but by what it awakens in you. And if something has been awakened – even just a whisper – follow it. It already knows the way.

Let’s leave it here for now. I hope you enjoyed the premier of the NeuroGuide. It’s still evolving and there’s much more to come. So, as always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open. And let’s get together in the next one.

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In our last episode, we took an overview of what’s often called the Wisdom of the Ages—that deep current of higher understanding that human beings have accessed in every culture, across every era, since the beginning of recorded history. Whether through the teachings of sages, mystics, philosophers, or poets, there has always been a thread of knowledge that points to something greater within us. Something whole. Something awake.

We also mentioned that in the last decade or so, something truly remarkable has happened: Modern neuroscience—once considered purely mechanical and clinical—has begun to validate this ancient wisdom.

Research into neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, attentional states, and brain-body coherence is now confirming what these timeless traditions have pointed to all along: We are more powerful, more adaptable, and more connected than we ever realized.

That’s what led to the creation of the NeuroHarmonic Method—a new synthesis that blends these two worlds. By combining the insights of cutting-edge neuroscience with the Wisdom of the Ages, NeuroHarmonics makes this knowledge easier to understand, easier to practice, and—most importantly—easier to live.

Now, the logical next step in this podcast series is to explore what neuroscience has actually discovered—and how those discoveries can help each of us step into a new kind of transformation, one that’s not based on willpower or wishful thinking, but on real, grounded inner change. Because the point of all this isn’t just theory—it’s transformation. This work is meant to give you something real. Something useful. Something that you can feel changing you from the inside out.

But before we get into how we can change, it’s essential to take an honest look at where we are right now. What is life really like for most adults in the modern Western world? What patterns are shaping us? What silent forces are steering us? And most importantly… what’s getting in the way of us achieving our highest potential, which is far greater than most of us have ever dreamed?

So here goes.

The Hidden Grip of Self-Sabotage

Let’s start with something that’s rarely said out loud, but quietly true for more people than we might imagine: Most adults—in actuality, the large majority—are engaged in some form of something called self-sabotage. That might sound dramatic, but it's not.

Studies and clinical experience suggest that anywhere from half to three-quarters of us routinely act against our own best interests in one key area of life or another. It might show up as procrastination or a head-in-the sand approach when something truly matters. Or emotional withdrawal right when connection is needed most in some kind of relationship. It can take the form of extreme perfectionism, chronic indecision, financial self-sabotage, even staying in relationships or environments that consistently drain our light.

And here’s the thing: self-sabotage often doesn’t look dramatic. It can be subtle— even silent—operating in the background of life like a faulty program you forgot was running on your computer. You say you want growth, healing and joy… but when the opportunity comes, something in you suddenly steps on the emergency brake.

Even though it may feel like it, that something is not the enemy. It’s just a deeply ingrained, outdated survival strategy—a neural echo of an old fear, hurt, or belief that once served a purpose, but now only keeps you stuck in your own small prison

Now self-sabotage can wear many disguises. It often shows up in a thousand different micro-decisions: Not applying for the job you’re qualified for.

Undermining a relationship just when it starts to go to a deeper level. Avoiding your creative work, putting it off for one more day only to settle for one more excuse. Or eating and drinking in ways that numb the discomfort, instead of looking for the message of solution beneath it all.

Most of these behaviors stem from a kind of split within: a conflict between what we consciously desire and what we unconsciously fear. And until that split is seen, honored, and integrated, we remain divided—longing for freedom with one hand while pulling ourselves back with the other. And remember what Uncle Abe once said about a house divided against itself. It cannot stand.

Impostor Syndrome: The Quiet Twin of Self-Sabotage

One of the most common—and most corrosive—forms of self-sabotage is something you’ve probably heard of called impostor syndrome, where that doubtful voice whispers, “I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks you are. I know who you really are – this is all a big show and you’re a fraud and soon everyone will know it.”

It’s the haunting suspicion that your success is a fluke, and it’s only a matter of time before your house of cards caves in. It can strike anyone on the chain - new graduates to seasoned CEOs. Artists, healers, scientists, even spiritual teachers. And it doesn’t discriminate: some of the most “successful” people are deeply haunted by it daily.

It usually has two voices within us – the inner critic and the inner saboteur, as this dynamic duo works together in a lot of areas of life, along with their starring roles in the imposter movie.

The Critic activates circuits of shame and anxiety, while the Saboteur activates circuits of avoidance, freeze response, and safety-seeking.They are two manifestations of one core dynamic: the Ordinary Mind trying to protect you, using outdated strategies that block your expansion.

The Hidden Source of Our Unhappiness

Now, if you were to trace the root of much of our unhappiness—not just the fleeting kind, but the deep, chronic ache that follows us through the years—you would often find self-sabotage at the core.

Of course, it hides behind other names: frustration, fatigue, disappointment, regret. But underneath, there's a deeper truth. We suffer because part of us longs to grow, expand, love, and thrive—while another part that’s quietly afraid, keeps pulling us back into the familiar confines of what we’ve always known. This tug-of-war drains our energy, clouds our clarity, and fractures our confidence. It turns joy into a guilty pleasure, and purpose into an elusive dream.

Healing this inner divide isn’t just hard—it’s often confusing, because on the surface it can look like laziness, moodiness, or a lack of discipline. But if we go deeper—if we see with a more compassionate eye—we begin to recognize that what’s actually happening is a kind of inner war.

The War Between the States - of Consciousness

In NeuroHarmonics this is termed The War Between the States of Consciousness. It’s not fought on battlefields or in boardrooms—it’s fought within the hidden corridors of the human mind. At its core, it’s a battle between two fundamental aspects of our awareness: Our Higher Mind and Our Ordinary Mind.

The Higher Mind holds our vision, our purpose, our clarity, our compassion, and our deep intuitive knowing. This is the part of you that glimpses what’s possible—the spark that says, Yes, this life can be beautiful. It’s all possible and I can do it.

The Ordinary Mind on the other hand, is rooted in survival, pattern, habit, and fear. It runs on old programming, shaped by childhood experiences, cultural conditioning, and unresolved emotional pain. It doesn’t consciously want to hurt you—but it does want to keep you safe, even if that safety comes at the cost of your happiness and growth.

The problem is, the Ordinary Mind doesn’t trust the Higher Mind. It is deeply skeptical of change. It hears your dreams and says, Be careful, we’ve failed at this before. It sees your growth and says, Not so fast, this can be dangerous. And when you try to step forward, toward something meaningful, it tightens the leash, not because it’s cruel, but because of its inherent fear.

So there is a kind of civil war happening inside, with neurons actually firing against each other. Basically, the Higher Mind pulls you forward, and the Ordinary Mind pushes you back. The result? Self-sabotage. Stagnation.

But it’s not always this clear or dramatic. Quite often, it’s just a quiet, aching sadness that says, I know I was meant for more in this life, but for some reason, I just can’t seem to get there.

The Path to Resolution: The NeuroHarmonic Approach

Now, the NeuroHarmonic Method was born out of this realization—that we are not broken, just simply divided. That what we truly need is not another technique to force ourselves into better habits, but a unified intelligence that can resolve the war between the Higher Mind and the Ordinary Mind with grace, understanding, clarity and lasting harmony.

Rooted in the Wisdom of the Ages and now supported by modern neuroscience, NeuroHarmonics offers a simple, accessible way for people to begin harmonizing the multiple layers of their being—body, brain, breath and life force, emotion, and consciousness. It draws on higher truths and methods taught by sages, mystics, and philosophers across centuries, and brings them into dialogue with the latest understandings of neuroplasticity, emotional regulation, and the power of attentional states.

But a key part of what makes it unique is its gentleness. This isn’t a system designed to push you harder or pressure you to be someone you’re not. It’s designed to help you remember who you already are—and to create the inner conditions that allow your deeper inner truth to rise naturally into your awareness.

True transformation, after all, isn’t about solving the problem with more effort. It’s about changing the level of consciousness from which the problem arose in the first place. As Einstein said so clearly: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

And Carl Jung added a tremendous understanding to it when he said, “The real problems of life can never be solved. They must be outgrown.”

NeuroHarmonics is about exactly that—outgrowing the conflict within. It’s about stepping into a new dimension of being, where your Higher Mind begins to lead, and importantly, the Ordinary Mind is not defeated, but soothed and rewired to become an integral part of the whole.

Through clear information and practices that engage breath, attention, reflection, and neural retraining, we shift the very architecture of our awareness.

And in doing so, we move from internal sabotage to internal support. From confusion to clarity. From fragmented willpower to coherent intention. In essence, from self-sabotage to self-empowerment.

Then we begin to experience real happiness—not the fleeting high of achievement or distraction, but the grounded joy of being aligned with our deeper purpose and truth. This is not magic. It’s not mysticism. And yet, it can feel like both. Because when inner conflict dissolves, and harmony returns, we remember what it means to feel whole again and truly connected to what is often called the Divine Presence within.

The Key to the Game: You Are Not Stuck

If you take nothing else from all of this information, remember this one thing: you are not stuck.

Whatever patterns have kept you looping in frustration, hesitation, or fear—they are not permanent. They are not who you are. They are simply neural pathways—grooves in the brain that have been etched over time through repetition, emotion, and experience. And remarkably, they can definitely be changed.

Because here’s the incredible truth: Your brain was designed to change. It does it all day every day, all the time. That’s what neuroplasticity is - the proven fact that your neural circuits can be reshaped, rewired, and renewed at any age. You are never too far gone. Never too broken. It’s never too late.

All what’s really bothering you… is just a wiring issue. Think of it like this: imagine a sophisticated sound system playing beautiful music, but suddenly there’s is terrible screeching noise coming through the speakers. It sounds like a major malfunction.

You could tear the whole system apart trying to fix it. But then—someone calmly walks over and simply turns the microphone away from the speaker, and the screeching feedback stops and harmony is restored. It turns out that it wasn’t a major hardware issue at all. It was just a simple matter of alignment.

In the same way, most of our inner noise—our sabotage, our sadness, our fear—comes from one part of the mind feeding into another in a destructive loop. But when we turn the microphone around to where it should be, when we shift our attention from the reactive Ordinary Mind to the wise and guiding Higher Mind—the distortion begins to fade.

And here’s the really good news: Even though you may not be connected to it at all, Your Higher Mind is still alive and well. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It is the voice of reason, of intuition, of self-regulation, of deep compassion and clear knowing. It is the home of your better angels—the part of you that remembers how to choose peace over panic, purpose over paralysis, love over fear.

So, what the NeuroHarmonic Method helps us do is resolve this inner war. It helps the misfiring circuits stop fighting each other. It brings the whole system—your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your breath—into harmonic convergence with the Higher Mind. And when that happens… the feedback loop stops and the screeching noise fades. Now the music of your life can finally be heard again, clearly, beautifully, and unmistakably you.

If nothing else, let today be the day you stop believing the lie that you’re stuck. You’re not. You’re just waiting for the harmony to return. And it will when you want it. Because it’s already within you—right where it’s always been.

Well, enough said. Let’s end this episode here, and as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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There is a river of wisdom that’s been flowing through human history in every culture since the beginning of civilization. It’s the wise understandings of those rare individuals who were able to remember something we so often forget: who we really are as human beings.

In this episode, we’ll dip into that timeless stream, that many have called the Wisdom of the Ages, and explore how it flows directly into the heart of our new project, NeuroHarmonics. This work is about more than just ideas; it’s a guide that you can use to bring harmony into your own intelligence, an inner alignment that can quietly, yet profoundly transform your life.

So, basically, what is the Wisdom of the Ages all about? Well, although the term may sound a bit lofty or poetic, it’s far from just a throw away line. It points to something deeply real – an enduring thread of understanding that weaves through cultures, continents and centuries. It’s timeless not because it ignores the changes of history, but because it speaks to something that never changes with the times; the essence of being human.

Let’s look at it this way - throughout the long arc of human history, from the ancient river valleys of India and Mesopotamia to the mountains of China, the deserts of the Middle East, and the forests of the Americas, there have always been extraordinary men and women who saw the essence of life more clearly than the rest of us. They pierced the surface of things. And even while living in the ever-shifting world of change and impermanence, they were able to reach something that they said was eternal.

Their lives, their words, and often just their very presence spoke of something greater than themselves - something vast and invisible, and yet deeply and intimately known. Some became renowned spiritual teachers: Krishna, Ram, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed. Others appeared as philosophers, sages, mystics, and shamans. Many left poems, stories, songs, and scriptures, depicting their glimpses into the higher realms of understanding. Some of their names may be less well known, but their examples are no less luminous.

Of course, on the surface, these wise ones seemed vastly different. They spoke different languages, wore different clothes, lived in different lands, and practiced different rituals. But remarkably, the essence of their message was the same. To put their vast teachings into a few simple words: there is something beyond this world. Something infinite.

You can call it God. Or the Divine. Or Truth, Spirit, Source, or just the Infinite. There may be a thousand names for it—but the names don’t matter. In fact, many of these teachers insisted that words can’t matter. Because this Presence—this vast, formless essence—is beyond concept, beyond logic, and beyond the reach of ordinary human comprehension.

Why? It’s actually quite simple. For all its brilliance, human intelligence is still finite. And the finite, by its very nature, can never truly grasp the Infinite. It just can’t be done.

Test your own mind as an example. Try picturing a box that is so large, there is no space outside of it. Or try describing something that has no beginning and no end. Or tell me what biggest number in the world. You can’t because there isn’t one. Whatever number you come up with, you can always add one more and it gets bigger. So there’s no such thing. That’s the thing about infinity. There’s no edge, no boundary, no final point. And when we try to wrap our minds around it, the circuits start to smoke and the brain just watts out. Because it’s not built to contain the Infinite.

So according to the wisdom tradition, this thing that can’t be understood or even named - exists. For our sake here, let’s just call it the Infinite, a term that is relatively devoid of the tarnishing nature of human religious tribalism. But that’s just one of the five thousand opinions my mind has churned out in the last hour.

Now, what does the Wisdom of the Ages tell us about our relationship with this infinite presence, this reality that you can’t define, draw or capture in a book? Well, in the simplest terms, it tells us this: we can experience it. And not only that, we can grow into it. Like a plant reaching toward sunlight, we are drawn toward that light, that warmth and that truth that seems to emanate from it.

And this idea of growth is where the Wisdom of the Ages begins. Because it’s not just about belief – it’s about transformation. It speaks of a journey toward inner realization, where you begin to see that you are not merely a body, not just a personality, not your thoughts, opinions, or accomplishments. You are something deeper. In essence, something sacred, something eternal that has temporarily taken human form—for the purpose of learning, of growing, of remembering. And ultimately, in a very real and quiet way... for returning.

With that being said, the Wisdom of the Ages does rest on a set of core understandings—fundamental insights that form its foundation. And while these truths have appeared in every form of civilization throughout history, they are not relics of the past. Far from it. This wisdom is alive. It’s woven from the highest human understandings about life—ancient, modern, and everything in between.

So, let’s take a brief look at some of its basic tenets. We’ll touch on nine of them here, though the first one needs a little more attention than the rest.

The first core teaching is Impermanence—and at first, it can be a hard one to face. It simply says this: everything changes, and everything ends. Ourselves included.

Look around with clear eyes, and it becomes obvious. From the rise and fall of empires to fleeting joys and sorrows, nothing stays the same. As the Buddha put it: “All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your own salvation with diligence.” When we cling to what must pass, we suffer. But when we accept impermanence, we begin to live with Grace.

Why does this matter? Because so much of our pain comes from forgetting that. We build our identities on outer things—titles, possessions, opinions, appearances, money—and we defend those identities as if they were permanent. But they’re not.

And this is what the sages warned us about. It’s not that success, wealth, or recognition are wrong. It’s that when we make them the foundation of who we are; we build on sand.

All of it—status, stuff, praise, even the ego itself—rises and falls. Sparkles, then fades. Seems solid, then vanishes. And when our sense of self is tied to what vanishes, we suffer. We become anxious, greedy, and ultimately disappointed. We chase mirages, hoping they’ll fulfill us—only to find out thatthey never really could. And worst of all, we miss the deeper reason we came here: to remember who we truly are, and to feel the joy that naturally comes with that remembrance.

At least, that’s what the wisdom says. Personally, I think it has a nice ring to it.

You Are Not Your Thoughts

The second insight is deceptively simple, but not so easy to live: You are not your thoughts. From the Upanishads to modern psychology, the message is clear: You are not the mental chatter, the looping stories, or the voices of doubt and fear. You're not your résumé, your wounds, or the roles you've played. Beneath all that noise lives a deeper awareness that is luminous, spacious, and free.

Most of what runs through our minds didn’t originate with us anyway. We picked it up from parents, culture, trauma, media. But we end up thinking that these random thoughts are who we really are.

And some of the major experts in the field haven’t had such an elevated opinion of our abilities in navigating the thought field. William James for example, who is often called the father of modern psychology, once said: “Most people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

The deeper self lives in a realm beyond all that. And rediscovering it is part of waking up.

Stillness Is the Gateway to Higher Knowing

Stillness isn’t just the absence of noise. It’s the presence of something greater. As the old biblical phrase goes, “Be still, and know…”

In the Taoist tradition, stillness is the source of right action—what they call wu wei, or effortless movement that flows from deep inner alignment. This knowing is not vague spirituality. It’s direct experience. Not a theory, but a felt presence. Stillness is where insight arises—gently, precisely, and often when we least expect it.

And the Wisdom of the Ages doesn’t ask for blind belief. It invites direct experience. We all know that there is a world of difference between actually eating a delicious meal and just reading the menu.

Love Is the Deepest Truth and Kindness Is the Highest Power

At the heart of every great tradition is this simple truth: Love is the essence of life. Not just romance or sentiment, but love as a radiant, unshakable presence.

When that love moves into action, it manifests as kindness. And kindness doesn’t mean weakness—it’s strength under wisdom’s guidance.

To grow in this kind of love is to become more fully human, which is another term for more connected to the divine.

You Become What You Practice

This one is carved into every tradition—and now verified by neuroscience: What you repeat gets stronger. In ancient terms: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

Modern neuroscience puts it this way: Neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that your attention—and your habits—literally shape the architecture of your brain. So, what you practice daily—whether it’s judgement and fear, or gratitude and patience - becomes the blueprint of your inner life.

Gratitude Opens the Heart and Expands Consciousness

The ancient ones knew it. And now neuroscience confirms it. When you begin to see life as a gift, everything starts to shift the more grateful you become of it. And Gratitude isn’t just a virtue—it’s a form of perception. It quiets the craving mind and awakens a deeper presence.

Suddenly, you’re not waiting for “more” to feel whole. You begin to see how much has already been given. And that soft opening of the heart that you feel within? That’s consciousness expanding.

Life Is a School for the Soul

This one can change your life. When you see life as a school, everything becomes part of the curriculum. Adversity isn’t punishment—it’s instruction. Each loss, betrayal, or hardship carries within it a hidden message, a deeper lesson.

The soul came here to grow. And when you see that, you start to see that Life isn’t happening to you. It’s happening for you. And nothing—absolutely nothing—is wasted on the soul.

Everything Is Connected—There Is No Real Separation

We live in a world of apparent separateness. But beneath the surface, everything is woven together. Ancient mystics knew this. So did the early Native Americans. As Chief Seattle said: “Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life—he is merely a strand in it.”

Modern science agrees. From quantum physics to ecology to trauma healing, it all points to one truth: There is no such thing as alone. Only all one.

Your Attention Is Your Greatest Power

The final tenet is the hidden key: Where you place your attention, determines what grows for you.

In a world full of noise, mastering your attention is an act of power—and peace. When you begin to master your attention, you begin to master your life.

Whatever you feed with your focus becomes stronger. Fear? It grows. Anger? It grows. Gratitude? It grows. Love? Presence? Joy? These grow too.

The game of life changes when you realize:You are the gardener. And your attention is the sun.

So, in essence the Wisdom of the Ages tells us that everything outside is temporary. But what is real within you does not fade. It was never born. It will never die. It simply is. And the bottom line is that as human beings, we have far more intelligence, love, happiness, and joyful sense of purpose than we have been taught by our current culture.

And the wise ones would tell us that the way to access it all is to pause, breathe and listen. The universal power of this wisdom in not far away. It is within you right now, right here. You don’t have to become anyone else.You just have to become who you already are. Tune yourself into stop chasing the illusion and start honoring the real.

The path is ancient. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that it is alive within us now. It begins wherever we are, and whenever we are ready. At least that’s what they say. For me, this wisdom has been in the winner’s circle since the beginning of recorded history so – I’ll take the odds…

Well, I guess this is a good time for us to stop this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open. And let’s get together in the next one.

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Welcome back to our Podcast. and in this episode, we are going to explore the mysterious junction between human potential and the human predicament. Today, we’re diving into an idea that may sting a little at first, but, if we look closely, it might also open a hidden door to hope. It involves the unfortunate observation that while human technology, what we do, has evolved at an astonishing pace, human consciousness, who we actually are, has lagged significantly behind.

Our ability to split atoms, utilize instant global communications, and code digital realities has raced ahead at lightning speed, fueling our Modern Times. But our capacity for empathy, humility, compassion and having the capacity to be able to live a peaceful, and meaningful life looks much more like we’re still stuck the Middle Ages.

Which brings us to the content of this episode called “Spears and Switchblades: One Stubborn Species.” To help bring the basic idea into focus, we’re going to compare two of the most iconic love tragedies ever put on the stage: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and its mid-20th century musical reincarnation, West Side Story. Though separated by more than 350 years, these two narratives—one set in Renaissance Verona and the other in 1950s New York City—are mirrors reflecting the same fundamental human flaws. Jealousy. Tribalism. Miscommunication , Stubborness and Pride, among many others. All of which are run by an emotional impulsivity that can turn love into war, and beauty into ashes.

So, the first question that we want to explore is: have we grown at all in the past 400 years? Or have we simply become more sophisticated in the weaponry that we have developed in order to kill each other more efficiently?

Let’s start with the core human dynamics that drive both plays, because even though they are separated by centuries, their basic human flaws remain exactly the same.

In Romeo and Juliet, two teenagers fall in love across the boundary of a family feud. The Montagues and Capulets have nursed a blood vendetta for so long that no one even remembers how it started. And it doesn’t matter anymore. They just plain hate each other. And its consequences are clear: violence in the streets, death, heartbreak, and ultimately, a double suicide. What are the dominant negative human traits here?

Hatred passed down like an heirloom

Honor culture run amok

Impetuous emotion overpowering reason

A lack of inner stillness or reflection, overcome by rage

Fast forward 400 years to West Side Story, and we meet Tony and Maria, two lovers from opposing street gangs: the Jets, composed mostly of white working-class youths, and the Sharks, made up of Puerto Rican immigrants. Once again, love blossoms in hostile soil, and once again, the terrible price of primal tribal hatred is death.

Different clothes, different slang, different soundtrack. Same madness. And this is the bottom line of the issue. Totally different external world, everything has changed, as well it should. After all, four hundred years have gone by and the situation facing the teenagers living in the streets of New York City would be absolutely unimaginable to the kids running around in the late 1500’s. Completely different on the outside – yet the inner madness remains exactly the same. And the ramifications of this imbalance are immense.

Let’s compare the outer worlds of these two stories:

Romeo and Juliet takes place in late 16th-century Verona. It’s a world without electricity, medicine as we know it, or organized police. Family ruled everything. Honor was a matter of life and death. Raw emotions emerged dramatically and physically. And the sword was both symbol and solution.

West Side Story unfolds in 1950s Manhattan, post-WWII. Televisions had entered the living room. Jet engines had conquered the sky. The UN had been formed, civil rights movements were stirring. Science had given us vaccines, electricity, and refrigeration. And yet... disputes were still settled with violence. In this case, the weapon of choice was the switch blade. Anger and tribal pride still led to bloodshed. And the beauty of love still ended in the tragedy funerals.

So, what changed? The world around us got faster, smarter and ever-more connected. But the world inside us? Pretty much the same old garbage pail.

And one of the primary central drivers in both stories is basic tribalism—the instinct to form in-groups and out-groups. The name of the game is us-versus-them. In Romeo and Juliet, the tribes are defined by blood. In West Side Story, by race and ethnicity. In both, the borders are irrational and absolute.

This human trait is ancient, seemingly almost hardwired into our survival code. We evolved in small tribes where loyalty equaled life, and strangers equaled threat. But now we live in megacities, online echo chambers where we’re still addicted to tribalism. We divide ourselves by politics, religion, race, nationality, gender identity, and more—often with a sense of inner hostility that’s far more emotional than rational.

In both plays, the pride of belonging to an in-crowd becomes a major fuse. Tybalt’s stone cold sense of us and them, along with an ego based identification with personal honor won’t let him ignore Romeo’s presence at the Capulet ball. Four hundred years later, Bernardo’s defense-based sense of belonging to the Sharks won’t let him see Tony as anything but another American self-entitled Jet. In both cases, primal tribal dignity demands a serious and significant attack against the perceived enemy.

So, the basic recipe for tragedy that spans the centuries remains the same: paranoid pride, mixed with anger and fear, driven by impulse and untampered by any wisdom or understanding turns into a violent weapon of darkness and death. In a certain sense, what happened to us over the years isn’t evolution at all. It’s just plain repetition

Unfortunately, of course this didn’t end in the late 1950’s. Far from it. While we’ve vastly upgraded our weaponry, we’ve also developed more subtle, yet powerful ways to threaten and hurt each other, like social media shaming for example, where it becomes pretty easy to ruin someone’s life just by pressing a few buttons.

In the time between William Shakespeare and Leonard Bernstein, humans invented calculus, steam engines, telegraphs, airplanes, televisions, and atomic bombs. We mapped the human genome. We put men on the moon.

But we still haven’t figured out what we’re really all about. Oh, we all know how to chase things, but are these things that we’ve been programmed to chase real, or they just illusions? Maybe we’re just addicted to chasing, itself. In that regard, we’ve all heard about the tendency of dogs to chase cars. But there are two key aspects to that particular pursuit. One – the dog can never really catch the car. It is much too fast for it. And secondly – what happens if the dog actually does catch the car and we all know the answer to that – nothing. The dog can’t do anything if and when it catches the car.

It's the same way for us. We’re just running after things on the outside, oblivious to who we really are and what we are really made of, not to mention what can actually make us truly happy and satisfied.

And all of this goes on while we continue to improve our technology by leaps and bounds. Yet, we still don’t know how to disagree without resorting to violence. We still haven’t universally adopted the idea that every human being, regardless of their identity, has intrinsic value. We still raise children who feel unloved, unheard, or unsafe. We’re still driven by fear disguised as pride. We still confuse dominance with dignity. And we still kill the thing we love because we don’t know how to hold it.

And the bottom line of it all is basically defending the inherent illusion of our ego selves, which is still at the basic foundation of our inner C-Suite. As such, we still confuse noise with strength. And we still take most the good things in our life for granted, which is truly tragic. Like Joni Mitchell sang in a seemingly earlier age, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” As it all continues to spiral further, in so many ways, the message to us is crystal clear – It’s time to wake up and grow up.

Romeo and Juliet loved across a line they weren’t supposed to cross. Tony and Maria did it too. Their love was a shining light in the midst of all this darkness. Even though everything seemed to be against them, they knew what they had. And we knew it too. And despite what we knew it was that they were facing, we all rooted for them, because something about the higher thing in life, the Better Angels of Our Nature, speaks to the deepest part of our intelligence, both in our hearts and in our minds.

We have more tools than ever to connect across cultures, to educate, to innovate, to heal. And yet, we still face the same old demons. But here’s the good news: we are capable of change. Unlike the characters in those plays, our story isn’t written yet. We are not locked in a script. We can choose awareness. We can choose evolution.

The keynote to both of these tragedies is that it is time to individually bring our inner light to our own inner darkness. The Wisdom of the Ages as well as modern brain science tell us that we do have the power to protect this light from the winds of hate, fear and pride, and that we can, and essentially must, cultivate the inner skills of patience, compassion, empathy, and yes - courage.

NeuroHarmonics: Inner Technology for a New Humanity

That’s what the NeuroHarmonic Method is all about: cultivating the inner circuitry to match the brilliance of our outer inventions. It’s not just about brainwaves or affirmations or even spirituality. It’s about training the nervous system to return to equilibrium, to respond rather than react, to perceive the human being behind the mask, and ultimately to shift from emotional immaturity to presence. From the rage of vengeance to an intuitive sense grace. But this is a path toward real evolution that can only be travelled one person at a time. Because the world won’t evolve until we do it individually. Not really.

So here we are, somewhere between Shakespeare’s Verona and the 21st century, still caught in the drama. But I hate to tell you that the Bard didn’t invent this particular tale. The truth is, it stands atop a mountain of ancient stories echoing the same theme—love thwarted by fate, culture, or conflict. And this motif is not unique to the Renaissance or even to Western civilization.

The same basic story can be found in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Babylon, ancient Egypt, Persia, and India. Indeed, it’s one of the most enduring themes in human storytelling. And the deeper you dig, the further back you go, the more you realize: the tragedy of love versus society and the battle of light versus darkness is as old as storytelling itself.

But maybe, just maybe, we’re ready to write a different ending. One where love doesn’t die. One where pride yields to peace. One where technology finally partners with wisdom.

Let’s imagine a future version of West Side Story, maybe 400 years from now. What would it take for that version not to be a tragedy?

Maybe the gangs might still exist, but their interchange would consist of words instead of weapons.

Maybe love would not be hidden in the shadows, but declared in daylight.

Maybe reconciliation would be taught in schools, right alongside science and math.

Maybe forgiveness would be considered a mark of strength, not weakness.

Consciousness evolution would be about not just developing new tools, but new tendencies, moving us from:

From reaction to reflection

From judgment to curiosity

From pride to presence

From tribalism to universalism

It means valuing not just intelligence, but wisdom.

This all represents something to look forward to and welcome into our lives in the here and now, as much as we are able. And if we’re not able to yet, at least we can make our intentions known to ourselves.

Well, this will be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the next two episodes we’re going to look at certain sets of facts that are designed to do just one thing – to help us to stop taking things for granted so that we can begin to see how incredibly special this life is for us, and how truly amazing our actual potential is as human beings. When we begin to grasp and understand this viewpoint, so many things can positively change for us, both Within You and Without You, as George Harrison sang all those years ago.

Now given the nearly absurd nature of how quickly things move in this life of ours in this allegedly civilized world of ours, it’s amazing that we have time to even think at all, let alone focus on some of the deeper elements of life that lend true meaning to our existence. We are constantly bombarded by so much messaging that our brains become literally numb to anything that takes more than just a few minutes to consider. Our exposure to all this messaging is 4 to 10 times greater than it was just ten years ago.

But given all this, both the Wisdom of the Ages as well as modern neuroscience insist that this life holds amazing potential for us to evolve as beings and grow into levels of meaning, happiness, and satisfaction that are absolutely remarkable, and more than well worth the effort of simply opening up to them.

So, to get started in this tour of the miraculous, let’s begin at the beginning – the beginning of our overall story as a species, because if we want to understand who we are, and ultimately grow into the best possible versions of ourselves, it really is essential to know where we came from, which will help us gain a deeper understanding of what an absolute miracle it is that we are here at all. And the process of cultivating a profound sense of appreciation for the miracle of life that we are being given every moment of every day, is the real beginning of our joyful journey to higher ground.

So, let’s take a deep breath and travel back roughly 300,000 years ago, to the emergence of our species—Homo sapiens—on this planet. When you give yourself time to really pause and reflect on this, you begin to see that our origins are both humbling, as well as awe-inspiring.

Scientists estimate that over the course of Earth’s history, somewhere between 5 billion and 50 billion different species have evolved. Now that’s truly a staggering number, but here’s the real kicker and it’s a bigger number: about 99 percent of them have gone extinct. This means that entire species came into existence, thrived for a while, and then, due to environmental shifts, predators, disasters, or simply because they just couldn’t adapt, they disappeared, and they disappeared forever.

Which brings us to a profound and rather unsettling question: why not us? Why didn’t we, too, disappear like so many countless others? It’s an obvious question because, after all, if you look at the big picture, human beings aren’t exactly a strong pick for survival. We are not the biggest animals. We are not the strongest. We’re certainly not the fastest, and in terms of physical defenses, we’re laughably weak. No fangs. No claws. No protective armor. Not to mention the fact that we can’t even fly.

As a result of this, our position on the food chain is ridiculously low. Think about trying to run away from a cheetah, or outswim a shark and we’d lose the fight every time. And in terms of pure survival, put a naked human being in a fight to the death against a little squirrel and the squirrel would take us out in seconds. With its sharp claws and its ability to jump into attack mode, it would rip out our eyes and slit our throats almost instantaneously. What can we do with just our bare hands? And that’s just a fight with a relatively small creature. Let’s not even think about our survival odds barehanded against a lion, a tiger or a bear.

On top of all this, when it comes to reproduction, the odds of our survival get even more pathetic. We have a comparatively small number of offspring and our infants are born completely helpless. Indeed, a human baby is probably the most vulnerable creature on Earth. It takes them years to become even remotely self-sufficient, which makes us an extreme outlier in the animal kingdom, where many creatures are walking and foraging within hours of birth. So, from a statistical standpoint, according to the laws of the survival of the fittest, we should have been wiped out long ago. Yet, we’re still here. And not only did we survive, but we’ve thrived, eventually becoming the dominant life form on the planet.

So, how in the world did this happen? What was the game-changer? What was nature’s secret ingredient that allowed this vulnerable, physically weak and unimpressive species to outmaneuver and outlast so many others?

The answer, of course, is sitting quietly inside of each and every one of our skulls right now: the human brain. It’s easy to overlook, but this small, three-pound organ—about the size of a medium cantaloupe—is nothing short of a miracle of evolution. Though it occupies less than 100 cubic inches, it is, without question, the most sophisticated masterpiece every produced by nature. Packed with approximately 100 billion neurons, each one connected to thousands of others, it forms a vast and intricate network capable of truly astonishing things. Each neuron can fire between 200 - 1,000 times per second, so we’re talking speeds in the milliseconds here. Truly astounding!

At first, our ancestors' brains gave them the ability to craft simple tools—sharp-edged stones that allowed them to cut, scrape, and build in ways no other species could. But that was just the beginning of the revolution. With those primitive tools, we began to rewrite the rules of survival.

But then something truly incredible happened. It is largely hypothesized that at first, all we humans were running on was pure instinct. We didn’t have the ability to think rational thought. Suddenly, at some point, for reasons unknown, our brains took on a third more fat and we developed our prefrontal cortex. We became able to think rational thought and language developed, vastly expanding our capabilities, followed by writing, and everything really started to change for us because we could evolve and pass our understanding beyond the barriers of time and space.

Over time, we became hunters, gatherers, farmers, builders, and eventually, creators of civilization itself. As millennia passed, this remarkable brain of ours allowed us to harness fire, cultivate crops, construct shelter, and later, to write poetry, compose symphonies, and build spacecraft that could escape Earth’s gravity.

So, we each have our own modern human brain and let’s take a look at it from a modern perspective, which reveals a most remarkable fact: it’s estimated that it would take a dozen of the most advanced computers in the world about 45 hours to perform what your brain does in just one second. Think about that for a moment. And then take it one step further, our brain is involved in a key area that no computer will ever be able to touch – it can feel! And boy can it feel. We can literally feel hundreds of millions of different feelings. We don’t have the time here to get into all this here, but you get the point.

You are walking around every day with a mind of such complexity, speed, and brilliance that it outshines the most cutting-edge machines ever built. And yet, most of us rarely, if ever, give it any thought, let alone tap into even a fraction of its potential.

This brings us to an essential insight: while our brain is the very thing that has allowed us to survive and dominate, it is also the key to something even much greater than all of this – It is the key to our growth, our transformation, and, yes, even our happiness. Now, evolution didn’t just stop when we made it to the top of the food chain. The brain itself is a dynamic, ever-changing organ. Through the miracle of neuroplasticity, it is constantly rewiring, adapting, and evolving in response to what we think, feel, and experience.

So, our brain truly is an incredible masterpiece. But let’s not forget: with great power comes great responsibility. The very intelligence that has given us so much can also lead us terribly astray. It is capable of fear, anxiety, self-sabotage, and truly destructive habits. We see this everywhere—from personal struggles with self-worth to global crises fueled by greed and lust for power. Our human brain is a real double-edged sword. It can create miracles—or it can create truly horrible mayhem.

That’s why conscious evolution is so critical now, perhaps more than ever. We are at a pivotal point in human history where the challenges we face—whether ecological, political, or psychological—demand a new level of awareness and intentionality.

And this is where the NeuroHarmonic Method comes in. Designed to consciously engage the brain’s natural capacity for growth and transformation, it’s about learning to harness your neural wiring in ways that uplift your life, enhance your clarity, and empower you to live with purpose, compassion as well as passion, and peace. It is a framework for harmonizing your intelligence with your highest aspirations. The same brain that once helped your ancestors carve flint and build fires can now be tuned—harmonized, if you will—to unlock your deepest potential.

Imagine what your life would look like if you could access more of your brain’s innate power—not just for survival, but for true flourishing. What if you could train your mind to break free from limiting beliefs, to rewire patterns of fear and doubt, and to create new habits of joy, resilience, and creativity? What if you could harmonize your inner world so beautifully that it naturally radiates out to transform your outer world as well?

This is not a pipe dream. This is the promise of the NeuroHarmonic Method. And it begins with recognizing where we’ve come from and nurturing a deep sense of gratitude for life itself, as well as for the evolutionary miracle of the human brain. And it continues with a commitment to expanding your awareness of that miracle within yourself, day by day, breath by breath.

We have some rather detailed plans regarding the release of the NeuroHarmonic Method which will include a revolutionary new book and a powerful website that will host many different innovative formats including video presentations and a specially trained NeuroHarmonic Artificial Intelligence Service. And I’d like to close this episode with a poem that was co-produced with this service.

When I was researching the part of this podcast that dealt with the remarkable idea that it would take a dozen of the world’s most advanced computers over 45 hours to do what our brain does in just one second, we decided to put that information into an artistic form and ended up writing this poem. Pay close attention to the words because it really sums up the deeper meanings of this episode. It’s called “The Symphony in a Second,” and see if this rings any inner bells for you…

In a single second, your brain conducts a symphony no machine can follow— light enters your eyes, and is not only seen but recognized, interpreted, remembered, and folded into the ongoing narrative of you. Your breath adjusts without command. Your heart adapts to emotion before you speak its name. Memories rise like whispers, and feelings surface like the wind before a storm. You balance the physics of posture, weigh the weight of a word, and anticipate the consequences of a choice you haven’t even made yet. In that same second, dozens of the world’s greatest computers—humming in bunkers, consuming megawatts— would still be struggling to simulate the visual field of a child watching a butterfly land. And yet you do it while thinking about dinner, holding a loved one’s hand, and remembering a song from thirty years ago. This is not processing. This is presence. This is not code. This is consciousness. The marvel is not just that the brain is faster— it’s that it is alive. Aware. Awake. And, when tuned rightly, capable of touching the Infinite.

So, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep you eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As you may recall, we began the last episode by saying that we are deeply involved with preparations for the release of our next project, “The NeuroHaronic Method.” As a short introduction to it, I discussed two critical times in my life that helped lay the foundations for my lifelong study of personal growth. These were the metaphysical events that surrounded the sudden death of my father followed by my unexpected introduction to the idea that there has been a deep level of wisdom that has manifested itself in every human culture since the beginning of civilization. This remarkable intelligence is commonly called the “Wisdom of the Ages” and is by no means limited to ancient times.

Now, in this episode, we’re going to complete that part of the story and then we will go into a deeper overview of the “NeuroHarmonic Method” itself. Again, the purpose of all of this is to present you with ideas that you may find useful as you continue your own path of personal growth, which in my view, is a journey that we are all on in one way or another, because the innate desire for real growth is deeply tied to authentic human happiness. Some of us have begun to realize that we are on this quest and some of us haven’t. Yet.

I ended the last episode with a short description of the course that I took in college that was simply called – World Religions, which started to open my eyes to the prospect of evolving my own consciousness. Prior to that, I never even considered the idea.

The next important thing that happened to me in this regard took place in the early part of 1968 when I, along with the 70 million other baby boomers I came in with, heard the news that the Beatles had travelled to India to study meditation.

Besides being a major global media event, they were actually making some kind of a statement about inner growth, which was in absolute congruence with the music that they were making at the time. Not only were they deeply involved with the process of changing Western Culture, by extension they were also affecting the entire world.

Personally, since my generation first came under their spell in 1964, I basically did whatever they did. I mirrored their hair style and eventually their drug use, along with their overall counterculture understandings. So, because they started studying with a teacher known as the Maharishi, by early 1970, I had gone to his outpost in Philadelphia and started doing what is known as Transcendental Meditation, which was a form of mantra meditation. Of course I wasn’t what you might call a “sincere seeker,” I was still just a devotee of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Still, I practiced that form on and off for about a year but I stayed pretty much on the surface. Eventually though, along with the changing times, my quest for inner truth got deeper and I ran into a rather profound form of meditation that finally began to melt the inner ice that had frozen my insides for so many years.

Since then, I’ve explored and experienced several dozen other approaches as well, including some rather advanced mindfulness modalities, but that one form of meditation that I started back then, has continued to be the basic foundation to my overall approach.

Again, this is just some background to set the stage for the emergence and creation of the “NeuroHarmonic Method” and in that vein, something critical happened to me about ten years ago, when I started to learn about of a certain set of understandings that was becoming popular among some brilliant neuroscientists and psychotherapists.

They had begun to examine the effects of meditation, contemplation, and mindfulness on the neurology of the people who regularly practice these methods and their findings were astounding. This was especially true regarding something called neuroplasticity, which is our brain’s remarkable ability to physically transform itself, a truly amazing feat which it does constantly,

The implications of these neurological validations of the positive effects of certain methods of personal growth are massive because they confirm a major idea that we can each wholeheartedly embrace and that is that we are not stuck! We’re not stuck with the negativity we carry. We’re not stuck with where we are at all, and most importantly, we are not even stuck with who we are. We can positively reshape the way our brain works, which changes the way we see ourselves and our lives in the world, which basically changes everything. Again, we were born with this ability and we still have it.

So, to sum up this part of the story, this whole world of personal growth is truly a game changer and I’ve been lucky enough to have been involved with it for close to fifty-five years. And I’ll add with all humility, that there is a decent chance that I might be starting to scratch the actual surface of it!

Now to make a very long story very short, this is, in essence what has led to the development of the NeuroHarmonic Method. So let’s move on to a fairly quick overview of it, which I hope you’ll find inspiring.

It has emerged over what has basically been a lifetime of experience, study, and inner exploration. You've been hearing echoes of it in some podcast episodes, woven into stories and reflections, and maybe you’ve even experienced an occasional “aha” moment from some of its information. But now, I’d like to offer a fuller view of what it is, and why I believe it may hold real value for people in all walks and stages of life.

Again, the NeuroHarmonic Method was not born in a lab or a university classroom, although its roots certainly drink from the well of neuroscience. Nor did it spring fully formed from a single moment of insight. It came together gradually, over many decades, from lived experience, long meditation, and a commitment to understanding both the workings of the human mind and the deeper currents of consciousness that flow beneath the surface.

Also, as I’ve mentioned in a few earlier episodes, I’ve spent over five decades of serious study with a talented and deeply profound meditation teacher whose work reaches beyond theory and technique to a direct experience of an extrtemely joyful, yet profoundly peaceful state of awareness.

At the same time, I’ve been a lifelong student of human intelligence as it manifests throughout the brain and nervous system—how it functions, how it breaks down, and how, under the right conditions, it can harmonize with its own, inherently higher states of being. The NeuroHarmonic Method lives at the intersection of those two streams: ancient spiritual insight and modern neuroscience, so in a broader context, you could say that this is “Where Science Meets the Soul.”

So, essentially, what ss NeuroHarmonics? At its heart, the NeuroHarmonic Method is about attunement. It’s an easy, yet practical way of harmonizing your brain and nervous system so you can resonate with your own higher frequencies of truth, clarity, and love. Just as a musical instrument can be tuned to produce harmonious sound, so too can the mind-body system be gently brought into alignment with its natural, unburdened state.

But here’s the key: we’re not just talking about mental wellness or stress reduction, though these often happen along the way. This is about a truly transformational alignment. The NeuroHarmonics process tunes your entire being—your breath, thoughts, feelings, attention, and even your past—into coherence with the deeper intelligence that animates life itself. This is not a belief system. It’s a method of practice. This is something that you do, and the results are experiential.

Let’s start with the breath, which is appropriate because that’s where life began for each one of us – it started when we took in our first breath, and obviously it ends when we breathe our last one out.

But the power of the breath goes beyond even that. The breath is the portal to the animating force of life within, and naturally, breath is central to the NeuroHarmonic Method. Not just as a relaxation tool, but as a living bridge—a thread that connects your conscious awareness with the ever-present rhythm of your existence.

And we’re not just speaking of oxygen exchange here. It’s something subtler. The breath becomes a way of remembering presence itself. It becomes the moment-by-moment invitation to return—to come back from the endless distractions of the mind and rest again in the comforting reality of the fact that you are alive.

Through this breath-centered awareness, the nervous system can begin to down-regulate from stress, anxiety, and hypervigilance. But even more than that, it can begin to entrain with something greater. It can tune in to what we call our own NeuroHarmonic Frequencies, which are states of being that are marked by deep calm, clear focus, inner joy, and spiritual receptivity.

Now let’s turn our attention to our overall consciousness itself and look at what we call The Jumping Monkey and the Silent Signal. In the podcast episodes, you’ve heard me talk about the “jumping monkey” of the ordinary mind. This refers to that incessant inner narrator who’s always leaping from one concern to the next, dragging us along like an annoying, impatient child in a toy store. But even beyond that, this is the foundational source of our nagging self-sabotage, which is at the very root of most of our issues.

The NeuroHarmonic Method doesn’t fight this monkey part of the mind. It doesn’t suppress or judge it. Instead, it re-educates its attention. We learn to feel the difference between the monkey’s chatter and the silent signal that’s always present beneath it. That signal is often felt as a quiet invitation toward peace. Sometimes it’s experienced as an inner warmth. Other times, as clarity, lightness, or a kind of gravitational pull toward stillness. That signal is always there. It is part of our higher mind and what changes is our availability to receive it. Critically NeuroHarmonics trains us to step into that availability.

The next part of this quick examination deals with life’s difficulties, disappointments, and challenges. Now for me, I don’t need to pretend that my life has been particularly easy. Of course, everything is relative, but I’ve certainly had my fair share of significant difficulties. As Bob Dylan once wrote “If you don’t believe there’s price for this sweet paradise, just remind me to show you the scars.” To one degree or another, we all know what he’s talking about there.

For me, there were countless times when things fell apart just as they were coming together. Interlaced with periods of fatigue, heartbreak, and confusion, and accompanied by that certain exhaustion that comes not just from effort, but from the friction of experiencing constantly unfulfilled potential. At times, my life felt like I was living an enforced version of that famous Winston Churchill quote, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

But NeuroHarmonics isn’t about denying or bypassing life’s challenges. It’s about metabolizing them by finding the harmonic resonance within every event, even the ones that threaten to undo us. Because even the most painful experiences contain higher, hidden frequencies which you can learn how to resonate with, if you learn how to listen carefully enough.

So, this is an ideal place for us to stop. We’ll continue along these lines in the coming episodes because in reality, we’re just getting warmed up. As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As we resume our regular podcast series, the Better Angels Publishing Company is about to embark on its next phase which will feature our newest release, “The NeuroHarmonic Approach,” with its catch-phrase, “Harmonize Your Intelligence - Transform Your Life.”

Now, obviously, that’s quite a mouthful, but this is a significantly powerful and innovative program and it’s evolved quite a bit over the past year, so, I’d like to give you quick overview of where it stands now and I think you’ll be fascinated by the information. Also, as with everything that we produce, our intention is to create a resource that you can use to help you achieve your highest goals as you continue along your own path of personal growth, which is by nature, in a constant state of evolution, expansion and change.

So, let’s dig into some of its basics. And as we do, I suggest that you engage in what is often called the “Beginner’s Mind,” which means approaching the material as though you’re hearing it for the first time - even if you’ve encountered similar concepts before. When you do that, you naturally let go of old frameworks, open to a fresh perspective and new insights tend to appear. I know that’s always been my experience over the years.

To put it into context, the origins of the NeuroHarmonic Approach began with some extremely deep experiences that I had many years ago, so let me offer a bit of the backstory, to help you get a sense of how this work came to be, which might help enhance the overall meaning of the material.

As you may be aware, the central focus of my adult life has been the exploration and practice of what we’ve come to call personal growth, which is a path of self-discovery that emphasizes the deepening of awareness.

The seed of this pursuit was planted several decades ago, with the sudden death of my father. At age sixteen, it was a devastating shock for me, but it was also accompanied by certain experiences that, for lack of a better word, I can only describe as being metaphysical. I’ve talked about these before, in my memoir Wilt, Ike & Me, and in some earlier podcast episodes, but for the purposes of this introduction, I want to touch on them here again, briefly.

First, the night before he died, I had a vivid, precognitive dream of exactly how I would learn of his death. In precise detail, it included the exact time and place, as well as all of the people who were involved. Then the dream came true the very next night, exactly the way I had dreamt it. Living through those moments is still one of the most unusual experiences I’ve ever had, because it was like going through a strange blend of past, present and future, almost like being in a déjà vu that lasted for several minutes.

Then, about six months later, I had another remarkable dream. In it, my father appeared to me - joyful and full of life. When I asked him about his death, he smiled and told me that he It wasn’t real. “There is no death,” he said. “It’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about Him. That’s all that it is.”

At that point in the dream, he had me give him back his ring, which I had been wearing regularly since his passing. When he touched the ring, the whole room turned into light and I woke up. Then in waking life, just a few hours later that same day, his ring mysteriously disappeared from my locker during gym class - even though the locker was clearly locked and undisturbed, and everything else inside was untouched, including my watch, my other gold ring and my wallet with some cash in it.

Although I’ve described these circumstances many times, I’ve never been able to truly express what they really did to me. But in hindsight, it’s obvious that these events marked a time when some seeds of deep change were planted within me, even though they would take several years to unfold.

After some time, I came to two powerful conclusions. The first one is that there is far more to this life than meets the eye. Even though we think we’re in an advanced society, we actually understand very little about what’s really happening here. Thomas Edison once put it this way, “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.” And this was from a major genius who is still considered to be one of the greatest inventors of all time. The fact that this was his point of view should speak volumes to us.

So I began to ask myself – Even if it was just in a dream, how could I have experienced a precise visual precognition of events that hadn’t happened yet? The details in that dream had been crystal clear and when the events happened in reality, it was 100% accurate. What does that say about the nature of time? It was completely confusing tome, and of course I’m not alone. Even Einstein himself once said that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Now obviously, I’m no Einstein and probably neither are you.

Also, I had to wonder - how could my father’s ring have vanished into thin air when I knew without question that the locker was locked and undisturbed when I got back from gym, let alone the fact that my watch, my other ring and my wallet with cash in it were all still there. It made no sense. It simply defied all logic.

So, the two dreams – the precognitive one of his death, and the one where I gave him back his ring and then it mysteriously disappeared the next day, put the seeds of some deep thoughts in my head. Which makes sense, because as you can imagine, this sudden and major disruption of time, space and logic was a pretty big deal for an average sixteen-year-old kid.

Which brings me to the second conclusion I drew from those days. My father’s dramatic death was totally unanticipated. The massive heart attack that he suffered took him instantly, and neither he nor any of the rest of our family had the slightest idea that a tragedy of this magnitude was about to befall us. For me, this rude introduction to your world being turned upside down by a sudden death drove home the undeniable fact that life can change, or end, at any moment. It happened to him and it could just as easily happen to me. So, like a thief in the night, the idea of the ultimate ticking time bomb got planted somewhere deep within me.

As I began to live my life in the new reality that followed, on a deep intuitive level, while I sensed that it was important to resolve the existential questions that were beginning to appear within my mind, the ticking time bomb kept reminding me that I better get on with it because I might not have that much more time. Of course, we’re all in the same boat on this, because regardless of external appearances, nobody has any guarantees here. These events happened nearly sixty years ago. This is how I felt about it all back then. And this is how I still feel now.

To continue on this track of early experiences that became critical to my interest in personal growth, during college, I took a course called World Religions. Now I wasn’t a serious student at all. In fact, it would be a stretch to consider me a student at all. Academics were more like a nuisance you had to deal with while you lived rest of your college life. The freedom of it alone was intoxicating. The times had gotten pretty crazy back then and as far as being a student, you could say that I had the attention span of a housefly mixed with the philosophical depth of a skunk, so the general odor emanating from my academic life wasn’t all that pleasant.

With that being said, I don’t even remember why I took World Religions. I’m sure I didn’t have any real interest in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I took it because it might have been a “gut course,” which in the parlance of my esteemed fraternity, meant that it didn’t require much work to be able to get a good grade. As you can extrapolate, I had gotten in with a pretty smart bunch of guys.

Anyway, I ended up in this class and to my extreme surprise, after a little while, I became quite interested in it. We studied all of the world’s major religions and the teacher’s point of view was that in essence, they all had the exact same basic understanding, which was that there is one God, who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. And as human beings, each one of us has come here to grow into the best possible being that we can and that individually we can grow out of the world’s chaos, emerge into the higher realms and ultimately merge with God, even while we’re still alive. In fact, according to him, you could say that this is the actual purpose of life here.

As you can surmise, the teacher was quite a learned man and taught that this universal truth that contained all of these deeper understandings, was generally known as the “Wisdom of the Ages.”

Now one thing I’ve learned in my life is that you never know when something profound is going to come into our consciousness and take you in a new direction. You often don’t see it coming and you don’t know why or how it happens. It just does.

In this case, I wasn’t looking for anything other than just an easy way to get a good grade that would boost my cumulative average, so that I could get into a major law school. But without having the slightest idea about it, I subtly found myself moving down a completely different track, and unwittingly, this whole “Wisdom of the Ages” thing took up residence somewhere deep in the back of my mind.

There was just something new and gripping about the whole thing The concept that there was a universal truth that had been expressing itself through wise men and women in every culture since the beginning of human history was brand new to me. It was also the first time I had seen beyond the walls of different religious dogmas to the view that essentially, they all had the same basic message - that as a human being, you could somehow evolve your consciousness and then actually merge heart, mind, and soul with God. It was all deeply intriguing. Not to mention the fact that the wise ones said the bliss of living in this elevated state of being was beyond human comprehension. It really captured my imagination.

And on top of all this, the American status quo was crumbling from the mushrooming counter-culture movement, Marijuana and psychodelia seemed to be everywhere, fueling it along, and the mind-expanding music that played our soundtrack saw to it that we never missed a beat. You get the picture.

And I’d also like to add one of my favorite quotes about those days from the great comedic master, Robin Williams who always insisted, “If you can remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.”

Well, this is a great place for us to stop. We’ll continue the journey in the coming episodes, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The last episode ended on the evening of April 5, 1968. I was unexpectedly leaving Washington DC as my college had been abruptly shut down following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was in a friend’s car and as I looked back, I could see that the clouds in the darkening sky were flickering red, reflecting the light of the fires that were burning, as violence had begun to break out in the city. Within a week, 1,200 buildings had been burned, 12 people were killed and 14,000 federal troops were still occupying the nation’s capital.

Now even though the murder of Dr. King was one of the most tragic and deeply disturbing events that could possibly have happened, I am not going to focus on the assassination itself, or on the profoundly traumatic effect that it had on the country. Thousands of articles have been written about it by hundreds of authors who have a much deeper understanding of history than I do.

Instead, for the purposes of this podcast series, which again focuses on the ways that consciousness began to evolve in those days, as witnessed through my own personal lens, there are a few key points that I would like to bring up.

The first one is that Dr. King was a far greater figure than the iconic public servant that is presented in the current annals of American history. Even though he was one of the primary founders of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as one of the nation’s most inspirational orators, there was much more to him than that.

He had a highly enlightened view of human potential as well as of its ultimate destiny. As such, he was continually expressing some of the deepest essential truths concerning human wisdom and understanding. In reality, he was at the very forefront of the enormous expansion of consciousness that was beginning to take shape back then. And it is truly hard to grasp how far ahead of his time he really was.

The easiest way to realize this is by looking at his lofty position on non-violence, both as a means for resolving conflict, as well as for moving the evolution of humanity forward. For the sake of clarity, let’s compare it with the law of the jungle, which has been the basic modus operandi of humanity since civilization began.

As a species, our knee-jerk reaction to the seemingly dog-eat-dog world we live in can be summed up in one basic phrase - might makes right. It began in the time of the caveman, as tribe fought against tribe, and over time, man began the process of inventing weaponry. Primitive spears and clubs turned into bows and arrows and swords. And thus, the arms race began.

To our great misfortune, it has continued, unabated since then and the constant development of ever-increasing firepower has only served to heat things up. Tragically, even though times have changed dramatically, this basic concept of settling disputes has remained exactly the same. When push comes to shove, we resort to good old fashioned brute force. From the one-on-one fist fight, all the way up to massive conflagrations fought between millions of soldiers, it’s still the same old story. One side prevails due to its superior weaponry, along with its unbridled willingness to inflict severe pain and death on the other side. And of course, it doesn’t matter how many innocent people have to suffer and die. What difference does that make when it comes to getting what you want?

Now, even though this unenlightened unconsciousness has remained unchanged since the dawn of human history, remarkably, throughout every era, certain people have emerged who seem to be tapped into a deeper level of understanding. With a higher and more compassionate perspective, non-violence is usually the central theme of their approach and from a very early age, Dr. King was clearly one of them. Indeed, he spent his entire short life trying to elevate human awareness to this higher viewpoint.

At the root of his understandings was the work of Mahatma Gandhi, whose brilliant use of non-violence helped overthrow the brutal British rule that had subjugated the Indian people for nearly a century.

His interest in Gandhi grew over time, and following his successes with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Dr. King felt the desire to travel to India to gain a deeper understanding of the life and teachings of this unlikely, yet remarkable leader. Finally, on February 3, 1959, he and his party, which included his wife, departed for a six-week visit to the ancient land. “To other countries I may go as a tourist,” he told reporters when he arrived at the airport. “But to India I come as a pilgrim.”

His aim was to study how political goals can be accomplished through the use of non-violent methods, rather than through the use of brute force. According to Gandhi, it was the fundamental difference between using the higher parts of our hearts and minds, rather than just relying upon the primitive, survival-based impulses of anger and fear.

The visit proved to be an extremely powerful experience for him and he stated that it had helped clarify and empower his dedication to alleviate “the suffering, the exploitation, the injustice, and the degradation of human beings.”

These noble, universal feelings had only grown since his return, and when he formally came out against the war in Vietnam, he also stood against the horrible injustices of the economic exploitation practiced by “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out, with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”

Along with his stance on non-violence, there is one associated factor regarding the tragedy of the King assassination that I would like to mention at this point. In general, as far as race relations in the United State had been concerned, black people had always been delegated into a fundamentally subservient position in the society. While it was within their civil rights to express their views regarding the racial injustices that existed in the country, it was always firmly understood that it had to be done in a basically respectful and civil manner.

But that mindset had begun to change a bit in the mid-sixties, and it was brought into focus on March 6, 1964, when Cassius Clay, the young boxer who had just become the heavyweight champion of the world, changed his name to Muhammed Ali and announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam, which was also known as the Black Muslims.

This controversial movement was part of a larger sentiment that had been gathering momentum that became known as “Black Pride” or “Black Power.” Along those general lines, the Black Panther Party was formed just two years later.

I remember these developments very clearly, and in particular, I was struck by something that Malcom X once said. An extremely charismatic leader, as the chief spokesman for the Nation of Islam, he summed up the emerging point of view in a way which I found to be particularly clarifying. “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they won't even admit the knife is there."

Now, of course Dr. King clearly understood the sentiments and feelings behind this point of view, but he never wavered on the issue of non-violence. As an ordained minister who took his work extremely seriously, the idea of using violence to accomplish the goal was completely out of the question.

As such, he felt that the motto of Black Power represented “essentially an emotional concept” that meant “different things to different people.” Even though it “was born from the wombs of despair and disappointment…and is a cry of pain,” he had deep concerns that “the slogan was an unwise choice,” because it carried “connotations of violence and separatism.”

In his view, the real way to create change was to amass political and economic power, and then use it to achieve ennobling change. As far as the higher destiny of the country was concerned, he believed that “America must be made a nation in which its multi-racial people are partners in power.”

Now, the truly remarkable thing about Dr. King is that he had the ethical and moral standing to bridge the gap between the various viewpoints and promote a more inclusive path. And this basic fact makes his loss to the country and to humanity itself all the more tragic.

With all of this in mind, the outpouring of grief that followed the assassination was staggering. The funeral was set for Sunday, April 7th in Atlanta, and in an official proclamation, President Johnson declared it to be a National Day of Mourning. All sporting and theatrical events were to be postponed, with all flags lowered to half-staff.

Of course, not everyone in the country was aligned with the idea of paying respect to the memory of Dr. King. Lester Maddox, the staunchly segregationist governor of Georgia always looked upon King as a major villain, who had no right stirring up the black population to go against the venerated laws and traditions of the South.

As funeral arrangements were being made, the governor was approached with the idea of having Dr. King’s body lie in state in the Capitol building in Atlanta, but he flatly refused. On top of that, he declared that no flags in the state of Georgia would be lowered to half-staff either.

When his position was relayed to Washington, although the federal government had no power over his refusal regarding the use of the state Capitol, it did have the power to enforce the lowering of all flags in the nation, so the flags in Georgia were lowered in accordance with the decree.

The funeral itself became an iconic moment in American history. At first, the city of Atlanta estimated that about ten thousand people would be in attendance. But by the time of the funeral approached, it became clear that this estimate was way off.

It took place on April 9, 1968, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was born and raised, and began with a private ceremony at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had co-pastored with his father. The intimate service was attended by just family and friends. But then something truly extraordinary happened.

A four-mile long funeral procession began from the church to Morehouse College, which was King's alma mater. King’s coffin was placed on a simple wooden wagon which was pulled by two mules. As the procession got underway, approximately one hundred thousand people joined in and walked along with it.

The global media coverage was extensive. Major American networks broadcasted the event live, which allowed millions of viewers across the country to participate in the intense feeling of collective mourning. Throughout the country, people who were driving in their cars spontaneously turned on their headlights, as though they were driving in a funeral procession.

The simple wooden cart being pulled by two mules highlighted King's commitment to the struggles of the poor and marginalized in society, while the throng that walked behind the coffin was also filled with hundreds of major celebrities who had flown in to show their respects. Leaders from the field of government and politics were mixed with the top tier of the county’s athletes and entertainers. The list of notables who walked in that somber procession is far too large to include here.

Again, as I’ve mentioned regarding the JFK assassination, I wouldn’t even try to put into words what it all felt like. Let’s just say that the injustice and the hopelessness of it was simply overwhelming,

And on top of it all, the fact that one of history’s major apostles of non-violence was brutally murdered for what he stood for was far beyond ironic and it soon became gasoline added to the fire; significant violence erupted in more than 125 American cities across 29 states. Nearly 50,000 federal troops occupied America’s urban areas. Thirty-nine people were killed and 3,500 injured. These uprisings produced more property damage, arrests, and injuries than any other uprising of the 1960s.

In all, it was just a truly, horrible feeling, and with that, let’s end this sad episode here. But even so, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, we took a quick look back at Robert F. Kennedy’s rise to the senate in November of 1964. Then we mentioned that in 1967, the soon to be anti-war candidate, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy had approached him with the idea of opposing President Lyndon Johnson for the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. But Kennedy had quickly turned the idea down. Now back to early 1968.

Everybody knew that Bobby was certainly no friend of LBJ’s. They had a long and well-known history of animosity between them. But again, for many significant reasons, he didn’t think the timing was right to mount a challenge against a sitting president, so he just stayed in the wings and watched Gene McCarthy try to take him on.

Then on March 12, 1968, something completely unexpected happened. The largely unknown senator from Minnesota, whose grass roots campaign had been largely run by a group of underfunded student volunteers, made a truly significant showing in the New Hampshire primary, and it proved to be a shocking upset.

Lyndon Johnson, who had the powerful name recognition of the incumbent, was well-funded and well organized with a huge staff of seasoned supporters. But he won only 49.4 per cent of the vote. And incredibly, McCarthy won a remarkable 42.2 per cent, which really took everyone by surprise. Suddenly it became obvious that the anti-Johnson, anti-war sentiment in the country was far larger and deeper than anyone had calculated.

Overnight, the equation had clearly changed and Johnson was not as firmly in the driver’s seat as he seemed to be. And as you can imagine, the outcome caught Senator Kennedy’s attention as well.

Now, there have been several biographies about RFK written over the years and many of them have examined the evolution and inner growth that led him up to this time. He had traveled extensively throughout the entire country and his views on the makeup of the American culture had broadened deeply.

I remember watching some of his speeches and noticing that there did seem to be something different about him, like a deeper level of empathy and compassion was emerging, especially for the underdog. And he seemed to have let his hair grow longer as well, maybe to emphasize his youth. Not that he needed it - he was only forty-two years old, afterall.

Anyway, it didn’t take him long to make up his mind. And just four days after the outcome in New Hampshire, on March 16, 1968, in the same room where his brother had done it eight years earlier, Robert F. Kennedy announced his intention to run for president of the United States.

Of course, his move was met with mixed reactions. Many people in the anti-war movement called him an opportunist, coming in only after McCarthy had courageously paved the way. But somehow, it seemed much bigger than that, like he was on a completely different level from the rest of the prospective field and was capable of producing the major change in the county that was so desperately needed.

“It is a time of difficult choices, a time of danger and opportunity,” he said. “It is a time for all of us to choose whether we will stand for what we believe in, or whether we will be silent.

“I believe that we can build a country where every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to live up to his or her full potential. I believe that we can build a country where every person is judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And I believe that we can build a country where the pursuit of happiness is not just a dream, but a reality.

“But in order to do that, we must first have the courage to change,” he continued. “We must have the courage to stand up and speak out for what we believe in. We must have the courage to demand better from our leaders, and better from ourselves.

“That is why I am here today. That is why I am running for President. Because I believe that we can do better. Because I believe that we must do better. And because I believe that together, we can build a country that is worthy of the ideals that we hold dear.”

So that was it. Wherever you stood - like it or not, with him or against him, anti-war or pro-war, Bobby was in the race. The game was on. And suddenly everything had changed completely. This was an enormous development, as well as a major surprise to a large portion of the country. Suddenly, the idea of serious opposition to the war in Vietnam had reached an entirely new level, to the delight of the entire anti-war movement.

Of course, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota wasn’t happy about it. He had personally approached Kennedy five months earlier, arguing for an anti-Johnson initiative and urging him to run, but Kennedy had squarely turned him down, saying he said he didn’t want to challenge Johnson at that point in time.

A lot of other people in the anti-war movement were skeptical about Kennedy as well, feeling that he was an opportunist who only found the courage to run after McCarthy had bravely paved the way. But Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing firmly against the war for nearly a year, felt otherwise. He felt that RFK’s entrance into the field was a real help because it made the case against Johnson even stronger. As he stated, “I think both Mr. Kennedy and Mr. McCarthy represent the kind of competence, dedication and relevant thinking on the basic issues that confront us today, that they are the kind of men that present the alternative that I think we need.”

But it really didn’t matter how you looked at it - the race for the presidency had suddenly and radically changed because Kennedy had now entered it. Besides his enormous name recognition, on a deep level he also represented the JFK Camelot mythology to a large portion of the general public, and his announcement had an immediate impact on the entire country. He quickly began active campaigning, targeting the key primaries that were the closest on the schedule. And when it came to managing a presidential campaign, he was a true expert, for he had overseen every aspect of his brother’s incredibly successful race.

Over the next few weeks, things began to settle into the new political normal and then, toward the end of March, suddenly, President Johnson’s office requested airtime from the three TV networks. He wanted to make a major speech regarding the status of the war in Vietnam. His appearance was scheduled for Sunday night, March 31 and at 9:01pm, the president began to address the nation.

He started by giving an extensive overview about the state of the war in Vietnam. He discussed troop levels and urged Hanoi to consider a recent US initiative for peace, after which he went on about the real chances for ending the war and praised the US determination to bring the situation to a successful conclusion.

After going through these topics for over an hour, he began to discuss his actual role in the process, “I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year,” he stated. “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour of a day of my time to any personal partisan cause or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office - the Presidency of your country.”

Then at that point, with no warning, he suddenly shocked the world. “Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,” he said. Then he quickly ended his speech.

It was a major bombshell and absolutely nobody had seen it coming, not even the closest members of his cabinet or staff. He had kept his decision completely private, but suddenly, here it was - Johnson was out and the presidential race was now wide-open.

Almost everyone believed that it was RFK’s entrance into the field that did the trick, but years later, it came out that Johnson’s health had been seriously deteriorating and he didn’t think he was physically up to the callosal demands that would be facing him. He had pretty much made up his mind several months before the McCarthy/Kennedy phenomenon had even begun to emerge.

But none of the reasons why he did it mattered. All that mattered was that he was stepping down, it seemed like a whole new era had begun, and suddenly, things seemed incredibly bright. With Bobby Kennedy, Gene Macarthy and several other key players emerging into the forefront, a true change of direction for the war, as well as for the entire country seemed imminent.

Although I don’t remember a whole lot from that particular time, I do remember that night very well. The next day, our entire campus seemed elevated. Who knows? Maybe the summer of love and the sudden emergence of flower power had something to do with it. But it really didn’t matter. All we knew was it was it seemed like we were in the Wizard of Oz; black and white had turned into color and we weren’t in Kansas anymore. April had begun, spring was about to dawn, and there was no telling what the future might bring. It was a great feeling.

Suddenly, this elevated mood seemed to light up the world. And although major challenges were still plentiful, a new sense of optimism had begun to set in and it was truly a magical time. But unfortunately, it didn’t last long, for only four nights later, on Thursday evening, April 4th at 6:05 pm in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brutally murdered.

Now, details traveled much more slowly in those days. Don’t forget, this was still a dozen years before the idea of 24-hour news coverage had even begun. I do remember hearing that Dr. King had been shot, but the next morning, the enormity of what was happening really got driven home. At my first class, the professor announced that school was immediately closing and that basically, we should all get out of town as quickly as possible. The best thing to do now was to just go home.

By that evening, I was on my way back to Philadelphia in a friend’s car and as I looked back at DC, I could see that the clouds in the dark sky were flickering red, lit by the color of burning flames. It was clear that some truly disturbing days lay ahead.

So, let’s let this terrible news mark the end of this episode. We’re entering into a tough time now, but as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As the last episode ended, we had begun to examine the speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had made as he publicly came out against the war in Vietnam. He talked about his lifelong commitment to non-violence, saying he had been compelled to speak against the war effort because the United States had become “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

He went on to link the war to the nation’s economic injustices, arguing for a fundamental moral shift in the country's priorities. He called the festering US involvement in Vietnam, “some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war.” And he declared that “America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic destructive suction tube.”

Indeed, he found that the amount of money that had been spent in producing such meaningless destruction, was simply obscene. Total expenditures had surpassed $252 billion by end of 1967, while over 25 million Americans were still living below the poverty line.

And don’t forget, our troops weren’t a bunch of volunteers fighting for a cause that they considered to be worthy. Far from it. This war was being fought by draftees. The country was under a mass conscription order, and if you were a male between the ages of 18 ½ and 26 and you didn’t have a deferment, you were either going to fight or you were going to jail.

On top of all these other issues, the number of black soldiers fighting in the war was out of proportion. You had nearly 80,000 black soldiers being forced to fight a war that was 8,500 miles away, while their families were largely treated as second class citizens back home.

But given all this, on a larger level Dr. King still had a sense that a major change of some kind was beginning to take place in the world and he stood squarely behind it. But it was going to take a lot of sincere effort and prayer. As he said, “Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance.”

“Somehow this madness must cease,” he continued. “We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.

“I speak…for the poor of America… I speak as a citizen of the world… as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. Then he concluded, “I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

Today, this is considered to be one the greatest speeches of his lofty career. But things were quite different back then, and to say that his decision about the war wasn’t well received would be quite an understatement.

But Dr. King was well aware of the probable opposition he would face as he went into the church that day. The idea of standing against the war had presented quite a difficult conundrum for him because it meant standing against President Johnson, who had been an enormous ally of the Civil Rights movement during the course of his entire presidency. He had been a powerful force of positive change in the lives of black people throughout the country, and the idea of opposing him on the war was rife with significant difficulties.

And indeed, it proved to be so. A large portion of the Civil Rights movement was shocked that King chose to oppose Johnson and the NAACP called the speech a “serious tactical mistake.” But the opposition in the mainstream press was far stronger than that.

The editorial board of the New York Times said that King’s position was an oversimplification and that when it came to the Civil Rights Movement and the War in Vietnam, "linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion." The Washington Post said that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." And Life magazine said his speech had been “demagogic slander that sounded like a script from Radio Hanoi.” But Dr. King stood strong and began stepping up his antiwar efforts.

As I mentioned earlier, there were three powerful events that happened in 1967 that would have a significant impact on the American involvement in Vietnam. Dr. King taking a stand against the war in April was the first. The second happened on June 20, 1967, when the controversial, yet enormously respected world-famous boxer, Muhammed Ali, was sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion. And just to be sure that everyone understood where the government of the United States stood on the issue of the war, on the same day that Ali was convicted, Congress voted 337-29 to extend the draft for four more years.

Finally, on November 30 of that year. Eugene McCarthy, the astute senator from Minnesota, formally announced that he would oppose Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic party’s nomination for president.

At the time, it seemed like a relatively minor event. McCarthy was basically unknown and even though Johnson’s popularity had begun to dip a bit at the time, it was common knowledge that he had a secure hold on the party and that there was no way he could be defeated for the nomination. McCarthy’s announcement seemed largely symbolic.

Now, let’s go back to January of 1968. But before we get into what began to unfold politically, let me give you a very quick overview of what I was doing at school, once I returned from winter break. The reason this will be so quick is because I was doing very little at the time, unless pledging a big fraternity and partying your brains out can be categorized as an accomplishment of any kind.

I wasn’t paying much attention to anything outside of the realm of my own little world and I barely paid attention there either. As far as the war was concerned, I rarely thought about it. I had a solid college deferment through to June of 1971 and the whole mess would certainly be over by then, so I had nothing to worry about. Other than that, I guess I had forgotten that I had come to college to learn anything, at least not scholastically. I was busy developing the attention span of a common house fly, along with the clarity and depth of a thin layer of mud. It’s not necessary for me to add any concrete details here. Just let your concept of absolute cluelessness fill in the blanks.

So, back to the political world. Shortly after his announcement, to everyone’s surprise, even though it was still relatively small, Senator McCarthy’s campaign began to gain some traction. It seems there was a little more anti-war sentiment in the country than most people had noticed.

At one point, it became generally known that, along with a few other groups, McCarthy had privately tried to convince New York senator Robert F. Kennedy to run against Johnson in the primary. But RFK was quite hesitant about it. Although he was unquestionably opposed to him, he felt that Johnson was in a totally secure position and that opposing him would be a bad choice for both the party and the country, as well as for his own possible future plans.

It’s important at this point, to step back a little and take a look at RFK or “Bobby” as he was generally called, who was in a completely unique position in the country at the time. To start with, he was probably one of the first major figures in the United States to be routinely referred to by just his first name. Whenever TV or news reporters mentioned “Bobby” everybody knew exactly who they were talking about.

And that’s because, as many of you know, he had become a major figure in America ever since his older brother, John F. Kennedy, had been elected president in 1960. As his tenaciously brilliant campaign manager, Bobby had overseen every aspect of the successful win. And then, as Attorney General, he became the most trusted member of the cabinet. Indeed, someone once asked JFK if Bobby was his number two man in Washington and he said that not only was his number two, he was also his number three, four, and five as well.

Then, during the horrible ordeal of the JFK assassination, Bobby was center stage with the family throughout the entire nightmare. In the months that followed, he rarely made appearances and when he did, the scars of agony and grief were deeply etched upon his face. But nine months after the assassination, something truly remarkable happened at the Democratic party’s national convention in Atlantic City on August 27, 1964.

It was the final day of the proceedings and they were going to show a film commemorating the life and accomplishments of JFK. The auditorium was packed and the program was being carried live on all the TV networks. Bobby was scheduled to give a very brief introduction to the film, and after a few preliminaries, he was finally introduced.

As soon as he walked onto the stage, the entire auditorium spontaneously erupted into a massive standing ovation. For the first few minutes, it was overwhelmingly powerful, but it quickly turned into something much more, as the crowd simply would not stop cheering. Even though he tried to speak several times, they wouldn’t let him and the standing ovation just went on and on. It seemed that a huge wave of emotion had been spontaneously released and was being showered upon him, as though the whole country was holding him tightly in a fond embrace.

It had not been organized, there was no demonstration of any kind and no accompanying music. It was just Bobby standing in front of several thousand people who were expressing their deep admiration and affection for him and what he stood for, including those golden days of Camelot that had been brutally stolen from the country. It went on like that for over twenty straight minutes and it was truly extraordinary.

A few months later, RFK decided to return to public service and was elected the United States senator from the state of New York. From 1965 on, along with being a major figure in American politics, he became an effective and widely respected United States senator as well.

Now, this is a perfect place to end this episode, as Senator Kennedy was about to make a political move that would have a major impact on the country. So, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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We ended the last episode with a quick look at the groundbreaking Beatles album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the powerful effect it had on popular music and on Western Culture in general. For many reasons, the album, which was released on May 26, 1967, seemed to elevate the mass consciousness of a significant segment of society to a new and higher level. And then a month later, on June 25, 1967, the old Fab Four took things up another notch.

On the first internationally broadcast television program to be beamed simultaneously around the world by satellite, the Beatles introduced their classic masterpiece, “All You Need is Love,” which became an instant anthem for those amazing days.

They had invited a bunch of guests to be on stage with them as they performed the song, including the Rolling Stones, the Who and many others. It turned out to be an incredible celebration and along with the music and the expanding tenor of the times, a new form of appearance had come into the world as well. It was the hippy look and it quickly became known as the uniform of the counter culture. It’s hard to describe because of its individualized, free and unencumbered, styleless style. But one popular phrase of the times sums it up - you just “let it all hang out.”

And the Beatles, along with everyone else who joined them on the stage, all wore it well. Now, there was nothing subtle about what was going on. They were clearly making a statement and the entire Western world reacted.

Shortly thereafter, the remarkable summer of love got under way, with its happenings, be-ins and other mass gatherings, boldly celebrating the emergence of this newly liberated way of being. The concept of Flower Power had been born and spread like wildfire, verifying the old adage that, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Now, I haven’t mentioned anything about what I was doing personally back then, but it was a pretty incredible year for me as well. As a senior, I was elected president of our high school, (which was a relatively big deal for its time and place), I had also met and fallen in love with my high school sweetheart, Sally, and we had our own magnificent, teenaged summer of love. And to top it off, the basketball team that my father had founded only a few years earlier, the Philadelphia 76ers, won the NBA Championship.

By the way, that high school romance of ours is still in full swing. We went on to get married, had a wonderful daughter, and as Sonny and Cher sang long ago, “the beat goes on.” However, for the purposes of this podcast narrative, what’s important here is that from my little perspective, everything seemed right with the world.

Finally, the endless summer came to an end and I soon departed to Washington, DC and entered American University. One of the very first things that happened to me there presents an accurate picture of both the nature of the times and of my personal state of mind. I was living in a dorm and on one of the first nights, we had a meeting of the residents of our floor. There were about sixty of us and it went on for over an hour.

Towards the end, the floor supervisor summed up the dorm rules and then added, “So when it comes to alcohol, as long as you’re not too drunk, you’re going to be okay. If you are too drunk though, you’re going have to go before the disciplinary committee. Okay, so I guess you’re asking – “What is the definition of being too drunk?” he asked with a smirk.

“Well, if you get on the elevator and you’re too drunk to remember what floor you live on, or if you’re too drunk to remember what your room number is, or if you’re so drunk that you pass out in the hall before you even make it to your room - then you’re too drunk. If you’re less drunk than that, you’ll be fine.”

Everyone had a good laugh, like hey, we didn’t know college was going to be this much fun. But then, his entire demeanor changed and, sounding like a tough cop on the beat, in a curt, strict tone, he said, “Of course, if you’re caught smoking marijuana, you’re immediately expelled. We have no tolerance for that here.”

There was dead silence in the room and I thought to myself, “Who the hell is going to come to college and smoke marijuana?” It seemed like the most absurd idea in the world. “Why would anybody do that?” The mixture of college and marijuana seemed completely incongruous.

As you might deduct, at eighteen and a half years old, to coin an old phrase, I was as straight as they came. I had never smoked anything at all and had never had an alcoholic drink of any kind in my entire life. And that was fine with me. I had other plans. I was enrolled in the School of Government and Public Administration and following graduation; I would go to law school and then join my brother in the law firm my father had founded.

Anyway, it turned out to be a terrific opening semester for me. I went home for winter break to enjoy some sorely missed, extended time with Sally, and as the year came to an end, the only bad thing that I have to say about 1967 is that it turned into 1968.

So, here we go. But this takes us into some rather dark territory and intestinal fortitude becomes an absolute must. By now, you probably know that the first place to start talking about this year is with the ever-deepening quagmire of Vietnam. Although I hadn’t been particularly aware of it, besides everything else that had happened in 1967, it was also the year that a small, but significant portion of the American public had begun to question our involvement in that war.

Through it all, Lyndon Johnson kept reassuring the country that even though the financial and human costs had been high, our effort in Vietnam was proving to be more than justified and things continued to go quite well for us over there. However, his rosy picture darkened considerably when something called the Tet Offensive broke out at the end of January of 1968. Without warning, the North Vietnamese launched a massive, well-coordinated attack throughout the entire country, including the South’s capital city of Saigon.

As the brutal fight continued to rage on, it became an enormous blow to US public opinion in two significant ways. First, it showed that the optimistic spin that had been put on the war was deeply flawed. And secondly, it prompted something revolutionary in TV news. Due to enhanced technology, all of the networks began to cover the war in graphic detail, and kept it in the lead position of their major broadcasts.

This constant exposure brought the bloodshed home in a way that had never been seen before. Horrible images, filled with violent battle scenes brought the war into the living rooms of the American public on a nightly basis, which was deeply disturbing to the entire country. Suddenly, Lydon Johnson began to seem like a major liar and his approval ratings, which had always been robust, began to tank.

At its peak, his approval rating had been 74% with only a 15% disapproval. By the end of February 1968, primarily due to his mishandling of Vietnam, his approval rating had sunk to a dismal 41% with a seriously significant disapproval of 48%.

On a personal side note, I used to take the train to Philadelphia on a fairly regular basis to visit Sally, who was still in high school. I would travel to and from Union Station in Washington DC and I began noticing something eerie. On every trip. I would walk by a restricted area where there would be about 20 – 30 rather small, flag draped metal boxes with a military official standing nearby.

Soon, I became aware that these were coffins carrying the bodies of US soldiers coming back from Vietnam, and the human toll of it all began to dawn on me. I soon realized that these weren’t just some metal boxes in the hallway of a train station. No. In a very short time, each one of them would become the sad focus of deep mourning, as the family and friends of the fallen would try to make sense of their dear young ones taken far before their time. All of this death! And what was it that what we were we fighting for again?

At this point, to set the stage for what was about to come, it’s important to look back to 1967 once again, at three events that were to have an impact on the anti-war movement. The first one took place on April 4, 1967, when something truly extraordinary happened. After months of agonizing deliberations, and in a move that was incredibly controversial for the time, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. firmly and unequivocally announced his staunch opposition to the war.

In order to understand the significance of this, let’s remember that there have been very few people in American history who can match his moral and ethical standing. Of course, he is mainly remembered for his groundbreaking actions in the realm of Civil Rights, but as lofty as those accomplishments were, they are only a small part of who he really was.

For in essence, he had always considered himself to be primarily a preacher who had dedicated himself to doing God’s work. And as such, he stood for peace, equality, and dignity for all people, everywhere, not just for those aligned with the American point of view.

In a major address before a packed house at the Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King meticulously outlined his reasons for taking his anti-war stance.

He then began to address the issue of non-violence. Throughout his life, King had been deeply influenced by the work of Mahatma Gandhi and had espoused the path of non-violence in everything he did, especially in the inner cities of America. And because of that, he now couldn’t justify the hypocrisy of not opposing this massive war effort. “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government,” he said.

With those deeply striking and incredibly powerful words, let’s let this be the end of this episode. We’re just beginning this part of the story, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, I briefly described my grandfather, who was a lifelong mystic, and his reactions to the dream I’d had about my father and his ring, which was followed by its mysterious disappearance. I also mentioned another unusual incident concerning the ring that took place about twenty years later, when a friend told me about a vivid dream he’d had where my father had given him a message for me, saying that I should “remember the ring.”

Now this wasn’t a childhood friend, he knew nothing about my father, and had no idea if this message was going to mean anything to me at all. As you can imagine, the fact that it had come through a completely objective third party and had happened a full twenty years after the original incident made quite an impact on me.

So, that completes this part of the narrative. In summary, even though my life had been turned upside down by the sudden death of my father, which had been accompanied by two inexplicable events that had defied all logic, I put it all behind me, or so I thought. I continued with my eleventh-grade life, which basically meant that I returned to my everyday state of constant activity.

Now, as I’ve mentioned a few times earlier, this podcast narrative focuses on the massive evolution of consciousness that began in the early1960s, as experienced through my own individual lens, which brings us now to the middle of 1966.

On a larger level, at this time two huge influences were beginning to shake American society to its core – First, the enormous evolution of the Beatles and their profound impact on popular culture, and second, the war in Vietnam.

With the Beatles, as we mentioned in the last episode, at the end of 1965, they had come out with their revolutionary album, Rubber Soul, which George Harrison said was the first music they made when they were all regularly smoking marijuana. It had enormous appeal and was having a major effect on all of popular music.

By the way, their old friend Bob Dylan was breaking some new ground of his own. In March of 1966, he brought out a radical new song that caught everyone’s attention. Its free-wheeling, raucous sound was far more in the style of a New Orleans Dixieland band than of rock and roll. And in the wild chorus, with his background musicians singing along in high hysterics, he kept repeating the signature line, “Everybody must get stoned.”

The song was over four and a half minutes long and got a ton of airplay on almost every pop radio station. So, on a daily basis, with a clever twist of words and a message that was unmistakable, millions of music fans would listen to Dylan constantly urge them to try marijuana. It was quite an advertisement.

A few months later, the Beatles took it all one step further when they released their groundbreaking album, Revolver. Again, according to George Harrison, while Rubber Soul was the first album they made under the influence of marijuana, Revolver was the first one they made under the regular influence of LSD.

The easiest way to describe this remarkable collection of songs is that it was incredibly trippy. One song, “Love to You” followed the form of a classic Indian raga, complete with sitar and tablas. Nothing like it had ever been heard in the west before. Another major breakthrough was the soul-stirring “Eleanor Rigby,” which brought an entirely new level of depth to the Beatles repertoire. All the other songs on the album became instant classics as well, but one track, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” deserves some special attention because it was specifically designed to boost the evolution of consciousness.

Apparently, John Lennon had been influenced by a book called, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner. The book claimed that under the influence of LSD, it was possible to shed the limiting nature of constant ego identification and emerge into a higher, more enlightened level of awareness. And it gave step by step instructions on how to do it.

Supposedly, after Lennon bought the book, he took LSD and followed the instructions to a tee. Soon after that, he wrote the song, with the psychedelic nature of the music combined with the mind-expanding lyrics. He said he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting on top of a mountain, as he enlightened the public to the message of possible God realization that underlies the LSD experience.

“Turn off your mind relax and float downstream,” he sang. “It is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining, it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is being, it is being. That love is all and love is everyone. It is knowing, it is knowing…”

Some years later, George Harrison offered an interesting perspective on the song as well as on their evolving perspective at the time. “From birth to death all we ever do is think: we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought, another thought,” he said. “Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when the mind isn’t always active with thoughts. But you can turn off your mind.

“The whole point is that…the self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world. . . is just clutter.” Then he concluded, “The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. So, the song is really about transcending, and about the quality of the transcendent.”

Of course, this understanding about the higher nature of our consciousness was extremely advanced for its time. And whether the public understood it or not, the message was still pouring out to millions of people on a daily basis, subtly or not so subtly affecting their consciousness.

The innovative album caught on in a flash and the influence of psychedelic music began to grow significantly. Over the next few months, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds, the Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors all gained enormous popularity, along with many, many other groups.

A new idea of a higher, more evolved state of being was clearly being born in the culture. And speaking of the culture, in a larger context, something called the “counter culture” was beginning to emerge, which not only challenged the mainstream norms and values, but also advocated for social change. Embracing ideals of peace, love, and unity, it was all vibrant, inspiring, alive, and unmistakably - young.

But at the same time, another enormous, yet rather sinister influence was in the early stages of taking over the consciousness of the country as well. As you probably know, it was the ever-broadening tragedy of the war in Vietnam.

Even though no one seemed to be paying much attention to it, like an undiagnosed cancer, it just kept metastasizing. President Lyndon Johnson continued to insist that the constant build-up of US troops was the right thing to do because at all costs, we had to prevent communism from taking over the Pacific Rim. And the costs were getting pretty serious.

In 1964, we spent $53.4 billion on the effort in Vietnam. In 1965, we spent another $54.5 billion and in 1966, it escalated to 66.4 billion. That’s a total of $174.4 billion. Not that anyone looked at it this way, but in those three years, instead of being used for warfare, that amount of money could have abundantly fed well over a billion people.

And the human costs were building as well. The US troops which had numbered 23,300 in 1964, grew to 184,300 in 1965, then onto 385,300 by the end of 1966. And with that, the truly horrible number - how many people actually died there – kept swelling. In 1964, 216 US soldiers died. It grew to 1,928 in 1965, then onto 6,350 in 1966.

Now that’s just US troops. When it comes to how many of the North and South Vietnamese people died, no one really knows for sure, but an estimate of 10-1 is used as a conservative approximation. So here are the basically revolting numbers related to those three years of war - $174.43 billion just plain wasted on destruction, with a total of over 96,000 human beings needlessly killed.

Even so, at that point, there still was very little opposition to the war and President Johnson stood resolute and strong. Afterall, he wasn’t about to let the Pacific Rim go communist. And on a side note, he was damned if he was going to be the first US President to ever lose a war.

So that brings us to 1967, which would go down in history as a truly magical year. Many volumes have been written about it and there’s not a whole lot to say that hasn’t already been said. On the grim side, the US involvement in Vietnam got much worse, to nobody’s surprise. We went up another 100,000 troops to a deployment of a staggering 485,600 soldiers. And US deaths went up an additional five thousand to 11,363. That’s 17,713 families who buried their young sons and daughters who had died trying to protect the Pacific Rim from going communist. Not that any of us even knew what that concept meant.

So. the dark side had gotten darker. But incredibly, the light side was about to get much lighter. On May 26, 1967, the Beatles released what was probably the most monumental album of their entire career, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. This major phenomenon, turned the pop world completely upside down.

The album was filled with references to transcendent states of consciousness that were being now being experienced by millions of baby boomers around the world. It featured the most psychedelic song anyone had ever heard yet, called “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The music was absolutely hypnotic and the mind-altering lyrics broke radical new ground on many levels. The initials of the title happened to be LSD, but according to John Lennon, that was just a coincidence. However he always said it with a smile.

George Harrison took his Indian raga theme one step further in his song, “Within You, Without You.” It was what is called a “Satsang Song” in the Indian tradition because it expresses some of the deeper truths of their ancient wisdom. “Try to realize that it’s all within yourself, no one else can make you change,” he sang. “When you see beyond yourself you may find that peace of mind is waiting there. And the time will come when you realize that we’re all one and life flows on within you and without you.”

Meanwhile, on the very last song of the album, “A Day in the Life,” after a mind-blowing journey through some seemingly random news of the day, to mesmerizing music played by a 40-piece orchestra John hypnotically repeats the stanza, “I’d love to turn you on.” By then, several million people knew exactly what he was talking about.

Now, I still wasn’t one of them yet, but that part of the story is coming up soon. Which makes this an ideal place to end this episode. As you might guess, things keep on evolving, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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As the last episode ended, I had given a quick overview of my grandfather, who was a lifelong Orthodox Jew, but was also a mystic with his own set of metaphysical understandings, especially about what was happening in modern times.

Among his teachings, he used to tell us was that there are always highly evolved people living on Earth, who are here to help bring about the Divine Plan for the evolution of humanity. In the ancient tradition, such a person was called a Kal-El, which means “vessel of God.”

As a brief note about that term - when I first started reading Superman comics at about age eight, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Superman’s real name on his home planet of Krypton was Kal-El. I never gave it much thought and figured it must have been some kind of coincidence until several years later, when I learned that Superman had been created by two Jewish guys, Jerry Seigle and Joe Shuster. I guess they thought of him as a vessel of God doing good, so naming him Kal-El was no coincidence.

Also, when it comes to comic books, surprisingly, my first introduction to the idea that human beings could evolve into a higher level of consciousness came from reading about it in a comic book. I was around twelve and I still remember the moment when the concept first hit me.

After years of being devoted to Superman and Batman, I had gotten introduced to a new company called Marvel Comics and its highly innovative, new characters began to expand the horizons of my imagination. It still featured action stories, but they dropped in some extra tidbits. Like in one episode of the Fantastic Four, there was an alien named “The Watcher,” from an advanced race of beings, who had become friends with Reed Richards, the leader of the Fantastic Four.

One day, Richards wanders into The Watcher’s laboratory when he isn’t there and picks up a baton-like device. Suddenly he’s rooted to the ground, can’t move and his head begins to morph into a much larger size. The Watcher suddenly bursts in, grabs the baton out of Richards’s hands and brings him back to normal.

Once Richards is fully restored, The Watcher explains that the device he was holding was a “consciousness enhancer.” In those few seconds, it had moved him forward a thousand years and he had actually become a highly evolved human being of the far distant future.

As a fellow scientist, he asks Richards what the experience had been like. Richards says he couldn’t retain the details, but he could remember that he had become fully merged with the creative power of the cosmos and the inherent joy of being in that heightened state of awareness was indescribable.

The only thing I can say about being exposed to that idea is that it completely blew my mind. It was several years before that expression became popular, but that cosmic comic book really did it to me.

If it was possible for human consciousness to evolve to a significantly higher level, as an extrapolation, I began to wonder if it were possible for me to do it. And could I do it in this lifetime? A certain ideal seemed to take root deep inside my mind, almost like a trophy had been placed on some distant shelf in time to remind me to take up the quest to approach this noble goal at some later point in my life.

Anyway, let’s get back to my grandfather and his belief that the modern technologies, including television, were being used by God to expand human awareness and that there are always Kal-El’s or vessels of God on earth, helping to further his work.

Remember that Zayde, my grandfather, was the absolute spiritual head of our extended family and one day, to my sheer delight, he decided that the TV character, the Lone Ranger, was in reality, a Kal-El.

This basically changed the workings of our family because now, whenever the Lone Ranger was on TV, my grandfather had to stop everything and sit and watch the entire episode. Whatever was happening around him, lunch or dinner, party or celebration – it didn’t matter. He had to stop and watch the show.

Now, this was a terrific development for me because the Lone Ranger was my favorite TV program, and if it had something to do with God, it was all the better. Because in my book, watching the show was a million times better than sitting in Hebrew school for an hour and a half.

Zayde would watch each episode with total focus, and after it ended, he would give a short teaching on the moral of the story. Here’s one shining example that is still enshrined in my memory.

An hourlong origin special about how it all began was being shown, and we watched it together. As it started, the Texas Rangers were ambushed and left for dead by the bad guys. Tonto, the Ranger’s future Indian companion, comes upon the scene, realizes that one of the Rangers is still alive, and nurses him back to health. Since he’s the sole survivor, Tonto calls him the Lone Ranger.

A few weeks later, they find a big white stallion lying near a bush bleeding to death, apparently gored by a bull. The Ranger and Tonto spend weeks caring for it. Once it fully recovers, they tie a rope around its neck and lead it into an open pasture.

“Your horse was killed, and now Great Spirit has given you a new horse,” Tonto says, appreciating the synchronistic workings of the universe.

“He’s not my horse yet, Tonto,” the Ranger replies.

As they stand in the field, the horse feels its strength returning, and with its nose twitching, senses the call of the wild. The Ranger pats it on the head and slowly removes the rope. Then suddenly, he gives it a sharp slap on the rear.

The horse bolts forward and breaks into a mighty gallop, charging full speed to the top of a hill. It rears back on its hind legs, neighing in triumph, standing tall against the sky.

But when it comes back down on all four legs, a change comes over it. It tilts its head to one side, and then, as though sensing a call beyond the wild, it trots back over to the Lone Ranger and just stands there next to him.

“There, there, Big Fella,” the Ranger murmurs to him, gently stroking its muzzle. Then he turns to Tonto, and in a clam voice, filled with absolute certainty says, “Now he’s my horse.”

The show went to commercial and Zayde turned to me, his face glowing like he had been staring at a burning bush.

“You see?” he asked me. “It’s all about free will. God will never force you. He’s just waiting for you to choose to be with him. You can do it whenever you want, but it’s really up to you. God’s in no rush. He has all the time in the world. And more.”

Then, as always, he quoted some Hebrew or Yiddish phrase that I didn’t understand. “You know what that means?” he asked me. I never did.

“It’s simple. ‘In the dark, you’re blind. But in the light, you can see. So, stand in the light and open your eyes.’” Then he touched the middle of my forehead with his index finger. “There’s a lightbulb in there. But it’s up to you to screw it in and turn it on. Understand, Davy?”

So, that’s a brief introduction to this deeply esoteric man. Now let me tell you what happened when I told him about the incident with my dream and the disappearance of the ring.

As you may recall from the last episode, I had experienced a vivid dream with my father. At the end of it, I gave him back his ring and it dissolved into white light. Then, the following morning, after my first period gym class, I was shocked to find that the ring had mysteriously disappeared out of my wallet, which I had securely locked in my locker.

A few days later, during my regular weekly visit to him, I told my grandfather what had happened and he was completely transfixed. Every detail seemed to tell him something special. The fact that it took place in the lobby of the synagogue, the fact my father seemed younger and had a healthy-looking tan, the fact that he chuckled when I told him that he died and said that it wasn’t real, that it was just a trick…all these things amazed and delighted him.

Then, when I got to the part where the ring had dissolved into a white light which filled the room and that I felt a happy presence in the light, he got quite still and didn’t move for a few moments. I didn’t quite know what to make of it, so I went right into telling him how the ring disappeared out of my locker the next morning. After I finished, he seemed deeply moved.

“So, understand, Davy, that you were shown a lot here, especially at such a young age,” he said. “All that you need to grasp at this point is that this life is much more than it seems to be. Try to keep that idea in the back of your mind as you grow, because take it from me, it will always be true. Now matter how much you know, there will always more to learn. That’s just the way it works. As a path to infinity, it’s an infinite path, and it’s always more wonderful than you can ever understand, especially at your age. So, just keep opening up to it.”

He broke into a warm smile and said, “It gives you a lot to think about and there are a lot of maybes here for you to consider. The ring turned into light in the dream, then it disappeared the next day in real life. Maybe that means there’s a deep connection between the two realms,” he said. “Much more than most people know.”

“Also, Dad said there’s no death, that its just a trick God does to get people to think about him. So maybe you should give this whole thing a lot more thought. I’m sure that you will, over the years.”

“And you said that you both stood there, holding the ring and it felt like a bridge between you,” he continued. “Maybe he’s telling you that the bridge is real, that it’s still there and that you’re still connected, even beyond death. Maybe you’ll always be.”

“And you know what else? The ring turned into light and you felt yourself get pulled into it. What was that like?” he asked me.

“It was incredible,” I said. “It had a presence that was filled with comfort and joy and I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Maybe, that light took you into Shamayim (heaven). And maybe he wants you to remember that feeling. Remember what that taste of heaven felt like. Don’t forget, the reason we came here in the first place is to find our way back home, so maybe you should enshrine that feeling in your heart. and maybe it can help you get there somehow.”

“Now look, this whole thing is just like a lot of other things you run into in life. Maybe some of it was real. Maybe none of it was real. Or maybe all of it was real. Who knows? I do know one thing, though - you have the rest of your life to figure it out. And that probably won’t be long enough!”

His eyes were twinkling, and he gave me one of his glowing, impish smiles. He did this kind of thing all the time. He’d use the word “maybe” in the tradition of the great Talmudic teachers he’d studied for years. They don’t tell you things. They just plant seeds and inspire you to help them grow.

So, that’s the end of what he had to say about my seemingly metaphysical experience with the dream and the ring. But there is one other quick story I’d like to add, which took place about twenty years later.

One Saturday night, I was at a big party and out of nowhere, an old friend who I hadn’t seen in quite some time came over to me. He said that he’d had a strange dream recently and he needed to tell me about it.

In the dream, he was in a crowd of people and a platform rose up with a stranger standing on it. The stranger looked at my friend and said, “I am David Richman’s father and I want you to give him a message for me.” Then he lifted up his hand and my friend could see he was wearing a ring. Suddenly, the ring started glowing with light and the man said, “Tell David that I said to remember the ring.” Then he repeated himself. “Give David Richman this message. Tell him I said to remember the ring.”

My friend finished and looked at me quizzically for a moment. “I don’t know if that means anything to you, but I just felt I had to tell you.” You can imagine what an intriguing shock that experience was for me!

Well, there’s nothing more to add to this part of the story, so let’s let this be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, I described a most unusual dream that I had. My father had been dead for almost six months and I dreamt that he appeared to me, looking alive and happy. He told me that his death wasn’t real, that it was just a trick. And he went on to explain that there really isn’t such a thing as death, it’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about him.

Then he noticed that I was wearing his black star sapphire ring. He told me he didn’t want me to wear it anymore and, in the dream, I gave it back to him. At that point, a tremendous light appeared and everything dissolved into it. The light carried a wonderfully warm sense of happiness and joy in it and I woke up in an extremely elevated state of mind.

Let’s pick up the story there.

I began my day as usual. As I drove to school, I reflected on the dream from a psychological perspective. My second semester of psychology was almost over, and the mysterious workings of the mind were really starting to fascinate me.

As I thought about it, I was quite impressed with this dream as it had been a perfect mental placebo for me. In the theater of my mind, my father looked great. Healthy and smiling, he said he had never really died, and that it was only a PR stunt. He called it a gimmick, which I loved. It was a term he used a lot in the early days of the team, but I had forgotten all about it. Yet it was exactly the way he used to talk. Indeed, everything about him was familiar, comforting and reassuring. In short, he was just the way I would have wanted him to be if he were alive.

And there was also a strong God theme running through it, which made perfect sense because I was getting so much religious exposure every day. As the dream ended, I had seen this beautiful light, filled with an essence of peace, happiness, and contentment. I felt like I was finally coming back home and experienced an overwhelming love. Then I merged into it. It was all classic heaven stuff.

I didn’t know what to make out of my father’s ring though. I had given it back to him and it had turned into light, which started the whole heaven part. It probably had some subconscious meaning and I figured that I’d bring it up with my psychology teacher.

Anyway, as far as dreams go, it had been a real beauty. And if my mind’s purpose was to comfort me and bring me a little happiness and peace, it had certainly done its job. I felt great in the dream. And as a matter of fact, I was still feeling rather elevated from it as I drove along.

When I got to the school parking lot, I took the ring off and looked at it. I liked it, but I always felt a little odd wearing it. I had just turned seventeen, and it was the type of thing you’d see on a fifty-year-old man.

I didn’t care, though. It was his, and I was going to wear it for the rest of my life and give it to my kids. I put it back on and went into school.

It was a Friday morning, and I had gym first period. When I got to my locker, I followed my usual routine. I wore two rings, a gold initial ring, and his black star sapphire. I took them both off and put them carefully inside my wallet, next to a ten-dollar bill I had brought because I was going to buy a new basketball after school.

I took off my wristwatch, wrapped it around my wallet, and put the whole thing in one of my shoes. Then, I put my books on top of my shoes and locked my locker. I double-checked the door and the lock to make sure it was all secure. I had been doing the same routine twice a week for five years and I was confident that it was as tight as a drum.

It was a beautiful May morning, and I played touch football with my friends, a bunch of jovial, eleventh-grade jocks. After gym ended, I took a shower and got dried off. Then, I opened my combination lock, swung open my locker door, and put my clothes on. I took the books off the top of my shoes, took out my wallet, removed my watch, and put it on my wrist. Then I opened my wallet to put on my rings, and the world stopped.

To my extreme shock and disbelief, my father’s ring was gone!

Everything else was exactly as I had left it. My gold initial ring and the ten-dollar bill were still there, undisturbed. But his black star sapphire ring, the one I had given him in the dream just a few hours earlier, was gone. It had disappeared without a trace.

All I can say is that suddenly, reality didn’t make any sense. What had just happened, quite simply could not have happened. It just wasn’t possible. My head started spinning and I felt disoriented. I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and tried to pull myself together. To make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I went over all the details again to see if I had made a mistake. But I hadn’t. I remembered everything precisely.

“Somebody must have stolen it,” I thought for a second, but obviously, that wasn’t the case. The locker had clearly been undisturbed when I came back after my shower. The combination lock was still locked, and the door was untouched. And besides, why would someone steal just that one ring and leave the wallet, the watch, and the gold ring, not to mention the ten-dollar bill?

I thought about the dream again. It was now nine in the morning and I had only been awake for a couple of hours, so everything was still completely fresh in my mind.

I realized how strange the whole thing had been. I didn’t remember feeling drowsy at all or ever falling asleep and then, all of a sudden, I was back in the synagogue chapel. And there had been nothing dreamlike about it at all. Actually, I had never felt more awake in my life. And on top of that, unlike my usual dreams, it hadn’t faded one bit. Normally, I forget my dreams before I even start breakfast. But this time, I could remember every single detail, especially my father’s tan, smiling face.

He said that he hadn’t really died and that it was a trick. Then he had me give him back his ring. When we held it, it turned into a brilliant light. And now, just a few hours later, in real life, it had vanished into thin air. What can I say? What had just happened just wasn’t possible.

Still dazed, I sat in front of my locker for a few more minutes and then the bell rang. I knew I had to hustle because my next class was all the way on the other side of school. There was nothing left to do but get on with my day.

My logic had hit a brick wall and as I got up and started walking, I still felt completely out of sorts. But as I hurried along, I noticed that everything felt just a little bit lighter, as if the old bounce was starting to come back into my step.

A few days later, it was time for me to go visit my grandfather, my father’s father, and I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say about the dream I’d had, followed by the seemingly otherworldly disappearance of the ring.

We had always had quite a deep relationship, but it got much deeper after my father died. He and my grandmother lived about twenty minutes away and for one reason or another we would see them at least once a week.

After I had my first strange dream experience, where I had the precognitive dream that my father had died and it all came true the next day, I told the experience to just a few family members and some very close friends. Along with all the sadness we all felt, many people also felt a little extra sympathy for me because I was the youngest, and most of the ones I told about the dream just shrugged it off, as something that either didn’t happen, or at least not the way I had remembered it. But not my grandfather. He believed every bit of it, completely.

Now, before I tell you his reactions to the dream-ring-disappearance sequence, let me fill you in a little bit about him, as he was quite a unique individual. Although I haven’t mentioned him in the podcasts very frequently, he was one of the main influences on me in the younger part of my life, and is a central figure in “Wilt, Ike & Me,” the memoir that I’ve written about those early days.

We all called him Zayde, which is the Yiddish term for grandfather. Although he was still the patriarch of our extended family, my father, who was his eldest son and a prominent attorney and businessman, had assumed most of the family’s worldly responsibilities. But still, Zayde remained the undisputed spiritual head of the family. That respected position never changed.

And on the spiritual side, he certainly had the credentials for it. He had grown up in Lithuania as an orthodox Yeshiva student and as a gifted singer, he was being trained to become a cantor. In the Jewish tradition, the rabbi leads the service and gives the sermon, but the cantor is the one who actually sings the prayers. And ideally, he should sing them with so much understanding and feeling in his heart, that the prayers go straight up to heaven.

Zayde could really do it, but he had to give up his lofty profession when his family fled to America. His young wife had gotten pregnant, and he had to make a living, so he became a wallpaper hanger. Eventually he opened a paint and paper store in South Philadelphia and he and his family lived in the small living quarters above the store. He still remained true to his orthodox religion though, carefully practicing all of its customs and traditions. But on top of that and somewhat secretly, he was essentially a mystic, with a deep understanding of the more arcane elements of the faith.

You could see it whenever you looked at him. There was a twinkle in his pale-blue eyes and he always seemed to have a funny look on his face, like he was learning some kind of deep lesson and was ready to burst out either laughing or crying, or sometime, a funny kind of combination of both.

Along with all his training, both traditional and esoteric, he had evolved some of his own theories about the cosmos, as well. He said God was always pulling humanity closer and closer to him, and the new communication technologies - radio, movies, and TV, were all a part of a great divine plan. Bear in mind that none of them had existed in his early life, not even electricity.

He had seen them all develop and to him, they had been created to help teach humanity profound lessons, enabling it to achieve its highest potential.

Now, this is actually a great place to end this episode. Of course, there’s a lot more to come, so, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As the last episode ended, I was beginning my return to normal life after the unexpected death of my father. The unanticipated event had turned my entire world upside down.

After remaining home for a one-week mourning period, when I returned to normal life, everything was exactly the same as it had been when I left it. Same classes. Same teachers. Same friends. Everything was the same. Except nothing was the same and it would never be again. It’s a terrible feeling and everyone who has experienced the early stages of deep grief is painfully aware of it.

However, there was one thing that was radically different in my new daily routine, which was that I was now going to synagogue every morning and every night and would be doing it for eleven months. The same held true for my brother, who was eight years older than me.

It was a big eight years at that age because while I was in the middle of high school and living the life of a teenager, he was in his last year of law school, had been married for a few years, and his wife was about six weeks away from giving birth to their first child.

But even so, we had always done everything together. We even lived in the same room in our house until he moved out for college. So naturally, we started attending the daily service together.

Very early in the process, I came to understand that while the ritual of saying the mourner’s prayer is ostensibly to honor the dead, in reality, it provides a tremendous benefit for the living survivors. It was an enormous help to me on several key levels, and the most important one for me was that the rabbi of this particular synagogue was truly a spiritual giant. We got to spend an enormous amount of time with him and became extremely close.

So, that new way of life began for me in the second week of December of 1965. Let’s jump ahead almost six months later to the end of May of 1966. As I’ve said, we have an enormous amount of resiliency at that age, and even with all the trauma around the death, I was still having a great year at school.

My brother, Mike and I had been attending services every morning and night. We never missed a service and we intended to keep it that way, but suddenly something came up that was going to be an insurmountable problem for him.

His last year of law school was coming to an end and soon, it would be time for him to take the bar exam. A two-day cram course was being offered that went until nine each evening and he was going to have to miss services for two nights.

It was upsetting to him but there was no away around it and it absolutely had to happen. The first night came and I attended the service without him. It really was no big deal and I didn’t pay any attention to it.

It was a normal night. I ate dinner with my mother, went to the synagogue and said the prayer, came home and did my homework and eventually got washed and went to bed. Then, one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me took place

For some reason, I didn’t feel tired at all and thought I was going to have some trouble falling asleep. I was just lying there, and the next thing I knew, I suddenly found myself back in the chapel of the synagogue once again. It was a strange sensation because I felt like I had actually gone back in time. The events that had just happened a few hours earlier started happening again. It was like watching an instant replay, but instead of just watching it, I was living through it.

Everything happened exactly as it had, just a few hours earlier. Services ended, and I walked out of the chapel. But this time, when I entered the main lobby, I heard a sharp sound. “Psst! Psst!” It was clear to me that whatever that replay had been was over. I knew I was in new territory because nothing like this had happened earlier.

The sound came from my left. I looked over at the dark corner near the sanctuary doors and suddenly, my father stepped out of the shadows.

Amazed, I walked right over to him. As I got closer, he gave me a warm smile and I was struck by how great he looked. He was wearing a gray suit with a purple shirt. The collar was opened, and he had a dark, healthy suntan like he had been in the Caribbean or Hawaii for a few months. He also seemed a little younger, with slightly more hair, which was slicked back. In short, he looked tremendous.

“Where’s Michael?” he asked, as soon as I got close.

“Oh, he couldn’t come tonight,” I said. “He has to study for the bar exam. They’re having a cram course, and tonight’s the first class.”

“Oh, right, right. That’s good,” he said, sounding like he knew exactly what I was talking about. “He’ll pass it. He’ll do fine. He’s going to become a lawyer, and he’ll go right into the firm. Everything’s going to work out well for him.” Then he got a little serious. “But, watch out for your sister, though,” he said soberly. “She’s not doing so great.”

“Sybil?” I wondered. “What’s the matter with Sybil?”

I didn’t say anything, but as I thought about it, I remembered that she had never shown any emotion after he died. She had been extremely stoic, always stone-faced and never crying or even shedding a tear. Maybe that had something to do with whatever it was he was talking about.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “She didn’t show any emotion after you d—”

I was just about to say the word died, when the impossibility of what was happening hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly I remembered the actual truth of the matter – that he was, in fact, dead.

I guess I had been so glad to see him, I hadn’t realized it at first. But now it all came rushing came back into me. The reason I hadn’t seen him for all this time wasn’t that he had been away on some tropical island. It was because he had dropped dead on the floor of the Boston Garden six months earlier. He was long since dead and buried. Yet here he was, standing in the synagogue lobby, happy and healthy and talking to me like everything was normal.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You’re dead!”

“No,” he said, with a slight chuckle. “No, no. That wasn’t real.”

“What?” I asked.

“It was just a trick,” he replied. “It wasn’t real.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t real?” I shot back, a little perturbed. “Of course, it was real!”

How could he say it wasn’t real? It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Everything about it was a nightmare. Our family was completely devastated, and since then, we had gone through month after month of relentless pain. I wished to God it wasn’t real, but unfortunately, it was as real as it gets.

“You died. You’re dead,” I blurted out, even more upset. “It was terrible. There was this big funeral, and everyone was hysterical. It was awful.” An enormous rush of pain welled up inside of me. “It was horrible. You died! We buried you and you’re dead!”

I was ready to break down in tears. But then, just like old times, he made his familiar gesture and held up his right hand, signaling me to calm down and listen to him. Just seeing him do it made me feel a little better.

“It wasn’t real,” he said, calmly. “It was just a trick.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered.

“A trick. You know a stunt, a gimmick.”

I still had no idea what he meant, but I didn’t say anything.

“Listen to me,” he said, sympathetically. “There is no death. It’s just a public-relations stunt God does to get people to think about him. That’s all it is. It’s not real.”

I didn’t know what to say. There was absolutely, positively no question about the fact that he had died. It was irrefutable. And yet here he was—alive and well, telling me it was all just a stunt. As confident as ever, he certainly looked like he knew what he was talking about. He looked great. In fact, I’d never seen him look better.

“See?” he said, with a smile. “It’s all just a trick.” Then he added, “Some trick!”

At that point, my mind went blank. I don’t think I could think anymore, and frankly, I didn’t care. It was just such a relief to be with him again and listen to him explain something to me. It didn’t matter if I understood it or not.

As I looked at him, I realized I had forgotten how much I really missed him. I hadn’t seen him for six months. It had been an eternity of constant pain and I had gotten used to it. But now, alive or dead, we were back together again, and the pain was gone. I was happy and felt like my old self again - two long-lost and long-forgotten feelings.

He looked at me with a warm smile for a moment. “I see you’re wearing my ring,” he said, looking down at my right hand. He used to wear a black star sapphire pinky ring that he got when he went to the Japan Olympics to sign Luke Jackson to the 76ers. My mother gave it to me after he died, and I wore it every day.

“Listen,” he said somewhat soberly. “The stone in that ring has a vibration that’s bad for your body. I don’t want you to wear it anymore.” I didn’t say anything.

Then his face lit up. “Hey! I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Since I never really died, why don’t you give it back to me?”

Without giving it a second thought, I took the ring off and held it up between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. He reached up and held it exactly the same way. I thought he was going to take it, but he didn’t. Instead, we both stood there, holding the ring between us, like a statue.

After a moment, I felt it start to vibrate. Then, like an instrument being tuned to a higher note, something within me quickened. The ring began to glow, getting brighter by degrees until eventually, the whole room was filled with a brilliant light.

But it was more than just a light. I could sense a happy presence to it, a warm beauty that was extremely comforting. And it felt familiar to me as well, like I knew it from somewhere - another time and place from long before my memory began.

I felt myself being slowly pulled into it, as though it had its own field of gravity. It got stronger, like the current of a river nearing the ocean, and the light got even brighter. The more light I saw, the lighter I felt, along with a deep sense of happiness and joy. And finally, an all-encompassing love enveloped me, and I lost all contact with space and time.

I have no idea how long it lasted, but I finally began to regain awareness of my body. There was a gentle transition, almost like the physical world gelled into reality around me and I found that I was laying in my bed, wearing my pajamas. It took a little more time, but I soon realized it had all been just a dream.

Soon, I was completely back in the real world. Obviously, my life was unchanged, and my father was still dead. Naturally, I was disappointed. As fulfilling as the experience had been, I quickly understood that the whole thing had been just a fantasy that my mind had created in my sleep.

Even so, it had been a deeply wonderful experience to feel happy again. It was the first time since the night he died, that the heavy burden that I constantly felt was lifted from my heart. For those few moments, I had gotten to be my old self again and realized that I had completely forgotten the way life used to be, before the road had turned, and I had come upon the Vale of Tears.

Now you may be thinking, “OK. So what’s the big deal? You had a happy dream that your father was still alive. Why is that one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to you?”

All I can say is, we’ll get into that in the coming episode. For now, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The last episode ended on the evening of December 3, 1965 when my father suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly during a nationally televised NBA game between the 76ers and the Boston Celtics.

As I have mentioned previously, this podcast series examines the enormous evolution of consciousness that began to take place in the western world during the 1960s, as well as looking at what happened to me personally during those turbulent times, which led to my life-long commitment to the greater realization of human potential.

It also seeks to present you with some fundamental ideas that you might find useful as you grow through your own inner evolutions, which is something we all do, whether we’re aware of it or not. That’s just the way our intelligence works.

So, even though the events surrounding my father’s death were extremely traumatic, this is not an autobiographical look back at them. Rather, I am going to describe some of the realizations I experienced that began to open a pathway to my own inner growth.

Looking back, I can see that without having the slightest awareness of it, I had been living my life with two basic assumptions that I had been taking for granted. As naïve as they may sound, these assumptions were simple - everything was going to stay the same and I would live forever.

Of course, I knew intellectually, as we all do, that that these ideas are ridiculous. In reality, everything here ends and everybody dies. But as we all must learn sooner or later, there is a vast difference between believing a theoretical concept of something and experiencing the actual reality of it. And that’s especially true when it comes to death.

For me, the aspect of sudden death was a powerful and rather rude teacher. It felt like having to learn how to swim because the luxury cruise ship you had been traveling on suddenly sank. The next thing you know, you’re in a freezing cold ocean and you notice a dark fin sticking out of the water that keeps circling around you. Of course, that’s just a metaphor, but that’s kind of what it felt like.

But the death itself was also accompanied by an additional, mysterious factor. On top of the shock and grief, I had to ponder the series of cryptic omens that had preceded it that were particularly unnerving.

As you may recall, along with several less intense events, I had experienced a jarring, recurring nightmare for three consecutive nights, followed by an incredibly vivid dream that my father had died. Then in the real world, the dream came true the following night, exactly the way I had dreamt it. In metaphysical terms, this is called a pre-cognitive dream, which is more of a prophecy than a premonition.

So, under the surface, there was always this other element that I had to deal with, which was the uncanny experience that I had somehow foreseen the future. It had been incredibly strange and I had to ask myself – “How could that have happened? How could you have seen something in such detail the night before it happened? And, what does that say about time and the nature of life itself?”

There was another deeply troubling aspect to the experience as well. In real life, when I began living through the events of the dream, I knew exactly what was coming next and I wanted to change the events. But to my severe shock, I found that I had no control over anything whatsoever.

The incredibly odd fact was that I had absolutely no volition. Nothing that I thought, felt, or decided made any difference at all. I was awake. This was real. But it was like I was walking through a movie that had already been made. I knew that nothing could be changed because somehow, I knew that the present had already happened in the past. It was all too overwhelming to even try to understand.

Some years later, I came come across a profound quote from Einstein that seemed related. “The distinction between past, present and future is nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Of course, I found the idea fascinating, but in trying to grasp it, all I could come up was that my understanding of my life in the world was incomplete, and that there was a lot more that I needed to learn, to say the least. It’s like you’re living your adult life learning your lessons and something unexpectedly alters your reality. Suddenly you feel like a preschooler enrolled in a babysitting club at an advanced university.

Everything had changed so fundamentally for me that I felt like I didn’t know this world anymore. As boxer Mike Tyson once put it, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” And believe me, it was quite a heavy punch for this 16-year-old kid to take.

At the foundation of it all, the basic impermanence that underlies all of life had become abundantly clear to me. My father had been an incredibly powerful person, the central figure not just in our family, but in the entire world around him as well. And in less than five seconds, he was gone for good. Vanished without a trace.

So, it quickly drove home the fundamental impermanence of life. Nothing here lasts. Everything ends. Which brings up some deeper questions. Why does this creation even exist in the first place? What are we doing here? What is the real purpose of my life, if there even is one?”

Suffice it to say that I eventually put all these thoughts and questions aside and got on with living the new version of life that had been presented to me. And it picked up pretty quickly. After all, I was in the middle of my junior year in high school and we are blessed with a tremendous amount of resiliency at that age.

As soon as I began to return to my normal school life, a nice little coincidence happened for me. You may remember from a previous episode that my father had made me promise that I would say the Kaddish prayer for him after he died. I made that vow on a Saturday and eight days later, I said the prayer for the first time at his graveside. Amazingly, I had completely forgotten about that promise until those first words came out of my mouth that day in the cemetery.

I started attending the synagogue near our house twice a day and I had to get into the routine of getting ready to go there every morning and night. A new Beatles album had just come out and I got into the habit of listening to it as I prepared to leave.

Like all their other albums, its songs took up permanent residency in my mind almost immediately upon hearing them. The album was called “Rubber Soul” and it was quite a departure for the band. Many years later, once the Beatles had become history and were being studied from a cultural perspective, this album came to be viewed a major turning point in their career.

Listening to it was giving me quite an emotional boost and one day, I heard a deejay say that the release date for Rubber Soul had been December 3, 1965, which was the exact day that my father died. Now, all my life, I’ve been one of those people who are always on the lookout for “signs.” It’s hard to explain exactly why, but if you happen to be one of them, you understand.

Anyway, for me, this information meant that somehow, everything was in synch. As insanely disruptive as the death had been, on some level, it all made sense and in some way the universe was still in good working order. I might very well have been grasping at straws, but who cares? The fact that the dates were identical made me feel a little better. And no matter how small, I needed all the “feel better” I could get.

Importantly, from the larger standpoint of the evolution of the times, the group had a distinctively new sound. Later this would be understood to be the very beginnings of psychedelic music, and the songs were mainly written and recorded while the band was under the steady influence of marijuana. If you listen to the song “Girl” you can hear someone inhaling a joint, and George Harrison once commented that the album was “the first one where we were fully-fledged potheads.”

But the songs had a new level of depth to them as well. Remember that Bob Dylan had once told the Beatles that he liked their songs, but the trouble was that they weren’t about anything. John Lennon said that he took that comment in on a profound level, and when you listen to him sing “Nowhere Man,” it certainly sounds like it.

“He’s a real nowhere man. Sitting in his nowhere land. Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” Those words immediately got me. At the time, it sounded like he was talking about everyone, myself included. He continued, “Doesn’t have a point of view. Knows not where he’s going to. Isn’t he a bit like you and me. He’s as blind as he can be. Just sees what he wants to see…”

In the present day, the song is looked at as an absolute classic and we take it for granted, but back then, it was truly incredible to hear these kind of ideas expressed in a Beatles song. In another cut, “Norwegian Wood,” George Harrison played the sitar for the first time ever in western music, which was truly a sign of things to come.

And finally, there was the song, “The Word.” It’s a song about love, but it’s not a standard love song because it’s actually about universal love, which is a theme the Beatles would expound upon seriously over the next few years. “Say the word and you’ll be free. Say the word and be like me. Say the word I’m thinking of. Have you heard the word is love? Now that I know what I feel must be right. I’m here to show everybody the light. Give the word a chance to say that the word is just the way.”

So, at the end of 1965, big changes were underway. The Beatles had evolved into a new level of musical genius and don’t forget, they were the leading force of cultural change in the entire word, so the larger world of popular music was changing in an enormous way as well.

And as difficult as it had been for me, I had gone through the first truly major change in my life, and one of the key parts of it had been the fact that I had gone through an experience that had defied science and logic. But something even bigger was waiting for me just around the next corner.

Let’s take that up in the coming episode, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, we looked at two disturbing events that happened to me during the last week of November of 1965. In the first, I was sitting in synagogue with my father and toward the end of the Saturday morning service as the rabbi was announcing the prayer called the Mourner’s Kaddish, with a sudden sense of urgency, my father had me swear a solemn oath before God that I would say this prayer for him after he died. Surprised at the completely unexpected request, but taking no serious note of it, I made the vow.

Then a few nights later, I had a harrowing nightmare where I was being chased by an invisible killer. I ended up standing before a huge wooden cross that clearly represented death to me. A hooded monk who was standing next to it, telepathically said to me, “You have come upon it.”

Then to my extreme dismay, the dream turned into a recurring nightmare, as I had it on the following two nights as well. Now, as you may sense, we are beginning to approach some rather dramatic territory and before we start, I would like to mention a couple of key points, by way of introduction.

First, the events that were about to unfold would alter not only my entire life, but more critically, my most basic understandings about the nature of existence itself. Foundations were being laid that would lead to the massive inner revolutions I would grow though during the deeply turbulent times that were about to follow.

Secondly, the main reason that I am recounting these events is to provide some possible encouragement to anyone who may be facing some hard times and might want to explore the deeper sides of human intelligence and the potential that lies within each one of us. So here we go.

The next part of the story begins on Thursday night, December 2. My father was leaving for Boston the next day for the big 76ers - Celtics showdown in the Boston Garden. It was still early in the season, but the stakes were already enormous.

For me, the day had flown by as any standard eleventh grade day normally did. After dinner, I finished my homework, goofed around a little and finally went to bed, but I never got sleepy. I was much too agitated.

My mind seemed to be spinning around about my social life, my schoolwork, and of course, the gigantic upcoming game with the Celtics. But I knew that none of that was what was keeping me awake. The real reason I couldn’t fall asleep was because I was too afraid that I was going to have that horrible nightmare again, and I just couldn’t face the prospect of going through it all one more time.

I don’t remember getting tired or drifting off to sleep. I was just lying in bed with my eyes closed and the very next thing I knew, I felt a funny sensation in my stomach, like I was in a moving car that had just come over a hill and was on its way down. I opened my eyes and saw my hands resting on the steering wheel of a car. I looked over them at the hood and realized I was driving my father’s Cadillac.

I came down the hill on Spring Avenue and turned left onto Heather Road, as I had done a million times before. Our house was on the corner.

With slight concern, I noticed that there were a few cars parked in front as I drove by, which was out of the ordinary. I made a right turn into the driveway, pulled up, and got out of the car. I walked around back and came in though the kitchen door.

My mother was on the phone with her back to me. She didn’t turn around. My father’s younger brother was standing in front of the stove with his arms folded across his chest. He kept staring down at the floor, as though I wasn’t even there.

I went into the main hall, and up the stairs. I turned left at the top and walked up to my sister’s room. As usual, her door was closed. I put my right hand on it, and stopped for a moment. Starring at the back of my hand I thought, “Well, this is it.”

I pushed the door open. Sybil was standing in the back of the room with a few friends. She looked up at me. “Daddy’s dead,” she said. “We don’t have a daddy anymore.”

“This is terrible,” I thought to myself. “But why are you talking like this? You’re twenty years old, and you sound like a four-year-old.”

I didn’t say anything and walked out of her room, down the hall, and into my room. I sat down on my bed, and suddenly got overwhelmed with an intense anger at God.

“Why did you do this?” I thought. “Why in the world did you have to do this?” I closed my eyes and smashed my fist down on the large end table next to my bed. As soon as my fist hit the table, I opened my eyes and felt completely disoriented. I was still in my room, but instead of sitting on my bed, I was lying in it. It took a few moments for me to grasp that I had been asleep and as real as it had seemed, the entire experience had only been a nightmare.

Of course, I was relieved. I had just gone through the horrible experience of having my sister tell me that my father had died. And now, thankfully, I realized it had all been just a bad dream. Still, on a deep level, I was profoundly shaken because in truth, there had been nothing dreamlike about it.

I was happy about one thing, though – I hadn’t had a repeat of the horrible dream with the killer and the cross. At least that recurring nightmare seemed over.

Now, it was Friday morning, December 3, 1965. I picked up my good friend Marty and drove him to school. But as soon as he got in the car, I felt compelled to tell him all about my dream. I felt like I should tell someone because if it happened to come true, I didn’t want to be the only one who knew about it in advance. It seemed like the kind of thing that could drive you nuts if you didn’t handle it right.

We only talked about the dream for a quick minute as we drove, and then switched to our plans for the upcoming weekend, which was packed with social events. The school day flew by in a flash, and the next thing I knew, it was Friday night.

There was a big party and I was going to drive across town, pick up my girlfriend, and bring her with me. It was a half-hour ride each way, and when it came time to leave, I suddenly didn’t feel like driving by myself. I called Marty and asked him to come with me. He agreed if we didn’t take my Sprite, which was only a two-seater. He was six-one and didn’t want to be cramped-in for that long.

The 76ers – Celtic game was going to be on national TV and my mother was getting ready to watch it. My father had flown to Boston with the team. I asked her if it was OK for me to take her Pontiac. “You better not,” she replied. “Sybil has a bunch of friends coming over, and she may need it.” She turned on the TV and sat down on the couch. “Take the Caddy,” she said, nonchalantly.

Without giving it a second thought, I hopped into my father’s car and picked up Marty. About twenty minutes into the ride, I suddenly felt like hearing some music. “Let’s listen to the radio,” I said and turned it on. I hit the middle button, but there was no sound at all – just dead silence, which was very strange. That button was always set to our local rock ‘n roll station, and a loud-mouth deejay, a pop song, or some annoying commercial was blaring all the time. But now I heard nothing, and the ongoing silence was absolutely deafening.

It lasted long enough that I thought the radio was broken. Then, finally, someone in a solemn voice came on and said - “We have just received a report from the Boston Garden that the owner of the 76ers, Ike Richman, has collapsed at courtside.” It paused. “His condition is unknown.”

I quickly turned it off. I didn’t want to hear any more. We drove to my girlfriend’s house. As soon as we got there, I called home. My sister answered, and she sounded perky and happy, like she was having fun with her friends and everything was fine.

“Sybil, what’s happening?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied lightly. “Everything’s fine. Listen, Mommy is leaving for New York soon, and she wants to see you before she goes. She’s waiting for you, so come right home.”

“Sure, I replied. “I’ll be right back.

“Great,” she said, cheerfully. Then in a slightly different tone, she added, “Come home now, David. Just come right home.” It was a minor change, but I heard it in a major way.

“This could be anything,” I said to Marty as we drove back. “It could be indigestion. Or maybe he fainted from the lack of air in the place.” I paused, then said the obvious. “Or he could be dead.”

Finally, we got to Spring Avenue, came over the hill, and as I started driving down it, I got a funny feeling in my stomach. I looked at my hands resting on the steering wheel and gazed at the hood of my father’s car.

That moment began one of the strangest experiences of my life. As soon as I felt that odd feeling in my stomach, my dream from the previous night began to come to life, in front of my startled eyes and it was uncanny. As I lived through it, I knew exactly what was coming next. I turned left onto Heather Road and drove past the cars that were parked in front of the house. I felt they were not a good sign, just like in the dream.

It was kind of like having a déjà vu, but very different. Déjà vu means “already seen,” and you feel like somehow, you’ve already lived through the experience that you’re currently having. It’s like remembering the present. But it’s usually quite vague, and only lasts for an instant.

There was nothing vague about the experience I was having. Quite the opposite. It was crystal clear. And it didn’t vanish at all. It just went on and on.

As I drove along, one part of my mind was normal, with regular thoughts and feelings. But another part knew exactly what was coming and wanted to change it. As I was about to turn into the driveway, that part said, “Park on the street. Don’t turn into the driveway. You know what’s coming if you park in the driveway. Don’t do it. Do something else!”

That seemed logical, so I decided to park on the street. But then I made a deeply disturbing discovery: I had no control at all over what was happening. Even though I had clearly decided to park on the street, I robotically turned into the driveway, shut off the engine and got out of the car.

It was like was watching a movie that had already been shot, but I was now living through it. And now, not only did I know what was coming, I also knew I couldn’t change it.

I got to the back door and walked into the kitchen. Sure enough, just like in the dream, my mother was on the phone with her back to me and never noticed me. Neither did my Uncle Ray, who was standing in front of the stove with his arms folded across his chest, looking down at the floor.

As I walked out into the hall, I knew it was time to go upstairs and face the news. And I knew it didn’t matter what I thought or did. What was coming was coming.

I got to the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway at the door to my sister’s room. I could see that it was closed and I walked over and put my right hand on the door. I looked at my hand and had the same thought I’d had in the dream. “Well, this is it.”

I pushed the door open. My sister was in the exact spot she was in the dream, surrounded by a few friends. She looked up at me and said the exact words from the dream. “Daddy’s dead. We don’t have a daddy anymore.”

And then I had the same thought that I had had in the dream. “This is terrible. But why are you talking like this? You’re twenty years old, and you sound like a four-year-old.”

I walked out into the hall and down to my room. I sat on my bed and became overwhelmed with the same intense anger at God.

“Why did you do this?” I thought in a rage of anger, confusion, and despair. “Why in the world did you have to do this?” And just like in the dream, I smashed my fist down on the end table next to my bed.

In my dream, at that point I woke up. This time, when my fist hit the table, the bizarre state of reality I had been in came to an abrupt end and I was snapped back into normal life. Except there was no such thing as normal anymore.

Instead of waking up from a nightmare and realizing it had only been a dream, my horrible nightmare was becoming reality. And the devastating truth of it was unmistakable. This was no dream. This was real life. And my father was dead.

Although it may be a bit abrupt, this is an ideal place for us to stop. So, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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At the conclusion of the last episode, in late November of 1965, I was having a happy life as a normal sixteen-year-old eleventh grader. Things were going well and everything seemed right on track.

However, even though I had hardly noticed, a few things happened, which in retrospect could be seen to have been subtle warnings of a coming change. First, my father had told me that he would never be a grandfather and given the fact that my brother’s wife was seven months pregnant, that meant that he had less than two months to live.

Then I had unexpectedly ran into an old comic book that had two mysterious stories concerning Abraham Lincoln and death, which I found to be hauntingly disturbing. Again, I paid no real attention to any of these at the time. But two more events were about to happen that would take things to another level.

The first one happened on a Saturday morning as my father and I were sitting in services in a modern synagogue near our home in Elkins Park. He was thinking about changing our affiliation, as we still belonged to our original temple, but it was a twenty-five-minute drive each way. This place was close enough that we could walk, which was a dream come true for him.

Toward the very end of every Jewish service, a prayer is recited called the Mourner’s Kaddish. It is one of the keystones of the religion, and every congregation does it, all over the world. Interestingly, even though it’s done to honor the dead, it never once mentions death or dying. It’s a prayer of praise, and the idea is that you always praise God, no matter what happens. As much as your heart may be broken, the teachings say that there’s always a pathway that leads to salvation.

As we sat there, the rabbi invited the mourners to rise to say Kaddish, and one of the kids from my school stood up, which surprised me. “I know that kid,” I whispered to my father. “I didn’t know anybody in his family died.”

Suddenly, to my surprise, my father got extremely serious. “This Kaddish prayer is much more important than you know,” he said, speaking in a tone of voice I had never heard before. It was incredibly solemn and I could barely tell it was him.

“I want you to promise me that after I die, you will come to services and say Kaddish for me, every morning, and every night. And that you will do it for the full eleven months.”

It was a strange moment for me. I had never heard him that somber before and besides, it didn’t make sense - he was only fifty-two. There was no question that I would say Kaddish for him after he died but that was twenty or thirty years down the road. “Of course, I will, Dad,” I said matter-of-factly. “You know I will.”

Then the weird got weirder. “We’re in synagogue,” he said, still in that extremely somber tone. “We’re in front of the Torah and I want you to make a solemn vow to me now. And understand, this is a vow that you are making before God himself.”

Now, we were extremely close and nothing like this had ever happened between us. He had never asked me to promise him anything before in my entire life. It seemed like a bizarre request, coming from him at this point in his life, but if this is what he wanted, why not? “OK,” I said, concealing the fact that I was slightly taken aback.

“Good,” he said. “Now, repeat after me.” He paused, and then, like a judge administering an oath of office, he slowly recited the vow, one sentence at a time. And I repeated it after him, word for word.

“I promise before God, that after you die, I will come to services and say Kaddish for you every morning and night for the full eleven months, so help me God.” When I said the last phrase, he exhaled deeply and slumped forward in his seat, with his eyes closed.

He didn’t move a muscle and for a second, I thought he might have passed out. It could have been for just an instant or it may have been much longer. I don’t remember now. What I do remember is that there was a deep sense of completeness in that moment. But it wasn’t a positive feeling. It felt more like the completeness of the grave.

The next thing I knew, they started singing the last song of the service, which is a happy, cheerful hymn. Whenever I heard that song it always lifted me up, basically because I knew that services were over. My father opened his eyes and looked relieved. He seemed like his normal self again and started singing along with the song. Whatever that strange spell was, it was over.

When we got outside, it was a beautiful day and we were both happy as we walked home in the bright sunlight. I always loved that time right after services. I had fulfilled my obligation to God and to my father, and I could finally get on with the carefree part of my weekend.

Then, a short time later, on Monday night, November 29th, I had a deeply disturbing nightmare. Someone was trying to kill me. I was desperately running for my life on a deserted part of the beach in Atlantic City, in front of the Boardwalk. It was daytime, but the atmosphere was dark and foreboding, like a major storm was brewing.

As I ran frantically, the would-be killer kept firing a gun at me. But the assailant, the gun, and the bullets were all invisible. Still, I could hear the loud crack of the gunfire and feel the sharp zing of the bullets as they whizzed past my head and exploded into the sand in front of me. The assassin was hell-bent on my destruction, relentless and getting closer all the time.

In sheer terror, I ran under the Boardwalk to hide. But once I did, the whole scene immediately changed. Suddenly I was standing in a dark cave and everything was completely silent. Before, when I was running for my life, I heard the panting of my breath, the thumping of my feet on the sand, and the hiss of the bullets as they flew past my head. Now everything was dead silent and absolutely still.

I was standing in front of an old, brown wooden cross, with hundreds of lit candles all around. A monk in a dark-brown, hooded robe stood in front of it. The hood concealed the monk’s face entirely.

“Behold! The cross of the Crucifixion!” I seemed to somehow hear it inside my mind, but I knew it was coming from the monk. Then oddly, a few complete ideas appeared in my consciousness at the same time. Unlike linear thinking where one thought follows another, they all became clear to me at once.

I knew this was the actual cross from the actual crucifixion and that things were serious. I understood that the cross was a symbol for death, commonly used to mark a grave. And the final message was – “You have come upon it.” I looked at the monk, then back at the cross. Everything seemed frozen in time, like a still picture. The candles had stopped flickering, nothing moved and the stillness seemed to have a presence all its own.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp slap in the middle of my chest, right on my sternum. I gasped in an enormous amount of air and the next thing I knew, I was lying in my bed, in my pajamas.

I was in my room, it was morning, and I realized it had all been a dream, a terrible nightmare. My right hand was resting on my chest. I must have stopped breathing in my sleep and then subconsciously slapped myself awake.

I was shaken and didn’t move for a few minutes. I finally got up, got dressed, and had my breakfast. But as I started driving to school, I was still disturbed. I hardly ever had nightmares and certainly never anything like this before.

By the time I pulled into the school parking lot though, I was much more relaxed and decided to let the whole thing go. After all, it was just a bad dream. Maybe it was something I ate. The rest of the day was uneventful, and everything seemed fine.

And it would have stayed fine, except that night, Tuesday, I had the same exact nightmare again, right down to the tiniest detail, through to the very end. Now I was rattled. This was more than just a nightmare, it was a recurring nightmare, which made it doubly serious.

Then, to my extreme shock and dismay, the next night, Wednesday, I had the exact same dream. Again, I was being chased along the beach by an invisible killer, firing invisible bullets at me. I ducked under the Boardwalk, and it turned into a cave. There was the cross and the monk. Again, I got the same set of inner understandings, ending with the message - “You have come upon it.” And again, I slapped myself awake.

I didn’t know what to do. Three straight nights of this recurring nightmare was unnerving. And on top of that, the fact that it had a big cross in it was deeply disturbing. The truth is, I didn’t like crosses. They always made me feel uncomfortable. And it wasn’t due to any differences in religious beliefs either. It was much deeper than that…a visceral feeling, like getting punched in the stomach.

I felt it the very first time I ever saw a crucifixion statue, which was when I was about six. We lived in the Northeast section of the city, across the street from a church and I was having a catch with a friend. The ball flew over and landed near the front door of the building. When I went to get it, I noticed that the church door was open. The place had always been mysterious to me, so I thought I’d go in and take a peek.

The very first thing I saw in there was a huge cross with a lifelike porcelain statue of a nearly naked man nailed to it. The guy was dead. And there was a crown of sharp thorns stuck into his head, with blood streaming down his face.

Thorns! I couldn’t believe it. My mother grew rose bushes and always warned me to be careful of them. Still, I got stuck in the finger once. It bled a lot and it really hurt. Seeing a bunch of thorns stuck in this poor guy’s head was revolting. The rest of his body was a real horror show too, with whip marks all over it and nails hammered into his hands and feet.

It was easily the most gruesome sight I had ever seen in my life. It made me sick to my stomach and I ran out of the church at full speed, crossed the street and collapsed onto our lawn. My head was spinning, and I was out of breath. But the firm ground and familiar smell of the grass made me feel better. After a few minutes, I calmed down.

Then, out of nowhere, an unexpected rush of rage came over me. Filled with anger and fury, I thought, “Look what those goddamn bastards did to him!” I was only six, but it wasn’t the thought of a child. I felt like I wanted to kill somebody.

Crosses always bothered me after that. Later, in college, I studied the symbol’s deeper meanings, along with the concepts of sacrifice, grace, forgiveness, the soul’s triumph over death, and its eventual reunion with the immortal father. And while they’re all ennobling ideas, the cross still reminds me of humanity at its worst, and of things gone horribly wrong. And I still get the same visceral feeling.

The jarring symbol had now played a central role in three recurring nightmares, and I decided if it happened again, I would talk things over with my mother. Maybe it was time for me to go see a doctor or something.

Well, as far as the ongoing narrative is concerned, this is an ideal place for this episode to stop. All I have to say at this point is – fasten your seat belts! As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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We ended the last episode in April of 1965 when George Harrison and John Lennon of the Beatles were unexpectedly given a dose of LSD by their dentist at a dinner party that he was hosting for them. This was done without their knowledge or permission, and although it could have had some significantly negative consequences, fortunately for everyone concerned, it all worked out well.

At this point in the podcast series, it’s important to understand that this narrative is about the evolution of consciousness, especially as it happened on a mass level beginning in the mid-sixties. And that will serve as a lead in to some of the remarkable experiences I had at the time, which led to my lifelong involvement with personal growth, which is just a simpler term used for the evolution of consciousness.

As we’ve seen, two substances, marijuana and LSD, played significant roles at the time, but they were just catalysts for the massive changes that were beginning to take place. Critically, this isn’t about those substances, how they work or the positive or negative aspects of them. This is about the liberation and elevation of human consciousness itself, which can easily happen with or without the use of external stimulants.

Indeed, myriads of people have experienced enlightening inner growth without ever using any of these kinds of substances, and by the same token, plenty of people have taken large amounts of them and have gained very little, if any lasting enlightenment. So, it all depends upon the individual involved, as well as on the circumstances that help set the stage.

That being said, let’s take a brief look at what happened to John and George that night at their dentist’s home and then, what happened to Ringo and Paul a little later.

It seems that George had a profoundly illuminating experience that night. As he said, “I felt this amazing sensation come over me. It was like an intense version of the best feeling I ever had in my life. It was wonderful. I felt in love with everything and everyone. Everything was perfect and beautiful, and I wanted to tell everyone how much I loved them — even strangers.

“I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience within twelve hours. It changed me, and there was no way back to what I was before.”

Indeed, there was no way back for him and the same held true for John as well, who said about that first night, “God, it was just terrifying, but it was fantastic.” He began taking it on a somewhat regular basis and later he said, “LSD was the self-knowledge which pointed the way. I was suddenly struck by great visions when I first took acid. But you've got to be looking for it before you can possibly find it. Perhaps I was looking without realizing it.” I’ve always felt that given the cultural framework of the time, that was quite a profound observation of his.

About moving forward, George said, “John and I had decided that Paul and Ringo had to have acid because we couldn’t relate to them anymore. Not just on the one level — we couldn’t relate to them on any level, because acid had changed us so much. It was such a mammoth experience that it was unexplainable. It was something that had to be experienced, because you could spend the rest of your life trying to explain what it made you feel and think. It was all too important to John and me.”

Ringo joined John and George for their second LSD trip on August 25, 1965 and his experience seemed positive as well. “I’d take anything,” he later said. “It was a fabulous day. The night wasn’t so great, because it felt like it was never going to wear off. Twelve hours later and it was, ‘Give us a break now, Lord.'”

Paul was a bit more hesitant, and despite repeated pleas from his bandmates, he held out for over a year. But when he finally gave it a try, he said, “I always found it amazing. Sometimes it was a very, very deeply emotional experience, making you want to cry, sometimes seeing God or sensing all the majesty and emotional depth of everything.

“It opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God … It is obvious that God isn’t in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life,” he said. “It was truly a religious experience.”

So, in the larger context, by the end of 1965, the stage had been set for what was about to come. The Beatles had been opened to a higher understanding of consciousness and their music and everything else about them had begun to evolve. Significantly, they would have a major effect on both the music and the messaging that was about to transform the entire culture.

But remember, there was also another major factor that had been put in place during the same month that the Beatles first got high with Dylan. And that was the fact that the US Congress had basically given Lyndon Johnson the right to activate the American military in Vietnam in any way he saw fit. And by the end of 1965, he had begun to significantly exercise that right, right or wrong.

Unfortunately, the statistics tell the tale. By the end of the year there were 184,300 US troops deployed in South Vietnam and 1,928 US soldiers died there that year. That is more than a 700% gain over the previous year’s totals. It was still getting relatively little attention, but tragically, things were just getting warmed up over there.

Now, the end of 1965 also brings us to a time of a major, critical change in my own life as well. As you may have noticed, I have said very little about my life so far and there’s a good reason for it. I had been living a standard, normal American life, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me yet.

If you know of my personal history, you might find it a little strange for me to say that nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me yet. After all, I had grown up in a somewhat unusual environment. My father was a prominent Philadelphia attorney who started the 76ers and had moved Wilt Chamberlain into our home. Wilt was my roommate when I was in tenth grade, so of course, those were some incredible times.

But as unusual as they may have been, these are not the kind of “out of the ordinary” events I’m talking about. As you will soon see, I’m referring to something completely different.

Anyway, as November of 1965 was drawing to a close, I was making my way through eleventh grade and enjoying it thoroughly. I had a great family with lots of terrific friends. My future seemed well-planned and rather rosy as well. I would finish high school followed by college and law school. At some later point my brother and I would inherit our father’s law firm as well as ownership of the 76ers. So, everything seemed pretty much set up for me.

Speaking of the team, the season was coming into full swing, things were going well for us and the NBA championship seemed clearly in sight. So, there I was, a normal, happy sixteen-year-old, eagerly looking forward to what was coming next.

But the truth is, as we all must learn sooner or later, you can never really know what’s coming around the next corner. The actual reality of the future always remains unknown. The past, of course is a different story. And with the clarity of hindsight, it’s fairly obvious that some troubling signs were starting to appear in my path.

The first one was barely noticeable at the time. My brother’s wife was about seven months pregnant and my father and I had driven over to visit them one afternoon. When we got home and pulled into the driveway, I asked him, “So how does it feel now that you’re going to be a grandfather?”

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

“Does it make you feel old or anything?”

He didn’t respond right away and just stared out at the rose garden near the back door of our house. “I’m never going to be the grandfather to this child,” he said. There was a distant sound in his voice, like he was talking from afar. “No. I won’t be the grandfather,” he continued matter-of-factly. “I’ll be the father’s father, but I’ll never be the grandfather.”

He used to say quirky things like this all the time. It sounded like he was splitting hairs and I didn’t pay any attention to it.

A second subtle omen came in the form of a comic book. I was in student council and started thinking about running for school president. My high school was quite large, with about two thousand students. If I wanted to run, there would be a lot to do, and it was time to give it some serious thought. One night at dinner, I mentioned it to my parents and they both encouraged me.

The next day, when I got home from school, an old comic book of mine was on the end table next to my bed. I hadn’t seen it in years, but I immediately recognized it. It had stories about each president of the United States. My mother kept a few boxes of my childhood things in the basement and had pulled it out, probably to inspire me.

As I looked at the cover, I clearly remembered that there was a strange story about Abraham Lincoln in the middle. I quickly flipped it opened and sure enough, there it was, “Lincoln, the Mystic.”

It had two parts. The first was called, “I Am Not Dead – I Still Live.” It showed a letter from a psychic that was found in Lincoln’s desk after he died. Supposedly, it was a channeled, life-after-death message from a close friend of Lincoln’s who had been killed in battle. Written backwards, it had to be read in a mirror. It said - “I am not dead. I still live…I experienced a happy reality - a glorious change by the process called death… Man lives on Earth, to live elsewhere, and that elsewhere is ever present. Heaven and Hell are conditions, not localities.”

You might be surprised to learn that Lincoln had kept a letter from a psychic in his desk at the White House, but it’s in the archives of the Library of Congress.

I went on to the second part, called “The Most Famous Pre-Cognitive Dream in American History.” It showed Lincoln asleep in the White House. A mournful sound wakes him up. He gets out of bed and starts walking toward it. As he gets closer, he realizes that it is the sound of people sobbing in misery. He enters the East Room and sees a coffin on a flag-draped stand, guarded by soldiers.

“Who is dead in the White House?” he asks one of them. “The President,” comes the reply. “He was killed by an assassin.”

The crying gets much louder and Lincoln looks into the coffin and to his shock, he sees himself lying there. He stares at his dead body for a moment, then he suddenly wakes up and realizes it had all been a bad dream.

Looking back on these small events it seems like I was being given some information about what was to come. The first part came from my father. If what he said about never becoming a grandfather came true, whether he knew it or not, he was telling me that he had less than two months to live.

The second and third came from the comic book about Lincoln and they were both about death. One said that in truth, death is not an ending, it’s actually a glorious change into a happy reality. And the other said that it’s possible to have a pre-cognitive dream of death that can quickly come true.

Again, I barely noticed these three factors at the time and certainly didn’t see any connection between them and my life at all. That being said, this is a good place to end this episode. As you might guess, the unfolding story is about to go a few levels deeper, so as always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, we looked at two critically important events that happened in August of 1964 that would eventually have truly profound effects on Western culture, as well as on world history in general. On August 7, the US Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and 21 days later, on August 28, Bob Dylan got together with the Beatles in their New York City hotel suite for a casual evening of fun.

Again, neither event seemed overly important at the time, but in the long run, they were truly critical. By a nearly unanimous vote, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively gave President Lydon Johnson “carte blanche” to direct the American military operation in Southeast Asia however he saw fit.

A few weeks later, at the party New York, Bob Dylan got John, Paul, George, and Ringo high on marijuana for the first time in their lives, blowing the doors of perception wide open for them. And significantly, in their altered state, he told them that he admired their songs, but the problem was that they weren’t about anything. This casual comment proved to be deeply moving to them in terms of their creativity.

The last episode was titled, “Tale of Two Seeds,” and that’s exactly what it was because two very different seeds had been planted. And within a rather short period of time, both of those seeds would sprout and start growing like wildfire, and ultimately, one would be the undoing of the other.

But let’s veer off a little here for a quick reminder of what this sequence of episodes is all about. As I’ve mentioned a few times earlier, the underlying theme of all of this is the evolution of consciousness that began to take place in a very serious way back then and has continued, through to this day, although often quite subtly.

As the series has unfolded, we’ve gotten some terrific feedback from our subscribers, but there has been one question that has come up a few times and I’d like to address it briefly. The question is, “What do you mean by the term “evolution of consciousness?”

It’s really quite simple. Essentially, we each live in two worlds - our external world and our internal world. Our external world consists of everything that is happening around us on the outside, which generally involves our friends, our family, our career, our home, our car, our pets, and so on. And on the other hand, our internal world relates to everything that is going on within us – our thoughts, our feelings, our knowledge and understandings, our memoires, etc.

The term, “consciousness” simply refers to this inner world of ours, which holds the mass composite of all the intelligence that is within each one of us on an individual basis. When our consciousness grows toward the positive, it turns us into better human beings, and the term “evolution of consciousness” is used to simply identify this wonderfully powerful kind of positive inner growth.

Now, human society is largely a reflection of the overall state of consciousness of the human beings in it, so the more highly evolved our individual consciousness becomes, the better the chances we have of living in a kinder and more humane society. In other words, better people will always create a better world.

In this regard, history has shown that the artists of any age usually play very significant roles in stimulating the inner growth of the people of their time. Along these lines, although I haven’t been able to find out who said it, I once came across a great quote about the role of the artist in society. It divided people into two categories.

The first one is made up of society’s solid, reliable, hard-working people, the ones who go to work every day and do all the things we need to keep our lives going. It said that these are the people who make the world go around. But it said that the job of an artist isn’t to make the world go around. The job of the artists is to make the world go forward. As a wanna-be artist, painting the colors of words onto the canvass of ideas, I found the idea to be quite inspiring.

So, with all that being said, let’s go back to the Beatles in August of 1964. Apparently, when Dylan got them stoned that night, it began a bit of a love affair between the lads and the weed. As happened to so many of us upon our first exposure to the mind-altering powers of THC, they began perceiving things in a very different way. After that, getting high on marijuana became a normal part of their abnormal lives, and their music, along with everything else about them began to undergo a slow, but dramatic metamorphosis.

Small and subtle as it was, I clearly remember the first time I became conscious of a definite change in their music in December of 1964. I was in tenth grade, finishing my first semester of high school and a new Beatles album had just come out called Beatles 65. It was always a major event whenever a new one of their albums came out and this was no different.

All the songs were remarkably great, as they always were, but there was one that seemed just a bit different. John Lennon was singing. His voice had become incredibly familiar to me and always made me happy. The song was about a lost love, but instead of just being sad, it seemed to have a new sense of pathos in it. And in the slow introduction, I couldn’t believe the words that I heard him sing. “I’m a loser. I’m a loser. And I’m not what I appear to be.”

I was pretty surprised. To me, he seemed to be the coolest superstar in the whole world, which to my young mind made him one of my major heroes. And now, I am hearing this greatly influential voice tell me that in actuality, he’s really a loser and he’s not what he appears to be.

And there were some pretty deep ideas in the rest of the lyrics as well. “Although I laugh and I act like a clown, beneath this mask, I am wearing a frown. My tears are falling like rain from the sky. Is it for her or myself that I cry? What have I done to deserve such a fate? I realize I have left it too late. And so it’s true, pride comes before a fall. I’m telling you so that you won’t lose all. I’m a loser. I’m a loser. And I’m not what I appear to be.”

It's not like it was that all that big of a deal for me, but still, something seemed noticeably different. Clearly it was a break-up song, but also clearly, it was not a song that didn’t mean anything.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but in a larger sense, some initial seeds of concepts of change were being planted in my subconscious mind. “Maybe I’m a loser too, and maybe I’m not what I appear to be. And you know what? Maybe this whole world isn’t what it appears to be. And what about life itself? Maybe life isn’t what it appears to be, either. These are really important questions and you don’t really know a thing about this kind of stuff, do you?”

These hadn’t exactly formed into thoughts yet, just somewhat ethereal feelings and of course, I had no answers. Far from it. I didn’t even have any questions. Again, it was just a subtle feeling, like on a very deep level, a curtain of some kind was about to be lifted. Again, these were the earliest of times for me. It would be several years before I would find myself being forced to explore the treacherous terrain of self-deception.

As far as the society was concerned, at this point, it's important to remember that during the mid-sixties, as well as for at least the ten years that followed, the Beatles were by far, the most influential force in popular music. Of course, there were many other tremendous musicians during that time as well, far too many to mention here. But the Beatles always led the way, coaxing the culture down the yellow brick road for at least a decade.

All in all, a truly remarkable output of rock music became the primary source of influence to the seventy million American baby boomers. With their radios and record players constantly blasting the beat, it became the soundtrack of their lives as they made their way through the incredibly influential years that led them into becoming the people they eventually became.

By the way, on a completely different track, let’s take a look at a few statistics regarding Southeast Asia as the year of 1964 came to a close. At the close of 1963, the US had 16.300 “advisors” active in South Vietnam and 122 of them had been killed that year. By the end of 1964, the number had increased by over 40% to 23,300 and 216 of them had been killed. Not that anyone was paying any attention to it. These weren’t particularly alarming numbers and Vietnam could have been on the moon as far at the general public was concerned. A vast majority of the American population had never even heard of it.

But the Beatles music had definitely begun to change. It started out with a random song here and there, but the same way that random rocks trickling down the side of a mountain can suddenly catalyze a massive avalanche, in many significant ways, the Beatles were about to change the world.

In this regard, one evening in April of 1965 marked the beginning of their next phase, as their newly elevated path was unexpectedly launched into hyperspace.

John Lennon and George Harrison, along with their wives, went to dinner at the home of their dentist. The dentist served them a meal, followed by coffee and dessert, and it seemed like he made sure that John and George drank all their coffee. Then, a short while later, he told them that he had spiked their coffee with LSD.

Of course, dosing someone with LSD without their consent is a terrible thing to do. History has taught, as Timothy Leary’s research at Harvard had proclaimed much earlier, that the drug can wreak severely negative impacts when done in the wrong way at the wrong time.

Fortunately for the couples at dinner that night, even though it turned out to be a bit of a crazy ride, they still remained safe. But both George and John had some deeply profound experiences. But that’s enough for right now. As you can imagine, we’re coming into some interesting territory in the coming episodes, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As we ended the last episode, a party was beginning in a swank hotel suite in New York City. It was August 28, 1964, and Bob Dylan had driven down from his home in Woodstock to spend an evening with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, who had become known to the world as the Beatles.

Before we get into what happened on that magical evening, let’s step back a little and remember that we are looking at certain key events that took place back then that were hardly noticed at the time, but would have incredibly powerful effects on the massive changes that were about to come that would shake our society to its very core.

Two of those major events happened in August of 1964 and the meeting between Dylan and the Beatles was actually the second one. Let’s start this episode by taking a quick look at what happened a few weeks earlier, on August 4.

On that date, by a vote of 98 – 2 in the Senate, and by a 100% unanimous vote of the House of Representatives, the Congress of the United States passed something called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The odds are high that you either never heard of it or barely remember it, but in essence, this is what opened the door to the ever-deepening US involvement in Vietnam. In a lot of ways, this event marked the very beginning of the coming catastrophe.

At the time, in the battle between North and South Vietnam, the US was backing the south against the communist regime of the north. But South Vietnam’s forces had been largely ineffective and the Johnson administration concluded that it needed to prop them up to prevent a communist takeover of the entire region. This idea was called the “domino theory” and was often used to justify deeper US involvement in the area.

The South Vietnamese began a series of naval raids on the North Vietnamese coast and to lend support, the U.S. Navy stationed two destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, they reported that they had been attacked by some North Vietnamese patrol boats and had returned fire. Later it came out that the US had fired the first shots.

Then on August 4, with the area under severely inclement weather, relying on radar readings, the ships thought they were under larger attack. The two ships fired at the area delineated by the radar readings and reported up the chain of command that they were engaged in a battle. But soon, the captain of the Maddox realized that not only had there had been no attack, there were actually no ships in the area at all. He sent the corrected information up the chain of command.

Then, as Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara said in the documentary, “The Fog of War,” things got a little foggy. No one knows exactly how or why it happened, but President Johnson, speaking with the full authority of his office, notified congress that the attack had happened.

He then addressed the country on national TV and explained the alleged facts of the alleged situation. And calling for action, he firmly stated that the US could not tolerate this kind of aggression on the open seas. Congress passed the Tonkin resolution which stated that “the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force.” Note that the key words, “as the President determines.

Now there are two key points to take away from this congressional resolution. The first one is that the report’s inciting incident was, essentially, a “false flag,” which means it never happened. Of course, it was only after certain secret documents about it had been de-classified in 2005 that the true information became known. All things considered; forty years of misinformation sounds about right.

But the second, and by far most important issue with the proclamation is that it gave the president the right to use US military force at his discretion, without having to go before Congress for authorization. They basically gave him Carte Blanche to direct the actions of the military in Southeast Asia as he saw fit. And as events would subsequently prove, he really took them up on it.

It’s not necessary to go more deeply into all this here. The important thing is, and no one it knew back then, tragically, the trap-door been set and soon, we would fall into the horrifying abyss of death and destruction that was lying in wait for us in Vietnam.

Now, on a much lighter note, let’s jump ahead three weeks to August 28 and the party in the swank premier suite at the Delmonico Hotel, when Bob Dylan joined John, Paul, George and Ringo for an informal get together.

Dylan was always a big influence on the white-hot band from England. He had hit the big time about a year before the Beatles had emerged and they really looked up to him. Now, although they had both become major forces in popular music, in reality they operated in distinctly different musical frameworks. All of the Beatles’ songs were about standard romantic themes, while Dylan’s carried much deeper messages.

He had begun as a protest singer and quickly came to be considered the voice of the new generation. But he had recently gone through quite a change and was working on a new album called, “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” And indeed, it clearly was a very different side of the rapidly evolving artist.

In his new music he was dealing with themes that were far more personal than societal. Still, on the deepest level, his new songs were every bit as revolutionary as his protest songs had been, and as deeply insightful as well, but in a very different way.

One of his new songs was called “All I Really Want to Do.” Instead of being tied down to the normal roles of a standard romantic relationship, he expressed the liberated desire for freedom and individualism for both partners. He sang, “I ain’t looking to compete with you, beat or cheat or mistreat you. Simplify you, classify you, deny, defy or crucify you. All I really want to do is baby be friends with you.” No one had ever heard anything quite like it before and it quickly became a big hit.

But there was also a rumor about this new direction he was taking. According to one record producer who claimed he had been there, Dylan had tried LSD for the first time earlier that year.

As I already mentioned about Dylan, he always has been and still is, prone to keeping the details of his private life extremely private. So, nobody knows if or when he ever did LSD, how many times, or anything like that. But he wrote a song back then that found its way onto his new album and some observers consider to be the first popular song ever written about an LSD trip.

The song was called, “The Chimes of Freedom Flashing” and this deeply poetic statement quickly became an iconic standard in the annals of popular culture. Dylan seemed to have entered into a different dimension, where he was getting a sense that a major change in consciousness was approaching, that would bring freedom and liberation to those who were suffering from the slings and arrows of humanity’s unending inhumanity. It was and still is quite a powerful idea.

In the song, he and a companion were having a dramatic, multi-sensory experience as they witnessed what he called, “the chimes of freedom flashing.” He said the chimes were “Flashing for the warriors, whose strength is not to fight, flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight. And for each and every underdog soldier in the night.” He went on, saying they were “Tolling for the searching ones on their speechless, seeking trail, for the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale, and for each unharmful gentle soul misplaced inside a jail.” And in the last verse, he proclaimed that the chimes were “Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed, for the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse, and for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.” Obviously, this guy was light years ahead of his time.

Anyway, back to the party with the Beatles. It started out in a friendly, light hearted manner and stayed that way for a while until unexpectedly it went up a notch as Dylan told the group that he had brought along some rather high-grade marijuana.

He said he had assumed that the Beatles were already getting high because he thought the lyric to one of their famous songs was - “It’s such a feeling that my love, I get high, I get high, I get high.” They all had a good laugh because the actual lyric in the song was “I can’t hide. I can’t hide. I can’t hide.” Not “I get high.”

The hilarity continued, one thing led to another and before they knew it, the fab four, along with their manager Brian Epstein, got stoned for the first time in their lives. And it seems like they got really stoned, because, as it can happen, rather than just having an elevated inner feeling, it seems they took a little journey through the doors of perception and started having some rather profound realizations.

You might have heard the term, “the doors of perception before,” as writer Aldous Huxley used it as the title for his 1954 book. It comes from the quote by William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.” And that’s kind of what happened to them that night.

Paul McCartney felt like he was having an inspiring brush with enlightenment. He said something to the effect that this was the first time in his life that he felt he could really think. He had one of their assistants grab a pen and paper to keep writing down all deeper understandings he kept having.

Apparently, as the revelry of the evening continued, at one point Dylan made a comment to them that went in pretty deep. At the time, 100% of the songs the Beatles were writing and singing were about the ups and downs of standard, romantic boy-girl love, and that was their entire repertoire. That was it.

Dylan told them that he really enjoyed their music and he did. He often said that they had a great sound, that their melodies were terrific and their harmonies were perfect. But he said that even though he liked them, he had a problem with their songs and his problem was that they weren’t about anything.

Supposedly John Lennon got blown out and later said that Dylan’s comment had produced some major realizations within him, prompting him to start writing about deeper themes that were “outside of just the meat-market.”

In retrospect, many cultural historians believe that this meeting between Dylan and the Beatles marked the very beginnings of a major change that would soon completely transform popular music, which in turn, would change the entire world. We’ll go into it all this little more in depth in the coming episodes so let’s call it quits for now. As always, keep your eyes mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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We ended the last episode with the Commencement Address that President Kennedy gave at American University, which marked a major thaw in the cold war, leading to a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. That was on June 10, 1963. Now let’s move on to June 11th.

Governor George Wallace, in defiance of federal desegregation orders, attempted to block the enrollment of two African American students at the University of Alabama. Symbolizing his resistance to federal integration efforts, he stood in the doorway and proclaimed, “Segregation Now. Segregation Forever.” It’s hard to know if he thought his action was going to intimidate the President, but it did no such thing. JFK quickly federalized the Alabama National Guard, who immediately removed Wallace from the premises.

That night, the President delivered a televised address to the country announcing that he had ordered the National Guard to ensure the enrollment of the two African American students. Then, emphasizing the importance of upholding the rule of law and the Constitution, he clearly reaffirmed his administration’s full support of the Civil Rights movement.

It turns out that the month of June was to become a truly historic month for him because as it continued, on June 26th, he made his legendary trip to West Berlin. In his world-famous speech to 120,000 wildly admiring West Berliners, he said, “There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.” Then, with the wit of biting sarcasm he continued, “Freedom has many difficulties and Democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.”

At that point, he concluded the speech with words that went down in history, “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner.” Of course, it meant, “I am a Berliner.”

At the end of the trip, he left Berlin for a four-day visit to his ancestral homeland in Ireland, a journey that can only be called a love fest. Not only was he the first US president to ever visit the emerald isle, his trip was celebrated as the return of a truly beloved native son, and wherever he went, he was mobbed by adoring Irish crowds. He then moved on to two days spent in London consulting with Prime Minister MacMillan before returning to Washington.

Following his return from the exhilarating trip abroad, it was time to begin preparing for the coming presidential election. Although it had been a promising first term, he still had a tricky path to navigate in 1964, as his political enemies were powerful and the road ahead of him had some serious obstacles.

During these early, pre-elections days of October and November, there were rumored to have been two other events that may have happened which would have critically changed world history if they had come true. The first one is that Kennedy, concluding that the government of South Vietnam had become too unstable to justify further US support, had supposedly set in motion plans to terminate all US involvement in Vietnam by the end of December, 1965, He had made up his mind and we were pulling out.

The second possible event is the report that Kennedy had decided to drop Lyndon Johnson from the ticket for the election of 1964 and had told him so.

Now, there is no substantial proof to verify either of these claims and there never will be. Still, if you let your imagination run wild a little, you can see how the history of the coming era would have been radically different.

Whatever his plans might have been, they would have had to remain top secret given the turbulent politics of the upcoming presidential election. In that regard, he began to embark on some politically-motivated trips. On November 2nd he left for Chicago, followed by a trip to Tampa, Florida on the 18th. Then, on November 21, he and the first lady departed for Texas.

They went to San Antonio, then Houston, and then to Fort Worth, where they stayed overnight. The next morning, they took the short flight to Dallas and arrived at 11:38 AM. They got into the presidential limousine and left Love Field at 11:55, arriving in downtown Dallas following the short ride. The streets were lined with throngs of awestruck people, enthusiastically cheering them on, as the most recognized and charismatic couple in the entire world slowly passed by. As they basked in the warmth of the adoring crowd, the motorcade continued on, into the brilliant sunlight of what was shaping up to be an absolutely perfect day. Then, at 12:30 pm, the unthinkable happened.

It’s neither necessary nor possible to begin to describe the effect that it had on America, and in particular, the youth of America, as the plague of that horrible news spread like wildfire throughout the population. And it went on for the full thirty days of mourning that followed. For me, when the assassination happened, I had just begun ninth grade, my last year in junior high school and I was in the sadly unfortunate position of being just old enough and just young enough.

I was old enough to understand the true gravity of the tragedy, but still young enough to have my childhood sensibilities shaken to the core. And let’s not even talk about that four-day stretch of dark days. There was the assassination itself, followed by a day of absolute shock, then the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on national TV, followed by the incredibly sad and deeply somber funeral, as the forty-six year-old, fallen hero of the republic was laid to rest. It was all so sad, but also, it was all so weird.

For the first time ever, the whole country stopped to watch television as the entire nation stood still for the six-hour funeral. Something like this had happened before, on April 14, 1945 when President Franklin Roosevelt was buried, but that was only on radio. This was completely different. It was much more graphic, as one incredibly grief-stricken image after the next was broadcast to the entire western world.

And when it comes to tragic images, the spontaneous salute that John-John gave to his father’s flag-draped coffin as it passed him by was seared into our collective memory. Nobody saw that heart-wrenching moment coming.

It was almost as if we were being taught as a culture, a dramatic seminar on the ever-present possibility of sudden death…how everything can come to a screeching halt, no matter who you are. And subconsciously the message was clear - if instant death can happen to someone like that, who was at the absolute pinnacle of power, it can happen to any one of us. We can be gone in a flash. And then nothing is the same.

In total, all three major networks suspended normal programming for four days and played seventy consecutive hours of the live coverage of the proceedings. From a mass media perspective, the only other time anything like this has ever happened was the coverage of the 911 attacks in 2001.

Again, the purpose of this series of podcasts is to focus on the mass evolution of consciousness that happened during this formative era, as well as to examine my own story as I went through it all. At this point, to put it simply, we all had the wind completely taken out of our sails. Our daily lives continued, but again, it was all so sad and it was all so weird, like we were painfully groping our way through the shadows of a slowly unfolding nightmare that never seemed to end. And then, suddenly, something completely different happened.

Exactly eighty days after the assassination, on the night of February 9, 1964, variety TV show host Ed Sullivan walked onto the stage of his Sunday night program and with five words, spoke a phrase that absolutely changed everything - “Ladies and Gentleman – The Beatles.”

Seventy-Seven million people were watching and for the youth of the country, it was like a magic spell had been cast, designed to dissipate the suffering and the pain that had enveloped us. In an instant, one phase of our life ended and another began. The mourning period was over and suddenly, it was time to sing and dance again. And boy, did we!

Once more, it is neither necessary nor possible to begin to describe what happened. Suffice it to say that everything changed for us almost overnight, as this thing called Beatlemania set it. We had four new heroes, these guys named John, Paul, George and Ringo and they were so cool, yet so incredibly upbeat at the same time. Their music was truly amazing but there was also something else about them, something intangible. They seemed to be happily above the toils of life, like they had just arrived from another planet that ran on nothing but pure fun.

And on top of it all, their haircuts were like nothing we’d ever seen before. It seemed a little strange at first, but within a few months, all the guys were copying them. I know I went from the standard buzz-cut to the new mop top as soon as my hair would grow out. If it sounds like we were completely awestruck, we were, but don’t forget what we’d just been through, not to mention our age – I was just a month shy of turning fifteen.

Amazingly, it ended up that the Beatles were just the first wave of what became known as the British Invasion as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Who, the Hollies, the Zombies, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits and God knows how many others came cascading into the country. It seemed like every day, wave after wave of new songs washed up onto the shores of our AM radios, which we had blasting all the time. And that’s not to mention all of the new remarkable American music that helped launched us into hyper-space, as well.

Of course, we were still going to school and studying, as normal life continued, But, a massive new party had obviously begun, with the Beatles leading the way.

Things went on like that for about six months. Then the Beatles hit an unexpected, little turn in the road, when on the night of August 28, 1964, they finally got to spend an evening with one of their primary musical heroes, the enigmatic Bob Dylan.

Now this was another one of those events that was only a very quick couple of hours, and it was largely unnoticed at the time. On one level, it was just your standard meeting of two major musical superstar acts. At the time, the Beatles were enjoying a level of fame that had never been seen before. And along with also being extremely famous, Dylan was the most influential musician of his time.

It started out with a lot of goofing around, a lot of partying, you know the standard kind of things that can happen in a glitzy high-end hotel room in New York City when the absolute pinnacle of rock and roll gets together to relax and have a good time.

But it ended up being quite a bit more than that. Even though it was extremely subtle, again, those subterranean Teutonic plates were set in motion and a major earthquake was looming, just over the horizon. Well, this is a perfect place for us to stop, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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We closed the last episode by looking at the emergence of Bob Dylan onto the Beat Scene in Greenwich Village in 1962, and we mentioned his song, Blowin’ in the Wind, where he asked some deeply troubling questions about what was going wrong in the world and said that the answer to them all is blowing in the wind.

Now Dylan has never confirmed nor denied that he was referring to marijuana in that song. But if he was, it was a pretty obscure reference because

less than 4 per cent of the US population had tried it at the time, and a vast majority of people had never even heard of it.

It’s known that a lot of the “Beatniks” were into it, including my sister who was attending a big university in a major US city, so it was probably starting to get around, although her private escapades were always kept top secret.

There was another drug, LSD, that was flying well under society’s radar screen as well, but there were two major differences between the two substances. While marijuana got you high, meaning it put you into of an elevated state of mind, LSD was a powerful psychedelic, capable of significantly altering your entire sense of reality. And, although the far less potent drug, marijuana, had been against the law since 1937, remarkably, LSD was still legal.

We’ll get into the effects of these substances on American culture more deeply as the story unfolds. For now, let’s go back to the period immediately following the Cuban Missile Crisis and take another look at President Kennedy.

It seems clear that serving as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces during those harrowing thirteen days had a profound effect on him and most historians believe he started to seriously explore ways to reduce the tensions between America and the Soviet Union.

When the crisis began, Kennedy had authorized his brother Robert, the Attorney General and a key member of his cabinet, to set up a back channel of communications with the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin. JFK felt that it was imperative to have a reliable form of direct communication with Khrushchev.

According to released Russian documents, the Soviet premier’s son-in-law Alexei Adzhubei, met privately with the President to confirm that the Attorney General would be speaking on his authority. When he asked JFK if Bobby was his “number two” in Washington, JFK replied that he wasn’t just “No. 2, but 3, 4, 5 and 6.” The message was relayed to Khrushchev and the back channel was secured.

Once the crisis had been resolved, the two leaders set up a permanent, direct channel that became known as the “Hot Line.” Before it was officially completed in June of 1963, it could take as long as twelve hours for the two sides to communicate. Twelve hours is an obvious eternity in a world filled with massive atomic weaponry. Now, at least communications were on a much sounder footing.

In various public statements and speeches that followed, President Kennedy began expressing a stronger commitment to peace and the importance of finding diplomatic solutions to international conflicts. He emphasized the need for dialogue and negotiation to prevent the escalation of tensions. And he began to prioritize Civil Rights in Americas well.

Like most members of my generation, I had always felt a kind of personal connection to him. I don’t want to sound too shallow here, but along with all of his other accomplishments, he just seemed like the coolest guy in the world, and we all looked up to him. A commentator once put it this way. Nixon reminded us of who we were, and Kennedy of who we wish we were. It was for obvious reasons. He was young and handsome, came from a very wealthy and powerful family, had a beautiful wife who seemed like royalty, along with two adorable kids.

And on top of all this, his life played extremely well in the mass media, which was still in its earliest stages. The truth is that besides being president, he was also the most charismatic media superstar in the world. He would routinely hang out with the hottest entertainers in show business and everybody was totally enamored by him. At the top of the heap was Frank Sinatra and his pals, who were known as the “Rat Pack” and as the presidential campaign began in 1960, Sinatra changed its name to the “Jack Pack.”

Supposedly Jack and Frank were very tight and obviously Frank ran with a huge circle of A-List celebrities. All the glitzy pieces of the political/entertainment puzzle formed a glamorous mosaic when Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday to JFK at his 45th birthday gala celebration in Madison Square Garden. Popular culture as basking in the high life, with John F. Kennedy at the very top. So, again, I had always been pretty taken with him.

Looking back on it from a cultural perspective, an interesting side note is that Timothy Leary, the former Harvard professor who became a major counter-culture guru, claimed that JFK had been experimenting with LSD during this time as well.

According to Leary, at one point in mid-1962, a very impressive woman in her early forties came to visit him in his office at Harvard. She said she was an artist living in Georgetown and wanted to learn how to conduct LSD sessions. Apparently, a few of her female friends had a plan to turn some of the most powerful men in Washington on to LSD.

After a few meetings, she confided in Leary that she was having a serious affair with a very high-ranking member of the administration and he was interested in experimenting with the drug. Leary gave her detailed instructions on how to properly conduct sessions and things moved on from there. She began reporting her progress regularly to Leary and apparently things were going quite well. Along with the fact that this high-level member of the administration’s mind was expanding, their love affair was reaching extremely satisfying new heights.

Now, it turns out that Leary’s friend was no ordinary woman. Her name was Mary Pinchot Meyer. She came from a wealthy family, had known JFK since they were teen-agers, and they had been neighbors together in Georgetown. She was also extremely well-connected in Washington. Her sister was married to Ben Bradlee, a major reporter for Newsweek and a close friend of JFK’s. who later became the Executive Editor of the Washington Post. So, you can imagine how well-connected she really was.

I’ll tell you in a future episode how Leary came to the conclusion that JFK was the high-ranking member of the administration in question. Obviously, Leary’s theory has never been proven and it never will be, as all the players, including Leary, are long since dead. The whole thing could have easily come from a false memory of his or even a hallucination.

But it never mattered to me whether it was true or not because my focus has always been on the growth of human consciousness, regardless of the catalyst. And there is no question that LSD played a significant role in the massive changes that were about to overcome society during the next few years.

Also, and again I don’t want to sound too shallow here, but the idea that JFK might have been experimenting with mind expansion only made him seem cooler to me. LSD was completely legal at the time, many members of the intelligentsia had tried it, and I found the idea to be intriguing.

Regardless of the reason, Kennedy was making major strides in the direction of establishing a framework for the reduction of tension and the establishment of peace, not just with the Soviet Union, but around the world as well.

On June 10,1963, he took it a step further by delivering one of the most important speeches of his presidency as he gave the Commencement Address at American University.

He set the tone at the beginning by saying, “I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.” Then he continued, “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

He then shifted to the relationship between America and Russia saying, “both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race.” And then he made a major policy announcement calling for a test ban treaty and stating that the US would suspend nuclear atmospheric testing if Russian would agree.

And then he went on, “So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved…For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

The speech, which represented a break from contentious rhetoric, was revolutionary for several reasons. First, it marked a real thaw in the cold war. Although he acknowledged the ideological differences between the two superpowers, he still stressed their common humanity, which transcended those differences. Moving away from the adversarial language that had characterized the cold war for so long, he sought to create an atmosphere more conducive to negotiations and détente.

And critically, from the standpoint of policy, it represented a true breakthrough, as he announced his intention to pursue a comprehensive test ban treaty with Russia. Importantly, the speech received positive response both at home and abroad, which helped set the stage for the major diplomatic initiatives that followed, including the signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August of 1963.

Today, it's hard to grasp how revolutionary his ideas as well as his actions were. From our modern perspective, his views were incredibly advanced for the times.

And when he talked about the commonality between the Americans and the Russians, saying that “we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal,” even though he was six years early, from his words, he almost sounded like a hippy who had just come back from Woodstock. Who knows - maybe Timothy Leary was right. Maybe he had been experimenting with consciousness expansion. But it really didn’t matter. What mattered was how he was steering the ship of state.

So, let’s end this episode by leaving things here for now. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The last episode ended with the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. As you may recall, one day at the height of the crisis, October 27th is considered by some experts to be the closest the world has ever come to a full-out nuclear war. And it is thought that the wise decision of one 34-year-old Russian naval officer was all that stood in the way of provoking what could have been the cause of the greatest single loss of life in human history.

The American public had been deeply shaken by the event. Early in the crisis, on the night of October 22, 1962, JFK appeared on national TV and outlined the situation to the country. He said that Cuba had in essence, been turned into a Russian strategic nuclear base, complete with long-range and unmistakably offensive weapons, clearly capable of mass destruction.

Saying that this now constituted an explicit threat to all the Americas and acting in the defense of the entire Western Hemisphere, he announced a strict naval embargo. Then he gave a clear and stark warning to Russia. “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Clearly, the gauntlet had been thrown and the ultimatum was unmistakable. If you fire a missile from Cuba at any county on this side of the globe, we will launch an immediate and full retaliatory response upon you.

In closing, he said to the American public, “My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”

Nothing like this had ever happened before and a lot of people felt that a real catastrophe was at hand. Fortunately, the crisis resolved itself with no major incidents and things returned to some facsimile of normal. Still, most people remained extremely concerned about the future, because it had become painfully obvious that this ongoing cold war could get really hot, really fast.

Again, the evolution of consciousness is the focus of this story, along with an understanding of how certain societal and cultural events served to catalyze its emergence, so we’re going to shift our perspective a bit at this point.

We’re going to stay in the same time-frame, but we’re going to look at a different series of events, set against a very different backdrop.

In 1945, when the country had emerged victorious from the six years of hell that it had gone through in World War Two, it exhaled a deep sigh of relief that turned into a general state of conformity.

It seemed that we wanted and needed a calming sense of normality to set in after suffering the harrowing insanity of the unending torment of injury, misery and death that had overcome the world for what seemed like eternity.

It might have been a little boring, or even intimidating, but we wanted everything to be safely, sanely the same, at least for a while. And that’s what happened. America turned basic vanilla, 70 million babies were born and for a while, we just let it be.

But that kind of thing only lasts for so long, and then the younger generation starts to stretch its legs and flex its muscles a little. In the mid ‘50s a kind of subculture began developing around the country. In general, it featured a rejection of conventional norms including the materialistic and conformist aspects of the society.

It became known as the Beat Generation and interestingly, the term had been coined by writer Jack Kerouac, who claimed that it didn’t mean that you were deflated or beat. It meant you had the beat. It was something you could feel, like a jazz beat, and according to him, it didn’t matter what you called it. What mattered is that you had it.

Along with Kerouac, other key writers included Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassidy. The Beats became known for their exploration of alternative lifestyles, experimentation with drugs, and a deep interest in Eastern philosophy and spirituality. Although it began as a relatively small nuance of society, the seeds they planted throughout the fifties and early sixties would populate and grow into a massive forest. And like flower power on steroids, it would permanently alter the landscape of the entire culture.

Along with the poets, writers and folk musicians, other revolutions began to take hold in the entertainment world. In movies, a new actor named Marlon Brando was being noticed for his avant-garde style of acting, which created a radically different kind of hero.

With his ability to convey a feeling of inner turmoil and vulnerability beneath a tough exterior, he brought a new sense of realism to the screen. Soon after playing a conflicted blue-collar brute in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in 1953 he played a black-leather jacketed, delinquent motorcycle gang leader in “The Wild One.”

Early in the film, a possible girlfriend asked him, “What are you rebelling against Johnny?” With a casual shrug he replied, “What do you got?” His defiant attitude symbolized rebellion and constructed a new kind of “bad boy” archetype in film. James Dean took it a step further in “East of Eden” and “Rebel Without a Cause” and inevitably, movies began to change in a major way.

A similar, but louder revolution was building in popular music as well. A new rhythm called “Rock and Roll” had begun to emerge. In the early-fifties, artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Fats Domino fueled the flames of the vibrant new sound, and year by year, its popularity continued to grow. Then on September 9, 1956, the burning candle of rock exploded into a full-scale conflagration when Elvis Presly gyrated his way onto the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theatre. The genie was out of the bottle, sixty million kids went nuts, and that was only the beginning.

Meanwhile, a vibrant Beat scene had begun to develop in New York City’s Greenwich Village and a bunch of coffee houses had sprung up featuring folk music singers and poets. Thousands of onlookers were drawn to the streets on a weekly basis, just to check out the scene.

In January of 1961, as the Beat scene was in full swing, a 19-year-old kid from Minnesota hitch-hiked to Manhattan to see what he could see. He was a skilled singer-songwriter who played the guitar and harmonica, and a few years earlier, he had changed his name to Bob Dlyan. He began hanging out at the folk café’s and playing songs whenever he got the chance.

But it soon became apparent that this was no ordinary kid. He seemed to possess an extreme talent, both in writing and performing. Within an amazingly short period of time, he became one of the most important folk/protest voices in the city. Of course, that was just the beginning of a truly legendary career. Fifty-five years later, he was granted the Nobel Prize in literature and the New York Times estimated that he had written over six hundred songs.

But even back at the beginning, he seemed to be light-years ahead of everyone else. And there seemed to be something prophetic about his work. Surprisingly, he had secured a record deal rather early in his career, and in April of 1962, he went into the studio to record his second album. At one point in early September, he recorded his iconic song, “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.”

In the song, in response to the question, “Where have you been my blue-eyed son?” he answered with line after now famous line. Listen to his poetic description of the visions he saw, which stood for the darkness that was engulfing the world.

“I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard. I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it. I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken. I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children. I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.” Then as if warning of the fallout from a nuclear blast, he sang the chorus. “And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”

The song was an immediate phenomenon with the beat generation and about a month later, it seemed to have been prophetic as President Kennedy went on TV to inform the American public about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for thirteen days, the world held its breath.

A few months after that, things seemed to come back from the brink a little, but Dylan was just getting warmed up. He recorded a series of protest songs that instantly became classics and still are today. His first one sounded like it came right out of Eisenhower’s warning. It was called “Masters of War” and was incredibly powerful.

The first verse says. “Come you masters of war. You that build the big guns. You that build the death planes. You that build all the bombs. You that hide behind walls. You that hide behind desks. I just want you to know. I can see through your masks.”

A little later he continued – “You’ve thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled. The fear to bring children into the world. Let me ask you one question – is your money that good. Will it buy you forgiveness, do you think that it could?”

Then the last verse really puts the nail in the coffin. “And I hope that you die. And your death will come soon. I'll follow your casket by the pale afternoon. And I'll watch while you're lowered. Down to your deathbed. And I'll stand over your grave. 'Til I'm sure that you're dead.”

Maybe he was thinking that the masters of war were so tricky, they would probably fake their own death if would benefit them. Remember, in his warning, Eisenhower said to take nothing for granted. Regardless, representing the forces of life, he wanted the warmongers off the planet for good.

Before we close, a few points about the passage of time. First, it still always amazes me that Dylan was only 21 years old when he wrote that song. And besides his youth, these were still the earliest of days. JFK was still president.

We live now, knowing the history of what was to come, but back then, nobody knew it. Consider what was about to happen over the next seven years – JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby, Woodstock, Kent State. And the emergence of a new generation whose look and outlook would have been unimaginable back then.

But that generation was on the forefront of a conscious revolution that would ultimately bring the war machine to a grinding halt. Obviously, it was just a halt, not a stop. But at least it was a beginning.

Anyway, at that point in 1963, Dylan’s career launched quickly. On April 12, he played Town Hall. On July 27, he played the Newport Folk Festival and on October 26, he played Carnegie Hall. And earlier, on May 27, Columbia Records released his second album which had Masters of War on it.

But it had another song that blew the roof off the entire folk world. It was called “Blowin’ in the Wind” and it quickly became an anthem for American Youth. Dylan goes through a probing set of questions about the world as it was. “How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man? How many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned? How many deaths will ‘it take til he knows that too many people have died?”

Then, in the chorus he said, “The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

Now, I was in eighth grade when that song became popular and I remember hearing it and wondering, what the hell is he talking about, the answer is blowin’ in the wind? What is it that is blowing in the wind that could possibly be the answer to all these problems?

Well, we’re going to dig into that in the next episode. So, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened. And let’s get together in the next one.

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In the previous episode that took place in March of 1965, I mentioned that although we didn’t know it, the western world was entering into the early stages of a turbulent upheaval that would eventually revolutionize human consciousness on a global level. As one of the seventy million American baby boomers who were busy growing up at the time, I was heading right into it, as well.

In the chapter of “Wilt, Ike & Me” that was included in the episode, I had made mention of three critical factors that would become significant influences in shaping the upcoming changes – John F. Kennedy, Bob Dylan, and marijuana. Like the subterranean movements of massive Teutonic plates, the foundational reverberations from these powerful forces were about to unleash a major earthquake.

As with the rest of us who lived through that era, I was radically changed by it, and I’m going to present some of the deeper impressions that it made on me. But before I do, there are a few things I would like to point out.

First, during that time I was exposed to a combination of events and influences that changed the trajectory of my entire life, and ultimately, personal growth became my primary focus. So, I tend to view things from that particular perspective. Of course, there are many other ways of looking at what happened back then and mine is only one of them.

I will also include some profound events that happened to me which opened my eyes to a larger vision of what human intelligence can become, which inspired me to reach for higher ground. I continue to be a work in progress, but so is everyone else who is still alive. Regardless of your hopes and dreams, if you want to move forward, you always have to start from where you are. And as any great card player will tell you – the trick to the game is in learning how to play the hand you’re dealt.

Regarding the societal history of what happened, some of what I am about to discuss can be proven and some of it cannot. But presenting historical fact is not the purpose here. And besides, history isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. According to George Santayana, the renowned American philosopher and educator, “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened…told by people who weren’t there.”

As with the content of all these podcasts, the information that follows will simply be presented for your consideration. My suggestion is that you just take it and see what it does for you.

This episode is going to focus on JFK. We’ll get to Dylan and marijuana a little later. For now, we want to look at one essential aspect of JFK’s presidency, particularly his emergence as a champion of world peace.

Let’s start weaving this tapestry of time on January 17, 1961, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his Farewell Speech to the country. Before he became president, Eisenhower was the quintessential military man. He had graduated West Point in 1915 and remained on active duty in the army for thirty-three consecutive years. A five-star general in WWII, he served as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, directing the allies to victory in that grueling six-year tragedy that claimed the lives of 15 million soldiers and 38 million civilians.

So, it’s three days before he’s about to leave office, and the soldier/president is bidding farewell to the people of the republic that he had served for his entire life. And what does say to them?

Well, at one point, he issued them a stern, now-famous warning. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he said. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”

If you wonder that he meant by all this, it can be summed up in one simple, but simply dreadful fact – warfare had become extremely profitable. Both the constant threat of war, as well as its execution, creates an enormous, constant, and ongoing cashflow, regularly generating massive profits.

This makes it inherently dangerous, because of an inherently dangerous aspect of our current mentality – when it comes to being right or being rich, a lot of us will choose to take the money, regardless of the consequences. Our world is rife with examples of the unenlightened rationales that we use to justify our misguided actions, which are incredibly short-sighted to say the least.

In his speech, Eisenhower was the first one to coin the term, the “Military Industrial Complex,” which delineated the network of dependencies and relationships that exist between the government, the military, and powerful defense contractors. With his decades of military experience, he warned that we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. He said that it was the unwarranted influences by the complex that posed the potential risk, due to the disastrous rise of misplaced power that could come from it. In other words, policy could become driven by profit.

When it comes to gaining influence, nothing beats just plain buying it, which is a practice that human beings began perfecting almost as soon as soon as they created money.

In modern times, money spent on lobbying congress is a reliable barometer for tracking influence sought. In 2022, the defense industry spent over $125 million in lobbying and its affiliates contributed another $17.5 million to the reelection of certain members of congress. A total of $858 billion was spent on US defense that year.

Now this is a number we readily accept today. It continues year in and year out. But in 1961, it was unthinkable. It reminds me of what Deep Throat said to Woodward and Bernstein in “All the President’s Men” about solving the mystery of Watergate, when he told them, “Just follow the money.”

Three days after giving his farewell speech, Eisenhower, the oldest man ever elected president at age 70, passed the gavel to the youngest man ever elected – John F. Kennedy, at age 43. And in many deeply profound ways, the old was giving way to the new.

We’re going to jump ahead a little bit here. We’re going to move forward 646 days, from inauguration day, Jan. 21, 1961, to October 27, 1962, which is considered by some to be the most significant day in human history which most people have never heard of.

Of course, John F. Kennedy is one of the most famous figures in all American history and he has been the topic of over 40,000 books, so I’m quite sure you’ve heard of him. But I’m also just as sure that you’ve probably never heard of someone named Vasily Arkhipov. But these were two of the key players on that fateful day.

As you may have guessed, it was at the very height of the incredibly dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy had recently learned that Russia had installed a significant number of nuclear missiles in Cuba that were easily capable of inflicting severe damage on over half of the United States. The President had put in place a naval embargo, blocking all cargo into Cuba.

Ominous threats between the two countries had been escalating and hostilities were rapidly building. Then, earlier on that October day, Russia had shot down a US spy plane, killing the pilot.

In America, Kennedy’s military staff was calling for an immediate counter attack. Meanwhile, the Russian commanders were demanding that Khrushchev take significant military action as well. Castro even wired Khrushchev calling for him to launch a nuclear missile targeted at Florida. In the extremely volatile situation, things had clearly gone from bad to worse.

Meanwhile, four Russian submarines were secretly lurking in the waters near the blockade and unbeknownst to US intelligence, they were armed with nuclear torpedoes.

At one point, the battery died aboard one of the Russian submarines, the B-59, and it lost all communication with the outside world, including with its command center. One of the major US destroyers in the area, the Charles B. Cecil, suddenly detected the sub and began dropping mini depth charges into the water to force it to come to the surface and identify itself.

On top of all this, the sub had lost its air conditioning and was running low on oxygen. The crew had become extremely anxious and it was getting worse. Believing that the war between the US and Russia had already begun, the captain started to prepare to launch one of their nuclear torpedoes. He would make a pre-emptive strike and blow the US destroyer out of the water.

Fortunately, though, the Russian rules of engagement dictated that the decision to fire a nuclear weapon had to be unanimous among all three commanders of the ship. At 34 years old Vasily Arkhipov, the guy you never heard of, was second in command and he resolutely refused to endorse the action of launching the torpedo. Instead, he went against the captain, insisting that in a non-combative stance, the sub should rise to the surface and identify itself.

An intense argument ensued for quite a while, but Arkhipov stood his ground and in accordance with the Russian rules, he blocked the launch. Finally, they decided to bring the B-59 to the surface. The two ships signaled each other of peaceful intentions. The Cecil stood down and the situation ended without further incident. Over the next few days, with a round of intense back-channel diplomacy between Kennedy and Khruschev the entire crisis was finally resolved.

It may not sound like much now that sixty years of history have gone by, but many scholars consider that moment on October 27 to be the closest humanity has ever come to a full-scale nuclear war, with all the tragedy that could have ensued.

If Arkhipov had complied with the captain’s order and that Russian sub had sunk the American destroyer with a nuclear torpedo, all hell might have broken loose and we don’t know what might have happened. We do know that Russia and America had major nuclear arsenals pointed at each other that were ready to launch at a moment’s notice. And those weapons were about a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, which killed about 100,000 people. If things had gotten out of hand, which could have easily happened, it is quite possible that fifty million people could have been killed within an hour or so. More casualties that took place during the six years of World War Two, would have been caused in less than a day.

Kennedy had been deeply moved by the entire episode. He headed the US position hands on, making all the key decisions from beginning to end and he knew how close we had come to a major, human-caused catastrophe.

He may or may not have known that just one 34-year-old man, standing on his own, outside the chain of command, made a decision that saved millions of lives. But Kennedy was a renowned student of history and had earlier passed around a book to his staff called “The Guns of August,” which told the story of how World War I took place due to a series of reckless mistakes coupled with poor diplomacy, and he fully understood what could have happened. He knew what was in his hands and he knew what he had to do.

We’ll stop here for now, but sometime after this harrowing incident JFK began to transform into an active proponent for peace. As the tale continues in the next episode, we’ll get into some fascinating theories about JFK’s metamorphosis. And then we have Dylan, marijuana, LSD and the Beatles on the horizon. So, essentially, the story is just beginning…

As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As you may recall, I am currently preparing to release a comprehensive personal growth program called, “The Higher Mind Training.” Its purpose is to help people harmonize their intelligence, which will allow them to transform the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment.

We will have programs designed to address specific needs, like smoking cessation, freedom from drug and alcohol abuse, and weight loss. We will also offer a general personal growth training, as well.

As I have also mentioned in some previous podcast episodes, as part of the preparation effort, I am reviewing a large portion of the research material I have collected over the years, including some of the journals that I have kept, and I am going to present some of it to you for your consideration.

Although the material may seem to cover a wide range of topics, it all revolves around one central theme, which is the fact that as human beings, we have a remarkable potential within our intelligence which remains largely untapped and if we choose to, we can connect with it. Even small improvements in this kind of self-knowledge can significantly transform our lives for the better.

At this point, I’m going to look back at certain dramatic events that led me to explore some of the deeper sides of life, ultimately leading me to become deeply committed to the process of personal growth. Like each one of us, my personal life has been set against the background of the society and culture I’ve lived in, and as it will become apparent, the times, they were a changin’.

To set the stage, I’d like to start out with a short chapter from my memoir, Wilt, Ike & Me. It takes place in March of 1965 and I am beginning here primarily due to the nature of the times. Back then, hardly any of us knew it, but we were on the verge of a massive cultural change that would eventually revolutionize the entire western world. And even though it may not be obvious, in many, the revolution goes on today..

In those days, Wilt Chamberlain had been staying with us in our home for a number of weeks and it was quite an adventure. But this isn’t so much about Wilt, as it is about my sister, Sybil, a college student who had become a bit of what they called at the time, a “beatnik.” So, let’s take a look at a day in the life…

A lot of the times in the late afternoon, Wilt and I would end up hanging out in my sister’s room at the end of the hall, listening to music. Sybil had a nice record player and was never there. She was a sophomore now at Temple University and was out all the time.

Her room was in its own part of the upstairs. Wilt was in my room, and I was in the guest room right next to it. That was on one side of the house, along with the bathroom. Then there was a long hallway that went past a small sundeck on the roof, and Sybil’s room was at the far end of the hall. It was a universe unto itself, and the door to that universe was always closed.

One thing I learned early in life is that you never, under any circumstances, entered her room without knocking first, and then you had to wait for her permission to come in. This was a cardinal rule and we all obeyed it implicitly. Only our homemaker, Geneva had free rein to come and go as she pleased.

Sybil was what was called a beatnik in those days. My mother just called her a vilde chaya, which is a Yiddish term that doesn’t translate perfectly into English, but basically means a “wild Indian.” And that shoe really fit.

She was a lot like the weather in our part of the world—lots of warm, sunny days but some dark, stormy ones as well. And as her little brother, while I enjoyed basking in the sunshine when it was out, I always knew to get the hell out of the way whenever one of those storms blew through.

She was by no means a bad kid, adored her parents and was fiercely loyal to her family. But she had an untamable wild streak running through her. And no matter what was going on, she was always her own boss.

The first time I really saw it was during the 1960 presidential campaign. My father was for Nixon. He was tight with the Pennsylvania Republican party and had met both Eisenhower and Nixon. He had even unsuccessfully run for Congress in 1956.

On top of that, he was no fan of the Kennedys. In his view, Joseph Kennedy had been weak on Hitler and he didn’t trust him when it came to Jewish welfare. And in my father’s world, the apple never falls too far from the tree.

Sybil, on the other hand, fell madly in love with JFK. He was the first candidate who was a real media superstar, and my fifteen-year-old sister was crazy about him. She pasted about five hundred pictures of him on her wall in a massive collage. I think my father got nauseous every time he saw it and avoided ever going into her room. Even after the election, her JFK shrine endured for quite a while.

Now that she was in college, her taste in wall décor had veered off into some new directions. One of her girlfriends was a talented portrait painter, who later became a famous courtroom artist. She painted three large full-color paintings for Sybil, who displayed them prominently in her room.

Two were portraits of Sybil. In one, she was wearing an enormous black-feathered hat. It looked like her head was covered by a dark, foreboding raven. In the other, she was seated on a big, comfortable gold easy chair, with an opened book lying face-down on her lap. From the sour look on her face, she was either the most bored or the most depressed person in the world.

But she hung the masterpiece of her collection in the center of the back wall, and it really grabbed your attention when you walked in the room. In the rear of the large painting was a blindfolded naked woman hanging from a meat hook by her tied hands. A priest stood in the foreground, dressed in a black suit and a black shirt with a white priest’s collar. He was holding a Bible in his hands with a gold crucifix on top of it. And he was staring daggers at you.

Sybil added her own piece of art to the mix. She made a collage and put it right next to the painting. She covered a large piece of poster paper with cutout photos of every form of human suffering imaginable. It was unbelievably awful. And in the middle, she put a true-to-life depiction of Jesus on the cross.

She was obviously making a statement of some kind, but it probably would have gone over better in a dorm than in her room at home. My father couldn’t stand it.

I was sitting with him in the kitchen having ice cream one Thursday night, while my mother was still in New York doing her charity work. Something seemed to be bothering him. The whole time we ate, he had a weird look in his eye, like his mind was on a slow simmer. Suddenly it exploded into full boil.

“God damn it!” he said and smacked his hand down on the kitchen table. He stood up, went over to a drawer, rummaged through it and pulled out a medium-size carving knife. “God damn it!” he repeated and angrily stomped out of the kitchen toward the steps that led upstairs.

“What the hell is this?” I thought and went running after him. Knife in hand, he went up the steps, then down the hall to Sybil’s closed door. He burst it open without knocking and flicked on the lights. I had no idea what he was up to, but I was glad she wasn’t home.

He walked right over to her human suffering collage, and using the sharp point of the knife, started scraping off the Crucifixion scene. He attacked it like a maniac and kept going until he had gotten rid of every last bit of it. When he was finished, he stood there and stared at the poster for a moment. Then he turned around and looked at me. I had absolutely nothing to say, and neither did he.

Now, of course, symbols mean different things to different people, and whatever that image meant to him, he clearly didn’t want it in his daughter’s bedroom. But now it was gone, and everything seemed fine. We walked back to the kitchen together, sat down at the table, and finished our ice cream as though nothing had happened.

My mother was absolutely horrified when she got home later, and he told her what he’d done. Somewhat of an artist herself, she felt he had no right to invade Sybil’s room and inflict his will on her creative expression. She thought it was appalling.

When Sybil got home the next day and my mother sheepishly began to give her the details, my sister made a point of being outraged. But her biggest effort was to hide her deep relief.

When my mother said, “Sybil, Daddy went into your room last night,” her heart sank, and she got really scared. But when she heard what actually happened, she was so happy she almost burst out laughing, but kept a straight face.

She told me years later that she always kept an ounce of grass in the drawer of the night table next to her bed. She couldn’t have cared less about the collage, but if he had found the marijuana, it could have been a disaster. She would have really had to reach into her bag of tricks to wiggle her way out of that one. We both knew she could have done it—she was that good. But it would have been quite a challenge, even for her.

Now, this was still the early days, when marijuana had just started blowing in the wind, and not too many people were smoking it at the time.

When she first started, I could clearly smell a pungent, unfamiliar odor in the air. It definitely was not the same as the normal cigarette smoke that pervaded every other part of our house. When I asked her about it, she told me she had begun burning incense. It was a new thing she had found, a study aid that would clear her mind and help her concentrate. It made sense to me.

One day, during Wilt’s stay, she was home in her room with the door closed. Wilt and I were in my room, and I had to drive him somewhere. As we walked out into the hall, it reeked of that smell of hers. He immediately picked up on it and stopped on the landing before we went downstairs.

“What’s that?” he asked me, taking a couple sniffs of the air.

“Oh, Sybil’s into burning incense now. She does it all the time. It helps her study.”

“Really?” Wilt, sounding impressed. He looked at me like I was five years old. “So, you think that’s incense, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. What else could it be?

“OK,” he said with a chuckle. “Incense it is.”

But before he moved, he took one more sniff and nodded in appreciation. “It smells like some pretty good stuff to me,” he added, and we left.

Before we close this episode, I want to add one other element to the mix. Behind her closed door, my sister always had music playing and at one point, for some strange reason, she seemed to have gotten into this hillbilly singer who had a high pitched, twangy voice and played a guitar and harmonica.

It was such a weird sound that I figured it must have been some kind of comedy album. I mean, why else would anyone pay good money to listen to someone who sounded like that? It turned out that the hillbilly singer was some kid my brother’s age named Bob Dylan.

Astonishingly, within another few years, he would become a major hero of mine and I would know all his songs by heart. But that was still a few lifetimes away. Again, these were the very early stages of a major, unprecedented change of consciousness that was about to disrupt the entire world, but we’ll pick it up again in the next episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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I’m going to ask you to try to stretch your mind and imagination a bit for this episode. A true story is going to be presented to you. It took place in India, sometime around 1910 and you may find the cultural differences to be a little unusual for you. But on a subtextual level, a lot of important information is going to be presented as well, and you may find that it takes you to some interesting places within your own intelligence. I know it did for me.

As I mentioned a few episodes earlier, as my interest in Personal Growth began to grow strongly towards the end of 1971, I became aware of certain writers and speakers that grew into significant sources of information for me, and many have remained so.

One of these was the renowned Indian Yogi, Parmahansa Yogananda, and my earliest introduction to him was in the memoir he had written which was called, “Autobiography of a Yogi.”

At the time, I was being exposed to an idea about God and religion that was new and somewhat revolutionary for me. Rather than being far away from us, the Divine Essence was actually very close. In fact, closer than our own breath. And you didn’t have to die to get to be with it. You could somehow could turn your attention within and experience it now, while you are alive. Yogananda’s writings were very much in line with this perspective.

Historically, he came to America in 1920 and became a powerful force in the west until his death in 1952. His towering legacy still lives on, but this story is from a much earlier time in his life, when he was a teenager, still living in India. And according to him, it marked a truly major turning point.

For thousands of years, that country has had a tradition of gurus, who are teachers and master practitioners. They usually have a set of disciples that they teach. At the time of this story, Yogananda had recently become a disciple of a master named Sri Yukteswar and had begun living in his ashram, practicing, and studying to become a yogi.

But as a teenager and young college student, he was getting restless and wanted to travel to the Himalaya mountains. He thought he would go there to sit in silence to achieve continuous divine communion. Although he felt his intense yearning was sincere at the time, he later called it “one of the unpredictable delusions which occasionally assail the devotee.”

His teacher discouraged the idea, saying that "Wisdom is better sought from a man of realization than from an inert mountain." But Yogananda decided to go anyway.

As he was preparing for his journey, he heard stories about someone known as the “sleepless saint” who was supposedly always awake in an ecstatic state of consciousness. The story was that he had spent decades alone in a cave, practicing meditation and had achieved some kind of enlightenment. Yogananda decided to travel to the village in the mountains where this man supposedly lived and try to contact him.

After a few days on the road, as he got nearer to the village, he came upon a shrine that many people in the area considered to be a holy place, like Lourdes. When he walked into the temple, he was surprised to see that it contained nothing but a large stone ball. Most pilgrims bowed before it, but Yogananda, believing he should bow only to God, just walked out without offering any reverence at all to the huge stone ball.

He finally got to the village and started asking where he might be able to find this holy man, whose name was Ram Gopal Babu. And here is where his nightmare of confusion began.

He began to be told a series of conflicting bits of information. He was told that no such person lived in the village. He was sent to another village several miles away. When he got there, he was told he had made the wrong turn. In another village he was told he had just missed the man.

Finally, night fell and he found a place to eat and sleep. The next day, his fruitless journey got even worse, filled with hour after hour of following wrong information, in the blistering hot sun. Toward the end of the day, feeling completely hopeless as he was standing at a crossroad wondering which way to go, the extreme heat made him feel like he was ready to pass out. Then, he noticed someone walking towards him at a casual and very leisurely pace.

In his autobiography, here is what Yogananda happened next -

“The stranger halted beside me. Short and slight, he was physically unimpressive save for an extraordinary pair of piercing dark eyes. "I was planning to leave the village, but your purpose was good, so I awaited you." He shook his finger in my astounded face. "Aren't you clever to think that, unannounced, you could pounce on me?”

In the presence of this master, I stood speechless. His next remark was abruptly put. "Tell me; where do you think God is?"

“Why, He is within me and everywhere." I doubtless looked as bewildered as I felt.

"All-pervading, eh?" The saint chuckled. "Then why, young sir, did you fail to bow before the Infinite in the stone symbol at the temple yesterday? Your pride caused you the punishment of being misdirected…and today, too, you have had a fairly uncomfortable time of it!"

I agreed wholeheartedly, wonder-struck that an omniscient eye hid within the unremarkable body before me. Healing strength emanated from the yogi; I was instantly refreshed in the scorching field.

"The devotee inclines to think his path to God is the only way," he said. "Yoga, through which divinity is found within, is doubtless the highest road…But discovering the Lord within, we soon perceive Him without. Holy shrines …are rightly venerated as nuclear centers of spiritual power."

The saint's censorious attitude vanished; his eyes became compassionately soft. He patted my shoulder.

"Young yogi, I see you are running away from your master. He has everything you need; you must return to him. Mountains cannot be your guru." Ram Gopal was repeating the same thought which Sri Yukteswar had expressed at our last meeting.

"Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to limit their residence." My companion glanced at me quizzically. "The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears near-by."

I silently agreed.

“Are you able to have a little room where you can close the door and be alone?"

"Yes." I reflected that this saint descended from the general to the particular with disconcerting speed.

"That is your cave." The yogi bestowed on me a gaze of illumination which I have never forgotten. "That is your sacred mountain. That is where you will find the kingdom of God."

His simple words instantaneously banished my lifelong obsession for the Himalayas.

"Young sir, your divine thirst is laudable. I feel great love for you." Ram Gopal took my hand and led me to a quaint hamlet. The adobe houses were covered with coconut leaves and adorned with rustic entrances.

The saint seated me on the umbrageous bamboo platform of his small cottage. After giving me sweetened lime juice and a piece of rock candy, he entered his patio and assumed the lotus posture. In about four hours I opened my meditative eyes and saw that the moonlit figure of the yogi was still motionless. As I was sternly reminding my stomach that man does not live by bread alone, Ram Gopal approached me.

"I see you are famished; food will be ready soon."

A fire was kindled under a clay oven on the patio; rice and dhal were quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my aid in all cooking chores. "The guest is God," a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial.

Ram Gopal arranged some torn blankets on the floor for my bed, and seated himself on a straw mat. Overwhelmed by his spiritual magnetism, I ventured a request.

"Sir, why don't you grant me a samadhi ?" (Note: In Hindu yoga, samadhi is regarded as the final elevated state of consciousness, at which union with the divine is reached.)

"Dear one, I would be glad to convey the divine contact, but it is not my place to do so." The saint looked at me with half-closed eyes. "Your master will bestow that experience shortly. Your body is not tuned just yet. As a small lamp cannot withstand excessive electrical voltage, so your nerves are unready for the cosmic current. If I gave you the infinite ecstasy right now, you would burn as if every cell were on fire.

"You are asking illumination from me," the yogi continued musingly, "while I am wondering-inconsiderable as I am, and with the little meditation I have done-if I have succeeded in pleasing God, and what worth I may find in His eyes at the final reckoning."

"Sir, have you not been singleheartedly seeking God for a long time?"

"I have not done much. For twenty years I occupied a secret grotto, meditating eighteen hours a day. Then I moved to a more inaccessible cave and remained there for twenty-five years, entering the yoga union for twenty hours daily. I did not need sleep, for I was ever with God. My body was more rested in the complete calmness of super consciousness than it could be by the partial peace of the ordinary subconscious state.

"In super consciousness, the internal organs remain in a state of suspended animation, electrified by the cosmic energy. By such means I have found it unnecessary to sleep for years. The time will come when you too will dispense with sleep."

"My goodness, you have meditated for so long and yet are unsure of the Lord's favor!" I gazed at him in astonishment. "Then what about us poor mortals?"

"Well, don't you see, my dear boy, that God is Eternity Itself? To assume that one can fully know Him by forty-five years of meditation is rather a preposterous expectation. However, even a little meditation saves one from the dire fear of death and after-death states. Do not fix your spiritual ideal on a small mountain, but hitch it to the star of unqualified divine attainment. If you work hard, you will get there."

Enthralled by the prospect, I asked him for further enlightening words. He related a wondrous story of his first meeting with a renowned Hindu avatar.

Around midnight Ram Gopal fell into silence, and I lay down on my blankets. Closing my eyes, I saw flashes of lightning; the vast space within me was a chamber of molten light. I opened my eyes and observed the same dazzling radiance. The room became a part of that infinite vault which I beheld with interior vision.

"Why don't you go to sleep?"

"Sir, how can I sleep in the presence of lightning, blazing whether my eyes are shut or open?"

"You are blessed to have this experience; the spiritual radiations are not easily seen." The saint added a few words of affection.

At dawn Ram Gopal gave me rock candies and said I must depart. I felt such reluctance to bid him farewell that tears coursed down my cheeks.

"I will not let you go empty-handed." The yogi spoke tenderly. "I will do something for you."

He smiled and looked at me steadfastly. I stood rooted to the ground, peace rushing like a mighty flood through the gates of my eyes. I was instantaneously healed of a pain in my back, which had troubled me intermittently for years.

Renewed, bathed in a sea of luminous joy, I wept no more. After touching the saint's feet, I sauntered into the jungle, making my way through its tropical tangle until I reached the village with the holy temple.

There I made a second pilgrimage to the famous shrine, and prostrated myself fully before the altar. The round stone enlarged before my inner vision until it became the cosmical spheres, ring within ring, zone after zone, all dowered with divinity.”

And so ends this part of Yogananda’s remarkable story, which was clearly worlds away from our own. As I mentioned earlier, I came upon this in the very early stages of my interest in personal growth and a few parts of it really hit me. And these parts still impress me, but on a deeper level as I continue to age.

Here are a few of them for your consideration. First was the general state of consciousness of Ram Gopal. He knew all about Yogananda before they ever met. He knew that he was travelling to try to find him and he knew about Yogananda’s refusal to bow before the stone in the shrine.

Also, he had meditated alone in a cave for decades and seemed to be in a permanently exalted state. Yet, even in that state, he mentioned that when we are talking about the Divine Force, or God, we are talking about the infinite, and practicing meditation for several decades in one lifetime isn’t necessarily as big a deal as it may seem to us. And finally, he healed Yogananda of back pain that he had suffered from for most of his life.

All this made me look at the state of my awareness at that time. I was a standard, twenty-two year old American know it all, who thought he knew it all, but was starting to find out a thing or two about some of the illusions of this life. And I started wondering what the greater potential of our consciousness is? It suddenly seemed like there was more to life than learning how to master the skills of how much, how many, where and when. All centered around the stone cathedral of “I, Me, Mine.”

We don’t have the time to go into more detail about how this story affected me. I just wanted to present it to you for your own personal consideration, and I hope you found it interesting and helpful, as well as somewhat enlightening. Enough has been expressed for this episode As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As with many people, in my line of work, one thing often leads to another, and often in some very unexpected ways. As you may recall, I have mentioned in a few earlier episodes that over the years, I have been involved in the writing of several stories for the purpose of possibly developing them into novels or films, and at one point in my life, I became very involved in studying story structure.

This was around the time of the release of the first Star Wars movie and during my research I became intrigued when I learned that George Lucas, the writer, producer, and director of the film, had been significantly influenced by someone named Joseph Campbell and that the basic story structure of Star Wars was largely developed from of what Cambell had termed, “The Myth of the Hero.”

This was from his book, “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” that was published in 1949 and as I started studying it, I was amazed to find that what happens to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars follows the exact outline of Campell’s story structure to the tee.

As I continued my research, it turned out that Campell’s understanding of the hero was just one part of his work, which also included a general grasp of the power of myth in the human psyche. And, additionally, a large influence on him had been psychologist Carl Jung.

Of course, like most people who have gone through the standard western educational system, I had heard of Jung. but to be honest with you, the only thing I think I knew about him was that there were some differences in the way his last name could be pronounced. I called him Carl Young, but some of the finer students of linguistics pronounced his last name Yooong. I doubt he would care. I don’t want to sound too shallow, but that’s really about all I knew about the guy.

Now suddenly I had an interest in him. It began with his influence on Campbell and the way his views pertained to crafting stories. But the deeper I got, the more fascinating his overall viewpoint became to me.

By way of a very brief overview, Jung was a Swiss psychologist born in 1875 who became one of the major figures in modern psychology. But he was a little different from Freud and many of the other authorities of his time. He was slightly more esoteric. He founded analytical psychology, which emphasizes the exploration of the unconscious and deeper elements of the psyche.

He also introduced the concept of archetypes, which are universal, innate symbols and themes which remarkably appear in myths, dreams, and fantasies across all human cultures, throughout all eras of civilization. He considered them to be part of the collective unconscious, representing fundamental human experiences and emotions that we all have in common, like a shared reservoir of memories and ideas that all human beings inherit.

And to take it one step further, he also delved into a process that he called individuation, which perceives life as a journey of self-discovery. It is a transformative process, and Campbell used it as a foundation of his myth of the hero. The protagonist, which also represents each one of us, undergoes trials and hardships, comes face-to-face with the unknown, and ultimately triumphs, returning to the world with newfound wisdom, giving boons to his fellowman. This is a basic storyline that has deeply affected human beings since the beginning of recorded history.

I could see that thanks to George Lucas’s consultations with Joseph Campbell, Luke Skywalker’s journey in the ultra-modern Sci-Fi epic Star Wars, exactly mirrored the psychological and spiritual transformation that Jung had associated with individuation.

I was starting to get pretty blown out and although my initial interest in Jung’s observations began with just my interest in the elements of good story construction, his understandings began to take on greater relevancy to me as they pertained to my interest in some of the deeper meanings in life and how they relate to personal growth.

Which leads me to the basic theme of this episode. Because, as interesting as this may have hopefully been so far, what I really want to do is pass along four of my favorite quotes from Jung that I have found to be particularly transformative, and I have found that their meanings to me have deepened considerably over the decades.

The first one is, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

In this regard, Jung observed that individuals tend to project their own unconscious qualities onto others. In other words, the aspects that we find irritating, offensive, or challenging in other people may be reflections of our own unresolved issues or unacknowledged traits.

For me, this one required a little upgrade in the old humility department because about the easiest thing in the world to do is to dislike something about somebody else. Take it from me, if you’re tuned into that sort of thing, you see it all day long. So and so is narcissistically self-centered. This one has an obnoxious mean streak. Or, that one is a power-hungry egomaniac. And on and on, ad nauseum.

And it gets a little unsettling if you take Jung’s point of view, that maybe the reason I see all these terrible traits in others is because I carry them all in me. Maybe if I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t even notice them. Like hearing strangers speaking in a foreign language that I didn’t understand, I wouldn’t pay it any attention at all.

And if I recognize these irritating traits within myself, maybe I can find out what is causing them, and more importantly, maybe even transform them into something better, which would be great for both for me and for those around me. I find that anytime you think like that, you don’t feel like such a big shot.

The second great quote from Jung is, “Your vision can clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakes.”

This was in line with another realization I was dealing with as I started to become aware of some of the sayings of Buddha. Once, someone asked him what he was. Was he some kind of divine being, like a god, or an angel or a master of something like that? And he replied, “I am awake. To be awake is everything.”

Now a library worth of books has been written about this idea of being awake in life, rather than being asleep. But Jung’s quote was pretty confronting to me. How much did I look into my own heart? To tell the truth, I didn’t even know what that meant, and no matter what I think I may have learned in the last half century, I probably still don’t.

And when it comes to looking outside versus looking inside, I wouldn’t say that all my attention was completely focused on the outside. Probably no more than 98% of it. And again, I’ve been practicing personal growth for over fifty years, and I think there’s a decent possibility that I may have picked up a percent or even two over the that time. Which, according to Jung, means that I’m still basically dreaming my life away.

So, it seems like we all have in front of us the idea of making life a journey of self-discovery, gaining clarity through self-reflection, transcending illusions, and awakening through internal inquiry. For me, although it may sound like a tall order, what else should I be doing with this fleeting existence?

The third quote that I want to mention is a short, pithy quip that I still really enjoy. “One ought not go to cadavers to study life.”

Of course, you can look at this idea in a lot of ways, but here is an idea to consider. Perhaps observe the difference between what is alive and what is not. We have life within us. We are alive. But many of the antiquated concepts from unenlightened cultures that went before us are dead and the people that came up with them are long since dead. Flowers and insects are alive. And one thing about life – it always functions only in present time. The past is a memory and the future is only an idea. Life is always now and all of creation is throbbing with life.

Maybe what he is saying is that by bonding ourselves to life, rather than to death we will produce a major change in both our outlook as well as our behavior. I’m reminded of a passage in the book, “Little Big Man,” by Thomas Berger, which was the source of the movie of the same name.

Old Lodge Skins, the wise Cheyenne chief was reflecting on the difference between the Native Americans and the White Man. He said something like, to the Cheyenne, everything is alive. Not only the people, the animals and all the plants, but the dirt, the mountains, the sky and the sea, the earth and all of creation is alive. To the Cheyenne, everything is alive. But to the White Man, everything is dead. He even sees his brothers and sisters as just the walking dead. There’s a lot to unpack in that comment.

Finally, the last quote by Jung that really got to me was, ““The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. We don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems.”

This was the first time I had ever heard things put quite in this way. I know for me, I seem to spend the majority of my life solving problems. One thing, after the next, after the next. And I never thought about the idea of outgrowing them, that I could become bigger than the problems.

The idea of outgrowing something reminded me of the first time I ever learned about outgrowing anything. I must have been about five years old and I had a pair of red cowboy boots that I absolutely adored. I wore them every day through the winter and when spring came, my mother put them on in the back of my closet.

I completely forgot about them until late fall, about six months later. She was getting me dressed to go to a birthday party and I saw my old boots. I was overwhelmed with excitement at the idea of wearing them again. When I told my mother I wanted to get them out she said, “Oh no. They won’t fit you anymore.”

What she said didn’t make any sense to me. These were my favorite shoes. After begging her about a hundred times, she finally put them on me with a big shoe horn. They felt pretty tight, but I decided to wear them anyway.

When I walked out the front door, to my shock, I couldn’t even make it to the car. They were so tight that I couldn’t stand them and had to get them off as soon as possible. And the idea of ever wanting to wear again went right out the window. Permanently.

Jung would say that it is the same with the greatest and most important problems in our lives. The only solution to them is to outgrow them. Maybe as our consciousness expands and grows, from our enlarged perspective, we see them with a different set of eyes. And we approach them with a different set of tools. And maybe from there, not only are the big problems taken care of, the little ones fall in line as well. Who know? It seems like we each have to find out for ourselves.

Anyway, I hope that the quotes from Dr. Jung have stimulated some ideas in your awareness. As with a lot of insights from the world of personal growth, if you give them a little time and attention, they have the potential to bear some wonderfully tasty and truly nutritious fruit. But let’s leave it at that for this episode.

As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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I am continuing with the process of releasing some of the large amount of notes that I’ve filed away over the years that pertain to personal growth. As I mentioned, I am not building any podcasts specifically around any of these ideas. I am just putting them out to you without any particular format so you can take them in one at a time and see if they do anything for you.

One thing I didn’t mention is that some of these are not just ideas, they are actually notes that I’ve taken with the idea to possibly construct a short story around. It’s something that I learned from the gifted American Literature professor that I was fortunate to have in my senior year of college, prize winning author Kermit Moyer.

Kert told me that for the most part, he wrote like a jazz musician who was improvising a piece. He said he never knew where the writing would take him. He would just get started and soon the work would begin to take shape, almost on its own. He authored many of his writings in that way. The idea caught my fancy, and although I do a lot more planning than that, the technique is something that I do love to play around with.

So, we’re going to begin today’s podcast with a quick story about something that happened to me about fifteen or twenty years ago. I have a working title for this working story, but to be honest, I’m not sure that the story is going to go much farther than here. The title is, “You Know It When You See It.”

As I mentioned in a few episodes in the past, I’ve been playing golf for many, many years and I am really, really bad at it. Trust me. I’m not being modest or humble about it. The truth is that I was horrible when I first started playing around with it and I am every bit as horrible now as I was twenty-five years ago. I do enjoy playing. I’ve learned a lot about it and a lot from it. But I’m just plain bad at it.

Comedian Larry David says he’s in the same boat and he once put it this way. “You really have to have a knack for this game and the truth is, I’m knackless.”

Don’t worry. This story isn’t really about golf at all. It’s more about the recognition of mastery. So, here’s what happened.

We live in a condominium on Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park and there is a golf driving range about two miles away that is called “Longknockers.” I used to go over there about twice a week to hit some balls. Because my schedule is usually pretty flexible, I would go over on weekdays in the early afternoon, when the place was basically empty.

Like most driving ranges, it is a huge, open field and being in the park, there is a large line of trees on one side. I would generally go all the way over near this line of trees so I could be in the shade as I was hitting.

One afternoon, I went over there as usual and as I was walking over to my secluded spot near the trees, I was surprised to see that someone was sitting in a chair, right behind the area where I usually played from. There was never anybody there and I always had it to myself, so I was mildly perturbed. Anyway as I walked closer, I could see that this guy wasn’t just sitting in the chair, he was actually sprawled across it. As I got a little closer, I could see that he seemed to be unconscious. I didn’t want to disturb him, but I did want to hit my bucket of balls from my spot, so I set up about ten yards in front of him.

From that vantage point, I could see a few empty bottles on the grass around his chair. I’m not sure exactly what had been in them, but they looked like booze bottles and the general smell of the place gave a clear confirmation.

I started to hit a few balls in the direction of this huge tree that was off in the distance. I had been told it was about 210 yards away. I would always hit towards the tree and even with my driver, I would consider myself lucky to be able to reach it. If you know anything about golf, you know that if you consider yourself lucky to be able to hit your driver 210 yards, you’re not what they call a “big hitter.”

So, I kept hitting and the guy was still passed out on the chair behind me. Finally, after I hit a shot I heard him say, “You’re not replicatin’ your practice swing.” I turned around and looked at him. He was sitting up a little and was a little more conscious than he had been before.

“What the hell are you takin’ a practice swing for if you’re not going to at least try to replicate it. Complete waste of time.”

I knew he was right, but I also knew that it wouldn’t be a stretch to categorize my interest in golf with that phrase. Complete waste of time wouldn’t be an inaccurate summation of all the hours I had spent in my life hitting golf balls. Mark Twain once said that golf was a good walk spoiled, which never bothered me much because I usually took a cart.

“You want a lesson?” he asked me. My first thought was, “My God, why would I want a lesson from this guy. He looked like he’d be lucky if he could stand up.

“I teach all the best players around here. I teach at Merion, Pine Valley, Commonwealth National.” That last name caught my attention becasue my closest friend belonged to Commonwealth.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “How much?”

“Forty bucks,” he answered.

“I only got twenty,” I said.

“Good enough,” he responded.

He got up and kind of staggered over to me. He looked in my bag. “Oh, you got a new Bubble Burner,” he said. Taylor Made, a major golf company had just come out with a new driver called the Bubble Burner. It was a big sensation and my wife had surprised me with one for my birthday a little earlier. It was an incredibly sweet gesture on her part because the truth is, at my level play, buying me a fake putter for miniature golf would have been a far more appropriate use of money.

“I haven’t seen one of these in person yet,” the alleged teacher said. “You mind if I hit a few? He asked.

“No, not at all. Go ahead,” I responded.

Now I’m not nearly a good enough writer to describe what happened next. He pulled the club out of my bag and the second he had the club in his hands, my perception of him immediately changed. I could tell just by the way he casually held the club in his hands that this guy really knew his stuff.

He teed up a ball, and with a very slow and easy, and obviously perfect swing, with no recognizable source of power whatsoever, he hit a ball over the tree in the distance. And I mean well over the tree, like over 250 yards in the air.

For a hacker like me, whenever you see someone hit a ball like that, you are basically stunned, which I was. He hit about five balls in a row. Each one went way over the tree and he deliberately bent a couple of shots to the right, which in golf is called a “fade.” And then a few over to the left, called a “draw.”

I was in a transformed state just watching him. I’m not sure I was even breathing. He handed me back the club and said, “I don’t really like what they’ve done with this. I couldn’t really control it.”

I could barely move. He started giving me a lesson and honestly, I don’t really remember what he taught me. I do remember that the way he had me swing the club was very different from the way I had been doing it.

We had a nice time together and as we were about to say goodbye to each other, he looked at me sideways and said, “Let me ask you something.” He was still pretty inebriated. “If I hadn’t shown you what I showed you today, what would you have been practicing?”

“I don’t know,” I responded, “I guess my same..”

“Your same old freaking bullshot,” he growled back at me, like a drill sergeant. Of course those weren’t his exact words, but you get the point.

Later that day, I called my friend who belonged to Commonwealth and he knew exactly who this guy was because he was well known to the top players as the best player in the entire Philadelphia area. He could have made the pro tour but he had a serious problem with alcohol and was never able to kick it. A couple of years later, they found him dead in a flop house.

So why did I tell you this story? Well, simply because it taught me two very critical lessons that ultimately had to do with personal growth. The first one is, you know that you are in the presence of the master of a craft as soon as you see them perform. This can be about anything, sports, cards, chess, knitting, you name it. You can be around a lot of people who are good, but when you’re with a true master, you know it when you see it.

With this guy, whose first name was Billy, he was dead drunk when I first met him and he could have said a million things to me. When he took the club in his hands, I could tell he had skill, but I still had my doubts. But as soon as he started hitting the ball, constantly putting it well over the tree in the distance that I could barely reach, all my doubt immediately vanished and I was in that state in that famous Bruno Mars song when he sang, “Don’t believe me, just watch.”

The last thing that he said to me was deeply meaningful as well. If I hadn’t run into a teacher who could point out my errors and show me the way to a better swing, even though I would be doing something that I would call practicing, all I would really be doing is my same old freaking bullshot.

And by the way, with golf as with most skills, nothing beats having a real live teacher giving you instruction. God knows I have a million books and tapes on golf and they really haven’t done me much good. One good teacher is worth its weight in gold.

Now, it’s easy to know when you’re exposed to transformative information about golf because your score eventually starts to improve. With personal growth, if you have access to good information and especially if you have a good teacher, your inner world starts to improve. As our consciousness begins to evolve and expand, there is a natural sense of harmonic well being that starts to come over you, and all the better angels of your nature start to show up.

Well, I haven’t really examined this little anecdote in several years and it’s always a lot of fun and a little enlightening whenever I do. It was just a quirky little lesson about life that came to me unexpectedly on a golf driving range, delivered by a lovable rapscallion of a character who could have easily come straight out of the Twilight Zone. It’s the kind of thing that often happens when you’re lucky enough to be able to tune into it.

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

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As you may recall, I had mentioned in the last two episodes that we are making a slight change in format for the “Stop Making Yourself Miserable” podcasts. Instead of building each episode around one particular theme, I am going to start presenting notes that I’ve made over the last fifty years that were particularly inspiring to me as I continued to go through all the ever-unfolding phases of inner growth.

For me, these living ideas are like beautiful flowers and bountiful fruit trees that align the side of the path I travel along. And again, they are not being presented as specific teachings of any kind, just simply ideas for you to consider. My suggestion is that you just take them in, maybe contemplate their meaning a little and see if they take you anywhere interesting within yourself. You may come across some pleasant surprises that might be surprisingly long lasting. You never know because the evolution of your inner consciousness truly is a gift that keeps on giving.

And one last point, which again comes completely from my own experiences with each one of these – although they may seem to be incredibly simple, they are often far deeper than they appear to be at first glance. For me, when I would encounter one of these, a natural process of inner contemplation would take place, seemingly on its own, and layer upon layer of meaning would make itself known.

This following message is a perfect example of the simplicity of the profound and the profundity of the simple. As I mentioned at the end of the last episode, several decades ago I had been reading the transcript of a press conference that had been held for Prem Rawat, who was just thirteen years old at the time.

Someone asked him, “Do you believe in God?” And he immediately responded, "I believe in the God who put a smile on every baby's face." Now that phrase really stopped me dead in my tracks and made me give it some real thought.

For one thing, I had never heard that particular idea before and the first thing I asked myself was, “Is there really a smile on every baby’s face?” Well, obviously, they’re not smiling all the time. I mean a lot of the time, they’re crying. But then I realized the deeper idea behind the question, which made me rephrase it to, “Is there the potential for a smile within every baby? And if there is, where does it come from? Might it be instinctual?’

Now back then, I had been around enough babies to know that they can break into a beautiful smile at any time, so on an intuitive level it quickly became clear that yes, there is a potential smile within every baby. So I had no issue with the idea that there is a smile on every baby’s face.

Then I started thinking about the nature of that smile and a few things quickly occurred to me. The first one is that a baby’s smile is incredibly transformative on the human beings around it. It’s actually remarkable.

You can take the most hard-boiled person in the world, who could easily win the Mr. or Mrs. Universe title for the most miserable people on earth, and put them alone in a room with a baby. And if no one is there and enough time has gone by for the adult to settle down a little, when that baby suddenly beams one of those beatific smiles at them, the adult’s heart of ice will melt in an instant and they’ll smile and start cooing at the baby in a matter of seconds.

This inherent tenderness of a human’s connection with a baby is a critical element of the highest and best aspects of our nature. And it doesn’t even have to be a human baby either. The sweetness of this reaction has been clinically observed in people when they get around babies of other species as well. We all know what happens to people when they get to be around a baby puppy or a kitten. And it doesn’t stop there. It’s the same with baby deer, baby rabbits, baby horses, all the way through to baby turtles. It just does something truly wonderful to us.

So, if an incredibly powerful smile lights up every baby’s face, the next big question is, “What are they smiling about?”

When viewed from a certain perspective, this is a truly great question. Studies have shown that babies do smile all the time and it’s also been shown that children under the age of five experience significant laughter about three hundred times a day. That’s a really lot of smiling and laughing. And the obvious and deeply profound question is, “What are they smiling and laughing about? What is it that is making them so happy? Why are they all in such great moods?”

We know that they’re not laughing at any jokes, because they’re this happy long before they gain any language skills. They’re also too young to be happy about the various external things that generally make adults happy – like money, success, prestige, power, position, etc.

Of course, there are probably hundreds of well-reasoned out reasons why they are so happy, but personally, I’m fond of this one particular idea which is rooted in Ancient Wisdom and validated by modern neuroscience. And that is that they are so happy all the time because they are still closely connected to the very essence of our consciousness.

They haven’t absorbed enough of the unconscious confusion of the external world to be over-influenced by it. And although they may have been exposed to the agitating aspects we all run into like anger and fear, they haven’t yet cemented the associated negative channels in their brain. The inherent happiness and contentment of our inner essence, existing in its state of joyful, creative genius is still who they are. And that’s why there is so much smiling and laughter in their lives.

Okay, so much for the smile on every baby’s face. Now what about the first part of the statement that the young teacher made in the press conference when he said, “I believe in the God who put the smile on every baby’s face?”

In so many words, the statement says that God is the source of the smiles on the faces of babies. Or you could say that God is the source of the inner joy that makes the baby smile. And that says something about God that is radically different from most of what I had been exposed to up until then, and it was pretty shocking to me, but in a good way.

As I said earlier, I had come upon this quote when I was still pretty young myself. To be exact, I was about twenty-two. And I had never thought of the idea of the Supreme Being in these terms.

As I’ve mentioned previously in these podcasts, during my upbringing, I was given a pretty heavy dose of what is called the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the idea of the deity that it introduced me to was a male-God who carried around a big quiver full of lightning bolts and didn’t seem to be a particularly nice guy.

I mean, half the time, he’s smiting someone for some reason, so you come away with a fairly hefty burden of fear. And that’s not to mention the guilt that you get from the origin story. You have original sin, where our great-times-a-million grandmother and grandfather got kicked out of paradise.

And then when you flip to the new version of the tale, you continue down guilty lane, by hearing that God had to have his only begotten son killed so his blood could wash away our sins.

The first time I came across the idea, it actually made me sick. But that may have been from just the idea of blood because I’ve always had one of those medical phobias. Anyway, there was this huge sign in Atlantic City that said, “Christ Died for Our Sins.” It was over a church near the boardwalk and I must have seen it at least five hundred times in my life and the more I saw it, the more uncomfortable I got.

It kind of made me think, so this is actually all my fault. I’m the one who committed the sins that forced God to kill his only begotten son, so his blood could be used to cleanse the world of the sins I brought. Jeez, this blood bath story took the guilt thing to a whole different level.

I certainly don’t want to give offense to anyone about any of this, but a whole pattern of thinking went off within me. What the hell did I ever do that was so Goddam bad that God had to kill his son so his blood could wash my sins away? And why would blood wash anything away? It didn’t make any sense to me and to be honest, it made this God guy seem a little sick. Why would I want to have anything to do with him?

When you consider all the stuff they tell you that you have to do to try to worm your way back into the Big Guy’s good graces, it didn’t seem worth it. All this praying, fasting, begging and repenting to butter up this thunderbolt bearing human-blood-sacrifice-craving character? What’s the point?

Again, this is probably all my own mishegoss, which is a Yiddish term for craziness or lunacy, and I apologize if I offended anyone, but all this stuff put up some pretty steep walls between myself and the Ultimate Power of the Universe.

So, that’s where I was. Now, let’s go back to the idea of the God who put a smile on every baby’s face. And by the way, you can probably see why the idea was so foreign to me. Beautiful, intriguing, even perhaps enlightening. But definitely foreign.

By contemplating the image of a smiling baby and tying it to the essence of the Deity, a different perspective began to take shape in my consciousness. The purity and innocence of it, along with the idea that immense joy is bestowed by God to every human at birth, was something I had never considered before.

And that was just the beginning of many new ideas for me. The concept that there is inherent good within every human being and that all the negativity was just learned behavior began to emerge. And it brought along the idea of universality with it. The image of an innocent, smiling baby experiencing the joy of the Divine within brought me a sense of hope that perhaps all the separation brought on by the world’s religious, cultural, and geographical boundaries might be able to be transcended.

Again, this was still rather early in my interest in personal growth and I was just starting to get introduced to certain ideas that were actually thousands of years old. The idea that there is pure, unadulterated happiness within us that is not tied to anything external. That there is a compassionate and loving universal power which is the source of all the magnificent goodness and beauty in the world. And that this power serves as a guiding light in life and because it is always within, it can be accessed at any time. And all you have to do is open up to it.

With the birth of all these seeds of understanding, it was like some noble, high minded and extremely powerful group of friendly strangers had suddenly come to visit me in my jail cell where I was imprisoned in the dungeon of my mind. I had been locked up there for ages and now they were telling me about this wonderful realm that existed just outside my prison walls.

Then they told me that there was no lock on the door to my cell and actually it had never been locked. I was free to leave there anytime I wanted. And it was all up to me.

So, these are a lot of the realizations that started coming to me from that 13-word sentence that was spoken by that 13 year old teacher. Not bad. I started thinking that maybe the kid had something after all.

Okay, enough for one episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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As I mentioned in the previous episode, I am about to begin a series of episodes that will have more of a free-flow format than the ones that have gone before. This is because I have a large amount of information that I have collected over the years which I consider to be extremely valuable when it comes to personal growth, and rather than try to build a context for each one that would be the theme of an entire episode, I am just going to put them out one at a time, without trying to format them into a general context.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first one is that I have found that every one of these ideas has been extremely helpful to me at some point in time, just the way they are. And they may be very helpful to you, as well. Also, if I don’t put them out now, rather than serving to possibly help someone in their path of personal growth, they’ll probably end up just being food for worms somewhere. And although the worms might appreciate the nutritional value of the paper, the ideas themselves will do the crawlers no good at all. That kind of stuff only works for human beings.

So, before I begin, I’d like return to my own personal story and move it forward a little bit from where we left off in the last episode. I had mentioned that my interest in inner growth began when I heard the news that the Beatles were continuing their magical mystery tour by travelling to India to study meditation. Before I knew it, I decided to look into meditation and went to the Philadelphia Transcendental Meditation center and received a mantra to meditate with.

The practice didn’t really do much for me and my interest in inner evolution left me about as quickly as it came. But at this point, I want to underscore something important about what was happening within my overall intelligence. You may or may not be aware of the fact that I had a few extraordinarily metaphysical experiences surrounding the sudden death of my father. These experiences are detailed fairly extensively in my memoir, “Wilt, Ike and Me” and they were the subject of a few podcast episodes about a year and a half ago.

To make a very long story very short this is the gist of what happened. With absolutely no background in this kind of thing at all, one night when I was in 11th grade, I had a clear and vivid dream that my father had died. I dreamt the events as they happened to me. It was quite a long dream, with several sequences, it was crystal clear and I could remember every bit of it.

And then incredibly, it all happened the next night exactly as I had dreamt it, down to the finest details of who said what to me and when. Then, about six months later, I had another deeply vivid dream in which my father appeared to me and told me that he never really died. He said that there is no death and that it’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about him.

At the end of the dream, he noticed that I was wearing his ring He told me to give it back to him. I did and the whole room exploded into brilliant white light. Then back in real life, a few hours later, following my gym class, when I opened my locker and went into my wallet where I kept my two rings, his ring had disappeared. My other ring, my watch, my wallet with a ten-dollar bill in it were all still there. But inexplicably his ring was gone. It had vanished without a trace.

Now, even though the details about these events were truly extraordinary in and of themselves, the thing that was important to my growth was the fact that they had happened at all. Underlying the shock and grief that came along with the sudden death of my father was a deep understanding that started to come over me, that was that there’s more to this life than meets the eye. There’s more to it than we’ve been told.

I mean, how is it possible that in a dream, I clearly foresaw events that hadn’t happened yet? What does that say about time and space and the so-called reality of life as we know it?

Of course, this was a lot for a standard American 16-year-old schoolboy to begin to grasp, but it lit a deep desire within me to find out what the hell is going on around here. What am I doing here? What is the purpose for my life? Why was I born? What did I come here to do? You know, all those basic kinds of existential questions that we are generally warned to dismiss from our minds at all costs. There’s no answer to them and they will just lead you down a never-ending rabbit hole of confusion.

Well that may be true, but the fact was, I had no choice about asking these kinds of questions and I still don’t. I still have to ask them. By the way, I’ve learned a lot since then and although there is still effort to be made, there is an enormous amount of difference between the effort of searching to find a gold mine and the effort of mining the gold once you’ve found it.

Anyway, in the fall of 1971, suddenly some powerful events began to take place almost simultaneously. The first thing was that I heard about a unique Indian teacher who supposedly had a very evolved way of teaching. He was all the rave at the time, but I was really put off by the fact that the guy was only 13 years old. He was basically just a kid.

I’ll never forget it. I was in my first semester of law school walking down the quad at Temple University with my old friend and fellow student, Ted Simon. Ted was already very serious about the law. He studied hard and quickly became a major criminal lawyer, as well as the President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. I won’t go into details about it here, but let’s just say I went down a road less traveled.

Anyway, I had a hot dog in my hand and was about to bite into it and suddenly saw a poster taped to a pole which said something like, “13 year old spiritual teacher has come to relieve you of your suffering.” I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared at it. “Whoever is promoting this guy is going to go bankrupt fast. Who the hell is going to believe that a 13-year-old kid is a spiritual teacher? What the hell can somebody that young know?” I asked Ted. I was so flabbergasted by the complete absurdity of the idea that it took me a few minutes to finally bite into the dog.

Well, things went the surprising way they often do and within a few months, to my extreme surprise, I started taking this young teacher a bit more seriously. He was teaching a form of meditation that was supposedly quite powerful and in certain circles that I had become familiar with, he was gaining a serious reputation for having significant wisdom.

That’s a really quick overview, but how it actually happened is quite a story in and of its own right and I will probably tell it in a podcast episode one of these days.

Anyway, this teacher’s name was Prem Rawat and besides hearing a lot about him, I also got exposed to a few other sources of information that began to exert a strong influence on me in those days. And this kind of happened all at once.

The first one was that a lot of people I knew had begun reading a book called, “Autobiography of a Yogi,” by someone named Parmahansa Yogananda. At some point, I got that book and couldn’t put it down. I’ll go more deeply into who he was and what his influence was on me at a later time, but his writings became a major source of inspiration to me. And they still are.

At the same time, a lot of people were recommending reading a book called, “There is a River, the Edgar Cayce Story.” I had never heard of Edgar Cayce before and the story of America’s most documented psychic was another element that played a major role in my inner awakenings back then. The idea that someone could tap into a higher realm of consciousness and gain access to a wealth of knowledge that was otherwise unavailable was basically a mind blower.

Another book that hit me pretty hard at the time was called “The Essene Gospel of Peace,” which was one of a four-part series that presented a deeply esoteric view point about God and religion.

Along the same lines, it was recommended to me that I begin reading a book called “The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ,” which was supposedly channeled by someone named Levi. This book was truly incredible and I plan to present a few chapters of it down the road sometime.

I began reading all of these books within a few months of each other and it was quite a powerful experience because essentially they all said the same thing. Prem Rawat hadn’t written any books back then, but he was giving a lot of talks which also said the same exact thing. And the basic message which was common to them all was that – yes there is such a thing as God and it is omniscient, which means it knows everything, is omnipotent, which means that it is all powerful, and it is omnipresent, which means that it is present everywhere, throughout every molecule of creation and beyond.

And the most important thing is that it is within every single individual and we are all born with the inherent ability to connect with it, expand and grow, and eventually merge into it. And the successful performance of this merger of consciousness, which could also be termed, the ultimate surrender, was the purpose of our life, the very reason we were born here in the first place. And if we were able to accomplish this evolution of consciousness, we will be complete and able to have the highest experience of life possible or find heaven on earth while we are still alive, if you want to put it that way. This is the brass ring on this otherwise crazy looking merry-go-round we found ourselves on.

And the most amazing bottom line element to me was that God is not some ultra powerful guy who lives ten zillion light years away and can only be approached after you die. No, all these sources taught that you can find the god presence within yourself and ultimately merge with it. The general term for it was “the indwelling god presence” and I had never been exposed to this kind of a concept before in my life.

Like I said, all of this hit me at the same time within just a few months. I started practicing the meditation taught by the young teacher and I’m still doing it to this day.

So, this has been quite a lot of information for one episode and I’m going to close it by relating to you one of the first notes I took from back then that was deeply meaningful to me.

I was reading the transcript of a press conference that was held for Prem Rawat. Again, he was thirteen years old at the time. And by the way, as bizarre as the idea of such a young teacher seemed to me back then, in the east, great teachers who were child prodigies and began teaching at a young age does happen from time to time. The greatly venerated Yogi, Sri Ramakrishna was recognized as a master soul by the age of seven. The current Dali Lama was recognized as a master soul by the age of five and assumed full leadership duties at the age of fifteen. And there is currently a very young teacher who will apparently take his place at the appropriate time.

I didn’t know any of this back then and the reality is that it didn’t really matter. I liked what the young teacher had to say and his approach seemed not only revolutionary but it was deeply meaningful.

Anyway, at this press conference someone asked him, “Do you believe in God?” And he simply replied, “I believe in the God who put a smile on every baby’s face.” That eleven-word sentence was one of the most beautifully profound statements I had ever heard, and I’m going to get into it more deeply in the the next episode, along with several other things. But in the meantime, you may want to give that statement a little thought and see what it does to you. “I believe in the God who put a smile on every baby’s face.”

So, for now, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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Over the course of these podcasts, I have mentioned several times that I first became interested in personal growth around the time that the Beatles went to India to study meditation in February of 1968. My interest wasn’t particularly deep. The only thing deep about me at the time was how deeply I was being influenced by the world around me, and I basically mirrored every move the Beatles made. They said that meditation was great, so I thought I’d check it out.

My search didn’t go very far. Just far enough to understand that I didn’t understand anything about anything to do with it. And I had no real interest in it either. But that changed as the next few years went by in a flash.

One thing I haven’t mentioned about those days is that at one point I began taking random, but detailed notes on anything that I came across that helped to expand my inner awareness, even in the smallest of ways. I never stopped this notetaking process and I never threw any of it out, either. That began half a century ago so, as you can imagine, I have an enormous amount of material stored away in my office.

As I was recently considering what to do with all of it, an interesting idea occurred to me that involved our podcast series. But before I tell you the idea, first let me tell you a fascinating story that I once heard that served as a significant inspiration for me to begin making notes in the first place. It’s the story about how the ending of the movie, Casablanca came to be, and once you hear it, I’m sure you’ll understand how all these strings tie together.

So, it started back in my college days. As I mentioned in an earlier episode, in my junior year, I had spent a full semester working as an intern on Capitol Hill, with my major in Government and Public Administration. But by the end of the semester, my experiences on the hill led me to conclude that the world of politics was not one that I wanted to set up shop in. Maybe it was just what was going on in the country during the late sixties, as extreme societal turbulence violently eradicated any semblance of normality. But from my perspective the hill seemed like one big snake pit, constantly churning through never-ending rounds of ego-based struggles for money and power.

After considering a few different options, I finally decided to change my major to American Literature. For some unknown reason, the idea of possibly becoming a writer seemed to hold a much bigger draw for me, not that I had any talent or experience in the field. Now that I have been working at it for several decades, I can hypothesize with some degree of certainty that at least I’ve gained a modicum of experience.

Anyway, around that time, I came upon an interview with Julius Epstein who, along with his identical twin brother Phillip, had written the movie, Casablanca. I, like millions of other motion picture enthusiasts, had always been a major fan of that film, ever since I first saw it in a film club in high school. And being a would-be writer, anything a successful author had to say about the craft of writing was naturally interesting to me.

But in this interview, Julie Epstein began describing an element of the making of the movie that I had never heard before and it really got my attention. According to him, as screenwriters, he and his brother had never been able to come up with an ending to the story and they still didn’t have one even when shooting began.

If you’ve never seen it, on a basic level, it’s a bittersweet story about a love triangle and throughout the piece, you never know which of the two men the woman will end up with. But its classic ending reveals the fact that it also has profoundly noble themes as well, one of which is the critical importance of performing individual duty.

Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, ultimately sacrifices his love for Ilsa Lund, portrayed by Ingrid Bergman, for the greater good. Ilsa's husband, Victor Laszlo, is a renowned Czech resistance leader, and he needs her support to continue his vital work in his uphill battle against the Nazis. Rick finally recognizes the significance of Victor's mission and the importance of Ilsa's role in it.

In the final scenes of the movie, even though he is clear that Ilsa would rather stay with him, Rick puts his personal feelings aside and helps her escape with Victor, understanding that their mission is far more important than any of their own personal feelings. As he puts it, “Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

This incredibly climactic ending is truly a piece of cinematic history and I was a deep admirer of it, but I never knew until listening to Epstein that the ending wasn’t written or even decided upon until the shooting was well under way.

And then, in the interview, he went on to tell the story of how he and his brother came up with the ending. To me, it was a remarkable tale and it stuck to me to this day because it speaks volumes about the role that instinct plays in our intelligence.

He said that as writers he and his brother would routinely write down any notes that struck them about anything at all., It didn’t matter if the idea had no context or relationship to anything they were working on. In fact, the ones that seemed to come to them completely out of the blue, often ended up being the most usefully creative ones in the long run. And that was especially true when it came to writing dialogue. He said this form of note taking was a well-known method of the craft and they had been doing it for their entire careers.

Then he shifted back to talking about the difficulties they had run into in coming up with the ending of Casablanca. They just couldn’t decide if Ilsa should go with Victor to America or stay with Rick in Casablanca. And as shooting continued, this lack of an ending had become a real problem for everyone involved in the film, especially the actors and the director.

As the pressure continued to mount, they started rummaging through their huge file of random ideas and at one point, they found a line of dialogue that stopped them dead in their tracks. The line was, “Round up the usual suspects.” They had no real recollection of when or how it was written. They just knew it was a great line, and given the gripping drama of the story line, they instinctively knew that if it was used in the right way, at the right time, it could really take the movie to a whole different level.

By the way, no one involved with picture at that time thought that it was going to be any good at all. They all thought it seemed destined to be a flop.

They started to try to figure out where to use this terrific line. The first question was - who could say it? It quickly became clear that the only character who could deliver it was the police captain, Captain Renault, played by Claude Rains.

But what would lead him to speak that line? Well, it might be great if he spoke it after somebody killed somebody. Then they thought, “Who would the audience most like to see killed?” Again, it became obvious fairly quickly that the audience would love to see the villain killed. The villain was Major Strasser, a high-ranking Nazi officer.

Now the big question came up - who should kill him? They considered all the key players and Humphrey Bogart’s character was far and away the favorite. Ultimately, he was the central hero of the plot and it’s always most satisfying when the hero defeats the villain.

So, when should he kill him? Suddenly the resolution of the ending began to emerge. The most dramatic time would be if the Major tried to stop Victor and Ilsa from escaping and Rick eliminates him, opening the way for them to escape. And with all these plot elements in place, it only made sense for Rick to remain in Casablanca and become pals with Captain Renault, who had used that great line to save his life.

The film was released in early 1943 and despite the premonition of doom and gloom that pervaded the cast and crew during the filming, it quickly gained significant approval. But over the years that followed, the ending became one of the most renowned and respected in Hollywood history and catapulted the film into movie immortality. And eighty years later, it is still one of the most beloved movies of all time.

And hearing that the ending wasn’t the result of a planned-out strategy but was reverse-engineered from a random line of dialogue really impressed me. I don’t remember whether it was a conscious or an unconscious decision about it, but I found myself making notes about anything and everything related to personal growth that impressed me, and as I said, I never threw any of it away.

Now, let’s go back to the idea that occurred to me regarding all this personal growth material I have in my files. So far, in preparing these podcasts, I generally pick out one central them for an episode and weave the entire episode around that theme. At this point, we’ve produced over eighty episodes and they have all followed this format.

But as I was looking over all of this material I have collected it hit me that while a lot of it is extremely valuable, it may not be a large enough topic to build a complete episode around. And then I thought that it might be a great idea to develop a different format. Rather than building a whole episode around one particular theme, maybe I should just present the ideas without thinking about developing a context at all. Maybe I should just present them to you and you can just take them in and see where they may lead you.

So, I am going to incorporate this creative free-flow format into the next few episodes and see what happens. Again, these will not be teachings of any kind, just some intriguing ideas you might like to consider. They will still be coming from Ancient Wisdom through to modern neuroscience, along with personal experiences and observations that have been particularly helpful to me.

If you just relax and let them come into your consciousness, it’s quite possible that they may bring you some interesting and maybe even enlightening realizations. You might even play with the concepts in a reverse engineering, “Casablanca” ending kind of a way, where you let one idea lead to another. Maybe you’ll experience your own “Round up the usual suspects” effect. With inner growth, you never know where you may uncover your next masterpiece of wisdom.

So, we’ll begin the new format in the next episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and lets get together in the next one.

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In the last few episodes, we’ve talked about the fact that many of us suffer from a case of mistaken identity in which have come to believe that we are actually the contents of our neural template, which is largely responsible for forming our ordinary mind. We looked at some of the limitations of it, especially that it is, by nature, always dissatisfied, that it has the element of fear deeply rooted in its awareness and that it cannot dwell in present time. We also discussed the existence of its voice, called our inner critic which feeds us over 30,000 negative messages every day. And we touched on the phenomenon of self-sabotage, in which we often become our own worst enemy.

In this episode, we’re going to look a little deeper into the make-up of our overall intelligence by considering some of the differences between our ordinary mind and our higher mind.

Now, even though we have made tremendous advances in neurology, the brain sciences, psychiatry, and psychology, we still know very little about the actual potential of our intelligence. Current thinking is that is far greater than we currently imagine. So, let’s dig into it.

Obviously, even though, in reality we each have only one intelligence, the easiest way to examine it is by separating it into two distinct parts – our ordinary mind and our higher mind.

In that regard, I am going to present some information from a tremendous resource, “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” which gives a terrific overview of the key teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. This classic compilation of wisdom was first published in 1982, with a thirtieth anniversary edition released in 2012.

As an aside, I find that even though it may be thousands of years old, Ancient Wisdom often captures the obstacles facing us in modern times with uncanny clarity, as though it were written today.

I remember once reading a description of our ordinary life as lived through the filter of our ordinary mind which said something like this, “When we are children, all we think about is - my toys, my toys, my toys. Then we get older and it becomes – my mate, my mate, my mate. Finally, when we become adults, it turns into – my worries, my worries, my worries. And it just stays there.” Sound familiar? I guess on a certain level, some things never change.

Anyway, let’s use some of the text from the “Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” to help shed some light on the ordinary mind and then on the higher mind.

The Ordinary Mind

Let’s remember that after years of neural firing and the establishment of billions of neural pathways, our brain sets up our neural template, which is an incredibly interconnected matrix of all the information stored in our brain. By around age five, we become increasingly identified with this template, which is also called our Ordinary Mind and we basically start filtering our life entire through it.

It’s important to understand that we can’t function in the world without it. Afterall, among many other critical tasks, we use it to navigate our way through life. The problem is that even though it is an incredibly multi-faceted tool, it is also severely limited. For the most part, we are given no training in using it at all and we can easily become over-identified with it. If it gets out of control, it can be the cause of endless trouble for us. So, let’s take a look at what we are dealing with here.

The Tibetan book says that while the ordinary mind does possess discriminating awareness, its focus is largely external, always making us look outside of ourselves. It also possesses a basic sense of duality – good and bad, light and dark, which makes it constantly grasping or rejecting. And it is discursive, which means it is always digressing from one subject to another, often focusing on a projected and falsely perceived external reference point.

After this, the text really gets down to brass tacks. Even though this is thousands of years old, see if it sounds familiar to you:

“So, the Ordinary Mind is the part of the mind that thinks, plots, desires, manipulates, that flares up in anger, that creates and indulges in waves of negative emotions and thoughts, that has to go on and on and on, asserting, validating, and confirming its existence by fragmenting, conceptualizing, and solidifying experience.

“The Ordinary Mind is the ceaselessly shifting and shiftless prey of external influences, habitual tendencies, and conditioning. The Ordinary Mind can seem like a candle flame in an open doorway, vulnerable to all the winds of circumstances.

“Seen from one angle, the ordinary mind is flickering, unstable, grasping, and endlessly minding others business, its energy consumed by projecting outwards. The ordinary mind can be thought of as a Mexican jumping bean, or as a monkey hopping restlessly from branch to branch on a tree.

“Yet seen in another way, the ordinary mind has a false, dull stability, a smug and self-protected inertia, a stone-like calm of ingrained habits. The Ordinary Mind is as cunning as a crooked politician, skeptical, distrustful, expert at trickery and guile, ingenious in the games of deception. It is within the experience of this chaotic, confused, undisciplined, and repetitive, ordinary mind that, again and again and again, we undergo change and death.”

So, while we do have this vast neural network that makes up our Ordinary Mind, and we can’t live without, it is critically important to understand its limitations. Again, this mind is not our true identity and it is certainly not the sum total of our intelligence. Far from it.

Here are some things to remember about it, so you can avoid its pitfalls, which in many ways are the source of most human problems, both individual and societal:

It is dualistic, constantly fluctuating, and reactive in nature.
It generally vacillates between attachment and rejection, which leads to endless desires and negative emotions and thoughts.
It is unstable and reactive in nature. It projects constantly flickering reactions to an endless parade of external circumstances.
It fragments and conceptualizes experiences and its assumptions and conclusions can be significantly flawed.
It is continuously vulnerable to external influences and circumstances which change constantly.
By the nature of its insecure and skeptical foundation, it is cunning, and skilled in deception and trickery.
Despite its apparent instability, it also possesses inherent inertia and is resistant to change due to ingrained habits and patterns.

So, this is quite a list. Again, it’s just a summary of some of the characteristics of the limiting aspects of our ordinary mind. They are common to us all and personally, as intense as they may be, take it from me, my own ordinary mind makes them look pretty tame.

Anyway, we can all benefit by gaining a simple awareness of them and understanding and eventually transcending these limitations is a central goal to many of the spiritual and contemplative practices contained in Ancient Wisdom. According to it, a higher state of awareness can be achieved, bringing a state of consciousness that exists beyond the dualistic and reactive tendencies of the Ordinary Mind, resulting in a state of peace, equanimity, and ultimate freedom from suffering.

This is a great introduction to looking into the other part of our intelligence, which is said to be the primary foundation of our identity: Our Higher Mind.

The Higher Mind

We all start out life with the awareness of only our Higher Mind and if you’ve ever spent time with a baby or toddler, you know how magical and creatively intelligent this level of consciousness is. Its learning capacity alone is truly astonishing.

Here is what the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying says about it:

“Then there is the very nature of mind, its innermost essence, which is absolutely and always untouched by change or death. At present, it is hidden, within our own mind, enveloped and obscured by the mental scurry of our thoughts and emotions.

“Just as clouds can be shifted by a strong gust of wind to reveal the shining sun and wide-open sky, so, under certain special circumstances, some inspiration may uncover for us glimpses of this nature of mind. These glimpses have many depths and degrees, but each of them will bring some light of understanding, meaning and freedom.

“This is because the nature of mind is the very root itself of understanding. In Tibetan, we call it ‘Rigpa,’ our primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.

“Do not make the mistake of imagining that the nature of mind is exclusive to our mind only. It is, in fact, the nature of everything. It can never be said too often that to realize the nature of mind is to realize the nature of all things.

“Saints and Mystics throughout history have adorned their realizations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind. Christians and Jews call it God, Hindus call it the self, Shiva, Brahman, and Vishnu. Sufi Mystics name it the hidden essence, and Buddhists call it the Buddha nature.

“At the heart of all religions is the certainty that there is a fundamental truth, and that this life is a sacred opportunity to evolve and realize it.”

I don’t know about you, but whenever I come across a great description of this higher state of being, I always feel like something is knocking on some kind of door within me. I know it sounds vague, but I also feel a deep desire to open that door up.

What the Tibetans call the nature of mind, or Rigpa, is another term for the higher mind. Now most of us feel that it is easier to relate to and understand the ordinary mind than it is the Higher Mind, probably because we’ve had much more experience experiencing it. Understanding the Higher Mind can seem much more challenging and I’m very fond of what inner growth teacher Prem Rawat has to say about it. According to him, the Ordinary Mind is finite in nature and therefore, our finite mind can easily understand it. But the Higher Mind is infinite in nature and therefore, we can never truly understand it. According to him, we can just feel it and trust it. And that is far more than sufficient.

Even though we may not be able to comprehend it, here is a very brief summary of some of its remarkable aspects:

At its essence, it is immutable, meaning it is not subject to change. Ancient Wisdom says it is not only untouched by change, it is also untouched by transient thoughts and emotions, and incredibly, even by death.
It is universal in nature. Not limited by anything, including the individual mind and ego, it is the root of understanding, transcending all other personal boundaries.
It is inherently connected to the infinite essence that is at the root of all creation, and is the home of our insight, intuition, inspiration and aspiration.
It is the source of all the “better angels of our nature,” including among countless other aspects, love, compassion, integrity, courage, altruism, etc.
It represents a constantly expanding horizon for us. Infinite in nature, no matter how much of its positive essence we are able to grasp and experience, there is always more.
It exists in the state of the “ever new.” Not subject to the limitations of time and space, it is the essence of the “now” and can never age. Therefore, the ever-enlarging experience of it is always new for us.
Whether or not we are currently aware of it, we are infinitely attracted to it. At the essence of our intelligence, we have an intense desire to merge into it.

So, we’ve seen that there are two basic aspects of our intelligence – our ordinary mind and our higher mind, and we’ve taken a quick look at some of the characteristics of each.

Personally, I’ve always been attracted to the idea of the Higher Mind. But like the rest of life’s endeavors, growing from the idea stage into reality is the challenge and probably the opportunity as well. When it comes to the Ordinary Mind, like blindly stepping into a mud puddle, it’s basically effortless. But to grow into the Higher Mind, it seems to take some intention, like you have to want it, like a truly thirsty person needs water.

Yet, voices from Ancient Wisdom through to modern neuroscience assure us that it is, in fact, available to us. Some say that our thirst for it is inborn and fulfilling it is the actual purpose for incarnating here in the first place. Who knows? I guess we each have to figure that one out for ourselves.

Well, once again, this has been a lot of information for one episode. So, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As mentioned in the previous episode, we are continuing to provide some of the basic information that is imparted by the Higher Mind Training, which is a new personal growth program being prepared for release by the Better Angels Publishing Company. Its purpose is to help the normal, everyday person emerge from the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment. The program probably won’t be released until the middle of next year, but we want to give our podcast subscribers the information now, so you can begin using it right away, if you like.

To begin this episode, let’s start out by taking a little detour in time and space back to August 13, 1865 to a sanitarium in Vienna, Austria, which is the date upon which one of its inmates named Ignatz Semmelweis died. He had suffered from a nervous breakdown and had been confined to the sanitarium a few months earlier. Outspoken, unruly, and constantly arguing that he was being held against his will, he suffered regular beatings from the guards. The cause of his death had been a gangrenous wound on his right hand, which was a probable result of one of these beatings.

Surprisingly, Semmelweis was a physician and scientist who had fallen into serious disrepute among the medical establishment of the capital city. He had been doing research on the mortality rates among women during childbirth and at one point, he had come up with a radical new idea that became extremely unpopular, primarily because there was absolutely no scientific basis for it. Even so, it seemed to make intuitive sense to him, so he began to institute it at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic.

He documented the results of his unfounded and unaccepted new procedure and found that over several months, the maternal mortality rate in the obstetrical clinic dropped from 18% to 2%. Even though he still had no scientific theory upon which to base any medical hypothesis whatsoever, he still published a book about his findings in 1861, called “Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.”

Given the story so far, the next obvious question would be – what was this radical new idea that Dr. Semmelweis had come up with that had seemingly cut the maternity mortality rate by nearly ninety percent? Now remember, he had no scientific explanation for how or why his procedure worked and every medical professional who had heard about it was adamantly opposed to it.

Get ready. You will probably find this quite shocking.

He proposed that all the health care workers in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, and midwives, should wash their hands before they performed any procedure on any patient. In fact, he felt they should wash their hands before they even touched anyone at all and he came up with a chlorinated lime solution to do the job.

He had absolutely no scientific reasoning to support his supposition and his outrageous idea was met with ridicule and universally condemned by the entire medical establishment. They were certain of their opinion because, in their highly educated minds, the concept made absolutely no sense. Why would washing your hands have anything to do whatsoever with protecting the health of mothers and babies during childbirth?

And on top of that, the doctors felt personally offended. Why should they have to wash their hands? Afterall, doctors were considered to be refined gentlemen and gentlemen never have to wash their hands. That was for laborers and other members of the lower classes.

Following his clashes with the medical establishment, Semmelweis got involved with some other societal and political battles as well, and was ridiculed, ostracized, and finally ruined. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum where he eventually died from the beatings he received from the guards.

All of this came from the audacity he had to suggest that medical professionals should wash their hands before treating patients. And don’t forget, they weren’t treating just anybody. This was the upper crust of Austrian society. Many of the mothers and babies who died in the contaminated obstetrical hospitals were members of the aristocracy and royalty of Europe, who were being treated by the finest doctors of the day.

Many years after his death, because of his efforts to protect the maternity environment, he became widely known as the “Savior of Mothers.” Of course, he wasn’t the first savior to be crucified by his detractors and certainly not the last.

To put the story into historical perspective, Dr. Semmelweis had made his radical handwashing suggestion about twenty years before the general emergence of germ theory into the scientific world, which followed the work of Pasteur and Lister.

Back in 1860, they knew nothing about germs whatsoever. They had never even heard the term. They still believed that disease was caused by liquid “humors” in the body, a two-thousand-year-old concept that was concocted by ancient Greek and Roman doctors. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the standard accepted medical procedure of the day for treating disease was still simple bloodletting. And they felt that the state of their medical understanding was incredibly advanced.

As primitive as they may appear today, this has been the case with most cultures. Every society thinks they are incredibly advanced, and this conceit goes way back. When chariots were invented in about 1600 BC, they were all the rage. The Hittites took them to an unheard-of level of comfort and maneuverability, and eventually refined them for warfare. The most advanced military battle of its time was fought in 1274 BC with over five thousand chariots helping to boost the carnage. I’m sure the warriors were all proud of the level of modernity they had achieved.

Going back to the “Savior of Mothers” 1860 example, let’s back up a little to 1830’s, 40’s and 50’s, and consider the tremendously advanced water system that was set up to bring water into the White House. It was complete with steam driven pumps and cast-iron piping and the fact that water was delivered in this way to the White House was a marvel of the times.

Of course, no one knew anything about germ theory and although the piping system was ingenious, the water that it carried was severely contaminated, coming from wells that abutted wastewater dumps that were loaded with pathogens. It is now believed that Presidents Henry Harrison, James Polk and Zachary Taylor all died as a result of exposure to the water brought in by that otherwise innovative system.

And that’s not to mention the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, who died from typhoid fever which was directly related to the putrid White House water.

So, due to their significant technological advances, they were able to distribute water in a more convenient way, but with their ignorance of germ theory, they just made it more convenient for people to get sick and die.

Of course, we’ve come a long way and hand sanitization has become almost universal, especially since the pandemic. But back then, they just didn’t know what they didn’t know. And guess what? Neither do we. No one ever does.

I often find myself wondering what the people living a hundred and fifty years from now will think of us. Like all previous cultures, we believe we are incredibly advanced. But what critical factors don’t we know now, that will be common knowledge throughout the world in 2175?

With my lifelong focus on the evolution of human consciousness, my assumption as well as my hope is that it will have something to do with the way we use our minds. Because to put it simply, the way we use our minds is the basic root of all the major troubles that we face today.

Look at it this way. We live in an extremely troubled world, nearly drowning in a sea of immense problems, and from what I’ve read, if you ask artificial intelligence to come up with a plan that would quickly and efficiently save the planet, it would simply respond, “Get rid of the human beings.” Of course, it’s a shocking response, and some AI experts find it deeply disturbing, but you can see the troubling logic behind it.

And if we are the primary cause of the problems that are plaguing our world, what’s wrong with us? Again, the answer is dramatically simple. It’s our mind. That’s right. the most advanced biological evolution since the beginning of life on earth, and indeed the very factor that enabled us to emerge from the brutal tests of survival of the fittest, this miraculous organ is the very cause of all our issues.

And it isn’t really the mind itself that is the problem. It’s the way we use it. Let’s refine that statement a little. It’s the unconscious way that we’ve been unconsciously trained to unconsciously use it that’s creating the problem. We have a mind with nearly unfathomable intelligence, but we haven’t learned how to use it in a human-centric way. We develop incredible technology, but we don’t use it in a way that serves humanity or the rest of the planet.

And this lack of evolved consciousness is nothing new. Just look at our track record. It’s pretty dismal. And that’s not just in caring for the planet, it’s also deeply troubling in taking care of ourselves.

Here is a particularly disgusting example. About 160,000 people die each week from starvation on earth. That means that close to 8,500,000 people literally starve to death each year. They die because they simply don’t get enough food to eat.

Now, get this – in the United States alone, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted each year. That means that 130 billion meals, $408 billion in food or about 40% of the total food supply is simply thrown out. Discarded. Four hundred and eight billion dollars of food is wasted each year, while 8,500,000 people die of starvation.

We have the money and we have the technology. We just have a serious problem with the way we misuse our intelligence. And personally, I believe that if and when people 150 years from now look back on us, it will be the generally primitive level of our human consciousness that will be so shocking to them.

Because when it comes to the overall state of our consciousness, basically, we’re still living a glorified law of the jungle. You know the drill – I, me, mine. Dog eat dog, Winner takes all, and the countless variations of the same primitive, fear-based theme, which leads to the sad conclusion that in the entire world, we have no greater enemy than ourselves. No other creature or factor poses a greater threat to our survival than we do. If the human species is ever destroyed, there is a high probability that it will be a case of unconscious suicide.

So, there can be no doubt that the growth of our inner consciousness is critical to our survival as a species, and I’d like to offer two of my favorite quotes on the subject. Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” And Dr. Carl Jung said, “The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”

So again, we must grow. And when it comes to inner growth, I’d like to suggest a “what if.” What if it’s not all that hard? What if like the germs in the nineteenth century, there is something incredibly basic that we just don’t know yet? And what if the key to our advancement is as simple as just washing your hands?

Well, this seems like a good place to stop. We’ll go a couple of steps deeper in the coming episode, so keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode we spent some time looking into our innate human genius as well as some of the remarkable attributes we have within our vast intelligence. We also touched on the fact that many of us are troubled by self-sabotage and other forms of negativity that limit our ability to truly enjoy our lives.

And we ended the episode with two questions - if we began life in a genius state of consciousness and it is still within us right now: What happened to us? And more importantly, what can happen for us?”

We’re going to look at these critical questions in this episode today. But let’s start out with an extremely condensed overview of the answer: What happened to us is that we began suffering from a subtle case of mistaken identity, which is hampering us from fulfilling our ability to achieve highest human potential. And what can happen for us is that we can re-connect once again with the larger part of our intelligence and enjoy all the inborn gifts that are built into it. This will create a more fulfilling life for ourselves, having a positive effect on everyone in our sphere of influence.

Okay, that’s only two sentences, but there’s a lot to unpack in them.

Our case of mistaken identity brings on the condition of self-sabotage, which seems to affect almost everybody. I’m always impressed by how many people tell me how much they are bothered by it, and some of them are incredibly successful. Many are suffering from the dreaded imposter syndrome, which is one form of it where they believe that despite their accomplishments in life, on the deepest level, they are really a fraud. There are dozens of psychological syndromes like these that prey on our minds and can plague our lives in hundreds of ways.

It kind of reminds me of a west wind at the Jersey shore, near Philadelphia. On those beaches, if there is a west wind, which is also called a land breeze, it blows tons of mosquitoes and green head flies onto the beach and you really can’t go on it. Everything else can be perfect – great sunshine creating a beautiful, warm day, bright clear ocean giving off that fresh saltwater smell. But if you go onto that beach, a swarm of insects will make a meal out of you so fast that you won’t be able to last longer than five minutes. Believe me, I am speaking from painfully direct experience on this.

It can be just like that in life. It makes no difference how great things may be going in your outer world, if your mind is making a meal out of you on the inside, you’ve got real problems.

So, as we approach the information, I’d like to suggest that you try to maintain what is called the “beginner’s mind,” which simply means you continue to suspend your assumptions and previous understandings as you consider the ideas presented. Also, even though you may have heard some of these ideas before, there is a decent chance that you have never heard them in this exact context before.

As I mentioned in the last episode, I am always reminding myself of Thomas Edison’s view of our so-called understandings in his quote: “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.” That’s a truly helpful perspective because if you can stay opened and give the understandings a fair chance, a lot of pleasant inner surprises may surface within you.

Now, as has been mentioned a few times, as a species, we humans are on the very low end of the food chain and would never have made it through the grueling selection process of survival of the fittest were it not for our incredible brain. Indeed, not only is it the single greatest biological evolution in the history of life on earth, it is the only factor that has allowed us to prevail over the almost insurmountable odds that were stacked against us.

Incredibly, we have about 86 billion neurons that fire together constantly and after enough repetition of firing between specific neurons, a neural pathway is established. Once the pathway is established and used continually, it becomes fortified and the neural firing mechanism becomes greatly enhanced. And when this has happened to a sufficient degree, we feel that we have learned something.

This is the way you learned your name. This is the way you learned the language that you speak and in fact this is the way you’ve learned everything that you’ve learned throughout your entire life. Learning is basically just the repeated firing of neurons which create the advanced formations of your neural pathways.

After a while, all your pathways develop an internal brain structure that we call your neural grid, which is the massive, interconnected electronic highway which holds all of your individuated knowledge. And we know from the study of people who have suffered from severe stroke or traumatic brain injury, these pathways can be completely wiped out, with nothing remaining. But, after what can be a grueling process of reprogramming, the grid can be rewired and a lot can be regained. So, it is the content of this neural grid that creates who we seem to be.

But as critical as our neural grid is on a countless number of levels, including the shaping of our identity in the world, it is only one small part of our massive overall intelligence. Another term for this grid is the ordinary mind, and it is a very powerful tool that we have created to navigate our way through life.

And now, as touched on in the last episode, here comes the root of the problem for us. Instead of understanding that this is just a tool that we have created, due to a myriad of external factors, we have come to believe that this is who we really are. We have become so overidentified with the makeup of this inner matrix that we have lost sight of our real nature, which is a key element of our much larger intelligence.

And here’s where the pain of it comes in. Within this small part of our intelligence is an even smaller part which has been called our inner critic. And as small as it may be, it has a critically big mouth. The reason it’s called the inner critic is because it is always criticizing us. It’s merciless and once you start believing that your inner critic is who you really are, and you listen to its constant negative rambling like it’s the gospel truth, you’re in for one nasty day at the beach. Followed by many, many more.

Our mind moves almost at light speed and the current estimation is that it is giving us about 30,000 negative messages every day and fifty percent of those are repetitive. Which means we are programming the same negative messages into our mind at least 15,000 times each day, or about fifteen times a minute. This is a truly incredible amount of negativity, which can make you feel like you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Now it’s important to remember that our ordinary mind is a truly extraordinary tool and we could never survive without it. And we can never grasp how much intelligence we each have within us at this very moment. Indeed, it is estimated that it would take the most advanced computer in the world about 45 hours to do what our brain does in just one second.

But this mind of ours can be a real double-edged sword, which means it cuts both ways. And when our inner critic wields the sword, we usually find ourselves cut and bleeding within seconds.

To further clarify the situation, let’s briefly examine three basic aspects of our ordinary mind that can have an enormous impact on us.

The first element to grasp about our Ordinary Mind is that it is responsible for making improvements in every part of our lives, which is a truly tremendous benefit for us. But to utilize this talent, a key part of its nature is that it is always dissatisfied. No matter what’s going on, it will always be looking for something better, something more. Its innate dissatisfaction is what makes it so effective and productive. Without it, we’d still be living in caves and every advancement in our world, from the wheel to the computer and beyond, is a direct result of it.

But the when the dissatisfaction becomes unbridled and gets out of control, it can become brutal because living in a state of constant dissatisfaction can truly darken your life. Thinking that your dissatisfied mind is who you really are, you become dissatisfied with everything. Nothing is ever good enough, including your spouse, your family, and your profession, among many other things. And ultimately, you become dissatisfied with yourself, which can become deeply destructive, turning your world into a prison of endless frustration.

A second key characteristic of the Ordinary Mind is that it is deeply connected to our limbic system, which is responsible for our safety and security. In this area, it’s in a state of constant surveillance, always on the lookout for threat, and we couldn’t survive without it, especially during the early days in the cave.

This survival mechanism is a critical function for us and we can’t do without it. But the other side of the coin is that its default signal is fear, and its general tendency is to catastrophize problems, making a mountain out of every molehill on every issue. Ultimately, fear can become the root of our awareness, completely dominating our minds and bringing devastating results to our health and well-being. Ironically, if unchecked, the very part of our mind that is responsible for protecting our life can end up ruining it.

The last aspect of our Ordinary Mind to understand is that by nature, it cannot operate in present time. It’s always remembering the past or hypothesizing about the future. Or it may go into weaving random fantasies. But it can never be in the here and now. When we’re in present time, we’re in an entirely different state of consciousness than our thought world.

This may not seem so bad at first, but if we don’t understand it, it can become deeply problematic. We can often find ourselves wondering why we’re not fully present, why are we day dreaming our way through our lives and not really paying attention. The next thing you know, the inner critic has more ammunition to torture us with. But that’s only if you believe that you are your mind. When you know that you’re not and you understand how it works, you can take advantage of an entirely different approach which yields vastly different results.

Now here’s one last thing to consider about the make-up of this neural grid of ours. It wasn’t exactly created by us. We actually had very little to do with assembling the deepest structures of it. That was done by an amalgam of all of the influences that we were exposed to throughout our younger years. And we really don’t have access to its actual formation.

Of course, we know that our parents or primary care givers had an enormous amount to do with it, but we don’t know much about what they were truly like as adults. We just saw them through the eyes of a child. And there were many other architects of it as well that we can barely remember, specifically our teachers from kindergarten through second grade, who also were among its primary programmers.

And that’s not to mention the world of television, radio and the internet, generating the constant barrage of commercial messaging that we have lived with for our entire lives. In the 1970s we saw between 500 to 1600 ads per day. Now we are exposed to between 4,000 to 10,000 of them each day. So, who really shaped this grid of ours anyway?

We’re coming to the end of this episode and we have only taken a 40,000-foot overview of the lay of the land. Suffice it to say, that if you have come to believe that your ordinary mind is who you actually are, with its neural contents of all your likes and dislikes, opinions and concepts, memories and future dreams, and you don’t understand that in reality, it’s just an incredibly innovative tool that was largely created by a random hodge-podge of constant impressions, you’re in for a pretty rocky internal ride as you proceed down the highway of life. Whether we understand it or not, our neural grid is not who we are. It’s not even close. Fortunately, our overall intelligence is something far greater.

Now, this has been a lot of information to absorb. We’ve exposed the pathway that leads to the trap of our inner prison. In the next episode, we’ll start looking into finding the doorway out.

As always, keep your eyes mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last two episodes, I discussed the Higher Mind Training, which is a unique personal growth program that is being prepared for release by the Better Angels Publishing Company. I also mentioned that for the past six months I have been teaching some of its basic understandings and techniques to the counselors and residents of the James A. Casey House in Wilkes-Barre, PA, which is an innovative halfway house where about fifty men live, recovering from the effects of severe alcohol and substance abuse.

This effort has been kind of an experiment because although I have been speaking about and teaching the fundamentals of the training for many years, I have never exposed it to a population of this kind and had no idea what to expect. The results have been deeply inspiring.

It’s been obvious that these guys have never heard anything about their greater inner potential before. Neither well-educated nor well-funded, most of them have been beaten down by the external world for most of their existence. They’ve been told that they are losers, that they’ve basically ruined their lives and that the road ahead of them is a dangerous, thorny, uphill climb, with a high probability that they’ll fail in their efforts to recover.

Suddenly, they’re being given new information - that they were born geniuses and that they still have the genius potential inside of them. And most importantly, that they’re not their minds, Even though it may be filled with anger, fear and thousands of other forms of negativity, their finite mind with its vicious inner critic is not who they are. It’s just one part of a much larger intelligence that they have. And they don’t have to buy into the miserable story that it’s telling them all day long. They can let it go and move on, because there’s a bright road ahead of them if they choose to choose it.

We also show them a few simple inner exercises and even though they may get only a brief introduction to inner freedom, it’s clearly a liberating experience for them and it’s been an incredible phenomenon to watch. After one exercise, a resident smiled at me in disbelief and said, “I have never felt anything like this before in my life.”

During these months, as I began to prepare for the return of the podcast schedule, I decided to make some of the key points of the training available to all our podcast subscribers. There is still quite a lot of work to be done prior to the program’s release and I wanted to make this information available to you now. You may find it to be quite helpful and there’s no reason for you to have to wait.

Now although a lot of what I am going to present to you may seem basic at first, just take it in. I have found that most people have never had a clear introduction to these inner fundamentals and having a clear understanding of them can be critical to our long-term happiness. Afterall, they pertain to the achievement of our highest human potential, which will enhance every area of our lives.

So, let’s begin with a somewhat tricky problem that can be a real barrier to the growth of our inner awareness and that is – on a certain level, we’re know-it-alls. We think we already know everything. Now I’m only talking about a relatively small part of our mind, but it has a pretty loud voice.

And there is a companion trait that comes along with being a know-it-all and that is - we like to be right. Actually, we love to be right, but we make far too much out of it. And it’s not just an annoying trait, it can be downright dangerous. When it gets out of hand, wars can start with terrible catastrophes following.

Sometimes you have to wonder: why are we so proud about being right, anyway? Being right isn’t such a big accomplishment. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This particular part of our mind isn’t really such a big deal. It’s bark is much worse than its bite, but if we want to grow, we really do need to grow beyond it.

It reminds me of a story from the old days, and I mean the thousands of years old days, when a student approached a master and asked to be taught knowledge of the inner self. “Let’s have some tea first,” the master said.

He then poured the student a cup of tea. When the cup was full, he stopped for a few seconds and said, “Here, let me give you a little more.” The master then poured more tea on top of the filled cup and the tea ran onto the saucer. The master kept pouring more tea onto the cup and it ran onto the table. He kept pouring and it ran over the table onto the ground. He kept pouring for a few more moments, then he looked at the would-be student.

“You see, all the tea that was poured into your filled cup just ran off and ended up on the ground. It was a complete waste and never did you or anybody else any good. Is that right?” he asked, and the student nodded.

“You see, you have to empty your cup before you can fill it.” So typical of Ancient Wisdom - an extremely simple statement with an extremely profound meaning.

By the way, this know-it-all, love-to-be-right trait isn’t bound to only individuals. Every culture throughout history seems to think that it’s completely advanced. Even the most appalling barbaric ones thought they were great. So, both as individuals and as societies we remain proud of our so-called knowledge.

And this always leads me to one of my favorite quotes, which comes from Thomas Edison, who is still considered to be one of the greatest inventors of all times. He is credited with over a thousand patented inventions including the light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture, and the telegraph. Pretty impressive! Probably one of the smartest humans ever!

Well, here’s his view about the state of our knowledge. “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything,” he said. Hearing that phrase and knowing that it comes from him always makes me humble. And when it comes to inner growth, humility is one of the most reliable allies we have.

With that, let’s quickly recall that famous study that was commissioned by NASA in which Dr. George Land found that 98% of us begin life as creative geniuses and remain that way though the age of five. Then it progressively diminishes until by our early twenties, only two percent of us are in the genius category. But according to Dr. Land, this remarkable level of intelligence remains within us and can be recovered relatively quickly.

Personally, the thought that there are advanced levels of consciousness within our intelligence that we have not yet discovered has always intrigued me and through research I have found that this concept has been expressed in every culture and religion throughout human history. I have mentioned in a previous episode that one of my favorite ideas about this is the inner state called Satchitanand, as expressed in Vedantic philosophy.

The term can be broken down into three components: Sat, which is truth. Chit, which is consciousness and Anand, which is bliss.

The ancient teaching is that although we may not be aware of it, there is a profound state within us which is connected to eternal truth, unending happiness, and immortal contentment. Together, they represent the ultimate reality or supreme principle, which exists both within and without. George Harrison expressed the concept in his classic song, “Within You Without You.”

Personally, I fell in love with the idea when I first heard the song on the Sergeant Pepper album. I was in college at the time, it was the late sixties and

chaos had become the societal norm. Things were falling apart as quickly as they were coming together, but as George put it, “When you see beyond yourself you may find that peace of mind is waiting there.”

Now, with the idea that there is a pristine state of peace, consciousness and bliss within our awareness, along with Dr. Land’s conclusion that we are in a genius state of consciousness from birth through age five, I started thinking about our early years, especially before the age of three. It seemed to me that if a toddler is not hungry, tired or in need of being changed, and nothing external is bothering them, they seem to exist in a most amazing state of being. They’re creative, expressive and completely aware. And they’re incredibly happy. Indeed, according to current research the average toddler laughs about 300 times a day.

Of course, we can blow right by that number but stop and think about it. That’s a lot of laughter. So, what are they laughing about? They don’t have much of an understanding about anything in the so-caller real world, so they’re not laughing at a good joke or because they just found out they unexpectedly came into a ton of money. No. The fact is they’re not laughing at anything at all. They don’t need a reason to be happy. They just exist in a state of consciousness that is inherently joyful. And a countless number of masters and teachers over thousands of years, have told us that this state of consciousness is within us now.

In that regard, I’m reminded of a poem called “Samadhi” that was written by the great teacher Paramhansa Yogananda. Samadhi is a term that refers to the highest meditative state where the individual achieves union with the Divine. He wrote it after he first experienced it as a yogi and this is the ending - “Spotless is my mental sky. Below, ahead, and high above - Eternity and I, one united ray. I, a tiny bubble of laughter, have become the Sea of Mirth Itself.”

Can you imagine that? Living in a state of inner consciousness where you have transcended the bonds of earth life and merged with the Divine. And what about that term - the Sea of Mirth itself? The dictionary defines “mirth” as abundant gladness expressed by laughter. I don’t know about you, but with all the ideas about God and heaven that I’ve been taught throughout my whole life, and believe me, that’s a lot of ideas – I never came across the idea of God being abundantly happy and expressing it with laughter. The big guy they taught me about seemed to be pretty pissed most of the time and was always ready to smite somebody. Well, so much for concepts.

But also, to appreciate the incredible state of being that we have within us, we don’t have to go looking for some arcane, yogic, meditative state. It’s much simpler than that. We can just look within our own heart, which is already filled with what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” There are hundreds of average, everyday traits that we have within our awareness that are miraculous in their own way. Love, gratitude, kindness, generosity, integrity, and compassion are just a few.

So, if we start out life in this incredible state of consciousness and it is all within us right now, a most obvious question comes up: What happened to us? And more importantly, what can happen for us? Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground here and as you might guess, this will be the topic of the next episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one…

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In the last episode, I offered a brief introduction to The Higher Mind Training, which is the next project that will be released by the Better Angels Publishing Company.

I mentioned the remarkable fact that modern neuroscience is in the process of verifying the basis of the higher understandings that have been expressed by Ancient Wisdom for tens of thousands of years. Now, we don’t have the time to go into the specific scientific details of what happens to our brain and nervous system when our inner awareness evolves into its higher levels. Just suffice it so say that the physiological proof of its positive effects on us is irrefutable.

I also presented the work of Dr. George Land and the study he produced for NASA that indicated that an astounding 98% of us were born geniuses and remained that way through the age of five. And by the time we reach adulthood, only about 2% of us are still in that genius category. But amazingly, that level of intelligence hasn’t left our consciousness. It’s still there and we can definitely reconnect with it.

And finally, I began the episode with the statement that the Higher Mind Training presents the average, everyday person with practical understandings and techniques they can use to expand their awareness and take them into our larger sphere of human intelligence. It is specifically designed to be simple to understand and easy to put into practice.

So, with this in mind, let me give you a brief update about some powerful events that have taken place with the Higher Mind Training during this past spring and summer.

About six months ago, I was invited to teach some of its basic principles to the counselors who serve in a half-way house in Wilkes-Barre, PA as well as the residents who live there. The results of this initial phase of implementation have been truly encouraging.

The name of the establishment is the James A. Casey House and it has been in operation for over twenty years. Its population is about fifty men, all of whom are recovering alcoholics and/or drug addicts. And these guys are all veterans of some truly hard times. Many have just been released from incarceration, several have recently been subject to severe overdoses, and many were homeless before the Casey House took them in.

You could say that a lot of them are living on the very bottom rung of society’s ladder, with very little education and even less wherewithal to survive the school of hard knocks that they find themselves involuntarily enrolled in. For me, although I have been speaking about and teaching the ideas and methods involved with the Higher Mind Training for many years, I had never tried to apply it to a population of this kind and had no idea what to expect.

As I began to train the counselors, I also held six training sessions directly with the residents so I could gain first-hand knowledge of their reactions. It was far more powerful than I had anticipated. Not only did they understand the material, but many had uplifting, liberating experiences practicing it. The results with the counselors, who continue to learn about the training and practice it have been equally impressive as well. And even though we are still in the early stages of implementation at the Casey House, the results have been truly encouraging.

One of the key fundamentals of the training is that most of us live in a state of Self-Sabotage and this is clearly at the root of most of the problems of the residents of the Casey House.

The basic description of the state of Self-Sabotage is quite simple. We keep getting in our own way of making progress in our lives. If it becomes bad enough, we become our own worst enemy. To one degree or another, this happens to almost all of us. No matter who we are or what we may have accomplished in life, we all have certain dissatisfactions that we are trying to transcend, higher goals of some form that we would like to achieve. And we each have only one truly powerful enemy who is fighting us every step of the way. And that is – our own self!

And the reason for this is also quite simple. Basically, we are at war with ourselves. In his introduction to the NASA study, as Dr. Land put it, our neurons are constantly fighting with each other. And again, this goes on with most of us, no matter who we are, how successful we may be, how much money we have, etc., etc.

So where does this constant inner battle come from and how can we resolve it? Believe it or not, it all comes down to a case of mistaken identity. Let’s use the lens of the Higher Mind Training to take a quick look at it.

To get started, let’s go back to the very beginning, which for us means, let’s go back about 300,000 years ago to when our species first began to appear on earth. In that regard, there are a couple of things to consider. First, since the beginning of life on planet earth, an estimated five to fifty billion species have evolved here. And incredibly, approximately 99 percent of them have become extinct. They came, stayed a while, and then for one reason or another, they vanished. Gone for good.

So, the obvious question then comes up – how did we survive? Why haven’t we become extinct?

The fact that we didn’t defies all logic. Given our relatively puny bodies with our lowly position on the food chain, natural selection should have wiped us out thousands of years ago. After all, we’re not the biggest. We’re not the strongest. We’re far from the fastest. Compared to sea creatures, we’re pathetic swimmers and we can’t fly at all. And when it comes to reproduction, our babies are born helpless, it takes them years to get to where they can survive on their own and compared to most other species, our overall offspring statistics are terribly weak.

So, under the laws of survival of the fittest, we should have been long gone by now. And indeed, we would have been just another unknown creature that came and went, except for this one small feature that was bestowed upon us by nature. We were born with this incredibly powerful brain. And although we’re clearly outmatched on every other level, this one small organ, with its endless creativity, has given us an overwhelming advantage against the competition.

At first glance, it doesn’t appear to be much. About the size of an average cantaloupe, it’s less than 100 cubic inches and weighs only about three pounds. And yet, of all the biological evolutions that have manifested on earth since the appearance of the microbe, with its 100 billion neurons seamlessly wired for endless creativity, it’s in a class all by itself. Indeed, the human brain is the single greatest masterpiece ever created by nature. And we each have one of our own.

With just its ability to invent tools, starting with primitive flint rock knives, it altered the survival equation, and soon we were at the very top of the food chain. And it did much more than that. With its boundless innovation, we didn’t just survive, we became the dominant creature on earth, radically transforming the entire planet.

And it truly is a most extraordinary tool. It is estimated that it would take the most advanced computer in the world about 45 hours to do what your brain does in just one second. So, your mind is absolutely incredible, and you could never grasp how much intelligence you have within you at this very moment.

So given all of this, where does this horribly destructive state of Self-Sabotage come from? Well, the truth is, it’s not all that hard to understand. The first concept to grasp is that we all have something in our intelligence which the Higher Mind Training calls our “Neural Template.”

Our brain has about 86 billion neurons that fire together constantly, and as the saying goes, neurons that fire together, wire together. They create about a hundred trillion neural pathways, which form a neural grid. This vast neural grid is called our neural template.

It is an incredibly complex device and it’s filled with everything that makes us who we are in the world, all of our concepts, emotions, thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, hope and memories, and on and on. We end up filtering everything that happens to us through this vast neural network, and that filtering shapes our entire life experience. We’ve each been basically living our lives through this neural filter since age five.

Now it’s important to remember that according to Dr. Land’s study for NASA, 98% of us were born geniuses and remained in that category through the age of five, which is when our creative intelligence began a significant and steady decline. So, what happened?

For most of us, we become more and more over-identified with our neural template, which is also called our ordinary mind. Due to an almost unending barrage of external stimuli, we lose the understanding that this grid that we have created is just a tool that we use to navigate our way through life, and we start believing that this neural template, this ordinary mind that can be overwhelmingly filled with negativity - this is actually who we are. And this extreme over-identification with this very small part of our overall intelligence becomes this case of mistaken identity. And this mistaken identity is the root cause of most of our mental and psychological pain.

Now, we don’t have this over-identification with anything else that we own. I don’t care how much you might love your car or your cell phone. You never get confused into thinking that they’re actually a part of you. But by mid-childhood, we’ve become so bonded to this neural template we’ve created, that we’ve lost touch with our actual identity and we no longer know who we really are. And the inner civil war, the war between the states of consciousness rages on.

So, as I mentioned in the last episode, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s also a great place to bring this episode to an end. There’s a lot more coming, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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Welcome back to the Stop Making Yourself Miserable Podcast and I certainly hope that you had a wonderful summer.

As you may recall, in the last episodes before the hiatus certain key chapters from my memoir, Wilt, Ike & Me, were presented along with the subtext behind them as I delved into some of the deeper meanings of the story for me. The response from many of you has been quite gratifying and I want to express my sincere thanks to all.

Now, as we return to our regular podcast schedule, I want to start presenting some information about my next project, the Higher Mind Training (HMT). To begin, let me give you a little bit of background about it.

You probably remember that for my entire adult life, I have been a writer, researcher, speaker and most importantly, practitioner in the field of personal growth. I’ve been seriously involved in it since it first began to emerge in popular American culture in the late 1960s. Along those lines, about three years ago I began to construct an educational program which I called, the Higher Mind Training.

Simply put, over the years, I have found that everybody wants to grow internally. Everyone wants to live a happier, more fulfilled life. And true personal growth, the evolution of our inner awareness, holds the key. But it seems that we each have our own individual roadblocks and currently there is so much confusing information out there. On top of that, our lives have become so busy, that the task of finding an approach that really works for us has become truly daunting. So most people don’t even consider it.

To address this need, my basic idea is to take the very best understandings and methods that I have used over my decades of research and personal experience and put them into a basic format that is simple for the everyday person to understand and easy to put into practice. Nothing special is required – just average intelligence and the simple desire to grow into a better human being.

Now, I have mentioned the basic concept of this training in some previous episodes, but in broad strokes, you can look at it as information that is drawn from sources as diverse as Ancient Wisdom, all the way up through modern neuroscience. And it turns out that modern neuroscience is actually validating the key fundamentals of Ancient Wisdom, which is a remarkable phenomenon which I have found to be extremely powerful.

Let’s take a quick look at it. So to begin, what is Ancient Wisdom? When you consider it, the answer is pretty astounding because throughout every culture in the world since the beginning of civilization, certain deeper understandings have emerged about fulfilling our purpose for living and realizing our highest human potential.

And it boils down to just a few key points. These are - as human beings, we have a greater potential than we currently understand. There is a higher state of consciousness that is available to one each of us and it can be realized through self-discovery. This will lead us to fulfilling our greater potential and the vast treasures that await us in this new state of consciousness are truly immeasurable. That’s an extremely basic introduction to it.

Now the format of storytelling has been largely the norm. And although the customs, cultures and languages have been vastly different throughout the ages, this basic message remains the same. Along with the caution that although we can spend our entire lives searching for happiness and satisfaction in the outside world, what we are really looking for is actually within us.

There’s also one other idea to consider - on the deepest, intuitive level, we all know this. And because of this intuitive understanding, at the very root of human consciousness is the built-in compulsion to grow towards it. If we don’t grow on an inner level, our life becomes an inner prison where we are trapped by our own limitations.

Now, this may seem overly simplistic, but just because something is simple, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Quite often it’s the other way around. The simplest things can be the truest.

So, that’s a very quick outline of the make-up of Ancient Wisdom and the question becomes, what do these thousands of years of wisdom have to do with modern neuroscience? Well, that’s exactly what I wanted to know when I first became aware of the unlikely relationship between the two about fifteen-years ago.

And although as I researched it, I found it to be quite startling at the time, in retrospect it makes perfect sense.

To put it in a nutshell, modern neuroscience has begun to scientifically verify the beneficial effects that are produced on us by the understandings and practices of Ancient Wisdom. Before the current modern era, we knew that practices like prayer, contemplation, and meditation seemed to produce exalted feelings that expanded our awareness. Now we know why, at least on a physiological level.

And all this really hit me, because as I’ve mentioned many times before, I’ve been exposed to many different forms of higher understandings throughout my adult life. But I’ve always been a pragmatist about it. Maybe a bit on the creative side, but a pragmatist nonetheless. Of course, I’m a big fan of wisdom, but I like the practical kind and I’m probably not alone in that. I think we all feel more secure with our feet on the ground.

Along these lines, two old practical sayings come to mind. The first one is attributed to Zen and it says this, “Before Enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After Enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.” Depending upon your perspective, I guess the meaning is self-explanatory. For me it says that no matter what may happen with your inner consciousness, the laws of three-dimensional life remain the same. The view may be different but the task remains the same. So pay attention.

Another similar saying I’ve always like is, “Feet on the ground. Head in heaven.” There are many traditions which carry similar sayings, but the message is simple. Just because you may become an enlightened soul, you still need to know your zip code.

So this fact - that the basic underlying ideas behind Ancient Wisdom continue to be verified by advanced neuroscience - served a great role in inspiring me to develop the Higher Mind Training.

And there was another element that provided further inspiration to me when, about ten years ago, I happened to watch a TED talk by Dr. George Land.

You may be aware that NASA once commissioned a study on creative genius to be applied to its work force. They were facing several serious issues and because they had a large base of top-level professionals in their work force, they wanted to see if they had any creative geniuses in their employ that they could tap into to help solve some of these critical problems.

They commissioned Dr. Land to devise and conduct the test. An astute scientist, he was one of the pioneers in the study of creative intelligence in modern America and was the founder of an internationally renowned research institute. His key principles are still used by over four hundred organizations throughout the United States.

The test he devised was extremely successful for NASA and he decided to extend it into the general public. He began by applying it to register the creativity of 1,600 children ranging in ages from three-to-five years old who were enrolled in a Head Start program. He re-tested the same children at 10 years of age, and again at 15 years of age. The results were astounding.

98% of the five-year-olds proved to be in the genius category. When he tested ten-year-olds, the percentage had dropped to 30%. At age fifteen, only 12% tested genius and by adulthood, in tests administered to 280,000 adults, only 2% were functioning on the genius level.

Dr. Land then concluded that from birth through the age of five, an astounding 98% of us were geniuses. Then, one way or another, society seems to program the genius out of us. According to him, this mass reduction in our overall intelligence began when large factories first emerged in society. We had to build factories to create workers to fill the factories and creativity was certainly not welcomed there. He said these “worker creator factories” were called “schools.”

But then Dr. Land threw another remarkable idea into the mix. According to him, we all still have that creative genius inside of us right now. It’s still there. It didn’t leave us, we left it. And according to him, we can each recover it. And not only that, we can recover it fairly quickly. It all has to do with learning how to use our imagination.

So, to sum things up, with my decades of positive experience in the study and practice of personal growth, and with the fact that modern neuroscience is proving the benefits of it beyond question, along with the findings of Dr. Land, that we were all born creative geniuses and that we can still recover our higher level of intelligence, you have the basis of my efforts in developing the Higher Mind Training over the past few years.

As you can imagine, this is just the tip of the iceberg to the story, but it’s a perfect place to end this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open. And let’s get together in the next one.

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The Better Angels Publishing Company announces that the “Stop Making Yourself Miserable” podcast will now begin its annual summer hiatus. We’ll resume our normal schedule again in the fall.

At this point, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for your continued, enthusiastic support. As you know, the purpose of these podcasts is to present intriguing information that is specifically designed to stimulate personal growth, and I’m happy to report that so far, it has been a terrific success.

Let’s take a look at some robust statistics that highlight how valuable your support has been.

To date, we have completed a total of 74 episodes, which are sent out by email to our growing subscriber base. We also have readers and listeners who access the podcasts entirely on their own. So far, we’ve had close to 15,000 views of the written episodes and about 4,500 downloads of the recordings. Now, this has all happened with no marketing whatsoever – simply by word of mouth, which makes these statistics all the more impressive.

Also, our podcast emails continue to enjoy a tremendous open rate. According to industry standards, the average open rate for this kind of content is about 7-10%. Since we began, our open rate has steadily maintained an incredible 57.3%, which is more than five times the industry standard! So once again, I want to offer our sincere thanks to you for your loyal support.

Now, besides this hiatus announcement and podcast update, I am happy to report a few other significant upcoming developments as well.

As you may know, this August marks the fifth anniversary of the publishing of my memoir, “Wilt, Ike & Me” and it continues to be extremely well-received. Readership has been growing steadily, and we recently passed seventy-five unsolicited five-star reviews on Amazon. For your interest, I’ll add a couple of samples at the end of this email.

But now for some exciting 5th anniversary news about the book. At the end of August, we will be publishing a commemorative, limited edition hardback version and we are going to prepare a special release for podcast subscribers. I’ll keep you posted as things develop, so keep an eye on your inbox.

And also, in a completely different genre, at the end of 2023 we are planning to release a new book called, “The Higher Mind Training – How Your Innate Genius Can Transform Your Life.”

By way of background, there was a famous NASA study that found that 98% of humans begin life as a creative genius, and even though we’ve mainly lost touch with it, we still have this incredible resource within our intelligence.

Resulting from over fifty years of research and experience in the field of Inner Growth, I’ve drawn on sources as diverse as Ancient Wisdom through to modern neuroscience, to design this program to help the average, everyday person fulfill their highest potential. Of course, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this groundbreaking project as it continues to evolve and grow.

As you can see, we have a number of innovative projects in the works, and there are a few more in development that I will mention to you a little more down the road. So even though the podcasts will cease for now, keep on the lookout for email updates from me that will be arriving in your inbox on a regular basis.

In closing, I wish you a terrific summer and I urge you to keep on growing your awareness to the higher levels of understanding. Remember, there’s no end to this inner evolution and we’re all changing every single day. It’s how our intelligence naturally grows, so we don’t have to resist it and we don’t have to be afraid of it. The great master of words, Ben Franklin, once put a great spin on it when he summed it up this way: “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.”

As I mentioned, here are a few Amazon review samples about “Wilt, Ike & Me”:

“David Richman, eloquently delves deeply into the underlying meaning behind unanticipated losses. He shares a valuable perspective on the inevitable challenges that we will all face in life. I couldn't put this book down!”

“A poignant and evocatively written tale of a great Black American and his cultural immersion in a 60's Jewish family. This is a unique and unlikely story that could only happen in the USA amid the cultural ferment that was 1960s America.”

“Richman has brought us a rare and wonderful treat, rich with details that ring with joy, pain and meaning. He opens a doorway to a depth of meaning that we rarely stumble on ourselves. Richman is a master storyteller, but far more important are the stories he has to tell. Quite an extraordinary feat and quite an extraordinary book.”

I hope you can relax and enjoy your inner journey. And I wish you all the best. Have a great summer! – DR By the way, if you haven’t gotten a copy of the book yet, here is a link to order:

Wilt, Ike & Me Available Now

And if you would like to write a review, you can post it to this link:

Review Wilt, Ike & Me

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This is the last episode of a four-part series featuring the text and subtext of some excerpts from my memoir, “Wilt, Ike and Me.” The last two episodes dealt with two of my earliest conceptual encounters with aging and death. This next episode looks at them as well, but from a significantly different perspective.

In December of 1974, my father’s father, Zayde, finally passed away. He was eighty-four, a ripe old age for the time. He had lived alone since my grandmother had died a few years earlier. He cooked his own food and was in great health - never hospitalized or even sick. And every day, he would walk the two miles to his Orthodox synagogue, where he would pray, do a few chores, and tutor some bar mitzvah boys.

We had always been close and of course, we got closer after my father died. But one day in 1972, unexpectedly it went to a deeper level. We were watching a NASA moon landing on TV and he said it was a fake, and that they were really doing it in a TV studio.

When I asked him why he felt that way, he told me about a prayer they used to say in the old country on the full moon. Apparently, the ancient prayer got dropped and never made it over here. Then he recited it - “The moon is so far away from the Earth. And in the same way, God’s perfection is far away from man. But one day man will touch the moon, and when he does, know that the days of the kingdom of heaven on Earth have begun.”

I had never heard that prayer before and even though it intrigued me, I didn’t say anything. I had actually been keeping something from him and didn’t want to discuss anything to do with God or religion.

During my recent college years, I had gotten a strong dose of the hippie lifestyle, along with some of its some mind-altering components. As comedian Robin Williams once said, “If you can remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.” Well, I really was, and it really changed me. Recently, I had started practicing a form of meditation which was having a profound effect on me as well. I was simply outgrowing a lot of my childhood concepts.

But I didn’t want to talk to my grandfather about any of it. He was an old man and had been through enough Tsuris in his life. (Yiddish for trouble), and he didn’t need any more. I was certain that my expanding point of view would only upset him, so I stayed away from it.

“So, you see,” he said, pointing to the lunar surface on the TV screen, “This isn’t real. It can’t be. If they were really on the moon, the Kingdom of Heaven would on its way.”

“Actually, Zayde,” I heard myself say, “it is real.”

“What?” he asked, like he hadn’t heard me right.

“Yes. It is real. All the prophecies are coming true and the whole planet is moving into a higher state. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

I couldn’t believe those words had come out of my mouth. I hadn’t planned to say anything to him, but my tongue had been faster than my mind.

The truth is though, that’s the way I really felt. I had spent four turbulent years in college in Washington DC, front and center at the demolition of the American status-quo. It felt like my generation had been on the vanguard of a revolution that had transformed the world.

For baby boomers, since Woodstock, the old order of “might-makes-right” was crumbling, and a new awareness was arising. The stirring message was everywhere - in the music and the movies, on TV and the stage. It really did seem like the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as they said in the musical “Hair.” Millions of us believed it, and the high times were global.

Still, I hadn’t meant to say anything to him. He came from another era, a distant time and place. He had been a Yeshiva student, and as a part-time cantor, was a full-time, orthodox Jew.

“What?” he shot back at me sharply, “What did you say?”

I thought he sounded angry and scrambled around in my mind to find a way out. But as I looked at him, I realized he wasn’t angry; he was hungry. And alive with curiosity. From that moment on, and for the rest of his life, all we ever talked about was higher consciousness. He was like a sponge and wanted to know everything I knew. The more I learned, the more he wanted to know.

And he had no conflict at all with what I was doing, which completely amazed me. He just wanted as much knowledge about God and the higher realms that he could gather. He didn’t care where it came from. I once asked him about it and he said, “Your religion’s like a car. You drive it to get somewhere, and when you get there, you get out. It’s the same thing with religion. It’s supposed to get you to God. And when you do get to God, you leave everything else behind and go straight to him. Never forget that, Davy. Go straight to him.”

As time went by, he was getting more and more otherworldly and I started visiting him every few days. He was always happy and cheerful, but the end was clearly in sight.

“Hi, Zayde,” I said when I walked in on one of those last days. “What are you doing?” I was referring to the fact that he was walking toward the dining room.

“Oh, I’m just waiting now,” he said. “That’s all I’m really doing. Just waiting.”

“What?” I asked.

“Just waiting. You know, I’m just waiting for him to take me.” He raised his eyes up, toward the ceiling. “I really don’t know why he hasn’t yet. Most of my people are gone, and there’s not much left for me to do here anymore. So, I’m just waiting for him to take me.”

He sounded like a passenger sitting in a bus terminal, whose bus had been delayed. He didn’t mind. He knew it was coming sooner or later. And he was happy to be finally going home.

The last time I saw him, he was sitting at his dining-room table, about to eat lunch. He began every meal with a small glass of schnapps. He had one on his plate and downed it like water. He started eating, but soon, after just a few bites, he fell sound asleep. His head was resting on his chest, and I wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. He had a faint smile on his face, like a baby, listening to a lullaby.

At that moment, I could really see the family resemblance between him and my father. And as I looked at him, smiling in his sleep, I remembered my father’s face, as he was lying in his coffin. He was smiling too. Of course, he was dead, but he still looked like he was having a great time.

I had often thought about that smile and wondered - was the reason he looked so happy because he actually was? Had he made that glorious transition into a higher reality, like the psychic said in that letter that was found in Abraham Lincoln’s desk? I wondered if there really was such a thing as a higher reality. And if there was, do you really have to die to get there? It didn’t seem to make sense. Why can’t you know that joy while you’re still alive?

After another minute, Zayde started to move a little. He lifted his head off his chest, opened his eyes and his slight grin turned into a happy smile. “Well, it won’t be long now,” he said cheerfully. Obviously, he was referring to the fact that he was about to die. But if anything, he was glad. He went on with his lunch, but when he finished, he looked at me somewhat seriously.

“Listen to me, Davy, and pay attention now,” he said. “We came to this Earth to learn. And not just about anything. We came here to learn about the highest. And I’m going to tell you something important. When we leave here, we actually get to keep what we learned. In fact, that’s the only thing we get to keep. All the rest just goes back to dust.”

He got up and started walking me toward the front door. I figured he was going to take a nap when I left. “So, learn what came here for, and don’t get too distracted by all the other stuff. You know what I mean? Most of what’s here isn’t really real.”

We got to the door and he turned and looked at me. “In the morning, always say to yourself - I want to accomplish what I really came here for. And then, at the end of every night ask yourself - what did I learn today that brought me closer to God? Remember, it isn’t what happens here that really matters. It’s what you learn. That’s what it’s all about.” With his soft, contented smile in the afternoon sunlight, he really looked like the embodiment of a learned soul.

“The higher your understanding gets, the more gratitude you feel in your heart,” he said. “And when you leave here with a heart filled with gratitude, you’ve done your job. Then the journey was worth the trip.”

He put his right hand on the crown of my head and said some prayer in Hebrew that I didn’t recognize. His pale-blue eyes were lit by a warm, steady flame, and he gave me a soft stroke on the cheek. “So long, Tot-a-la,” he said. We hugged each other, and I left.

A few days later, as he was giving a bar mitzvah lesson in the synagogue, he died peacefully among the ancient texts.

And so, ends the written description. Now for the subtext, which for me, is quite profound.

By way of background, in his world, my grandfather had become known as being a “Tzadik,” which means a “righteous one.” He had been educated as an Orthodox cantor and had spent a considerable amount of his life engaged in study, prayer and service to his religious community. He also had a mystical temperament, was an deep admirer of the eighteenth century rabbi called the “Bal Shem Tov,” and had been a student of the Kabbalah. And as he was nearing the end of his days, the rarified effects of having lived such a life were unmistakably obvious.

Being with him during these last days was deeply meaningful to me.

Even though he was quite old for his time and had outlived most of his contemporaries, he wasn’t facing the end of his life with any sadness or regret at all. If anything, he seemed excited about it.

And not only was he verbally giving me his perspective about what really matters in life, his example spoke far more than words could ever say. Listening to him, it seemed that when you know that you have fulfilled your true purpose in coming here, you can face the end with gratitude and fulfillment, which seemed to be much more appealing than grappling with a heart and mind filled with confusion and regret.

From that perspective, it seemed clear that many of us spend the majority of our lives chasing after passing, man-made illusions that ultimately bring little in the way of real fulfillment, which suddenly seemed like a colossal waste of time.

Although this final encounter with him took place almost fifty years ago, the light that it generated still illumines my path and inspires me to keep on growing throughout all of the rest of my days, no matter how few or many more I get. As he said, it’s only what you learn about the highest in this life that really counts.

So, this marks the end, not only of this episode, but also of the four-part series. It started out with Wilt Chamberlain taking his epic walks around Peter Widener’s palace. Then it went to Davy Crockett’s valiant fight to death at the Alamo, followed by my meeting with Cousin Agnes, the former glamorous flapper from the 20s. And now, we conclude with witnessing this elevated state my grandfather was in as he contentedly faced the end of his life.

As with all things in the field of inner growth, it’s up to each one of us to draw our own conclusions and extract our own benefits. Again, that’s the end of this episode and as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In this episode, we continue to look into the text and the subtext of a few portions from my memoir called, “Wilt, Ike and Me.” Again, the text relates to the written words and the subtext relates to the meanings behind them.

In the last episode, we dealt with the subtextual theme of death, when a classic comic book dramatized to me how my hero, Davy Crockett, had died at the Alamo. This unexpected encounter with the certain impermanence of life took me completely by surprise, which made it all the more powerful.

This coming episode also deals with an unexpected encounter with impermanence, but it comes in a different flavor.

My mother was thinking of adopting a dog, a big Afghan poodle that belonged to an old woman who couldn’t care for it anymore. I was supposed to go take a look at it and see if it was too big for our house.

“Isaac Ruvah will drive you over,” she said. “He knows the old lady pretty well.”

“Isaac Ruvah” was another name for my father’s uncle, Uncle Ike. When you talked to him directly, you always called him “Uncle Ike.” But when you referred to him in the third person, he was Isaac Ruvah. Ruvah was a nickname. There were so many Isaacs, they gave each one a Yiddish modifier, so you could tell who they were talking about. It was like an Italian family that had so many Paulies, they had to give them nicknames like Paulie Walnuts, Paulie Bag o’ Donuts, and so on.

A few days later, Uncle Ike picked me up, and we drove over to the woman’s apartment. He said her name was Cousin Agnes and asked me if I knew who she was. When I told him I didn’t, he wasn’t a bit surprised and explained that she was the widow of one of my father’s cousins, Natey Schaeffer. He asked me if I knew who he was.

“I’m sure you don’t,” he said before I even had a chance to answer. And he was right. I had never heard of him, but that was nothing new. Our extended family was huge and a lot of them didn’t speak English, so to me, they were a big blur.

Uncle Ike didn’t say anything for a few moments as he drove. His salt-and-pepper hair, now far more salt than pepper, shimmered in the flickering sunlight as it poured through the windshield. Then, with a smile of both irony and affection, he started telling me about this unfamiliar relative, and I quickly understood why I had never heard of him before.

Apparently, Cousin Natey was a Jewish gangster, and a fairly significant one at that. As with most American subcultures, the Jews had a dark side, a criminal underbelly. And like the Irish, the Italians, the blacks, the Asians, and so on—they didn’t like to talk about it. To them, it was best kept private. Natey had been dead for quite some, but it was clear that Uncle Ike’s memories of him were still very much alive.

“Yeah, Cousin Natey was really something. There was never anybody like him,” he mused. “He was our cousin, a first cousin to your Bubbe and me, and we were really close.”

He got quiet again, like he was trying to decide how much of the vault he wanted to open. “Listen, this is just between you and me, so don’t talk about it to anybody, but he was with Meyer Lansky.”

He looked at me like he had just revealed a great truth, but I had never heard that name before. As it turned out, Meyer Lansky was the most notorious alleged Jewish mobster in American history, but it meant nothing to me.

Since he sounded important, I figured he might have owned one of the stores on Castor Avenue, the neighborhood’s big shopping strip. It couldn’t have been the toy store because the brothers who owned it, Hershel and Zvi Slansky, were tight with my parents, but there were dozens of others.

“You know who that is, don’t you?” he asked.

“Sure!” I shot back.

“OK, good. So, during prohibition, Natey and his group ran Philly for Lansky,” he said. “Made a fortune.”

“A lot of people in the family were ashamed of him, but not your Bubbe,” he went on. “No sir. She would never let anyone say anything bad about him. She wouldn’t hear of it. And I’ll tell you one thing, you don’t want to get on her bad side.”

As tough as he was, Uncle Ike was my grandmother’s baby brother, the youngest of eight, and I could hear a definite sound of fear in his voice. It was surprising because to me, she was just my sweet grandmother. She was always full of love, and although I could barely understand her, I always felt it. She’d been here over fifty years and still sounded like she just got off the boat. It didn’t matter though. Her hugs and kisses, and the light in her eyes told us everything we needed to know. She was all heart, and Uncle Ike’s comment about her fierce loyalty made perfect sense.

“If somebody had a bar mitzvah or a wedding and they couldn’t afford it, Natey would always cover it,” Uncle Ike continued. “Same thing with a shiva. If somebody in the family died and they didn’t have the money, Natey was right there. Great guy!”

A shiva is a gathering that happens at a mourner’s house, and there’s always a lot of food put out for the visitors. Before then, it hadn’t occurred to me that you had to pay for it. Somehow it seemed to come along with the death.

“Cousin Agnes is really something,” Uncle Ike said as we got to her apartment. When we walked up to the door, he took out his own key.

“She was a flapper, you know? Great dancer. I don’t know how they met, but she was a real looker and Natey fell hard for her.”

He opened the door, bent down, and picked up the mail. “She was a real shiksa [a non-Jewish woman] too. That was another big strike against him with the family. But Natey didn’t give a shit. He was nuts for her. My God, she was pretty, though. Really, really gorgeous.”

We walked down the hall, into a dimly lit bedroom full of stale cigarette smoke. A huge white dog was lying at the foot of a double bed. And an unbelievably old, white-haired lady was lying in it. She looked like a creature in a comedy/ horror film, a kindly old ghoul who had been dead for years but could still smoke cigarettes. There was a bottle on her end table with a half-filled glass of clear liquid next to it. A sort of pungent odor filled the air that I would later come to know as vodka.

Next to the bottle was a black and white picture in an ornate silver frame. Clearly from the Jazz Age, a dapper-looking guy in a sharp tuxedo was standing next to a curvaceous flapper in a short dress. She wore one of those 1920s hats that covered her forehead, framing her face with a perfect blend of pearls and curls. They were obviously at a fashionable party or some fancy joint, having an amazing time, and she had a dazzling smile.

“There’s your Cousin Natey,” Uncle Ike said, pointing to the picture. “And Duvid, take a guess who’s on his arm.” I shrugged. I didn’t know, and I really didn’t care. The whole scene was starting to get to me; I just wanted to get out of there. “That’s right,” he said, smiling at the pale ghost in the bed. “It’s Agnes.”

She lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and blew out an enormous billow of smoke. It didn’t seem possible for that much exhaust to come pouring out of a body that small and frail. She gave me a wide smile. Her white skin crinkled into a thousand pieces, and her mouth revealed a smattering of teeth that were more orange than yellow.

“Boy, was she something,” he mused, with a faraway look in his eyes. He peered into the dense cigarette smoke, like he was looking through a veil, at a vision of the distant past.

“You were one pretty lady, Agnes,” Uncle Ike said to her. “And according to Natey, nobody could do the Charleston like you. He always said there was magic in those hips of yours.” He did some ridiculous Charleston imitation, swiveling his hips around like he was twirling a hula hoop, which really cracked Agnes up. She laughed for a moment, then broke out into a long, hacking cough. She reached over, grabbed a tissue, and spit into it.

That did it. I really had to go. She seemed like a nice enough lady, but I couldn’t handle being there any longer. I had never been around anybody that old before, and I wasn’t prepared for it. I mean, Uncle Ike was up there in years, but next to her, he looked like a teenager. It was all just too much.

After another few minutes, we left. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t coming back. My mother could handle anything further with the dog. I was done.

Later that night, as I was lying in my bed, I was too agitated to fall asleep. We all know getting old is a fact of life, but this face-to-face encounter had really thrown me. In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing that great old picture of Agnes and Natey. They were at the high point of their lives, young, happy and clearly in love. But the suave and handsome Natey was long since dead. And his vivacious showgirl had turned into the withered, ancient, woman, confined to bed, laying in a shroud of smoke.

“Is this what’s going to happen to me?” I wondered. But I knew the answer before I even finished asking the question. “Of course, this is what’s going to happen to you,’ I replied to myself. “This is exactly what’s going to happen to you. That is if you live that long.”

Images of the young Agnes and the old Agnes kept alternating in my mind, like someone was running a slideshow in there. It was hard to believe they were the same person.

“What else do you think is going to happen? How do you think this whole thing ends?” my inner dialogue continued. “One way or another, you die.” After about an hour of this mental back and forth, I finally drifted off. But I didn’t sleep well that night.

That’s the end of the text of the story. Now for some of the meaning behind the words.

I was only sixteen at the time and had just gotten my driver’s license. And it seemed like the whole world was opening up to me. I don’t know about you, but getting my license is still one of the most transformative events that has ever happened to me. It changed everything.

So, here I was, this excited and happy adolescent, enthralled by the thrill of this whole new stage of life, suddenly running headlong into the brick wall of truly serious old age. And let me tell you that my description of it didn’t even come close to imparting the true severity of the blow.

As he was telling me about them, Uncle Ike had built up Agnes and Natey’s life together to a lavishly mythic level, which made sense because he was ten years younger than them and they were clearly his idols. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when I finally met her, not only did I meet the oldest person I had ever seen, I also came face to face with the unequivocally transient nature of our life on earth.

And it really got driven home when I saw that picture of them in their heyday, this jazzed-up couple, jazzing it up in the jazz age, and then looked back at this frail, ancient lady, smoking her cigarettes, as her crumpled sheets matched the crevices that made up the atlas of wrinkles that covered the pale skin of her face.

In the picture, they seemed so cool, but now, the faded glory of their bygone era was so ancient, that I might as well have been looking at a picture of the Sphinx in front of the Great Pyramid,

And that night, when I couldn’t fall asleep and the images of the young Agnes and the old Agnes kept alternating in my inner vision, it was clear to me that I too would someday be that old. That is if I lived that long.

I’m sure you get the picture, because this subtext is true for all of us. All of our hopes and dreams, our cares and fears, and our successes and failures are just temporary stops along this road of life, and we all know all too well, that regardless of any circumstances, this road inevitably comes to an end.

But for me and for anyone else who cares to look a little deeper, the outlook isn’t as dark as it may seem, because according to the Wisdom of the Ages, understanding impermanence can mark the doorway out of the prison of self-limitation that leads to the liberating freedom of self-knowledge, along with the inherent joy that comes along with that territory. And even though I may only be just starting to scratch the surface of this whole thing, so far, the view has certainly been worth the climb.

And with that, let’s let this be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In this episode, we continue our look into the text and the subtext of a few portions from my memoir called, “Wilt, Ike and Me.” Again, the text relates to the written words and the subtext relates to the meanings behind them.

The last episode dealt with the subtextual theme of impermanence and it took place during my tenth-grade year in high school, when Wilt Chamberlain was living in our home during the 1965 NBA season. This next episode begins a decade earlier in 1955, when I was an extremely impressionable six-year-old.

We lived in a neighborhood of row homes and were a typical family for the times - a husband and wife, two boys, one girl, a dog and a bird, and of course a television, which was still kind of new. Less than 35% of the homes in the country had one.

We watched it all the time and in my young mind, our world was an extension of what was on it. Our home life seemed like just one more happy show. The times were ordinary, and I thrived on the normality of it.

The only unusual character in my life was my father’s father, Zayde. who was the undisputed spiritual authority of the family. Besides being trained as an Orthodox Jewish cantor, he was also quite a mystic. You could see it when you looked at him. There was a twinkle in his pale-blue eyes and half the time, he looked like he was ready to burst out laughing. And the other half, crying.

He had some interesting theories about God, saying there are always highly evolved people living on Earth, to help bring about the Divine Plan. And one day, to my delight, he decided that the TV character, the Lone Ranger, was such a one. It was a great development for me because he was the star of my favorite show, and if he had something to do with God, all the better. In my book, it was a million times better than going to services.

Zayde would watch each episode with total focus, and after it ended, he would give a short teaching on the moral of the story. In the origin show, the Texas Rangers were ambushed and left for dead by the bad guys. Tonto, the Ranger’s future Indian companion, comes upon the scene, realizes that one of the rangers is still alive, and nurses him back to health. Since he’s the sole survivor, Tonto calls him The Lone Ranger.

“Your horse was killed, and now Great Spirit has given you a new horse,” Tonto says, appreciating the synchronistic workings of the universe.

“He’s not my horse yet, Tonto,” the Ranger replies.

The horse bolts forward and breaks into a mighty gallop, charging full speed to the top of a hill. It rears back on its hind legs, neighing in triumph, standing tall against the sky.

“There, there, Big Fella,” the Ranger murmurs to him, gently stroking its muzzle. Then he turns to Tonto, and in a calm voice of certainty says, “Now he’s my horse.”

The show went to commercial and Zayde turned to me, his face glowing like he had been staring at a burning bush.

Davy—now that was a magical name for me. To my grandfather, it was just short for Dave-a-lah, an endearing Yiddish nickname meaning “little David.” But for me, it was the doorway into the realm of heroes.

That was because I used to watch a TV show every afternoon called The Mickey Mouse Club. Probably every other baby boomer in the country with a TV did the same thing. It was our own private club, with a special membership cap that had mouse ears. Everyone seemed to have at least one.

It was an enormously popular, national phenomenon, but one day, they introduced a new character that took it to a completely different level. His name was Davy Crockett and he was The King of the Wild Frontier. It immediately became an unprecedented success and within weeks, Davy was the number one TV kids’ hero in the country.

Disney launched a massive merchandising campaign that turned into a major profit center for them. The more popular the show got, the more stuff they sold. And the more stuff they sold, the more popular the show got. There was no end to it. I had three coonskin caps. Disney was selling over five thousand a week. I probably had six different styles of Davy Crockett T-shirts and a toy rifle; a replica of the one Davy always carried that he called Old Betsy.

Brave, but light-hearted, always fighting for what was noble and right, Davy became the embodiment of the true American hero, and we all loved him.

Now, all my life I had been called Davy. I was Davy Richman. Our new hero was Davy Crockett, and everybody called him Davy, as well. As if the line between fantasy and reality wasn’t already blurred enough for me, now whenever I heard my name, I felt like a mythic hero. Every other six-year-old Davy in the country who was glued to a TV set probably felt the same way.

My life was deeply intertwined with Crockett’s and I was having a great time, until the day my mother came home from the supermarket with a new comic book about him. It had great artwork, and I was enthralled by every part of it until I got to the end. The last few pages went into a dramatically realistic portrayal of Davy’s death at the Alamo.

Disney had touched on the death briefly on TV but had just glossed over it, probably for advertising reasons. They didn’t want you to feel too bad before their sponsors sold you candy and cereal, which was their bread and butter.

But this comic book was no Mickey Mouse job. The colors and the artwork were haunting, with noble, idealized writing. And unlike TV, it was static. It didn’t move. You could just sit there and stare at it. Which I did.

And it really brought the death alive. They took you inside the Alamo, where Davy and his men were being defeated at every turn. One by one, all his companions are killed. Finally, Davy is surrounded by dozens of Santa Anna’s soldiers, their bayonets bared, ready to tear him to shreds. Knowing he is out of ammo, he turns Old Betsy around, bravely swinging it in the air by the barrel, ready to go down fighting.

The last panel was just his silhouette, swinging his rifle against the backdrop of a dark crimson sky. The caption read, “With no hope left, Davy fought on, and as the sky turned blood- red, The King of the Wild Frontier, the noble champion of truth, virtue, and all that is right, finally was no more.”

I couldn’t look away from that last panel. The color pictures saturated my mind and the truth sunk into me like a thousand-pound weight - Davy was dead. For the first time in my young life, I tasted the finality of death. And it took the life right out of me.

I sadly closed the comic book and decided to go outside. I put on my favorite Davy Crockett T-shirt and my coonskin cap, picked up Old Betsy and walked out to our small front yard. Everything was the same as always, but I didn’t know this world anymore. The light had gone out of it.

It was already late afternoon. I stood on our little hill and looked out at the sky. As the sun began to set, it turned blood-red, just like the end of the comic book. The deep color made my grief a hundred times heavier.

It was unbearable, and I closed my eyes and started to cry silently. Then, somewhere in the depths of my imagination, I thought I heard a deep voice talking to me from far away saying, “Be strong, Davy. It’s time to be strong.”

For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. Then I heard another voice. “What are you doing?” it asked me. I realized it was someone in the real world.

I opened my eyes and saw my father standing there with his briefcase in his hand. He had just come home from work. He looked me over for a few seconds, dressed in my Crockett gear. I don’t know if he was picking up on the fact that something profound had just happened to me, or if he was picking up on the fact that you could move a lot of merchandise on TV. Whatever it was, he gave me a smile, picked me up, and carried me into the house.

As soon as we got in the hall, I smelled spaghetti sauce and knew we were having one of my favorite dinners. I immediately felt better. He said something to my mother in Yiddish and she started laughing - my favorite sound in the world. It made me feel even better than the spaghetti sauce.

So much for the text of this excerpt, now let’s take a look at the subtext. For me, there’s a lot to unpack here. For one thing, with my grandfather you have the presence of a mystic which, according to the dictionary definition, is someone who seeks enlightenment in ways that are beyond the scope of pure intellect, the idea being that there is a deeper understanding of life that transcends the limitations of the ordinary mind. Or to put it in a nutshell, there’s more to this life than meets the eye.

Furthermore, it’s not bound by time. My grandfather grew up before there was widespread electricity and spent much of his life studying ancient texts that were thousands of years old. Now he’s getting the same teachings from a character on a TV show. Go figure.

Then you have the element of free will as represented by Silver, the great white stallion. The Ranger could have saddled him up and forced him to be his horse, but instead, he set him free. And the horse could have run off into the wild, but instead he chose to serve the Ranger. Although it may be a simple allegory, it’s filled with profound meanings.

And finally, there’s the Davy Crockett comic book, which presented me with my first encounter with death itself. Even though it was only about a fictional character, this was my biggest hero, not to mention my alter-ego, and the ultimate finality of it completely obliterated my young world and I was utterly devastated.

Now I don’t care how talented a writer you may be, the profound sadness and despair that the death of a loved one brings can never be adequately communicated, and anyone who’s felt it knows exactly what I’m talking about. For me back then, as well as for all of us when we’re children, as immense as it seemed, it was nothing compared to the real thing.

But then, I quickly stabilized back into my natural state of joy when my father scooped me up and took me inside and I heard my mother’s laugh and smelled her spaghetti sauce.

Even this small moment carries some deep subtext for me because according to today’s neuroscience we each have been made with the built-in capacity to come back from pain and anguish. No matter what may happen to us, we can always find a way to recover. It’s a natural part of our survival mechanism.

Lincoln put an interesting additional spin on it when he said that nearly all men can handle adversity, but “if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” How’s that for a short statement that carries many layers of major subtext?

Well with that, we’ll close this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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As I mentioned in the previous episode, we’re going to look at four different excerpts from my memoir, “Wilt, Ike & Me,” and were going to examine some of the subtext in each. The following is the text from the portion of the first excerpt. By way of background, my father had recently moved basketball superstar Wilt Chamberlain into our home for the remainder of the 1965 NBA season.

We had fallen into a fairly regular daily routine and Wilt would generally be sleeping when I left for school in the morning. When I got home, he’d be either up in his room or out walking around the neighborhood. He took a lot of walks.

We lived in a community called Elkins Park, which is in Cheltenham Township, just north of Philadelphia. It’s an upper-middle-class American suburb and has a lot of stretches where you can take some great long walks.

Our house was just a few hundred yards away from a large religious institution called Faith Theological Seminary, which was a training facility for future clergymen. But it didn’t start out that way. When it was first built at the turn of the century, it was called Lynnewood Hall and was a 110-room Georgian-style palace from the Gilded Age. Finished in 1900, it quickly became known as the American Versailles and was considered the most magnificent estate outside of France.

It had luxurious gardens complete with huge fountains and ponds. The home was filled with over two thousand artistic masterpieces, and it was the center of a social network of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the land. There were legendary parties that went on all night, routinely ending with sumptuous sunrise breakfasts.

The mansion itself stands in the middle of a thirty-five-acre circle of land, enclosed by a black wrought iron fence. It was about a two-mile stretch from our house, around the estate, and back. Wilt would usually make the trip every day, sometimes going around twice.

Now, this was 1965 and in our neck of the woods, black people and white people generally didn’t live in the same neighborhood. Things were basically segregated. Cheltenham has changed a lot over the years and is now a model of multicultural living. But back then, things were different, and in our area, all the residents were white.

Soon the local grapevine was buzzing with news that a huge black man was regularly seen walking around the neighborhood near the seminary. A short time later, it became common knowledge that this mysterious giant was, in fact, Wilt Chamberlain and that he was living in Ike Richman’s house.

Before you knew it, nearly everyone claimed they had seen him out on one of his famous walks and had gotten a wink, a wave, or a nod. One day, a school bus slowed down to a crawl, so all the kids could come over to one side and wave at him through the windows.

For most people, seeing Wilt up close was an experience they would never forget. Not only was he much bigger than they’d thought, he was also strikingly handsome and extremely charismatic, with an engaging personality. Along with a great sense of humor, he always had a slightly comical expression on his face, like he was in on some kind of inside, private joke. He was just unbelievably cool.

And memories of him never seem to fade. Although he walked that neighborhood over fifty years ago, people still tell me stories about seeing him. And they’re all still smiling.

Lynnewood Hall always held something special for Wilt. He was fascinated with its architecture and loved to take it in from all the different angles he would see as he walked around its perimeter. As a world traveler, he had developed quite a discerning eye for art, architecture, and design. And this palace was a real masterpiece.

It was built by Peter Widener, who was the embodiment of the American dream. Born in 1834 and starting out as a butcher, he made his first real money selling beef to the Union army during the Civil War. Then, he parlayed his holdings into a huge transportation company that he formed with his partner, William Elkins, the namesake of Elkins Park. He also helped start US Steel and American Tobacco, and ultimately became one of the wealthiest men in American history.

Unfortunately, his interests extended into the steamship business as well, and he owned a piece of the White Star Line. The RMS Titanic was one of his investments. He sent the elder of his two sons, George, over to England to celebrate the maiden voyage of the “unsinkable vessel.” George, his wife, and their son occupied one of the premier luxury suites in first class.

The night of the iceberg tragedy, the Wideners were hosting a formal dinner party for the ship’s captain, who was summoned from it when the collision occurred. Mrs. Widener survived the horrible ordeal, but father and son both went down with the ship.

Peter Widener was devastated. He withdrew from the world, retreated into Lynnewood Hall, and never really re-emerged from it. Within a few years, still mourning the loss of his son and grandson, the old man died of a broken heart.

But the grand old mansion still stands. Its religious conversion didn’t take place until 1952 and it remained a monastery for about twenty-five years until the brotherhood finally closed-up shop. It’s been abandoned for decades.

Now, after an age of neglect, with its insides gutted and its once-white limestone faded to a dull brown, it still holds its magnificent place in the sun, perhaps waiting for some dreamer to come along, with inspired visions of restoration and redemption.

Wilt knew all about Widener’s Titanic connection and the place always got to him. I don’t know if it was just plain spooky, or if it spoke to him on some profound level, maybe about our ultimate mortality. Whatever it was, I could always tell when he’d been there from his distant gaze as he walked back onto our street.

I had recently gotten my driver’s license and one day Wilt decided that we should drive over to a commercial part of North Broad Street, where he could give me some pointers on how to squeeze into a parking space. He said it wasn’t all that hard.

“I think you’re good enough to listen to the radio now,” he commented as we drove along. I turned it on, and soon, the deejay said it was time for the daily double, which was two songs in a row by the same artist. Then Sam Cooke came on singing “Another Saturday Night.”

“Oh my God! My theme song,” Wilt exclaimed. “Turn it up! Turn it up!”

I made it louder, but it wasn’t loud enough for him. “Come on!” he said. I blasted it, and he started singing as we drove along. He actually had a fine singing voice and had made a record once. He kept snapping his fingers along with the music, right next to my ear. His hand was probably three times the normal size, and every snap was like a firecracker exploding in my skull.

I did my best to concentrate, but this was crazy. I wasn’t even a novice, and he was totally distracting. I started getting perturbed, but that was just one part of me. Another part felt like it was the coolest thing in the world.

Wilt had a happy smile when the song ended. But then the slow, haunting introduction of “A Change is Gonna Come” came on, and everything changed.

It was the final song of Sam Cooke’s young life and the mood got somber as Cooke began to sing: “I was born by the river, in a little tent. And just like the river, I’ve been running ever since. It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know, a change is gonna come. Oh yes, it will.”

“I knew him,” Wilt said over the music. “He came up to Paradise right before he died and sang a couple of numbers.” The nightclub he owned was called Big Wilt’s Smalls Paradise, but whenever he talked to me about it, he just called it Paradise.

“They released this right after he got killed,” he said.

We fell silent and listened to the rest of the song. When the last verse came on, Wilt closed his eyes and sang along, his soul coming out of his mouth.

“It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die. ’Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky. It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know, a change is gonna come…Oh yes, it will.”

When the song ended, I looked at him in the rearview mirror. His eyes were closed, and he was clearly in another world.

So, that’s the end of the text from this excerpt. Now let’s briefly go into some of the subtext. Again, subtext refers to the deeper meanings behind the words, and of course, it’s purely subjective, meaning that everyone will have their own interpretations.

To me, the overall concept behind the text is impermanence. Nothing in our life on earth lasts, including all the people, places and things that make up the realm for us. It’s all temporary, and this applies to everyone, no matter who we are or what we do.

This idea is symbolically represented by the grand estate, Lynnewood Hall, that was built by the great industrialist Peter Widener, as he was achieving his greatest successes. But his son and grandson were tragically killed in the Titanic disaster and he retreated into seclusion and died soon after.

The once world-famous palace of opulence still stands to this day, but it has degenerated into a deserted and dilapidated ruin.

Again, it is only about 350 yards away from the home we lived in when Wilt stayed with us. And there is something haunting about the image of him, taking long walks around the huge perimeter of the estate.

Here he was, this 7-foot-tall NBA giant, who at the time was the most recognized celebrity in the entire world, with vast aspirations of his own, circling the former home of one of the greatest business titans in American history.

They were both in the same location, separated by a mere 65 years. Each at the peak of their powers and each dominating their worlds. And as different as they may seem, they were in the same basic situation. They both played out their roles, filled with all of their triumphs and tragedies, and eventually they vanished and were no more. It goes without saying that we’re all in the same boat on this one.

Finally, to drive the point home, the excerpt ends with Sam Cooke singing “A Change is Gonna Come” on the radio. At age 33, the megastar of popular music was also at the peak of his power. But he had recently been shot to death, and watching Wilt sing along to the lyric about being afraid to die was quite a powerful moment for me.

So, what’s the subtextual takeaway from all this? Again, it’s a completely subjective matter and will vary from individual to individual. For me, the somewhat metaphysical experiences I had surrounding the sudden death of my father forced me to take a deeper look into the mysteries of life and I eventually came into contact with some profound understandings from humanity’s Ancient Wisdom Traditions.

From that perspective, there is nothing more important in life than true inner growth and nurturing our consciousness is critically important for us to be able to fulfill our highest human potential and genuinely enjoy the gift of life.

And in that regard, understanding the factor of impermanence can become a great ally for us. For once we begin to accept the truth of it, humility, gratitude and appreciation naturally begin to take hold within our intelligence. And that noble trio never fails to illuminate the path to our higher inner ground.

Well that’s quite a bit of subtext, so this seems like a good place to end this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The last podcast episode called, “One Lucky Soldier” was the final installment in a five-part series from the novel I am writing called “The Better Angels – Lincoln, the Psychic and the Spy.” During the previous episodes, we followed the arduous journey of Annie Franklin, a 19-year-old psychic who came to Virginia to bring her brother Daniel, a seriously wounded Union soldier, back home to Connecticut for care.

After being abused and extorted by a Union captain who withheld the necessary furlough, and then learning that her brother had been left to die in the rotting remains of a deserted Union field hospital, Annie had finally reached her breaking point and had no idea of what to do next. In her hour of despair, she unexpectedly ran into Charles Kean, a powerful Union spy who, with a kind heart and a mighty pen, quickly saved the day for Annie and her brother.

In the book, this marks the beginning of an extraordinary adventure that brings Annie into close contact with Mary Lincoln and eventually with the President himself. As a strong romance begins to blossom between the psychic and spy, they embark on a dangerous, but thrilling adventure as they attempt to foil the Lincoln assassination. As you can imagine, the story has a lot of different layers to it and I am slated to release the novel by mid-2025.

Also, as you may recall, when I first introduced the series of podcasts, I mentioned that I had become seriously interested in writing during my college years when I changed my major from Government and Political Science to Literature. Back then, I intuitively felt that storytelling has a tremendous capacity to assist in the positive growth of human consciousness, which seemed to be absolutely essential to our survival as a species.

Over the years, as I continue to study the powerful effects of writing, I am always fascinated by the relationship between what is called “text” and “subtext.” The text refers to the actual words that have been written, while the subtext refers to the meaning behind the words. The subtext helps reveal the theme of the story; understanding it is often referred to as “reading between the lines.” And sometimes, a very small amount of text can reveal an enormous amount of meaning for us. Here are two great examples of that remarkable phenomenon.

The first one is a phrase that says, “Basic Life Needs: Backbone, Wishbone, Funnybone.” Just a few simple words, but they point to three key traits of human nature that are critical for us to successfully navigate the often-turbulent waters we face in life.

The idea that we need a strong backbone tells us that no matter what you want to do in life, you have to keep putting effort into it. And on top of that, you need to have the courage to stand up to tough times, because one way or another, they do show up.

In addition to a strong backbone, we need a robust wishbone as well, so that we can keep our sights set on our highest aspirations. Regardless of the situation we may be in, somewhere inside we have an innate sense of hope Its optimism helps bring about inspiration and creativity, along with dozens of other key components that lead us forward to fulfilling our highest human potential.

Finally, there is the idea of the funny bone, having a good sense of humor, which can be more important than it may seem. The fact is, over sixty-five different species of animals are known to laugh, and scientists now believe that laughing and having fun are critical components to survival. because it helps us see the brighter side of life.

So, it’s best to take it all with a grain of salt because one thing to remember is that we each have only a limited time here. Impermanence is a fundamental part of our existence, and having a clear understanding of that not only bring us a deeper sense of appreciation, but it also keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously, which can be a major hurdle to our inner growth.

A good sense of humor can also serve as a protective barrier for us, as well. For example, while I was doing research about Abraham Lincoln, I regularly came across the fact that he genuinely loved to laugh. And this proved to be a great help to him when he was president, as he was faced with the difficult task of managing the nation throughout the entire, unprecedentedly bloody Civil War. This was not only a truly dark time for the country, but for him personally, as well. His eleven-year-old son had died early in his first term, and he had to confront an appalling amount of death and destruction on a daily basis. As he put it, “If there is a place worse than hell, I am in it.”

But it’s a well-known fact that he kept joke books in his desk at the White House and read them often. When a reporter asked him why he would try to find humor during such a dark time, Lincoln, a deeply sensitive man who never drank or smoked said, “I laugh because I must not cry. That is all. That is all. With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die.”

So having a strong backbone, wishbone and funnybone are all critical for our success and well-being. Very simple, but very deep stuff.

Here is the second example of an extremely simple text that carries enormous meaning in it. In fact, this has been called the most profound story ever told in six words. It was an ad in a newspaper that read, “Baby Shoes for Sale. Never Worn.”

Now if you’ve been interested in these podcasts, it’s a good bet that you’ll immediately feel the depth of meaning behind these words. Afterall, why would someone have a pair of baby shoes that had never been worn? Obviously, it could be for a number of different reasons, but there are certainly some pretty sad ones to consider. Death, loss, dashed hopes and the fragile nature of our existence are just a few of the sorrowful themes that come to mind. And each would produce an immediate and profound sense of empathy in us.

On a somewhat lighter note, I once came across a slightly different version of this ad that had a very different resolution to it. Supposedly the ad read, “Baby Carriage for Sale. Never Used.” Someone called to inquire about it and first offered sincere condolences. “Thanks so much, but no condolences needed,” was the reply. “It turned out that we had twins.” I really enjoyed that when I read it. I don’t know about you, but I always love unexpected silver linings.

And here is one last quick story that had an enormous depth of subtextual meaning for me. I first heard it when I was on an extended visit to India in the early 70s and it’s actually at the foundation of one of the world’s most influential religions.

It took place in the sixth century BC, in a kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas, when a son was born to the wealthy and powerful king of the realm. A seer told the king that the new prince would either expand the kingdom and become a great king, or he would turn into a renunciate and become a great teacher of inner truth.

Deeply disturbed by the prophecy, the king decided to keep his son in a world filled with pure delight. Throughout his entire life he was shielded from any form of suffering and pain, and was never allowed to go outside of the palace walls. The prince’s name was Siddhartha and finally, at the age of 29, he had his charioteer take him out for a chariot ride, past the palace walls and into the outside world.

They soon came upon an old man. The prince had never seen anyone old before and asked his driver what type of creature this was. He looked like a person, but was bent over and shriveled up. The diver said that that this was a regular person, just like him, who had gotten old. And he added that we all will get old like this if we live long enough. This idea of old age was new and was deeply troubling to the prince.

Then they came upon someone who was very ill. When he asked what was happening to that person, his driver said the person had become sick. Then he added that sickness can strike any of us at any time. This concept of sickness was a second deeply troubling idea to the prince.

Then they rode past the crematorium grounds as a dead body was being prepared to be placed on a funeral pyre. When he asked what had happened to that person, he was told that the person had died. He was looking at a body that no longer had the power of life in it. Then he was told that we’re all going to die someday, no matter who we are or what we do. The prince had never heard of death before, let alone the idea that we’re all going to die, and this presented a serious problem for him.

So, within a matter of an hour of leaving his palace of earthly delights, Siddhartha had been shown the realities of old age, sickness and death. Then, as they made their way back to the palace, they came upon a traveling saint, who was giving a talk to a few people of the town. With a smile on his face, he told the people that there is way of understanding that can take you from the suffering of the outer life to an immortal inner kingdom that lasts forever.

When Siddhartha asked his driver what kind of person this was, the driver explained that he was an aesthetic, someone who had dedicated himself to finding inner enlightenment. And he sounded like he had found it.

According to legend, this tremendously transformative journey for the prince became known as the four sights. Soon after his return, Siddhartha left the palace in search for inner truth. Then, at the age of 35, after six years of searching and practicing, he attained the state of inner enlightenment, began teaching and became known to the world as the Buddha.

The subtext of this story is as incredibly profound as it is simple. It conveys the idea that no matter who we are or what we are doing, we are all subject to the conditions of sickness, old age and death. And also, it is possible to attain the higher state of consciousness that transcends darkness, illusion and mortality. Of course, there are a lot of interpretations of this legendary tale, but these are the basics to it, plain and simple.

So, back to the ideas of text and subtext. As you may know, I have written a memoir called, Wilt, Ike and Me, about the days when my father founded the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team and moved NBA superstar and cultural icon, Wilt Chamberlain into our home. Wilt was my roommate during my tenth-grade year of high school.

As a memoir, the text of the story is very clear. It simply recounts the events of the time, as they happened to me. But there is a considerable amount of subtext to it as well.

In the next four podcast episodes, I am going to present four chapters from the book and I am going to go into some of their deeper subtextual meanings for me. Writers are generally somewhat hesitant to do something like this because the idea is to let the reader draw their own conclusions. But given the nature of the Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcasts, I felt inspired to do this with these chapters and I certainly hope you will enjoy them.

So that will be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the four episodes that preceded this one, during the Civil War, Annie Franklin, a nineteen-year-old woman who happens to have psychic gifts, had come to Virginia to take her brother, Daniel, a badly wounded Union soldier, back home to Connecticut for care.

It had been a difficult and trying time. After attempting to take advantage of her, an unscrupulous Union captain angrily refused to give her the furlough she needed. Then, when she went back to the field hospital to see what she could do for her brother, she found that it was basically deserted, and along with a few hundred other soldiers, he had been left there to die.

Overwhelmed by their desperate situation, she had gone out into the field to try to think, but broke into tears and ended up sobbing into her lap. Unexpectedly, a man dressed in buckskin riding clothes came over and offered to help her. He took her by the arm and started walking her towards a table where some soldiers had gathered.

But she was still shaken by the terrible experience she had when the army captain had tried to molest her, and she pulled her arm away, refusing to move until the stranger told her his intentions. The man assured her that he was acting in her best interests and as the episode ended, the two of them stood facing each other as she tried to decide if she could trust him.

And now, the story continues…

He took her by the arm again. She intuitively felt her body relax and began to walk along with him before she had consciously made up her mind to do it, which surprised her. As they approached the table, the soldiers immediately looked up with attention.

“Do you happen to have a paper with your brother’s name on it?” he asked Annie.

“Why yes, I do. I have his enlistment certificate,” she said.

“Oh perfect,” he responded and held out his hand “Give it to me.”

She couldn’t tell if he had given her an order or made a statement of assistance, but he spoke with total authority and complete confidence. She handed him the paper, and when he took it, she felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders.

“Fred, we still have a few furloughs left in the pack, don’t we?” he asked one of the men at the table.

“I think we have a few left,” the man replied.

“Good,” he said, putting the enlistment certificate on the table. “Fill one out for this young lady’s brother, will ya?”

“Sure thing,” the man said, rifling through the certificates that were neatly filed in a leather saddlebag. “Be happy to.”

“A furlough?” Annie asked, hardly believing her ears. “I thought you could only get them at the War Department.”

“Well, things are not always the way they seem,” the man responded. As the clerk at the table filled out the papers, the man in buckskin motioned to two other soldiers who joined them.

“This girl’s brother is in the infirmary tent. I want you to get them to Georgetown right away,” he said quietly. “Go tell Serling to dress up as a doctor and dress Willoughby up as another wounded soldier. Take the two snipers and dress them up as orderlies. They’ll all travel along as one party.

“Georgetown is a great place for them to lay low for a few days. They’ll know where to go. Tell them that once we get things set up, I’ll get their orders to them.”

He looked over at Annie, who was clearly amazed by what was happening. “This really came along at just the right time,” he said, smiling at her. “It’s perfect.”

“All done, Charlie,” the man at the table reported to the man in buckskin. He walked over and read the papers. After a moment he signed the furlough and handed it to Annie. “Here you go,” he said to her with a smile.

“So that’s it?” she asked him. “I don’t need to go to another doctor and I don’t need to get an army officer to authorize this? This is all we need?”

“That’s right,” the man replied. “We just took care of all that here. You don’t need to do anything further. Just get your poor brother some care and bring him back to health. A military escort will transport you to your friends’ house.”

He then walked over to the table and started talking to the soldiers. After a moment Annie walked over to them.

“Um, pardon me, but when do you think we’ll be able to go?” Annie asked tentatively. “I don’t think Daniel can last here more than a few more days, maybe a week at most. Longer than that, I - ”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he interrupted her. “I wasn’t clear. You’re going today. I put a rush on it. They’ll probably have you both on the road within an hour. Two at the most.”

“Oh my God!” Annie said quietly, almost to herself. “Oh my God,” she repeated as she breathed in a deep sigh of relief.

“Everything will be taken care of for you from here,” the man continued. “Now you just do what the soldiers tell you to do and you and your brother will be in Georgetown before nightfall.”

“Oh my God!” Annie quietly repeated again. It seemed to be all she could express, the unexpected change in their fate had happened so suddenly, she could hardly think straight.

The air was cold and still reeked of death, but now she was filled with gratitude, and everything was different. She held out her hand to the noble stranger. He shook it and held it in his and said, “Miss, it’s been an honor to meet you. You came at just the right time.” He paused for a moment and added soberly, “Good luck to you and your family in this bitter time of trial for us all.”

“Sir,” she responded. “I just want to say, really from the bottom of my heart, I just want to say,” she stopped and looked him squarely in the eyes. “I just want to say… thank you.”

“You’re most welcome,” he replied. He patted her on the hand, then buttoned up his buckskin jacket. He gave her one last look, then turned and walked toward his horse, a huge golden stallion with a bright white mane.

He put on his brown leather riding hat and mounted the massive steed that seemed to welcome him into the saddle. It eagerly shook its head and snorted, like it couldn’t wait to run. He turned the horse away from Annie and sat in the saddle for a few moments, gazing out at the field. He seemed to be deciding which way to go. The day had brightened, the sun was shining, and the stinging rawness had gone out of the air.

He continued to survey the scene as Annie watched him from behind the horse. With this simple act of kindness, he had ended her horrible ordeal and saved her brother’s life. It was far beyond anything she could have hoped for.

But who was this mysterious stranger? He was clearly in charge of the soldiers at the table, but he seemed kind of young for that. Obviously, he was deeply involved with the brutality of the escalating war. Yet there was a steely kind of optimism about him…a sense of confidence in that ultimately - the power of good would prevail.

As she looked up at him, she became overwhelmed, not only by what had he had just done for her, but also by the man in the saddle, himself. He muttered something to his horse, it turned around and, he was face to face with Annie once again.

On horseback he certainly cut a striking figure. But she suddenly realized how handsome he actually was, and she stared up at him like he was a gift from above. They looked at each other for what seemed like a very long moment. Then with a warm, yet slightly coy smile he said, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Miss Annie Franklin, your brother is certainly one lucky soldier!”

No man had ever looked at her quite like that before. There was something endearing in his eyes, but there was also something more than that. A thrill rippled through her and she felt the blood rush into her head. Even though she was already nineteen, she came from a small town, had been sickly as a child and had no experience with men at all. Her breath quickened and she blushed as red as a beet.

“Who knows?” he finally said, “Maybe our paths will cross again someday. You take care of yourself ‘til then, okay?’

“I will,” she said with a subtle smile as her face lit up like a budding rose.

“I’ll take that as a promise,” he said with a knowing look and turned the horse around. Giving it a slight nudge, it lunged forward and then galloped away. She stared at him for a few moments until he finally disappeared over the horizon.

“Is this really real?” Annie asked abstractedly. “I mean this is real, isn’t it?”

“Pardon me, Miss?” asked the soldier who was sitting at the table near her. She turned to him and put the paper on the table.

“Oh. I mean the furlough,” she said, quickly changing her focus. “It’s real, isn’t it? I mean, that man wasn’t even in uniform. Can he really do what he just did?” she asked.

“Well, his kind never dress in uniform. They run undercover. But that furlough is as good as gold. You see his signature there?” the man pointed at the paper. “You see that - Charles Keane – BDF.”

“Yes,” Annie said. “Does that mean something?”

“You bet it does. BDF stands for the Baker Detective Force and that means a hell of a lot. They’re a top-secret group, the Bakers. Nobody really knows that much about them. I think there’s only about 12 of them in the whole army. But you see that signature there? That can only be overruled by a four star General.”

She stared at Keane’s signature on the furlough. The soldier gave her a kind pat on the hand, then added reassuringly, “You’re safe now, Miss. You can relax.”

It was dusk when Annie stood and watched as two soldiers carried the stretcher holding her semi-conscious brother into the parlor of the Harrison’s home. Just a few hours earlier, on the hospital grounds, she had been staring into the pits of hell, only inches away from having to make a vulgar deal with the devil. Then unexpectedly within minutes, the dark scene had suddenly filled with light, her troubles had vanished, and now she could see a clear pathway home.

Filled with gratitude, she lit a candle on a nearby table and heaved a deep sigh of relief. Finally able to relax, she sat down and stared at Daniel’s peaceful face, glowing in the warm, flickering candlelight. He had fallen asleep and was snoring softly. Smiling, she gazed contentedly at his chest, rising and falling with the steady flow of his rhythmic breath.

And so ends the story of when the psychic met the spy. And this is also the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, when Annie Franklin went back to the field hospital to try to get another letter from a doctor to allow her to take her brother, Daniel, home to Connecticut for care, she was unexpectedly confronted with an appalling situation – the formerly crowded hospital was now basically deserted and there were no doctors present. Along with just a few hundred other critically wounded soldiers, her brother had been basically left there to die.

She met with Daniel and put on a brave face to try to reassure him, but now it was completely obvious to her that they were in truly dire straits. And so, this episode begins…

She walked outside the tent, took a breath of the chilly air and looked over the field. The place was pretty much deserted except for a small group of soldiers huddled around a makeshift table about fifty yards away. They were carefully studying some maps and in a rather animated discussion as a small fire was giving off some much-needed heat. A man dressed in civilian buckskin riding clothes was clearly in charge.

As Annie looked around, it seemed to be the only place available to go ask for help and stood watching them, waiting for the right time to approach. After a few more moments there was a pause in the discussion and she took a step toward them, and as soon as she did, the man dressed in buckskin picked up his head and stared directly at her. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, but he seemed so intently focused on his work that that she quickly lost her nerve and started walking in a different direction, towards another group of soldiers who were off in the distance.

But once she got close enough to see what they were doing, the nature of their horrible task became clear - they were loading dead bodies onto a wagon. There was a pile of about a hundred of them, next to a large, blood-soaked wooden box that was filled to the rim with amputated limbs.

Sickened, she walked back towards the first group of soldiers. The wind shifted a little and the smell of death and decay which pervaded the camp, suddenly enveloped her. She had noticed it before, but now it engulfed her like a damp, moldy shroud, turning the very act of breathing into a nauseating chore. She felt like she was going to vomit, but she fought it back. This was no time to get sick.

She stood still and went over the situation in her mind. Daniel was definitely better than he had been, but he was still in dire straits. There were no doctors present. He had clearly been left there to die, and without proper care, she didn’t see how he could make it.

What could she do? To her disgust, the only hope she had was to go back to the War Department, makeup with Captain Lee and just do whatever he wanted. How bad could that really be? Whatever it was, she could handle it, she told herself. But how could she really trust Lee? Would he really help her? Maybe not, but it didn’t seem like she had any choice. What else could she do?

It was all she had left. She pictured the captain with his blood-shot eyes. The smell of his foul breath had been almost as bad as the stench of death that pervaded the hospital field. In her mind she could still see the anger in his face, as he spat out his curse - “It’s your own stupid, stubborn goddamn fault. His blood is on your hands now.” Then she could see his sneering smile as he said, “Oh, by the way, honey, you’ll be back! And you know what? I’ll be here waiting for you.”

Suddenly her legs got wobbly and she knew she needed to sit down or she would fall down. A few yards away, a small bench lay on its side, surrounded by discarded boxes and some rotting garbage. She walked over, straightened up the bench and sat down.

Then, in that instant she lost control of her emotions and suddenly burst into tears. She quickly covered her face, bent over, buried her head in her hands, and sobbed silently into her lap. She had come to the end of her rope and the situation was completely hopeless. She couldn’t even think anymore.

“Help,” she silently called out in despair, into the depths of her inner darkness. She didn’t even know what she was saying, or who she was talking to. It was beyond all that. It was just pure desperation. “Help me. Please, please, please help me,” she sobbed silently into her lap.

“Can I help you?” she heard a voice ask. For a moment she wasn’t sure if she had lost her mind.

“Whaaat?” she muttered incredulously, almost to herself. She didn’t want to open her eyes. Even if this was just some kind of mental mirage, she didn’t want it to end just yet. Illusion or not, at least it was something comforting.

“Miss?” the voice spoke again. “Is there something I can do for you? Do you need something? Can I help you in some way?” The voice was coming from directly in front of her and she knew it was real. She opened her eyes to the vision of a pair of light brown buckskin pants. She looked up and saw the face of the man who had been standing at the center of the soldiers’ table a few yards away. Although he had a rugged appearance, there was something trustworthy about his tone of voice, and he seemed sincere.

“Yes,” she said, looking at him through her tears. “Yes, thank you, I do need help.” She paused, trying to collect herself and dry her eyes. “I don’t know if you can help me, but God knows, I need help.”

He held out his hand. She took it and he helped her stand up. She wobbled a little and he put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her and helping her gain her ground. “So, what’s the trouble?” he asked, kindly focusing his steady gaze on her.

She went to talk, but no words came out. She was still too shaken to answer him, and just stood there, mute. His face softened and he gave her an encouraging smile. “Come on now. Tell me. You can tell me,” he said in a softly encouraging tone. “What is it?” She felt some life come back into her body, and her voice suddenly made its way back into her throat.

“Sir, I have got to get my brother out of here. I have come here for him, to take him back home to heal. He got seriously wounded in the battle, caught a bullet in the stomach and now they’ve left him here to die,” she blurted.

“Oh, I see,” he said and looked at her for a few seconds. “So, you’re his next of kin and you’ve come to get him, you’ve come to take him home. And he’s in there, I take it,” he said, motioning toward the hospital tent.

“Yes. Yes, he is, and he looks better today than when I last saw him. I think he’s getting better. I think he can make it if I can get him out of here. But if he has to stay here, I don’t think...”

“Well, did you go to the War Department?” he interrupted. “I take it you know that they are directed to give furloughs for exactly this reason?” he asked.

“Oh yes. Oh my God, yes. I went to the War Department. I went there twice. What a nightmare,” she said. “A doctor here gave me a letter with a recommendation for a furlough. I took it to a captain in his office in the War Annex. He said it was fine. He said there was no problem. He told me he would have it issued the next day. And then, when I came back to get it, he told me that he didn’t have it. A problem had come up with it.” A wave of emotion tore through here and she stopped for a moment, and let it pass.

“He wanted me to go with him to - I mean he wanted to take me to dinner and he said that if I , uh...” The man held up his hand, stopping her.

“You don’t have to go any further, Miss,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you that I’ve heard the story a million times.”

“He said that if I wouldn’t do what he wanted, he’d make sure I would never be able to get the furlough and my brother would die here,” Annie blurted out, as a wave of hopelessness and despair flooded back through her.

“I presume you didn’t go along with him?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she replied indignantly.

“Well good for you. You’re smart,” he said, and looked her in the eye. “Because let me tell you the sad truth – he would have never given that furlough to you anyway, this Captain Whoever-He-Is. He would have just strung you along until he got some other poor gal who came to him for help.

“Those boys have quite an operation going on for themselves down there,” he continued. “That’s how they do it. They hang out the hope of a furlough like bait on a hook. As soon as they have someone who’ll bite, they keep dangling hope in front of them forever. They really couldn’t care less about the poor injured soldier. Could die for all they care.” He stopped and looked over the hill for a moment. “But they do love that power, though,” he mused. “That’s the thing. They probably love the power even more than the uh -”

He stopped for a moment and looked her as if he had an idea.

“Would you mind telling me your name?” he asked.

“Annie Franklin,” she said. “My family is from Farmington, Connecticut.

“Oh. Okay. And where are you staying while you’re here?” he continued.

“I’m with some friends in Georgetown,” she said.

“Georgetown,” he said thoughtfully. “Hmm, Georgetown. So, you’re staying in Georgetown.”

“Yes, with some friends,” she said.

“And I assume that’s where you want to take your brother? To your friend’s house in Georgetown?”

“Exactly,” she answered.

“Ok. Great. Come with me. I’ve got an idea,” he said suddenly, taking her by the arm. He started walking her over to the table where the soldiers sat with the maps, but she stopped in her tracks.

“Sir, what are you doing?” she demanded, pulling her arm away. The memory of the army captain who had just tried to take advantage of her was fresh in her mind, and she was still wary.

“You can relax now, Miss,” the man said with a calm smile. “Just take it easy. Believe it or not, fate has smiled upon you today. You came here to take care of your brother. He’s a soldier and you’re obviously a Union girl. Now it just so happens that I can help you and you can help the boys in blue. So just trust me and come along. Believe me, you’re going to be much happier than you know.”

And that’s the end of this episode, as it seems that some sunlight might be starting to break through the clouds. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, Annie had returned to Captain Lee’s office in the War Department, expecting to pick up the furlough that would allow her to take her badly wounded brother, Daniel, back to Connecticut for home care. But when she went into Lee’s office, instead of giving her the furlough, he withheld it, attempting to get her to allow him to have his way with her.

It was a pure case of abuse of power, as he ransomed her brother’s life to extort her to submit to him. When she refused, he became infuriated and told her she would never be able to get the furlough unless, of course, she changed her mind. Again, she was a nineteen-year-old, inexperienced girl who had never been over thirty miles away from home before and was unexpectedly thrust into a truly desperate situation. Now, she had no idea what she was going to do.

And so, the next episode begins…

Annie had no choice but to start over. On top of what happened, Captain Lee had kept the letter from the army doctor and there was no way to get it back. She had to go back to the hospital, get a new letter from a doctor and try to find a better contact in the War Department. It seemed like a hopeless idea, but it was all she had left.

When she saw the Harrisons in the morning, rather than telling them what had happened, she just mentioned that a bureaucratic delay had come up and quickly headed back to the ferry to Alexandria.

Her mind churned out a whirlwind of scattered thoughts. She was hoping that Daniel might have improved. She was both sickened and seething from her unexpectedly horrible encounter with Lee. And she was starting to run out of money. She hadn’t planned on staying as long as she had, and the cost of all the transportation was high.

After the long ride, as her carriage climbed up the hill that overlooked the vast hospital grounds, she gathered her internal fortitude. But when she got to the top, the scene she saw hit her like a hard punch to the stomach and she gasped at the sight of it.

She had expected to see the several hundred white canvas tops that made up the hospital tent city. Instead, the place was basically deserted. What had been a sprawling medical encampment just two days earlier, was now just a gigantic grassland of deserted debris. The grounds were covered in garbage and medical waste was everywhere. There were just a few dozen tents left standing and it was a truly appalling sight.

A few Army men were packing up a wagon as she approached them.

“What happened?” she asked one of them.

“What do you mean?” he asked her back.

“What happened to the hospital?” she asked. “I was here the day before yesterday and it was -” she looked around. “It was -” She couldn’t continue and just shook her head.

“Oh, I see Miss,” the soldier said kindly. “Are you here to visit someone?”

“Yes,” Annie said. “I’m here for my brother.”

“Well,” he explained, “early yesterday morning, orders came in for us to break up the camp immediately. They set up a new tent hospital about ten miles from here. It’s bigger and much better equipped.

“The boys that were almost better just got sent back to their companies. The ones who were well enough to make the trip, got taken over to the new place. And the other ones will stay here. We’re going to finish gathering them up today.”

“Gathering them up? What are you going to do with them?” Annie questioned.

“Well, we’re going to take care of them here, Miss, in the big infirmary tent.”

In shock, Annie looked out at the sprawling desolate scene around her. “Sir, can you tell me how I might be able to find out if my brother’s still here?” she continued on.

“Well, the best place to start is to just go look in the big infirmary. Come with me and let’s see if he’s in there,” he said as he took her gently by the arm.

In a few minutes, Annie was standing inside the large tent, gazing over a sea of about 250 cots spread out before her. With the soldier next to her, she started walking up and down the aisles between the cots. Finally, she spotted Daniel. He was sound asleep.

“That’s him,” she said quietly to the soldier. She guided him a few steps away so that she could talk a little louder.

“Listen, sir, I need your help,” she continued. “I came here from Connecticut to get him a furlough and take him home so we can care for him. I need to get to a doctor who can write the recommendation letter and I need to do it right away. Can you stay with me and help me find a doctor? I don’t know if he can make it here much longer.”

It was mid-December and although there were some small fires burning, it was still quite cold in the tent. “Miss,” the soldier spoke slowly. “I’m afraid that can’t be done.”

“Please,” Annie begged. “I’ll do anything that’s necessary.” The words didn’t come out quite right and she was a little wary as she looked at him.

“I couldn’t help you if I wanted to,” he said immediately. “There are no doctors here anymore.”

“What?” Annie asked disbelievingly. “How can there be no doctors here?”

“They all left. They all got assigned to the bigger hospital,” the soldier explained.

“Well, what is going to happen to all these men?” she asked, looking at all the cots with the wounded.

“Like I said, we’re going to take care of them here. We were told to keep the boys as comfortable as possible,”

“How many soldiers are here with you? How many are here to help these men?” Annie asked.

“There were about 20 here yesterday. Today we’re down to about 12,” he said blankly.

“Twelve?” Annie asked, and the reality of the situation suddenly dawned on her. “They left them here to die, didn’t they?” she asked, dumbfounded. “They just left them here to die.”

“Miss,” the soldier tried to explain. “They didn’t have a choice. They couldn’t take everyone. There wasn’t enough transport, and the ones they left behind probably wouldn’t have survived the trip anyway. You understand? They had to do it like this. Nobody wanted this, but this is what we got.”

Annie’s mind spun in several different directions for a few moments. Then she reached a determination. “Alright,” she said firmly. “This is what we have to do. We have to get him out of here. I am going to take him home with me and I’m going to do it now. Will you help? Will you?”

“Now, look, you have to calm down, Miss,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re up against. You don’t just walk a man out of here. If a soldier goes leaves these grounds without a furlough, he immediately becomes a deserter. If he’s caught, they’ll hang him.”

“So what?” Annie retorted. “He’s going to die here anyway. He’ll die if I don’t get him out of here.”

“Yes, but if you take him off the grounds, you automatically become an accomplice. Make no mistake. This is the army, this is wartime and the laws are clear. Helping a deserter is treason. They’ll hang you too. Now don’t even think about it.” He paused for a moment and looked at her kindly, but resolutely. “And I’ll tell you what - if you try anything crazy like that, I promise you, I’ll stop you. And believe me, it will be for your own good.”

Annie didn’t know what to do. She needed some time to think, and she wanted to talk to Daniel and see how he was. From afar, he seemed like he had a little more color in his face. Hopefully, he was getting better.

“Alright sir,” she said, stalling for some time. “Alright, thank you. I appreciate it. I am going to speak with my brother for a while. Then I’ll try to figure something out. I know some people in Washington. Maybe I can do something there. They might be able to help,” she finished, having no idea what she was talking about.

She took a few steps back over to Daniel’s cot, put on the bravest face she could muster, and gently shook him awake. He opened his eyes, looked at her for a few seconds and then smiled.

“Hey, Sis,” he said quietly.

She immediately hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He shivered a little, but he definitely seemed a little better than he had been two days earlier. At least it didn’t seem like he was just about to die.

“Annie, we have to get away from here,” he said and coughed a little.

“I know, Daniel. I know. That’s what I came here for. I am going to take you home,” she said.

“Everything went okay at the War Department, didn’t it? You got the furlough, didn’t you?” he asked. Annie turned her face away to hide her tears and just stroked his hair.

“Look, the doctor will be here soon,” Daniel said confidently. “He told me yesterday that he would be coming around today. He said if we run into any problems at all, he would help out. He should be here soon.” They looked at each other for a moment and Daniel broke into a smile. “Don’t worry,” “he said calmly, but brightly. “I know everything is going to be fine.”

She couldn’t tell whether he was delusional or if someone had lied to him about being a doctor. It didn’t matter. She needed more time to think. She was scared to death, shaken to the core and didn’t want Daniel to see any of it. Even though his health seemed a little improved, but he was still very fragile. The last thing he needed now was a hard dose of reality. Annie closed her eyes for a second, then turned back to him smiling.

“It’s so good to see you, Danny. You look much better today,” she said and gently stroked his hair for a few minutes. He smiled at her. “Such a dear, dear soul,” she thought. “Probably the last person in the world who should be in combat.”

“Listen,” she said, “I am going outside to see if there is someone around that I can talk to, you know, to start to make the arrangements and things.” She patted him on the head. He nodded, closed his eyes and drifted away.

And that’s the end of this episode, with things having gone from bad to worse. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The last episode began a key segment of a story called, “The Better Angels – Lincoln, the Psychic and the Spy.” As a quick summary, it takes place in December of 1862; the Civil War is raging and a brutal battle has been fought that has been a devastating loss to the Union Army.

Annie Franklin, a nineteen-year-old, inexperienced girl, has traveled to Washington DC to apply for a furlough to be able to take her brother home for care. He has been seriously wounded in the battle and because the hospital is so overwhelmed and understaffed, the government is allowing injured soldiers to be taken away to be nursed back to health at home.

Annie has already gone to the field hospital and gotten the letter she needed from a doctor authorizing the release of her brother. The previous day, she had gone to the War Department and presented the letter to the appropriate officer who had told her that everything seemed to be in order and to come back the following day and she can pick up the furlough.

As the story continues, Annie has returned to the War Department, with the expectation of getting the furlough and bringing her brother back to Georgetown, where she is staying with some friends of the family. Once he is well enough to make the trip, she will take him back to their home in Connecticut.

At 4 pm the next day, Annie was eagerly sitting in the waiting room of Captain Lee’s office with three other people. He called each one of them in before her, all of which took about a half hour. Finally, he waved at her, gesturing to come in.

Annie walked into his office and sat down in front of the desk. Lee reached over to the ashtray, picked up the cigar which had gone out, lit it, and puffed for a few moments. “What a day,” he sighed. “What a day. So busy. Never seems to stop.” He took another long puff. “So - what can I do for you, Miss?”

Annie looked at him, a little surprised that he didn’t seem to remember her or the reason for her visit.

“I am here to pick up the furlough for my brother. Remember? Daniel Franklin of the 14th Connecticut?”

“Oh, Franklin, sure, sure. I’m sorry,” he said and started shuffling through some papers. “What a day…” After a few moments, he stopped and stared at one particular paper. He picked it up and read it for a few moments.

“Oh, hmmm, this one...” he said somewhat sadly. He looked up, took off his glasses and stared at her. As he pulled a piece of tobacco off his lip, she couldn’t help noticing how yellow his teeth were.

“Well, my dear, you see this one here, this was one of the ones we had a problem with today,” he coughed and took another puff from the cigar. “Yeah, there were a few, that well - we’re not so sure of...”

“What?” Annie asked tentatively.

“Well, look, let’s put it like this - there are a lot of people that have to give the approval on this kind of thing, and we hit a little snag. There’s a delay. And to tell you the truth, I’m afraid this could go on for quite some time.” He put the paper back on the file and looked up at her. “Anyway, there will be no furlough issued on this one today,” he said officially. “So sorry.”

Annie felt confused. Her emotions began to well up inside of her, but she stayed in control. “Sir, I don’t understand. Yesterday you said that – “

“Look, Miss,” he cut her off, “it’s obvious that you are new around here and you don’t really know how things work.” He gazed at her for an uncomfortably long moment. “Do you know what I mean?” he asked. Her expression was confused and he studied her face. “No. Of course, you don’t,” he said, answering her silence. Then he broke into an ingratiating smile.

“Listen, let’s make this easy for both of us. Do you like oysters? There’s a great oyster bar around the corner and we could go there and talk things over. Personally, I could use a drink too. I don’t know about you...”

Suddenly, he seemed to have a new expression on his face and Annie didn’t know what to make of it. He got up from his desk, walked over to the office door and closed it. Then he came back and stood next to her chair. As she looked at him, she noticed the large ash that had fallen onto his Union jacket, and that he was engulphed by the smell of stale cigar smoke, like a skunk enshrouded by its own stench.

“Honey, like I said, I want to make this as easy for you as I can. I really do,” he continued in a conciliatory tone. “Now I don’t usually do this, but you seem like a nice girl, maybe not all that experienced or knowledgeable in the ways of the world, but that kind of makes it better in a way,” he chuckled.

As Annie got more uncomfortable, she furtively glanced around the room and took a quick inventory of possible ways to get out. They were on the second floor, so the windows weren’t an option, and the large office door immediately behind her was shut.

“Sir, I uh,” she started.

“Look,” he broke in. “There are only two things you really need to know at this point. First, I am in a very strong position here. In fact, I’m pretty much in charge. And believe me, I can get a lot done. I can really speed things up. Or I can slow them down.” He looked at her for a moment to see if he was getting through. He couldn’t quite tell, but he decided to keep going.

“And the second thing is - well, to tell you the truth, I’m a little bit lonely, if you know what I mean.” He reached down and touched a curl of her hair that was resting on her shoulder. She didn’t move a muscle. “Now I can help you and you can help me. It’s really as simple as that. Actually, you could look at it as a gift of fate.”

“So, you come with me to the bar,” he continued, still fondling her hair. “We’ll have dinner tonight. You’ll like the food there, it’s very good. Then after dinner, maybe something else might happen, and maybe it won’t. That’ll be up to me.

“But whatever does happen, I can promise you one thing. You do what I tell you, and your brother’s furlough will be waiting on my desk for you by noon tomorrow,” he stopped. “Now could anything be any easier than that?”

The rancid air around him was sickening and as she kept breathing it, Annie felt a wave of nausea in the pit of her stomach. She slowly stood up and turned to face him. She could see the office door out of the corner of her eye. As he looked at her, she coughed a little.

“Sorry,” she said, still coughing. “I’m not usually around this much cigar smoke.” She opened her handbag as if to take out a handkerchief, but in the next instant, she ran over to the office door and opened it.

Her unexpected move took him by surprise. To her relief, they were not alone. There were a few people sitting in the lobby. He rushed over, pressed his body against her and tightly gripped her upper arm. His hand felt like a vice and he seemed to be shaking a little

“Now don’t get stupid, girly,” he muttered underneath his breath. “You see, you already made a big mistake - you got me mad, and I got a bad temper. But I’m also a forgiving man. I won’t hold it against you. We can talk about it over dinner.”

“Let me go,” she hissed at him and tried to pull her arm away. The people in the lobby didn’t seem to notice and he tightened his grip even more. Her arm started to go numb.

“Now you listen to me and you listen good. You say ‘no’ to me and I promise you, your brother will rot and die in that goddamn stink hole in Alexandria. You don’t know who you’re talking to. I can fix it so no matter what you do, you’ll never get a furlough for him from anyone in the War Department. I can do it and I swear to God I will. Now don’t push me. Get your head together and wise up!”

“You let me go right now, or I’ll scream,” she threatened, glaring at him.

“Alright,” he said, slightly louder. “Alright,” he repeated and gruffly let go of her arm. “But you just remember one thing. I gave you a fair chance. I gave you a choice to make and you made it. And when your brother’s dead, you selfish bitch, and you’re standing there watching them lower his coffin into his grave, you just remember one thing – it was your own stupid, stubborn goddamn fault. You had your chance and you didn’t take it. His blood is on your hands now.”

He rudely shoved her out the door into the hall. She straightened her dress and started walking away. “Oh, by the way, honey,” he called after her. “You’ll be back! And you know what? I’ll be here waiting for you.”

A wave of revulsion welled up in her stomach and feeling like she might throw up, she stopped for a moment to let it subside.

Seeing her pause, with a softer, but still sinister tone, Lee said, “Remember this one thing. When you come to your senses and you realize what’s best for your brother, you don’t have to worry. I’ll take you right way, I promise. And you’re going to find a lot of comfort in that promise. I’ll take you anytime you decide to see me again.” He stopped for a moment, then added, “And trust me, you will.”

Still nauseous, Annie walked away. Two hours later, she slipped into the Harrison’s house and snuck up into her bedroom. But there was no sleep or even rest for her that night. She found herself in the depths of hell, fighting for life as relentless waves of despair and panic kept dragging her under. What was she going to do now?

Tune in next time to find out because that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As human beings, storytelling is not only one of our favorite forms of entertainment, it’s also a critical part of how we learn. This universal trait goes back to the very dawn of civilization, and transcends all divisions of time, place and culture. We’ve been telling each other stories forever, and the probability is that it will be with us far into the future.

Actually, a joke came out a few years ago that illustrates the point. A perfect computer had been created that had immediate access to all human knowledge and could answer complex questions in a user-friendly way. The first question it was asked was, “How does our intelligence actually work?” and it quickly responded, “Well, let me tell you a story about it.” So, from the caveman to the computer, it seems like past is prologue.

Anyway, like everyone else, I’ve been fascinated with stories all my life, and at one point I found myself making a key career decision that was based on their inherent power.

I was a Political Science major at American University in Washington, DC. It was my Junior year and I was one of two students who had been chosen to serve as an intern in the office of a United States Congressman. Instead of attending my usual classes, I worked on Capitol Hill four days a week, six hours a day for three and a half months. As you can imagine, it was a pretty exciting environment and I gained a tremendous amount of first-hand experience. But after getting such an up close look at what really goes on up there, when it was finally over, I decided to change my major from Political Science to Literature.

I’m sure I was oversimplifying it at the time, but it seemed to me that the whole place was running on an intoxicating mixture of ego and greed, spiked with a major dose of good, old-fashioned lust for power. It was the late sixties, my generation seemed to be coming alive with a quest for a greater life, and I didn’t see how anything truly transformative was going to come from the world of that masquerade ball, which smelled like it was set up somewhere between a swamp and a cesspool.

It seemed like literature held a much greater potential to foster the nobler essences of the human spirit so I decided to start focusing my attention there, and have been deeply involved in it ever since.

One of the most unexpected and amazing stories I’ve ever worked on revolved around the deeply spiritual side of Abraham Lincoln. Although I had been a long-time fan of Lincoln, I had never been exposed to this side of him. I found it absolutely fascinating and decided to construct a dramatic story based on it. I thought it would make a great book and maybe even a movie someday. I know… it’s not a very novel idea.

Now, this is all kind of a roundabout way of introducing you to the next five episodes of the Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcast in which I am going to present two key chapters from that proposed book which is titled – “The Better Angels – Lincoln, the Psychic and the Spy.”

The jacket-cover blurb for it is: “During the Civil War, a young woman who is a gifted psychic, secretly channels for the Lincolns and becomes part of a private, White House inner circle. By chance, she meets a daring Union spy and as their romance begins to blossom, they unexpectedly discover a sinister plot to kill the President. They secretly join forces in a desperate attempt to thwart it.”

Based on actual facts, it’s a multi-layered story filled with history, intrigue and all mixed with a sense of the metaphysical which was extremely popular at the time. But at its root, it’s a truly enthralling love story.

In the excerpts that follow, the two main characters, who are the love interests of the story, meet each other for the first time. Annie Franklin is the 19-year-old talented psychic, and Charles Keane is the dashing, 27-year-old Union spy.

I think it you’ll find the story well worth the ride, so let’s begin with a little background.

It is mid-December, 1862, a bitter time for the Union army. The gruesome battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia had just been fought, with two hundred thousand American soldiers gripped in a truly ferocious battle. It had been a major defeat for the Union, with a staggering 13,000 of their soldiers killed, including two generals, and another 10,000 left badly injured.

Not only was the Union army suddenly and seriously demoralized, its field hospitals were also utterly overwhelmed. Unable to properly care for all of the wounded, the government is now allowing the worst cases to return home for care.

Annie Franklin’s brother, Daniel, is lying in an enormous field hospital, very close to death. She has made the trip from her home in Connecticut to Washington DC to obtain a furlough for him and is staying at the home of some family friends in Georgetown.

She had visited Daniel at the hospital grounds two days earlier and had gotten the necessary release letter from an army doctor. Now, all she needs to do is deliver it to the War Department, and the furlough will be issued.

Annie approaches the large office building in the nation’s capital.

Things have gone smoothly so far and now, she fully expects to bring Daniel home within days.

The War Department was located in a large annex building, not too far from the White House, and it took Annie almost an hour to make the trip from Georgetown. It was open to the public from 10 am to 3 pm daily, and although she had gotten there at 9:30, the place was already nearly a madhouse, packed with hundreds of people, fervently trying to get their various personal missions accomplished.

She had the name of Captain Ernest Lee, an assistant to the Under Secretary of War, who was in charge of logistics for the wounded at Fredericksburg. After wading through the tumult, she finally found Capt. Lee’s office on the second floor, in a distant corner of the building. When she arrived, she was given a number and told to wait her turn. There seemed to be about 20 people in front of her.

She sat down on a bench, clutching the letter she had brought from an army surgeon stating that Daniel’s condition was serious enough to warrant a furlough, and recommending it be issued immediately. Finally, after not moving for over two hours, she was ushered in to meet Captain Lee.

“Hello, Miss,” he said officiously. “Sorry for the wait, but as you can see, we are really busting at the seams here.”

There was a lit cigar in the ashtray on his desk giving off a thin, steady stream of smoke, filling the air with a rancid yellow haze. He sat down at his desk, picked up the cigar and took a few puffs. Annie stifled a cough, but unphased, the captain kept puffing away.

“So, what brings you here today?” he asked, his bloodshot eyes staring out at her over a pair of dark brown bags that hung under them.

“Sir, my brother is with the Connecticut regiment and he has been wounded,” Annie stammered, “badly wounded. I went to visit him yesterday. He doesn’t seem to be healing right and -”

“I see,” Lee interrupted. “Sorry to be curt, Miss, but as you can tell, we are really backed up here. This whole thing is completely out of hand. Terrible battle, just terrible. A complete disaster.” He paused for a moment. “So, let me ask you, were you able to you get a letter from a doctor?”

“Oh yes,” Annie brightened up. “Oh yes indeed, I -”

“Let me see it if you don’t mind,” he interrupted.

Annie handed him the letter. He put on a pair of wire spectacles and puffed on his cigar as he read it carefully. He looked like he was in his late forties, with a large mustache, offset by a stubbly growth of hair. It wasn’t an actual beard. He just hadn’t shaved for a few days. After a few moments, he put the paper in a pile and looked up at her.

“Well, Miss, uh, Franklin, is it? I assume you have the same last name as your brother?”

“Yes sir,” Annie said.

“It looks to me like everything is pretty much in order here,” he said and smiled. “I just have to pass this through a set of approvals and then get the actual furlough issued. I should be able to have it finished by the end of the day tomorrow. Why don’t you stop by here at around about four o’clock in the afternoon and I should have everything ready for you.”

“Oh, thank you, sir, that’s so wonderful,” Annie sighed with relief. “But are you sure it will be alright for me to come then? I was told that they don’t let the public in here after three.”

“Oh no, that’s just a general rule for people bringing new business. Don’t worry about it. Four will be fine for you. If anyone stops you, just tell them you have an appointment with Captain Lee. They’ll understand. It will be fine,” he said, waving her out of the office. He pulled out a new paper and called for the next person to enter.

“Thank you, Captain. Thank you so much,” Annie shouted back to him as she walked away. He never looked up or acknowledged her at all. He was already on to the next case.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” Annie thought to herself on the ride back to Georgetown. “It was a long wait, and it took a lot of patience, but the captain was kind and he said I can pick up the furlough tomorrow. Thank God, Daniel and I will finally be on our way home.”

As the carriage made a turn, they passed the White House, and she started thinking about all of the psychic messages she had gotten over the last few months, saying that it was urgent for her to travel to Washington and meet with President Lincoln. The readings said that there was certain critical information that had to be delivered to him immediately, which could alter the course of the war and change history itself. She had been promised that all would go well if she just went to see him.

But she had deep resistance to the idea. Interest in Spiritualism, with its emphasis on channelings through mediums, had swept through the country like wildfire since the early 1850s and there were large Spiritualist newspapers in every major city in America. But a legion of charlatans had sprung up as well, and it had gotten worse since the war had intensified, with grieving relatives willing to pay anything to contact their departed loved ones. It was easy pickings and phony quacks trying to cash in seemed to be popping up everywhere.

And now, the spirit guides she channeled were telling her that she had to go present herself to Mr. Lincoln. She had been a sickly child and had very little schooling, so the idea of an uneducated nineteen-year-old girl who could barely read or write, telling the President that she had important information for him, seemed completely preposterous.

She kept refusing to go, sure that she would be dismissed as some kind of lunatic. But at the end of a recent reading, she had been told that it was so important Lincoln receive this particular information that somehow, some way, she would be brought in to meet him face to face, regardless of what she thought. As the White House disappeared from view, she put the idea of trying to see him out of her mind, for the thousandth time. She had come to Washington to take care of Daniel. That was her focus and it finally seemed to be going well.

When she got to the Harrison’s front door, she stood outside for a moment and looked around at the stately Georgetown neighborhood. She had never seen anything like it. Actually, she had never been more than 30 miles from her home before. Now, suddenly she was in the nation’s capital and the trip had opened her up to an entirely different world. But as stimulating as it was, she still couldn’t wait to leave. Seeing all the poor, wounded soldiers in the field hospital had been devastating, and she just wanted to get Daniel out of there and back home, safe and sound.

She took a breath and looked around optimistically. After delivering the doctor’s letter to the officer at the War Department who looked at it with an approving eye, it seemed like she had real hope that Daniel’s life could be saved.

With that, this part of the story comes to a close, to be continued. But as the saying goes, “Strap on your seatbelt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride...”

And that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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I hope all is well with you and that you are enjoying the coming onset of spring. This is just a quick announcement to let you know that the Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcast will be going on a short, two-week spring break.

For me, early spring is always a poignant time, when once again I get to witness the magnificent transformation of nature. And it always reminds me to try to stop the process of constantly taking things for granted, which seems to be a basic human tendency with some very deep roots.

Someone once said that when it comes to all the positive things in our lives, we’re like Teflon. We seem to let our good feelings slip away from us, like a buttered omelet sliding off a non-stick pan. But when it comes to the negative ones, forget it. We’re like Velcro, clinging to that nasty negativity with a stubborn tenacity that defies all logic.

I guess when you get down to it, it’s all based on fear, along with its trusty sidekick, ignorance which, by the way, is derived from the concept of ignoring something.

Now that brings up an intriguing question – Are we ignoring something positive that could stimulate a major, spring-like transformation in our lives? Could it be the miracles that are happening around us and within us, on a constant, 24/7 basis?

To me, the question reminds me of the basic process of breathing, which is at the very foundation of life for us. We all know this. No breath – no life.

So, what does the process of breathing have to do with the miracle of spring? Well look at it this way, our inhalation brings us oxygen and with our exhalation we release deadly toxic waste. So, we each inhale life and exhale death about 22,000 times every day.

And this process of breathing is every bit as miraculous as the rebirth of spring. After all it’s a phenomenon that can’t be explained or understood by science. Call it a gift, call it a miracle, or call it anything you like, the truth is, the process of breathing defies all human understanding.

And even though we are basically unaware of it and take it completely for granted, on a subtle, yet profound level, you could say that are each reborn 22,000 times a day. Wow – 22,000 miracles a day! Can you imagine what life would be like if you could tap into having real gratitude for even just a fraction of that, let alone the whole thing?

So, I guess the basic idea for me is to enjoy this happy season and see if I can become a little more grateful and appreciative for the gift of life. And maybe I can even flip that Teflon/Velcro thing around, and have the positive stick to me like Velcro, while I let the Teflon part of my awareness allow any and all negativity to slide right off of me like water off a duck’s back.

Sounds like a good idea, and I’m going to give it a shot. And of course, I wish it for you as well. So in the meantime, Happy Spring, and let’s get back in touch soon…

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I’ve always been amazed by the fact that there are genius levels of human intelligence that are far beyond the ordinary. Some people seem to be born with remarkable talents and capabilities that the rest of us clearly don’t have. That’s not to say that these people don’t need to work and practice to perfect their skills. They clearly do. Still, they possess brilliant talents that are far above those of the average person.

Take music for example. My mother was a real lover of classical music. She attended concerts regularly and had a great collection of records that she would play in our house all the time. And without question, I knew that her fondest hope for me was that I would become a concert pianist, not that I had ever shown any talent or the slightest bit of interest in it.

Still, she made sure that I took piano lessons every week for about six years, until the painfully obvious became painfully obvious, and she finally let me quit. On some level though, I’ve always been kind of sorry about it and I’ve tried to pick it up every now and then. I’ve even taken a few lessons here and there but still, all I can do is play a few basic scales and bang out a couple of elementary songs, and that’s it. As a result of all this, to say that I have the keyboard finesse of an aging chimpanzee would be more kind than accurate.

So, it always makes me wonder - what’s the story with these geniuses, who are able to play as if the music is pouring out of their very soul. They perform these outrageously difficult compositions by heart, without reading any music at all. In a state of pure inspiration, they don’t even open their eyes half of the time and yet, these magnificent melodies flow out of them in perfect timing and sequence, seemingly with no effort at all. It just boggles the mind.

If you want to see a truly amazing example of this, watch Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Lincoln Center in 1976, performing Rhapsody in Blue. The multi-talented maestro conducts the fifty-piece orchestra while he performs as the piano soloist at the same time. I’ve probably watched it over twenty times and I still can hardly believe my eyes and ears.

But this astounding manifestation of genius intelligence also has two other forms of it that are just as hard for me to grasp. They are child prodigies and polymaths.

We’ve had child prodigies among us for many centuries. For some inexplicable reason, certain young children manifest extremely advanced talent and abilities at a very early age, and no one has been able to figure out why this happens. Probably the most famous prodigy in musical history was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

By age five, he was already extremely competent on the violin and piano and he began composing music. At six, he embarked on a three-year career, playing before the crowned heads of Europe. Can you imagine that? Think about what you were like at that age. By six I had memorized the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club and my parents probably thought I was a genius because of it.

Anyway, there have been child prodigies in dozens of different fields including math, science and the visual arts, but it’s still pretty rare. The current thinking is that it’s only a one-in-ten-million phenomenon. And staying within the realm of music, even though it’s quite a stretch from Mozart, Stevie Wonder was clearly one of them, as well.

Born six weeks premature, he went blind from having too much oxygen in his incubator. Still, in his early childhood he taught himself how to play the piano, harmonica and drums and along with his powerful singing voice, signed his first recording contract in 1961 at age eleven. Since then, he has won far too many awards to list here, including, twenty-five Grammies, eight Honorary Doctorates, an Academy Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in all this time, he hasn’t slowed down a bit.

Now, let’s go on to the polymath, which is another manifestation of intelligence that I just can’t fathom. Simply put, these are people who are able to excel in several different fields, which are often completely unrelated. Some of the most famous ones have been Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. But there have been other, quite surprising ones as well.

I was pretty amazed when I found out that Danny Kaye, the famous performer from the golden age of movies and TV, was one of them. He was an extraordinarily gifted actor, singer, and dancer. But it turns out that his genius as an entertainer was just the tip of the iceberg.

He was also an expert jet pilot who flew his own plane. He owned a Lear Jet and flew it to sixty-five different countries, mainly on UNICEF tours for the United Nations. In addition, he spoke eleven different languages and although he couldn’t read a note of music, he was a talented conductor of symphony orchestras and spent fifteen years giving benefit performances with the finest orchestras in the world including the National Symphony, the Boston Symphony and the New York Philharmonic.

He was also a bit of a sports nut. He was a single digit golfer who grew up a die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And as a lifelong lover of baseball, as well as a savvy businessman, he was one of the founders of the Seattle Mariners.

But that’s not all. He was also a master chef, particularly in Chinese and French cuisine and he is still the only non-professional chef to ever be awarded France’s highest culinary award, which is bestowed by the Sorbonne.

And finally, and probably the most unexpected, he was an honorary member of the American College of Surgeons as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics. He had always wanted to be a doctor, but his family couldn’t afford higher education, so he went into show business instead. Still, he always maintained his serious interest on medicine.

But it went a little further than that. He was close friends with the heart surgeon who performed history’s first coronary bypass. He would observe operations, which they would later discuss in great detail. “Danny has had no medical training, but he knows his way around an operating room” the doctor said. “He’s so intelligent he picks up immediately what he has observed.”

This was all absolutely remarkable to me because I had been aware of Danny Kaye as an entertainer for many years, but had never heard about all of his other abilities.

When it comes to observing this kind of extraordinary talent, I had a similar experience when I ran across someone who was a child prodigy, but was also a budding polymath as well. It happened when I was beginning to explore the world of personal growth, which was really just a by-product of having been a die-hard Beatles fan for over a decade.

Capturing global attention, the Fab Four had gotten into meditation in 1968 and had been studying under a teacher named the Maharishi, who was a classical Indian guru, with flowing white robes and a long, grey beard.

Like the millions of other Beatles devotees throughout the world, I basically mirrored whatever they did, so I started practicing the same form of meditation. But I wasn’t very sincere about it and after a couple of months, I stopped.

Then, a few years later, a friend told me that he had started practicing a deeper form of meditation that was doing him a lot of good. A little while later, he told me that the teacher of that meditation, who was supposed to be a major authority on inner growth, was coming to Philadelphia to give a talk about it. It sounded interesting until he told me that the teacher was only fourteen years old.

I don’t remember what my exact reaction was, but I’m pretty sure I burst out laughing because it seemed ridiculous on the face of it. I mean the Beatles’ guy looked like he was in his mid-eighties and this kid was barely a teenager. What could he know about the evolution of higher consciousness?

Out of deference to my friend, I decided to do a little research and I learned to my surprise that in the East, this kind of thing does happen from time to time. There were child prodigies who were renowned spiritual teachers.

There was Sri Ramakrishna, a globally respected teacher during the mid-1800s, who had been recognized as a spiritual master at the age of nine. His successor, Swami Vivekananda, was recognized in the same way at age of nineteen. And the current Dalai Lama assumed the full authority of his role when he was fifteen years old. As an aside, in our culture, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became a fully ordained minister at nineteen.

Anyway, this fourteen-year-old teacher was named Prem Rawat, and when I went to hear him speak at the Irvine Auditorium of the University of Pennsylvania, I found him to be surprisingly impressive.

There was a calm, but extremely powerful presence about him, and he seemed to really know what he was talking about. I observed him rather carefully from the time he entered the prestigious auditorium until he left, and perceived nothing about him that had anything to do with his age whatsoever. Rather than seeming like a young teenager, he had the presence of a secure adult about him. In fact, he seemed to be the most centered individual I had ever seen. But there was also a subtle, yet clearly present joyfulness about him that seemed foundational to his being. Again, it was quite impressive.

By the way, as far as being a child prodigy is concerned, he had been in this teaching mode for quite some time. He had begun his work at the age of four and started meditating at six. At the age of nine, he became the recognized teaching authority to several hundred thousand Indian meditators.

But there’s also a profound element about being a teacher of inner growth that I found to be most intriguing. It’s different from being a genius in art, music or science because in those realms, you can tell if someone is truly a master of their craft just by observing their work. You look at the art, listen to the music or watch the dance, and you can quickly get a sense of how good they are.

But with a teacher of inner growth, it’s quite different, because the purpose of the teaching isn’t just to entertain and inspire you, it’s to actually help you expand and grow your own consciousness. And the only way you can tell if the teacher is truly a master of the craft is by the actual experiences you start having within your own awareness.

And this is not just in the short-term. It pertains to the long-term as well. Are you continually growing beyond where you were? Are you becoming kinder and more compassionate? Are you feeling more connected to the larger and higher consciousness? You have to determine all this for yourself. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, what matters is what’s going on inside of you.

Along these lines, that night at Penn, Prem made a statement that I still remember. He said if you find his information to be helpful, then enjoy it. If not, then immediately leave it and move on.

So, as a child prodigy, I found him to be most impressive, but surprisingly, he was also blossoming into becoming a polymath as well. Over the years that followed, while his primary focus was always on teaching meditation and inner growth, his considerable other talents spread out into seemingly unrelated fields.

For instance, in the aviation world alone, his accomplishments are truly noteworthy. He is a fully licensed jet pilot, with tens of thousands of hours of flight time, and was one the youngest pilot in aviation history to be certified to fly a certain sophisticated jet aircraft. He is also a helicopter pilot and a veteran helicopter instructor as well.

More down to earth, he is also a master car mechanic and one of his hobbies is the total restoration of antique automobiles, of which he has completed several. In addition, he is also a prolific photographer on a professional level, and several of his photographs are hung in galleries around the world.

On top of all this, as an author, his recent book on personal growth is a New York Times best seller. And on the lighter side, he is a tremendous chef and has been approached a few times to host a cooking show. And get this last one - he writes his own computer code and is a master programmer. For some reason, to me that one really takes the cake. After using a computer for over forty years, I still have absolutely no idea how they work.

Well, so much for geniuses, prodigies and polymaths. In essence, as impressive as they are, this episode isn’t really about just listing their incredible accomplishments. It’s really about the fact that they exist at all and what that says about human intelligence, and our possible potential.

For starters, it puts things into perspective. If they’re only one in ten million, then the nine million, nine hundred thousand, nine hundred and nine of the rest of us have an opened door to feeling truly humble. We’ve all heard the phrase - a jack of all trades but a master of none. Well as far as I’m concerned, I’m not even one of the jacks.

Still, to close, here are a couple of quick, rather optimistic things to consider.

First, neuroscience believes that within the next hundred years, we will find methods that will enhance our intelligence exponentially, taking us into levels of existence that are inconceivable to us now. According to them, we all have genius potential within us and as the brain sciences evolve, we will find ways to bring it into the forefront.

And they also say that we all possessed genius intelligence through the age of five, so in one way or another, we were all child prodigies. And finally, the essence of our intelligence shows that we are all inherently positive beings, biased to the highest. And that is revealed by the simple fact that we have a finite capacity for suffering and pain, while we each have an infinite capacity for happiness and joy. I don’t know about you, but all of this inspires a great deal of hope in me.

So that will be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, we took a look at our mind’s built-in propensity for doubt, which is critical to the healthy functioning of our intelligence. Without it, we simply could not progress.

Used in the right amount, for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right way, doubt can produce incredibly positive results. For example, doubt is at the very root of the scientific method, which has been largely responsible for most of the extraordinary advancements that we’ve made over the last four hundred years.

This method, based on logic first began in 1610, when Galileo doubted the Church’s position that the sun revolved around the earth. He got in serious trouble for it, but after refining his telescope, it was obvious to him that his position was true, despite the superstitious, inaccurate religious dogmas of the day.

So, that’s an example of the positive use of doubt. But it’s important to remember that it can also be truly a double-edged sword, and on the negative side, it can be utterly catastrophic. Unbridled doubt bonded to negative feelings like anger, guilt and fear can drive us to act against our own best interests, doing and saying irrational things that we would never do if we were in our right mind.

Now we’re going take the idea of doubt a step deeper by examining self-doubt, which can be one of the most insidious inner challenges we ever have to face. The dictionary defines self-doubt as a simple lack of faith in one’s self, a basic loss of self-confidence, which may not sound like much at first, but it’s a poisonous seed that can viciously grow like wildfire.

An easy way to examine it is to break it down into three basic parts; let’s look at some of the harm that self-doubt can do, followed by a brief summary of its root causes. And then, we’ll go into a couple of simple ways to grow beyond it.

So, what kind of harm can self-doubt do to us? First of all, on a personal level, it can cause significant damage to our self-esteem, which hinders our creativity as well as our productivity, bringing on a mountain of regret and self-pity. Over time, it begins to block our overall inner growth, especially in the key areas of emotional, psychological, and spiritual wellness. All of this leads to a general weakening of our will, which can cause major problems in every single area of our lives.

As you continually encounter loss of faith in yourself, it can become hard to do anything to the best of your ability. In fact, it can become hard to do anything at all. Eventually, you don’t even want to try anymore.

The causes of this condition are relatively well-known. One of the major contributing factors is the way our mind was formed during our childhood, which established the basis of our overall self-image. Along with that, past negative experiences that we’ve had, including major mistakes we have made over the years are two other extremely significant factors.

While there are many more, they all lead to the one basic bottom line of self-doubt, which is plain, old-fashioned fear of failure. Self-doubt and fear of failure go to together like fire and gasoline – a perfect combination if your goal is to destroy everything in sight.

And then there’s one final factor to consider that makes it all much more destructive, and that is our propensity to compare ourselves to others, which is something we do all the time. We’ve inherited this stubbornly annoying trait from our society and for the most part, it does us absolutely no good.

Of course, regardless of all this, many people do achieve success. But that’s not the end of the game because at that point, you may have to deal with another form of self-doubt called the Imposter Syndrome.

It’s almost a subconscious feeling that no matter what you have achieved, you still feel that you don’t really deserve it. On a very deep level, you believe you’re a fraud. You’re not as good as you seem. Maybe you just got lucky and success came to you in spite of your inadequacies.

And with this insidious little seed planted in your mind, you run around hiding your fear that one day people will realize that you’re an imposter, and everything will quickly fall apart. This syndrome is just self-doubt, in a sophisticated disguise that’s hard to spot.

Now the good news is that while all of this can present us with a wide variety of problems, it can also help open the door to a higher realm of being. Wisdom traditions from around the world all teach that to truly grow into higher awareness, you have to be at peace with two fundamental factors concerning our human existence. They may seem off-putting at first, but once you begin to grasp them, they can become quite liberating.

The first factor is that we are all mortal. We are all going to die at some point and on the deepest level, we all know it. And no one has any guarantee about their lifespan. The end can come at any time and we have no control over it whatsoever. Like it or not, that’s just the way it is.

The second factor is that even though we probably don’t realize it, we are always operating on incomplete information. Experts tell us that we can never have access to the complete and total picture of anything regarding our life at any time. And unlike our mortality, which we all know comes with the territory, most of us don’t have a clue about this. And it’s because of a very fundamental reason - we just don’t know what we don’t know. And we can’t know it until we find it out.

So in light of all this, no matter how logical our plans may be, they are all essentially just our best guess. And a lot of times, we’re functioning on assumptions that are no longer valid.

One extreme example of this is the position I was in at 8 pm on Friday night December 3, 1965. I was driving to pick up my girlfriend. We were going to a big party where all of my eleventh-grade friends would be. It was sure to be a great night and I had the whole thing planned out. But at that moment, something critical had happened, but I hadn’t heard about it yet.

About a half an hour earlier, my father had dropped dead from a massive heart attack and I was just about to get the news. So at that particular moment, my plans were based on information that was no longer valid, but I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Of course, it turned out to be a very different night from what I had planned. Turned out to be a very different life, as well.

So, with this knowledge that we are mortal and always operating on incomplete information, and that these two conditions can never change, it’s no wonder that we encounter self-doubt in all of its varying forms. So, the next logical question is, what are we going to do about it?

Well, again going back to the world’s wisdom traditions, the first thing we need to do is just accept it. Realistically speaking, we have no other choice. And this acceptance leads us to a remarkably powerful inner state called true humility, which in turn, leads to true wisdom. Amazingly, for some reason your heart starts to lightens up a little and eventually, you rise up to meet your challenges once again.

With this in mind, let me share with you two quick stories which I have found to be quite illuminating. The first one is about a dear old friend of mine named Tim Gallwey. If the name sounds familiar it’s probably because he is the author of the “Inner Game of Tennis,” which is still the most popular sports psychology book of all time. And Tim is still widely regarded as the father of sports psychology.

This very brief story is about how the Inner Game came to be. Tim was the captain of the Harvard tennis team and at a big match, he went to rush the net and blew the point by hitting the ball into it. It was a self-inflicted wound, and on his way back to make the next serve, he was screaming at himself. “You stupid idiot. How could you have blown that shot? What the hell is the matter with you? Come on man, get it together. You had that point and you blew it!”

At that moment he got hit with an epiphany. “Who’s talking to who?” he asked himself. “This is all going on within my own mind. I’m me. Why does it sound like there’s two of me in there. Why am I saying you blew it, when I’m the you I’m talking to.” This enlightening moment launched his exploration into the world of the inner game, as he developed the idea of Self One and Self-Two, the thinker and the doer.

I met Tim a few years later, as we had both gotten involved with a form of meditation that was being taught by Prem Rawat, an internationally accepted authority on inner growth.

Tim was getting quite a bit of inspiration from this teacher, and he told me that he felt that Prem was the most creatively intelligent person he had ever met. I found that to be pretty impressive because Prem happened to be only fourteen years old at the time, and Tim was about the most intelligent and talented person I had ever met. So, here was this genius captain of the Harvard tennis team absorbing deep life lessons from a fourteen-year-old Indian teacher. I’ll talk a little more about Prem in a later episode.

Anyway, for our purposes here, it’s important to understand that there is an inner critic within our own mind which seems to have taken up permanent residency there, and self-doubt isn’t its only stock in trade. It’s responsible for the constant stream of negative garbage that goes on in our minds, day-in, day-out, twenty-four seven. Anyway, that’s is the way it is for me. If you have it any better with your inner critic, more power to you..

Now, here’s the second brief story to consider and it also comes from the world of sports. I was watching an interview with one of the greatest modern golfers of all time. He had won over a hundred tournaments including several majors and had been inducted into the Hall of Fame, so this guy was no joke.

Anyway, this great golfer said that every single time he stands over the ball and prepares to swing, the same thought pops into his head, “I can’t do this,” he says to himself. Then he takes a breath and hits the shot anyway. And most of the time the results are tremendous.

Then he said that after a while, a second thought started coming into his mind before hit the ball. He would think, “I can’t do this.” And then he would instantly think, “Oh yeah? Just watch me.”

So, these two stories deliver a profound message to me. From Tim’s, we learn that we have this inner critic within, and self-doubt just happens to be one of the dark cards it plays. But we have a more trustworthy voice in there as well.

And from the golfer’s story we learn that the inner critic is probably never going to go away. I mean, here was one of the greatest golfers in the world thinking the same thought every single time he gets ready to hit the ball, “I can’t do this.”

But that voice doesn’t have to have the last say. Immediately, the next thought arises, “Oh yeah, just watch me.” And he hits the ball. He challenges the challenger and goes on to win tournament after tournament. And remember, this is a pro, so he’s winning millions of dollars as well.

Personally, I get a lot out of this. With the inner critic and the voice of self-doubt, I’m not overly troubled by the fact that it always seems to be there. And I’m not worrying too much about whatever it has to say. Trying to engage with it always seems to take me down a pretty dark rabbit hole.

So, there’s a road ahead of me that is filled with opportunity as well as with challenges. I’m sure it’s that way for each one of us. Maybe we think thoughts like - I can never let go of my anger and fear. I can never get beyond the terrible guilt I have for everything I’ve done so wrong. I can’t evolve beyond all this and merge into my greater self. I can’t realize my greater potential as a human being and I’ll never fulfill my best destiny.

But maybe it’s time to start doubting the doubter and maybe it’s time to begin trusting the trustworthy. And when the inner critic says, “I can’t do this,” maybe we should just roll up our sleeves, put our foot down and say, “Oh yeah? Just watch me.!”

So this is a good place to end this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open and let's get together in the next one.

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It’s really hard to grasp what America was like in late 1973 if you didn’t live through those times. For one thing, the country was in the process of falling apart. The unprecedented scandal of Watergate was starting to reach a boiling point, the executive branch of the US government was coming unhinged from the top down and nobody knew what was going to happen next.

Somehow, it all seemed like an extension of the earlier national nightmare that had begun with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, which became deeply unpopular. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were dying for no apparent reason, as the enemy posed no discernable threat to America. Massive protests were taking place constantly and finally, things began to change. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came out firmly against the war and a few months later, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his opposition to it he launched his candidacy for president.

Then, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated. And just sixty-four days later, Senator Kennedy met the same brutal fate.

They were both extremely popular iconic figures in American culture, deeply compassionate, powerful leaders who represented the hope for a brighter, more enlightened future for the country. And they were young as well, which was deeply meaningful to the 76 million Baby Boomers in the population. Although they had accomplished so much in their lifetimes, King was only 39 and Kennedy was only 42.

Then, with a couple of tragic flashes of gunfire, to our extreme shock and dismay, both Martin and Bobby were suddenly gone, and the two strongest voices for peace and sanity in the country had been silenced.

Predictably, the war kept escalating and the student protests continued to increase. Then the Kent State Massacre happened, when four unarmed college kids were gunned down in cold blood by the Ohio National Guard. The country went into complete chaos and things went rapidly downhill from there. Fear and confusion became the new American way of life.

Eventually things seemed to normalize out for a while, but then the treachery and darkness of Watergate, with its resulting severe constitutional crisis took it all to a whole new level. Again, if you didn’t live through these events, you can’t imagine how disconcerting and deeply traumatic it was, as it all played out in real time.

But there was also something else happening during those days that is just as hard to grasp from today’s perspective. Almost as if it was the opposite end of the spectrum, an enormous interest in personal growth was rapidly spreading throughout the country as well. It had been prompted by the Beatles’ trip to India to study meditation, which also happened in 1968 and it continued growing exponentially from there.

By early 1974, the search for inner peace and consciousness evolution seemed to be everywhere. And given the metaphysical events that had happened to me around the sudden death of my father, which shook my world to its very core, it made sense that I found myself travelling down this newfound road towards self-discovery.

In those days, I was entering into my second year of living in a meditation ashram, which was a modern American version of basic monastic living. We practiced meditation two to three hours a day and attended lectures on a nightly basis. We had about thirty people under the age of thirty, living together communally, and the rules of the house were no meat, no fish, no eggs, no sex, no dope, no booze. You can imagine what that was like.

We also had information meetings that were open to the public, which regularly drew hundreds of people who were interested in inner growth. As a result of these meetings, there was a constant influx of new practitioners.

I was one of three leaders who helped guide things along. I was about to turn twenty-five years old and had been practicing meditation for almost two years, so I was considered to be one of the senior members of the community, which should tell you a lot about a lot of things.

Anyway, something a little quirky happened to me around then that unexpectedly left quite a deep impression on me. I was serving as a counselor to new meditators, helping them get acclimated to the practice. I had about ten people that I was meeting with individually on a regular basis.

One of them was a young college professor who seemed to be in his late twenties. His name was Leo and he was extremely intelligent in a rather witty, but somewhat shy kind of way. There was also a young lady who claimed she was over twenty-one, but everybody thought that was a bit of a stretch. Her name was Peggy and she worked in a nearby doughnut shop. She later confided in me that she had never done well in school and felt lucky that she even graduated high school.

One day, during my meeting with the college professor, I couldn’t help but notice that he seemed completely blissed out of his mind. I knew that the meditation we were practicing had the power to elevate your awareness and help you feel inner peace but out of nowhere, this guy was completely off the charts. Finally, he told me that he had fallen deeply in love and was basically over the moon from it. Now I had been around the block a few times myself and was now living the life of a monastic, so I had my reservations about it, but I kept them to myself. Whatever he was into certainly seemed to be making him incredibly happy, so who was I to say anything about it?

A couple of days later, I had my meeting with Peggy from the doughnut shop, and it was immediately obvious that something wonderful was happening to her as well. After a little while, she blurted out that she had fallen in love and had never been so happy, which certainly explained the bright smile that lit up her face and the light that kept pouring out of her eyes. She was a nice kid and I felt good for her.

For some reason, I just didn’t put two and two together, but a few days later, to my complete surprise, I found out that Peggy and Leo were going together. The college professor and the girl from the doughnut shop had fallen in love.

Apparently, they had met at a meditation meeting and sparks started flying immediately. After a couple of quick coffees, the magnetic attraction had taken hold and now they were in the midst of the great love affair of their lives.

And naturally, they both started confiding in me. Leo said, “She tells me that I’m sexier than any of the younger guys in her crowd. And she says that making love with me is the best sex she’s ever had in her life. She can’t believe how great it is,” he stopped for a moment, then sounding like he was describing a magnificent dreamscape, he added, “I never knew life could be like this.”

A couple of days later, I sat down with Peggy. “He tells me that not only am I the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, I’m actually smarter than any of the students he teaches,” she gushed. She literally looked like she was about to bust a gut from glee. “He gives me books to read, we discuss them and he loves my comments. Can you imagine that? I’m sitting there talking to a real college professor who thinks I’m smart. I can’t believe it. And my God, what great sex we’re having. I have to tell you; I feel like the heavens have opened up for me.”

Well, I was impressed to say the least. I hadn’t seen two people this happy in years. Sure, the age difference was pretty big, not to mention the gap in their intellectual backgrounds. But hey, crazier things have happened and who knows, maybe love does conquer all.

Well, it went on like that for about a month and then I’ll bet you can guess what came along next. One day Peggy came in to see me. She looked like she was in the middle of a deep sense of disappointment mixed with a much deeper sense of relief.

“I finally had to get away from Leo,” she told me. “I couldn’t take it anymore. The guy’s just a stick in the mud. He never wanted to do anything but stay home, and when I could get him to go out, he was a total drag.” She stopped and took a breath. “All of my friends thought he was a real creep, too. He was obviously way too old for me. I mean, after a while, I felt like I was going out with a friend of my dad’s. What the hell was I thinking? Thank God it’s over.”

We both had an “isn’t life strange?” kind of laugh about it and I prepared myself for my next meeting with Leo, which took place a few days later. I was hoping that she hadn’t broken his heart, but as soon as I saw him, it was obvious that he was every bit as happy to be done with Peggy as she was to be done with him. Probably more so.

“You know what,” he said. “At first, I thought it was just the circumstances that she had grown up under, but after a little while, I had to accept the fact that she just didn’t have it upstairs. And let me tell you something, that’s really a nice way of putting it. Believe me, I’m being kind.” He looked like someone who had just made a narrow escape from a torture chamber. “You know what?” he continued. “There’s a reason people end up working in a donut shop. The girl has the IQ of a salamander.”

I certainly felt relieved for him that he hadn’t had his heart broken, and I was happy that they were both walking away from it unscathed. Of course, it wasn’t totally unexpected because it had been so incongruous from the very beginning. But still, it gave me a lot to chew on. For one thing, they had both seemed so extraordinarily happy that I could have sworn it was based on something real.

But after I gave it a little more thought, it was obvious that it had just been an extremely powerful infatuation. They fallen into the romance trance, where you temporarily lose sight of your new partner’s shortcomings. You’re on such a high from what’s going on that just don’t notice anything negative. But sooner or later, you open your eyes and come back to reality.

The explanation made perfect sense, but I felt intuitively that there was more to it than just that. The ecstatic joy they were experiencing was just too powerful to be limited to that bubble of infatuation, and then it became clear. They each had a deep-seated psychological issue and they were providing each other with some much-longed for and much needed relief.

Leo was in his late twenties, and suddenly this pretty, young woman who was twenty-one if you were willing to stretch the truth, was attracted to him. It soothed his fears that he was getting old and gave him proof that even though he was about to break the scary age barrier of turning thirty, he still had the goods. In short, it brought back his confidence and made him feel young.

And Peggy was also an open book. She had been told she was stupid her whole life and besides being the object of a lot of sexual attraction, nobody ever took her seriously on any other level. Now she was suddenly on par with an actual college professor. They were reading books together and having deep talks. And he was telling her that she was much smarter than the students in any of his classes. And suddenly, a bright light went on in her head and she thought, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I’m not so dumb after all.”

It was a deep point for me to contemplate. The relief of having your psychological problems resolved, although it may be a deeply pleasurable experience, is not the same thing as experiencing true happiness. Getting relief from being unhappy is not the same thing as actually being happy.

It may seem subtle, but saints and sages throughout the ages have told us that they’re very different. To make real progress, your awareness has to grow and you have to elevate your consciousness, because if you don’t evolve into a more enlightened being, although you’re going to be greatly relieved when your big problem is resolved, you’re just going to create another one that’s going to put you right back into the same trap.

So that’s a look back at a couple of interesting things that I found myself involved with just about fifty years ago. And one thing I can tell you from my perspective, although the times change, the scenes change and the characters come and go, the lessons remain the same. And I’m still trying to learn them. My deepest hope at this point in time, after all this study and all this practice, is that I just may be starting to scratch the surface. But on an infinite path that’s loaded with happiness, peace, love, joy and fulfillment - what difference does any of that make?

Well, this seems like a good place to end this episode. As always, keep your eyes mind and hearts open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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We’ve all heard the famous phrase, “Do as I say, not as I do.,” and many people take it to be a sure sign of duplicity. Why should I listen to what a person is telling me to do if he or she isn’t doing it themselves? It seems purely hypocritical, and a lot of times it is.

But there can also be some other circumstance for it as well. For example, the person may be telling me to follow his instructions, not his actions, because he is imperfect and makes mistakes. So, he tells me not to model myself after him because of his own shortcomings. Although his advice is good and his guidance holds true, his actions don’t always show it.

I ran into another situation concerning a “do what I say, not what I do,” statement several years ago, that surprised me, when I was taking a round of golf lessons.

By way of context, I’ve always been a fairly decent athlete, especially in the American schoolyard sports of basketball, baseball and football. But I’m a pretty pathetic golfer and I’ve been that way forever. Indeed, the idea of ever being able to achieve mediocrity seems like a distant dream on a hill to me.

But I’m not alone. I’ve got millions of fellow duffers out on the links with me, and comedian Larry David is one of them. He once said that to be good at golf you have to have a knack for it. Then he added, “And I’m knack-less.” Same here, but for some reason I just keep on trying, although I can’t seem to get any better at it. But I can’t seem to give it up either.

Anyway, I had taken a couple of lessons from this one instructor who was a really good player. He had won several local tournaments and had almost made the junior professional tour a few years back. In my first two lessons he had taught me a great deal about some basic fundamentals - how to grip the club, align yourself to the target, and take your stance.

For this next lesson, I had gotten to the range a little early. The pro was on a tee, hitting a few short shots and I watched him practice for a while. He was barely paying any attention to what he was doing, just hitting shot after shot, and they were all perfect. It looked pretty cool, so I started doing the same thing at the next tee. Suddenly he looked up and saw me and stopped short.

“Hey! What are doing? Don’t do that!” he shouted. He seemed perturbed, which surprised me. “I’m hitting like this just to work on my rhythm, but you’re not ready for this. You’re nowhere near it. I’m just smoothing out my flow, but it took me years of practice to get here. You don’t even have the first part of the fundamentals down.” He went back to his routine, hitting perfect shot after perfect shot, with seemingly no effort at all and no focus on anything but the rhythm of his swing.

“Everybody wants to hit the long ball. Everybody wants to win the gold cup. But nobody wants to work on the fundamentals.” he said as he kept hitting. “People always say - Practice makes perfect, but be careful. That’s a dangerous half-truth. Practice makes perfect only if you are practicing the right thing. Keep practicing the wrong thing and you’ll just keep digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole.” He stopped and looked me in the eye. “So do what I told you to do and don’t try to copy me at this point. Focus on the fundamentals. If you don’t learn them, you’ll always be lost no matter how hard you try.”

So, this was truly a different kind of “do as I say, not as I do” moment because if I did what he was doing instead of what he had been saying, it would have caused me far more harm than good. According to him, I had to get the fundamentals down before I did anything else.

Now I’ve been focusing on consciousness evolution and personal growth for my entire adult life and I seem to always be trying to take things to a deeper level and see the big picture, so with this, I suddenly found myself in a world that had nothing to do with golf and it quickly got pretty deep for me.

I started thinking about the fundamentals of life. The fundamentals of being grateful for the gift of breath, of being kind and compassionate, of growing beyond the limits of ego-driven selfishness into a greater identification with the so-called indwelling God presence. In essence, the fundamentals of growing into a better human being.

Maybe I should focus more on these, instead being so easily carried away by the endless delusions of grandeur, that my grandly deluded mind keeps churning out endlessly. After all, they’re all variations of the same basic theme: all things concerning I, Me, Mine. I, Me, Mine. I, Me, Mine. I’m sure you get the point.

And I’ve come to understand that you never know where you’re going to stumble upon these kinds of insights. The fact that this one came from golf just proves that they can come from anywhere. Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of its shape, form or origin. And one thing I’ve learned beyond the shadow of a doubt: I need all of it that I can get.

So, in that regard, I came upon another remarkable story along the lines of giving advice and setting examples when I was on an extended meditation retreat in India. This one was about Mahatma Gandhi.

I had first studied a little about Gandhi during college in a government course as we were examining the difference between the way that India had broken free from British rule compared to the way that America had done it.

Now, any student of history knows that the American Revolution was a brutal war that lasted seven years and killed about twenty thousand people. It seemed like most of the history that I had studied was about all the different wars that had been fought over the millennia, so I guess I always assumed that this was the way that big change happened. Both sides slug it out until one of them beats the other with better strategy along with a strong dose of cold, hard brute force.

So, it surprised me to learn that while Gandhi had led the critical revolt for independence that finally terminated British rule, it was done by a largely non-violent form of civil disobedience. The power of non-violent disobedience: What a remarkable idea! I subsequently learned that Martin Luther King, Jr. had modeled much of his civil rights approach based the teachings of Gandhi.

So, I knew that Gandhi was a man of great political and social stature but when I was on this retreat in India, I learned that he was also deeply spiritual as well. He used to attend prayer and meditation meetings on a regular basis, all the way through to the end of his life. In fact, it was at a prayer meeting where he was assassinated.

This story about Gandhi giving advice took place at one of these prayer meetings several years prior to his death. Apparently, as these meetings, Gandhi would set aside some time at the end, where he would be seated in a certain place and people could come up and speak to him on an individual basis. Usually there would be a long line of people waiting to see him. One day, a woman approached, accompanied by her son who was a young teenager.

“Mahatma Ji,” the woman said. “Please tell my son to stop eating sugar.”

Gandhi looked at the woman for a moment, then looked at her son for a little while and then turned back to her. “Come back in two weeks and talk to me then,” he replied, and the woman left. Sure enough, two weeks later, she returned. After waiting in line for quite some time, she finally approached Gandhi.

“Mahatma Ji, I have returned,” the woman said. “Do you remember that I had asked you to tell my son to stop eating sugar and you told me to come back in two weeks?”

“Yes, indeed, I do remember you,” Gandhi replied.

“Well two weeks have gone by and I have returned,” the woman said.

Gandhi then turned and faced the boy and looked him straight in the eye. “Son,” he said kindly. “You really must stop eating sugar. It does a lot of bad things to you. It won’t be easy to do. In fact, at first, it’s going to be really hard. But if you stay with it, after a while, you’ll be able to stop. And once you do, not only are you going to feel better, you’ll be able to think better as well. It will be a big benefit to you, both in body as well as in mind. It might be hard to do at first, but trust me, it will be well worth the effort.”

The boy thanked Gandhi sincerely for his advice and said he would try. The woman then looked at Gandhi with gratitude, but also with a little confusion.

“Thank you so much, Mahatma Ji,” the woman said. “But with all due respect, I have to ask you, why didn’t just give my son your advice when we were here last time? Why did we have to leave and come back after two weeks just to hear what you could have said to him back then?”

“Because two weeks ago, I was still eating sugar,” Gandhi said. “And if I had spoken to him then, my words would have had no power. Now I am speaking from my own practical experience rather than from just theoretical belief. Now I really know what I’m talking about and that makes all the difference in the world.”

Even though it’s a rather simple story, it’s quite moving. I’ve told it to many different people over the years and everyone seems to have the same reaction. Most people don’t say anything. They just silently nod their heads and smile. It seems to universally ring that certain inner bell we all seen to have within us.

So that’s a tremendous story about the congruence of word and deed. Now to close, let me tell you another quick story that’s always been a favorite of mine. It’s a little different from the one about Gandhi because that was a story about someone who knows that he knows, and this next one is about someone who knows that he doesn’t know.

It comes from the writings of Carlos Castaneda, an author I’ve mentioned in a few earlier episodes. He was extremely popular during the late 1970s and one of his main characters was someone called Don Juan, who was a shaman and a practitioner of an esoteric South American form or sorcery.

By way of context, in many spiritual and esoteric traditions from every culture around the world, there is a great reverence paid to people who are considered to be “masters.” In general, the term refers to a man or woman who has attained a certain elevated state of consciousness and has the ability to help others attain it as well. Again, it is an extremely highly regarded title.

Don Juan had always referred to himself as a warrior. He had given Carlos tremendous insight and advice over the years and had also performed a number of seemingly miraculous feats. Carlos always had enormous respect for him and one day, after witnessing many awesome examples of his sorcery, Carlos asked Don Juan, “Are you a master.?”

Don Juan just smiled and with a clear look in his eyes said, “I don’t even know what that word means.”

I always loved his response because there is not even a hint of pretense to it. Now the finite mind usually likes to pretend that it knows more than it does, but here was someone who knew what he knew, and was what he was. And he had absolutely no reason or desire to claim otherwise. This kind of humility is more rare than we realize.

So, to sum it up, we started with the golf teacher who taught me to focus on fundamentals, rather than trying to imitate him, who’s skillset was far beyond my reach at the time. Then we went on to Gandhi who taught the value of really knowing what you’re talking about because you are speaking from your own practical experience. And we finished with the Don Juan, the Yaqui sorcerer who exemplified the difference between knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know.

Personally, what attracts me about all these stories is that they are all examples of being authentic, which is a quality that we all love. There’s something so genuine about it.

Well, there’s been a lot to think about here, so let’s let this be the end of the episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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It’s no secret that advertising is a big business. It’s projected that the combined ad-spend in the United States for the year 2023 will be over 165 billion dollars. And one thing to consider is what exactly are advertisers trying to achieve with this money? What are they trying to do?

The answer is very simple. They are trying to create a state of mind within consumers that will make them want to buy their product. Now, of course, there’s an entire art and science that goes into it, but this is the bottom line. Create a state of mind that makes the consumer want to buy the product. That’s it.

On a subtextual level, the message of the ad is – get this product, your problem will be solved and your life will improve in some important way. Depending on the consumer’s need, the underlying message might be - with our product, you’ll be happier or healthier, or richer, or more desirable, or more popular, and on and on and on. In other words, get this product and your life will improve. And of course, if the ad is done right, it can be very compelling. That’s why it’s such big business.

With this in mind, let me tell you something that happened to me back in the mid 70’s, when I happened to see a certain ad in a magazine. It was a picture of a man’s hand as he signed a credit card bill. He was wearing a dark business suit and his white shirt sleeve showed that he was wearing a gold cufflink. He was signing the credit card receipt with a gold Cross pen. A folded copy of the Wall Street Journal was next to the small tray that held his American Express credit card.

I don’t remember the exact caption, but it was something like, “When you know who you are, you know what you’re doing.” Now in those days I was in my mid-twenties and trying to get myself started in a worthy career, and the ad really captured my attention. It all seemed so perfect. I remember thinking, “Boy would I love to be that guy.”

And of course, when an ad really does its job, your mind doesn’t stop there. That’s just the beginning. The image invades your imagination and hits you right between the dreams. I started daydreaming about what my life would be like once I became this super successful guy. I’d be driving a great car and wearing cool clothes. Maybe I’d buy a home in Florida and go down there every winter. I wonder what kind of car I would buy. Should I get a convertible? And what about the house in Florida. Should I get it on the ocean or the bay. The bay has nicer sunsets. And you know, this kind of daydreaming never stops. You just keep going until you have to come back to the real world for some reason or other.

Anyway, as the world turns, a few weeks later I got notified by the IRS that my mother was being audited. At the time, I was handling her affairs so it was up to me to get fully prepared and go to the IRS office and deal with the coming proceedings.

Of course, getting notified that you are being audited by the IRS isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. It’s not even in the same league as the big stuff, like having someone close to you dying or being diagnosed with a terminal illness. No, it’s not in the same league as any of that. But it’s no walk in the park either, especially not for this kid in his mid-twenties who was trying figure out some way to become a man.

I kept preparing for the audit and as the IRS appointment was approaching, I happened to tell a friend about it who told me a Jewish joke that he thought would be appropriate. Now Jewish humor has a lot of different layers to it. It’s truly an arcane topic. Tons of books have been written and a variety of documentaries have been made, but at some point, they all speak about something called “chutzpah.” It’s a Yiddish word that defies exact translation, but it’s like having nerve, gall, or audacity mixed with an adult dose of wit and humor, along with a thousand other nuances as well.

Anyway, in the joke, this man finds out that he is being audited by the IRS. He goes in to see his accountant for some advice. “Take it from me,” the accountant says. “You go in there looking like a pauper. Dress in your most modest clothes and look like you haven’t got a cent. You’re broke. You have nothing.”

The man then decides to consult with his attorney and the lawyer gives him the exact opposite advice. “Walk into that office looking like you are the most together guy in the world. Have the appearance of total confidence and complete competence. Dress rich and show them you are not someone to be trifled with.”

Now the man was pretty confused so he went to see his rabbi, who stroked his beard slowly while he listened to the conflicting advice from the accountant and the lawyer. After the man had finished, the Rabbi said, “Well, your situation reminds me of the story of a young woman who was about to be married and she seeks the advice of her mother and her older sister about what she should wear on her honeymoon night.

Her sister told her, “Go into the bathroom to change and when you come out, be wearing the skimpiest, sexiest negligee you can find. When you walk into that room, you’ll drive him absolutely nuts!”

Then the young woman went to her mother who said the opposite. “Go into the bathroom and when you come out, be wearing a plain nightgown that covers you up completely, from your neck to your feet. Don’t show him anything. Keep it secret. Be a mystery. Make him want to find out what you’ve got under there. He won’t be able to control himself.”

Then the rabbi stopped talking and just stared at the man.

“Rabbi,” the man finally said. “With all due respect, I came in here to ask you what I should do with the IRS and you tell me this wedding night story. I don’t get it. What’s the point?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Rabbi said. “My mistake. I thought the meaning was clear. You’re just like that young lady on her honeymoon night. It doesn’t matter what you wear. Either way, you’re going to get screwed!”

Now this is an edited version of the joke. In the real version the wise, but salty Rabbi doesn’t say “screwed.” He uses a four-letter word that begins with “F” and ends with “K” and it’s not “fork.”

So much for that. A few days later it was time for the audit, which was scheduled for 1:30 in the afternoon. The IRS suburban office was located very close to a shopping center that had a great deli, so I decided I would eat lunch there first and then go to the audit.

As I began to get dressed for the appointment, I thought about the joke and decided to go with the lawyer’s advice. So I got out my best suit and tie. But when I looked for a dress shirt, all of mine happened to be dirty. I looked more thoroughly through my closet and I saw that there was one white shirt hanging in the very back and I realized I hadn’t worn it for about ten years. I don’t think I’d even seen it in all that time.

It was clean, but when I went to put it on, to my disappointment I saw it needed cufflinks. I couldn’t remember the last time I wore cufflinks but I did have some gold ones in my jewelry box that I had gotten as a Bar Mitzvah gift. I got them out and put them on and noticed that there was a gold Cross pen in there too. It had been so long since I had seen it, I’d forgotten I even had it. It was so old that I doubted that the ink would still write, but I put it in my shirt pocket anwyay, thinking it might make me look more professional.

I got dressed and drove over to the deli near the IRS office. I was going to eat alone, so I went over to the magazine stand to get something to read. There wasn’t much there, but the Wall Street Journal caught my eye. Now, I knew absolutely nothing at all about stocks and bonds, but I thought I would try to read it during lunch and maybe I could pick up some much-needed financial knowledge. And besides, I figured it might be a good idea to be carrying it when I walked into the IRS office. It couldn’t hurt.

So, I sat there and ate my lunch while I tried to read the paper, but I couldn’t make any sense out of it at all. It might as well have been written in Greek.

After a little while the waitress brought the check. It was a bit more than I thought it would be and I realized that my credit cards were getting maxed out. I did have an American Express card, but I never used it because you had to pay off the complete balance every month. I decided to give it to the waitress anyway and when I did, I started feeling pretty down in the dumps.

As you can probably tell, things weren’t going all that great for me financially at the time and the larger picture had gotten pretty rough as well. My mother, who was only in her early sixties had gotten very ill. She had already suffered a major stroke, was being prepared for brain surgery and the outlook for her was grim. And here I was, about to go into an IRS audit which could be quite costly. To make some headway, I had tried to read the Wall Street Journal and to my sad disappointment, I realized that a chimpanzee would have had a better chance at getting something out of it. And to top it off, I had to use my American Express card, which unexpectedly made it all worse. In reality, as I sat there, I basically felt like an abject failure

Finally, the waitress came back and put the small tray with the credit card on the table. I pulled the gold Cross pen out of my pocket and went to sign the receipt.

But at that moment as I looked at my hand, what I saw made me suddenly freeze. I was wearing a dark business suit and my white shirt sleeve showed that I was wearing a gold cufflink. I was signing the credit card receipt with a gold Cross pen. A folded copy of the Wall Street Journal was next to the small tray that held my American Express credit card.

To the tee, I was in an exact replica of that alluring ad I had recently seen in a magazine. It was truly uncanny and I was so astounded that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When I had first seen that ad, it projected the image of someone who had his life together on every level, and I deeply longed to be him. And now, due to a totally unrelated set of random coincidences, I had become the living embodiment of the ad. For that one moment, I was the guy in the picture.

But unfortunately, I was living the exact opposite life that the picture had promised. It was quite a stroke of irony and if it had it had been a joke, it would have been pretty funny.

The ad’s caption had read, “When you know who you are, you know what you’re doing.” But the truth was, I didn’t know who I was and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. The image had made me dream of a new car, new clothes and a winter home in Florida. And even though I was dressed for the part, instead of living out these wonderful and relaxing fantasies, I was about fifteen minutes away from walking into an IRS audit. I had just finished lunch and felt like I had eaten a big bowl of stress for dessert. It was just plain scary.

As you can tell, I never forgot that moment, or the deep lesson it taught me. Don’t rely on external appearances. You never know what’s really happening just by looking at an alluring image. The reality may quite different from the fantasy. Well so much for advertising, not to mention a million other illusions we run into in this life.

Anyway, in case you’re interested, I did go through with the audit and the wise rabbi from the joke was actually wrong. Things turned out quite well and the IRS actually gave us a nice refund, so I didn’t get forked at all.

I had done my best to prepare, but it felt like I also had some extra help. Maybe it was what I was wearing or that I was carrying the Wall Street Journal when I walked into the office. Or maybe it was just plain luck. One thing I think we all can agree on - No matter what challenge you may be facing in your life, a strong, old-fashioned dose of just plain good luck never hurts. I know I’ll always be deeply grateful for it.

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

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Human intelligence has a remarkable capacity to create tools. No other species even comes close to us in this unique talent. But it’s also critical to keep in mind that once a tool has been created, it can easily become a double-edged sword, which simply means it can be used for good or for bad, for positive, constructive purposes, or for negative, destructive ones.

As an example, let’s look at the first truly transformative tool that human beings ever developed, our primitive ability to make fire, which our distant ancestors discovered at the dawn of history. The current belief is that homo sapiens started using fire about 300,000 years ago, and as we all know, over the course of these 300 millennia, our ability to harness fire has upgraded our lives in innumerable ways. We’ve kept ourselves safe and warm with it, cooked our food with it, and one way or another, we’ve used it to power all of our inventions and machinery. It is such a basic part of our lives that it’s hard to imagine living without it.

But we also know that either by mistake or intention, our misuse of fire has been catastrophic as well. Besides the enormous amount of injury and death that has been caused by accidents, it also provides the power for all of the destructive weaponry we’ve developed. And we created these inventions for the deliberate purpose of maiming and killing human beings. From the first primitive guns of the tenth century through to today’s ultra-modern assault rifles, they all run on fire power. And guns and rifles are just the tip of the iceberg. All told, today’s weapons of mass destruction permeate our world like a monstrous infestation of hungry termites silently devouring a colossal wooden mansion.

Now, along with our ability to create external tools, our intelligence has also developed internal ones. Language and writing are two of our most important. As our psyche continued to evolve, our intelligence crafted innovative mental tools to help us cope with our ever-increasing inner needs. And just like our external tools, the inner ones can quickly become double-edged swords as well.

Doubt is a perfect example. The positive use of doubt has been a tremendous aid for our advancement. For example, doubt is at the very basis of the scientific method. If you have a belief of any kind, for it to become scientific accepted fact, it must be proven beyond doubt. As another example, in America, to be convicted of a criminal offense, the defendant must be proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. So, in essence, it’s always a good idea to doubt the doubtful.

But on the negative side, unbridled doubt can be catastrophic. It can make us doubt the truth, which can be truly detrimental. Doubt can be especially powerful when it is bonded to negative feelings like anger, guilt and fear. These combinations can make us act against our own best interests, doing irrational things we would never do if we were in our right mind.

I once heard an instructive story about how powerful doubt can be and what it can make us do. I was on an extended retreat in India back in the early 70s and as with many of the teaching stories of that tradition, although it is simple and somewhat light-hearted, it delivers a profound message if you can tune into it.

The story takes place in the late 1500s and is about an Emperor named Akbar the Great, who ruled most of the sub-continent of India. Akbar’s chief advisor was a brilliant strategist named Birbal, who was the smartest and most cunning member of the royal court. His wit and wisdom were renowned throughout the entire kingdom.

Akbar and Birbal were very close and Akbar always relied on Birbal’s advice for the nation’s matters, both great and small. However, there was a problem brewing. Akbar’s wife, Queen Mariam, who was quite powerful in her own right, was very suspicious of Birbal. Many people felt that she was jealous over his closeness to the King and there was another serious point of contention as well. Her brother was also one of Akbar’s advisors, but he was always in a subordinate position to Birbal, which was a constant irritation to the Queen.

She used to make her negative feelings about Birbal known to the King on a regular basis. and one day she went to the him and insisted that he put Birbal’s cunning and loyalty to the test.

Her plan was for the King to be seated in the garden the next day. He should summon Birbal and tell him to go the palace and bring the Queen to him immediately. But when Birbal would come to get her, she would refuse to go. No matter what he said or did, she wouldn’t budge. She said that would prove that Birbal didn’t have the power to fulfill all the King’s wishes. And she demanded that after he failed the test, the King must demote Birbal and appoint her brother as his chief advisor.

It was obvious to the King that she wanted to prove to him that she was more powerful than Birbal and the King quickly agreed to the plot. But it wasn’t just to placate the Queen. He was sure that his trusty courtier would somehow resolve the problem and his main interest was to see what cunning device he would use to do it.

So, the next day, the plan was put into action. The Queen stayed in the palace and the King went into the garden. He then had a soldier bring Birbal to him.

When Birbal arrived, the King said in an extremely serious tone, “I want you to go to the palace and tell the Queen that I must see her immediately. This is critically important, so you must bring her to me now. And don’t come back without her.”

Birbal had a renowned sense of radar for palace intrigue and he immediately sensed there was something fishy in the air. “Yes, your Majesty,” he agreed. “But your tone has given me some concern. Let me take this soldier with me, so that he can protect the Queen from any danger as we walk from the palace to the garden. As always, I want to fulfill your wishes as perfectly as I can.”

“Of course,” Akbar responded. “But bring her right now. I must see her right away.”

Birbal and the soldier departed, but during the short walk to the palace, Birbal gave the soldier some brief instructions.

“Now do exactly as I tell you,” he said to the guard. “When I go into the room where the Queen is, you remain outside Stay out of her eyesight, but make sure you can see me and watch me closely. If I look at you and wink my eye, I want you to hurry into the room as if you have something critical to tell me. Got it so far?” he asked.

“Yessir,” the soldier replied.

“Good,” Birbal said. “Then you come up to me and whisper something in my ear. It doesn’t matter what you say, but after a moment or so, I want you to say to me in a voice that is loud enough for the queen to hear, ‘And she’s absolutely gorgeous. Got it?”

“Yessir,” the soldier answered.

“Good. Again, in a voice that’s laud enough for the Queen to hear, say, ‘And she’s absolutely gorgeous.’”

Soon, they got to the room where the Queen was. Birbal knocked on the door, entered and left the door opened so he could make eye-contact with the soldier, who remained out of view from the Queen.

Besides being strong-willed and quite powerful, Queen Mariam was also a renowned beauty. Many people felt she was the most beautiful woman in the Kingdom and her appearance was of prime importance to her. She had a hairdresser working on her hair and a make-up artist working on her face.

After bowing to the Queen, who was somewhat cold to him, he said, “Your Majesty, it is very important that you come with me to see the King in the garden right away. He wants to see you immediately.”

The Queen could hardly hide her delight, but answered firmly, “I’m sorry, Birbal, there is an important state dinner at the palace tonight and I will be getting ready for it for hours, so I’m not available this afternoon. You’ll have to go back to the garden and tell the King that I just can’t come. I promise you he’ll understand.”

This began a protracted back and forth where Birbal kept pleading with the Queen to come with him and she kept refusing him. “Now, I’m telling you for the last time that I’m not coming,” the Queen said firmly. “And I command you not to ask me again. The answer is just, plain no. Now go back and tell the King.””

“But your Majesty,” Birbal humbly responded, looking anxious and confused, like he didn’t know what to do next. But, at the same time, he winked his eye at the soldier who was standing in the hall. The soldier then came bursting in the room and whispered into Birbal’s ear, who quickly looked like he was deeply concerned, but trying to hide it. The soldier then said in a louder voice that he was sure the Queen would hear, “And she’s absolutely gorgeous.”

Birbal’s body stiffened. He dismissed the soldier and turned to face the Queen. “You, uh, you know what, your Majesty?” he said with a stutter, looking like he was trying to hide something from her. “It turns out that it’s really not necessary for you to go see the King in the garden after all! I was mistaken. You don’t have to go.”

“What?” the Queen exclaimed astonishingly. “What do you mean I don’t have to go.”

“It’s just that,” Birbal answered. “It’s better if you just, I mean it turns out that you really do have to look your best tonight. Now more than ever, your hair and make-up have to be just right. So just stay here and make sure you look really stunning at the dinner tonight,” he stammered. “You should just stay here.”

The Queen gave him a mistrustful, withering glance and he quickly blurted out to her, “Your Majesty, trust me, it will be better that way. Leave it to me. I’ll handle the whole thing; I’ll just tell the King that you couldn’t make it. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it for you.”

Seeing that the Queen was becoming overwhelmed with suspicion and jealousy, Birbal got down on one knee and pleaded to her, “Let me put it this way, your Majesty, I implore you not to go! Please don’t for the sake of the Kingdom, please don’t do it.”

Incensed, the Queen stood up. “And why not?” she shouted.

Birbal started shaking nervously, like his life depended on it. “You just can’t go to the garden right now. I’m telling you. You can’t do it.”

“Oh, no?” the Queen replied in a rage. “Just try and stop me!” And she stormed off angrily to confront the King in the garden. Birbal followed her, but stayed a good distance behind.

When the Queen finally burst into the garden, she found King Akbar casually sitting all by himself, alone in a grove of some flowering trees. The Queen was confused but the King had a serene smile on his face as he saw Birbal casually enter the garden. After a moment, the three of them just stood there staring at each other. Nobody said anything because they each knew that things were better left unsaid.

I’ve always been quite fond of this story because it highlights the power of doubt in a rather light-hearted but surprisingly deep way. Birbal had simply used doubt mixed with fear to disrupt the otherwise ironclad plan of the Queen. And he added some reverse psychology on top of it for good measure. The more he begged the Queen not to go, the more it built up her will to do it.

The powerful Queen was secure in her ability and determination to undermine Birbal’s’s position, and she had devised a plan that couldn’t fail because she was in control. Yet, it all went out the window when Birbal cleverly dropped some powerful seeds of doubt and fear into her mind.

Now doubt can take many different forms, but self-doubt is particularly self-defeating, and those of us who have been dealt a serious dose of it know how debilitating it can be. But self-doubt will be a topic of its own in a future episode.

So, we come to the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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Looking back on it, I feel I was truly fortunate to have grown up during the golden age of rock and roll music. We take it for granted now, but back then, when it first began, no one had any idea what a major cultural phenomenon it would become.

Personally, I got hit with it when I was still pretty young. My brother and I lived in the same room together, but he was eight years older. He was born in 1941 and I was born in ’49. So, when he was turning into a young teenager, that wild beat was just starting to shake up the American status quo. Soon it would shake it to its core.

The post-war era was in full swing and the uninhibited nature of this music was being looked at as not only revolutionary, but possibly threatening. And what had begun as just an undercurrent of society eventually turned into a massive tidal wave that would revolutionize the entire western world

My brother, along with the 70 million other baby boomers who were on the verge of their teen years, went absolutely nuts for it. He had a little record player with a huge number of 45 rpms, and they were playing in our room all the time. I was six years old and the incredibly lively beat jitterbugged its way into me - body, mind, and soul.

But there was also a little bit more to it. Along with their free-spirited sounds, certain songs would carry some deeper meanings as well, themes that would subtly take you to some unexpected places. You would be singing along, the lyrics would find a home in your mind, and after a while, you would subconsciously start learning something new about being alive.

It used to happen to me all the time. For example, there was this one song by the Motown group Smokey Robinson and the Miracles called “Tears of a Clown.” It was a big hit about someone who was broken-hearted because his girlfriend had just left him. Now, heartbreak is of the most common themes in popular music and it seemed like I had heard a million songs about it. But Smokey gave it a little twist by singing about putting on a false face to hide inner pain.

In one part of the lyric he wrote:

Just like Pagliacci did I try to keep my sadness hid. Smiling in the public eye But in my lonely room I cry The tears of a clown When there's no one around.

Now they're some sad things known to man But ain't too much sadder than The tears of a clown when there's no one around

As a side note, neither I nor any of my friends understood what those words were at the beginning of the verse. It was just a blur until one day a deejay explained that Smokey was referencing a famous Italian opera from the late 19th century called Pagliacci, which was about a tragic clown. Until then, nobody had any idea what that first line meant.

Anyway, the idea of someone putting on a show to hide their pain, smiling on the outside while crying within, hit me a little deeper than I had noticed at first. It’s not as though I had never heard the idea before, but there was something deeply touching about this one particular song. The music was upbeat, like it belonged in the circus, but the words were really sad. And the difference between the two really drove the point home. That, along with the utter hopelessness in Smokey’s voice made the message all the more pathetic.

I was still in high school back then, but the idea of a clown crying in private- that the outside is not necessarily a true reflection of the inside-stayed with me over the years, especially as I started to get involved with consciousness evolution and my own inner growth.

At one point, I came upon something that certain ancient traditions called “maya,” which is a general term that simply means illusion. Its basic idea is that much of what goes on in the world of human activities is just that – an illusion, a façade. It’s simply not what it appears to be.

Like a mirage in the desert, which appears to be a bountiful, green oasis off in the distance…but when you finally get there, instead of coming upon cool shade and healing waters, to your deep disappointment the visual image evaporates and you find nothing there but more heat and dry sand.

In the same way, many contemplative traditions have taught that the things we find so attractive in the external world, like wealth, status and fame, to name a few, are like that. We get caught up in our various pursuits, chasing after situations that we think must be fulfilling. But when we finally arrive at our destination, we find that the attractive image was just a mirage, a form with no substance, and our lofty hopes are replaced by deep despair. We may try to put on a false face, and whether or not it’s convincing, a lot us are hiding behind the masks we are wearing on our faces.

Around the time I was processing all of this, I came across a unique story that used some comic irony to help illustrate the point. I had begun reading some of the works of an author named Carlos Castaneda, whose books mainly focused on a South American form of metaphysical knowledge. Castaneda was supposedly an apprentice to a Mexican sorcerer and part of the charm of his books is his sense of awe mixed with a certain sense of humor that reveals more than you might realize at first.

This story takes place in a psychotherapist’s office in a large city, when a new patient comes in to see the therapist for the first time.

“Doc,” the man said, “You have to help me. I am totally unhappy. I’m in a state of complete misery every day.”

“Okay, let me give it a try by asking you a few questions,” the doctor said. “Are you married? Do you have a family?”

“Yes, yes I am,” the man replied. “I have a wonderful wife and three terrific kids. Everything is good at home. That’s not the problem.”

“Well, what about money? Are you worried about your finances? Do you make enough to be comfortable?”

“Yes, I do. I’m fine, there Doc. I have plenty of money.” The man paused for a moment. “It’s just that I’m so unhappy all the time. I feel miserable and I just can’t shake it.”

“Maybe you’re afraid of dying, “the doctor suggested. “Is it the fact that we’re all mortal and that death is inevitable? Is that getting you down?”

“Well, I have to be honest with you,” the man replied. “I don’t love the idea of dying, but I don’t find it to be particularly troubling. Death is just a natural part of life.”

For the rest of the hour, the doctor kept asking questions and offering different suggestions to the man, but none of his ideas gained any traction. Finally, the doctor suggested that the man try to take in some entertainment to at least help take his mind off his problem, maybe lighten things up a little. But the man said he had tried going to the theatre, seeing dance and musical recitals and nothing had done the trick for him.

“What about some comedy,” the doctor asked. “Maybe you should go see someone who is really funny. That can help a lot, even if it just gets you some short-term relief.”

“I don’t think so Doc,” the man said. I’m way too depressed for any comedy to help me. I can’t imagine laughing at anything.”

“I don’t know. Maybe you should just give it a try.” the doctor persisted. “I hear there’s this hysterical comedian that’s been playing sold out performances in one of the major theatres in town. Three of my saddest patients have gone in to see him and they all said he was incredibly funny. His light-hearted approach really helped pull them out of the doldrums.”

“I don’t know,” the man said and thought about it for a moment. “What’s this comedian’s name?”

“He’s called The Great Rodrigo,” the doctor said. “Oh boy, Doctor, I’m in real trouble now,” the man said sadly. “You see, I am The Great Rodrigo.”

So, Castaneda created quite a compelling story here about the tears of a clown. The Great Rodrigo, the man who is lauded for having the cure for sorrow is actually sadder than everyone else. I found that particularly meaningful because it’s so easy to assume that a person who has the trappings of a successful life is actually happy, especially when that person has something you wish you had.

It made me go back to considering the idea of maya, the illusion that seems so prevalent in the world of human activity. And fortunately, when it comes to maya, I found that the Wisdom of the Ages has something encouraging to say. It teaches that along with the fact that there is a fake world filled with false, temporary pleasures that leave us empty and sad, there is also a real world that is filled with real treasures that leaves us full. Actually, it never leaves us at all, we leave it. And the trick is to learn how to choose between the two worlds - the false and the true.

They say the illusion of the world is just a shadow, a dark reflection of the real thing. It’s like when you’re outside on a bright sunny day with the sun at your back and you see your shadow projected right front of you. Although your shadow has your exact shape and moves exactly like you do, it is not real. Your body is real. It is a presence. But your shadow is not. It is just an absence, the absence of light in a shape that matches your body. So, there’s the real and there’s the fake, and it’s up to us to choose which one we want.

Sometimes the choice can be a no-brainer. Like if you’re sitting in an ice cream parlor and the waiter delivers you your hot fudge sundae, and you notice that a ceiling light is casting a sharp shadow of the sundae on the table. Are you going to take your spoon and try to eat the shadow? Of course not. There’s nothing there. You can’t eat a shadow. It’s just form without substance. We all know that.

And by the way, the only way a shadow can exist at all is because of the presence of a source of light. Without light there can be no shadows. On a dark, moonless night, you don’t see any shadows. But in the daytime, they’re everywhere.

So, this practical perspective about reality, illusion and choice was starting to dawn on me as it’s message continued to get clear. Put your spoon in your real sundae. Eat it, enjoy it, and be happy. And don’t even think about the shadow. Before you know it, you won’t even notice it anymore.

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

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In the last episode, a missing NBA basketball player named Wally Jones had suddenly turned up at our house to visit my father, the owner and General Manager of the 76ers, who had made a trade for him to join the team. They had gone into my father’s office to have a consultation and I had set myself up in the kitchen, which was nearby and had begun doing my homework.

I was working on a psychology assignment where I had to describe two brushes with fear and how I eventually found safety. I had described the first one in the last episode, where my friend and I had unexpected run into a mass event where Martin Luther King had made an impromptu appearance on the front steps of a large church in Philadelphia. Now it was time to write about my second brush with fear.

It had been quite different from the first because this one had brought me into a direct, face-to-face encounter with real danger and there was severe intensity to it.

By way of background, I had inherited a beat-up sports car that had been handed down from my brother to my sister to me. It was a 1959 Austin-Healey Sprite, the famous “bug-eyed” model.

Eddie Gottlieb, one of the founders of the NBA and a close family friend, had picked it up for my brother on one of his trips to Europe. It was brand-new, white as a cloud, and the incarnation of pure fun. My brother kept it in perfect condition and drove me everywhere in it.

When he got married three years later, it went to my sister. My parents told her she could spruce it up, so Sybil had it painted jet-black with a red-and-white racing stripe down the back. She took off in it like a bat out of hell and drove it nonstop for the next three years. By her second year at Temple University, she had outgrown it. It was only a two-seater and didn’t work for her anymore. So as soon as I got my license, it came to me.

Now, they say that when a family’s first baby drops its pacifier on the floor, the parents sanitize it in boiling water. With their second baby, if the pacifier falls on the floor, they rinse it off with hot water. And with the third baby, if the pacifier falls on the floor, they just let the dog lick it. By the time I got the Sprite, it had clearly been to the dogs. But I loved it.

It had a manual four-speed stick shift. I had been driving it for about two weeks and hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet, but I was getting there. One sunny afternoon, as I was out driving, I pulled into the parking lot behind some stores. I was trying to turn around but had trouble getting it into reverse and was stuck, just sitting there.

All of a sudden, a big car - an older Buick - backed up and smashed right into me. The jolt of the accident and the sound of shattering glass shook me to the core. I got out to take a look. The front-left side was mangled and bent, and the headlight was smashed.

I looked at the dark-green Buick, which was the size of a tank, and it didn’t even have a scratch. Then the car door opened, and my worst nightmare got out—a tough-looking, lanky hoodlum with a lit cigarette in his mouth and a mean snarl on his face. He didn’t really look all that human.

“What da fucksa matter with you, dude?” he growled furiously. As he walked toward me, I thought he was about to hit me.

The parking lot was behind a place called Kelley’s Bar, which was one of the seedier establishments in the township. It was about four-thirty in the afternoon and the guy smelled like he’d been drinking for hours.

I was too shocked and scared to say anything, so I just stood there staring at him. He must have concluded that I was no threat, and he relaxed a little.

“Tough shit, kid,” was the next pearl of wisdom that came out of his mouth. “Too bad you hit me. Now, what do you want to do about it?”

“I hit you?” I asked, finding enough strength to speak. “I didn’t hit you. I couldn’t even get the car into reverse. I was just sitting there. You backed into me.”

The hoodlum chuckled, took a leisurely drag from his cigarette, and blew out a long stream of liquor-laced, grey smoke into my face.

“You know that, and I know that,” he said. “But we’re the only ones who do. You see anybody else here? No. It’s just me and you. So, the truth is gonna be what I say it is. And when we go in front of the judge, the truth is that you hit me. You got that, asshole?”

He had a mean smile on his hard face, and it was clear that he was starting to enjoy himself. The cruelty of it took my panic to a whole new level. Like a stunned rabbit in the grip of a python, I could feel the iron coils tightening around me.

I don’t remember how I did it, but I got him to write his name and phone number down on a piece of paper. I’m pretty sure it was on the back of a racing form. There was a horse track about ten miles away.

I got back into the Sprite and drove home. It still moved, but it was a shaky mess as it rattled along. I backed into the garage, so my father could see the damage. I shut the engine off, and to my surprise, I burst into tears. I cried like I was six instead of sixteen. I couldn’t believe I could still fall apart that easily. I thought I was much more grown-up than that. It didn’t really matter. I knew my back was against the wall and the situation was hopeless.

About an hour later, when my father came home from work, I was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him. I did my best to keep it together as I told him what had happened. We went right out into the garage to take a look.

As we both stared at the crumpled side of the car and the smashed headlight, I started giving him the details. I was fine until I got to the part when the guy said he was going to make me lie to the judge in court. At that point, I got choked up.

I tried to go on, but my father simply held up his right hand, signaling me to stop talking. In his stillness, he looked like a mighty Indian chief who had stopped time.

“Did you, uh, happen to get any information from this guy?” he asked quietly. “You know what I mean? His name, his phone number? Anything like that?”

His tone was completely calm and ordinary, and it surprised me. Instead of being rattled by this horrible situation, he sounded like we were sitting at a casual lunch and he was asking me to pass him the salt. It was nothing to him, which did something to me.

“Sure,” I responded and pulled the crumpled racing form out of my pocket.

“Give it to me,” he said simply and extended his right hand. There was no emotion in his voice and no expression on his face, but there was also no question about what was going on. I was now face to face with the enormous, unmistakable power that was firmly and forever on my side. Nothing was going to hurt me.

I put the paper in his hand, and as soon as he took it, the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders and I could breathe again. He looked at the information for a long moment.

“OK,” he said. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re just going to take the car over to a place called Frese and Fishers in town, and they’ll handle it. Frese and Fishers.”

I tried to concentrate and remember the name, but it flew right out of my mind.

“You know what? Don’t worry about it,” he said, sensing I was struggling. “Just call my office tomorrow morning, and Bernadette will take care of the whole thing.” He put his hand on my shoulder and held it there, as steady as a mountain and as reassuring as the dawn.

“OK?” he asked me, looking in my eyes for the all-clear. I nodded to him. “OK,” he said with finality, indicating that the episode was over.

“Enough already!” he exclaimed. “Come on. Let’s go back inside.”

We left the garage. He put his arm around my shoulder, and with synchronized steps, we walked back to the house. As we approached the kitchen window, I could see my mother through the glass, working at the sink. She lifted her head, and as a Madonna Amongst the Dishes, with a subtle Mona Lisa smile, she gazed sublimely at the sight of her youngest child, walking along the path under the shelter and protection of his father.

Once we were inside and he started down the hall to his office, he called back to me. “Don’t worry about this, Duv. It’s no big deal.”

And it wasn’t. I called his secretary in the morning, and she told me exactly what to do. She had already set up the appointment, and the body shop treated me royally. Within another day, the car was fine, and I was driving it as though nothing had ever happened. And I never heard another word about it again.

I started making some notes for the essay. I realized that in my extreme fear, the situation seemed completely hopeless. It had never occurred to me that my father might have been able to help. In fact, I forgot I even had a father.

But in truth, he was one of the most powerful attorneys in the city, his protégé was the President Judge of the Philadelphia Court System and his partner was the Police Commissioner of Cheltenham Township. So, in reality, that half-drunk degenerate who had threatened me in the bar’s parking lot, had no power over me at all. But try explaining that to sheer terror.

The panic we feel when we encounter darkness makes us forget that there is such a thing as light. But for me, everything changed the instant my father took that nicotine-stained racing form out of my hand. Light had dispelled darkness and I realized I was safe again. It was as simple as that.

Suddenly the door to my father’s office opened, and Wally Jones stepped out, with my father right behind him. I closed my notebook and followed them into the hall but hung back and watched. I don’t think they even noticed me.

They had only known each other for an hour, but you could’ve sworn they were old friends. Wally still looked dirty and disheveled, but he certainly didn’t look like a bum anymore. My father walked him to the opened door and put his arm around his shoulder.

“Now, this is all going to be OK, Wally. I promise you we can handle it. It’s time to put the whole thing behind you.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. Richman,” Wally said. “I will.”

“Call me first thing Monday morning,” my father said. “And don’t forget, the important thing now is to get back in the game and start working on your jump shot. You gotta get that rust off.”

They both chuckled. Wally walked out to his car, and my father turned to me, with the smile of a job well done. I’d seen that look on his face a million times.

A few days later, the 76ers announced that Wally Jones had come back to Philly and had joined the team. Amazingly, all his legal problems were quickly resolved, and the whole city was buzzing with anticipation.

When he met the reporters after his first practice, he said, “I think my problems are more mental than physical, and Mr. Richman already has helped me see some sunshine for the first time in a long while. I have a little peace of mind for the first time in three years, and I want a chance to show the world what I can do.”

Soon, he would do just that. And along with the recent signing of Billy Cunningham, my father’s dream team was complete.

Billy, the great star from the University of North Carolina, was his number-one draft pick. He and my father had grown quite fond of each other, but contractually, they had hit a snag.

My father had offered Billy $12,000 for the year. But Billy wanted $12,500 and was holding out. Neither one would budge. Finally, right before the season was about to begin, my father threw in the towel and gave Billy the extra five hundred. Now everything was in place, and we were ready to begin the new season. And our quest for destiny.

So, this story pretty much speaks for itself. I guess the idea is that when times get tough and the threatening clouds of fear encompass our vison and darken our lives, even though it may be hard to see the cloud’s silver lining, it’s still there. Sometimes all we can do is just remember the existence of light until we can see it again. And sometimes, all we have to do is ask.

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

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In the last episode, we examined the uplifting words that Frederick Douglass used to describe what it was like to be around Abraham Lincoln, when he simply said that there was safety in his atmosphere.

In this episode, as well as in the next one, we’re going to take a look at two instances in my life when I came face to face with what it was like to be in someone’s presence who truly had safety in his atmosphere. They were both quite powerful in somewhat different ways.

The first one began at the end of the summer of 1965 when I had just begun eleventh grade in high school. It was time to get ready for school as well as for the upcoming 76ers season.

As you may know, my father was the founder as well as the General Manager of the team, and he was stepping up his efforts to try to find a player named Wally Jones who played for the Baltimore Bullets. The talented guard hadn’t shown up for training camp, and nobody had any idea where he was. The papers said he had legal problems and that they were getting worse.

My father opened up talks with Baltimore about a possible trade. Wally would be a tremendous addition to the team. Besides being a star player, he was also a Philadelphia hometown hero, having gone to Overbrook High School, and as well as Villanova University.

As he was negotiating on the trade, my dad asked Vince Miller to get involved. Vince was Wilt Chamberlain’s closest friend. They had grown up together, actually in the same neighborhood as Wally, and all three of them had gone to Overbrook.

Vince was a popular figure throughout the city and was extremely well-connected. He’d also become very tight with my father and although he wasn’t officially with the team’s organization, he was around a lot. There were rumors that my father was grooming him to take a position in the front office soon, and then maybe someday, take over the top spot.

Vince went to work, but after ten days, there was still no news. Even so, my father decided to roll the dice and on September 22, 1965, he made a trade with the Bullets and secured the rights to Wally Jones, who was still missing.

The move hit the newspapers pretty hard and they were all critical of the trade. According to them, Jones’s life was in shambles and he was now an actual fugitive from justice. Nobody knew if he was still in the country or even if he was still alive, for that matter.

Finally, Vince got some news. He told my father he thought he knew where Jones was hiding and might be able to get a message to him. My father said to tell Wally that he had looked into his legal problems and was certain he could take care of them all. He wanted Wally to get in touch with him as soon as possible. Everything would be alright once he let my father go to work for him. The word went out.

Then, the following Saturday, as I was having our usual after-synagogue lunch with my parents, our front doorbell rang. I got up to get it. When I opened the door, a disheveled twentysomething black guy was standing there with a small suitcase in his hand. He looked like a bum.

“Is this Ike Richman’s house?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said, mildly apprehensive.

“Is he here? My name’s Wally Jones. I heard he might be able to help me.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was such a major development that had seemingly come out of nowhere. “Sure,” I said. “Hold on a second.” I went and told my father, who dropped everything and came right to the door.

“Hello, Mr. Richman,” Wally said, extending his hand. “I’m not sure if I—”

“Wally, great to see you,” my father said, shaking his hand. “I’m so glad you came. Good choice! Come on in!”

They looked at each other for a brief moment. “Now, listen,” my father said, getting right to the point. “I know all about your situation. I’ve looked into it thoroughly, and it’s really not all that bad. We can definitely take care of it.”

Wally looked surprised as if things had gotten off to a much rosier start than he had hoped.

“Come on back, and let’s have a talk,” my father said, putting his hand on Wally’s shoulder. He led him down the hallway toward his office. I heard the door close, and that always meant business.

From his tone, I knew immediately that everything was going to be all right. I’d seen this kind of thing all my life. People would come to him in trouble and they would leave relieved.

My father had a great reputation as a brilliant problem solver, with a real genius for finding creative solutions that worked for everyone. He was also an astute judge of character, with wit, charm and an intelligent sense of humor thrown into the mix. He was known for his soft touch. He would put people at ease, and then appeal to their better natures.

And most importantly, they felt safe with him. He had an unmistakable aura of power and authority, and intuitively, you knew you could trust him. If you had a serious problem, he was definitely the guy you wanted to see.

I had been planning to go out that afternoon to play ball with some friends, but I decided to wait until the meeting with Wally was over. This was a huge deal. Stories about him had dominated the news for weeks. Everybody knew if we got him, it would be a major coup. And at that moment, there were only three people in the whole world who knew what was going on, and I was one of them. I wasn’t going anywhere.

I had some homework to do over the weekend, so I got my papers together and set myself up at the kitchen table. I could see the door to my father’s office from there.

I took out my psychology homework. It was the first lesson of the year, and we were studying the basic human emotions of fear and safety. The assignment was to describe two recent times when you felt real fear, and then explain what happened that made you feel safe again.

The teacher was a super creative guy who a few years later ended up becoming an intellectual hippie. As a prompt, he had given us the statement Frederick Douglass had made when he was asked what it was like to be around Abraham Lincoln and he replied with elegant simplicity, “There was safety in his atmosphere.” It was the first time I had ever heard it and I found the idea to be comforting as well as intriguing.

This was actually going to be a fairly easy assignment for me because the two major brushes I’d had with fear were fairly recent and still very fresh in my mind.

The first was at the beginning of that summer when one of my friends and I were driving to a Phillies baseball game. It was early evening, and we were in his family’s small convertible, just the two of us. The weather was warm, and we had a few more hours of daylight, so we put the top down.

We drove down Broad Street, and when we got to North Philadelphia, we started noticing that there were far more people on the sidewalks than usual. Most of them were black, and they were all walking south, the same direction we were driving. As we drove on the size of the crowd kept getting larger and larger.

It started to get unnerving because of the recent racial unrest in the country. It was still the early days of the civil rights movement and severe racial tension had become rampant in several major cities and Philadelphia was one of them. The very neighborhood we were driving through had been the scene of major riot a few months earlier where three hundred people were hospitalized. As a sign of the times, only two months later, the massive Watts riots broke out in Los Angeles and over thirty people were killed.

As we drove on the crowds kept getting thicker and thicker. And I kept getting more and more nervous. Generally, I don’t trust big crowds. I had been going to professional basketball games all my life with regular attendance of 10,000 people and I knew how quickly things can get out of hand. It can get ugly in a flash, turning the crowd into a mob. And once it starts, it’s almost impossible to stop.

Traffic had slowed to a crawl and people were everywhere. We had no idea what was going on, but we did know one thing. We were completely exposed—two white, affluent suburban teens sitting in an opened convertible, surrounded by a huge throng of black people. Under the wrong circumstances, we would be sitting ducks.

But at the same time, we noticed something rather unusual. People were everywhere, but it was extremely quiet. In fact, it was almost silent. We were driving down Broad Street, which is a bustling six-lane avenue that runs the entire length of the city, and I don’t think I even heard a horn honk. As we headed south, I noticed that a large, famous church on the left side of the street seemed to be the focus of the crowd. Everyone was walking toward it.

Once we finally got close enough where I could see what was really going on, all of my anxiety immediately vanished and I knew without question that we were safe. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was standing on the church’s front landing, and everyone was staring at him. He wasn’t giving a speech or anything. There wasn’t even a microphone or podium. He was just standing there, standing for what he stood for. And everyone else was standing along with him. The moment was filled with unity, commitment, and nobility and it was absolutely obvious that nothing bad was going to happen.

King had been touring the country, trying to cool everybody out, and had been on a two-day visit to the city. He had just spoken in the church. There wasn’t nearly enough room for everyone, so after he finished, he came out to be with the people who couldn’t get in. By a wonderful twist of fate, we just happened to be driving by at that exact moment and got to witness it first-hand.

As I sat at the kitchen table, I jotted down some quick notes for the essay. The profoundly moving event had only happened a few months earlier and had left an indelible impression on my memory.

We all know that people can have a tremendous effect on each other. But here, just one person had brought out the best in thousands, just by the presence of his immense moral authority. The enormous group of people had become one unified force, and in a very small way, as we crept on by, we were a part of it.

My fear had been that the crowd could have turned angry, putting us in grave danger. But the opposite had happened. As Dr. King stood there, having his silent communion with the thousand people who had enveloped him, to say there was safety in his atmosphere would be putting it mildly. The nobility of the human spirit is truly inspiring.

As I sat at the kitchen table, I finished making my notes and looked over at the door to my father’s office. It was still closed. I decided to use the bathroom. It shared a wall with the office, so maybe I could hear what was going on in there. When I went in, I heard my father and Wally talking but I couldn’t make out their words. Still, from their muffled voices, it was obvious they were into some pretty heavy stuff.

Well, that’s the end of this episode. We’ll pick up the story again in the next one. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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March 4th of 1865 was a truly monumental day in American history. In the afternoon, the second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President took place. And that evening marked the first time that a person of color attended a social event at the White House as an invited guest. It had never happened before. The guest was Frederick Douglass and it very nearly didn’t happen at all.

Now most American citizens knows who Abraham Lincoln was. And although many people have heard of Frederick Douglass, most don’t know all that much about him other than the fact that he was a former slave who became one of the primary leaders of the abolitionist movement, both in America and abroad as well.

Of course, there is much more to the story of Frederick Douglass than this. He was truly a major figure in American history, but his vast stature isn’t what this episode is about. This is about a statement that Douglass once made about Lincoln. We’ll get to that statement a little later, but first let’s lay a little groundwork about these two giants of their time.

Prior to the inauguration Lincoln and Douglass already had a significant, ongoing relationship. It had begun on somewhat tenuous grounds, but quicky grew into one of enormous mutual respect and Lincoln had invited Douglass to attend the inauguration. Douglass, who was one of the most talented writers of the 19th century, has written a vivid description of what happened on that critically eventful day.

“I was present at the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, the 4th of March, 1865,” he wrote. “I felt then that there was murder in the air, and I kept close to his carriage on the way to the Capitol, for I felt that I might see him fall that day. It was a vague presentiment.

“At that time, the Confederate cause was on its last legs as it were, and there was deep feeling. I could feel it in the atmosphere. I did not know exactly what it was, but I just felt as if he might be shot on his way to the Capitol. I cannot refer to any incident, in fact to any expression that I had heard. It was simply a presentiment that Lincoln might fall.

“That day I got right in front of the east portico of the Capitol, listened to his inaugural address, and witnessed his being sworn in by Chief Justice Chase. When he came on the steps, he was accompanied by Vice President Johnson, and looking out in the crowd, he saw me standing nearby and I could see he was pointing me out to Andrew Johnson.

“Mr. Johnson, without knowing perhaps that I saw the movement, looked quite annoyed that his attention should be called in that direction. So, I got a peep into his soul, and as soon as he saw me looking at him, suddenly he assumed rather an amicable expression of countenance. I felt that whatever else that man might be, he was no friend to my people.

“I heard Mr. Lincoln deliver his wonderful address,” Douglass continued. “It was very short. And he answered all the objections raised to his prolonging the war in one sentence. And it was a remarkable sentence. ‘Fondly do we hope, profoundly do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away. Yet if God wills it to continue until all the wealth piled up by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, we will still say, as was said three thousand years ago: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

Douglass was deeply moved by the profound nature of Lincoln’s enlightened perspective and later wrote that his speech sounded more like a sermon than an inaugural address.

Later that evening, the formal ball was held in the White House. Even though the idea of a black man attending a social function at the nation’s Grand Mansion was socially out of the question at the time, Lincoln had invited him anyway. And Douglass was happy to attend.

According to Douglass’s description, “For the first time in my life, and I suppose the first time in any colored man’s life, I attended the reception of President Lincoln on the evening of the inauguration. As I approached the door, I was seized by two policemen and forbidden to enter. I said to them that they were mistaken entirely in what they were doing, that if Mr. Lincoln knew that I was at the door, he would order my admission. And I bolted in by them.

“On the inside. I was taken charge of by two other policemen, to be conducted, as I suppose, to the President. But instead of that, they were conducting me out the window on a plank.

“Oh,” I said. “This will not do, gentleman.” And as a gentleman was passing in, I said to him, “Just say to Mr. Lincoln that Fred Douglas is at the door.”

He rushed in to President Lincoln, and almost in less than half a minute I was invited into the East Room of the White House. A perfect sea of beauty and eloquence too, it was. The ladies were in very fine attire and Mrs. Lincoln was standing there.

“I could not have been more than ten feet from him when Mr. Lincoln saw me. His countenance lighted up and he said in a voice that was heard all around, ‘Here comes my friend Douglas!’”

“As I approached him, he reached out his hand, gave me a cordial shake, and said, ‘Douglass, I saw you in the crowd today listening to my inaugural address. There is no man’s opinion that I value more than yours. What did you think of it?’”

“Mr. Lincoln,” I said. “I cannot stop here to talk with you, as there are thousands waiting to shake you by the hand.”

“But,” he said again. ‘What did you think of it?’”

“I said, “Mr. Lincoln, it was a sacred effort,” and then I walked off.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said. That was the last time I saw him to speak with him.”

So, instead of being barred entrance or thrown out, Douglass was welcomed as an honored guest by the smiling, 6-foot 6 tall giant, the center of attention of the entire room, who loudly and happily greeted him as a dear old friend. It was indeed a transformative moment and later Douglass wrote, “Now in this multitude of the elite of the land, I felt myself a man among men.”

That night was a truly historic event in the East Room, but tragically, just forty-six days later, Lincoln’s body was lying in state in the very same chamber, the result of the first assassination of an American president. Following the assassination, Douglass’s reaction to his friend’s death was simple, but profound. He stated publicly that it was a “day for silence and meditation: for grief and tears.”

Over the years, Douglass continued to express many of his deeper sentiments about Lincoln, culminating in the keynote address he made in Washington DC at the dedication of a statue in Lincoln’s honor on April 14, 1876, the eleventh anniversary of the assassination.

In that speech he said, “We are here to express… our grateful sense of the vast, high and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.

“He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent. Though strong he was gentle.”

Then, about the issue of the abolition of slavery, Douglass offered a keen insight that he was in a most unique position to make. “Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent. But measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment that as a statesman he was bound to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined.”

And he continued, with a profound sense of how instrumental Lincoln would have been to the betterment of the freed slaves, as well as the rest of the black population throughout the nation when he added, “Whosoever else may have cause to mourn the loss of Abraham Lincoln, to the colored people of the country his death is an unspeakable calamity.”

He went on, “In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln, I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. He was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a state where there were black laws.

Then he concluded, “I account partially for his kindness to me because of the similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest round of the ladder.”

And this is quite true because they were both anomalies of their time. Lincoln, the esteemed and revered president, was born and raised in a one-room log cabin in the middle of the wilderness and had less than a year of formal schooling. And Douglass, a truly iconic human rights leader of global stature, as well as an internationally respected writer, publisher and orator, had endured an incredibly brutal life of slavery until he was able to escape at age twenty. And he acquired his vast intelligence completely on his own, against nearly insurmountable obstacles. So, the two men had defied all odds to achieve their lofty positions. And they both knew it about each other.

Then Douglass took it a step deeper when he wrote, “There was another feeling that I had with reference to him, and that was that while in his presence I felt I was in the presence of a very great man, as great as the greatest. I felt as though I could go and put my hand on him if I wanted to, to put my hand on his shoulder. Of course, I did not do it, but I felt that I could. I felt as though I was in the presence of a big brother. There was safety in his atmosphere.”

It was that last line that always got me and this is what I alluded to at the beginning of this episode. Let’s take a closer look at it.

“There was safety in his atmosphere,” he wrote. What an incredibly powerful idea, especially coming from Frederick Douglass, who was in his day, one of the most hated people in the entire South. And many in the North didn’t like him too much either.

This had been the darkest hour in American history, with almost six hundred and twenty thousand US soldiers killing each other over the course of the war which lasted four years, almost to the day. There was still a large and vicious group of rebels who would have loved to see him killed, or at least returned to slavery. Still in this truly dangerous time, Douglass expressed that he felt safe around Lincoln, that there was safety in his atmosphere.

The lofty statement seems to go far beyond the idea of just plain power. You can be around a lot of extremely powerful people and never feel safe with them. Quite the contrary, there is often danger around those whose lust for power is just a disguise that’s masking a deeper weakness of character.

Lincoln was different. At the time he was arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but look at the amiable, “big brother” picture Douglass painted of him. The former fugitive slave felt both comfortable and safe when he was near.

To me, this seems to bespeak the idea of something greater, that the person of power is also a manifestation of the most noble characteristics of humanity, and the feelings around such a person emanate from a much deeper, inner place, which elevates the entire atmosphere.

It seems that the next logical question would be - do we each have a higher part of our own inner nature that can exude this elevated atmosphere of true safety, both within ourselves as well as on the outside? Saints and sages throughout the ages have assured us that we do and that we can absolutely aspire to reach it. That’s an idea that has always appealed to me as a great thing to believe in, and an even better one to know.

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

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After this episode, our “Stop Making Yourself Miserable Podcast” will be taking a Holiday/Winter hiatus. We will begin again sometime in late January.

As I have mentioned in a few previous episodes, I am busy working on The Higher Mind Training, and in particular, I am adapting it for use in a halfway house for people suffering with alcohol and drug addiction. The training for this facility should be in place by late-February.

As I am working on it, I am looking through some of the notes that I have made over the years, and I have found a few phrases that I have written that I would like to share with you at this time. Like a lot of other people who are involved with writing, I always keep a file opened where I can drop in random thoughts that occur to me as I am working. They don’t necessarily relate to anything in particular. If something occurs to me that I feel I should keep, I just write it down and put it away, possibly for later use and possibly not.

So, before we take our hiatus, here are a few of those random thoughts for your consideration See if they do anything for you.

The first one is, “Follow the heart, not the herd.” In this, I was pondering how powerful the herd mentality factor is for us. I remember watching a documentary that featured a holocaust survivor. He told a story about something that happened to him during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.

An enormous rally was going to be held with 100,000 Nazi loyalists. They had gathered up about a hundred Jews and seated them near the podium so Hitler could vilify them and spew hatred on them during his speech to the crowd. They were instructed to remain in their seats throughout the entire proceeding and they would be taken out at the end.

At one point, the gate to the stadium opened and Hitler came riding into the stadium in an opened car. Instantaneously, everyone rose, giving the Nazi Salute and started chanting, “Heil Hitler.” The survivor then said that the energy of the crowd was so powerful that it took every bit of will power that he had within him not to stand up, give the Nazi salute and join the crowd in chanting “Heil Hitler.” I never forgot that story because I had spent my entire childhood at basketball games along with 10,000 fans and I was all too familiar with the power of a crowd.

For some reason, for the most part, we humans basically like to be just like everyone else. But as the Nazi rally story illustrated, the feeling of safety in numbers is often what it seems to be.

Around the same time, I had written myself a note that pretty much speaks for itself: “Get your information from the horse’s mouth, not from the horse’s ass.” As the Gershwin brothers wrote, “Nice work if you can get it.”

Then, in a completely different framework I noted, “A quick look can reveal a treasure.” This is especially true if you ever get the opportunity to be in the presence of someone who has attained a truly elevated state of consciousness. A lot of times they don’t need to say a word to lift you up a little, or a lot. Just a look will do it.

Two things I had jotted down about moving along the journey of life. The first one was, “To do anything, you have to do something.” Sometimes it can be very small, but everything takes effort and even if it’s just something small, something big often starts from something small. But small or large, the step of taking action has to happen.

Still, it often takes persistence. You just have to keep going, so I had written, “In the long run, it’s a long walk.” Guts or glory, up down or sideways, you just have to stick with it.

Along those lines, here’s an anonymous quote that I’ve always admired called, “Press On.”

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence, it starts. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

And when it comes to going through inner obstacles that we might encounter, I was focusing on the idea of inner growth and the thought occurred to me that “It’s not so much a matter of going through it that counts. It’s more a matter of growing through it.”

But along with growth comes the necessity of practice and I noted, “The practical becomes impractical if it’s not practiced.

So, to wrap things up, I wish you a very happy and healthy Holiday Season, and I am going to leave you with two of my favorite quotes from two of my most treasured influences.

When it comes to giving Parmahansa Yogananda gave us this advice, “Spread rays of hope in the hearts of the poor and forsaken. Kindle courage in the hearts of the despondent. And light a new strength in the hearts of those who think they are failures.” Now, that’s quite a high bar for giving, but for me, it certainly seems like something to aspire to.

And Prem Rawat, who is a master of the art of expressing a profound truth in a rather understated way once said, “Within you resides the essence of every single scripture ever written.” That one always gets me.

So, this will be the end of this episode and the beginning of our holiday/winter hiatus. We’ll pick it up again in late January. As always, keep your eyes mind and hearts opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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April of 1965 was a relatively uneventful month in western culture. If you research it, you’ll see that nothing particularly critical happened during those thirty days. However, even though it never showed up on any of society’s radar screens, one event did take place that was to change the entire world. John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles went to dinner at their dentist’s home and unbeknownst to them, the dentist slipped LSD into their after-dinner coffee.

They had no idea of what was going to happen, but according to George, although things were a little rocky at first, it turned out to be quite a night. As he put it, "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience within twelve hours. It changed me, and there was no way back to what I was before."

He also said that as he was coming back to normal consciousness, a thought occurred to him that had no connection to any part of his life and he had no idea where it had come from. This thought, that came to him completely out of nowhere, was simply this: “The yogis of the Himalayas.”

Now LSD was relatively new and still legal at the time. An extremely powerful psychedelic drug, many famous celebrities had taken it and had profound experiences including Carey Grant, Groucho Marx and Jack Nicholson, along with renowned Harvard professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. And speaking of Harvard, there are still rumors that JFK took acid several times as well, with his longtime companion Mary Meyers. Timothy Leary hints that he played a key role in those events in his autobiography, “Flashbacks.” Again, it was still legal and there were no prohibitions to it.

Anyway, a few months after the incident in their dentist’s home, whether or not it had anything to do with his thought of the “yogis of the Himalayas,” George introduced Indian music to pop culture when he played the sitar on the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood.”

This was the early beginnings of a revolutionary change in popular culture as the band began to introduce a new genre that would eventually become known as psychedelic music. Not only did their sound change, but their songs took on a new depth of meaning, with primary examples being “Nowhere Man,” “The Word,” “In My Life,” “Elanor Rigby,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Within You, Without You.” They were all part of a remarkable string of three groundbreaking albums: “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” and “Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Now, it’s nearly sixty years later and all of these songs are looked at as just great classics. But back then, they were incredibly revolutionary and the Beatles themselves were even more so. Along with their radical appearance and their welcoming approach to marijuana, psychedelics and the expansion of consciousness, they were at the forefront of an astounding cultural shift that would radically alter not only England and America, but every other country throughout the entire civilized world.

And it all went to the next level in February of 1968 when the Beatles travelled to India to study meditation with a guru named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And as usual, they weren’t shy about telling the world what they were doing. The massive publicity surrounding their trip created a major sensation that rocked the whole world.

Now as earthshattering as all this was, it wasn’t the first time that Indian spirituality, with its reverence for the expansion of consciousness, had made a profound impact on western culture. Far from it. In one way or another it had been going on since the 1500s.

Unfortunately, it came about as the result of a rather brutal societal development. Certain European nations established superior military might and mixed it with ever-increasing naval reach. And with an appalling display of the greed-driven, incredibly destructive delusion that “might makes right,” they began to conquer and subjugate as much of the world as they could get their hands on. They would routinely invade a foreign country, enslave its people and plunder their resources. All in the name of civilization, of course.

A prime example of this arrogance of power is what England did to India. Although the British had been in the land for centuries, they finally conquered it completely in 1876. Queen Victoria became the Empress of India and the exploitation of the country moved into full swing.

But something unexpected happened as well and it became an example of something extremely positive resulting from something extremely negative. Along with all the horrors that came with the conquest, an inevitable interaction of Indian and English cultures got underway along with it. And nowhere was the distinction between the two cultures more evident than in the realm of religion.

The difference was somewhat stark. Western religion was basically a societal matter, where people would gather at houses of worship, sing songs of praise to God and hear sermons from clerical leaders that promoted higher ethical, moral and religious standards.

In India it was a little different. Their religion had been around for over five thousand years and was the oldest in the world. And although it did have many similarities to its Western counterpart, it had some significant differences as well. For instance, according to its teachings, not only is there a God, but rather than being far away and unapproachable, it is actually within you right now and is completely accessible to you at all times.

If you wish, you can evolve your consciousness to the point where you can become enlightened and actually merge with it. So, you didn’t have to die to go to heaven, you could do it while you were still alive. In fact, doing it was the actual point of being alive.

And also, given the idea that it was possible to reach this higher level of consciousness, rather than having clerics who could only give speeches and sermons about the higher realms, they had beings who had supposedly attained the enlightened state and were talking about something they actually knew, rather than something they just believed. And not only that, they had the ability to show you how to get there as well.

They called these teachers “Swamis,” “Yogi’s” or “Gurus,” which was an interesting term word because “Gu” means darkness and “Ru” means light, and a true spiritual guru can take you from inner darkness to inner light. And this isn’t supposed to be just a bunch of words and concepts, it’s experiential. In other words, if you were thirsty, you weren’t confined to just hearing stories about people who had gotten to drink water, you could actually drink it yourself.

Now a couple of these Gurus had made it to the United States over the years and their impact had been extremely significant. The first one was named Swami Vivekananda who travelled to Chicago in 1893 to address the First World’s Parliament of Religion.

The Swami created quite a stir and his talk was, in a word, a sensation. The attendees to the conference felt they had heard someone address them who was in a uniquely elevated state and seemed to be speaking about God consciousness from direct personal experience. And there was something extraordinary about being in his physical presence. It wasn’t just uplifting and inspiring. It was actually elevating. It was palpable. Indeed, one of the delegates, Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard University told him, "To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun about its right to shine."

After his ground-breaking appearance in Chicago, Vivekananda’s reputation grew rapidly and he travelled to New York and gave lectures to sold out auditoriums, where people waited for hours to buy tickets. One night, New York’s most prominent actress Sarah Barnhart held a party for him and introduced him to her friends Nicola Tesla and Mark Twain. His vast influence spread from there and even though he passed away in 1902, at the age of just 39, he continues to be a renowned and deeply respected authority on inner growth.

Then in 1920 another Guru from India arrived in America, this time in Boston, in the form of Parmahansa Yogananda. He was also a powerful presence whose impact quickly grew to the extent that he was able to reach millions of people, encouraging them to evolve and grow their inner consciousness. As his life work evolved, along with remaining a powerful force in India, he became a major phenomenon throughout the West and indeed the entire world.

Not only was Yogananda a magnetic speaker, he was also a brilliant and profoundly prolific writer. He went on to establish a major center for mediation in Los Angeles and many local residents of the area studied his work. The internationally esteemed author W. Summerset Maugham cited him as a primary inspiration for his 1944 masterpiece novel, “The Razor’s Edge,” which is about one American man’s search for enlightenment following his harrowing experiences in World War I. In 1946, it became a well-loved motion picture as well.

The next truly major interaction between India and Western culture happened when Mahatma Gandhi visited London at the end of 1931, and this was quite a phenomenon.

Although Gandhi was the head statesman of his country, when he came to England, instead of wearing formal western clothing, he only wore his simple handwoven Indian cloth and sandals. He always looked like he was walking through the blistering heat of India, although he was in the freezing temperatures of England, with its shivering rains. Wherever he went, he was mobbed by massive crowds who were in awe of his presence. Not only were his words inspiring, he also had a piercing wit. As he was about to depart, a reporter asked him, “What do you think about Western Civilization. “I think it would be a good idea,” he shot back.

A few years later in August of 1935 Gandhi met with Parmahansa Yogananda, who initiated him into the practice of Kriya Yoga, an advanced form of meditation. But to Gandhi, the ground breaking elevation of consciousness had applications that were societal as well as individual. And in response to the increasingly harsh British domination of India, Gandhi began to institute a process he called “Satagraha” which means “holding onto truth,” with its emphasis on non-violent civil disobedience.

Although it was a slow and difficult process, it was extremely powerful and twelve years later, the British were driven out of India with relatively little violence. It was a truly incredible example of the application of evolved consciousness to resolve a cruel societal injustice.

But that wasn’t the end of it. In the late forties, an African-American theology student at Morehouse College in Atlanta was introduced to these remarkable works of the Mahatma. Intrigued, the student began a serious study of Gandhi and the unique way he had been able to terminate British rule

Upon his graduation, that student was ordained to the Baptist ministry at the age of 19. And of course, that student was Martin Luther King, Jr. As his activities in the civil rights movement began to evolve and grow, he became more interested in the idea of applying Gandhi’s methods to break the chains of racial oppression that were so overwhelmingly prevalent throughout the land.

It all culminated on February 3, 1959 when King and his wife Coretta, embarked on a three-month trip to India to get more familiar with Gandhi’s approach. “To other countries I may go as a tourist,” he said upon his arrival. “But to India I come as a pilgrim.”

During his stay, his study of Gandhi deepened considerably. As an ordained minister, he was taken with Gandhi’s profound spiritual understandings and in his closing remarks he said, “In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.”

Dr. King returned to the United States and anyone remotely familiar with American history knows the extraordinary story of what happened next.

So, that unlikely acid trip that ended with George Harrison’s mysterious inner reflection about the Yogis of the Himalayas began yet another major chapter in the story of how the evolution of consciousness has changed the world. And changed it for the better.

And even though a lot of the advances that happened came about as a result of some terrible cruelty, the truth is, the negativity had quite a silver lining. And for me, it’s always important to remember that the only reason there ever is a silver lining, is because of the powerful light that is right behind those dark clouds.

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

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As I mentioned in a few previous episodes, from the age of six through thirteen, I was given a rather extensive religious education, primarily in Judaism, with a focus on the Orthodox version. During those years, I was averaging about ten hours of training a week and as you can imagine, I got exposed to quite a bit of material.

It was long ago and as you can also imagine; I’ve forgotten most of it. But among the ones I remember, there was one story that has stayed with me simply because of the way it ended. I always thought it was a Jewish story because we studied it in a class on rabbinical commentary, but I found out later that the story is also told in a lot of Christian traditions as well. Of course, the Jewish one is about a rabbi and the Christian one is about a priest.

Anyway, according to the version I heard, it was the late Middle Ages and there was a rabbi in a bustling city who never had any money, ever. Absolutely none. He was married with a family and he was so poor that he could barely put food on the table. One night, during hisprayers before bed, with deep sincerity, he begged God for financial help.

The next morning when he woke up, there was something that looked like the leg of a table, lying on the floor of his room. When he examined it, to his amazement, it seemed like it was made from solid gold. He was overwhelmed by what seemed to be the abundant answer to his prayer and was sure he could sell it for enough money that would support him and his family for quite some time.

That day, he found a gold dealer in town who was very interested in buying it. They made an appointment for him to bring it in the following day. When he returned home, he hid the leg in a remote closet in his home. He was overwhelmingly pleased, but that night when he went to sleep, he had a dream that was more vivid than any he had ever had before.

He was in a magnificent building and was told that he had reached a rarified level of religious understanding and was being admitted to a special class of students where he would be taught some of the most important understandings that would lead him to the state where he would be able to behold and realize the beatific glory of God.

The class was held in a special room where each student was given a solid gold, three-legged table to be able to write down the arcane understandings from the teachings. Each leg was symbolic. One represented the teacher; another represented the student and the third represented the knowledge to be taught. When he was escorted to his place, to his shock, his writing table was lying on its side on the floor because it was missing one leg.

He was told that the leg on his table had been removed and sent to him on earth in response to his prayer for financial help. It was the leg of knowledge and he could stay and listen to the teachings, but he would not be able to retain any of it because he had no writing surface to work with.

In an immediate flash of clarity, he prayed to have the leg removed from his home on earth and put back onto his writing table so that he would be able to retain the knowledge that was about to be taught.

He closed his eyes and felt a powerful sense of connection to the Higher Power and everything dissolved into a comforting, all-encompassing white light. He then opened his eyes and realized that he had been asleep and having a dream. It was morning and he immediately rushed to the closet where he had hidden the golden table leg. To his shock, as well as his profound relief, the leg was gone. It had unexplainably disappeared during the night.

As our teacher ended the story, he gave a rabbinical explanation that whether you’re rich or poor, all the happenstances of earth life are meaningless compared to the value of gaining true knowledge of the higher dimensions. This was a fairly standard idea that I had heard many times before, but then he added an additional concept that I had never heard before. He said that according to the rabbis, the disappearance of the golden leg was more miraculous than its appearance because it is more difficult to undo something than it is to do it.

Now I was pretty young then, but something about that idea really got to me and slipped into a “for future use” file in my mind. Then, about twenty years later, as I was studying the evolution of consciousness, I came upon a concept that opened that file up again.

I was starting to understand the idea that as human beings, there are basically only three things that we can do. We have three spheres of activity open to us. We can think. We can speak. And we can act. And although they may all be manifestations of the same inner feeling; they produce very different results. Let’s take a quick look at all three of them, but in the light of the idea that it is more difficult to undo something than it is to do it.

In this regard, thinking is the easiest to undo because we each inhabit our own mental world completely by ourselves. You can think anything you want and the only person who ever knows about it is you, unless and until you tell someone else.

Now, we each think about fifty thousand thoughts a day, with a vast majority of them being negative and repetitive. Even though we may not be aware that we’re doing it, we just keep repeating the same negative thought patterns over and over again.

Still, we all have some great thoughts, noble sentiments of higher understandings, but speaking just for myself, a lot of them are pretty terrible. I mean some can be revolutionary, but many are just plain revolting. I used to feel pretty bad about it, but Bob Dylan made me feel a little better when he finished his 1965 classic song, “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” with the line, “If my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.”

I guess we’re all in the same boat on this, but what’s nice is that we never have to give outward expression to our thoughts unless we choose to. So, it isn’t difficult to undo a bad thought because as long as they stay in our own thought world, they have no outward effect.

But then, we come to the activity of speaking, which is an entirely different matter. It usually takes some maturity before we start to understand that we have the power to choose whether or not to speak. It’s completely our choice. You don’t have to say anything, but once you do, it’s important to understand that you can’t unsay it.

You can apologize for what you said and make an effort to make amends. You can try a million different things, but the truth is, once the words have been spoken, they can’t be unspoken. It’s not like water, where you can freeze it into ice and then melt it back into water. No, what you’ve said can never be unsaid. The impression has been made and the results will fall where they may.

Here’s an example that makes the point. Suppose you are speaking with someone and they say something that really makes you angry. The thought arises in your mind, “How dare you talk to me like that! I ought to slap your face!” Now if you keep the thought to yourself, no harm done. But suppose you blurt it out. The thought becomes the spoken word. It has left the confines of your own mind and gone into the mind of the one who has heard you. Now, one way or another, big or small, major or minor, you have to deal with what you’ve done.

It’s not to say it can’t be rectified, but after a lot of experience with this, you learn to be more conscious of what you allow to come out of your mouth. Here are two quick thoughts about it. While an ancient text was discussing what kind of food you should eat it added, “Remember, it isn’t what goes into your mouth, but what come out of it that will defile you.”

And the second is the famous quote that is attributed to both Lincoln and Mark Twain, that sums it up this way. “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Now let’s take it one step further and go from the world of speech to the world of action. Ancient Wisdom always cautions us that this is a truly major step.

Let’s look at the previous example, but take it to the next level. Suppose you get angry and think the same thought – “How dare you talk to me like that.” But instead of thinking or even saying, “I ought to slap your face,” you actually do slap the other person’s face. Now you’re in a completely different world. We all know this and it’s really not necessary here to go into all the horrible things that can happen. But wars have been fought and millions of people have died from negative thoughts and feelings that have become words and deeds.

So, in closing, this all points to a very simple, but powerful point. Our thoughts and our feelings are entirely our own until we choose to express them. And once they are expressed, they can never be unexpressed. We can do what we can with the results of the expression, but we can’t un-express it. And in retrospect we often see that it is our words and our deeds that are not rooted in our higher intelligence that are the roots of all our problems in the world.

So, it’s always a better course to consider them carefully and consciously before we let them out. So much trouble can be avoided by doing this. Indeed, the great teachers of all times have taught that there is no need for us to let our doing become our undoing. And common sense says that the best way to solve a problem is to not create it in the first place.

Well, that will be the end of this episode. Again, these podcasts don’t present teachings, they’re just designed to offer you points of view for your consideration. If they work for you, then work with them. And if not, no harm, no foul. Once again, keep your eyes mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, we looked at some of the basics of the Higher Mind Training and we observed that our intelligence can be divided into two components – our Ordinary Mind and our Higher Mind.

We also looked at the famous NASA study from the early 90s that showed that an astounding 98% of us are born geniuses and we stay that way through the age of five. Then it starts to wane and by adulthood, we have only about 2% left. But it’s not gone for good. It’s still within us. We just become overidentified with the makeup of our Ordinary Mind, which for many of us has become negatively tainted, with significant Self-Sabotage.

Now, let’s go back to that genius self of ours: Our Higher Mind. This is actually our real self, our authentic identity, and it’s not based on our identifications at all. This is about our being, not about our doing.

Our identifications, like the roles we play in the world, our likes and dislikes, our concepts, opinions and ideas we have about ourselves and others, are all products of our neural template, which is in the domain of our Ordinary Mind. And don’t forget, our Higher Mind existed before our Ordinary Mind even began to form, and it’s is far more powerful.

Here is a simple and easy way to get in touch with a very basic part of it. What happens if you put an adult human being in a room with a very young baby and it’s just the two of them, alone together. No one else in the room - just the two of them. And by the way, the baby doesn’t even need to be a human. A puppy or a kitten would be just fine. If the baby is happy and content, what do you think is going to happen?

Well, sooner or later, no matter how hard-boiled the adult may be, it’s going to be affected by the sweetness and innocence of the baby. And eventually it will start interacting with it. But it will do it in a very specific way. Its voice will become higher and softer, with a happy, lilting sing-song pattern to it. The person’s facial expressions and overall demeanor will become kinder and gentler, as a feeling of true caring comes over it.

Even if it lasts for a very short time, there are a few things about this phenomenon that are important to understand. First, it’s been proven that this is universal human behavior, spanning all times, cultures and geographic locations. If they do not have to be bonded to negative role identifications, all humans behave this way. And second, this behavior is neither taught nor learned. It is an instinctual component of this remarkable side of our inner awareness, which is our true nature.

We’ve all experienced this and we all know that it’s true. It’s so normal and natural that we take it for granted. But what does it tell us about ourselves? It actually tells us quite a bit. Authorities from the wisdom of the ages through to advanced neuroscience say that it is indicative of the very essence of our being, which, to use a five-thousand-year-old Sanskrit term, exists in a permanent state called, “Sat Chit Anand,” which simply means – truth, consciousness and bliss. According to them, this is the essence of our consciousness.

In the training, this is what we call our Higher Mind. Now, rather than calling it the Higher Mind, many traditions just call it “the heart” because it’s the home of love, compassion, kindness, gratitude and appreciation, along with countless other noble human traits we all admire. Indeed, this is the home of what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature and all of our highest and best human traits are there.

And from the perspective of our intelligence, this is where our intuition, our wisdom and our logic work hand in hand together, forming the basis of the genius side of our awareness. And whether we’re in touch with it or not, like our breath, it’s always there.

So, to sum things up so far, our intelligence has two parts, our Ordinary Mind and our Higher Mind. The negative aspect of our Ordinary Mind is the root of self-sabotage, the source of all our suffering and pain. And our Higher Mind, which is our genius consciousness, is the source of all our happiness and joy. The road of life lies ahead of us. So, which way are we going? Well, obviously, it all depends on who’s behind the wheel.

Prem Rawat, a renowned authority on human potential, as well as a UN global peace ambassador, had a great analogy for this. He once said that if you’re standing at a light on a street corner and you see a man driving a station wagon and he’s got a cage in the back with a monkey in it, you don’t think anything of it. It’s probably some guy from the zoo or something.

But if you see a station wagon going by with a monkey driving the car, and there’s a cage in the back with a human being in it, you’re going to call the police immediately because sooner or later, there’ going to be a major problem.

In the same way, due to our over identification with the negative aspects of our Ordinary Mind, we often find ourselves stuck in a cage. Now although this is a simple, rather comical analogy, it runs far deeper than it may seem. Life would be very different for us, both individually and as a society, if we can put the Higher Mind behind the wheel. Again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the monkey, which represents our Ordinary Mind. We need it to survive. It should be cared for and made happy. But it just should never be driving the car.

The idea is to re-connect with our Higher Mind and let it start driving the vehicle of our life. At that point, we are able see things from a higher perspective, where we can turn our obstacles and hurdles into stepping stones leading to our larger self, which is our greater potential.

Even though it may be a gradual process, everything changes because unlike Our Ordinary mind which is a purely finite tool, our Higher Mind has the capacity to experience the infinite source of creation and all the good that it inspires.

Here’s an easy way to picture this infinite nature of our Higher Mind. First, consider how much real suffering and misery can you stand? The answer is – as little as possible. We just plain don’t like to suffer. We may feel we need to for some unfortunate reason, but we really don’t like it. On the deepest level, it just doesn’t feel right. It’s not in line with our inborn inner instincts.

On the other hand, how much true happiness and joy can you stand? The answer is that it’s limitless. It’s infinite. We can take as much real happiness and joy as we can ever have. And even if we become unable to do the things that bring us joy, we still keep the innate ability to enjoy ourselves. That never leaves us. Our ability to be happy always stays within our consciousness and we always have an infinite capacity to receive it.

Now this may not sound like much, but the fact that we have an infinite capacity for happiness, contentment and joy is a powerfully significant fact. Can you imagine really connecting with this deeper part of ourselves? Can you imagine living in that level of perception, where you can experience infinite clarity, elevate your problems into learning experiences and transform your suffering into wisdom and your pain into joy? Wow.

So how can we make this change? The first thing to understand is that it is absolutely critical to use the right tool for the right job. We all know this. You don’t scrub your floor with a toothbrush and you don’t wash your car with steel wool. In the same way, you don’t want your Ordinary Mind to be in the primary position of running your life. That’s just not what it was made for. It’s far too limited and unstable. Instead, we want to put our Higher Mind in the lead position and harmonize our entire intelligence behind it.

But you want to be careful here because there’s a high likelihood that the Ordinary Mind has become habituated to control and we don’t want to create a war between our own states of consciousness, because whenever you’re at war with yourself, one way or another, you always lose.

Now, there are ways to do this and that is the essence of the Higher Mind Training. If we gently, but continuously prioritize our Higher Mind, we can create a United States of Consciousness, which is the ideal way for our awareness to function. Our intelligence becomes harmonically balanced and it’s finally in tune with itself. And we all know how important being in tune is. You can have the greatest orchestra in the world, with the best musicians playing the finest instruments, but if they’re out of tune, the only sound they’re ever going to make is just plain noise.

But, in the state of harmonized intelligence, there is no limit to the beauty and majesty we can create, both for ourselves and for the world around us. The prison of self-sabotage becomes the freedom of self-empowerment and this changes everything. Your intelligence is no longer out of alignment and its former state of static interference evolves into the pristine clarity of harmonic congruence. Oh, sure, you still may run into challenges, but now you’re calm, focused and facing the target. Your bow is drawn and your quiver is full of the sharpest of arrows.

Well, this is all certainly a lot to consider, so let’s finish the episode here. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As I mentioned in an earlier episode, I am currently in the process of producing an awareness enhancement program called the Higher Mind Training. Its goal is to provide everyday people with some simple understandings and techniques that they can use to expand their consciousness, enabling them to realize their highest potential as a human being, which is far more than we currently know.

This is great for people who are facing significant life challenges, helping them grow from the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment. But it’s also perfect for people who would just like to experience a happier and more fulfilling life.

In response to continuing requests for more information about the training, in this episode, I am going to give a quick overview of some of its basic understandings. Now please don’t be put off if that makes it sound stuffy or like it’s some kind of hard work. It’s really quite the opposite.

For starters, whenever you consider expanding your awareness, there are two basic things to keep in mind. First, it’s a good idea to adopt what’s called, the Beginner’s Mind, which just means that you start out with a clean slate. Afterall, common sense tells us that you have to empty your cup before you can fill it. And it doesn’t hurt to give it a good cleaning either.

So, in that regard, whether we’re willing to admit it or not, we all think we know a lot. It just comes along with the kind of society we live in. But Thomas Edison, who was one of the greatest inventors of all time, expressed a slightly different opinion about our wisdom when he said, “We don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything.” For me, hearing something like that from someone like him, always helps me keep an opened mind, especially about levels of understanding that are probably far beyond what I think I know.

The second thing to keep in mind is that modern neuroscience teaches that our brain has an amazing capacity to grow and change, which it does every single minute of every single day. And that brings up a critical point: Just because your mind is in one place right now, it doesn’t have to stay there. It’s not stuck. It’s never stuck. It’s far more fluid than we know. Which means you absolutely do have the ability to change it for the better, no matter where it may be right now.

So as far as an overview of the training is concerned, let’s step back a little bit and start with some basics about who we are. Human Beings are just one of about five billion species that have evolved on earth since life began. And of those five billion species, over 97 percent of them have become extinct. Finished. Caput. Gone for good. Which brings up an obvious question – Why not us? How were we able to survive?

After all, we’re pretty puny creatures and we’re very low on the food chain. We’re not the biggest, not the strongest, not the fastest. We can’t climb very high and we can’t fly at all. We should have never made it through the sheer brutality of survival of the fittest. Yet we did. It was a one in a billion shot, but we made it. And the big question is how did we do it? What gave us the power to beat these impossible odds?

The obvious answer is our incredible human brain! Not only is it the one element that separates us from the rest of creation, but over 3.7 billion years, it is the single greatest biological evolution of all time. And think about this – you have one of your own, all to yourself. It’s all yours.

And if you want to make the most of it, the first thing to understand is that it has two basic parts - our ordinary mind and our higher mind. Although we each have just one incredible consciousness within us, it’s easiest to understand it by dividing it in these two distinct parts.

Now here’s an intriguing question for you. What do you think the odds are that you were born a genius? Whenever I ask people this question, almost everyone thinks that the odds that they were born a genius are slim to none. But in a famous study done by NASA in the late ‘90s, it was their conclusion that an astounding 97% of us were born geniuses.

Isn’t that amazing? And think about this – they say you remained a genius through the age of five. Actually, if you ever get to be around a child who is at that magical age, they really are in an extraordinary state of consciousness. The speed of their learning ability is astounding, their world is filled with wonder, and unless they are being bothered by something external, they are basically happy. Indeed, they smile about 400 times a day, and they laugh heartily about eight times an hour.

So, according to the NASA study, 97% of us were born there. And the reason we lived in this incredible state of awareness is that our consciousness was composed primarily of our Higher Mind. But then, after age five, our ordinary mind, began to take over.

By way of some background about the make-up of our brain, it has about 86 billion neurons that fire together constantly, and as the saying goes, neurons that fire together, wire together. They create about a hundred trillion neural pathways, which form a vast neural grid called our neural template.

This template is an incredibly complex device and it’s filled with everything that makes us who we are in the world, all of our concepts, emotions, thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, hopes, dreams and memories, and on and on. We end up filtering everything that happens to us through this vast neural network, and that filtering shapes our entire life experience. We’ve each been basically living through this filter of our neural template since age five.

Now the ordinary mind is truly an extraordinary tool, we could never survive without it and we can never grasp how much intelligence we each have within us at this very moment. Indeed, it is estimated that it would take the most advanced computer in the world about 45 hours to do what our brain does in just one second. But it can also be a real double-edged sword, which means it cuts both ways. And it is absolutely critical to understand this about it.

For example, our Ordinary Mind is responsible for making improvements in every aspect of our life, but to accomplish this, a key part of its nature is that it is always dissatisfied. No matter what’s going on, it will always be looking for something better, something more. Innate dissatisfaction is one of the key characteristics that makes it so effective. Without it, we’d still be living in caves and every advancement in our world, from the wheel to the computer and beyond, is a result of it.

But the negative side of this can be brutal. Being in a state of constant dissatisfaction can darken your entire life. You become disappointed with everything, including yourself. This can become extremely destructive, bleeding the very life out of you and turning your world into a prison of endless frustration.

The ordinary mind is also deeply connected to our limbic system, which is responsible for our safety and security. In this area, on one level, it’s in a state of constant surveillance, always on the lookout for threat, and we couldn’t survive without it. But its default signal is fear, and its general tendency is to catastrophize problems, making a mountain out of every molehill on every issue. Now fear can easily begin dominating our entire awareness, bringing devastating results to our health and well-being. Ironically, if unchecked, the very part of our mind that is responsible for protecting our life can end up ruining it.

And one other thing about our ordinary mind. It cannot operate in present time. It is always ruminating over events that happened in the past or hypothesizing about what may happen in the future. Or it’s involved in general fantasizing. But it can’t exist in present time. When we’re in present time, we’re in a different state of consciousness. Now this can be quite problematic because our real life only happens in the present. We really live just one breath at a time and the only time you are ever actually breathing is now.

This dichotomy between the ordinary mind and our existence in real life can be the source of enormous trouble for us. We don’t have time to go into depth about that here, but the primary problems begin when the ordinary mind becomes overly programmed with negative impressions and misunderstandings.

And this brings us to another famous study about the mind that doesn’t bode particularly well for us. It’s estimated that the average person thinks about 50,000 thoughts a day and over 80 percent of them are negative in nature and they are also repetitive, which means we are programming in about 40,000 negative impressions into our minds every day. We’re just basically repeating them again and again and again, which just makes them stronger.

After a while, the negative self-talk becomes just too much. When its negative aspects become overly dominant, the mentality of our ordinary mind degenerates into Self-Sabotage, and you become your own worst enemy. No matter what objective you seek or which method you use, you just keep on defeating yourself at every turn.

Now by mid-childhood, we’ve become overidentified with the make-up of our ordinary mind, this neural template, and this overidentification is the primary cause of most of our psychological pain. Forgetting that it’s just a tool we’ve constructed, we start believing that it is actually who we are, mistaking all of its idiosyncrasies for the make-up of our actual character.

Of course, we don’t have this overidentification with anything else in life. I don’t care how much you love your car, your TV or your cell phone. You never get confused into believing that they’re actually a part of you. But when we’re still in our early years, we’ve become so bonded to the identifications within our neural template that we’ve lost touch with our actual identity.

And so much for our inborn genius. According to NASA, by age 10, we’ve lost about 70% of it. But don’t worry, it’s not gone for good. It’s still there, right where it always is. Remember, we do have another side of our awareness – our higher mind. This is the one we began life with, the one that brightened those magical years we lived in through age five, and this is the one that is still with us today, far more that we realize. Due to a myriad of external factors, we’ve just lost touch with it. But it’s actually closer to us than our own breath.

So, this will be the end of this episode. We’ll get into the make-up and remarkable nature of our higher mind next time. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together for the next one.

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As I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, there have been times during my childhood when I came across a concept or an idea that unexpectedly buried itself deeply within my mind and I’ve gone back to it on a regular basis throughout the course of my life. Each time I reconsider it, I derive more value from it, which makes sense, because I keep seeing it from the new perspective of a different stage of growth.

Something like this happened on the night of November 13th 1959 when I flipped on an episode of The Twilight Zone. For some reason, I often watched the show alone, on a little black and white TV set in the den of our house. I was ten years old; it was over sixty years ago and I still clearly remember that moment in time. Fittingly, it just so happened to be Friday the 13th.

The episode was called “The Lonely,” and it took place in the far distant future, in the year 2046. It begins on a remote asteroid, and you’re told that it’s a prison planet. But it’s more than that. It’s actually solitary confinement.

There is an inmate named Corry, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to fifty years' imprisonment on this desolate little planet, which is completely devoid of all life.

So far, he had been there longer than three years and he is nearly going crazy from the isolation. Four times a year, a spaceship from earth lands and Corry gets to spend a short period of time with the captain and his crew. Captain Allenby brings him three months’ worth of provisions and news from Earth.

These visits are the only time that Corry gets to see anyone at all and he looks forward to them with every fiber of his being. Unfortunately, when the ship lands, Capt. Allenby tells him that they can only stay for fifteen minutes due to a shortage of fuel.

The terrible turn of events is devastating to Corry, but Allenby has even worse news. Corry’s plea for a pardon has been rejected and pardons for murder cases have been suspended indefinitely. The last remnant of hope is gone, at least for the foreseeable future and Corry is completely crushed.

However, over the years, Capt. Allenby has begun to have some compassion for Corry, beginning to believe his story that he had only acted in Self-Defense. He has started bringing Corry things to help him kill the time. A year ago, he had brought him a disassembled antique car with tools and instructions on how to put it together. It had taken Corry nine months to build it and had at least given him something to do.

Now, Allenby tells Corry that he has brought him something else, but he can’t talk about it in front of the crew. Allenby has stolen it for Corry and if it ever got out that he had done it, he would be in serious trouble.

As they are preparing to leave, Allenby has his crew bring over a large crate, placing it before the metal shack where Corry lives. He whispers to Corry not to open the crate until after the ship has departed. Within another few minutes, the ship lifts off and is gone. Overcome with his feelings of intense loneliness and isolation, Corry sits down on the crate, breaks down and begins to sob.

For a few days, he doesn’t even open the crate. It doesn’t matter what kind of distraction Allenby has brought him; he’s just not interested. But finally, he opens the crate and to his surprise, he finds that it is an inanimate robot in the form of a woman.

It has come with an instruction manual which says that the robot’s name is Alicia and it says she is 100% lifelike in appearance and is indistinguishable from a normal, living person. Her brain is currently unprogrammed, but as soon as she is interacted with, she will begin to assume the language and mannerisms of her owner. She has logic and memory and is capable of expressing the full gamut of human emotions.

At first, Corry detests it, rejecting it as a mere machine, whose human-like presence only makes his isolation worse. He lets his frustrations out in a verbal tirade and mirroring his language, the female robot tries to talk to him. This only makes him angrier and every time she tries to speak, he is mean and cruel to her. Finally, in a rage of frustration he screams that he hates her. He can’t stand the sight of her and wishes Allenby had never brought her.

But to his surprise, her face fills with an expression of deep sorrow and her eyes well up with tears. Seeing her deep sadness, Corry suddenly feels like he is with a real, living person, which melts his heart and he begins to accept her.

Now, the scene flashes to a few months later, and not only has Corry accepted Alicia, he has actually fallen in love with her. Her personality mirrors his exactly. She has developed his sense of humor and expresses the same set of opinions as he does. They constantly laugh and have fun. She cooks him his favorite meals. They take walks at night and stare up at the stars. They are even deeply romantic together, and now, with his ideal partner, Corry is enjoying the happiest days of his life.

But unexpectedly, one day, the space ship from earth lands. It hadn’t been scheduled and Capt. Allenby comes bursting out of the ship filled with joy. He has amazing news for Corry. He’s been pardoned and Allenby has come to bring him home to earth right away. But they have to leave immediately. There is a coming meteor shower and they must lift off within 20 minutes to avoid danger.

Corry is standing with Alicia and he is overcome with gratitude and happiness. He puts his arm around her and says they can leave immediately. But Allenby quickly responds, telling him that he can’t bring the robot. There are seven other passengers on the ship and they only have room for Corry and fifteen pounds of belongings. There is no room for any cargo.

Corry breaks into an impassioned explanation about why he must bring Alicia with him. She’s far more than just a robot. She’s not cargo, she’s become his wife. He’s in love with her and he will not leave without her. If he can’t bring her, he won’t leave. He’ll just stay there with her.

Frantic and near insanity, he keeps begging Allenby to help him. Allenby apologizes, but telling Cory that he must do what he must do, he suddenly draws his gun and shoots Alicia in the face. The robot breaks down, malfunctioning and repeating the name "Corry" until it goes silent. The large gap in her face where the bullet hit reveals the metal under her skin and a mass of wire and broken circuitry

Allenby then takes Corry back to the ship, assuring him that the only thing he will be leaving behind is his own loneliness. "I must remember that," Corry says in a daze. "I must remember to keep that in mind."

As the show began to close, the camera pulled away, revealing the desolate landscape of the asteroid with Corry’s metal shack, his antique car and the lifeless form of the robot lying next to it. From that vantage point, it was clearly just one more inanimate object that had helped Corry feel less lonely.

Now, as a ten-year-old, the program really hit me, but I didn’t know why. It was more of a feeling than words. But looking back on it in later years, I could see a lot of levels to it. For starters, it was an excellent piece of drama. You got bonded to the character of Corry. As a convict, he seemed like a reasonably good guy who didn’t deserve the horrible punishment he was suffering, which was too awful to even imagine.

When the robot was introduced, you didn’t know what to make of her. She looked human, a very attractive woman about the same age as Corry. But she didn’t become animated until Corry began to interact with her. Then she became the likable character of Alicia.

After a short time, they fell in love and Corry became incredibly happy with his lot. He didn’t care where he was or that he was alone anymore. He had unexpectedly, found the love of his life, taking him from utter despondency to ultimate happiness. You had to feel good for him.

Then when the ship unexpectedly landed and Allenby gave Corry the incredible news that he had been pardoned, it was cause for tremendous celebration until it became clear that Alicia the had to be left behind. Then when Allenby shot her, it was a total shock. But the gunshot wound revealed not blood and guts, but metal and wire, driving home the fact that the creature was a mere machine.

Again, it was a great piece of drama, but it went far deeper than that. You knew that Corry had been deeply in love, but the big question suddenly became, “In love with what?”

Alicia had been a blank slate when Corry had unpacked her. Then over a short period of time, she took on all of the characteristics of the kind of woman that Corry would love. She became the very embodiment of his fondest dreams and being with her made him incredibly happy. What does that tell you?

Well, over the years, as my inner consciousness began to evolve and grow, some profound realizations began to flow within me.

Basically, to begin with the simplest terms possible – we all like to get what we like, and the more the better. In the story, Alicia wasn’t a real person with her own mind and emotions. Rather than that, due to her make-up she became a perfect reflection of Corry. In an attractive form, she reflected all of the best parts of him back to himself and he became incredibly happy with her. But in the end, he was shown that he had been having a wonderful relationship not with another human being, but with the personified expression of himself.

Now, if you want to dive into it, these waters run pretty deep. A million questions pop up like, what is the nature of human-to-human relationships? Why do we like the people we like? And what am I really looking for in life anyway? Am I just running around trying to find a reflection of my own likes and dislikes? Does that process really allow me to grow or does it just make me feel better?

And given the nature of how our mind works, it’s projecting itself all the time. For instance, if you have a lot of anger in you, you’re going to see a lot of angry people in the world. People consumed by greed will live in a world filled with greedy people. Ego-centric people will generally find themselves locked in conflicts with other people bonded to their ego. Afterall, like does attract like.

If that’s true, what if we are able to evolve to a higher inner level and our awareness becomes filled with what is known as the better angels of our nature? Will the people in the world around us begin to reflect these higher understandings and feelings back to us?

And taking it one step further, what if the concept of the Indwelling God Presence is actually true, as thousands of teachers, masters, saints and sages throughout the ages have told us that it is? What if we’re really able to truly connect with this amazing part of our inner awareness? If we’re experiencing that and constantly giving it out, what will the world be like for us? And what kind of a life would that be like to live?

We certainly don’t have enough time here to cover all this, but if you ponder it a little, I am certain you will come up with your own valuable conclusions. And these are questions that can only be answered on an individual basis anyway. As the wisdom information tells us, they can’t be explained or taught. To be understood, they have to be felt and experienced.

Well, that’s a lot to consider and it seems like the perfect place to stop, so this will be the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and hearts opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, I told the story of what happened when I was standing on the platform of a train station with a large group of commuters and we suddenly realized that the well-dressed, mid-forty-year-old woman who was about to get off the train was blind.

The woman was a professional, going about her business on a normal weekday morning, just like the rest of us who were standing there. Except she was blind.

As I watched her come down the train steps and start walking away with her cane, once I got over the unexpected shock of the encounter, I found myself in a world that was suddenly filled with humility and gratitude.

I guess it was for obvious reasons. I’ve always taken the gift of sight for granted. For me, it just comes along with the territory of being alive. I rarely, if ever, give it any thought. But this chance encounter had reinforced in me how precious it is to be able to see and it hit me with unexpected power.

I became in touch with how small of a creature I actually am, completely dependent on forces unseen and unknown by me – like having the power of sight, for example. I felt extremely humble and a profound sense of gratitude washed over me.

Generally, when we experience something like this, we find ourselves in a rarified state of being, enjoying the sense of clarity about what’s really important in our lives. And then, in today’s hyper-fast paced world, before you know it, we revert back to our normal, everyday habit of trying to get the next thing we want. This is what happened to me but still, it was quite a powerful feeling and it lasted for most of that morning.

Now real feelings of humility and gratitude are a little more than they may appear to be. We’re all familiar with them and something about them feels just right. But modern neuroscience has taken it to a deeper level by yielding a vast amount of data which highlights the powerful effect they have on our overall consciousness.

Along with the release of a myriad of positive neuropeptides that can do wonders for us, humility and gratitude can bring about actual physiological changes in the brain itself, making it function on an entirely new level. And these changes can be quite powerful when it comes to our overall happiness and sense of well-being, transforming our minds into higher states of awareness.

And as I had also mentioned in the last episode, both Einstein and Jung emphasized how important it is for us to evolve and grow our consciousness.

Now from thousands of years of contemplative traditions all the way through to modern neuroscience we are told that the ideal way to begin to enhance this growth process is to start appreciating some of the incredible things we have been given in this life, rather than to just keep on taking them for granted.

So, let’s take a little deeper dive into this. Whether we’re aware of it or not, there is a truly vast intelligence that is within each and every one of us. We don’t know the extent of it and the truth is, we will never know, because it’s just too vast. But whether or not we’re aware of it, the truth is, it’s still there. Let’s consider one small, but truly miraculous part of this intelligence – our ability to heal.

A few months ago, I got a nasty paper cut one on my right index finger. Now if you’re right-handed, you probably don’t pay much attention to how you use your right index finger. But once you have a cut on it, you find out pretty quickly.

Most of us have probably had a paper cut. They can be surprisingly painful, but we all know them to be just a minor nuisance. They’re not going to kill you. They’re just an inconvenience. You take care of it, maybe you put a band aid on it and it heals up in a couple of days. I’ve had them many times where the intensity of the pain gradually decreases, then goes away completely. A few weeks later, it had healed so well that I could barely remember that I ever had it or exactly where it had been.

Just a small, everyday occurrence that happens to us all, but what is it that happened? Somehow, my body just healed it. Now here is where we have to stop and pick up our mental microscope.

We’ve all had tons of physical problems that have just healed themselves. We caught a bad cold. It was a real drag. It lasted a couple of weeks until it finally healed. You get out of your car on a funny angle and you twist your ankle. You limp along for a while until it finally heals. Examples like these are endless and we’ve all had them probably thousands of times, from getting over indigestion, maybe a hangover, to recovering from a broken bone, the flu or even a major illness, we have an innate trust in the healing processes of the body and we take it all for granted.

But what is it? How does it happen that we heal ourselves from all these things? Of course, there are hundreds of medical books that will explain the process, but the basic, bottom line is that the ability to heal is part of the miraculous intelligence that we each have within us all the time.

Again, we take it completely for granted, but to put it into perspective, let’s say you go out and buy a wonderful new suit. It’s perfect in every way. Maybe it even was ridiculously expensive, but you still bought it, because that’s how much you liked it. One night, you wear it out to a party and you don’t even know why, but when you get home and take it off, you notice that it has a significant tear in it. You must have caught it on a nail or piece of glass, whatever. It doesn’t matter how it happened. Your beautiful new suit is torn.

Now it doesn’t matter how wonderful it is, what kind of fabric it’s made from or how much it cost you. The rip in that suit is not going to heal. Of course, we all know that. You’re not going to hang it up in your closet and a few days later, when you come back, it will have naturally repaired itself.

No. And that’s the enormous difference between the tear on your suit and the cut on your finger. The suit in an inanimate object. It does not have the power and intelligence of life in it. But our bodies do. Again, this points to the deeper fact that our existence is, by nature, miraculous.

And this isn’t just limited to the parts of ourselves that we know. No, this intelligence goes far beyond that. Like if you’re having a chat with a friend, trading questions like, “How your family? How’s your job? How’s that new TV you bought?” All normal enough questions, but nobody asks, “So, how’s your spleen doing?”

Your spleen? Not only don’t you know how it’s doing, most of us no idea what it is or where it is. But something inside of us does. This vast, almost unfathomable intelligence within knows everything about it in real time.

By the way, how’s the Ph balance in your mouth at the moment? Does it have the right amount of acid in it given what you ate last night? Again, this is the kind of thing most of us never think about and we have no conscious control over it anyway. But the intelligence in our body does. It knows everything about it, monitoring and adjusting it constantly.

So much goes on inside of us that we have no idea about and here’s one last example that always gets me. Let’s say you go into a public bathroom and you leave with some very nasty germs on your hands. Within another hour, by eating or rubbing your eyes or nose, you ingest several million of these toxic germs and now you have a real invasion on your hands.

But you have an immune system with precision firepower that makes Battlestar Galactica look antiquated and tame. Powerful cells called macrophages arrive to detect, engulf and destroy the invaders. If necessary, your hypothalamus directs the production of exact hormones to step up the attack and after a short while, all the invading cells have been killed. They’re then carefully escorted through your blood stream into your bladder. An hour or two later, you go to the bathroom and pee them all out. End of episode.

Your health was protected, your life was preserved and you had absolutely no idea that it happened. In all probability, your mind was busy spinning its web of delusion, conjuring up the way it wishes things would be. According to current estimates, this kind of thing happens within us about 1,200 times each day.

So where is all of this going? It’s just going back to where we started – humility and gratitude. We are living a life whose miraculous nature is far beyond our ability to comprehend.

And to close, nothing is more miraculous or important to us than our breath. You can go without food for about thirty days. You can go without water for about seven. But you can’t go without your breath for more than just a few minutes at most.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, it’s been happening since the moment you were born and it will continue until the moment you die. And all the great teachers of all time have instructed us to humbly recognize and be grateful for the absolute miracle of it. They say this is the key to opening the doorway to the higher realms. It all begins with the simple recognition of the power that is giving us life.

Now, there’s a modern-day teacher named Prem Rawat who has been a big influence on me for many years, and one of the things I’ve always liked about him is that he has a great sense of humor. He can express a deep truth in a way that makes you laugh while it delivers its profound meanings, which isn’t easy.

He was once talking about how obsessed the religions of the world are with stories about miracles, which makes us dream big dreams. But we fail to see our own life as a miracle which, by definition, it is. He said once, and I’m paraphrasing, “You can spend your whole life hoping for a miracle, but would you know one if you saw it? The truth is, you wouldn’t recognize a miracle if it was happening right under your nose.”

At first, I laughed, but when I took it in a little deeper, it suddenly wasn’t’ so funny anymore, it became more of a challenge. That was many years ago and I’m still trying to realize what’s going on right under my nose.

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

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As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m currently working on a project called Higher Mind Training, and some people who listen to the podcasts have written in asking for some information about it, so I thought I would present an overview of some of its basics for you to consider.

I’d like to start out by describing something that happened to me about four or five years ago. It was a very brief moment in time. The whole thing probably took only a few seconds, but it flipped a switch within my consciousness that went straight into the core of my being. It couldn’t have begun in a more ordinary situation. I was at a train station, waiting to get on a commuter train into downtown Philadelphia.

Let me give you a little background. I was doing some consulting work for a group that was trying to establish itself as an online entertainment company. I had put together a few consultants to work on the project - three talented professionals with lots of experience.

As the momentum built, we began to have regular meetings at an office space in center city and we were generally meeting there about twice a week. I live on the outskirts of the city, almost in the suburbs, and the closest train to me stops at Overbrook Station, which is almost on the campus of Saint Joseph’s University and many of the regular commuters seem to have something to do with Saint Joe’s.

After several weeks, I fell into a basic routine where I would get there about five minutes early and with about twenty other commuters, would board the train as soon as it arrived. It was only a 15-minute commute.

It generally ran on schedule, but one morning, when I got to the station, to my surprise and a little consternation, I found out that for no apparent reason, the train was running ten minutes late. After another five minutes it was announced that it was now running twenty minutes. Everyone on the platform groaned and this changed things at the station because as time went by, there were probably about three or four times more commuters waiting for the train than usual. I, along with everyone else, started worrying about whether or not I would be able to get a seat on the train.

Now I had all this time on my hands. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m in that kind of situation, my mind shifts into high gear, churning out thought after thought, just to kill the time.

I started thinking about the consulting work I had taken on. Then about how this change in schedule was going to affect the rest of my day. Then the next thing I know I’m agitating about my golf swing and why am I having so much trouble learning this simple move that I was sure would be great for me. Then I started going over my finances and whether the juice would be worth the squeeze on this project, which was now developing a few side issues, and on and on and on, non-stop, never-ending, random mental wonderings.

The Tibetan Zen practitioners have a term for this type of mental process – they call it the “Chain of Delusion” because it binds you to mental meanderings that are generally meaningless, or even worse. All the while, I was keeping my eye on the station clock, which was moving so slow, I thought it might have been broken.

Anyway, it was finally announced that the train was nearby and everyone started gathering around the boarding area, which became mobbed with many more people than are usually there.

Now, there is a basic routine you follow when the train stops. The first thing you have to do is let all the passengers out who are getting off at that stop. You stand as close as you can to the train entrance, while still giving them room, so that once they’ve all gotten off, you can rush on and try to grab a seat. It isn’t particularly rude; you’re just jockeying for position.

Finally, the train pulled up and we all moved in as close as we could, but still within acceptable limits. There were only a few cars, so we all knew that a lot of us would be standing up for the whole ride into town.

The train stopped and the door opened. But strangely, no one got off. Suddenly, one the conductors, a tall and sturdy looking man in uniform planted himself in the doorway. The paragon of authority, he just stood there staring at us with a rather solemn look on his face. Something seemed wrong. I was hoping there wasn’t a problem with the train that might cause a further delay or even a cancellation.

Then he stepped back a little and a woman came and stood in the doorway. She was fashionably dressed, had light brown hair that was stylishly cut and seemed to be in her mid to late forties. From her professional appearance, I assumed that she was with the University in some manner. Maybe a professor or an administrator. And she was wearing light sunglasses.

She just stood there, not moving, looking off into the distance. Then I could see the conductor take hold of her right hand and put something in it. Within another moment, we could all see what it was. It was a long, white walking stick and we all knew instantly that the woman was blind.

The entire feeling on the platform was immediately transformed and the moment was incredibly powerful. We had all been taken out of our normal, everyday routines and suddenly placed into an entirely different world. And this world was filled with a quick shock, followed by tremendous humility and gratitude. It might have only lasted for a brief moment, but we all felt the unspoken truth of that moment. We had learned something profound in that split second and we all knew that we all knew.

The woman was as cool as can be. Using her walking cane, she carefully made her way down the train’s steps, and walked away, looking like she had done it a million times.

We all boarded the train, but it was in a most orderly and polite manner and I doubt if anyone minded that they had to stand up for the fifteen-minute ride into town. I know I didn’t, because rather than running through my standard chain of delusion, my consciousness was filled with clarity as I reflected on what I had just been shown.

I don’t who that woman was or what she was doing, but she was clearly a professional going about her business. It was nothing special, she was just getting on with another day in the life. And that’s exactly what I was doing as well, but what a major difference - I could see and she could not. I had been given the incredible gift of sight, and Oh My God, what can you say about that feeling when you understand the absolute preciousness of the gift you’ve been given?

So, this quick example highlights the very first part of Higher Mind Training – the first step is to simply begin to recognize how miraculous the gift of life is. Now, it’s not all that easy to do because we each have a tendency to take all of it for granted, all day, every day. And sources from ancient wisdom all the way through to modern neuroscience tell us that having appreciation and gratitude in our hearts for the simple gift of life is the most powerful thing that we can do to begin to evolve our awareness so we can realize our highest potential as human beings.

This evolution of consciousness is critical to our long-term happiness, but in our modern world, most of us don’t see it that way. We’re mainly hung up on solving our problems, which never seem to end. For me, it’s almost a joke. As soon as I get one taken care of, five more pop-up. But what if the trick to achieving real happiness isn’t to spend your whole life just trying to solve your problems, but it’s to change the way we use our intelligence, which is what’s causing 99% of our problems in the first place.

In this regard, I’m going to leave you with two of my most favorite quotes about solving problems, and they’re from two of the most respected authorities on human intelligence that our species has ever produced.

The first on is from Albert Einstein who said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

And the second one is from the legendary psychologist, Carl Jung who said, “The greatest and most important problems in life can never be solved. They can only be outgrown.”

So, two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century tell us that it’s absolutely critical for us to evolve and grow. Years have gone by since I came across these quotes and I’m still trying to let their wisdom sink into me.

And here’s one last idea to consider, which comes from Abraham Lincoln. But not Lincoln the great president, but Lincoln the great log splitter who once said, “If I was told I had four hours to cut down a tree, I’d spend the first three hours sharpening the axe.” Maybe it’s a good idea for us to keep sharpening that old axe of our awareness. But the trick is knowing how to do it.

Well, that’s the end of this episode. Next, we’re going to take a quick look at the two basic parts of our mind – our ordinary mind and the higher mind. As always, keep your eyes mind and hearts open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous podcasts I’m always amazed whenever I come across significant wisdom in unexpected places. You can run into it almost anywhere and the sports world is certainly no exception. In basketball Phil Jackson is a former NBA player who became a coach and won more NBA titles than any other coach in the history of the game, eleven championship titles in all, which is truly impressive given how difficult the coaching position is. Not only do you have to master the details of the game, you also have to blend the egos of some extremely talented multimillionaires into a cohesive group that thrives on true teamwork.

Surprisingly for me it turns out that Jackson has had a somewhat mystical and spiritual approach to life for many years, which he claims was a major factor in his success. In 1995 he wrote a book called “Sacred Hoops,” featuring some of his esoteric understandings and there was this one quote that I’d never heard before that really got me that stated, “In Zen it is said that the gap between accepting things the way they are and wishing them to be otherwise is the one tenth of an inch difference between heaven and hell.”

This hit me on a lot of different levels which always gets me thinking. The first thing was the idea that heaven and hell were only a tenth of an inch apart. I’d always been taught that heaven was way up there, while its opposite, hell, was way down there. This idea that they seem close enough to be other sides of the same coin was revolutionary for me.

But it reminded me of a quote from a letter that was found in Abraham Lincoln’s desk after his assassination which can still be found in the Lincoln Collection of the Library of Congress. It was supposedly a channeled message from a psychic and it said that “Heaven and Hell are conditions, not locations.”

So, if heaven and hell were actually inner states of consciousness, it seemed like the pathway to heaven was somehow connected to accepting things the way they are, while hell had something to do with wishing them to be otherwise.

This led me into considering a mental process that we each have called “Idealization.” Now this is where you have a desire for something and you develop a fantasy about having it. In Jackson’s Zen quote you’re wishing for things to be other than the way they are and you start weaving a fantasy about it. And we all know that there’s an enormous difference between fantasy and reality.

As an example, let’s say you decide to get a new car and you start shopping for one. After a while you start to settle on this one particular kind of car, you start feeling good about it and your mind starts painting mental pictures about it for you.

You may imagine a million different things. You’re driving in it with your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, kids - whatever. It can go on and on but the important thing to be understood is that your idealizations are always positive and never negative. In all your imaginations you never imagine the feeling you would have if you went to a store and when you got back to your car there was a dent in the door because somebody dinged you when they open their car door. Or you never picture getting a flat or being stopped by a policeman and getting a speeding ticket.

That’s all the stuff of real life while all these fantasies are happening within the dream world of your idealizations and once you actually achieve your fantasize desire and you get what you think you wanted, of course it turns into a whole different ballgame.

Humorist Larry David put a funny spin on it in an early episode of his show, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He and his wife Cheryl had decided to buy a new home. They found a place on the beach in Malibu and when they walked in, the living room had an enormous picture window overlooking the ocean. The view was absolutely magnificent. Now, I’m paraphrasing the dialogue here but this is the way I remember it.

“Oh Larry! Look at the view! It’s absolutely incredible,” Cheryl says.

“Two weeks,” Larry replies.

“What do you mean, two weeks?” Cheryl asks.

“You won’t notice it after two weeks,” he answers. “You’ll be so wrapped up in everything that’s happening in your normal life, you won’t even notice the view anymore.”

Cheryl was idealizing the idea of moving to the home with this incredible view and imagining how wonderful it would be to live there. And Larry, with his hard-boiled New York sensibility, went straight for the reality of every day daily life. Of course, one of the main reasons his stuff can be so funny is because of his talent for putting his finger on things that can make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves but still make us laugh.

Now idealization is often followed by something that is broadly termed “Buyer’s Remorse.” Before you get the object of your desire you still construct the idealization. But once you’ve actually had it for a while, you start dealing with the reality of it, which rarely, if ever lives up to the fantasy you had in your mind.

It reminds me of something that happened to me about 25 years ago when our daughter was an adorable five-year-old and we used to shoot an enormous number of pictures of her. The photo technology seems like ancient history now but this was before the digital age and we took pictures with cameras that had film. You would shoot an entire roll of film and then take it to a camera shop to be developed into printed photograph. Every picture cost you money so you were operating within a bit of a limit on how many would take. It’s hard to imagine such a primitive time now, right?

So, I always used the same neighborhood camera store and I became familiar with the young woman who worked behind the counter. I had probably been coming in for about three years and one day she told me I wouldn’t see her again because she was about to take a new job. And she told me with enormous excitement that after years of trying, she had finally landed a job in a hardware store. It’d always been her dream and now it was coming true! She was incredibly excited.

Of course, we each have our own playbook of desires and personally it didn’t hit me as such a dramatic improvement to be making the move from working in a camera store to working in a hardware store. But what do I know?

Anyway, we had a nice friendly goodbye and the next time I came in someone new was behind the counter. Then a couple months later when I came back, to my surprise my former clerk was back behind the counter. When I asked her what happened to her job at the hardware store she said with a smile, “Well, I found out that the reason the grass was greener was because it was Astroturf.”

At first, I was struck by how simple and funny her comment was. But as you can see, it stayed in my mind for all these years because it pointed to a much more profound truth - the difference between the artificial and the real, which may just be that one tenth of an inch difference between heaven and hell.

Maybe it’s the celebration and appreciation for what’s real, which is on the deepest level for life itself, rather than the constant chasing after the artificial fantasies of the mind’s desires which never end, no matter what you have. Maybe that one tenth of an inch difference between heaven and hell comes down to the state of our consciousness as we live our everyday lives.

Whenever I ponder the idea, I’m always struck by how simple it is - that it all comes down to where we choose to focus. And I’m going to leave you with two quotes that are so simple that you might not even notice them, but they’re so profound that they always bring deeply positive changes to me.

The first one is from the world renowned Indian guru Parmahansa Yogananda who said, “The minutes are more important than the years.” And the second quote takes us back to the world of sports, which is where we first began.

This one is from Bobby Jones, the great US champion of the 1920s, who is still widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time. He was talking about a simple secret that he had discovered that had turned him into the great champion that he had become. And he said, “It’s nothing new or original to say that golf is a game that is played one stroke at a time. But it took me many years to realize it.”

Now that is a deceptively deep concept. No matter what has happened in the past or what you think may happen in the future, you have to focus on the present. In golf it all happens just one stroke at a time. And in life it all happens just one breath at the time. The mind has to dwell in the past or the future. But the breath only happens in the present. And that is where the treasure of existence is.

It really couldn’t be any simpler but how many of us have realized that one tenth of an inch difference?

Again, these podcast just present ideas for your consideration. So, let’s just leave it there for now and let’s call this the end of this episode. As always keep your eyes mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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As many of us know, we are multifaceted beings with many different levels of consciousness and understanding within us, many of which haven’t manifested yet. One of these inner aspects we each have is an amazingly heroic part of ourselves filled with bravery, strength and inner courage. It is often surprising in its power and its emergence can be completely unexpected. But whenever it makes itself known, it’s usually a pretty transformative experience.

I remember reading a story once about this unanticipated bravery of ours. It was a very long time ago, maybe in Junior High School, and I don’t remember that much about it – like how I came to it, how old I was when I read it, or in what context it was in. I don’t even remember the whole story, just one key part of it. But for some reason, that one part buried itself deeply in my mind and I never forgot it.

I think it took place in a small New England town sometime during the 1870s. There was a certain man who had become the town drunk. Nobody seemed to know what had happened to him, but somehow, he had completely lost his bearings in life and was in a drunken stupor most of the time.

Was it a lost love? Did somebody break his heart? Or did something awful happen to him in business and he lost everything he owned? Or had he done something horribly wrong and was now trapped in a dark chasm of guilt? Nobody knew. All they knew is that he was drinking all the time, could never be counted on for anything and was a completely hopeless, lost cause,

One night as he was lying dead drunk on a sidewalk in front of a tavern, a fire broke out in a small home near the end of the street where he had passed out.

In those days, fires were fought with bucket brigades. All the town’s people would gather, a horse drawn carriage would arrive with an enormous container of water, and they would line up and pass buckets of water from the carriage to the fire in a desperate attempt to try to put out the blaze.

As the brigade formed, they needed every single person available. Spotting the town drunk lying on the sidewalk, one of the firefighters roused him out of his stupor, shook him, slapped him awake and brought him into the line. The drunk was able to sense what was happening and did his best to help out. But as the fire was raging out of control, he was still pretty out of it.

At one point, a couple of firefighters brought a screaming woman out of the burning home that was now engulfed in flames. The woman was out of her mind, completely hysterical and with all the strength she had, she tried to break free from the firefighters, screaming that her two little children were still in the house. Her horrific story sent the entire brigade into a panic.

Suddenly and without any warning, the town drunk, who was at the far end of the bucket brigade, stood up straight, and like a soldier in battle, marched up to the doorway of the house and burst in through the flaming entrance. It was such an unexpected and shocking moment that everyone froze for a moment, then they went back to feverishly passing buckets of water.

Minute after hopeless minute went by as the poor mother kept screaming and sobbing. After about another ten minutes, it started to become apparent to everyone that the drunk wasn’t going to make it out. It was horribly sad, but at least he had died doing something noble. The bucket brigade continued its work and the house continued to burn.

But then, suddenly and miraculously, bleeding and burned, the man emerged from the doorway of the home holding two little children in his arms. They were both screaming and frightened out of their minds, but they were both clearly and magnificently alive!

The mother nearly fainted at the sight, and overcome with emotion ran up to grab her children. Everyone immediately surrounded the man, enveloping him in a enormous wave of gratitude and appreciation.

My memory of the story pretty much fades from that point. I do remember that it said that the event transformed his life he never took another drink again. I’d like to think that he ended up marrying the woman, adopting her children and becoming the mayor of the town. But that’s probably just the O. Henry in me.

What happened in the actual story doesn’t really matter that much because there’s something about the tale that runs a lot deeper than the details of the drama. It points to the incredible nature of the undiscovered side of our being.

I mean, something had happened to this lost soul that had completely defeated him and turned him into the town drunk. It doesn’t matter what it was, but something had taken the life out of him and left him hopeless. And he had resorted to trying to numb himself to his pain by drinking himself to death.

But then suddenly, the nobility and courage within his spirit took over. Maybe he felt that his life was at its end anyway, so what did it matter if he risked what he had left to save the lives of some children? Or maybe it was just the act of doing something selfless for the benefit of someone else that produced this incredible effect on him. It could have been any one of a hundred factors like these, but something triggered this power within him, and acting upon it created a miracle that not only helped innocent bystanders, it also completely transformed his life. But a

Now of course, this is a pretty dramatic story. But the reality is that we can come in contact with the higher and most noble parts of our character in ways that are not the result of dramatic circumstances at all. In fact, it’s often quite the opposite. It can be in seemingly small choices, made in the most ordinary of situations that can bring about significant inner growth which ultimately bring about major transformations in our character.

Coming from the perspective of western culture, we are trained to define real success as coming from the accomplishment of something great. But many wise voices of the past have pointed us in a rather different direction.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great poet and lecturer, who led the enlightened transcendental movement of late 19th century America, wrote a short, but deeply profound poem about it called, “What is Success?” It’s always been one of my favorites:

What is Success?

To laugh often and much.

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children.

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends.

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

It turns out that most people can relate to these simple ideas. And interestingly, most people can also relate to the story of the town drunk that became the hometown hero. We each have faced hard times in our lives, to one degree or another. And even if it’s small, we’ve each felt an innate sense of courage and strength inside. And whether we’re in touch with it or not, we each have an intuitive sense that there’s a lot more to us than we know right now.

So, how many more of these positive characteristics are inside of us? Well to me, that leads to a deeper question - What is the real nature of a human being? anyway? What is our highest potential and how can be we realize it? Now, that’s a big question. Actually, it might be the big question.

I think that seems like a good place to stop for now, so I’ll just leave you with that thought. Of course, the ideas in these podcasts are just my understandings, presented to you for your consideration. Like everything else on the path of growth, if they do something positive for you, use them. And if not, just let them go.

So, that’s the end of this episode, As, always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

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Welcome to Episode One of Season Two of the Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcast. I had to take a slightly longer hiatus because I’m now working on something called Higher Mind Training which will be the next release of the Better Angels Publishing company.

The basic concept of Higher Mind Training is that we each have an enormous amount of potential within our consciousness and most of us have tapped hardly any of it. But there’s a part of us that is a truly noble and incredible part of our intelligence and Higher Mind Training is designed to be a guide that the normal, everyday person can use to access these highest and best sides of ourselves and realize our highest potential.

Our inner nature is actually quite a bit more than we might have imagined. I had mentioned in an earlier podcast episode the idea of something called the Indwelling God Presence. This was a big deal for me when I first heard about it because as a product of Western religion, I had always been taught that God was somewhere far away, somewhere on the outside - maybe up some mountain or beyond some cloud. One way or another, we’ve all grown up with these theories and concepts, powerfully portrayed in books and movies.

But when I began opening up to some newer understandings I came upon this idea of the Indwelling God presence, which basically means that God (which is a very limiting term, but still a workable one) is within each person, and is actually an integral part of our consciousness. There is an energy that keeps us alive and this understanding says that this energy actually is God, dwelling within us.

It was a radical for me to conceive of, and it took a long time for me to begin to even accept the idea, because it was the antithesis of the framework of original sin and separation, where you have to earn your way back into the divine good graces. Afterall some of the stuff in the Bible is pretty intense, that God was so angry at Eve for the whole snake thing that he threw us out of the safe and beautiful garden and he condemned her to suffering horrible pain in childbirth.

It was a tough road ahead of us, filled with abandonment, separation, guilt and fear, all blocking our way back into paradise lost.

So, it was quite liberating to come upon this idea that – no, God isn’t far away from you. It’s closer to you than your own breath. And no, God never deserted you. God never left you. God’s love is always with you, and you don’t have to earn your way back. You don’t have to have the blood of somebody be spilled so that you can be redeemed from all this horrible sin. All you really have to do is open up to this divine presence within and accept it.

It was pretty radical for me and there were a two other expressions of the idea that made it all the more powerful. The first one comes from some information I had discovered when I was learning about Walter Russell, a figure you may remember from one of the earlier podcasts.

Russell was probably the most accomplished person in American history. A fourth-grade dropout with very little formal education, something happened to him when he was eight or nine years old. Some inner illumination occurred and he was able to tap into this inner part of himself which producing amazing wisdom and talents in his awareness. He was an architect. He was a businessman. He made millions of dollars. He was a scientist and helped re-redefine some of the periodic table.

He was also a close friend with Thomas J Watson, Senior who was the founder of IBM and Russell trained their sales force for twelve years. He was also a brilliant artist, sculptor and musician, and he used to say that he had the ability to go within himself and tap into the infinite intelligence which was in there. And he also used to say that everybody has the same ability to do it, but it was just untapped.

So once, when I was reading one of his lectures, he said an incredible thing about this inner power we all have. He said that what’s inside of you right now is not your higher self. It’s not your God presence. It isn’t the part of you that’s connected with the infinite. No. What’s inside of you right now is God Almighty.

It was a pretty heavy thing for me to read because it seems so hard to accept the idea that within, inside of you, right now is God Almighty. Then, in a completely different framework, I came across the same idea from the works of a mystical poet named Kabir from the 15th century. He also said that within you right now is this almighty power. Coming from a Hindu background, he said that even the creator preserver and destroyer and all the other gods, they all pray to this being. Like Russel, he said that it’s within us right now, keeping us alive. And like Russel he said we have complete access to it, but we basically ignore it and continue chasing after the illusory pleasures of Earth-life.

Of course, this is really hard for our minds to understand. In fact, it’s impossible, because if there really is a God, it would have to be infinite and our mind is a purely finite instrument. As an example, try this with your mind. Think about what is the largest number that could possibly exist. Your mind will spin and spin because no matter what number you come up with you can always add a 1 to it, or even a minute fraction, and that will always make it bigger. Your mind can’t handle the riddle because it bumps up against infinity.

You can also try to picture a box that is so large that there is no more space outside of it. Again, the mind just can’t handle the idea of something with no end to it. It can grasp the theoretical concept of infinity, but it can never really understand the reality of it.

Which brings up an interesting point about the actual nature of our inner make-up. We have a finite capacity for suffering and pain, but we have an infinite capacity for happiness and joy. In essence, we seem to be biased towards the highest.

So, as an example, if you happened to meet a renown accurate psychic who told you that unfortunately, for the rest your life your suffering and pain was just going to keep getting worse and worse. Five years from now you’re going to be in 50 times more pain. And 10 years from now you going to be in 1000 times more pain. Whether it’s physical, emotional or psychological, it would be a terrible thing for anyone to hear.

But what about if that same psychic said I’ve got some incredible news for you. Five years from now you’re going to be 100 times happier. You’re going to feel 100 times greater about life. You’ll have 100 times more love in your heart and things are going to be 100 times more wonderful than they are now. And by the way 20 years and now it’s going to be 10,000 times better. You’re going to feel 10,000 times happier, or even more. And it’s just going to keep on getting better and better.

Now every human being who ever lived would love to hear that news. And what does that really tell us about ourselves. Maybe it says that the inner essence of our being is positive and all the negative thoughts, feelings and emotions are the just the results of learned behavior. And one critical thing to remember about learned behavior – it can always be unlearned, especially when it comes in contact with something greater than can turn it positive.

Well, that wraps up this episode. Because of the work I am doing in preparing Higher Mind training, my time is a bit more limited, so you may find that the episodes in season two may be a little more casual than they were in season one. But the basics will still be the same. I’ll be presenting a lot of different information for your consideration and as before, just allow the ideas to come into your awareness and see where they take you. And as always keep your eyes mind and hearts open and let’s get together in the next one.

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Hello and I hope all is well with you. As I mentioned in my original Hiatus Announcement, I am going to reach out every few weeks, just to say hello, give some updates and leave you with a very short message for you to consider.

Regarding updates, I continue to be deeply involved in working on my next book, Stop Making Yourself Miserable, along with introducing an executive training program to help people enhance their personal growth progress and reach their deeper potential.

And for your consideration, I recently read an article that estimated that all of the major human-caused problems on earth are the results of the activities of just about 10 per cent of the human population, which means that about 90 per cent of us are peaceful, well-meaning creatures who wouldn't hurt a fly.

It always amazes me how the human mind is capable of such incredible highs and lows, such awful, selfish atrocities and such magnificent, altruistic triumphs. It seems that the choice of what we want to do with our intelligence will always be up to us, and human history is filled with men and women who have done incredible things, both big and small.

As an example, in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi with a quote about him from Albert Einstein that reads, " Generations to come, it may be, will scarce be able to believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."

Now that’s quite a statement coming from one of the most brilliant minds on record. Gandhi may be a high bar to emulate, but hey, it never hurts to try....

So that’s it for now. Be well, and I’ll catch up with you in the next update.

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Regarding updates, I am deeply involved in working on my next book, Stop Making Yourself Miserable, along with introducing an executive training program to help people enhance their personal growth progress and reach their deeper potential.

And for your consideration here is a terrific short poem by Portia Nelson that I found quoted in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. By the way, Portia had a great mini-prologue to her book. She wrote: My life has been a series of wonderful experiences. It’s a pity I wasn’t there for most of them.

So, here is her poem called, “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.”

Chapter One

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out

Chapter Two

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in... it's a habit... but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter Four

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five

I walk down another street.

So, there’s quite a lot to digest in this little entrée of hers. I hope you have fun with it. Be well, and I’ll catch up with you in the next update.

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Following 43 consecutive weekly podcast programs with over 2,500 downloads, I am happy to announce that the Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcast will be taking a summer hiatus beginning this week. I want to thank everyone for your continued support and your inspiring feed-back.

I will give you updates every few weeks and we expect to return for our fall season beginning on September 13, 2022. Thanks once again and have a terrific summer.

All the Best,

David

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It always surprises me when I run into a random piece of information that doesn’t seem like much when I first see or hear it, but somehow, it stays with me and grows into something much more important later. It can be much later. Like many years later.

This is something that’s happened to me many times and I’ve learned that you never know when you’re about to stumble upon something that may have deep meaning for you down the road. And it always amazes me that our mind has a way of keeping things stored away, to help us in a time and circumstance that hasn’t happened yet. How does it know to do that? It's quite a mystery.

But one of those times happened to me several decades ago, back in the late 70s. It was just a few moments on a TV show and I thought nothing of it at the time, but I’m still processing it today.

My mother was in the early stages of a degenerative illness that was to eventually take her life at a relatively young age. She had been an extremely active woman, but as the illness progressed, she had started spending a lot of time resting in bed and the TV was on constantly.

Once, when I was visiting her, one of those late-afternoon talk shows was on. The guest was a hypnotist and he was going to hypnotize two different subjects. In the first segment of the show, the host and the hypnotist were interviewing both subjects, a man and a woman, making casual conversation and getting to know them. The hypnotist chatted with them for a few moments and it was obvious that they were ordinary, average, everyday people.

The host said that during the commercial break, the hypnotist would put them both under hypnosis. They didn’t want to do it on TV because of what it might do to the audience.

After the break the hypnotist and the host were alone on stage. The hypnotists explained that he had hypnotized both subjects and that during hypnosis, he had given each of them a post-hypnotic suggestion. He said that when they came back, they would both appear to be just fine. But he had given the woman a post hypnotic suggestion that for her, the number six no longer existed. And he had given the man a post hypnotic suggestion that if he were asked to pick up anything off the floor, no matter what it was, it would be too heavy for him to lift. He wouldn’t be able to do it, no matter what it was.

They brought the female subject back first. The hypnotists started chatting

with her about what it had felt to be hypnotized. She said it had been very relaxing. She had remembered the whole thing and went into some details about it, but interestingly, she never mentioned anything about being put into a post-hypnotic trance.

At one point, the hypnotist asked simply if she thought she could count to ten. When she said she was certain she could, he pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and told her if she can count to ten, he will give it to her. She looked at him with surprised amusement and casually started counting. 1,2,3,4,5. And then she stopped and got a somewhat contorted look on her face. She was stuck at five and couldn’t go forward. She soon became completely confused by what was happening to her. For some strange reason, she couldn’t go beyond five.

The hypnotist told her to relax, that she would be okay and an attendant came and led her off stage. He then explained to the host that he will remove the post-hypnotic suggestion in a few minutes and had them bring out the man.

The hypnotist goes through the same casual conversation with him that he did with the woman. The man says he feels fine and tells him his pleasant memories of being hypnotized, and like the first subject, makes no mention of being put under a post hypnotic trance.

Eventually, the hypnotist pulls out a $100 bill from his pocket and hands it to the man. As he’s holding it, the man confirms that it appears to be a normal $100 bill. The hypnotist takes it back, throws it on the floor and tells the man, “If you can pick it up, you can keep it.”

The man looks at him surprised, like this can’t be for real. And he bends over to pick it up. But he can’t do it. He keeps struggling and the camera goes into a closeup of the man’s arm, which is shaking and his veins are bulging. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t pick up the $100 bill. Completely confused, he keeps struggling as they take a commercial break.

When they return, it’s just the host and the hypnotist again. The hypnotist explains that the two subjects have been returned to their normal mental state. And then he goes on to explain a fascinating fact. He says that if you honestly and truly believe in the deepest part of your mind that you cannot do something, you won’t be able to do it. It can be as simple as standing up or walking.

The woman couldn’t count to ten because he had removed the existence of the number six from her mind. And the man couldn’t pick up the $100 bill because he had put the belief deeply into his mind that anything that was on the floor would be too heavy to lift and there was no way he could lift that bill, which was just a piece of paper.

Then he added another fascinating point. He said that there is no way that either the woman or the man would ever have been able to guess what had happened to them. They knew that they were strangely unable to perform the simple, specific action, but they had no idea know why. And they never would unless someone told them, because the suggestions had been placed in a part of the mind that is beyond rational thought.

It was a pretty powerful concept for me – if you truly believe you can’t do something, you won’t be able to do it, even though it’s well within your power. And you may not know what’s driving your disbelief, because what’s causing it may be out of reach.

That’s all I remember from that random TV show on that random day and I really didn’t give it another thought until about twenty years later when I came across a quote from Parmahansa Yogananda, the great Indian yogi who lived in America for many years until his death in 1952.

I have always been inspired by his insights since I first became aware of his writings in the early 70s. So one day, this short quote of his caught my eye. He said, “I have met the Devil and his name is I Can’t.” And it really got me.

Now I am the product of many, many years of Judeo-Christian religious training and the idea of the Devil, which is the personification of pure evil, plays a central part in it. And here, with this short comment, Yogananda was equating this source of all human suffering with a two-word idea, “I Can’t,” which I realized, is simply an attitude of mind.

So, was this master of consciousness growth saying that the source of all human suffering is an attitude of mind? That was a new one for me, and as I started giving it some thought, my memory of that TV show with the hypnotist came back to me. I doubt that I had even thought of it for twenty years.

Now, that had been quite an example of the idea that if you really believe you can’t do something, you won’t be able to do it, no matter how simple or easy it is.

Of course, we all know that if you really do believe you can do something, it will greatly improve your ability to actually do it. There are many different mental strategies about how to boost your performance. Thinking positively about the task, finding your inner strength to do it and visualizing a positive outcome are just a few of the many things you can do to boost your chances of success.

But no matter what positive mindset strategy you use, there are certain things that you just won’t be able to do. Like, maybe you’ve always loved the stories of saints who supposedly could levitate or even fly, including Saint Francis. But if you decide you want to give it a try, no matter how much faith or belief you have that you can fly, don’t go jumping off of a building. Just try levitating from a sitting position instead. It’s a much safer idea.

So having a deep belief that you can do something doesn’t necessary mean that you can do it, but having a deep belief that you can’t do something can definitely stop you, even if you actually can do it.

And on its most basic level, the belief that you can’t do something can stop you from even trying. Many times, just making the effort is often the key to success. Part of the nature of our intelligence is that it grows by doing, which is one of the reasons it’s so important to make effort. As Lincoln once put it, “I say try. If we never try, we never succeed.”

Which led me back to Yogananda, who had succeeded with an amazing number of accomplishments during his 59 years of life. He had built large ashrams in America, as well as in India, was the spiritual leader of millions of people and founded a large organization that survives to this day. He was a firm believer in putting plans into action, So, his idea that the attitude that defeats making any effort is the devil in disguise started making some sense.

But then it went a little deeper. Yogananda was first and foremost a yogi, which means he had dedicated his life to something that his tradition called “God Realization.” He always said that realizing the infinite presence of the divine within your consciousness is the actual purpose of life on earth and accomplishing this ultimate achievement far eclipses anything else, which took me to a new level of thought.

I started combining the idea of “I can’t” along with the idea of attaining God Realization in this life and I realized that on the deepest level, I honestly and truly believe that I can’t. I have too many doubts about it, and given my cultural upbringing, it just seems impossible. So, what does that say about my chances?

Then, one more thing came up. Yogananda always taught that the external world is an illusion by nature, always pulling you away from your goal, and I thought of the two subjects of hypnosis on that TV show, who had no idea that they were under post-hypnotic suggestion, and that’s what was stopping them.

And it made me wonder, how much of our thoughts and actions are coming from things that are buried so deeply within our minds that we are unable to access them?

It's a pretty profound concept, because it’s acknowledged that there are so many things that affect us in our lives that are blind spots for us. We just can’t see them.

Like how much of an effect do you think your kindergarten teacher had on you? Studies show that it’s enormous and it stays with you for the rest of your life. It makes sense because this is one of the primary programmers of your early mind. But you can’t touch it. Like a post hypnotic suggestion, it’s completely out of reach. Personally, I don’t remember anything at all about mine.

And it’s the same thing with a countless number of other things in our lives. Popular culture, belief systems, societal attitudes, and a thousand other forces that we barely notice, have a profound effect on our minds, our personalities, and ultimately, our destinies.

It all makes the idea of evolving to a higher consciousness seem pretty attractive, because no matter what influences are impacting my mind, subtle or not so subtle, the fact is, I’m still breathing, I’m still alive. And this most basic foundation of my existence, is happening on its own. I have absolutely nothing to do with it, yet it keeps giving me the chance to be alive, and so much more. So, I guess that should tell me something.

Anyway, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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This is the third episode about Walter Russell, one of the most accomplished people in American history. Episode 40, called Self-Bestowed Genius, gave an overview of Russell’s life including some of his major accomplishments. It also described the incredible claim that Russel made that he was in touch with an infinite fountain of wisdom within himself that was the source of all his success in life. He also said that the same intelligence is within every human being.

The episode that followed, called the Five Laws of Success, presented Russell’s five key elements on how we can tap into that intelligence to help elevate our lives. Those five elements were humility, reverence, inspiration, deep purpose and joy.

Now, although his accomplishments were remarkable in their own right, this multi-millionaire, internationally acknowledged master of drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, business and philosophy had dropped out of school after the fourth grade, and had accomplished all of it with no real education, just by tapping into this source of inner wisdom. It was hard to believe, but as he always said, his life spoke for itself.

Following his death in 1962, he left behind teachings on many different topics. As I researched them, much of it was over my head. But there are three key points that I found particularly fascinating and I thought I’d pass them along so you can give them some consideration and see if they do anything for you.

The first one concerns an ability we have in our consciousness that I had never considered before. Russell was very fond of the idea of something he called decentration which, he taught, was the opposite of concentration.

Now, we all know what it means to concentrate on something. You focus your attention on it and the more you concentrate on it, the more it gets into your mentality. And importantly, a lot of times, we have problems letting go of it, especially if it’s charged troubling emotions like anger, guilt and fear.

Holding on to negativity is far more prevalent than it may seem. According to current research, we each think about 50,000 thoughts a day, with a large percentage of them being negative and recurring, which means that we keep churning over the same negative thoughts and feelings again and again.

But Russell said we have the power to decentrate them. This power is a natural part of our mind, but we haven’t been taught to develop it. With concentration, you focus your attention on something and give it your inner energy. With decentration, you just do the opposite. You dissipate your energy and remove your attention from the object.

He said you don’t have to try to change the thoughts and emotions. If we have nothing further to gain from examining them, we can just choose to remove our energy from them and they will disappear on their own. After all, the only reason these things exist in our mind is because we are giving them energy. It’s a very simple fact, but it can be easily missed.

He said it takes some practice, like anything else, if we keep trying, we can get good at it. To start with, if a thought or idea is bothering you, just give yourself a verbal command like, “I decentrate that thought.” Or “I decentrate that feeling.” And then let your mind picture withdrawing your energy from it and see it dissipating, like mist in the sunlight.

It seemed like Russell had mastered the process. He said he could decentrate to zero while he was in the middle of Grand Central Station, meaning he could give zero attention to thought and feeling while being in the middle of a crowd.

It may appear to be a tall order, but another thing Russell always said was, “If I can do it, you can.” You may want to give it a try. After many years, I think I may be starting to get the hang of it.

So that’s the first point from Russell that I wanted to bring up. The second one is about this inner intelligence that Russell claimed was the source of all his incredible accomplishments.

He said it is within each one of us, and it isn’t the higher side of our intelligence, or the part of us that is in touch with the higher spheres or some angelic realm of wisdom. It’s not genius part of ourselves or anything like that. He said that what is inside of us is God Almighty. Period. Full-blast, full-power. God.

At first, I found it surprising, then I realized that the idea forms the basis of most religions in the world. Many traditions speak of the Indwelling God Presence. For instance, the 15th century Indian poet Kabir used the image of the ocean and a drop of water to illustrate the point. God would be the ocean, and each individual would be a drop. Kabir said that the drop is in the ocean, everyone knows this. But the ocean is also in the drop and very few know this.

So, we all have God within. But according to Russell, as well as a myriad of other teachers and masters over the ages, if you want to get close to it, you have to surrender to it. And according to them, the more you do, you start to realize you can merge with it, which, they say, is kind of the point of the whole thing.

In his first law of success, humility, Russell put it this way, “I found that to achieve greatness one had to go only one inch beyond mediocrity. But that one inch is so hard to go, that only those who become aware of God in them can make the grade, for no one can achieve that one inch alone.” And he added, “The ‘I’ must be forgotten, one must not be the part; he must be the whole. Until one learns to lose oneself, he cannot find himself.”

In that vein, when someone asked him, “Why can’t I do the things that you can do?” He replied, “The only difference is that I do everything for God and you do everything for your body.”

It reminds me of something I once read about Parmahansa Yogananda, the great yogi from India who took spent many years in the west, elevating the lives of millions of people. until he passed away in Los Angeles in 1952.

In response to someone who kept questioning him about his personal life, he once said, “Oh, I killed Yogananda long ago. Only God dwells in this temple now.”

It’s always humbling for me whenever I run across expressions like these. The idea of only God dwelling in my temple seems almost unimaginable. With my relentless mind generating a constant stream of random thoughts, I have so much garbage in there, I feel like the line in one of Bob Dylan’s songs, “If my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.”

With that summary of the state of my inner world, that ends the second point of Russell’s that I wanted to bring up. The last one is pretty incredible. It’s about his vision of our future and it runs pretty deep.

In 1921, he coined the term, “The New Age.” Apparently, he was the first person to use it. He said that we were now moving into the next stage of our evolution, a new age which he called, “Epoch Three of Humanity.”

So, what were Epoch One and Epoch Two? According to certain theories of brain evolution, our brain didn’t start out the way it is now. In the beginning, it was much smaller and we didn’t have the ability to think rational thoughts or create language. We had instincts, we had emotional feelings, we were bonded to our family and our tribe, but we couldn’t think. According to Russell, this state of being was Epoch One.

Then, for reasons that remain unknown, some major evolutionary changes took place and our brain radically transformed. It got about a third larger with much more fat, and could begin to think rationally. We could think If-Then. If I do this, then that will happen. Like I know that the sun comes up on this side of the cave. If I sleep here, then I’ll be warmer in the morning. Soon after, language began to develop, eventually followed by writing. Before this evolutionary change, the only form of communication we had was just glorified grunting.

This ability to think rational thought began Epoch Two of humanity, which went from pre-historic caveman days until now. Of course, rational thought changed our whole world and our lives in it. Every advancement from the wheel to the computer came from it. But critically, one primary factor hasn’t changed at all, and that is, survival. We’re still struggling to survive, living by the law of the jungle to a large degree. Kill or be killed. Winner takes all.

Although it may not be clearly apparent, this fear-based concept of life is at the root of all the greed and lust for power that has dominated human history for all this time. All of this misery, generated by all of our conflicted concepts, theories and opinions, is all based on fear.

But, according to Russell, in Epoch Three of humanity, it is all going to change. It’s probably not going to be an overnight transition. It may take some time, maybe even a century or two, and even though it may seem quite dark, supposedly, this is just the darkness before the dawn.

So, what are the implications of this new epoch? What does it mean? According to Russell, it means nothing less than a new kind of human being living a new kind of life on earth.

Humans will eventually be liberated from a life of drudgery. With the right intentions, technology will evolve to the point where all of the great resources of planet earth will be properly harvested for the benefit of all.

It might be hard to understand how bountiful the earth really is, but here are a few quick facts to consider. As far as overcrowding is concerned, if you took every single human being on the planet and put them all together with one yard between them, they wouldn’t even fill up the state of Rhode Island. So, the entire population of the world could fit into the smallest state in America.

As far as hunger is concerned, more than 50 percent of all the food presently harvested on earth is thrown out every year, which means that human hunger isn’t the result of there not being enough food for everyone. It’s the result of mis-directed and poorly coordinated human activity.

And when it comes to energy, it is estimated that there is enough power in the amount of sunlight that hits one acre of land in one hour to provide all the electricity to the city of Chicago for a whole year.

So, enough said about enlightened technology, what about the human? This is where it gets really encouraging. Russell said our destiny is to emerge from this fear-based, survival-oriented, dog-eat-dog existence into a much higher level of intelligence, whose foundations will be based on each individual’s constant, conscious relationship with that divine energy that is within each one of us or God Almighty, as Russell called it.

Life will be like heaven on earth and if we could see the humans of 100 or 200 years from now, they would appear God-like to us, manifesting all the highest human characteristics. Wisdom, love, compassion and kindness, along with all the other better angels of our nature, would be part of our everyday way of life.

Okay, maybe it sounds too good to be true. But hey, I didn’t come up with this stuff, Russell did. And supposedly he was getting it from the source of wisdom within him that was the source of all his amazing achievements. So even though it may sound like a great big piece of pie in the sky, I’m sticking with it.

I’d love to imagine that 200 years from now, someone may be reading or listening to this information that came from this primitive man who was living in these primitive times. And that person would be thinking how obvious all of it was. Of course, all of these great things were going to come true. It had to happen and couldn’t have been any other way. How obvious!

Wishful thinking? Who knows? But no matter what may be happening in the world around us, we’re still entitled to our hopes and dreams and as the saying goes, “It takes a dreamer to make a dream come true.”

Well, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, I discussed some of the research I’ve on Walter Russell. As I mentioned, a chance encounter with a stranger led me down this unexpected path. I had never heard of Russell before and I was completely amazed by what I found. Not only was he one of the most accomplished people in American history, a self-made millionaire, master painter, sculptor and musician, architect and builder, friend of presidents and kings, as well as scientist and teacher, but incredibly, he was a fourth-grade drop-out, with almost no formal education.

And if that wasn’t remarkable enough Russell claimed that due to some extraordinary events he had experienced, he was able to tap into the intelligence that powers the entire universe. He said not only was this intelligence within him, he also claimed that it’s inside everyone of us, and we all have the potential to tap into it like he could.

While enticing, I found these ideas to be pretty incredible, but as he used to say, his life spoke for itself. In that regard, Thomas J. Watson, a close friend and associate, and the legendary founder of IBM, said that Russell had achieved seven lifetimes worth of accomplishments and that he had “reduced the philosophy of thought power to a science, and demonstrated that science in his own achievements.”

One of the books I had purchased about Russell called “The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe’ included a section where I listed what he called his Five Laws of Success. I found them to be intriguing different from what I had expected.

Russell didn’t stress hard work, long hours, detailed planning or setting benchmarks. Instead, he stressed the power of nurturing certain inner states of consciousness that naturally expand our ability to focus on the higher levels of intelligence that are within our awareness. These inner states help bring about the best in us. And the more we align with the best parts of ourselves, the more we naturally do our best, and ultimately become our best.

So here is a very brief overview of Walter Russell’s Five Laws of Success. It’s pretty simple, but I’ve read it hundreds of times, and I still don’t think I’m really getting it.

The first Law of Success is humility.

When it comes to true success in any area of life, it all starts and it all ends, with humility. According to Russell, nothing of real value, nothing that brings authentic, lasting fulfillment, can be done without a humble understanding of our true position in the larger scheme of things.

We need to truly understand that we are each 100% dependent on our breath to survive. We simply cannot live without it. And no one, no matter their position or accomplishments, has any control over it whatsoever. Life comes to each one of us by its own power, which is, and probably will remain, far beyond human comprehension. And, according to Russel, we need to surrender to that power to accomplish anything of real significance, indeed be truly fulfilled.

He said, “Early in life I found that to achieve greatness one had to go only one inch beyond mediocrity, but that one inch is so hard to go, that only those who become aware of God in them can make the grade, for no one can achieve that one inch alone.”

According to him, our own individual awareness is actually just a part of the larger universal intelligence. “The ‘I’ must be forgotten,” he said. “One must not be the part; he must be the whole. Until one learns to lose oneself, he cannot find himself.”

From this humble awareness, a natural desire to help others begins to flow, increasing in power, continually elevating the consciousness to higher perspectives. Russell said he often felt like he was “placing himself within all others through acts of thoughtfulness and service.”

So, the first step is authentic humility. There is no substitution for it. Although our miniature ego may always be around, expressing its miniature opinions, we have to surrender to the highest. Afterall, as he observed, “No great man has ever wise-cracked his way into greatness.”

The second Law of Success is reverence.

He used to say that when he was entering his workplace, he felt like he was entering a cathedral. He once put it this way, “I learned to cross the threshold of my studio with reverence, as though I were entering a shrine, set apart for me to become co-creator with the Universal Thinker of all things.”

When I first read this, it was a completely new idea to me because it was so radically different from any concept I had about work. Like most other products of the Puritan Work Ethic which was the foundation of the American education of my early years, my idea of work is that it was a form of drudgery, something you had to do. Like I had been consigned to a life of hard labor.

This was like night and day, saying that you can experience a grateful reverence for the opportunity to apply your intelligence in joyful service to the greater good.

Russell said that there is a hidden gem within every action we make, and we can uncover it by becoming conscious of the innate greatness of life itself. This has vast implications.

As he said, “If you look reverently in the inward direction toward your inner self, you will be amazed at what you will find. If you are alone long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with yourself, you will hear whisperings from the universal source of all consciousness which will inspire you.... You will soon find yourself using the cosmic forces. instead of working blindly in the dark.”

The third Law of Success is Inspiration.

We all know that acting from inspiration represents an ideal state of being. We say that we saw an inspiring movie or play or someone sang an inspired song or gave an inspired speech. Or we saw an inspiring painting or sculpture. There are thousands of examples. But, in our way of thinking, inspiration is something that we stumble upon every once in a while.

It doesn’t have to be this way, according to Russell. He said that inspiration is always present within our consciousness, we just ignore it. We haven’t been taught to value it, so, we just take it on a hit or miss basis, but he said we can do much better than that.

“Inspiration is that deep awareness of the consciousness of Being, which differentiates the genius or mystic from the being of average intelligence,” he said. “It is the language of light, through which man and God inter-communicate. Inspiration comes only to those who seek it with humility toward their own achievements and reverence toward the achievements of God.”

He taught that through humility and true inspiration, a higher access to knowledge can be gained. “Knowledge is yours for the asking,” he said. “You have but to plug into it. You do not have to learn anything. In fact, all you have to do is recollect it, or recognize it, for you already have it as your inheritance.” I guess it sounds easy enough.

The fourth law of success is Deep Purpose.

According to Russell, you have to learn how to focus your energy exclusively on completing your purpose. As he put it, “You have to gather your energy together, conserving it and insulating it from dissipation in every direction other than that of your purpose.”

But he also took it a little deeper. According to him, we have two parts of our consciousness, one part is connected to the finite world and the other part is connected to the Infinite. And to produce a truly great accomplishment, we need to be conscious of both.

Our finite purpose is the obvious goal that we with to accomplish. But along with it, our infinite purpose is to continually grow in consciousness where we can be living and expressing what he called, “The Life Triumphant.”

This is the state of being where you are giving out far more than you are receiving. He said a fruit tree in full bloom was a perfect example. The tree is taking in what it needs in terms of nutrients from the soil, water and air. But it is giving out far more than it is taking in, constantly supplying beautiful, nutritious, delicious fruits, with each Bearing seeds that can be the source of more trees, indeed of entire forests.

This is the ultimate goal of living, to embody what he called the divine plan behind creation, which is the constant multiplication of giving. This is the law of nature. But sometimes humans get out of tune, producing creations that are not in harmony with the big picture. And nature doesn’t go along with it. As he warned, “You may command nature only to the extent that you are willing to obey her.”

The final Law of Success is Joy.

Russell had a unique point of view regarding the importance of happiness and joy. He said inner joy carries a power in it that replenishes our consciousness in a way that is unmatched because the very essence of our being is actually happiness. Joy is our natural state. And we function best when we are in it. That’s when we are truly successful.

It surprised me to hear that he put such an emphasis on being happy. I hadn’t been expecting it. But Russell said it was more than just being happy. He said he was ecstatic. “By ecstatic I mean that rare mental condition which makes an inspired man so supremely happy in his mental concentration, that he is practically unaware of everything which goes on around him extraneous to his purpose, but is keenly and vitally aware of everything pertaining to his purpose.”

He went on to say that this ecstatic state was common among great artists and he described it this way, “Inspiration in man is accompanied by an intense mental ecstasy which is characteristic of all who become intensely conscious of their closeness to God. The great composers, sculptors, painters, inventors and planners of all time were in such an ecstatic condition... By ecstasy I mean inner joyousness, and by inner joyousness I mean those inspirational fires which burn within the consciousness of great geniuses.”

It may not be obvious on the outside, but as he said, “There is nothing dramatic about it. But there is some subtle light in the eye of the inspired one, or some even more subtle quiet emanation which surrounds the inspired thinker, which tells you that you are in the presence of one who has bridged the gap which separates the mundane world from the world of spirit.”

So that’s a quick overview of Russell’s Five Laws of Success. It seemed to me that they were designed to tune your consciousness to its highest levels of intelligence. Because our conscious intelligence is the source of all our thinking, emotions, intuition and ultimately decision making, it is the very compass that we use to navigate our way through life. And in that regard, what could be more valuable than tuning our consciousness to the Infinite Intelligence?

It reminds me of a famous quote from Lincoln, who spent a number of years in his youth as a woodsman, chopping down trees. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree,” he said. “And I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Again, here is something that makes perfect sense, but you would hardly ever think of it, unless, of course, you actually know what you’re doing.

So, to me Walter Russell’s Five Laws of Success are pretty amazing, as surprising as they are enlightening. But the obvious question is, of course, do they work? And for me the obvious answer is – try them and see.

The upside potential seems so great, and I don’t see a downside. Maybe we won’t have the kind of results that Russell had. Maybe we won’t suddenly become concert pianists, great painters, sculptors or scientific geniuses, but I always feel like if something makes me a truly better person, even by a fraction of a percentage point, it’s still a major win.

Now not to get over mercenary here, but one half of one percent of ten billion dollars is still fifty million. And it might be tight, but I think I could get by on that.

Well anyway, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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I have found that every once in a while, some unexpected information can come from an unexpected source and make an unexpectedly major change in your outlook on life. Something like that happened to me a few years ago.

I was in the pool behind our condo and a stranger came over and introduced himself to me. We struck up an informal conversation with one random topic casually leading to another. At one point he asked me if I had ever heard of someone named Walter Russell. I drew a complete blank. The name meant nothing to me at all and I said so.

Looking surprised at my ignorance, he launched into a string of hyperboles about this person I’d never heard of - that he was one of the most multi-talented people who ever lived, that his rags-to-riches story was one of the classics in American History, that he was a teacher of Consciousness Evolution, who claimed that we can all become geniuses if we want to and that Walter Cronkite had called him the “Leonardo DaVinci of our time,” when he announced his death on national TV in 1963. And on and on and on.

Then, he said with a sly smile, that Walter Russell was so brilliant and so prolific that he made Benjamin Franklin look like a “schlepper.”

Now, I’m pretty familiar with US history and culture, and I’ve been aware of Consciousness Evolution since the idea first caught my eye in the early 70s, and in all this time, I had never once heard of Walter Russell. So naturally, I was skeptical. After all, if this Russell guy was so great, how come I had never heard of him?

The stranger’s looks didn’t help dispel my doubts either. He was obviously a bit “out there.” A not-quite-former hippie in his mid-sixties, it seemed like he had not-quite-returned from wherever it was that his last acid trip had dropped him off.

And frankly, his Ben Franklin “schlepper” comment rubbed me the wrong way. Schlepper is a fairly nasty Yiddish term with a host of meanings, one more pejorative than the next. It’s basically a lazy dim-wit who can only perform menial tasks and can’t be trusted. Just your average dolt. Now, I have always been a huge fan of Franklin’s, and idea of applying the term to him just didn’t sit well with me.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the stranger in the pool did a perfect Groucho Marx impersonation. It turned out that he did Groucho impressions for a living, and he broke into a string of jokes that were actually pretty funny. Impersonation seemed like it was second nature to him.

Then, he looked over to the far corner of the pool, rolled his eyes, sang “Hello, I must be going” and swam away. An instant later, he was playing Groucho to a few well-groomed ladies who had just come into the pool.

It was a mildly amusing event at the pool during a pleasantly uneventful summer, and I made a lukewarm mental note to look this Walter Russell up someday. I jotted the name down, stuck it in a junk drawer and forgot about it.

At least six months must have gone by before I stumbled on the note again. I was sort of killing time, which is something I’ve been known to be a master of, so I thought I’d do a quick Google search.

I was expecting to find a few miniscule bits of information that I’d browse for a few moments, then move onto something else. But what I found really was something else and in a matter of seconds, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. What I mean is that I actually couldn’t believe what I was reading. It seemed preposterous, like it couldn’t possibly have been true. I had never seen anything quite like it before.

Walter Russell had been a prominent 20th century figure, a self-made millionaire who lived in New York City and had a studio in Carnegie Hall. A master painter and sculptor, he had also started a large architect firm in the city and had been intimately involved with the construction and financing of seventeen significant buildings. He owned a stable of Arabian horses in Central Park and was a renown equestrian. He took up figure skating in his forties and won the US national championship against competitors in their twenties. And later in life, as he got involved in the study of chemistry, he helped upgrade the periodic table of elements.

His name was always in the papers and he ran with quite a crowd - Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla and FDR, to name just a few. Not to mention his close friend Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who founded IBM.

And yet not one person that I knew had ever heard of him. It was incredible.

How could someone who had accomplished so much, in so many different fields, on such a grand scale, be so unknown? It didn’t make sense. After all, this wasn’t ancient history and it certainly didn’t happen in a vacuum.

I was astounded and kept reading. Two books that were several decades old caught my eye – “The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe,” and “The Secret of Working Knowingly with God.” The titles surprised me. I didn’t see their connection to the subject matter I had been reading.

I looked them up and the price was right, so I ordered them blind. When they came a few days later, it was immediately clear that this whole story ran much deeper than I thought. I was stunned by the books and couldn’t put them down.

To begin to grasp the depth of the story, the first thing to understand is that Russell was basically uneducated. Born into a very poor family in Boston in 1871, his parents got him in a job in a grocery store when he was about 10 years old. To help support the family, he dropped out of school after the fourth grade and never went back. So, amazingly given all that he had accomplished, he had no college, no high school or even junior high.

Yet, he went on to become one of the most accomplished people in history - a self-made millionaire, friend to presidents and kings, an internationally renowned painter, sculptor, musician, architect, scientist, sportsman, businessman, and master teacher. His resume was obviously well-documented and his vast accomplishments were completely verified.

Although what he did was truly amazing, even more amazing was how he said he did it. According to him, from the time he was a young boy, he experienced a series of inner illuminations that continued throughout his entire life. And these inner illuminations tapped him into a vast storehouse of wisdom, indeed the wisdom of the universe.

It all started when he was seven years old. He was playing marbles with some friends and suddenly, “Something tremendous happened to me, something indescribable, something so beautiful, so wonderful, a sort of complete blotting out of everything concerning the physical universe, concerning my body.

“A great burst of changing colors – blue, violet, orange seemed to fill and pervade all space and me. I was swallowed up in it. Then that ceased and there was a blinding flash and I stood motionless.”

He couldn’t function at all for several hours and it took him over a week to recover his normal consciousness. But he really wasn’t the same. In fact, he was never the same again.

It happened to him again the following May. And then it happened every May for the rest of his life. Every seven years the episode would be particularly intense, lasting for several days at a time. Once, he was in the altered state, in tune with this universal intelligence for 39 days.

Following each experience, he would find that he was different, as though his whole being had been elevated. Sublime understandings would crystallize in his mind. He seemed to have direct access to new levels of information. His existing talents would deepen or he would develop new ones.

For example, he could play the piano at a young age, but following one of the episodes, he was suddenly able to write and play advanced musical compositions, with a depth of emotion and pathos that was extraordinary. Everyone noticed the changes and several of the formal pieces he composed were played by symphony orchestras throughout the world.

The exact same thing happened with his skill as an artist. He had some talent and training, but it expanded exponentially after one of his episodes and he started churning out masterpieces. He soon became the artistic director of Colliers Magazine, and his series of pictures called, “The most beautiful children in America” won several awards. He drew a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt’s children that hung in the White House for a time.

On another occasion, his talent as a sculptor manifested instantaneously. He created over fifty masterpieces including busts of Thomas Edison and Mark Twain that are breath-taking in their level of realism.

Soon afterwards, in a completely different arena, he invented the concept of the co-op apartment in Manhattan and personally drew-up the first co-op lease in history, which his lawyer said was perfect in its legal detail.

It was all so hard to believe, not to mention that it was all done by a fourth-grade dropout. But he said that he had been granted the ability to transcend his mind’s normal thought processes and tap directly into the intelligence of the universe which, he said, is all-knowing.

This intelligence is divine in nature and is the home of all our noble human virtues including wisdom, love and compassion, according to him. He termed it the very life force which sustains us all and carries the genius of our consciousness on every plane - physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

Russell’s work output continued to explode, much of which required extreme precision. And his incredible achievements were acknowledged at the highest levels. For twelve consecutive years, he was the main trainer of the entire IBM sales force. Thomas J. Watson, the company’s Founder and President, said that Russell’s accomplishments were equal to seven lifetimes of achievement, all performed at peak levels of excellence.

His life became an example of a most lofty ideal – that of being able to live in a state that he termed “ecstatic joy,” while remaining completely grounded and succeeding brilliantly in his life.

According to him, this rarified state, where the inner and outer worlds are in complete harmony, is not only completely natural, it is the way we are meant to live. And he said that it doesn’t diminish with age. In fact, it increases.

He was living proof. He remained in good health well into his old age, with his awareness fully intact, enjoying profound happiness and fulfillment. He finally passed away exactly on his 92nd birthday, and that was in 1963, when the average life expectancy for an American man was sixty-six!

He always held that this genius intelligence exists within every single one of us and we are each capable of connecting with it exactly as he had. We can all become much greater than we think, but we have to make the decision to open up to it ourselves to it and connect with it in a way that is our own.

“Many have asked if I could more specifically direct them how to kindle that spark of inner fire which illuminates the way to one's self. That I cannot do,” he wrote. “I can merely point the way and tell you of its existence. You must then find it for yourself.” And he famously added, “Mediocrity is Self-inflicted. Genius is Self-Bestowed.”

Now if you’re like I was when I first got exposed to this story, with all of its implications, you’re probably pretty blown out. It’s a lot to absorb, on many levels.

He left behind an enormous amount of material on the subject of consciousness evolution and expansion. His writings are vast and the subject matter is profound. A great place to start is with his “Five Laws of Success.”

In the next episode, we’ll explore them and you may be surprised by how simple, natural and powerful they are. Like all of Russell’s teachings, they are meant to be practical. You just try them on for size and see how they fit.

Well, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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At this point in world events, it’s not hard to see that the evolution of human consciousness is critical to our survival as a species. We just have to grow up. And the way things are going, it seems like we better get moving.

Over the years, one of the biggest problems we’ve faced is the simple fact that our technology always grows at a much faster pace than our character does. It’s always been like this. We create things for ourselves much faster than we actually understand ourselves. And this has some inherent danger to it.

Even though our world seems incredibly sophisticated, in certain ways we still live by the law of the jungle - Dog eat dog, winner take all. And on that basic level, we’re not much better than a bunch of cavemen and women who, among other destructive inventions, have also created nuclear weapons. In that way, not a lot’s changed since we first came up with the sword and spear. It’s just a matter of degree.

And what’s driving this whole thing? On a basic level, it’s just plain fear. We’re still afraid of our own shadow. And our fear has been the cause of most of the tragic, human-to-human calamities that we’ve inflicted on ourselves since the dawn of civilization. At least what we like to call civilization.

It reminds me of a famous quote from Mahatma Gandhi from 1931. Towards the end of his visit to England, a reporter asked him, “What do you think of Western Civilization and Gandhi quickly replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”

Some say that human history is simply a reflection of the state of human intelligence. If that’s true, do we have the capacity to change things for the better by changing ourselves for the better. Can we evolve into something far greater than we are?

That’s a question I’ve been entertaining since I was fourteen years old. It was the summer of 1963. I was at camp and got introduced to idea of the evolution of consciousness in a most unexpected way – through a few panels of a comic book.

Like all the other kids, I had been a major comic book addict and for years with my main focus on Superman and Batman. But this summer I had been introduced to a new company called Marvel Comics and it was really expanding my imagination. They still featured action stories, but they always gave you a twist.

In the last Fantastic Four episode, they had introduced an alien named “The Watcher,” from an advanced race of beings. He had become friends with Reed Richards, who was the leader of the Fantastic Four. One day, Richards wandered into The Watcher’s laboratory when he wasn’t there. He absentmindedly picked up a baton-like device and in an instant, he was rooted to the ground and couldn’t move. His head began morphing into a much larger size. Suddenly, The Watcher burst in, grabbed the baton out of Richards’s hand and with a different tool, returned his head back to its normal size. Once Richards had recovered, The Watcher told him he must never touch anything in the laboratory again without The Watcher being there. He went on to explain that the device Richards was holding was a “Consciousness Enhancer” and in those few seconds, it had evolved him forward a thousand years. He had actually become a human being of the far distant future.

As a fellow scientist, he asked Richards what the experience had been like. Richards said he wasn’t able to retain all the details, but he could remember that he had gone into a heightened state of awareness and was fully merged with the power of the universe. The joy of being in that consciousness was indescribable.

It was all so foreign to me, but something about the idea of being able to evolve into a higher state of being took deep root in me. Like a seed being planted with unknown potential, it hit me in a place in my imagination that I still far too young to be in touch with.

A few years later, I experienced a similar event when I unexpectedly encountered the idea of the evolution of consciousness in a TV show. It was March of 1967. I was 18 years old and a senior in high school and I flipped on Star Trek. I wasn’t a big Trekkie. I just used to watch it every once in a while.

In case you don’t know, the original Star Trek takes place in the future, in the year 2265. The good guys are the Federation and the Starship Enterprise is one of its ships, commanded by Captain James Kirk and his first mate, a half-human, half-Vulcan creature named Mr. Spock. The villains of the series are the Klingons, a vicious, brutal dictatorship that is directly opposed to the high-minded principles of the Federation.

As the episode begins, negotiations between the Federation and the Klingons have broken down and the two sides are about to go to war. On orders from the Federation, Kirk and Spock go visit a planet called Organia, which is near the border of the Klingon Empire. They want to convince its people not to allow the Klingons to set up a base there.

Spock has researched the planet and as they approach he tells Kirk that the Organians are a primitive people, living in a low-level society that has had no significant advancement for thousands of years. They are dim-witted, but quite peaceful.

“Just the kind of weak innocents that make perfect fodder for Klingon domination,” Kirk observes.

Kirk and Spock get beamed down to the planet and meet with the Elder of the Organian society. Kirk explains that they are with the Federation, which stands for freedom and self-rule. He also explains that the Klingons are probably on their way and will seek to dominate them and take over the entire planet for their own purposes.

He makes a strong appeal that they should join forces with the Federation and allow them to set up defenses against the Klingons. But the Elder declines. He explains that they don’t believe in fighting and warfare, regardless of the reason. But he tells him that he and Spock are welcomed to stay and observe.

Kirk and Spock take up residence on the planet to spy on the Klingons, who land soon after. In short order, with brute force, they begin to take over the planet.

At one point, Kirk and Spock are captured. Kirk had been supplying the Federation with information on the Klingon operations and now an all-out war between the Federation and the Klingons seems inevitable.

The Klingon Commander decides to put more pressure on the Organians to join with them against the Federation. He says they will execute 20 Organians every hour as long as they refuse to cooperate. The Elder is not moved and within the hour, the executions begin. Twenty innocent people are brutally murdered in public every single hour.

Sadly, this strategy of a dominating nation with superior firepower, conquering another country and terrorizing its citizens into submission, so they can steal their resources has played out on earth more times than can be counted. And tragically, it still continues to this day.

In the fictional world of the future, the regardless of the Klingon’s brutality, Organians still refuse to cooperate.

The Klingon Commander finally meets one on one with Kirk to see if he can force him to give out any information about the Federation’s plans. Immediate negative sparks fly between them, but even though they clearly hate each other, they do have one thing in common. As military men, they have both come to despise the Organians, who clearly have no spine and will not stand and fight for their own land. And they’re even willing to have their innocent citizens killed, rather than put up any resistance.

Although Kirk’s revulsion for the Klingons is obvious, the Klingon Commander appreciates it. “Good honest hatred is refreshing,” he says. “I don’t trust people who smile too much.”

Suddenly, the two men are told that they must meet with the Organian Council immediately. An important announcement is about to be made. As they approach, the Organian Elder looks at them with the same, peaceful benign look he always has and then says, “As I stand here, I also stand upon the home planet of the Klingon Empire and the home planet of the Federation to make this pronouncement. I am putting a stop to this insane war of yours.”

The two commanders, along with Spock, stare at him in disbelief

“Yes. It’s being done,” the Elder continues. “All your forces, wherever they are, are now immobilized. Feel free to confirm if you like.” Both Kirk and the Klingon commander use their devices to communicate with their headquarters and they find out, to their amazement, that all of their joint destructive power has mysteriously gone dead.

“We find interference in other people’s affairs most offensive, but you gentlemen have given us no choice,” the Elder says.

“You should be the first to be on our side,” Kirk responds bluntly. “Two hundred innocent hostages have already been killed.”

“No one has been killed, Captain,” the Elder informs him. “No one has died on this planet for thousands of years.”

Then he makes another declaration. “Your emotions are most discordant. We do not wish to be inhospitable, but gentlemen, you must leave. The mere presence of beings like yourselves is intensely painful to us.”

“What do you mean, beings like yourselves?” Kirk asks.

“Millions of years ago, Captain, we were of humanoid lineage like yourselves as well. But we have evolved far beyond all that. We have no need for physical bodies. That of us which you see here is a mere appearance we have made for your sake.”

At that point, the Elder and the other Organians in the room transform into pulsating light, too bright to look at. Then they disappear. In another moment, Kirk and Spock are mysteriously transported back to the bridge of the Enterprise. Kirk is near shock, but Spock, as always, is completely calm. It’s the Vulcan in him.

“Fascinating,” he says. “Pure energy. Pure thought. Totally incorporeal. Not life as we know it at all.”

“But what about the whole planet with its fields and its buildings?” Kirk asks.

“Probably just a conventionalized prop,” Spock responds. “Useless to the Organians. Created so that visitors such as ourselves could have normalized points of reference.”

“Doesn’t seem possible,” Kirk observes.

“Captain, it took millions of years for the Organians to evolve into what they are. I would say that they are as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are above the amoeba.” And with that incredible statement, the episode ended.

Now, I was sixteen years old and was completely blown out. First of all, it was such a surprise that these kindly, meek and apparently powerless creatures were actually far more powerful that the Federation and the Klingons combined. They certainly didn’t show it, but I guess they just didn’t have any ego about it.

And also, this was the first time I had never heard the idea that there could be a lifeform that was more evolved than we are, let alone being as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are from the amoeba. That comparison was really too much to wrap my head around. What if there really were creatures that were that much more evolved than we are. What would they be like? And what about us? The Organians evolved, how far can we grow?

Sometimes even though you don’t see it coming, an idea comes out of the blue that radically changes our point of view. With these outrageous depictions of consciousness evolution from the Watcher and Star Trek, suddenly our whole way of life, with all our petty attachments seem so small. And from that perspective, our endless history of war after war after war, filled with killing, suffering and pain, looks like just one long catastrophe. Can we grow beyond it?

We’ll maybe we can’t evolve a thousand years in thirty seconds. But still, we gotta be able to do better than this…

So, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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Human Beings are primates, closely related to monkeys, lemurs and apes. We have all evolved from a common ancestor, beginning about 60 million years ago, and incredibly, when it comes to genetics, we are all amazingly alike. On average, human DNA is 96% identical to the DNA of our most distant primate cousins, and nearly 99% identical to our closest relative, the chimpanzee.

The fact that we have so much DNA in common with our primate family is pretty amazing and to me, and it helps explain a well-known fact about human beings, which is that basically, we are a monkey-see, monkey-do kind of species.

Generally, we’re most comfortable being part of a crowd. We find safety in numbers and we like to belong. So, externally, we mirror each other a lot. We look alike, we dress alike and we talk alike, using similar facial and vocal expressions.

But it goes much deeper than that. Critically, we also think alike. We have something called the herd mentality, where we think like everyone else around us. And because of that, for the most part, most of us don’t think very deeply. And it’s not just about what we think, it’s also about the way we think.

Looking into how we think, started to became compelling to me as I first began to explore personal growth many years ago. After I started meditating regularly, it became obvious that my mind was churning out an endless stream of random thoughts. And rather that being served by them, it felt more like I was being imprisoned by them.

Coincidentally, I had been reading a book about Einstein and it mentioned his relationship with a Danish physicist name Niels Bohr. Although they were friends and colleagues I had never heard of the Dane before and started doing some research on him.

He wasn’t only a revered physicist; he was a serious philosopher as well. Before long, I was really impressed with the way Bohr thought, always open to new revelations, which constantly filled his mind with insight. Unfortunately, the more I looked into him and Einstein, the more unimpressed I became by how shallow my own mental waters had been running, with tiny thoughts about nothing, unanchored by any reality, leading me absolutely nowhere. But I was still in my early twenties and had a long way to grow.

In retrospect, it reminds me of a line from the 1990s TV show Seinfeld, when Elaine says to Jerry, “Just when I think you’re the shallowest man I’ve ever met, you find a way to drain more water out of the pool.”

Anyway, back to Bohr. A contemporary of Einstein’s, they both won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. Although they were close friends, they actually had very different views on quantum mechanics, the new field of physics that was emerging which required a major leap of thought to even begin to understand it.

As they continued to disagree, they had a series of debates on the topic, with Bohr constantly defending what he called his principle of complementarity. And this is where things started to get truly fascinating to me.

It’s not hard to understand at all. Simply put, it’s about paradox, holding that that something can have seemingly opposite aspects to it, while still being one cohesive whole. A classic example is that there had been a longstanding argument about whether light is, in essence, a particle or a wave. It turns out that both are true. Believe it or not, light is both a particle and a wave at the same time.

Now the principle of complementarity wasn’t just a philosophical theory. It was practical physics and led to incredible advances in science, including the development of the laser, the transistor, the microchip, the electron microscope, as well as the development of the computer itself.

Although it was based on paradox, Bohr was comfortable with it, but he felt that you had to change your way of thinking in order to understand it. It turns out that paradoxical ideas can actually enhance your intelligence because they make you think first, before revealing their message to you.

We’re all familiar with them. Here are some common examples of paradoxical statements:

Less is more
Youth is wasted on the Young
If you don’t risk anything, you risk everything
The more you give, the more you get
The louder you are, the less they hear
The only constant is change.
And here are some famous paradoxical quotes:
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!, from Dr. Strangelove
I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse, from The Godfather
I had to come to prison to become a crook, from Shawshank Redemption
And from Plato – I am the wisest man alive for I know one thing, and this is that I know nothing.

Now a paradox is generally not a welcomed phenomenon in logic and science, but Bohr was a big fan of it. Once, when approaching a new problem, he said, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

But you had to drop your accustomed way of thinking and allow new ideas to form in your brain. This was especially true when it came to trying to understand quantum mechanics, which seemed completely outside of the realm of the logic of the day.

As Bohr said, “It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it,”

“Opposites are not contradictory but complementary," he added. “There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them. If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows that he has not understood the first thing about them.”

In time, Bohr had become a highly esteemed scientific expert, but he approached his role in a lighthearted way. “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field,” he said. “Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.”

His communications with his fellow colleagues were also legendary. Once, when responding to a new proposal that had been submitted to him, Bohr had shown it to his group and then replied, “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.”

Then he continued, “We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words. You’re not thinking. You’re just being logical.”

Again, he and Einstein were great friends who had a lot of respect for each other, but they had different and often seriously conflicting views about some very significant issues. In this day and age, I find it refreshing that these two extraordinary men could seriously disagree, but still respect each other and enjoy each other’s company.

After Einstein famously said, “God does not play dice with the universe,” Bohr responded, “Stop telling God what to do with his dice.” Then, in a letter that he wrote to Bohr in their later years, Einstein said, “Not often in life has a human being caused me such joy by his mere presence as you did.”

Although all of this had a deep effect on me, there is one last observation by Bohr that was in a league all by itself. It was best expressed by his son, Aage Bohr, who also won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Interestingly, Neils and Aage are one of only seven sets of parents and children who have both won a Nobel prize.

So, Bohr divided truth into two categories: Small Truths and Great Truths. According to him, the opposite of a small truth is a lie. But the opposite of a Great truth is another Great Truth.

Now this might not sound like much, but when I got exposed to it, it caused a seismic reaction within me, reverberating throughout my entire consciousness, creating major changes in me that continue to this day.

The first part of it is easy enough to understand. Right now, I am sitting down and writing this episode on a computer. And that is a Small Truth. But if I said I was standing up and dictating it on a voice recorder, that would be a lie.

So, the fact that the opposite of a Small Truth is a lie is pretty simple. But how in the world can the opposite of a Great Truth be another Great Truth?

It seemed like a quite a baffling paradox and I started giving it some thought. What’s an example of a Great Truth? How about the idea that the universe is infinitely large? Well, that seemed like it could be a great truth. It was certainly big enough. What would the opposite of it be?

Obviously, it would be that the universe is infinitely small. Now, is that true? Yes, of course it is. Science is now measuring distances of less than a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of an inch. That would be a decimal point followed by thirty-four zeroes and a one. And there’s a whole universe of subatomic strata in there. So yes, the opposite of this one Great Truth is another Great Truth.

This led me to apply the paradoxical idea to God which produced a truly kilowatt lightbulb moment for me.

There has been a long-standing, theological argument about that I had been caught up in for years. On one hand is the belief that God or whatever finite term you want to put on infinity, is not really involved in human affairs and our personal lives. He (she or it) doesn’t get his hands dirty. He just sets things up and let’s them run their course. And when it comes down to it, we’re basically on our own.

Then there’s the other side of the coin, the belief that God is intimately involved in every single thing about us and our personal lives, like a truly loving mother and father combined, only a billion times more so. Two quite opposite view points.

Suddenly it hit me, what if they’re both true? What does that do to this big argument? What if one didn’t exclude the other, but rather complemented it. This was a really big deal for me and it released a flood of new observations.

For instance, it always bothered me that good and evil could exist at the same time, both in the outer world in general, as well as in the ideas and concepts within my own mind.

But now, I had a new perspective on it. What if the good and the bad, the positive and the negative were just polar opposites with the potential to highlight the differences between the two? And what if, through understanding that, I could learn that I had the power to choose between them, to decide which I wanted to nurture and which to release?

I know to some, this may seem fairly rudimentary, but for me it was seriously revelatory stuff. And it still is. It’s amazing what a change in your inner outlook and mode of thought can do for you.

Now, one last time, back to Bohr. He and Einstein helped break ground on this new world of scientific understanding, quantum mechanics, that began to emerge over a hundred years ago, which revolutionized science and ushered in the modern age. Of course, it’s been an age filled with paradox, tremendous advancements and wonders mixed with horrible suffering as well.

But going forward, maybe this monkey-see, monkey-do species of ours can learn some new tricks, some new ways to use this vast intelligence of ours. Maybe we can find methods of unraveling the paradox we face and help bring about a much brighter future for all of us.

Who knows? As Neils Bohr put it, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. But the exponential increase in advancement will only continue.” Of course, nobody knows what’s coming next in this life, but if it’s an exponential increase in advancement in the right direction, it certainly sounds good to me.

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

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Ever since the old caveman days, when we sat around fires shooting the evening breeze, human beings have always loved stories. They do something specific for us. Besides giving us a great chance to be entertained while we hang out together, they give us the opportunity to learn and grow in a most efficient way. We can get the lesson of the story without having to go through the experience that’s at the core of it. We don’t have to be the one who actually gets hit by a car, or hit by a heartbreak. We can extract the understanding that comes from the circumstance without actually having to experience the pain of it. It’s a pretty good deal.

There’s a joke about it from the world of computers. The most advanced processor possible has been constructed to mirror human thought and find out how our intelligence really works. Finally, when this vast computer is ready, the attendant feeds it the first entry, “What is it like to think like a real human being?”

After running through some hyper-advanced calculations, it finally responds, “Well, let me tell you a story.”

So not only have we been telling each other stories since antiquity, it seems likely to be going on long far into the future.

Now, there have been thousands of different collections of stories throughout the centuries. All of the scriptures in the world are basically just collections of stories, but they are all based around the idea that the ordinary human being can have a profound relationship with the Higher Power, the Creator, God, or whatever other finite term you want to put onto what, by definition, has to be infinite.

When you grow up in a particular religion, you don’t really get to pick and choose what you’re going to read and study. You just follow the prescribed path. Having been given a rather intensive Orthodox Jewish education throughout my childhood, as you can imagine, I’ve heard, read or memorized about a million of these religious stories. Or so it seems.

But there happens to be one fascinating element about the religious training that I was given. We were taught that while there is one central, official writing of the story, which is the Old Testament, there are also many books of commentaries about them. The commentaries talk extensively about what the stories mean, and they often will tell slightly different versions of what happened.

When it comes to famous bible stories I, like most people of Judeo-Christian heritage, have always been well-aware of the story of the parting of the Red Sea. It occupies a strong place in our memory, not just because it’s central to the Bible, but the Technicolor 1956 Cecille B. DeMille movie packed quite a punch, especially for people of a certain age.

Even though it was a major cinematic experience, I’m sure that if there really was a Moses, he probably had very little in common with Charlton Heston. Maybe Ramses was a little more like Yul Brynner, but that’s anybody’s guess. Anyway, I saw that move as a seven-year-old and those guys are still starring in their roles in the theatre of my mind.

So, oddly, after knowing the story so well over all these years, I recently heard of a few different versions of the parting of the Red Sea that I had never heard before. And they made quite an impression on me.

In the version we all know; the Jewish people had been held captive, in a miserable life of slavery in Egypt for over four hundred years. Then Moses comes along, and after a lot of give and take between him, God and Pharaoh, Pharaoh finally decides to let the slaves go. There are a lot of different opinions about how many slaves there were at the time. By some accounts there were about 50,000 of them, others say 200,000 and others go ten times that amount. Who knows? It was a long time ago.

Anyway, Moses led them out of Egypt and they traveled about 40 miles until they came to a dead end at the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Pharaoh had come to severely regret his decision to let his slaves go and had assembled his entire army to go and forceable take them back. He’d probably kill a bunch of them in the process as well. It was going to be a pretty brutal scene.

As the story goes, the Jews have nowhere to go and the Egyptian army is at their back, getting ready to attack. At one point, Moses holds his staff over the waters, the Red Sea parts, and the former slaves are given a magical path to freedom.

That’s the standard version we all know, but here are three different versions that I heard about two years ago. They all involve a character named Nahshon. Now I can’t begin to tell you how extensive my religious training was when I was a kid, literally about eight hours a week. But until recently, I’d never heard of this guy. Maybe I wasn’t really paying close attention, which was a distinct possibility, as I remember spending an inordinate amount of time daydreaming.

Anyway, it turns out that Nahshon was a major player in those days. His sister was married to Aaron, Moses’ brother and the Jewish High Priest, so he was a member of Moses” extended family and part of his inner circle. And he was also a Chief of one of the ten tribes, and a significant military figure as well.

In the first alternative version of the story, Moses stands before the Red Sea, holds up his staff and commands the waters to part. But nothing happens. They don’t part. Finally, Nahshon, a man of great faith, steps into the water and as soon as he does, the waters part.

The second alternative version of the story is slightly different. It’s the same scenario as the first, Moses commands the waters to part, they don’t part and Nahshon steps into the water. But in this version, nothing happens. The sea doesn’t part. So Nahshon keeps walking into deeper and deeper water. He keeps going until the water is over his lips and when it’s almost touching his nostrils, at that point, the water finally parts.

The last alternative version of the story is quite a bit different. In this one, when they are trapped against the Red Sea, the Children of Israel are on a hill overlooking it. Moses holds his staff over the water and commands it to part, but nothing happens. At that point, Nahshon jumps into the water, which is quite rough. After a little while of struggling, it seems like he’s beginning to drown.

Moses then prays to God for help. God answers him saying, “You are trapped against the Red Sea with your entire nation behind you. You have no place to go and the mightiest army in the world is about to brutally take everyone back into slavery. The champion of your people has jumped into the water and is drowning. And you’re praying?

“What should I do?” Moses asks.

“Hold your staff out over the water and command it to part,” is the Divine reply.

Moses does it and the water parts.

So, those are the three alternative versions of the stories, and in the tradition, there are always lots of different opinions and commentaries that go along with them.

In the first version, although Moses commands the water to part, it doesn’t happen until Nahshon steps into it. The commentary here is that no matter what your inspiration may be, nothing manifests on the earth plane until you take action. Thoughts and prayers don’t take shape until you act.

This is a well-known concept in every school of thought. According to the famous Japanese proverb, “Planning without action is a daydream. Action without planning is a nightmare.”

In the second version, Moses commands the water to part and Nahshon walks into it. But it doesn’t part until he has walked in up to his nostrils. The commentary here is that it isn’t enough just to make an action, there must be commitment to see it all the way through, no matter what happens.

It certainly seems apropos to life, because sooner or later, one way or another, we all find ourselves in water up to our nostrils. For some of us, it’s become almost a way of life. Yet it does do something to us. To quote Don Juan, the Shaman in the book, “Tales of Power,” “It always amazes me what a man can do once he realizes his back is against the wall.”

In the last alternative version of the story, the commentary has a few different levels to it. According to it, in the beginning, when Moses commanded the water to part and they didn’t, he had just been acting on his own. He hadn’t connected with God first. It was only after the water didn’t part and Nahshon jumped in and started to drown, that Moses reached out and prayed to God. When he prayed, he received his answer, he acted on it, and then, the water finally parted.

Critically, he made the exact same action that he did at first, when he held out his staff and commanded the waters to part. The difference was that then, he was using only his own understanding and power. But after he had connected, he was one with the greater power. According to the commentary, your own individual power can never compare to connecting with the force that powers the entire universe. Same exact action. Completely different result.

Additionally, it says that when you pray, it’s critical to remember that it’s a two-way street. You ask and then you pay attention for the response. Many contemplative traditions say that for the most part, we only operate on a one-way connection to that power. We’re always asking, asking, asking for what we want, but we’re not always open to the response. Maybe our intuition’s out of whack or something. Whatever.

Now the tradition tells you that these alternative stories with their commentaries are not meant to be teachings, they are just meant to be prompts to help stimulate your inner growth. You let the information come into you and watch what happens to your awareness.

Personally, I find that if you take them deep enough, they can seriously transform your consciousness. I also find that one basic understanding usually gets reinforced within me. When it comes to inner growth – I have a really long way to go.

But I guess we all do. In my training, I was taught that when all was said and done, Moses never made it to the promised land. And the reason he never made it was that he had some pretty serious anger issues. Sound familiar? Problems with your own anger and frustration stopping you from reaching your goal? It sure does to me…

Well anyway, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and hart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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This episode marks the end of the series entitled, “It’s Just a Gimmick.” In the last episode, two things helped provide some welcomed validation for the seemingly metaphysical events I had experienced around the sudden death of my father.

By chance, I had run into my old high school friend who confirmed to me that I had told him about the dream that I had about my father’s death the night before it happened. Then it came true the very next day.

And then, a little while later, another friend I saw at a party, unexpectedly told me about an unusual dream he’d had where someone appeared, said he was my father and told him to tell me to remember the ring. He held up his hand and showed him a ring that started glowing with light.

These were significant moments for me, and of course, I shared them with my grandfather, who was a religious mystic and a firm believer in the profound nature of the experiences I’d had.

He also had surprised me by being completely opened to all the new forms of thought I had been exposed to over the previous few years. When I asked him about it, he said, “Your religion’s like a car. You drive it to get somewhere, and when you get there, you get out. It’s the same thing with religion. It’s supposed to get you to God. And when you do get to God, you leave everything else behind and go straight to him. Never forget that, Davy. Go straight to him…”

Now, as the series reaches its conclusion, I recall the last two times I saw my grandfather, both of which had a profound impact on me. Although it was nearly fifty years ago, his words are still very much alive in my heart.

I used to visit my grandfather a couple of times a month, but as time went by, he was getting more and more otherworldly and I started visiting him every few days. He was always happy and cheerful, but the end was clearly in sight.

“Hi, Zayde,” I said when I walked in on one of those last days. “What are you doing?” I was referring to the fact that he was walking toward the dining room.

“Oh, I’m just waiting now,” he said. “That’s all I’m really doing. Just waiting.”

“What?” I asked.

He sounded like a passenger sitting in a bus terminal, whose bus had been delayed. He didn’t mind. He knew it was coming sooner or later. And he was happy to be finally going home.

He sat down and started eating his lunch. I glanced around the place. It was exactly the same as always - same family pictures on the wall, same furniture, down to the old black and white TV set. To him, they hadn’t gotten color right yet, so he stayed with his original console.

I remembered sitting in front of it with him, watching The Lone Ranger, his Kal-El, a vessel of God. At the end of each episode, Zayde would explain its deeper meaning to me, as the daring and resourceful Masked Rider of the Plains would give us a wave, and ride off into the sunset, ready to right the next wrong.

The last time I saw my grandfather, he was sitting at his dining-room table, about to eat lunch. He began every meal with a small glass of schnapps. He had one on his plate and downed it like water. He started eating, but soon, after just a few bites, he fell sound asleep. His head was resting on his chest, and I wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. He had a faint smile on his face, like a baby, falling asleep to a lullaby.

I had often thought about that smile and wondered - was the reason he looked so happy because he actually was? Had he made a glorious transition into a higher reality, like the psychic said in that Lincoln letter? I wondered if there really was such a thing as a higher reality. And if there was, do you really have to die to get there? It didn’t seem to make sense. Why can’t you know that joy while you’re still alive?

My father had told me in my dream, that death was just a public relations stunt that God does to get people to think about him. If that’s what he was trying to do, I really had to hand it to him. The whole thing certainly had me thinking.

He got up and started walking me toward the front door. I figured he was going to take a nap when I left. “So, learn what you came here for, and don’t get too distracted by all the other stuff. You know what I mean? Most of what’s here isn’t really real.”

A few days later, as he was giving a bar mitzvah lesson in the synagogue, he died peacefully among the ancient texts.

This completes the ten-art series called “It’s Just a Gimmick.” It was pretty extensive, so let’s take a very quick review of it and I’ll add a few questions that I’m still processing as a result of them. Again, like the rest of our Stop Making Yourself Miserable podcasts, just let the ideas in and see where they may lead you.

When the series began, I was in the middle of a very steamy teenaged summer romance, that was just about to get steamier because it seemed like I might be getting the house to myself for a few days. But suddenly, everything changed and I had to go to my first funeral.

It was not a major personal event for me, but it was my first real experience with death, which would turn into a far deeper and more dramatic encounter just four months later, when my father unexpectedly died from a sudden heart attack.

What happened to me, both before and after the death, is detailed extensively in the series, but some deep questions bean to occur to me.

First of all, besides all the grief and sorrow I was experiencing, I had to process the fact that I had dreamt my father’s death in detail the night before it happened and the dream turned into reality the next day. On a fundamental level, it made me wonder about the nature of time and the nature of reality itself. Maybe this whole thing isn’t exactly as it seems to be. Maybe there’s more to it. How was it possible that I was able to perceive events in exact detail that hadn’t happened yet?

And, on top of that, in just plain hard reality was the fact that my father had died as he was in the prime of his life and experiencing tremendous success. He had just had finished personally assembling the greatest team in NBA history and had significantly expanded the size and scope of his law firm, which was going great guns. And then he drops dead in an instant.

What does that tell you about what’s really important about life? At that impressionable age of 16, the fact that anyone can die at any time hit me like a ton of bricks. No matter who you are, you have no guarantee that you’re going to get your next breath. Nobody does. And in the face of that, what does it all mean? What am I really doing here, anyway?

Then six months later, still in the midst of intense mourning, I had this incredible dream where my father appeared to me. He seemed healthy and happy and looked great. After a moment, I got upset when I remembered that he was dead, but he told me that his death wasn’t real. He said it was a trick. He went on to explain to me that there is no such thing as death at all. It’s just a gimmick, a public relations stunt that God does to get people to think about him.

It was such a strange way of putting it, and he was so light about it that he was chuckling, but what if it was actually true? What if this whole life is just a set-up to elevate us to a higher level of understanding. What if behind all of its horrible sadness and tragedy, the truth about death is that it’s just a gimmick? (Which, by the way, is where the title of the series comes from.)

Then, as the dream continued, my father had me give him back his ring, which started vibrating and soon the whole room was filled with a bright light. When I woke up, although I was sad that he was actually still dead, it the happiest I had been in since he had died. That light seemed to have something joyful about it.

It all left me with a ton of questions, which only got a zillion times deeper when the ring disappeared out of my gym locker, just a few hours later. Again, something that had happened in a dream that become matched in real life. I still have absolutely no idea how it could have happened, not to mention the event a years later, when my friend, who knew nothing about my father at all, had his outrageous dream about the ring.

Anyway, all of this led me to take the road less travelled, the path of inner growth. And I found that on that path, although a ton of questions may come up, they are soon met with a ton of answers. And amazingly, after a while, you find you have far more answers than questions.

And, of course, my grandfather’s short, but loving words to me at the end of his life speak for themselves, and speak volumes.

Again, it’s all a lot to consider, and we each have our own individual path, but for me, I have found that just by opening up to the idea that there may be deeper meanings to this life has a sneaky way of helping them take shape within.

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

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In the last episode, I’d had a dream where my father appeared to me, told me he never really died and had me give him back his ring, then a few hours later, after my first period gym class, the ring had mysteriously disappeared from my locker. The event was totally mystifying because there was absolutely no logical way that it could have happened the way it had.

My grandfather, who was a religious mystic, was the only person I told who actually believed me. And he told me he felt that there might be some more unusual events coming my way that related to my experiences around my father’s death and the disappearance of his ring.

A while later, by complete coincidence, I ran into my old high school friend Marty in a grocery store. The morning after I dreamt that my father died, I had told him about it on our ride to school. I hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, and it just so happened that the day we met was Dec. 3, the anniversary of my father’s death. After catching up with each other for about a half hour, I finally decided to ask him about the dream.

“Marty, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you kind of a weird question,” I started.

“You don’t have to ask,” he interrupted me. “You dreamt that your father died the night before it happened, and you told me about it the next day when we were driving to school. You dreamt that he died, then it all came true. And I’ll never forget it.”

After about a week or so, when I saw my grandfather and told him about it, he just smiled and said, “See? You just got a confirmation and you don’t have to doubt it anymore. It really did happen.”

About six months later, one Saturday night, I was at a party and out of nowhere, an old friend came over to me and said he had to tell me about an odd dream he had just had. In the dream, a stranger introduced himself and said, “I am David Richman’s father, and I want you to give him a message for me.” Then he showed my friend that he was wearing a ring. Suddenly, the ring started glowing with light and the man said, “Tell David I said - remember the ring.” Then he repeated himself. “Give David Richman this message. Tell him I said to remember the ring.”

My friend looked a me with a sort of confused expression and said, “Well, that was the dream. I don’t know if it means anything to you, but the guy was really powerful.”

Of course, I was completely blown away by the unexpected turn of events. And the next time I saw my grandfather, when I told him about what happed, he was transfixed. The fact that the dream had come to a complete stranger, an unbiased third party with no prior knowledge about any of it, was stunning. And this wasn’t an old high school friend either. I had met him much later in life and he didn’t know anything about father at all.

“And don’t forget about the message,” Zayde said to me. “What did Dad want your friend to tell you?”

“He said I should remember the ring,” I said.

“And what happened to the ring?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I responded. “In the dream, my father told me to give the ring back to him. We stood there and when he touched it, it turned into light. Then the next morning, after my gym class just a few hours later, it disappeared out of my locked locker.”

“And what does that tell you?” he asked.

I thought about it for a minute, but nothing really came to mind. “I don’t know.”

“Either do I,” he said with a bemused smile. “And that’s why it’s such a great message. It gives you a lot to think about. The ring turned into light in the dream, then it disappeared the next day in real life. Maybe that means there a connection between the two realms.

“And he told you a lot of things in that dream. He said there’s no death. He said God wants you to think about him. Maybe he’s telling you to remember the things he told you. Maybe give it more thought.

“Or maybe he told you to remember the ring because when you both held it, it connected you. You said it was like the bridge between you. Maybe he’s telling you that the bridge is still there, that you’re still connected, even beyond death.

“And you know what else? The ring turned into light and you felt yourself get pulled into it. What was that like?” he asked me.

“It was incredible,” I said. “I got filled with happiness and joy.”

“Exactly,” he went on. “Maybe, it even took you to Shamayim (heaven)? And maybe he’s telling you to remember what that feeling was like, what that happiness and peace felt like? Maybe he’s telling you that even though you were in a dream, the feeling you felt is actually real?

“It’s just like a lot of other things in life. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe some of it was real. Or maybe all of it was real. Who knows? I do know one thing, though - you have the rest of your life to figure it out.”

His eyes were twinkling, and he gave me one of his warm, impish smiles. He did this kind of thing all the time. Instead of teaching, he’d use the word “maybe” in the tradition of the great Talmudic teachers he’d studied for years. They don’t tell you things. They just plant seeds and help you let them grow.

My grandfather and I had always been close and of course, we got closer after my father died. But one day in 1972, unexpectedly it went to a deeper level. We were watching a NASA moonwalk on TV and he said it was a fake, and that they were really doing it in a TV studio.

When I asked him why he felt that way, he told me about a prayer they used to say monthly in the old country on the full moon. Apparently, this ancient prayer got dropped and never made it over here. Then he recited it - “The moon is so far away from the Earth. And in the same way, God’s perfection is far away from man. But one day man will touch the moon, and when he does, know that the days of the kingdom of heaven on Earth have begun.”

During my recent college years, I had gotten a strong dose of the new hippie lifestyle, along with some of its some mind-altering components. As comedian Robin Williams once said, “If you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t really there.” Well I really was, and it really changed me. And recently, I had started practicing a form of meditation which was having a profound effect on me as well. I was simply outgrowing a lot of childhood concepts.

Actually, this kind of thing is pretty common in Judaism, and the hippy/spiritual movement of the Sixties had more than its fair share of Jewish kids. It makes sense, because the religion basically teaches you to think for yourself and not just accept things at face value. There’s no hierarchy, no pope, or doctrine of infallibility. On the contrary, the spiritual leaders, the rabbis, are all just ordinary people, with plenty of ordinary faults. Your point of view is as valid as the next guy’s.

In a way, it can be an un-religious religion, and it’s been shaped into a million different forms. There are tons of non-observant Jews who don’t practice the rituals, but still respect the religion and love the culture, the food, the comedians, and the jokes. And in their hearts and minds, they are still very Jewish.

Regardless, I didn’t want to talk to my grandfather about any of it. He was an old man and had been through enough tsuris in his life. (Yiddish for trouble). He didn’t need any more. I was certain that my expanding point of view would only upset him, so I stayed away from it.

“So, you see,” he said, pointing to the lunar surface on the TV screen, “This isn’t real. It can’t be. If they were really on the moon, the Kingdom of Heaven would be on its way.”

“Actually, Zayde,” I heard myself say, “it is real.”

“What?” he asked, like he hadn’t heard me right.

“Yes. It is real. All the prophecies are coming true and the whole planet is moving into a higher state. The Kingdom of Heaven IS at hand.”

I couldn’t believe those words had come out of my mouth. I hadn’t planned on saying anything to him, but my tongue had been faster than my mind.

But the truth is though, that’s the way I really felt. I had spent four turbulent years in college in Washington DC, front and center at the demolition of the American status-quo. It felt like my generation had been on the vanguard of a revolution that had transformed the world. For baby boomers, since Woodstock, the old order of “might-makes-right” was crumbling, and a new awareness was arising. The stirring message was everywhere - in the music and the movies, on TV and the stage. It really did seem like the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as they sang in the musical “Hair.” Millions of us believed it, and the high times were global.

Still, I hadn’t meant to say anything to him. He came from another era, a distant time and place. He had been a Yeshiva student, and as a part-time cantor, was a full-time, orthodox Jew.

“What?” he shot back at me sharply, “What did you say?”

I thought he sounded angry and I scrambled around in my mind to find a way out. But as I looked at him, I realized he wasn’t angry; he was hungry. And alive with curiosity. From that moment on, and for the rest of his life, all we ever talked about was higher consciousness. He was like a sponge and wanted to know everything I knew. And the more I learned, the more he wanted to know.

He had no conflict at all with what I was doing, which completely amazed me. He just wanted to gather as much knowledge about God and the higher realms that he could. He didn’t care where it came from. I once asked him about it and he said, “Your religion’s like a car. You drive it to get somewhere, and when you get there, you get out. It’s the same thing with religion. It’s supposed to get you to God. And when you do get to God, you leave everything else behind and go straight to him. Never forget that, Davy. Go straight to him.”

Well, that’s the end of this episode. There’s one more episode left in this series, It’s Just a Gimmick, so as always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The last episode ended with a dream that I had where my father appeared to me. He looked fantastic and told me that he had never died, that death isn’t real, it’s just a gimmick, a public relations stunt that God does to get people to think about him. At the end of the dream, he told me that he didn’t want me to wear his star sapphire ring anymore and had me give it back to him.

As we stood there holding it, I felt it vibrate, then it turned into a brilliant white light and filled up the room. When I woke up, although I was disappointed that the experience had been just a dream and that he remained dead, I was still very happy to have been able to see him again. He had been dead for about six months, and it was a long six months.

When I woke up, it was about six in the morning and I began my day as usual. As I drove to school, I reflected on the dream from a psychological perspective. My second semester of psychology was almost over, and the mysterious workings of the mind were really starting to fascinate me.

As I thought about it, I was quite impressed by this dream. It had been a perfect mental placebo for me. In the theater of my mind, my father looked great. Healthy and smiling, he said he had never really died, and that it was only a PR stunt. He called it a gimmick, which I loved. It was a term he used a lot in the early days of the team, but I had forgotten all about it. Yet it was exactly the way he used to talk. Indeed, everything about him was familiar, comforting and reassuring, just the way I would want it to be.

And there was also this God theme running through it, which made perfect sense because I was getting so much religious exposure every day. I had seen this beautiful light, filled with an essence of peace, happiness, and contentment. I felt like I was finally coming back home and experienced an overwhelming love. Then I merged into it. All classic heaven stuff.

I didn’t know what to make out of my father’s ring though. I had given it back to him and it turned into light, which started the whole heaven part. I figured it probably had some subconscious meaning or other. Anyway, I’d bring it up with my psychology teacher.

Anyway, as far as dreams go, it had been a real beauty. And if my mind’s purpose was to comfort me and bring me a little happiness and peace, it had certainly done its job well. I felt great in the dream. And as a matter of fact, I was still feeling pretty good as I drove along.

I didn’t care, though. It was his, and I was going to wear it for the rest of my life and give it to my kids. I put it back on and went into school.

It was a Friday morning, and I had gym first period. When I got to my locker, I followed my usual routine. I wore two rings, a gold initial ring, and his black star sapphire. I took them both off and put them carefully inside my wallet, next to a ten-dollar bill I had. I was going to buy a new basketball after school.

I took off my wristwatch, wrapped it around my wallet, and put the whole thing in one of my shoes. Then, I put my books on top of my shoes and locked my locker. I double-checked the door and the lock to make sure it was all secure and tight as a drum. I had been doing the same thing twice a week for five years.

It was a beautiful May morning, and I played touch football with my friends, a bunch of jovial, eleventh-grade jocks. I took a shower and got dried off. Then, I opened my combination lock, swung open my locker door, and put my clothes on. I took the books off the top of my shoes and took out my wallet. I removed my watch, and put it on my wrist. Then I opened my wallet to put on my rings, and the world stopped.

To my extreme shock and disbelief, my father’s ring was gone!

Suddenly, reality didn’t make any sense. What had just happened, quite simply could not have happened. It just wasn’t possible. My head started spinning and I felt disoriented. I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and tried to pull myself together. To make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I went over all the details again to see if I had made a mistake. But I hadn’t. I remembered everything precisely.

“Somebody must have stolen it,” I thought for a second, but obviously, that didn’t make any sense. The locker had been clearly undisturbed when I came back after my shower. The combination lock was still locked, and the door was untouched. And besides, why would someone steal just that one ring and leave the wallet, the watch, and the gold ring, not to mention the ten-dollar bill?

I thought about the dream again. It was now nine in the morning and I had only been awake for a couple of hours, so everything was still completely fresh in my mind. I realized how strange it had all been. I didn’t remember feeling drowsy or falling asleep and all of a sudden, I was back in the chapel. And there had been nothing dreamlike about it at all. Actually, I never felt more awake in my life. And on top of that, unlike my usual dreams, it hadn’t faded a bit. Normally, I forget my dreams before I even start breakfast. But this time, I could remember every detail, especially my father’s tan, smiling face.

He said that he hadn’t really died and that it was a trick. Then he had me give him back his ring. When we held it, it turned into a brilliant light. And now, a few hours later, in real life, it had vanished into thin air. It just wasn’t possible.

I got up and started walking. But as I hurried along, I noticed that everything felt a little lighter, like the old bounce was coming back into my step.

A few weeks later, I went to visit my grandparents. I still made it a priority to visit them once a week. Bit by bit, they were coming back to life and it was especially clear with my grandfather. It was less than a year since my father had died, and he was still, obviously mourning the loss, but he was much more of his old self again. Maybe what happened to him at the Seder was part of it.

During one visit, we started talking about my sister. She had tumbled down a few steps in a classroom building. She wasn’t hurt, but for a few moments, she just sat there, laughing. The trouble was, she couldn’t stop. After a while, she went to see the nurse, who was concerned and admitted her to Temple Hospital for observation.

Sybil laughed all night, hardly sleeping. And then the next morning, she burst into tears, couldn’t stop crying and was hysterical for hours. Then suddenly, the whole thing stopped, and she was herself again. She was back in class the next day.

“In that one dream, didn’t your father tell you to watch out for her, that she wasn’t doing well?” my grandfather asked me. He was right. She had never shown any emotions after my father died, and maybe this was how her grief finally got released. That would be Sybil. She always had her own way of doing everything.

I wasn’t surprised that my grandfather had brought up the dream. He was always interested in the unusual things that had happened to me around the time of my father’s death. And I always liked talking to him about them, because he was the only person who really believed me.

I’m pretty sure everyone else thought I had lost my marbles. I couldn’t blame them. It had been a lot for an unprepared sixteen-year-old to handle. My mother had me talk to the rabbi and some teachers. In their rational explanations, the seemingly prophetic events never happened. To them, they were just false memories I had created to make myself feel better. But I knew what I had experienced, and no matter what anybody says, you know what you know.

That was one of my grandfather’s favorite sayings – you know what you know. He was always big on keeping knowledge and beliefs separate. You had to know what you know, know what you only believe, and know the difference. He was a mystic though and still, for him, dreams were in a special category, and could be bridges between worlds.

He felt my two dreams were very much like that – the first one, where I’d had a vivid dream about the death of my father and then it all came true exactly as I had dreamt it in in real life the next day.

And the second one when I had handed him the ring in my dream and then the next day, it vanished out of my locker in real life. And he had an inkling that there might be more to come. And as with a lot of things, it turned out he was right.

Well, that’s the end of this episode. And as you probably can guess, there are a couple of surprises over the horizon, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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Hi – this is David Richman with a short message to all of our podcast listeners who are not on our mailing list. First, I just want to say thank you for being a regular listener. We continue to get a lot of encouraging feedback about the programs and I’m so glad that so many people are enjoying them.

Now, I’d like to take just a few moments to let you know about the crowdfunding campaign that we are currently hosting on Kickstarter in support of upcoming my next book, Stop Making Yourself Miserable.

There is a short video clip on the Kickstarter page that will fill you in on all the details. If you’d like to take a look at it, Please go to Kickstarter.com and type in Stop Making Yourself Miserable or type in David Richman and it will take you to the campaign page.

Or if you’d like, please go to our website – Better Angels Publishing.com. Hit the contact button at the top of the home page and send us an email, and we’ll send you back a link to the Kickstarter site.

But let me also give you some very brief background information about what we are doing.

As you may know, Personal Development, or the achievement of the highest levels of human potential, has been my lifelong work for many years. My next book is a guide to inner growth called, “Stop Making Yourself Miserable, Grow from Self-Sabotage to Self-Empowerment.”

In today’s troubled times, enormous amounts of people suffer from self-sabotage, with their own mind blocking their way to a more fulfilled life. Whether it’s subtle or extreme, many of us carry around some pretty heavy inner baggage. Anger, self-doubt, regret and guilt, along with fear and relentless worry, are just some of the many internal roadblocks that stand in our way.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be like this, and it’s not all that hard to change. But it’s important to have the right tools, and this is where “Stop Making Yourself Miserable” comes in.

I’ve collected some of the most powerful insights and techniques that I’ve discovered over decades of research and experience, from field as diverse as Ancient Wisdom through to modern neuroscience. And they’re all presented in down-to-earth ways that can be easily understood by everyday people. In essence, it offers them a shortcut to becoming the best possible version of themselves.

Stop Making Yourself Miserable seeks to brighten our world by offering people simple ways to grow from the prison of self-sabotage to the freedom of self-empowerment, and live a happier, more fulfilled life. And when it comes to real personal growth, what’s good for one is good for all.

With the effort on Kickstarter, we’re reaching out to like-minded people to help us make the project a reality. We’re offering different rewards for different levels of participation, beginning at just five dollars. All the different rewards are listed on the campaign page and they include several e-book collections of all the podcasts that we have done so far.

Again, you can visit Kickstarter.com and type in Stop Making Yourself Miserable or David Richman, or go to our website, Better Angels Publishing.com – it the contact button and send us an email. We’ll get right back to you with a link to the page.

So let me close by saying, thank you so much for your help with this, and as we say at the end of each podcast – keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davidrichman/stop-making-yourself-miserable

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In the last episode, after going through some of the difficulties I had experienced as I returned to school after my father’s sudden death, I mentioned three things that had helped me start to return to my normal life – the birth of my brother’s son, just six weeks after my father’s death, the mysterious resolution of my aunt’s missing money, and my grandfather’s remarkable transformation while leading the Seder, exactly four months after my father’s funeral.

As a lead-in to today’s episode, let me repeat the last episode’s ending. “So, three small, but significant events had a deeply positive effect on me and opened my eyes to more light. But they were nothing compared to what was coming next.”

Of course, I continued saying the Mourner’s Kaddish, keeping the promise I had made to my father. We joined the synagogue near our house, and my brother and I went there every morning and night, seven days a week.

Around mid-May, my brother was about to graduate from law school and had to get ready to take the bar exam. There was a three-part prep course, but it was only held at night, which meant he would have to miss services. He was unhappy about it, but there was nothing he could do.

So, the first night of the course became the first time he didn’t make it to synagogue. I went without him, came home as usual, did my homework, and eventually went to bed. I have no recollection of getting tired or falling asleep. I was just lying there, and the next thing I knew, I found myself back in the chapel of the synagogue once again. And I started reliving the same exact events that had just happened a few hours earlier. It was like an instant replay, but instead of watching it, I was reliving it.

Just like before, services ended, and I walked out of the chapel. But this time, when I entered the main lobby, I heard a sharp sound. “Psst! Psst!” It came from my left. I looked over at the dark corner near the sanctuary doors and suddenly, my father stepped out of the shadows.

“Where’s Michael?” he asked, as soon as I got close.

“Oh, he couldn’t come tonight,” I said. “He has to study for the bar exam. They’re having a cram course, and tonight’s the first class.”

“Oh, right, right. That’s good,” he said, sounding like he knew exactly what I was talking about. “He’ll pass it. He’ll do fine. He’s going to become a lawyer, and he’ll go right into the practice. Everything’s going to work out well for him.” Then he got a little serious. “But, watch out for your sister, though,” he said soberly. “She’s not doing so great.”

“Sybil?” I wondered. “What’s the matter with Sybil?”

I didn’t say anything, but as I thought about it, I remembered that she had never shown any emotion after he died. She had been extremely stoic, always stone-faced, never crying or even shedding a tear. Maybe that had something to do with whatever it was he was talking about.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “She didn’t show any emotion after you d—” I was just about to say the word died, when the impossibility of what was happening hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly I remembered the truth of the matter – that he was, in fact, dead. I guess I had been so glad to see him, I hadn’t realized it at first. But now it all came rushing came back into me.

The reason I hadn’t seen him for all this time wasn’t that he had been away on a tropical island. It was because he had dropped dead on the floor of the Boston Garden six months earlier. He was long since dead and buried, and yet here he was, standing in the synagogue lobby, talking to me like everything was normal.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You’re dead!”

“No,” he said, with a slight chuckle. “No, no. That wasn’t real.”

“What?” I asked.

“It was just a trick,” he replied. “It wasn’t real.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t real?” I shot back, a little perturbed. “Of course, it was real!” How could he say it wasn’t real? It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Everything about it was a nightmare. Our family was completely devastated, and since then, we had gone through month after month of relentless pain. I wished to God it wasn’t real, but unfortunately, it was as real as it gets.

“You died. You’re dead,” I blurted out, even more upset. “It was terrible. There was this big funeral, and everyone was hysterical. It was awful” A rush of pain welled up inside of me. “It was horrible. You died! We buried you and you’re dead!”

“It wasn’t real,” he said, calmly. “It was just a trick.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered.

“A trick. You know a stunt, a gimmick.”

I still had no idea what he meant but I didn’t say anything.

“Listen to me,” he said, sympathetically. “There is no death. It’s just a public-relations stunt God does to get people to think about him. It’s just a gimmick. That’s all it is. It’s not real.”

I didn’t know what to say. There was absolutely, positively no question about the fact that he had died. It was irrefutable. And yet here he was—alive and well, happy and healthy, telling me it was all just a stunt. As confident as ever, he certainly looked like he knew what he was talking about. He looked great. In fact, I’d never seen him look better.

“See?” he said, with a smile. “It’s all just a trick.” Then he added, “Some trick!”

“I see you’re wearing my ring,” he said, looking down at my right hand. He used to wear a black star sapphire pinky ring that he got when he went to the Japan Olympics to sign Luke Jackson. My mother gave it to me after he died, and I wore it every day.

“Listen,” he said somewhat soberly. “The stone in that ring has a vibration that’s bad for your body. I don’t want you to wear it anymore.” I didn’t say anything.

Then his face lit up. “Hey! I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Since I never really died, why don’t you give it back to me?”

But it was more than just a light. I could sense a presence to it, a beauty that was extremely comforting. And it felt familiar to me as well, like I knew it from somewhere - another time and place from long before my memory began.

I felt myself being slowly pulled into it, as though it had its own field of gravity. It got stronger, like the current of a river nearing the ocean, and the light got even brighter. The more light I saw, the lighter I felt, along with a deep sense of happiness and joy. It was intoxicating. And finally, an all-encompassing love enveloped me, and I lost contact with space and time.

I have no idea how long it lasted, but I finally began to regain awareness of my body. There was a gentle transition, almost like the physical world gelled into reality around me and I realized I was laying in my bed, wearing my pajamas. It took a little more time, but I soon realized it had all been just a dream.

Soon, I was completely back in the real world. Obviously, my life was unchanged, and my father was still dead. Naturally, I was disappointed. As fulfilling as the experience had been, the whole thing was just a fantasy my mind had created in my sleep.

Even so, it had been a deeply wonderful experience to feel happy again. It was the first time since the night he died, that the heavy burden I felt was lifted from my heart. For those few moments, I had gotten to be my old self again. I had completely forgotten the way life used to be, before my road had turned, and I had come upon the Vale of Tears.

So that’s the end of this episode. It all goes one level deeper in the part of the story that’s coming. As always, keep our eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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In the last episode, I had recounted the painful experiences during the days after my father’s sudden death. There was a massive funeral for him, and after a one week mourning period, I had returned to my eleventh-grade world. And it was really difficult trying to navigate my way back to normal life. The whole experience had been such a shock and I was still so overcome with grief that it seemed like it was never going to end.

My father had died on Dec. 3, 1965 and it had begun a really dark time for me. But then, fifty-five days later, on January 26, 1966, a little light began to break through when my brother’s first child, was born. It was a boy and of course, they named him Isaac.

I came to visit the day they brought him home from the hospital. He was sound asleep, but they let me go in the room as long as I didn’t disturb him. I walked over to the crib and put my hand on it. He was just a few days old and I had never seen a baby that young before. His brand-new, innocent face was unmarked by any traces of emotion or thought. It was hard to believe that we all start out this way, and the innocence of it moved me.

As I stood there with my hand on his crib, it felt oddly familiar, and I soon realized that I had been in the same position at my father’s funeral, just six weeks earlier. Only then, I was standing next to a coffin, looking at death. Now, I was standing next to a crib, looking at birth – the sadness of the end of one life, followed by the joy of the beginning of another.

For the first time, I got a real sense of the beauty of the cycle of life. The triumphs and tragedies, the beginnings and endings were like a wheel - one following another. As I looked at the purity of the newborn’s face, I got a feeling of continuity that helped soften the blow of finality.

Still, I felt sad that the new baby and his grandfather would never know each other. Then I remembered that my father had told me he would never be the grandfather to this child. It had only been a few months earlier, but it hadn’t occurred to me until then. His comment had sounded so strange at the time. Now it was just one more prophetic piece of the mysterious puzzle surrounding my father’s death.

A few weeks later, my aunt called my mother with a problem. My Aunt Hommie was my father’s younger sister. All her life, he had been her protector and confidant, and his sudden death had devastated her. She was also my mother’s best friend. After my parents’ marriage, they had moved into my father’s parent’s house above the store with the rest of the family, and they had become as close as sisters.

She said that several months earlier, she had given my father some money to hold for her—about $4,000—and was wondering if my mother knew anything about it. My mother had no idea. My father had never mentioned it to her and it wasn’t in any of the papers he had left behind. Now, $4,000 was a pretty significant amount of money back then, so it was kind of serious. Regardless, they promised each other they would not let it become an issue between them.

My mother said she would start looking into it immediately and see what she could find. The first thing the next morning, she went into my father’s office to go through his papers again. As soon as she walked in, she noticed that one book was sticking out from all the others on a bookshelf, clearly separated from the rest. She went right to it, opened it up, and a paper fell out onto the floor.

To her amazement, written in my father’s handwriting, it was an exact accounting of Hommie’s money, with all the details - the amount, what bank it was in, and the account number. My mother was certain the book had not been there when she left the office, just the night before.

She called Hommie. They had a good, long cry and happily resolved the situation. The whole thing did them both a lot of good. In fact, it did us all a lot of good.

Finally, two months later, something very profound happened with my grandfather. It was Passover and my mother had both Seders at our house, as always. The first one was April 5, 1966, exactly four months to the day after my father’s funeral.

Our family was closer than ever. Not only had we all gone through the death trauma together, we had also closed ranks around my father’s parents, who were still struggling. Supposedly, nothing is worse than the death of one’s child, and losing my father had clearly drained the life out of them. They were both completely devastated.

About forty people came. Passover is a happy, festive holiday and we all behaved like everything was normal. Nobody even mentioned my father, whose absence was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room everyone was ignoring.

We all sat down for the Seder. My grandfather’s seat was in the center of the head table. The service starts with three blessings. He stood up and cleared his throat. We all joined him as he sang the first one, over the wine, and then the one over the bread. We all said, “Amen,” and waited for him to begin the third one, called the Shehecheyanu.

It’s a particularly momentous two-thousand-year-old prayer, said only on certain special religious holidays. Simply translated, it means, “Blessed art thou, o Lord our God, king of the Universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us and brought us to this great day.”

It is sometimes invoked on non-religious occasions as well. For instance, at the stroke of midnight on May 14, 1948, when the State of Israel gained its independence, the Government’s first official act was to recite the Shehecheyanu.

As Zayde stood there getting ready to sing it, something seemed to be bothering him. He began, but his voice was shaky and weak. When he got to the actual word Shehecheyanu, he choked up and couldn’t go on. He just stood there for a moment, then sat down, burst into tears, and buried his head in his hands.

He obviously had been holding back his feelings all night, but when he got to that word the damn broke, and the pain in his heart came flooding out through his tears. He was crying from the depths of his soul and it was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen.

My Uncle Ray, his youngest child, came over to him and put his arm around his shoulder. “OK, Pop, it’s OK. Come on, let’s do the prayer together. We’ll all do it with you. Come on.”

“No,” Zayde responded, with his head still buried in his hands. We waited another minute for him to regain his composure. He finally stopped crying, but he didn’t budge. He just sat there, crumpled over.

“Pop, we have to do the prayer,” Uncle Ray said. “We can’t go on without it. You just have to do it. Now, come on. We’ll all do it together.”

Zayde finally sat up and wiped his eyes with his napkin. “No,” he said, recomposed, but firm. “No. Not this year.”

He turned the page of the book and cleared his throat. My uncle stood there, but after a moment went back to his seat. Zayde continued the Seder and we all turned our pages and followed along. There was nothing else to do.

But as he sang, a noticeable change came over him. His old confidence seemed to be coming back and his voice got stronger with each prayer. Everyone noticed it and soon, the whole room was elevated. And as he kept going, he kept getting stronger.

It wasn’t like he had been miraculously healed and the pain had gone away. No, the pain was still clearly there. But now he seemed to be on top of it instead of under it, and that was a huge difference. I could see the light returning to his pale-blue eyes. They had been vacant for so long; I had forgotten the sparkle they used to have.

I’ve often wondered what actually happened to him that night. We never discussed it, but I knew that in my grandfather’s world, the world of the true cantor, when you prayed, you prayed from the heart. You meant it. And he couldn’t sing that prayer for real. He just couldn’t thank God for keeping us alive, when his son had been ripped away from him, only a few months earlier. So, he refused to follow the form and instead of faking it, he just moved on.

At first, I thought it might have been a statement of doubt or anger, but it didn’t look that way. He had just hit a personal impasse and had gone around it. And as he did, his spirit kept strengthening.

Could the sincerity in his heart have created an inner bridge that had actually brought him closer to God? Had he gotten to the essence of the prayer by refusing to follow the form? Who knows? According to the mystics, there are profound inner experiences that transcend rites and rituals. Well, he certainly was a mystic. And without a doubt, something profound had happened to him.

So, three small, but significant events – my experience with the birth of the baby, the resolution of Aunt Hommie’s money, and my grandfather’s transformation, each had a deeply positive effect on me and opened my eyes to more light. But they were nothing compared to what was coming next.

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

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The last episode ended with the actual death of my father and the events that happened to me were an exact replay of the precognitive dream that I’d had the night before.

In the Wilt, Ike & Me book, a lot of things happen right after his death. He died on a Friday, and here is a quick look at what happened the very next night…

Later that Saturday evening, right after sundown, we went over to the funeral parlor to view my father’s body. It was just our immediate family.

When we got there, I tried to get mentally prepared. Just a few months earlier, I had stood next to my father, looking at my Uncle George’s dead body. Now I would be looking at him. Uncle George was like a pasty wax figure. I couldn’t imagine how bad my father was going to be. As we approached the plain, brown coffin. I got ready for the worst. But when I looked in, I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw.

He looked fantastic, and he seemed completely alive. His eyes were closed, but he didn’t look dead. In fact, he didn’t even look asleep. He had an animated expression on his face that I had seen a million times, like he had just gotten a great idea. He seemed ready to sit up and tell us about it. And he was sure we were going to love it. I couldn’t stop staring at him. It was unsettling. He just looked too good.

Maybe it was because he had died suddenly and hadn’t been sick. Or maybe it was because he’d been dead for less than a day. Or maybe the mortician was a genius with hair, makeup, and lighting. Probably all of the above. Whatever it was, it was a real shock. The only way you could tell he was dead was that he wasn’t breathing.

I was fine until we got home, and I walked into the kitchen. I looked at our table with the four chairs spread around it, in their usual positions; and I totally lost it. I ran into the hall closet and cried into the coats for a few minutes. Then I regained my composure and came back out.

That started happening to me a lot. I always wanted to be alone whenever I felt like crying, which was often. There was something deeply personal about it, and I needed to shut off the outside world. This was just between me and myself.

When we got back from the funeral home, a few people had gathered at the house. It was quiet and private, with only some immediate relatives and close friends.

When I walked into the entrance hall, I was surprised to see Wilt sitting there. He was all alone, slumped over in one of the chairs, with his head in his hands. I couldn’t handle the sight of him. It brought the whole thing home in a way I wasn’t ready for. I ran into the bathroom and cried my eyes out for a few minutes. I’m pretty sure he never saw me.

About ten minutes later, we saw each other in the hall and again, I couldn’t take it. I turned, went into my parents’ room and closed the door.

When I came out and started walking down the hall, I could see him standing by himself, staring into my father’s office where the two of them had spent so much time together. I turned around to walk back to my parents’ room. I didn’t think he had seen me, and I was sure that I was out of his reach. But, somehow, he stretched out his long right arm and wrapped his hand around my shoulder. As soon as he touched me, I broke up. He pulled me close and held me firmly against his side. I collapsed into him and started crying hard.

He put his forearm against the wall, high above the doorway into the office, up near the ceiling, and buried his face in it. I could feel his body shaking with sobs as we stood there together. Then, from all the way up there, I heard his deep voice say, “Be strong, Davy. It’s time to be strong.”

In the memoir, a few more things happen back at the house, and then the next afternoon, Sunday, December 5, 1965, was my father’s funeral, which was held at Temple Sholom. For months, we had been focused on three big events, scheduled one Sunday after the next: the Bond dinner, the engagement party, and my mother’s fiftieth. Now it turned out there was a fourth - his funeral. Of course, it wasn’t on anyone’s calendar. But nevertheless, here it was.

It started out with a private viewing for family and friends in the synagogue lobby. It’s against the religion to put an opened coffin inside the sanctuary, so the viewing was held out there. It was a bright day and the lobby was filled with sunlight. As I looked at him, he still had that same animated expression on his face. But it was a day later, and he was a day deader.

It was a rough hour. As we stood next to the coffin, our family and close friends lined up to say goodbye. I watched as all the people I had known all my life, every single one of them, broke down in shock and grief at the sight of him. His aunts and uncles from the old country were crying and screaming in Yiddish, and two of them fainted. It was terribly painful. By the end of the hour, it was already the worst day of my life, and it hadn’t even started yet.

Finally, they closed the coffin and opened the sanctuary doors. They wheeled it into the synagogue and we followed behind. To my surprise, it was packed with mourners. We had been shut off and hadn’t heard them come in. All the seats were taken and there was no place left to stand. According to the papers, about twenty-five hundred people surrounded the building outside as well. Maybe they had come to pay their respects, or maybe just to see the team.

They had all walked in together and stood against one wall as a group. Wilt was in the middle, but he wasn’t Wilt Chamberlain anymore. He was just another heartbroken soul, who had come to say goodbye to his dear old friend, really his second father.

There was such an outpouring of grief, it took a while to get the place quieted down. Sudden death is a real killer. It adds shock to the sorrow, driving home the truth that no matter who you are, the end can come at any time…

At the cemetery, the coffin was placed on a metal stand, over the open grave. The rabbi said a few prayers and then it was time for us to say the Mourner’s Kaddish. When the first word came out of my mouth, I remembered that only eight days earlier, I had been sitting with my father in synagogue and he had made me promise that I would do this for him after he died. I had completely forgotten about it.

After we finished, the rabbi took a small spade, reached into a container of dirt, and put a pile of it on the coffin. “What are you doing?” I thought. “Don’t do that. You’re going to get it dirty.”

And then, it all really hit me. Until then, the whole thing had been like a show. My father was immaculately dressed and perfectly groomed, lying in this beautiful wooden box that was now resting on a shiny silver stand. They had bright-green artificial turf spread all around, so you didn’t see any dirt or the other graves. It was all so clean.

But now, the show was over, and it was time to get down to the real business at hand. They were going to take this pretty box with him in it, and bury it deep in the ground, under six feet of dirt. And that would be that.

For the first time, I fully understood that he was really gone, and I was never going to see him again. Never again hear his voice, listen to his wisdom and counsel, hear him laugh or sense the nobility of his spirit. And I would never again feel his love and protection. Our time together was over. We had reached the end…

A full week of mourning went by and then, it was time for me to begin the slow, inch-by-inch journey from catastrophe back to normal. But normal was a long way off. I went to school Monday morning and walked back into my everyday life. Everyone was extremely kind, and I had a ton of school work to catch up with, which helped divert my attention. But I was totally shell-shocked.

As the routine of everyday life set back in, amazingly, everything was the same as it had been before my father died - same people, same school, same schedule, same life; it was all exactly the same. Except nothing was the same. And it never would be again.

I played it brave, but the center of my world had been destroyed, and there was now a gaping chasm of grief in its place. I had to learn to walk around it, but I still fell into it several times a day, and it broke me apart every time.

Finally, after about a month, a few small things slowly started bringing me back to life…

Well, that’s the end of this episode, and it’s also the end of the sadder part of the story. The pace starts to pick up in the episode that’s coming. So as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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This is the fourth episode in a series about the unusual events that happened to me before and after my father’s sudden death. In the first two episodes, I had experienced a few possible signs of an impending disaster. But in the last episode, I had a troubling, recurring nightmare three nights in a row. Then I had a crystal-clear dream with a series of events that ended with my sister telling me that our father had died. That chilling dream happened the night before this next episode begins…

It was Friday morning, December 3, 1965. I picked up my good friend Marty and drove him to school, which I did on most school days. This time, though, as soon as he got in the car, I told him about my horrible dream. I had a funny feeling I should tell someone. In case it came true, I didn’t want to be the only one who knew about it in advance. It seemed like the kind of thing that could drive you nuts if you didn’t handle it right.

We only talked about it for a few minutes as we drove, and then switched to our plans for the upcoming weekend, which was packed with social events. The school day flew by in a flash, and the next thing I knew, it was Friday night.

There was a big party and I was going to drive across town, pick up my girlfriend, and bring her with me. It was a half-hour ride each way, and when it came time to leave suddenly, I didn’t feel like driving by myself. I called Marty and asked him to come with me. He agreed if we didn’t take the Sprite, which was only a two-seater. He was six-one and didn’t want to be cramped-in with a third person.

My mother was getting ready to watch the huge Celtics game on TV in the living room. My father was already up in Boston. I went in and asked her if it was OK for me to take her car. “You better not,” she replied. “Sybil has a bunch of friends coming over, and she may need it.”

She turned on the TV and sat down on the couch. “Take the Caddy,” she said, nonchalantly. Without giving it a second thought, I hopped into my father’s car and picked up Marty.

About twenty minutes into the ride, I felt like hearing some music. “Let’s listen to the radio,” I said and turned it on. I hit the middle button, but there was no sound at all - dead silence, which was very strange. That button was always set to our local rock ‘n roll station, and a loud-mouth deejay, a pop song, or an annoying commercial was blaring all the time. But now I heard absolutely nothing, and the silence was deafening. It lasted long enough that I thought the radio was broken.

Finally, an announcer in a solemn voice came on and said - “We have just received a report from the Boston Garden that the owner of the 76ers, Ike Richman, has collapsed at courtside.” He paused. “His condition is unknown.”

I quickly turned it off. I had never heard anyone speak like that on this station before, and I didn’t want to hear any more. We drove to my girlfriend’s house. As soon as we got there, I called home. My sister answered, and she sounded perky and happy, like she was having fun with her friends and everything was fine.

“Sybil, what’s happening?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied lightly. “Everything’s fine. Listen, Mommy is leaving for New York soon, and she wants to see you before she goes. She’s waiting for you, so come right home.”

“Sure, I replied. “I’ll be right back.

“Great,” she said, cheerfully. Then in a slightly different tone, she added, “Come home now, David. Just come right home.” It was a minor change, but I heard it in a major way.

I thought about it for a few seconds. Sybil had said everything was OK, but that didn’t mean anything. What else would she say? I was sixteen, had only been driving for a few months, and had a long ride home on the expressway.

Oddly, looking back on it, the lucid dream I’d had the night before - the one that began with me driving my father’s car - never occurred to me at all. I had completely forgotten about it.

I kept driving along and then got to Spring Avenue. I came over the hill, and as I started driving down it, I got a funny feeling in my stomach. I looked at my hands resting on the steering wheel and gazed at the hood of my father’s car.

That moment began one of the strangest experiences of my life. My dream from the previous night started to come to life, in front of my startled eyes. As I lived through it, I knew exactly what was coming next, and it was uncanny. I turned left onto Heather Road and drove past the cars that were parked in front of the house, just like in the dream.

It felt sort of like a déjà vu, but very different. Déjà vu means “already seen,” and you feel like somehow, you’ve already lived through the experience that you’re currently having. It’s like remembering the present. But it’s usually pretty vague, and only lasts an instant.

There was nothing vague about the experience I was having. Quite the opposite. It was crystal clear. And it didn’t vanish at all. It just went on and on.

As I drove along, one part of my mind was normal, with regular thoughts and feelings. But another part knew what was coming and wanted to change it. As I was about to turn into the driveway, that part said, “Park on the street. Don’t turn into the driveway. You know what’s coming if you park in the driveway. Don’t do it. Do something else!”

That seemed logical and I decided to park on the street. But then I made a disturbing discovery: I had no control at all over what was happening. Even though I clearly decided to park on the street, I robotically turned into the driveway, shut off the engine and got out of the car.

“Don’t go in the back door. Go around front,” I told myself as I started walking. “Just go in the front door. Do not go around back. Don’t do it!” I thought about whether I had the key to the front door with me, but I knew it didn’t matter. It was like I was watching a movie that had already been shot, but I was now living through it. And not only did I know what was coming, I also knew there was no changing it.

I got to the back door and walked into the kitchen. Sure enough, just like the dream, my mother was on the phone with her back to me and never noticed me. Neither did my Uncle Ray, who was standing in front of the stove with his arms folded across his chest, looking down at the floor.

As I walked out into the hall, I knew it was time to go upstairs and face the news. It didn’t matter what I thought or did. What was coming was coming.

I got to the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway at the door to my sister’s room. I could see that it was closed but opened just a crack. I walked over and put my right hand on the door. I looked at my hand and had the same thought I’d had in the dream. “Well, this is it.”

I pushed the door open. My sister was in the exact spot near her bed, surrounded by friends. She looked up at me. “Daddy’s dead. We don’t have a daddy anymore.”

And then I had the same thought that I had had in the dream. “This is terrible. But why are you talking like this? You’re twenty years old, and you sound like a four-year-old.”

Then, still without choice, I walked out into the hall and down to my room. I sat on my bed and became overwhelmed with the same intense anger at God.

“Why did you have to do this?” I thought in a rage of anger, confusion, and despair. “Why in the world did you have to do this?” And just like the dream, I smashed my fist down on the end table next to my bed. But in my dream, I woke up.

This time, when my fist hit the table, I was abruptly snapped back into reality and normal life. Except there was no such thing as normal anymore. Instead of waking up from a nightmare that was only a dream, I started living a nightmare that was real. The devastating truth was clear - this was no dream. This was real life. My father was dead.

Well, that’s the end of this episode, and it was a pretty sad one. But a few more things are yet to come. So, hang in there. I think you’ll enjoy what happens next. And as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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The series of episodes concerning the unusual events just before and after the death of my father continues. Coming from some chapters in my memoir, “Wilt, Ike & Me,” the series began when my father told me he would never be the grandfather to the child who was about to be born to my brother and his wife. Then I unexpectedly came upon two haunting stories about the death of Abraham Lincoln. And a few days later, for no apparent reason, my father had me make a solemn promise before God that I would say the traditional mourner’s prayer for him after he died. He was just 52 years old and in fine health, so I didn’t even give it a second thought.

In this next episode, the series gets a little more intense…

Two nights later, Monday night, I had a disturbing nightmare. Someone was trying to kill me. I was desperately running for my life on a deserted part of the beach in Atlantic City, in front of the Boardwalk. It was daytime, but the atmosphere was dark and heavy, like a major storm was coming.

As I ran frantically, the would-be killer kept firing a gun at me. But the assailant, the gun, and the bullets were all invisible. Still, I could hear the loud crack of the gunfire and feel the sharp zing of the bullets as they whizzed past my head and exploded in the sand in front of me. The assassin was hell-bent on my destruction, relentless, and getting closer all the time.

In sheer terror, I ran under the Boardwalk to hide. But once I did, the whole scene changed immediately. I was standing in a dark cave and everything was completely silent. Before, when I was running for my life, I heard the panting of my breath, the thumping of my feet on the sand, and the hiss of the bullets as they flew past my head. Now everything was dead silent and absolutely still.

I was standing in front of a large, old, brown wooden cross, with hundreds of lit candles all around. A monk in a dark-brown, hooded robe stood in front of it. The hood concealed the monk’s face entirely.

“Behold! The cross of the Crucifixion!” I seemed to hear inside my mind. I knew it was somehow coming from the monk. Then, oddly, a few complete ideas appeared in my mind. Unlike linear thinking, where one thought follows another, they all became clear to me at once.

I knew this was the actual cross from the actual crucifixion and that things were serious. I understood that it was a symbol for death, commonly used to mark a grave. Then, I got a final message – “You have come upon it.” I looked at the monk, then back at the cross. Everything seemed frozen in time, like a picture. The candles had stopped flickering and nothing moved. The stillness seemed to have a presence all its own.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp slap in the middle of my chest, right on my sternum. I gasped in an enormous amount of air and the next thing I knew, I was lying in my bed, in my pajamas.

I was in my room, it was morning, and I realized it had all been a dream, a nightmare. My right hand was resting on my chest. I must have stopped breathing in my sleep and then subconsciously slapped myself awake.

I was pretty shaken and didn’t move for a few minutes. I finally got up, got dressed, and had my breakfast. But as I started driving to school, I was still disturbed. I hardly ever had nightmares and certainly never anything like this before.

By the time I pulled into the school parking lot though, I was more relaxed and decided to let the whole thing go. After all, it was just a bad dream. Maybe it was something I ate. The rest of the day was uneventful, and everything seemed fine.

Then, to my extreme shock and dismay, the next night, Wednesday, I had the exact same dream. Again, I was being chased along the beach by an invisible killer, firing invisible bullets at me. I ducked under the Boardwalk, and it turned into a cave. There was the cross and the monk. And I got the same set of inner understandings, ending with the message - “You have come upon it.” Then I slapped myself awake.

I didn’t know what to do. Three straight nights of this recurring nightmare seemed really serious. And on top of that, the fact that it had a big cross in it was deeply disturbing. The truth is, I didn’t like crosses. They always made me feel uncomfortable. And it wasn’t due to any religious differences. It was much deeper than that, a visceral feeling, like getting punched in the stomach.

I felt it the very first time I saw a crucifixion scene, which was when I was about six. We still lived in the Northeast, across the street from the church and I was having a catch with a friend. The ball went over and landed near the front door of the building. When I went to get it, I noticed that the church door was opened. The place had always been mysterious to me, so I thought I’d go in and take a peek.

The first thing I saw in there was a huge cross with a lifelike porcelain statue of a nearly naked man nailed to it. The guy was dead. And there was a crown of sharp thorns stuck into his head, with blood streaming down his face.

Thorns! I couldn’t believe it. My mother grew rose bushes and always warned me to be careful of them. Still, I got stuck in the finger once. It bled a lot and it really hurt. Seeing a bunch of thorns stuck in this poor guy’s head was appalling. The rest of his body was a real horror show too, with whip marks all over it and nails hammered into his hands and feet.

It was the most gruesome sight I had ever seen in my life. It made me sick to my stomach and I ran out full speed, crossed the street and collapsed onto our lawn. My head was spinning, and I was out of breath. But the firm ground and familiar smell of the grass made me feel better. After a few minutes, I calmed down.

Then, out of nowhere, an unexpected fury came over me. I was filled with anger and rage. “Look what those goddamn bastards did to him!” I thought. I was only six, but it wasn’t a six-year-old’s thought. I felt like I wanted to kill somebody.

Crosses always bothered me after that. Later, in college, I studied the symbol’s deeper meanings, along with the ennobling concepts of sacrifice, grace, forgiveness, the soul’s triumph over death, and its eventual reunion with the immortal father. And while they’re all comforting ideas, the cross still reminds me of humanity at its worst, and of things gone horribly wrong. And I still get the same visceral feeling.

The symbol had played a central role in three recurring nightmares, and I decided if it happened again, I would definitely talk with my mother. Maybe it was time for me to go see a doctor or something.

That next day, Thursday December 2, flew by normally. My father was leaving for Boston the next day for the big 76ers - Celtics showdown in the Garden. After dinner, I finished my homework, goofed around a little and finally went to bed. As usual, I put on the radio and listened for a while, but I never got sleepy. I was much too agitated.

I kept thinking about my social life, my schoolwork, and the upcoming game with the Celtics. But I knew that wasn’t the real reason I couldn’t fall asleep. I was just too afraid I was going to have that nightmare again, and I couldn’t face the idea of going through it all one more time.

I don’t remember getting tired or drifting off to sleep. I was just lying in my bed with my eyes closed and the very next thing I knew, I felt a funny sensation in my stomach, like I was in a moving car that had just come over a hill and was on its way down. I opened my eyes and saw my hands resting on the steering wheel of a car. I looked over them at the hood and realized I was driving my father’s Cadillac.

I came down the hill on Spring Avenue and turned left onto Heather Road, as I had done a million times before. Our house was on the corner.

I noticed that there were a few cars parked in front as I drove by. I made a right turn into the driveway, pulled up, and got out of the car. I walked around to the back door and into the kitchen.

My mother was on the phone with her back to me. She didn’t seem to notice that I had come in and didn’t turn around. My Uncle Ray, my father’s younger brother, was standing in front of the stove. He had his arms folded across his chest and was staring down at the floor. He didn’t look up or acknowledge me at all. It was like I wasn’t there.

I walked through the dining room, into the main hall, and up the stairs. I turned left at the top and walked down the hallway toward my sister’s room. As always, her door was closed, but it was opened just a crack. I walked up to the door, put my right hand on it, and stopped for a moment. I stared at the back of my hand and thought, “Well, this is it.”

I pushed the door open. Sybil was standing in the back of the room near her bed, with a few friends. She looked up at me.

“Daddy’s dead,” she said. “We don’t have a daddy anymore.”

“This is terrible,” I thought to myself. “But why are you talking like this? You’re twenty years old, and you sound like a four-year-old.”

I didn’t say anything and walked out of her room, down the hall, and into my room. I sat down on my bed, and suddenly got overwhelmed with an intense anger at God.

“Why did you have to do this?” I thought. “Why in the world did you have to do this?” I smashed my fist down on the large end table next to my bed.

As soon as my fist hit the table, everything changed, and I was startled to find that I wasn’t sitting on my bed anymore. I was actually lying in it. In another moment, I realized I must have fallen asleep and the whole thing had been a nightmare. The room was gray with the first light of dawn. And according to my clock radio, it was a few minutes before six.

Of course, my first feeling was relief. I had just gone through a chillingly lifelike experience that had ended with my sister telling me that my father had died. And now, thank God, none of it was real. It had all been just a bad dream. But in actuality, there had been nothing dreamlike about it. In fact, it had been every bit as real as any experience I’d ever had in my life.

I was happy about one thing, though – at least I hadn’t had a repeat of that same nightmare with the killer and the cross, which was a plus. Luckily, that was over.

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This is the second episode in a series of excerpts from my memoir, Wilt, Ike & Me. The last one took place at the end of the summer of 1965 when instead of being able to continue with my sizzling teenage summer romance, I unexpectedly had to drive to Brooklyn with my parents to attend my first funeral.

In the chapters that follow in the book, I begin eleventh grade and the 76ers begin the NBA season. The team that my father had personally built over the last two years was now the most powerful team in basketball. It is still looked upon as one of the greatest NBA teams ever and this was a very exciting time for us.

But the focus of this series is on the events that took place just before and just following the sudden death of my father. Although it’s a sad part of the saga, it does lead up to a rather fascinating conclusion, so my advice is to stick with it through to the end.

This episode marks the beginning of some of the strange things that began to happen to me then. And so, the story continues.

Sometimes, things can be going along normally and then all of a sudden, your whole world gets turned upside down. There’s no point in dwelling on it, but the truth is, you never really know what’s coming around the next corner in this life. Something unexpected can happen and suddenly, you’re never the same again. It seems to happen to everyone. One way or another, we each enter into the dark night of the soul.

That’s exactly where I was heading as the last week of November began. I didn’t see it coming. We rarely do. But looking back, there were plenty of signs.

The first one was subtle. My brother’s wife was about seven months pregnant. Mike had been the first child in the generation following my father’s. Now this new baby would be the first child of the next generation. We were all unbelievably excited.

My father and I had driven over to visit them one afternoon. When we got home and pulled into the driveway, I asked him, “So how does it feel now that you’re going to be a grandfather?”

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

“Does it make you feel old or anything?”

He didn’t respond right away and stared out at the rose garden near the back door.

“I’m never going to be the grandfather to this child,” he said matter-of-factly, but in a distant tone of voice. I didn’t say anything.

“No. I won’t be the grandfather,” he repeated. “I’ll be the father’s father, but never the grandfather.”

He used to say quirky things like this all the time. It sounded like he was splitting hairs, and I didn’t pay any attention to it.

A second subtle omen came in the form of a comic book. Eleventh grade was turning out to be a great year for me. I was in student council and started thinking about running for school president. Cheltenham was a big high school, with about two thousand students. If I wanted to run, there would be a lot to do, and it was time to give it some serious thought. One night at dinner, I mentioned it to my parents and they both encouraged me.

The next day, when I got home from school, an old comic book of mine was on the end table next to my bed. It had stories about each president of the United States. I hadn’t seen it in years. My mother kept a few boxes of my childhood things in the basement and had pulled it out after our dinner conversation, probably to inspire me.

I recognized it immediately and remembered there was a strange story about Abraham Lincoln in the middle of it. I flipped to the center and sure enough, there it was, “Lincoln, the Mystic.”

It had two parts. The first one was called, “I Am Not Dead – I Still Live.” It showed a letter from a famous psychic that was found in Lincoln’s desk after he died.

Supposedly, following the assassination, the President’s son Robert Todd Lincoln went through all of Lincolns personal papers and destroyed a large amount. But for some reason, he preserved this one particular letter, which is now in the Abraham Lincoln Collection at the Library of Congress.

It was a life-after-death message that was brought to the White House by a psychic who had supposedly channeled it from Edward Baker, a close friend of Lincoln’s who had been killed in battle. It was written backwards and had to be read in a mirror. It said - “I am not dead. I still live…I experienced a happy reality - a glorious change by the process called death… Man lives on Earth, to live elsewhere, and that elsewhere is ever present. Heaven and Hell are conditions, not localities.”

The fact that Lincoln had a letter from a psychic in his desk was somewhat interesting news. But when I read the second part of the comic book tale, called “The Most Famous Pre-Cognitive Dream in American History,” I found it disturbing.

It showed Lincoln asleep in the White House. A mournful sound wakes him up. He gets out of bed and starts walking toward it. As he gets closer, he realizes that it is the sound of people crying miserably. He enters the East Room and sees a coffin on a stand, guarded by soldiers. “Who is dead in the White House?” he asks one of them.

“The President,” comes the reply. “He was killed by an assassin.” The crying gets louder. Lincoln looks in the coffin and sees himself lying there. The shock of it startles him, and he suddenly wakes up and finds himself lying in his bed. He realizes it had all been a bad dream.

I looked at the image of Lincoln, staring at himself in the coffin, and for some reason, I thought of my old Davy Crockett comic book and how crushed I felt when I realized my hero was dead. And as I sat on my bed, next to the end table, a quick flash of intense grief rippled through me like a shock wave. I quickly got up and put the comic away in a drawer. But that picture of Lincoln staring at his own dead body was haunting, and the image stayed with me for quite a while.

A more profound sign awaited me on Saturday morning. My father and I were sitting in services in the modern synagogue near our home in Elkins Park. He was thinking about changing our affiliation. We still belonged to Temple Sholom, but it was a long drive each way. This place was close enough that we could walk, which was a dream come true for him.

Toward the end of every Jewish service, a prayer is recited called the Mourner’s Kaddish. It’s one of the keystones of the religion, and every congregation does it, all over the world. Interestingly, even though it’s done to honor the dead, it’s a prayer of praise and never once mentions death or dying. The idea is that you always praise God, no matter what happens.

All of a sudden, my father got extremely serious. “This Kaddish prayer is much more important than you know,” he said. Then he spoke to me in a strange tone of voice, one I had never heard before. I could barely tell it was him.

“I want you to promise me that after I die, you will come to services and say Kaddish for me, every morning and every night. And that you will do it for the full eleven months and never miss a time.”

I had never heard him that somber before, and it didn’t make sense. I was definitely going to say Kaddish for him after he died, but that was twenty or thirty years down the road - he was only fifty-two. “Of course, I will, Dad,” I said matter-of-factly. “You know I will.”

Then the weird got weirder. “We’re in the synagogue now,” he said, still in the same somber tone. “There’s the ark and we’re in front of the Torah. I want you to make a solemn vow to me now. And understand, this is a vow made before God.”

Now, we were very close and nothing like this had ever happened between us. He had never asked me to promise him anything before in my life.

“OK,” I said, somewhat taken aback. It seemed like an old-fashioned idea, but why not?

“Good,” he said. “Now, repeat after me.” He paused, and then, like a judge administering an oath of office, he recited the vow, one sentence at a time. And I repeated it after him, word for word.

“I promise before God, that after you die, I will come to services and say Kaddish for you every morning and night for the full eleven months. And never miss a time.” When I said the last phrase, he exhaled deeply and slumped forward in his seat, with his eyes closed.

The next thing I knew, they started singing Adon Olam, which is the very last song of the service. It’s a happy, cheerful hymn. My father opened his eyes and looked relieved. He seemed like his normal self again and started singing along. Whatever that strange spell was, it was over.

When we got outside, it was a beautiful day. On the walk home, we were both happy, I always loved that time after services on a Saturday. I had fulfilled my obligation to God and my father and could get on with the carefree part of my weekend.

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The last podcast episode marked the end of a series of excerpts from my upcoming book called, “The Friend at the End,” which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011.

As that series began, I was in the prime of my life, all was well, and I was about to enjoy the beginning of the summer season. But by the last episode, the stroke was well underway, I was in the midst of a near-death experience and was facing the possible end of my life.

By the way, if you plan to read the book when it comes out, here’s a spoiler alert about the stroke – I lived!

Anyway, that series about the stroke was actually a lead up to the next series that’s about to begin with this episode. This series will feature some excerpts from my memoir, Wilt, Ike and Me and will portray the times just before and just after my father died of a sudden, major heart attack. I had some remarkable experiences during this time. I think you will find the story fascinating. And it all leads up to a rather enlightening conclusion.

So, let’s get into this next series. It begins at the end of the summer of 1965. Our family had a place at the Jersey shore and I had spent the summer there, working at a day camp. But those days had unexpectedly turned into a coming of age, rite of passage era for me, because I had run headlong into a wild teenage romance that was as every bit as hot as the summer was.

The day before the story opens, Wilt Chamberlain had come down to have dinner with us and he had taken me out for a ride in his new car. But as soon as the ride started, he unexpectedly gave me a quick, but very detailed talk about how not to get a girl pregnant.

And so, the story begins…

The next day, as I thought about my car ride with Wilt, I realized that my father might have set it up. The whole thing seemed a bit contrived. Wilt had come down early, by himself. And as soon as we said hello, the next thing I knew, we were driving around in his Bentley and he was giving me a pregnancy prevention seminar.

If my father had done it, I had to hand it to him. It was a pretty cool way to make sure I had all the information I needed to keep me out of trouble. But it really wasn’t necessary. I had been going to overnight camp for nine years, and other than sports, all we ever talked about in the bunk was sex. And besides, as heated as our interludes ever got, my girlfriend and I were always careful to keep things out of the danger zone.

But now, it looked like things might be about to heat up a bit. There was a chance I could be getting the house all to myself for a few days. Although the idea was incredibly exciting, unfortunately, it was for a sad reason.

My mother’s uncle, Uncle George, had gotten critically ill and was failing. He probably had less than a week to live. That meant a funeral was coming up, and it would be in Brooklyn. My parents would go, but they wouldn’t take me. I never went to funerals. They thought I was still too young.

As Uncle George kept slipping away, I went over the situation in my mind. My parents would be gone for at least a full day, maybe two. My brother and sister were both already back in Philadelphia. He was getting ready for his last year of law school and her college classes were about to begin. All I had to do was come up with a reason why I had to stay down the shore, which shouldn’t be too hard.

I could hardly wait. My girlfriend and I had been limited to the back seat of cars, the beach, or anywhere else we could sneak in our steamy escapades. But now, finally we’d have the whole house to ourselves.

A couple of days later, my mother got the bad news. Uncle George was gone. My parents and I sat down for dinner that night, and, of course, the mood was somber.

I had only seen Uncle George a few times in my life. He was from my grandparents’ generation and lived in Brooklyn. But he had been very close to my parents and I could see the deep sorrow on my mother’s face. A big part of me definitely felt sad.

But I had another part that was equally as big. And it had just popped the cork on the champagne bottle. My imagination was already drunk.

In my mind, there I was, walking out of the dining room into the living room. But I was wearing a freshly pressed, white tuxedo, just like James Bond, and carrying two martinis. I had no idea what a martini was, but those glasses were so cool, whatever was in them had to be good.

My girlfriend sat on the couch wearing a black, low-cut evening gown, a long string of pearls lazily draped around her elegant neck. She crossed her shapely legs and dangled a black high-heeled shoe off the end of one foot. I handed her a martini. She took it and moistened her lips with her tongue. Then she brought the goblet up to her mouth. Oh, man, this was going to be great.

“Duv?” I heard my mother’s voice calling, from somewhere beyond the fairy dust. “Duvid, are you OK?”

I was still waist-deep in my dreamworld and must have looked pretty distracted. “We know how hard it is,” she said sympathetically. My parents had a quick conversation in Yiddish. And then the killer came.

“Duv, we think it’s time – we think you should come with us to this one,” my mother finally said.

“Huh?” I grunted. I heard exactly what she said, and I knew what it meant, but I hoped like hell I had gotten it wrong.

“To the funeral, to Uncle George’s funeral,” she explained. “We talked it over, and we think you’re old enough now. You really should come with us. It’s time.”

I thought my head was going to explode. “Oh no! Oh my God, no!” I shouted silently. “This can’t be happening!” But as I looked at them, I knew immediately that I was going. End of story. Dream dead.

I kept a calm, pensive expression as if considering the wisdom of the idea, but I was devastated. A moment earlier, I was a step away from romance heaven. Now, instead of being alone in the house with my girlfriend, doing God knows what, I’d be sitting in a long car ride with my parents, driving up to my first funeral. Reluctantly, my imagination switched from sex to death.

“Listen, Shortstop. I know how upset you must be,” my father said. A master of the double entendre, he really knew how to say things without saying them. I realized that he probably knew exactly what I was planning to do with the house. In fact, I’m sure he knew it long before I did.

“But this is a perfect one for you to go to,” he continued. “It’s exactly right for you now. You were close enough to Uncle George that it matters, but not so close that it’s gonna be a killer. It’s always a good idea to get one of these under your belt before you have to go through a big one, you know what I mean? One that really hurts.”

It was obvious what he was referring to. His parents, my beloved grandparents, were getting older. Before too long, they’d both be gone. I had to accept it; going to this funeral made perfect sense. For a lot of good reasons, it was definitely the right thing for me to do. And besides, I had no choice.

The next morning, as we started off for Brooklyn, both my parents were solemn. They had long, fond memories of Uncle George, and also, he was the last member of his generation to go. That always adds an extra dimension to a death. Now your generation becomes the oldest in the family. And every time someone goes, it hits you on a deeper level than before… that in reality, the bell tolls for thee.

It was a quiet ride. But as we got closer to Brooklyn, my father began instructing me on the process of burying someone you love. He explained what a funeral home was, what would happen when we got there, what it would probably be like at the cemetery, and what would happen at the shiva back at the house.

We pulled up to the funeral home, went inside, and were greeted by a large group of relatives from my mother’s side of the family. We all hung around together for a few minutes. We didn’t get to see each other all that often, so we couldn’t help being glad, but it was obviously for the wrong reason. It’s amazing how much a funeral is like a party, only it’s not.

We all went in and sat in the middle rows. I could see the lid of the open coffin over the heads of the people sitting in front of us. According to my father’s instructions, I knew that soon we’d walk past it, and I would see a dead person for the first time. I started to prepare myself.

“It’s not really real yet,” my father muttered in my ear. “Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe it’s even a dream. But when you go up there, and you look in and you actually see him, and you know it’s really him, then it’s real. Then you know it’s over.”

“OK, Ike, let’s go,” my mother said to him. I felt him stiffen a little. Emotionally, everybody knew she was fifty times tougher than he was.

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Yeah. OK.”

I braced myself for whatever was next. We stood up and went to the front of the room. We walked up to the coffin, and I looked in to see what was left of Uncle George.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. He didn’t even look real. Actually, he looked like a figure in the wax museum on the Boardwalk. Still, it was clearly him, and he was clearly dead. My father linked his arm in mine as we stood there staring at the lifeless form. “Now it’s over,” he said quietly.

We went back to our seats, and the service began. The rest of the day was uneventful—a standard funeral followed by a burial at a huge cemetery. Then, we headed back to the house for a couple of hours with some of our favorite relatives. That was the nice part of a rather sad day.

On the ride home, once we hit the Jersey Turnpike, I actually felt pretty good. I had gotten one under my belt, and it really wasn’t all that bad.

So that’s the end of this episode.

As subtle as it was, this marked the beginning of a major change in my life and things really start to build as the series continues. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

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This is the fourth episode in a series based on my upcoming book, The Friend at the End, which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011, which very nearly killed me. In the last episode, I had continued my inner conversation with an unseen presence who had begun to introduce me to the idea that I might be dying.

He suggested that I make the effort to get ready, but as I started to consider the idea, I had some trouble with it and felt like I was failing. Then the presence said to me, “Here, let me help you with this. Did ‘ja learn anything?

Now, the story continues…

“Did I learn anything?” My God, what a simple little question! And asked in the most casual, way. Like from his tone, he could’ve just as well asked me if I had eaten a lot of pizza in my life, that’s about how important it seemed. My initial reaction was no reaction at all, and I drew a complete blank.

But then, something unexpected happened. Suddenly, a series of pictures began appearing in my mind’s eye. The pictures were all of me, in different stages of my life. They went through linear time, beginning on the day I was born. There were so many of them, it almost seemed like there was one for every day of my life. It was weird because they seemed to be moving very fast and very slow at the same time.

Although I clearly recognized each one of them and remembered the experiences they showed, rather than stirring up memories, I was just extracting the essence of the feelings that I’d had during them - happy, sad, amazed, confused, and on and on. Finally, after every age of my life and every role that I had played had been presented, the last picture I saw was of me at this very second, sitting in my bathing suit at the swimming pool, looking at all these pictures. Then my mind went back to normal and the episode, or whatever it was, ended.

I guess you could call it a life review of some kind. But before I could give it any thought, another image came into my mind’s eye. This time, it wasn’t a still picture, it was more like a movie, and I was in it and watching it at the same time.

I was in a small boat on a river and the boat kept changing forms. For a little while, it was a standard row boat and I was rowing it. Then it changed to a canoe and I was paddling it. Then it became a small motor boat and I was in the back, steering it by moving the motor. Then it went back to being a row boat again, and it just kept switching forms.

All of a sudden, I was teleported up to the inside of an airplane that was flying high above the river. I kept switching viewpoints, from being on the boat to being on the plane. Then, in the next instant, I was rowing the boat down the river and flying in the plane above it, both at the same time. I was in two places at once, and fully conscious of each.

The river had a lot of twists and turns to it, and from the viewpoint of being in the boat, you could only see what was in front of you. You couldn’t see beyond the next bend. But the vantage point from the plane was totally different. I could see the whole river, all at once. I could look back to where it had begun, I could see all the way forward to the point where it finally merged into the ocean.

Then, at one point, all of the pictures of my life that I had reviewed earlier, flashed in front of me once again. But this time, the scenes went by in what seemed like just a few seconds. Then it all vanished from my mind and I was back in normal life, sitting on my chair near the pool. The whole thing had taken me by surprise and it left me with a lot to absorb. Slowly, a series of realizations and understandings began to dawn on me.

The first one was that even though I knew that I might be dying and I had just seen pictures from every stage of my life, I felt no real attachment to any of it. It may seem odd, but it’s pretty simple. My father had died from a massive heart attack when I was sixteen, and his sudden death forced me to accept the harsh reality of the impermanence of all life on earth. I had no other choice. We all have to go one day, and I had been living with that understanding for almost fifty years, knowing that you just have to surrender to it, come what may.

After reviewing all the pictures I had seen, although I felt a lot of happiness and appreciation for the days gone by, they clearly belonged to the past. Looking at them had been like revisiting fond memories of a place that didn’t exist anymore, and from experience I knew that there is no real power in memories. The power is in the intelligence that is doing the remembering.

So, from the perspective of looking back on my life, if my time had actually come, I had no regrets about it. There was nothing left undone and what will be, will be.

I moved from thinking about the pictures to reflecting on the whole sequence with the boat on the river and the plane flying above it, and some profound realizations came to me.

While riding in the boat, the turns in the river were like going through all the day-to-day experiences of my life. Like everything else that is subject to time, they all came and went, seeming so real while they lasted, only to eventually fade away, like a passing dream.

And the fact that the boat kept changing forms represented the way that my body and mind had kept changing forms as I went through the natural growth cycle from baby to adult and beyond. The fact that I could never see beyond the next bend in the river was a reminder of the uncertainty we all face in our lives. No matter what we hope or expect, we can never really know what’s coming around the next corner.

But the view from the plane was the opposite. From there, I could see the whole river from beginning to end, and my intuition told me that the entirety of the river itself represented my conscious awareness, my essential self, as it passed through all the twists and turns of my life.

This was critically important for me because I had always felt that there must be some higher purpose to life other than just running around trying to fulfill your dreams and desires. Otherwise, it just didn’t make any sense, because no matter what you end up getting, you lose it all in the end anyway.

Of course, we all have our own personal views, but for me, the idea really got driven home by my father’s death. Not only was it a major shock, but there were also some very unusual and rather metaphysical things that happened to me during it that made me feel that there was more to life than meets the eye.

By the age of twenty-two, I had begun a serious study of all the higher understandings about life that I could find, including practicing a powerful form of mediation that helped accelerate my inner growth. Nurturing and expanding my higher awareness had remained the primary focus of my entire adult life.

Now, as I was pondering the idea of the flow of the whole river representing the evolution of my consciousness, I realized how much I had grown as a human being in my life. I had gone from having the dull consciousness of a shallow creature, almost robotically programmed into ignorance by an unenlightened society, into one who had explored the depths of his being, connected with the higher awareness within, and had led a profound life, filled with meaning, freedom, fulfillment and ever-expanding inner growth and happiness.

Of course, there had been an endless amount of twist and turns along the way, but because I had been growing, the challenging ups and downs had only made me stronger. And now, like a farmer who had been nurturing his crops for a very long season, I was deeply gratified with the yield.

“My God, this certainly wasn’t a wasted trip,” I thought. “What a life of learning!”

And with that thought, the unseen power of my unseen friend’s casual question really hit me. His simple, off-hand inquiry, “Did ‘ja learn anything” had triggered all this, bringing the value of inner growth to the forefront and making it clear that while you may have to leave it all at the end, you do get to keep what you learn, because that evolution of your consciousness becomes an actual part of you.

Now, the most important point became clear to me. I was deeply grateful for the life I had been given and had made the most of it. I had grown into a better human being and was satisfied with the person I had become. I felt complete.

Then I thought of the image of the river again and pictured it merging into the ocean, and I recalled something I once learned in school. The ocean has a powerful, magnetic attraction that draws the river towards it, pulling it back into its source. As it gets closer to the ocean, the current of the river gets stronger and it starts flowing faster and faster, almost like it can’t wait for the merging to happen. There was something not only comforting, but also enticing about the idea, and I felt that if my personal river was about to merge into the vastness of its original source, I was ready for it. Bring it on. Then, with a sublimely steady sense of clarity in my heart and mind, I finally turned my attention to my unseen friend and said with calm assurance, “OK. If this really is the end of my life, then the answer is - yes, I am ready,”

“Good,” it said. “Good.”

Once again, everything went quiet and still. I figured my life was over and we’d be leaving soon for whatever came next.

“OK, now listen,” it said, somewhat softly “This may not make sense to you now, but the truth is, no one knows whether you’re going to live or die from what’s happening to you. It’s just not known at this time. It can go either way. You could get better quickly or you could get taken out just as quickly. It’s just not determined yet. But either way, you know how to handle this,” it said calmly. “You know what to do now.”

My awareness shifted and once again I became fully conscious of my body as I was lying on the lounge chair. Although my vision was still seriously impaired, it had gotten slightly better and I could see a little bit.

I could feel the breath coming in and going out of me, like it always does, but now, I started focusing on it much more deeply. Being in tune with the breath was always a major part of my practice and I had done it for decades, but it was different now. Now, it wasn’t just about relaxation, clarity of mind, or elevation of consciousness. Now it was about survival.

As I felt the rise and fall of each breath, the presence of my unseen friend remained clear. It felt more familiar to me now than ever, but I still couldn’t put my finger on how or why. It just seemed to be a part of me, but not a part of me at the same time.

I knew that my fate was undetermined, so, I just let go and surrendered to the power that was sustaining me through the lifeline of my breath.

“Good,” the presence said, encouragingly. “By the bridge of your breath, just stay in the safety of the Divine Presence that’s within you. No matter what happens now, whether you live or die, that’s always where your real shelter is.”

In the next instant, the presence was gone and I knew it. I was on my own now, just taking each breath as it came to me, one at a time.

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

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This is the third episode in a series based on my upcoming book, The Friend at the End, which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011, which very nearly killed me. In the last episode, I had gone down to the pool at our condo for the first day of summer, but I started feeling kind of queasy. My condition worsened, and at one point, to my shock, I lost my eyesight and thought I was going blind.

I soon realized that not only was I in the midst a truly serious health crisis, I was also having a seemingly telepathic communication with an inner presence of some kind. And this presence kept suggesting to me that I might be in the process of dying. As I began to accept the idea, it casually asked me, “Are you ready?” That was the end of the last episode. This one begins with my reaction to that unexpected question.

“Am I ready? What? Am I ready?” I responded to myself.

The question caught me completely off-guard and it really threw me. What I thought had been a theoretical conversation had suddenly become a reality and I felt like I’d been shoved off the boat into a freezing ocean and was now in hostile water, surrounded by unknown dangers.

Of course, I knew that things were serious. My vision was shot and being involved in a telepathic communication within my own mind was beyond strange, to say the least. But, as distressing as it was, up until then, it was all just talk. Suddenly, these three little words – are you ready - brought me face to face with my own death, and basically, it scared me out of my wits.

But then, the next thing I knew, my fear quickly turned into anger. And it felt like righteous anger. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. It was a simple as that. Things were going great; I was in the prime of my life and I didn’t see any reason why it should have to end.

After a few more moments, my survival instinct took over and with a strong sense of resolve, I decided to stand and fight. I was done with this whole death thing and I didn’t want to hear any more about it. Who was this guy, anyway? And why should I listen to him? I would give this unseen and unwelcomed visitor a piece of my mind.

“Look, whoever or whatever you are,” I said to whoever or whatever it was, “Now you listen to me. If you’re asking me if I want to die, the answer is no! There is not one atom in my being that wants to die! I don’t want to die. I want to live.”

Then, having studied the power of crafting a pure intention and clearly expressing it, I decided to make a strong affirmative decree into the universe, of my desire and intention to live.

“I declare that any and all thoughts and fears of death have no part of me whatsoever. I banish them from my consciousness and negate them entirely. I affirm now and forever, my unshakable oneness with the infinite power of the divine energy that is within me.”

Then, with every part of my being and from the very depths of my soul, I firmly declared, “I CHOOSE LIFE!!!”

It felt like I had tapped into the faith that can move mountains, and I could feel the power of my intention resonate out into infinity. There was an inherent rightness to it and it was followed by a deeply profound and satisfying sense of inner peace.

“Good answer!” this whatever-it-was said to me a few moments later. “Well done! Very well done indeed!”

“Wow!” I thought, resting in the afterglow of the affirmation. “Okay!”

It was all so simple. Sometimes you just have to stand your ground. You align yourself with the integrity of your being, connect with the power of the universe and make your intention clearly known. Then, everything can change in an instant.

As I thought about it, maybe this whole dying thing had actually been a test of some kind. And maybe I had just passed through an initiation and would be moving into a greater level of consciousness, with a deeper understanding of life. Anyway, whatever it was, test or not, I felt like I had passed with flying colors. My confidence was back. I was on track and I felt great.

“So, look,” the presence said, “you’ve obviously done a lot of inner work in your life and it’s clear that you’ve learned a lot. You made a powerful expression of your intent and will to live, and you did it from your heart. Again, well done! Very well done!

“But David,” it continued calmly, “Although, in its place, there is tremendous power in this kind of method, it’s only valid up to a point. There’s a very important level that’s beyond all that.”

I didn’t know where things were heading, but suddenly something inside of me said, “Uh-oh.”

“In the physical world, you do get to choose a lot of things,” it continued. “But you don’t get to choose the length of your life and you don’t get to choose how and when it will end.

“Some flies live for one day, a butterfly for two weeks. Some trees live for thousands of years and stars like the sun can shine for ten billion. But it’s all just a matter of degree, because this is a realm of impermanence and nothing here lasts. Sooner or later, one way or another, everything here ends.

“But the source of it all never ends. You can call it God, the Higher Power, or any of the thousands of other terms that people have come up with over the years. Call it what you want, or don’t call it anything at all, but this universal power is what is keeping you alive, as well as the rest of creation. And it will decide when it’s time for you to go.

“Of course, it’s great that you’re aware of it, but don’t make the silly mistake of thinking that you control it, because you don’t. No one does. It’s not even close. And by the way, you didn’t come here to control it, you came here to surrender to it.”

It was a short, concise little talk, but it took the wind right out of my sails. My personal power vanished immediately, like a balloon that was burst by a sharp needle. The presence paused a little to let the information sink in and then continued.

“Now, although you just made a very strong, clear and firm statement, you didn’t answer the question that I asked you. I didn’t ask what you wanted. I asked you if you were ready. So, let me ask you again – Are you ready? And if you’re not, then you better get ready. Because even though on one level, time is just an illusion, on another, it’s very real. And the truth is - you’re running out of it. So, are you ready?”

The situation had obviously become crystal clear. I had to face facts and let go of the idea that I had any choice left in the matter. That ship had sailed, if it had ever been there in the first place. Clearly, things were in motion now and I had to get my inner affairs in order.

So, was I ready for this? If this really is the end, would anything major be left undone? Might I have regrets? Or even remorse? Whatever. I had to decide if I was ready and supposedly, time was getting short.

It seemed like a ridiculously tall order and I had no idea how to approach it. So, I just asked myself, “Okay, so am I ready?” and I waited to see what happened next.

Something came to mind immediately. It seemed unfair to me that I should have to die so young. Why such a short life? After all, I was only 62 years old and other than today’s crazy episode, I seemed to be in great health. And it was all so sudden.

But my thoughts went straight to what happened to my father. He was only 52 years old when he instantly dropped dead from a massive heart attack, which means that I would still be getting a full ten years more than he got. And talk about sudden, he literally died in a heartbeat. In another moment, the whole unfairness argument went right out the window.

I relaxed a little and waited to see what came up next. Out of nowhere, I felt an enormous wave of gratitude and relief wash over me. The feeling seemed to exist on its own, with no apparent connection to any form of thought. I just felt incredibly grateful and unbelievably relieved, for no noticeable reason.

Then suddenly I realized a critical fact that hadn’t occurred to me before - my life insurance policy was in full force and if I did die, my wife and daughter would be well taken care of after I was gone. The feelings of gratitude and relief suddenly made perfect sense. They had just hit my consciousness before any thoughts of explanation had caught up to them. In reality, I can never overstate how much this fact meant to me at this point in time. The relief was far beyond words.

As a writer, I had led a somewhat unconventional life and my financial fortunes had ebbed and flowed over the years - sometimes up and sometimes not so up.

But fortunately, I had always been able to maintain a fairly substantial life insurance policy for them. To me, this contingency planning had always represented a monument to sane responsibility. From where I was standing now, when it comes to monuments, it made Mt. Rushmore look like a little sand castle.

Thank God my wife and daughter would be financially secure after I died! I knew they would be safe after I was gone, and a deep sense of peace came over me.

It’s funny looking back on it, but I didn’t feel any anxiety over what would happen to them emotionally after I died. I had learned from experience that death and separation are an inevitable part of life, and we all have a built-in human capacity to recover from them. I knew that although it would be tough, eventually they’d recover. That’s the just way we’re made.

But the fact that they weren’t going to have to face a financial catastrophe on top of the sudden shock and grief was enormously soothing and the gratitude and relief I felt came from the very depths of my being.

At that point, I felt complete about my external responsibilities in life. As far as being ready, that area was covered and I waited for whatever else came up next. But to my surprise, nothing did. My mind kind of went silent and I seemed to be in a state of nothingness. I continued to wait.

“Could that be it?” I finally asked myself. “That’s all you’ve got? Come on, here you are, trying to see if you’re ready to die, and all you can come up with are these two things – that you think your life was cut too short and that you’re glad your life insurance policy is in force. That’s it? Nothing else? Come on man, there’s gotta be more.”

Still, nothing else came up. My mind was a complete blank, which seemed incredible. All my life, it had been churning out thought after thought of never-ending chatter, and now, at this critical moment, all of a sudden it goes radio-silent?

I was stuck and I felt like something was wrong. It seemed like I wasn’t doing this right and I got worried. “I don’t want to blow this,” I thought, “My God, of all things, I don’t want to be a failure when it comes to dying!”

“Here, let me help you with this a little,” the voice, or whatever it was, chimed in. It was a pleasant surprise. I had actually completely forgotten all about it and was very happy that it was still there. Once again, I felt how familiar it seemed to be. I couldn’t see it, but I could sense it, like a wise old friend with only my best interests at heart, giving me a kind, reassuring smile.

Then, in a most relaxed and casual tone, it asked me, “Did ‘ja learn anything?”

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This episode is the second in a series of excerpts from my upcoming book, “The Friend at the End,” which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011. As the first episode began, I was 62 years old, at a wonderful stage in my life, with everything safe and secure. It was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and I was looking forward to the summer, which was just over the horizon.

But when I had gone down to the pool at our condo, after a short while, I started feeling a little nauseous. Soon after, an unusual and disturbing white light appeared in my upper left peripheral vision. At first, I thought the light was coming from somewhere on the outside, but I soon realized that it was coming from within me, which was extremely alarming. So, that marked the end of the first episode, now the story continues…

In reality, vision impairment is a classic symptom of a stroke, but I just didn’t know that at the time. If I had, I would have dropped everything and gone straight to the emergency room. But I didn’t have that information. That’s the real Catch-22 when it comes to knowledge. You never know what you don’t know. You just can’t. By definition, the unknown remains unknown until you finally find it out. And hopefully, by then, it’s not too late.

Anyway, I felt a little tired and laid back down on my lounge chair and tried to relax. I’m not sure what happened next, but I must have drifted off to sleep. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke up and opened my eyes, I was met with a complete shock. My entire field of vision had radically changed.

I could still see, but it was like looking at the world through a splintered kaleidoscope, a bizarre Picasso painting of bright colors and random fractal patterns. I had never experienced anything like it before and obviously, things had taken a major turn for the worse. It was seriously disconcerting. Oddly though, the feeling of nausea was gone completely. Other than this bizarre vision issue, I felt fine.

I opened and closed my eyes a few times, but nothing changed. I still saw the world in the same splintered, fractal way. I closed my eyes for a moment to try to stabilize myself and the vision suddenly appeared within.

I opened my eyes again, and to my shock and dismay, I couldn’t tell whether my eyes were opened or closed. It didn’t matter. Opened or closed, my field of vision remained exactly the same. I still saw the same set of broken, fractal lights.

What had been bad had suddenly gotten much worse. This was, by far, the most alarming thing that had ever happened to me physically in my life, and immediately, a chilling fear came over me. “Oh my God! I’m going blind!” I thought.

It was earth-shattering. I felt like a bug splattered on a speeding windshield, and my mind went wild with a flood of terrifying images of me, living my life as a blind man. The horrible scene went on for quite a while, before I could finally pull myself together.

“Whatever’s going on, this is much worse than I thought,” I said to myself, as I recognized how seriously things had deteriorated. “This is bad. This is really bad.” I was stunned and had no idea what to do.

“Yeah, this is definitely much worse than you thought,” I thought. “And you know what, it might actually be much worse than you think it is now. Forget about going blind. You might actually be dying. This could be the beginning of the end.”

The unwelcomed idea hadn’t occurred to me before and it stopped me dead in my tracks. “Now wait a second,” I responded, “Let’s not go to extremes here.”

I quickly tried to pull myself together. Even though I was definitely in bad shape, I certainly didn’t want to entertain any thoughts of dying. Why let that in? It couldn’t possibly help. So, I quickly decided to put it out of my mind. But a few moments later, it came back again.

“Look, of course, the idea is upsetting to you, to say the least. And obviously dying is the last thing in the world you want to think about. But still…”

“But still, what?” I countered, sharply.

“Still, you don’t really have a choice. The way things are going, at this point you have to consider everything. You really do.”

Okay, so this was the rational, non-emotional side of my mind talking to me in its rational, non-emotional way. And it was probably right to consider the worst-case scenario. But I instantly dismissed the idea again. Sure, it was normal for me to have had a passing thought that I might be dying, but that’s all I wanted it to be - just a passing thought. As far as the actual reality of it was concerned, I would have none of it. “No. It can’t be. Not like this. Not now. No way.”

“Well, why not?” Mr. Rationality responded rationally. “You know it’s going to happen someday; it has to. There’s no way around it. It’s written in stone. So why not now? And why not like this? Just because it’s sudden and you weren’t expecting it, that doesn’t mean anything. Look what happened to Daddy.”

There was no refuting the logic of it. And bringing up my father was a major factor for me. He had died instantaneously of a massive heart attack at the age of 52, and I’m sure he never knew what hit him. Here one minute, gone the next. I was sixteen years old and along with the terrible shock and grief, it really drove the point home that any one of us can go at any time. Nobody operates with any guarantees here. That’s not the way it works.

“You have to understand something,” this part of me went on. “There are no rules now and anything can happen.” It paused for a moment. “Face it. This really could be the end of the line for you. You very well might be dying.”

The weight of the reality of death began to sink into me like a ton of wet concrete sliding out of a cement mixer, and it rattled me to the core. Just a few minutes ago, I was facing the fear that I was might be going blind, and that was absolutely devastating. Still, you can learn how to live with it. Millions of people have. But while you can learn how to live with being blind, you can’t learn how to live with being dead. No. This wasn’t about coming to a major crossroads in my life. This was about coming to the actual end of it, and it was staggering. I was in a whole new world and I knew it.

I started to feel disoriented. “Oh my God!” was the last thing that came into my mind before it went blank. I think I went thoughtless, and it might have been for fifteen seconds, fifteen minutes, or even more. In that state, who knows? Anyway, at some point, I could think again. “Could it really be true?” I asked myself, soberly “I mean, could this really be it?”

“Well, you can’t rule it out,” I answered myself. “Look, you’ve never experienced anything like this before. Things are obviously getting worse, and there’s no telling where this might lead. Anything can happen. You just have to face facts.”

“Yeah. Okay,” I thought, still stunned.

“Listen, Dying isn’t a question of ‘if,’ it’s only a matter of ‘when.’ And as far as what it’s going to be like when it actually does happen, well, nobody really knows that until they get there,” the rational side said. “Then you find out for sure.”

It was obviously true. We have no idea of what our actual death is going to be like. We have no frame of reference for it. It’s not like you’re going to a new beach where you’ve never been before. But you know what to expect from a day at the beach, so you throw a bathing suit and a towel into a bag, grab a beach chair, and you’re good to go. No, it’s nothing like that. This is 100% uncharted territory. And although we may all have our ideas about it, that’s all they are – just ideas.

At that point, I realized that I had no idea what to do. So, I just sat there, with this bizarre field of colored. fractal vision filling my head, whether my eyes were opened or closed. I was stuck. Checkmate.

Then something hard to describe happened. Call it a stroke of insight or a flash of intuition, but suddenly two critical points became unmistakably clear to me. And they were both seriously disconcerting.

The first one was that I knew for sure that I was in serious trouble and that my life was on the line. I knew that I very well might be dying and it was beyond any doubt to me. I had no further questions about it at all.

The second one was more subtle and much harder to grasp. I knew intuitively that some of the thoughts I had been thinking weren’t actually coming from me. This little conversation that had been going on inside my mind wasn’t just between me, myself, and I. I felt like there was something or someone else, a presence of some kind, speaking to me through the instrument of my own mind.

Now, the very idea that I was receiving some form of mental telepathy was deeply unnerving, to say the least, and I hoped I wasn’t just losing my mind. I mean, after all, dying is bad enough, but I didn’t want to go nuts on top of it.

It was quite an intense moment and a strong wave of anxiety washed over me. But still, almost within that wave, there was another feeling that was equally as strong. I felt that this presence, or whatever it was that was talking to me, was somehow familiar. It was like an old friend that I had forgotten so long ago that I didn’t even have a distant memory of it. Just a vague feeling that I had forgotten something, but I couldn’t remember what it was. The only thing I could remember was that I had forgotten. But whatever this thing was, I knew that I knew it. I just didn’t know how. It was too out of reach.

As this wave of familiarity kept radiating to me from just beyond my awareness, somehow, I could sense a rightness to it and something within me seemed to surrender to the situation. Any remaining doubts I had got set aside and I felt myself go all in. It felt uncomfortably strange, yet strangely comfortable at the same time.

“Ok, good,” it finally said, seeming to respond to my new state of mind. “You’re getting clear now. Stay as clear as you can. There may be a lot different things coming up for you soon, and clarity will help you stay focused on what’s important. Clarity will keep you strong.”

Another long pause seemed to happen, then it continued, “So, you have to understand where things are now. You are coming to a major turning point.” Somehow the level of communication had crystalized considerably. Like a cell phone that suddenly becomes static-free, my reception was much more clear.

“This truly is the possible end of your life on earth,” it continued. “And it’s time to start wrapping things up. And at this point, one question becomes critically important for you.” We sat in silence for an endless moment of eternity. Then a very firm, but very kind voice, it asked me, “Are you ready?”

So that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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One of the next books I’ll be releasing is called, The Friend at the End, which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011. The first part of it culminates with a few major realizations I had when I understood that I very well might have been dying. Once I was released from the hospital, these understandings played a profound role in my personal growth.

Over the next few episodes, I am going to relate the events that led up to these realizations. Take your time, let the background story unfold and see if it stimulates any insights in your personal awareness. There’s a good chance that it will.

By way of to a quick overview, even though we all do our best to plan for the future, we all know that you can never really know what’s coming around the next corner. Usually, our lives are filled with a set of normal, everyday routines. But every once in a while, something hits you out of the blue and everything gets turned upside down. Suddenly, you find yourself living in a different world.

Like most of us, I’ve had my fair share of these unexpected lightning bolts. But the one that hit me in 2011 wasn’t just about my world being turned upside down. It was about it actually coming to an end.

This story is a memoir of those ground shattering days, but it’s not what you might expect. While it does deal with death and impermanence, it’s not a dark or depressing story at all. In fact, you may find it to be quite the opposite.

There are a lot of layers to it as well. For one thing, it all began with a profound near-death experience. This is now quite a timely topic, but mine was a little different from most described in popular culture. It didn’t have a lot of cosmic bells and whistles to it. It was much more down to earth. Still, it was deeply metaphysical, and its impact on me continues to grow to this day.

I survived the ordeal literally by the skin of my teeth. A huge blood clot had been released into my system. By the time I got to the hospital, it was too late for me to be helped by any medical interventions, so my fate was entirely dependent on where the enormous clot finally landed. All anyone could do was wait, watch, and pray, so it was simply Russian Roulette, medical style.

For about thirty-six hours, I lingered in the twilight zone of a semi-coma, drifting precariously between life and death. Eventually, the clot came to rest in an ideal location, my life was spared, and suddenly, all was well.

I remained in intensive care for ten days, and my doctors and nurses kept telling me how close I had come to death and how much I had to be grateful for. After all, no human hand had anything to do with the merciful outcome I had received, and the chances of it happening had been less than one in a thousand.

As you can imagine, it was an extraordinary journey, but it all began in a most ordinary way. Saturday, May 28, 2011, was a normal day, much like any other. Nothing special. Just another day in the life.

Actually, on a happy note, it was the start of Memorial Day Weekend, which is always one of my favorite times of the year. In America, it marks the beginning of the beginning of summer, when everything slowly starts to slow down. Even the pursuit of happiness isn’t that much of a chore anymore.

I was 62 years old. More precisely, it was day 22,718 of my life. It began as a beautiful, sunny morning in late Spring. But by nightfall, I would be at death’s door, lying nearly comatose in an intensive care unit, with a kindly neurosurgeon telling my badly shaken wife to hold my hand and keep talking to me. “Just – just don’t let him slip away,” he cautioned her, somberly. “We might lose him tonight.” The outlook was bleak, and if it hadn’t been for an incredible stroke of luck, or the merciful Grace of God, or both, day 22,718 might very well have been my very last.

But let’s go back to that morning. You can relax, by the way. This is far from a sad story. It’s not even that intense.

For the most part, I was happy and healthy. And it had been a positive period for me financially as well, which was always welcomed because trying to make a living as a writer can be a daunting task, as every storyteller knows.

You work in a world of constant feast or famine, trying to navigate your way through a complicated network of interconnected challenges. To start with, you take a mixture of whatever knowledge, skill, and insight you can muster, and shape it into a framework that makes some kind of sense. After that, whether you’re inspired or nuts (often both), you try to turn it into a creative work of art. Weaving your magic carpet made out of words, you go through an endless round of rewrites and revisions. Then, after enduring this miniature version of infinity, complete with its ongoing ping-pong match between heaven and hell, with you as the ball, you finally try to get the thing off the ground.

Meanwhile, you have to constantly maintain your cash flow. It’s a little like a tight-rope act and your path is as narrow as a razor’s edge. While it’s often filled with tremendous high points of majestic inspiration, you’re always aware that you’re working without a net, and you can never lose your balance. It takes laser focus, and if you want to stay with it, you quickly learn two reliable tricks of the trade - you don’t look back and you never look down.

Luckily for me, about a year earlier, I had gotten involved with an innovative solar energy company as a side-job and had run into some financial sunshine. There were favorable government incentives in place and plenty of money was flowing. The outlook for the future was strong and a secure sense of optimism fueled the industry. I was in pretty good shape.

So, on this particular morning, with summer over the next horizon, I was ready to just let go and have a good time. According to the news, we were heading into a run of bright, sunny days and everything seemed lined up for a perfect holiday weekend.

My wife and I lived in a condominium that faces an enormous park, on the edge of Philadelphia. Our daughter grew up with us there, but she was down the shore, celebrating the completion of her freshman year of college. The building has a large oval swimming pool at the edge of a beautiful, emerald-green forest. That morning, as I stood on our balcony and gazed out at the lush panorama of verdant trees swaying gently in the flowing breeze, I felt like I didn’t have a care in the world.

I went down to the pool and checked in. It was still fairly early and there was hardly anyone there. The woods, bathed in the splendor of nature, were a chirping bird land, echoing the cheerful songs of its winged residents, all singing in tune with the glorious weather report.

As the sweet fragrances of the forest filled my lungs, I sat down on a comfortable lounge chair, laid back, and took it all in. I was in the prime of my life, safe, contented, and secure. All was well and I was ready to enjoy the next stretch of whatever. What a perfect way to start the summer!

But these feelings of serenity didn’t last all that long. After just a few moments, something within me seemed to change. It was subtle, but I had the uneasy feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I soon realized that I felt a little queasy. I wasn’t downright sick or anything, just slightly nauseous.

My first thought was that it might be some kind of delayed indigestion or maybe even food poisoning. The night before, we had eaten dinner at a new falafel place in town. The sandwich was good, but there was a weird spice in it that I didn’t really like. Still, it wasn’t all that bad and I decided to finish it anyway. Then I capped it off with a big, ultra-sweet dessert.

I figured that my stomach distress was probably just a delayed reaction to the meal. “It’ll just go away by itself,” I thought, not too concerned. Worst case scenario, there was a men’s room nearby and I could always go in there and throw up if I had to. No big deal. I was sure I’d feel better soon.

But I didn’t, although it didn’t get much worse either. It was just kind of a steady, slightly sick feeling. Then something weird happened. As I was lying there, I noticed that there was a little more light than usual, coming from my left side, just outside of my peripheral vision. It was like someone had switched on a bright lamp over there.

I thought it might be the sun, so I turned to my left to see what it was. But there was nothing there, just the trees in the forest. Everything was normal. But the bright light was still on my upper left, just outside of my peripheral vision. I tried moving my head around, but no matter what I did, the light always stayed in the same position.

I decided to close my eyes and see what happened. Even with them closed, the light stayed on, and I quickly understood that it wasn’t coming from anywhere on the outside. I realized that the light was actually within me and it was deeply unsettling. Suddenly, my nervous system went on high alert and my thoughts quickened. Any idea that this was indigestion went right out the window.

I needed to calm myself down and make a serious assessment of what was happening to me. First of all, how bad was I actually feeling? I definitely didn’t feel well, but it wasn’t all that bad. It had gotten a little worse, but that was probably just from fear. The nausea was still only mild and wasn’t particularly troubling. But this light thing was a whole different story. It had come out of nowhere, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and it certainly didn’t seem to be going away. If anything, it had gotten a little brighter.

My next thought was that I’d better check my heart. We have a bad history of heart disease in my family. My father had dropped dead of a sudden heart attack at the age of 52. My uncle, his brother, had also died of heart disease in his mid-60s, and my brother needed bypass surgery in his mid-50s, which saved his life in the nick of time. I had recently had some problems of my own, but they were fairly minor. A few months earlier I had been diagnosed with mild Atrial Fibrillation, but I was asymptomatic and was on medication that seemed to be working fine.

I was pretty familiar with the standard symptoms of a heart attack and I ran through them quickly in my mind. My heart seemed to be beating normally. It wasn’t racing or missing beats. I had no pains in my chest or either arm. I wasn’t lightheaded or dizzy. I wasn’t sweaty and my breathing was fine. Even though I still had some mild nausea, it certainly didn’t seem like I was in the throes of a heart attack. No, I was pretty sure that my heart was okay.

What about a stroke? Although I didn’t know as much about it as I did with heart attack symptoms, I did know a few things because a serious stroke had marked the beginning of the end of my mother’s young life. So, I did a quick check.

I got up and moved around a little. I stood on one leg and then the other. My balance was fine. I checked for numbness and had none anywhere. I moved my facial muscles all around, making different expressions, and everything was normal. So were both arms and legs, hands, and feet. I checked my ability to think. I knew the day, month, and year. I counted to twenty forwards, then backward. Then I cataloged every solar deal I was working on and knew the details of each one down to the penny. My mind was sharp.

Next, I checked my ability to talk. I quietly spoke some random words out loud and then recited the first half of the Gettysburg Address. No problem. No slurred speech or anything like that. I finally ruled out a stroke. All in all, everything seemed okay. If it wasn’t for that damned light…

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All of the major religions in the world are based on the idea that there is a higher power, and that we are each born with the ability to somehow connect with it. Their teachings are designed to inspire us and instruct our efforts, and they all rely on storytelling to help illustrate their deeper meanings.

Among the many stories I’ve encountered, there have been two that have remained especially meaningful to me over the years.

The first one is a lovely tale of simplicity and it begins when a bright and intelligent disciple of Buddha asked if his younger brother could join the order.

The order trained monks in various studies and practices so they might eventually attain the state of Enlightenment, a refined consciousness that transcends ordinary understanding. Buddha happily agreed to accept the young student.

But, as the younger brother began his studies, although he was kind and gentle and diligently performed his basic chores, he turned out to be rather dull-witted. He kept trying to apply himself, but he could understand nothing of the teachings. And after a while, he asked to go home so that he wouldn’t waste the Buddha’s time or let down his brother.

“There’s no need for you to give up,” said the Buddha. “You should not abandon your search for liberation just because you are confused about the teachings. Forget about the philosophies that you’ve been given. I will give you a mantra instead, and just practice repeating that.”

A mantra is phrase that is used to bring the mind into a state of concentration and ultimately gain enlightenment through mediation. Buddha gave the young monk a simple, one-sentence mantra and sent him away affectionately.

But soon the monk came back, this time he even more humiliated. “My beloved Buddha, I can’t remember the mantra you gave me and so I can no longer practice.”

The Buddha kindly repeated it for him. But twice more he came back, having forgotten it each time. So, the Buddha gave him a simplified form. “It’s just two syllables,” he told him with a smile. “See if you can remember that.”

But he couldn’t, Even the two simple syllables were too hard for him to retain. Alone in his hut, he broke down and wept. His brother heard about it and furious that his own reputation was being sullied, he came and demanded that the young monk depart immediately and go home.

So, the boy left. He had failed in everything else he had tried in his life, but this was much worse. Now, he had been instructed by the Buddha himself and he still failed. Feeling dejected, he sadly made his way along the path.

But as he neared a grove of trees, the Buddha suddenly emerged. When the boy explained what had happened, the Buddha smiled, took his hand and walked him to a temple where two old monks were sweeping the floor.

The Buddha said to them, “This young monk will live here with you from now on. Continue your sweeping, and in rhythm with your brooms moving back and forth, say the two-syllable mantra that I will give you.”

He gave them a two-syllable mantra and said, “Say it happily and with joy. And don’t stop until I come back.” He turned to the boy and said, “Now, just sit and listen.”

The young monk sat down and began listening to the swishing of the brooms as the old monks repeated the mantra over and over again. This went on for several weeks. When the Buddha finally returned, he was delighted to find that the young monk had attained the state of Complete Enlightenment. And so had the two old monks as well.

I always find the message of this story comforting as well as inspiring. Regardless of your limitations, the path to higher consciousness is always available, so don’t give up. Just keep going and some unexpected help may come your way.

The second story is on a slightly different track and originated about a thousand years before the fist. As it begins, a travelling master teacher had arrived in a village and was talking to a small group. They were sitting on a hill overlooking a nearby river.

As he spoke, the Master explained that human beings are able to attain a state of evolved awareness that is deeply connected the Higher Power. He went on to describe the truth, consciousness and bliss that fills this exalted state of being. It was soon obvious that he was speaking from the wisdom of his own direct experience and everyone in the group became enraptured by his talk.

“But there is something that can stand in your way,” He cautioned them. “It is your mind’s attachment to illusion. But the illusion isn’t about the people, places and things in your life. No. The illusion is that they’re going to last. It’s the illusion that the temporary is permanent. And this is a very powerful illusion that can distract you from your pathway home.”

“Master, I have a question,” one young man said. “Is this illusion really all that strong?”

“I’ll be happy to explain it to you,” the Master replied. “But my throat is getting very dry and the explanation may take some time. Please go to the river and fetch me a gourd filled with water, so I can have a drink before I go on.”

“Certainly!” the young man said, and left immediately.

He went to the river, selected a large gourd, cleared the seeds out, crouched down and began to fill it with water.

“Excuse me,” he heard a woman’s voice say. He looked at the ground next to him and saw the two most beautiful feet he had ever seen. Then he looked up to see the most beautiful face he had ever seen. It was a young woman, about his age. She was lovely, but obviously in distress.

“I need some help,” she said, urgently. “I hope you can help me.”

“I will if I can,” he responded. “What the matter?”
“My father and I come from a village across the river. We rowed our boat over and bought some grain. But when we got back to the boat, he suddenly didn’t feel well. Now he seems too sick to row. I would try, but the current looks pretty strong and I’m not sure I can do it. Can row us across? Once we get to our village, I’ll find someone who can bring you back.”

He glanced at the river, and confident he could do it, said, “Sure. I can help you.”

“Oh, thank you!” she gratefully responded. “But please, we have hurry. He’s really not well.”

They went to the boat and got in. The woman’s father was lying across the back bench. The young man rowed across, and by the time they got to the other side, the father felt much better and insisted that the young man join the family for dinner.

Then, as they say, one thing led to another.

The father was quite prosperous, with a fine home, and insisted that the young man spend the night. The young man and the young woman were irresistibly attracted to each other, and in the morning, he found that he couldn’t bear to leave her. He decided to stay for a few days, which turned into a few weeks, and then into a few months.

The happy couple fell deeply in love and were married in a large, joyous celebration. The young man joined his father-in-law in business and soon built a nice home near the river.

Within a few years, he had become a well-respected member of the community. And within a few more years, his wife gave birth to two children. With his wonderful family, the young man, who was now several years older, had never been happier in his life.

Then one day without warning, as he was working in his business in the village, a terrible storm came up. He immediately rushed home to be with his wife and children.

The storm quickly worsened to nearly a monsoon. There was a small mountain near their home and a giant mudslide came down and blocked the road out. They were stuck. As the danger built, his only option was to take his wife and children to the river and try to cross it in their small boat.

They started off. But halfway across, the boat was overturned by the rough current and to his horror, one of his children was washed away. He bravely took hold of his wife and remaining child and tried to swim across. But a few minutes later, another big wave hit and washed the second child out of their arms.

His wife was so overcome that she could barely hang on to him. He held her tight and continued swimming. But as he came closer to the shore, an enormous wave struck them and washed her out of his arms and swept her downstream.

Overcome with shock and grief, somehow his survival instinct stayed strong. With every ounce of his remaining strength, he was able to finally make it to the other side. He crawled out of the river and collapsed onto the shore.

After a little while, the storm subsided and there was relative calm. He looked back over the river and he could still see their family home on the other side. As he lovingly gazed at the symbol of their happy life, suddenly a huge mudslide came down the mountain, destroyed the home and dragged it into the river. There was nothing left.

Completely overcome, he turned onto his stomach, buried is face in the sand and began to sob uncontrollably from the depths of his soul.

“What happened to you son?” he unexpectedly heard someone ask.

He looked up and saw a man whose face seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“You never came back,” the stranger said.

“What?” he responded, confused.

“You never came back with my water. Don’t you remember? You asked me to explain the lure of illusion and I said my throat was getting dry and I asked you to go to the river and get me some water to drink?”

The words stirred a vague memory deep in his mind, but it was out of reach and he was still completely disoriented.

“I don’t want to be pushy, but I’m really very thirsty,” the stranger said. “That was almost ten minutes ago.”

Suddenly, in an instantaneous flash of insight, the reality of who he was and where he was came rushing back into the young man’s mind. But it was so hard to believe that all these experiences that he’d had over all these years; they were all just some kind of mental illusion? And it had all happened in less than ten minutes? He was absolutely thoughtless and speechless.

“You see?” the great soul asked, looking at him kindly. “It doesn’t really matter whether the events were real or imaginary. Ten years or ten minutes, either way, you experienced the truth that nothing here lasts.”

The young man was still completely silent, overcome with a thousand emotions and realizations.

“If I had only explained this to you, it would have just been just a bunch of words, with nothing behind them,” the Master said. “But now, after your trip to the river, they mean something to you, because real or not, you actually lived through them. Now they’re part of your experience and you know the meaning behind the words. And your knowledge will inspire you to find your way back to your real home.”

It’s quite a transformative story, and the idea of impermanence always had a deep effect on me in my younger years. Now I’ve seen that all you really have to do is live long enough and sooner or later, you’ll get the point that nothing here lasts.

Luckily, impermanence has a powerfully positive side to it as well. It helps us value the present, enjoy the life we have, and it brings a deeper sense of gratitude into our hearts. These are terrific gifts, and they’re just for starters.

So, with these two stories, I find it empowering to understand that the temporary is surrounded by the illusion of permanence, and that illusion can be overcome, leading to a more fulfilling life, no matter what happens.

And personally, it’s comforting to hear that the path to higher ground is so simple that even if you’re as thick as a brick, with the attention span of a common housefly, the door to the heart will always be open to you, if you simply choose to enter.

And of course, as shown in both stories, it always helps to have a great teacher, which is true in every endeavor in life. But especially in this one.

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

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There are human drives that we all have in common, but on a deep level, the most basic one is that we each want to be happy. And for most of us, the biggest obstacle we face is our own mind. For me, the reason I wanted to learn how to expand my inner awareness in the first place was because I believed it would improve my life and make me into a more fulfilled person.

As I began my growth process, one of the first things I realized was that my mind was a real double-edged sword. In one minute, it would make me my own best friend. Then it would stop on a dime and turn me into my own worst enemy. After observing this for quite a while, it made sense to me to get a better understanding of how my mind worked.

So, I started by taking a look at my basic education and I quickly realized that we were never really taught how to think. Although our happiness, as well as our destiny, is a direct result of the clarity of our thought process, our educational system puts no premium on it at all, and just lets our mental chips fall where they may.

Like millions of other kids, I had a standard American education, spending about 14,000 hours sitting in a classroom. And in all that time, I can’t recall ever learning one single thing about the basic dynamics of thinking.

Of course, I had tons of classes in math, English, French, science and social studies, among many others. And I’m sure that 90% of what I learned, I would never use or even remember. But there was nothing at all about how to think. Not even one minute of it.

It feels like the Paul Simon song that starts, “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.” But not only is it a wonder I can think at all, I wonder if what I’m actually doing with my mind really is thinking at all. Probably not. As William James, the father of American Psychology said, “A great many people think they are thinking, when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

Anyway, at one point, still pretty early in my growth, I got lucky and came across a simple approach to the way the mind thinks that was life-altering for me. It was very basic, but it laid down an accurate roadmap that really helped illuminate my mental territory and smoothed-out my proposed journey to the higher ground.

After all these years, I find it to be more valuable than ever. and I think if you take it in and give it a chance, you may get a lot out of it as well.

There are two parts to it. The first one is about the knowledge and belief. And the second presents the mind’s four categories of our ability to know.

So, the first part says that it’s critical to understand the difference between what we actually know and what we only believe. They are both very important, but very different.

Knowledge is something you absolutely know to be true and it exists as a truth for you regardless of any discussion, beliefs, explanations or interpretations of it.

As an example, let’s say that right now you are either famished with hunger, dying of thirst, so tired that you can hardly stay awake, or you really have to use the bathroom and it’s getting to be close to an emergency.

We’ve all been there to one degree or another. And we know that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks or says about it. They can try to explain the experience away for some reason, or tell us we shouldn’t be having it, but it’s an absolute truth for us. There are many other examples of this, but the point is that when you know something for sure, you really do know it.

Believing is a completely different story. Beliefs are critical to our lives and we can hold them for many different reasons…practical, psychological, societal, religious and personal, to name just a few. They can be very strong and clear, and you can have total faith in them and believe in them with all your heart.

But the difference between knowing and believing is that we don’t really know for sure that our beliefs are actually true. We can’t. They’re just not in the realm of our knowledge. And because we don’t know them for sure, for many different reasons, they can be wrong in some way. And we don’t find out that our belief was flawed or wrong until we finally realize it.

Here is a very, mundane example. When I was a kid, we were taught that the planet Saturn had three rings. You could clearly see telescopic pictures of the three rings and the fact was written in stone. Over the years, through our ability to magnify our telescopic vision, it was seen that there really are between seven and nine rings there. Then in 1980, Voyager I flew within 40,000 miles of the rings and sent back pictures invalidating all old beliefs and rendering them obsolete. We now know that in reality, there are thousands of intricate rings around Saturn. So, a solid belief system that had existed for over three hundred years was proven wrong by basic advances in modern instrumentation.

Now, that’s just one simple, rather unimportant example of this significant aspect about beliefs: because we don’t really know them, they can be deceiving or just plain wrong. And blurring the line between knowledge and belief can lead to major suffering. After all, countless wars have been fought and millions have died due to people’s staunch allegiance to conflicting belief systems, many of which were flawed to begin with.

So, understanding the difference between knowledge and belief is the first part of this approach to clarifying our thinking. The second part is a little more detailed. It’s about something called the Four Quadrants of Knowledge, which involves both our knowledge and our skillsets. Don’t worry, it’s much simpler than it sounds. But there’s still a lot to it.

Quadrant One is “What we know that we know.” We all have a ton of these. Besides knowing how I feel in the present time, I also have a bunch of things that I know I know how to do. Like I know that I know how to drive my car. And I know that I know how to get to my local supermarket. So, when the time comes for me to do that, I don’t have to give it much thought. I know that I know. Again, we all have thousands of these.

Quadrant Two is “What we know that we don’t know.” This means exactly what it says – we know that we don’t know. Here’s an absurd little example that clearly makes the point.

I happen to have a friend who is a heart surgeon. We’re old buddies and we’ll do anything for each other. But if he called me and said that a sudden scheduling issue had just come up and he had a routine bypass that had to be done, but now he’s tied up for the day, and would I mind popping over to the hospital and do the bypass for him? Of course, I’d have to say no because I don’t know the first thing about doing heart surgery. And I clearly know that I don’t know.

Again, we all have thousands of things that we know we don’t know.

So that’s the first two quadrants and they’re very straight forward because they refer to what we know. The next two quadrants carry some mystery to them because they’re about what we don’t know.

Quadrant Three is “What we don’t know that we do know.” In this case, we actually do know something, but we’re out of touch with it for some reason. A lot of the times, we’ve just forgotten it. The condition resolves itself successfully when we recover our knowledge and happily recognize that we already knew it.

Here’s another very mundane example. Let’s say that you have a sweater, that you really like. One day, you put it in the bottom drawer of a dresser you rarely use. Soon, you forgot where you put it, and now you can’t find it. At first, you’re annoyed, but over time, maybe even a few years, you forget about it completely. Soon you don’t even remember that you ever had the sweater at all. Then one day, totally by chance, you open the bottom drawer and there it is. Now that you’ve regained the knowledge that you lost, you can start wearing the sweater again and you’re glad to have it back.

You can take this phenomenon one step deeper and look at taking things for granted, especially important things. This happens a lot because one of the survival-based tendencies of our mind is to focus on fear, threat, and potential danger, but not pay too much attention to things when they’re good.

Take, for example, the simple act of breathing, which we take completely for granted. We each breathe about 22,000 times a day, so there’s no scarcity to it. And a breath doesn’t cost us anything and we don’t have to do a thing to get it, so there’s no effort involved. So, we barely pay any attention to it.

But we can’t function without our breath at all, and we all know that. If we don’t breathe for just 300 seconds, we’re dead. So, even though we do know how precious it is, we’re out of touch with our knowledge because we’re taking our breath for granted.

There are many things in our lives that fit this particular mold – our health, the health and well-being of our loved ones, the safety of our home, and on and on. We’re out of touch with them because we take them for granted. And we do that until something seems to really threaten them, which automatically brings gratitude back into our hearts. The situation is resolved because we recognize what we forgot.

Now we come to the last quadrant, Quadrant Four – “What we don’t know that we don’t know.” This is a very tricky category because we are dealing with the complete unknown. We just don’t know what we don’t know. And the truth is, we haven’t even got a clue.

It’s beyond our imagination as well because we have no foundation on which to imagine it. What we don’t know that we don’t know seems like a big category. But how big is it? The answer is we don’t know. Because we know absolutely nothing about the unknown. And we never will, until we do know, at which point it will no longer be in the unknown.

For a simple example, the other day I tried to read a short article on nuclear physics, which is a field I know nothing about. Almost all of it was about things I didn’t know. But I didn’t know that I didn’t know them because before I started reading the article, I had never even heard of them before.

And there’s one other huge part to this quadrant. It’s all the things we think are right, but are actually wrong for one reason or another. We think we’re right, but we’re actually wrong and we don’t know it. And we don’t know that we don’t know.

Like the rest of the quadrant, it remains in the unknown until we find it out, and of course, it can be the cause of an enormous number of problems. As humorist Will Rogers once said, “It isn’t what we know that gives us trouble. It’s what we know that ain’t so.”

I’m sure there are millions upon millions of all these kinds of things. And the resolution to them all involves learning something new.

So that’s the end of this short information I found about some basic components of thought. First, understand the difference between what you know and what you only believe. And second, be clear that there are four categories of knowing - things that you know you know, things that you know you don’t know, things that you don’t know that you do know, and things that you don’t know that you don’t know.

From the standpoint of the achievement of human potential, I find this whole thing fascinating, especially the part about knowing and believing and its relationship to what we don’t know that we don’t know.

The wisdom of the ages, along with countless saints and sages say that we humans have been born with a potential destiny that is far greater than we can imagine. I’ve read or heard countless descriptions about what it’s like to be fully connected to higher consciousness, and have a direct, living experience of God, heaven, the indwelling God presence, or whatever you want to call it. And living life with a heart filled with gratitude, inspiration, and compassion, and on and on.

Now, over the years I’ve had a tremendously wonderful experience learning about all this kind of stuff. But to put it in perspective, it like we’re talking about quantum mechanics, advanced calculus and rocket science. And I’m only about halfway through memorizing my multiplication tables. And because I don’t know what I don’t know, I’m lucky if that analogy is anywhere near being right. For all I know, I haven’t even been born yet.

I’m sure this holds true for many of us and who knows? Maybe some day we will know. And when it comes to fulfilling our remarkable human destiny, we’ll grow from not knowing what we don’t know to knowing what we do know. Maybe it comes down to having the humility to open up to new information that is beyond our current knowledge. Maybe then we’ll see the thousand rings instead of just believing in the three. And our knowledge will be based on our direct experience.

Revering personal experience is certainly nothing new. Over five hundred years ago, Leonardo da Vinci, who is still considered to be one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, once signed his name - Leonardo da Vinci, Disciple of Experience.

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

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Parables and allegories can be extremely effective teaching tools and have been around since people first started telling each other stories. In my years of research on personal growth, I’ve come across a countless number of these tales that seem so simple, yet carry profound insights that can last an entire lifetime.

Here’s an obscure one that you’ve probably never heard before. I came upon it many years ago and I’m still learning a lot from it.

It takes place in a fictional, mythical setting. There is a river with a fairly swift current. On one side, there is a Highland with hills and mountains, and on the other side there is a Lowland that is totally flat for many miles. There are fairly large settlements of people living on each side of the river.

The residents of the Highland are happy. There is plenty of food and water and creative systems of cooperation have evolved in every area of life. They are extremely intelligent people, practicing what they call “interdependent co-arising,” where everyone recognizes the value of everyone else and they all rise together. They are peaceful and prosperous, with art and music playing a central role in the culture. Generally, it’s a great place to live.

Unfortunately, the Lowland is the exact opposite. Although there is plenty of food and water there as well, the place is a dog-eat-dog world with every man for himself. Living life in a sophisticated jungle, the people compete with each other over all things, great and small. They routinely distort facts for personal gain, conning each other with dangerous half-truths. Fear and paranoia pervade, no one can be trusted, and serious physical fighting breaks out regularly. It’s simply a constantly ugly existence.

From the vantage point of the Highland, the people can observe the sorry state of affairs in the Lowland. But the Highland can’t be seen at all from the Lowland. It’s simply outside of the range of their perception. So, the people of the Lowland have no idea that the Highland even exists.

Highland residents nurture the most nobble human characteristics, including, of course, compassion. The state of life in the Lowland is a tragedy to them and they’ve come to believe there may be something harmful in the atmosphere there that makes the people behave the way they do.

They decide to invite the lowlanders to move up into the Highland and one of Highlanders, known as the High Citizen, comes up with a plan. Not only is he bright and kind, but he is also quite a strong swimmer.

Knowing that the current of the river is swift, he will take two strong metal stakes and securely fasten a long, thick rope between them. He will plant one stake in a firm place near the Highland side of the river, and will then swim across the river to the Lowland side and plant the other stake there.

Then he will tell the lowlanders about all the wonders of the Highland, and invite them to come live there, explaining that they will all be welcomed with opened arms. He will instruct them on how to hold onto the rope to safely cross the river.

The High Citizen carefully constructs his tool and on one clear, sunny day, he puts the plan in motion. He secures the first stake firmly in the ground, then begins to swim across the river, carefully unwinding the rope as he goes.

As he is getting closer to the shore of the Lowland, a few people have gathered to watch him. Apparently, someone had seen him swimming and thought he was a big fish. Some wild rumors started to spread, and when the High Citizen emerged from the river, about fifty people had gathered to watch him.

He took the second metal stake and hammered it deeply into the ground. He pulled on the rope several times to make sure it was secure, then he turned and faced the small group.

He starts to tell them about the wonderful world on the other side of the river. He tells them how bountiful and peaceful it is, that there is plenty of room for them all and everyone is welcomed. Then he explains that all they have to do is grab onto the rope and make their way across the river.

But this is the Lowland, where paranoia is king, and the confused and frightened people misunderstand everything he says. Within moments, a hundred more have gathered, forming a small, angry mob. The more the High Citizen addresses them, the more hostile the people become, believing he is a villain who has come to steal their money and trick them into drowning themselves.

Some soldiers have gathered and watch the scene from afar. One soldier remembers an old prediction that a demon would come out of the river, conquer the land and enslave the people. Convinced that this is that horrible demon, the soldier draws his longbow and shoots an arrow into the High Citizen’s chest, who falls down next to the stake in the ground. As some angry lowlanders encircle him, with his last breath, he says to them, “Take hold of the rope and cross the river.” Then he dies.

The soldiers then throw his body into the river and stand guard until it floats out of sight. Then they dispersed the crowd.

That’s the end of the first part of the allegory. As a prelude to the second part, consider the famous quote from Harvard philosophy professor George Santayana who said, “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened, as told by people who weren’t there.”

You can probably guess what unfolds in the second part of the story. After several years, all the people who had actually witnessed the events by the river all died. And the Legend of the High Citizen began to grow. But remember, there’s no truth in the Lowland, so the tale was all based on rumors, exaggerations and outright lies.

Religious-style groups sprang up. Now this was still the land of cheat and deceit, so the different sects battled each other over followers and resources, often leading to serious violence and bloodshed.

But through it all, the mythical story kept expanding. At first, the story was that the High Citizen was an extraordinary warrior who had come to save the people but had been killed by villains. Then it evolved into the idea that he was a saint or even a divine creature, like some kind of an angel. Finally, he came to be seen as the incarnation of God himself. According to the story, strange lights had been seen in the sky and angels sang from the heavens when he emerged from the river.

At one point, a fourteen-foot-tall stone statue of him was erected on the spot where he died. Pilgrims would come to kiss the feet of the statue and pay homage to the incarnation. Since no living person had ever seen the High Citizen when he was alive, the statue had no resemblance to him whatsoever. But of course, that didn’t matter. And the religious battles raged on.

Amazingly, the stake that he had buried in the ground, attached to the rope that led into the river, still remained solidly in its place. And because they had built the statue on the very ground where he had died, the rope and the statue were side by side.

People still had a distorted version of what the High Citizen had said about the Highland and the rope, but the idea that there was such a place, and that you could actually get there, was always dismissed as just an allegory.

The stake and the rope were just ennobling symbols of a better existence. And the truth is, nobody had ever seen any signs of life on the land across the river, and beside it would be sheer lunacy to try to cross it, as the current was just too strong.

Still, every once in a while, some Lowlander would take the words of the High Citizen literally and enter the river, holding onto the rope. As bystanders watched, the brave soul would eventually disappear from view, never to be seen again. The Lowlanders would assume that the maniac had been washed away by the current and had been drowned.

But that was just the view from the Lowland. On the shore of the Highland, whenever a Lowlander would emerge from the river, they would be joyfully met by a welcome party, that would happily escort them to their new home, which had been carefully prepared for their arrival.

And that’s the allegory of the rope and the statue.

So, to me this is quite a powerful story. Externally, its meaning is fairly obvious. Throughout history, time again great beings have arisen, pointing humanity in the direction of higher ground. But unfortunately, their messages have been largely misunderstood.

After they were gone, different factions formed with differing beliefs about what had happened. The factions often fight and kill each other over their interpretations of the message, which invariably emphasized peace and kindness amongst people.

Unfortunately, this kind of ironic tragedy isn’t limited to just one specific time, place, culture or religion. On the contrary, it’s been going on in every region of the world since civilization began. And it’s still going strong.

Personally, I like to take the allegory one step further and also consider it from the vantage point of inner growth. What can this story tell me about what is happening within my own consciousness at this moment in my life?

From that view, the Lowlands with the statue would represent that certain region of my ordinary mind where all the anger, guilt, fear, paranoia and all their destructive henchmen invade my thoughts and feelings.

The Highland would be my heart or my Essential Self, which is the home of all the higher human characteristics. We all know them well – kindness, compassion, inspiration, integrity and the thousands of other better angels of our nature.

And the rope would represent the stable, but narrow pathway that exists between the two. Some cultures consider it to be the size of a rope. Others say it’s as narrow as a razor’s edge. And some even say it’s as subtle as the coming and going of the breath.

It doesn’t really matter. To me, the point is to make the journey from description to reality. It’s like if you’re dehydrated and you really need water, you don’t care about the decorations on the bottle, the flowery descriptions of the source of the water, or the scientific breakdown of the molecules. You just need to actually drink the water and get your thirst quenched.

For me, with the allegory of the rope and the statue, the question is, what am I doing with my time? Am I languishing in the Lowland? Am I holding onto the rope, making my way across the turbulent river? Or am I comfortably living in my beautiful home in the Highland, and loving every minute of it?

Now, the wisdom of the ages would tell us that the answer comes down to the power of choice. They say we can actually choose our destiny, which is a pretty liberating concept. If I really do have a choice, I’ll take the happy-at-home option any time. Of course, that’s just me…

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

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I suffered a major stroke on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend in 2011. What I thought was going to be the happy first day of summer turned out to be an unexpected, full-blown trip to death’s door. And I walked away from it by the skin of my teeth.

I had been taken to our local suburban hospital, but they quickly determined that my condition was dire, so they rushed me to the Thomas Jefferson Hospital of Neuroscience in center city, Philadelphia. I fell into a semi-coma for about thirty-six hours and when I finally regained consciousness, although I felt fine, I was told that I had suffered from a major stroke.

An enormous blood clot had formed and had travelled throughout my circulatory system. If it had landed in the wrong place, it could have killed me within seconds, or maimed me seriously for the rest of my life. But to everyone’s amazement and relief, the clot came to rest in a benign area of my lower right cerebellum and caused me no significant harm.

They needed to thin my blood, so I was kept in intensive care for ten days. During that time, every doctor and nurse that saw me told me how fortunate I had been. According to them, my chances had been less than one in a thousand.

I had become quite friendly with the head nurse of ICU and at the end of my stay, she came to check me out and wish me well. “I’m glad I got to meet you,” she said. “You seem like a nice enough person, and don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.”

She went on to tell me how incredibly fortunate I had been and that the hospital had no way of knowing why these kinds of outcomes take place. So, they have what they call their “Hand of God” file and that’s where my case history was being placed. It’s called “Hand of God” because that’s the only explanation they have for what saved me.

Then, with a most earnest look on her face, she said, “You’ve been here for ten days, but I’ve been here for over twelve years now, and I’ve seen every possible situation that you can imagine. And trust me, you are more fortunate than you’ll ever know.

“You’ll never really be able to understand the miracle that has happened to you,” she continued, “But if you wake up every morning for the rest of your life and the first thing you do, before you even go to the bathroom, is get down on your knees and thank God for the gift you were given, you’d be understating it.

“The truth is,” she concluded. “You will never be able to have the level of gratitude that would be appropriate for the miracle that happened to you here. You will never be grateful enough for it.”

“Well, at least I can try,” I thought.

I went back home to my normal life and as you can imagine, the whole experience left me with a lot to think about. Of course, having survived such a close brush with death put a major emphasis on the fact that your life is temporary and can be taken at any time, which certainly helps you set your priorities straight. But there was another part to it that affected me on a much deeper and subtler level. The fact that a miracle had happened and that I was kind of taking it for granted didn’t sit well with me. Although I understood intellectually how amazing the outcome had been, I wasn’t fully connected to it. I guess it was because of the way I had experienced it. Basically, I had slept through the whole thing.

All that I had experienced was that I had been feeling pretty sick, they took me to the hospital, I fell asleep and then I woke up feeling fine. Except for the hospital part, I’d had that kind of thing happen to me dozens of times in my life.

My wife had a much deeper connection to the miraculous recovery than I did because she had consciously lived through it. While I drifting between life and death for 36 hours, she was involved with the doctors every step of the way. When it started, they told her there was nothing to do but wait, watch and pray, and that she should prepare for the worst as there was a real chance that I wasn’t going to make it. Then, a day and a half later, they told her that the clot had landed in the best place possible and that I was going to be fine. I think she was in the hospital chapel when she heard the news, so she had a real experience of the grace involved.

Critically for me, when I came out of it, I felt absolutely fine and had no idea that anything had happened at all. If they had told me that I was fine and they were sending me home, I wouldn’t have thought a thing about it. But during the ten days they kept me in intensive care, every doctor and nurse treated at me like I was a walking miracle and they all told me how lucky I was and how grateful I should be.

Here’s a small example of what it was like for me. They really wanted me to eat a lot, so, for my first dinner, I ordered a huge meal with one of my favorite desserts - cherry pie with vanilla ice cream on top. One of the brain surgeons was in the room while I was eating and when I opened the lid of the dessert plate, I saw that they had given me chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla.

“Oh,” I said, slightly disappointed.

“What’s the matter?” the doctor asked.

“Oh nothing,” I replied. “I had ordered vanilla ice cream for my cherry pie but they gave me chocolate. It’s no big deal.”

“Do you know where you are?” the doctor asked. I looked at him quizzically. “You’re at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of Neuroscience, and ninety per cent of the people that come in here with the magnitude of the stroke that hit you get either wheeled out of here or carried out in a box. But it looks like you’re walking away free and clear. So, if I were you, I wouldn’t be thinking about chocolate or vanilla anymore.” It was all very much like that.

Once I got home and started living my normal life again, I couldn’t help feeling a little strange. The nurse’s parting words to me kept ringing in my ears and I knew they were true – I would never be able to feel enough gratitude for what I had been given.

But I couldn’t just leave it at that. I had an intuitive sense that there was something important for me to learn here, that there was something valuable waiting for me to discover. So, without knowing where it was going, I opened myself up to exploring the idea.

What followed took many years of research and inner evolution, and it’s still going on to this day. I’m actually writing a book about it that will be called “The Friend at the End,” but here is a very brief overview of some of the key points.

It all started with exploring the idea of gratitude itself, and it soon became apparent that you can’t have gratitude without appreciation. If you don’t know the value of something, how can you be grateful for it?

For example, let’s say you’re out for a walk and you find a funny looking little coin in the dirt. You take it home and put it your coin jar. A few years later, things get tough financially for you and you finally take your coin jar to the bank to get some cash. Things are pretty tight. You dump your coins into the coin counter and it rejects that one funny little coin that you completely forgot you had. Rather than throwing it out, you casually show it to the banker.

The next thing you know, you find out that the coin is a rare treasure, worth over a million dollars. Suddenly you are overwhelmingly grateful that you ever found that coin. It has completely changed your life. But the truth is, you had it for years and you almost just threw it out. But once you understood its value, your whole life changed. Simply put, your gratitude for it came from your appreciation of its value.

I started to see that gratitude and appreciation can run in a cycle. The more appreciation you have, the more gratitude you have. And the more gratitude you have, the more appreciation you have. It builds on itself, going on and on. And fortunately, there’s no end to it.

And importantly, this great cycle keeps bringing you more and more happiness. Like everything else in our consciousness, it grows stronger with use and eventually becomes second nature. You find yourself spending a lot less time wanting the things you don’t have and much more time appreciating what you do have. And this brings about some very powerful changes in your overall being.

Then things went a little deeper for me. Not really being connected to the miracle that happened for me with the stroke led me to realize that I wasn’t really connected to the miracle that was happening to me of being alive.

Now being alive is so commonplace, why would you call it a miracle? The answer is rather simple. It’s a miracle because it defies all scientific and logical explanation. Nobody knows how or why it works. And even though breathing is the very basis of our life and we can’t do a single thing without it, no one can purchase, own or obtain one single breath in any way.

If you look at that fact deeply enough, you can easily come to the conclusion that life is a gift. You don’t have to do a thing to get it and it stays with you no matter what you say, think or do.

So, if it is a gift, then what is my role in the process? Well obviously, I’m not the giver. Although I’ve heard and read a lot of different ideas about a giver, the only thing I really know for sure about it is that I’m not it. I don’t have the power to bestow the gift of life upon one single cell amoeba. And neither does anyone else, no matter how rich or powerful they may be.

So, if I’m not the giver, the only thing left for me to be is the receiver. And this is where I saw something profound. I realized I could become a better receiver of the gift, and I knew on many levels that doing this would radically change my life. And it did.

From what I’ve learned, I don’t want to be in the same situation with the miracle of life that I was with the miracle of the stroke. I don’t want to be asleep to it, I want to be awake to it. I don’t want to be unconscious of what a wonderful gift I’m being given. Quite the contrary, I want to be conscious of it. And I want to be appreciative of it and grateful for it while it’s actually happening. Not after the fact.

That seems like the real trick. We all appreciate the good things in life when we look back on them, but what about when they’re actually happening, in the present, where the power of life is? I can tell you from decades of research, every esoteric tradition in human history points you in this direction, saying that the key to real happiness and freedom is hidden there.

On one level, getting to it is kind of a tall order. When the ICU nurse told me that I could never be grateful enough for what had happened to me, I instinctively thought, “Well, at least I can try.”

And maybe I’ll never get to the point of being a truly conscious and grateful receiver of the miracle of life, but well, at least I can try. And I’m more than willing to die trying. Actually, that might be a really good way to go.

So that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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I was raised in a very religious home and Bible stories were a significant part of my training. I came down the Jewish side of the Judeo-Christian pipeline, so the Old Testament was our go-to book. But with a Philosophy of Religion course I took in college, I also got fairly familiar with the New Testament as well.

Either way, most Bible stories felt like ancient history to me, with little relevance to my personal life. What did I care about who smote who, or who went to battle against the Hittites, why and over which piece of land?

Anyway, during college, I began to learn about the idea of inner evolution. It grew on me and after graduation, I spent some time in India, studying mediation and higher consciousness.

During one lecture, I got exposed to an interesting idea about Bible stories. Instead of looking at them as just historical events, it suggested reading them as if they were telling you something about the present make-up of your own consciousness. Try understanding them as a form of internal roadmap and see where the path leads.

It was quite a revelation to me and as I started playing around with the idea, it put a completely different spin on the old, familiar stories.

For instance, take the birth of Jesus in a manger. No one knows the exact details, whether it was a barn, a stable, or a cave, but it’s accepted that he was born among a bunch of animals.

From this new, inner perspective, you could say the Christ Child represents the Divine Presence that is at the very center of every human being. It’s within each one of us and exists in an ever-pure state. But even so, it is always surrounded by our animal instincts.

Now, whether or not we’re familiar with the Divine Presence within, I’m sure most of us are well aware of the vast variety of animal instincts that are in that inner barnyard of ours. Although a lot of them are positive in nature, many others are rooted in the law of the jungle, which is the dog-eat-dog code of survival. Its basic element is fear and things can easily get out of hand. Afterall, this is where violence and warfare come from.

The Bible story infers that Jesus was surrounded by many different kinds of animals, but it only mentions two specifically – an ox and an ass. Personally, I find the image of an ox and an ass next to the Divine Presence to be pretty telling, in a slightly comical way. Because God knows, there’s a part of my mentality that’s as stubborn as an ox and dumb as an ass. But that’s just me.

So that’s the birth story of Jesus in the context of inner awareness. Another Bible story that works in this context is David and Goliath.

Most of us know the details. Two armies, the Israelites and the Philistines were in separate camps on opposite sides of a battle filed. According to the Bible the Israelites and their leader, King Saul, are the good guys and the Philistines are the evil opponents.

The Philistines have a mighty warrior named Goliath, who was gigantic for his time. Scholars think he was about six feet nine inches tall, which made him like an evil super demon because the average man of the time was only about five six.

For forty days, Goliath had been challenging Saul to send out one soldier to fight him, in a one-on-one battle. Whichever soldier wins the fight, that army wins the war, subjugating the entire nation on the other side.

Of course, everyone is completely intimidated by Goliath and no one will fight him. The Israelites are stalemated in a no-win situation, and every day, his hostile challenges grow more and more filled with ridicule and scorn.

Then one day, David, a young shepherd, arrives on the scene with some food for his brothers, who are soldiers in Saul’s army. Although David’s age is not clearly known, he was definitely under 20 and may even have been as young as 15.

When David learns about the situation with Goliath, he goes to Saul and volunteers to fight him. Saul tries to talk him out of it, but David explains that he is an expert marksman with his shepherd’s tool, the sling. Now this wasn’t a little slingshot. On the contrary, it was a deadly weapon. A stone would be whirled around in the sling, building a huge amount of centrifugal force. Then it would be hurled at the target. Scholars say the impact of the stone would be nearly equal that of a bullet from a small pistol.

David says that with his sling, he has killed several wolves, a few lions and even a bear to protect his sheep. He also feels that he is called to the task to face Goliath and he will be protected by Divine Grace.

Saul finally agrees and outfits David in his armor and gives him his sword. But after a short time, David returns it all to Saul, saying it was too bulky for him. He goes to a stream and selects five smooth stones and puts them in his sack.

As he does every day, Goliath walks out onto the battle field, wearing his full-combat armor and starts taunting Saul with hostile ridicule about how cowardly the Israelites are.

A few moments later, David walks out onto the field, nearly naked, dressed in only his shepherd’s cloak and his sandals.

When Goliath sees him approaching, he starts to roar with laughter at the sight of this ridiculous boy. “What am I, a dog, that you send out a shepherd to fight me with sticks,” he shouts.

Finally, as David confronts the giant face to face and shows no fear, Goliath becomes overcome with anger at the boy’s impudent lack of respect. “I’m going to cut you up into small pieces and feed your flesh to the birds in the air and the beasts in the field,” he says.

David just stares into his eyes to paraphrase it, calmly replies, “You are going to die today.” He puts one of the stones into his sling and says, “I’m going to cut your head off with your own sword and everyone will know the glory of God.”

Then David whirls the sling around a few times and with a mighty force, hurls the stone straight into the center of Goliath’s forehead, right between the eyes. The giant falls to the ground and doesn’t move. David approaches the body, draws Goliath’s sword out of its sheath and cuts his head off. Then he stands up and faces the Philistine army, holding the severed head in his outstretched arm. The Philistines flee in panic and in grand Old Testament style, the power of good has won the day.

So, the basic inner idea of the story is that we all have David and Goliath propensities within our consciousness, and they’re both pretty easy to identify.

Goliath is the mindset of brute force, arrogance, intimidation and fear. It’s always ready to fight and it always thinks it’s right. It can take many different forms - from outright, raging anger all the way down to unending, self-defeating inner criticism. But it’s always based on some form of self-doubt.

Speaking of self-doubt, our David mentality has none of it. With its highly attuned sense of intuition, it is aligned with its conscience, and has a clear understanding of right and wrong. And although it has the appropriate amounts of caution and concern, it’s not bonded to all the different fear-based mindsets.

Knowing its own capabilities, when it comes to facing its responsibilities, it follows the dictates of the old Proverb which says, “Pray as if everything depends upon God. Work as if everything depends upon you.

In the story, when the experienced shepherd, armed with his sling, faced the intimidating giant spewing out hate and fear. He knew what he had to do. He stared it down. And then he took it down.

One last biblical story to consider in the inner context is that of Daniel and the lion’s den. There is a lot of speculation about whether not Daniel actually existed, but in the well-known story, he was a righteous man in both word and deed, but he had mighty enemies in the court of the king, who tricked the king into sentencing Daniel to death.

In those days, for executions, they had a cave in which they kept some captured lions. For a full day before an execution, they would not feed the lions to make sure they were hungry. Then they would throw the condemned prisoner into the cave of and roll a huge stone in front of the entrance, blocking any escape. The hungry lions would then rip the prisoner apart and eat him.

It always amazes me how kind and compassionate human beings can be, but on the other hand they can act in depraved ways that defy comprehension. Afterall, this horribly cruel idea of feeding people to hungry lions didn’t just fall from the sky. It was thought of and implemented by some very disturbed human minds.

Anyway, one night, they threw Daniel into the den full of hungry lions and sealed the exit. They came to the cave the next morning, expecting to see the remains of Danie’s devoured body. When they rolled the stone away, to their astonishment, they found Daniel still alive and standing among the lions, which were surrounding him like tamed house cats.

According to one rabbinical version of the story, when Daniel entered the lion’s den, the lions reacted like they were his pets and he was their long-lost master. During the night, he petted them and they licked him continuously as they all fell asleep and woke up together.

In the consciousness class, this was presented as a tremendously important example of what can happen in our awareness. The higher side of our nature becomes so evolved that our wilder parts become tamed. Fear and agitation become replaced by harmony and cooperation. Inner turmoil ends and peace prevails.

So, in a way, if you link these three Bible stories together, an interesting message emerges about our own inner evolution.

As shown in the Nativity story, when we’re born, the Divine Presence, which is the higher side of our being, is surrounded by the animalistic tendencies of our nature. Stubbornness and ignorance are just two out of hundreds of examples.

At some point in our evolution, as exemplified in David and Goliath, the higher side of ourselves subdues the false invincibility of the giant ego.

And finally, as with Daniel, when the higher consciousness within has evolved into its position of true power, all the inner forces that could do us serious harm have been tamed.

The idea kind of reminds me of a quote from Abraham Lincoln. “People tell me that I must defeat my enemies,” he said. “If I have turned and enemy into a friend, have I not defeated him?”

Lots of things to think about here, as we come to the end of this particular episode. So as always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened. And let’s get together in the next one.

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Episode 16 - The Form of the Formless

I entered college in the fall of 1967 as a pre-law student at American University in Washington DC. Then, as a junior in its School of Government and Public Administration, I was admitted to an honors program that placed me in the office of a US Congressman on Capitol Hill, where I served as a full-time intern three days each week. It was a great opportunity to get an up-close and personal view of what has come to be known as “the sausage factory.”

But the 4-month experience didn’t further my proposed career path. Quite the contrary. Once the glitz of being on the Hill wore off, the whole thing was pretty disappointing. The halls of congress just seemed like a giant breeding ground for the burgeoning egos of ambitions politicians, who seemed ready, willing and able to do anything and everything they could, just to get ahead.

So, I changed my major to Literature. It seemed that the written word was a much more effective vehicle for exploring and influencing the human mind which, I had come believe, was the root of all our personal as well as societal problems.

But you have to take all this within the context of its times. The sixties had just turned into the seventies, the personal growth movement was in its early stages, and I had gotten a good whiff of it, along with whatever else was blowing in the wind.

Before I knew it, my little spark of interest in the higher understandings of human consciousness exploded into a wildfire and I started studying everything I could get my hands on. As soon as I looked into Eastern Philosophy, I quickly came upon the idea of inner enlightenment.

Now, as odd as it may sound, the concept was completely new to me. The idea was that you could actually have a direct experience of God, infinite consciousness, the Indwelling Divine Presence, or whatever else you might want to call it. And this higher awareness would elevate your being and transform your entire life.

All of the prior religious ideas I had been exposed to seemed more related to externals, with the main focus being on getting to Heaven and avoiding Hell. It seemed like if you followed a bunch of rules, the Big Guy’s Chief of Security would let you into the front gate at the end. But you hadn’t changed. You were still the same you. You had just run the gauntlet successfully and were about to reap some great rewards.

But this new idea about elevating your consciousness was a complete revelation to me. You didn’t have to die to get to heaven. That’s actually what your life was for. And a whole new world was waiting if you just opened up to it. I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised. The Beatles, Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues had all been singing about it for a few years.

Anyway, this enlightenment thing really had me going. And at one point, a hippie, this total freak, avant-garde musician who lived across the street, gave me a small book about Buddha. With a quirky and bemused expression on his face that made him look like a cross between John Lennon and Arlo Guthrie, he also gave me some sage advice. “Hey man, if you’re into enlightenment, you gotta check out Buddha,” he said emphatically. “He’s the enlightenment guy!”

That’s about as deep as things went in those days, at least in my world. I tried to give the book a read, but it was way over my head. To me, it could have been written in Greek. So, I put it aside.

But I never get rid of books that have anything to do with personal growth and I revisit them from time to time. So, I kept the book and opened it every now and then. But it would be another twenty-five years filled with life lessons before the stuff started making any sense to me.

The book describes several short meetings between Buddha and different seekers. It’s broken down into brief chapters and the first one is about enlightenment. Although the passages are brief, they’re power packed. And even though I’m still in the early stage of beginning to grasp their meaning, I find that just hearing about the enlightened state does me a lot of good. If you give them a chance, maybe something positive can happen for you as well.

As an aside, I’m by no means a Buddhist. But then, neither was Buddha. Same thing with Jesus. Jesus wasn’t a Christian. Krishna wasn’t a Hindu and Mohammed wasn’t Muslim. All of that came later. These were the masters and the people who came after them, the ones who shaped the religions, were all followers or disciples. And as every authority on the master-disciple relationship will tell you, there is a vast difference between a true master and a disciple.

So here is a quick overview of the discussion between Buddha and some seekers of enlightenment. For what it may be worth, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a few personal comments here and there.

In case you’re not aware of it, Buddha was a traveling teacher who lived in India over 2,500 years ago. In this meeting, he was seated under a tree near a river, with a small group of about 10 people.

By most accounts, Buddha was quite an impressive figure to meet in person. He had a powerful presence of peace and wisdom about him, but it was also mixed with a noticeably cheerful joy, like he was tapped into the actual source of happiness. Or something like that.

“Are you an angel?” one seeker asked him.

“No, I’m not an angel,” Buddha replied.

“A spirit, then?”

“No, indeed,” said Buddha.

“Are you a god?” the seeker wondered.

“No, I’m not a god,” Buddha answered.

“What are you then?”

“I am awake,” Buddha said simply.

Someone in the group then asked Buddha how he became enlightened.

“I know what should be known,” he answered. “What should be cultivated, I have nurtured. What should be abandoned I have let go. In this way, O my friend, I am awake.”

Now, this idea of being awake has always been a bit of an enigma for me. Aren’t I awake? I mean I’m not in my bed sleeping and having a dream. I’m up and about, living my normal waking life, involved with its endless processions of this and that. What does he mean, he’s awake? What’s the big deal?

In this regard, Buddha told them that there is an enlightened state of being, an elevated level of consciousness and next to it, our ordinary life, which is filled with its never-ending stream of thoughts, is but a passing dream. And this enlightened state is beyond the ordinary mind’s ability to comprehend. You can’t get there by thoughts, concepts and ideas. It’s beyond all that.

Someone then asked him, “You talk about reaching the unreachable and attaining the unattainable. Is that so? And if it’s beyond thinking, can it still be done?”

“Yes, it is exactly so,” Buddha replied. “And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? One factor is the disappearance of the self-conscious person into pure presence. Another is the knowing of the essence of all things. And another is the luminous knowledge that knows without a knower. But basically, it is the simple awakening to reality.

“None of these understandings can be grasped by ordinary thought because they’re not objects or subjects. They can’t be imagined or touched or approached in any way by any ordinary mode of consciousness. Therefore, they are beyond thinking.”

He was then asked about the nature of the enlightened state.

“Just as space reaches everywhere, without discrimination, just so, the essential nature of mind is present in all,” he replied. “The mighty ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt. Similarly, the true way has but one savor, the savor of freedom.”

Someone asked about how to approach this higher state of awareness.

“Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. Delight in existence,” he responded. “For those who are ready, the door to the deathless state is open. You that have ears, give up the conditions that bind you and enter in. But you must do the work yourself, for buddhas only teach the way.”

“Is an ordinary person capable of enlightenment?” someone asked.

“What I call a self is essentially not a self in the way that an ordinary person thinks of it. But neither do I think of anyone as an ordinary person,” he answered. “But I declare that the overcoming of clinging to the impurities of the world is possible for a person who knows and sees. But not for a person who does not know or see.”

“In the person who knows and sees, the dustless and stainless Eye of Truth arises. Seeing the truth, he sees things as they are. Seeing the truth, the eye is born, knowledge is born, wisdom is born, science is born, and light is born.

“Like entrusting yourself to a brave man when greatly afraid, by entrusting yourself to the awakening mind, you will be swiftly liberated, even if you have made appalling errors.”

I have to admit that I’ve always loved this particular part. When it comes to making appalling errors, I’m a pretty heavy hitter. And one of the hardest parts about making a big mistake is that you don’t know you’re making it when actually you’re making it. You don’t find that out until later, sometimes much later and sometimes too late.

But even so, according to the Enlightenment Guy, by entrusting yourself to the awakening mind, “you will be swiftly liberated, even if you have made appalling errors.” And in my understanding, that means you don’t have to be fully awake to be able to trust it. You can trust it even if you’re just awakening. That’s a real ray of hope for the seemingly hopeless.

Then Buddha went on to urge them to seek freedom because the thirst for inner freedom will open the way to the enlightened mind.

“If you really want freedom, happiness will arise,” he explained. “From happiness will arise tranquility. And when you are tranquil, you will know bliss. Because you are blissful, your mind will concentrate easily. Being concentrated, you will see things as they really are. In so seeing you will become aware that life is a miracle. And being so aware, you will lose all your attachments. As you cease your grasping, you will be freed.

“There is freedom from desire and sorrow at the end of the way,” he continued. “The awakened one is free from all fetters and goes beyond life and death. Like a swan that rises from the lake, with his thoughts at peace, he moves onward, never looking back.

“The one who understands the unreality of all things, and has laid up no store – that one’s track is unseen, as of birds in the air. Wanting nothing, storing nothing, like a bird in flight, he takes an invisible course, returning to the form of the formless.”

Then he went on to speak a little about the goal of the path, which is to enter a state known as “nirvana,” which is an intriguing term which literally means “blown out.” The idea is that we have these raging fires within - anger, greed, lust for power, envy, pride, self-centered ego and all the other inner blow torches that can turn life into a living hell.

But nirvana refers to the inner state where all these fires are blown out. And once we’re in that blown-out state, we naturally flow into the higher levels of enlightened happiness. And in that regard, here is the way Buddha ended his teaching for the day.

“By watching keenly and working hard, the wise one may build himself an island which no flood can sweep away. The thoughtless man does not care, but the attentive man looks on wakefulness as his greatest treasure.

“Awaken and rejoice in watchfulness. Understand the wisdom of the enlightened. Meditate, and in your wisdom realize nirvana, the highest happiness.

“The nature of the absolute is total enlightenment,” he concluded. “It is beyond name and form, and beyond the world and all its living beings. Ignorance creates an illusion of birth and death but when ignorance is dispelled, the supreme and shining absolute is there. Then suffering is changed into insight and death is transmuted into nirvana.”

Well, as I said earlier, there’s quite a lot to digest here.

Personally, even though I’ve been exploring the growth of human awareness and enjoying mediation for over fifty years, I still feel like I’m just starting to scratch the surface. But even if I’m as far away from it as a shadow is from the sun, just hearing about enlightenment from people who seem to know what they’re talking about, expands my horizons and makes me feel inspired. And supposedly, in the inner world, what you feel is what you get.

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

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We’re all familiar with the term “transformation,” which is defined as the process of changing completely. It’s a simple word, but in reality, it’s a rather astounding phenomenon.

Here are two quick examples of transformation that illustrate this remarkable process. One is from the world of nature and the other is from the world of fiction.

In nature, the astounding metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly is one of its true miracles. It’s hard to believe that this beautiful creature that flies through the air on gossamer wings actually begins its life as a bland little worm with tiny legs, crawling around, eating bitter leaves. This is its life for about two weeks. Then something incredible happens.

It instinctively ceases all its activities, stops eating, and finds a suitable place to hang upside down. Within 18 hours, it weaves a strong protective coating, in which it lies dormant for another two weeks of complete isolation. Finally, after a process of creative magic that defies comparison, what was once a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon as a glorious butterfly. It has grown wings to fly, and an amazingly long tongue so it can extract nectar from the deep recesses of fragrant flowers.

With this radical change in form, it starts living a completely different life. It doesn’t crawl anymore, now it flies. It doesn’t eat bitter leaves anymore, now it drinks nectar all day long. And it’s become one of the most beloved creatures on earth. As a caterpillar, if it crawled onto a human being, the person would be repulsed by it. Now if it lands on someone, the lucky person will feel somehow blessed and will remember the magic of the moment for the rest of its life.

But there’s also another intriguing factor to consider as well. While it was still in the egg, small discs were forming that it would later use to complete its transformation, which means that even as a caterpillar, it always had the tools that it needed to become a butterfly. It was just a matter of time and instinct before they were used. Although the butterfly transformation is only one of eight complete metamorphosis changes in nature, it is certainly the most striking.

As far as the fictional example 0f transformation is concerned, it comes from a scene I wrote in in the early 90s for a Twilight Zone-type project called, “The Unexpected Stallion.” It takes place in the afterlife and the main character, who is simply called “The Observer,” is being given a tour of the realm by someone called “The Guide.” They are both invisible to others as they watch various events unfold.

They come upon a poor beggar, an old man in rags with a shaggy white beard, standing on the side of a dirt trail in the desert. On his shoulder is perched a large, grayish-red lizard, its long claws buried deeply into the beggar’s shoulder with a constant stream of blood trickling down from them. The old man is hunched over from the weight of the heavy lizard, which is constantly talking into his ear.

Suddenly, a knight in shining armor appears, riding upon a mighty steed and trots over to the beggar.

“Why do you have a lizard on your shoulder, old man?” he inquired.

“Why he’s my good friend and my most trusty advisor,” the beggar replied.

“Watch out for this knight,” the lizard whispered into the beggar’s ear. “He’s dangerous and he’s come to rob you.”

“How long has this friend of yours been advising you?” the knight asked.

“I don’t remember ever being without him,” the beggar replied.

“And this trusty advisor of yours has brought you to this?” the knight questioned. “You’ve been carrying it around and listening to it for all this time and this is what you’ve come to? You look pretty miserable to me, old man. Did you ever think that maybe this creature isn’t really your friend?”

“Watch it!” the lizard hissed to the beggar. “He’s only here to hurt you. Don’t listen to him. He’s a liar and a thief.”

“He’s all that I have,” the beggar replied. “I really can’t imagine life without him.”

“Well, maybe you should give it a try,” the knight responded. “Why don’t you let me kill it. At least you’ll be free of it. You won’t have to carry it around anymore and you can stop bleeding. That can’t be good for you. Get rid of it. Your life can’t be any worse than it is now.”

“Now listen to me, be careful,” the lizard cautioned. “He really can kill me. He has the power. But trust me, you don’t want that. I know things haven’t been all that great for us, but I’ve been with you through thick and thin, and if he kills me, you’ll be all alone. Imagine that! All alone with no one to talk to. We’ve had some hard times, but you know I’m a good friend. And besides, I always tell you the truth.”

“That thing has never spoken a word of truth in its life and trust me, he is no friend of yours,” the knight responded. “Do you really want to go on living like this until you die? Just say the word and I’ll kill it for you.”

“Maybe you’re right,” the beggar said, feeling a little confused. “But I don’t want to be the one to tell you to kill it. I still feel too close to it and I don’t want to cause its death. If you really think it’s best for me, why don’t you just go ahead and do it on your own.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” replied the knight. “The only way that I can have the power that I need is for you to tell me to do it. It has to be an act of your will, not mine.”

The lizard dug its claws deeper into the beggar’s shoulder and began pleading for its life. The putrid smell of its hot breath became sickening to the beggar, who finally looked up, into the knight’s eyes. They were steady and strong, but there was also a kindness in them, along with a certain hint of promise. With a sudden flash of intuition, the beggar finally knew what he had to do.

“Go ahead and kill it!” he said.

Without hesitation, the knight immediately drew his long sword.

“No!” the lizard screamed. But with one mighty stroke, the knight cut the lizard’s head off and the creature fell over dead, bleeding in the dust. Then, as though they were somehow connected, the beggar fell over as well, lying in the path next to it. The knight just sat on his steed and stared at them both.

As the Guide and the Observer looked on, suddenly, the body of the lizard and the body of the beggar both began to twitch and shake. In another few moments, the lizard transformed into a mighty white stallion with a saddle and bridle, and the beggar transformed into a strong, young knight in shining armor. He mounted the stallion and the horse and rider quickly became as one. He joined the first knight. They looked at each other for quick moment in comradery, then galloped away, over the distant horizon.

“Surprised?” the Guide asked the Observer. “Don’t be. It happens all the time.”

So, a bland caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly and a sharp-clawed lizard turns into a strapping white stallion. As I writer, I see powerful symbolism here, which to me, brings up an intriguing question – Is there such a thing as human transformation? Can we radically transform ourselves into a greater being than we currently are?

Well, according to authorities from ancient wisdom to modern neuroscience, we can, and we’re closer to this great change than we know. Mainly, it has to do with our relationship with our ordinary mind.

Let’s take a quick look at our situation. In our first few months of life, before our ordinary mind is formed, we live in a truly elevated state. Take any three-month-old baby in the world. If it’s not under any physical duress, not hungry, tired or uncomfortable, it lives in a natural state of magical bliss. Everything amazes it, often bringing it joy. Indeed, it’s estimated that the average infant laughs over three hundred times every day.

Then, at some point, things begin to change. Our ordinary mind begins to take form, gathering all of its opinions, it’s likes and dislikes, its happy and sad memories and the millions of other neurological imprints that it will carry with us for the rest of our lives. Then, before you know it, it’s actually running the show and our overall happiness becomes, to put it bluntly, a real crap shoot. And as we age, the situation often gets worse and worse.

But what if we can change things around? What if we can take the ordinary mind out of our driver’s seat and put our greater awareness behind the wheel? Maybe we can transform into a larger being that is filled with the joy, wonder and innocence of a happy child, yet still retains the wisdom, competency and discrimination of a mature adult.

Perhaps, like the butterfly, we already have the makings of this greater being within us and if we follow our higher instincts, we can begin to transform. Then at some point, instead of living our life crawling through dirt and tasting bitterness all day, we can soar freely through the air, drinking the sweetest nectars of creation.

Or if we’re like the beggar and our ordinary mind is the lizard, we can use our will to transform the situation and turn this vile creature who is draining the life out of us, into our trusty companion, a mighty stallion, that we can ride as a champion, tall in the saddle, with the reins finally in our own hands.

The funny thing is, we all have dreams of this greater life, this higher destiny. It’s because the seeds of it are already within us, but we all have it. It’s part of our deeper nature.

Sometimes, as a little joke, I like to imagine a caterpillar patient going to a caterpillar psychiatrist because it keeps having these crazy dreams that it can fly. And for some reason, it suddenly wants to drink the sweet nectar of fragrant flowers. But there’s no way it that it can do that. It’s impossible. But this strange thirst just won’t let up and it can’t imagine where it’s coming from.

“What’s it all mean, Doc?” it wonders. But the doc doesn’t answer, because the same thing is happening to it as well.

Well, as a writer, I like the idea of having that little ending serve if as the end of this episode. So, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened. And let’s get together in the next one.

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Over the years, I’ve done research on a countless number of creative projects. And whether they’ve panned out or not, I still get to keep what I learned, which is quite a bonus. Actually, I guess that’s the way life is for us. No matter how things turn out, you still get to keep what you learn, if you value it enough.

As an example, in the early 80s. I was working on developing a potential film project about the lost continent of Atlantis. There seemed to be a fascinating connection between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of Egypt, so I got involved in exploring some of the mystical understandings of ancient Egypt. These understandings were truly ancient, predating the pyramids by thousands of years and I found them to be quite powerful.

I think you’ll find two of them to be pretty intriguing. The first one is short and simple, and the second is a little more complex. But to me, they’re both still packing quite a punch.

The short one is simply this - after you die, you are going to be met by a guide who will take you to a river. And this guide will ask you just two questions. The first one is – What did you learn in this life? And the second is – How much did you help others?

Depending on your answers, you will either be taken across the river and be finished with the process of incarnating into earth life. Or, you will be sent back to incarnate again and give the whole thing another try. Supposedly, you may have to go around a few million times before you finally get it right. And that’s all there is to it.

As I mentioned, it’s pretty short and simple and the basic idea is that we came into life for two things. We came here to learn and we came here to help. Again, this is a very ancient concept, but who knows? Maybe it’s an oldie but goodie.

The second understanding is about something they called the Seven Manifestations of Intelligence on the Earth Plane, but don’t be put off by the big title. It’s actually fairly simple. It’s a little cumbersome in the beginning but it suddenly gets deep and I have gotten a lot out of it over the years.

So, using the metaphor of a stairway, it describes the seven different forms of intelligence that exist on earth. And it claims we that each make the journey up the stairway until we get to the top.

Each step includes the step before it, but then adds a new element. Because it begins with matter taking form, it doesn’t include air or water which are essentially formless.

The first step on the stairway is the Mineral Kingdom, where atoms and molecules take shape in physical form. There are about 4,000 different kinds of mineral compounds, like dirt, rocks and crystals, and while they may have an endless variety of forms and shapes, they all have one thing in common – they are not alive. They have organized structure, but they are inanimate objects. They have shape, but not life.

The next step is the Plant Kingdom, where the element of life is added to structure, and the process began about 1.5 billion years ago. Currently, there are more than 250,000 different kinds of plants ranging from simple, microscopic ferns to gigantic thousand-year-old trees that are over 52,000 feet tall. Yet in their vast diversity, these quarter million plant forms have one thing in common - they’re all alive.

In that, they are truly amazing. Most grow towards the light and use photosynthesis to transform light energy into chemical compounds. They reproduce. They give off flowers and fruit, helping to sustain the creatures of the earth.

But while all this is amazingly true, they are missing one key element, the element of choice. No matter how wonderful and advanced a plant is, it can’t decide to get up and move to a different location. It can grow, but it can’t choose where to grow.

Which brings us to the next step, the Animal Kingdom. And here is where the critical aspects of choice and will are introduced.

While even the most complex plant can’t make choices, the simplest animal, the Trichoplax, does it all the time. With only 50,000 cells, even if it’s just instinctually reacting to stimuli, it’s still constantly exerting the most primitive elements of choice and will.

Of course, from that most basic creature, animal intelligence evolved dramatically. The first animals with backbones appeared in the sea about 530 million years ago, and they came onto land about 30 million years later. Then about 63 million years ago, the first primates appeared.

While the complex, higher forms of animal life are extremely intelligent, with an enormous array of impulses and feelings, they can also go so far. They do not have the ability to think rational thought. This truly remarkable level of intelligence began in Step Four, with the emergence of the human being.

Now the difference between human intelligence and the rest of the Animal Kingdom could easily fill an encyclopedia. But the evolution of language and writing really kicked things into high gear. This astounding nuance of our intelligence allowed us to evolve as a species, rather than just a bunch of individual creatures. Not only could we share and improve our knowledge base, we could also pass it along to subsequent generations, generating constant improvement. This incredible feat is unique to human beings.

To see the difference, think about a colony of apes that was living during the dark ages. If you compare them, there would be hardly any differences between those creatures and the way they lived and the apes of today.

Now compare the human beings of the dark ages with those of today. While their bodies might be basically the same, that’s about it. Everything else is light years apart. And this enormous difference is due to language and writing, which gave us the power to transcend time and place and transmit information across generations. And that’s just one element of rational thought.

So, the emergence of rational thought in the human being is Step Four on the stairway. The next three steps all involve different levels of human intelligence.

The ancients called the fifth step the level of Genius. It goes beyond the linear form of rational thought. The linear form simply means that using logic, we reason in a line, A+ B=C. There are many people who are exceptionally brilliant at linear thought and as a species, it has been the basis of our evolution over all these years.

But the genus level is different. In the genius level we have access to our intuition, which is defined in the dictionary as “The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.”

The implications of this are vast. Geniuses are somehow able to perform on a higher level and when watched from the outside, their expertise almost seems effortless. They are in a certain flow. They’re in the zone.

Of course, this manifests in many different forms. There are geniuses in art and music. There are geniuses in business. There are sports geniuses. A basketball genius senses that a teammate is going to cut to the basket before it even occurs to the teammate, throwing the pass almost in advance of the move.

But the genius level isn’t only reserved for those who seek to do good. Unfortunately, it cuts both ways. There are evil geniuses as well and they have an uncanny instinct for creating terrible trouble. Indeed, all the major tyrants throughout history, who have created so much misery, were all geniuses in their own way. But their genius was in bringing out the worst elements of the human animal. And sadly, the beat goes on.

So, steps four and five, rational thought and genius intuition can be used for good of for bad. Step Six marks the next major turning point.

They called it the level of the Prophet and although it sounds like a rather lofty title, it simply refers to a human being that chooses to use its intelligence to serve only the highest good. Regardless of whether it’s with logic or intuition, it only serves the light. And this creates an enormously elevating evolution both in terms of the being’s feelings and as well as actions.

According to the teachings, there is a lofty area of human intelligence where our most noble characteristics reside. This is where we feel peacefully at home and it can be likened to a fertile field filled with an enormous variety of dormant, living seeds. just waiting for the water of our attention to bring them to life. And this is what one on the Sixth level chooses to do.

So, at this point, you may be asking yourself – Okay, that’s six levels - mineral, plant, animal, human, genius and prophet. You said there were seven. What’s the last one?

The answer is that the ancient Egyptians called this final step the level of the God Man. For some reason they had very little to say about it other than it referred to “a master soul, one who manifests God completely and perfectly, supremely conscious with no part unconscious.” And that was about it.

I guess when you look back on history, there have probably been a bunch of these masters who still have an individual identity, but have surrendered it to the Divine to such a degree that they have become a pure vessel for the Indwelling God Presence within them. But it’s probably one of those things where it takes one to know one, which certainly rules me out as an authority.

So, that sums up the seven steps of the manifestation of intelligence on the Earth plane according to the Gnostics that allegedly left Atlantis and founded Egypt. But there is one last enticing, yet challenging aspect to it. They claim we are each travelling up this stairway and as we learn how to refine our choices, we will ultimately get to the top of it.

For me, it’s all too vast to comprehend. I feel like I’m standing before an immense ocean with my trusty thimble in hand, ready to take it all in.

But on a less daunting level, because they say that choice is the key to the whole thing, maybe my best move is just to keep looking at the choices I’m making on a day-to-day basis and see if I can find some room for improvement in there. Anyway, it doesn’t sound too hard and it certainly can’t hurt.

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

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Compassion is one of our most admirable traits. And when it’s combined with the enlightened use of power, the results can be truly inspiring. The following story about Abraham Lincoln is a classic example. Told by his personal stenographer, who witnessed it first-hand, it presents an uplifting portrait of the noble heart and keen mind of the great leader.

As an aside, Lincoln was not a good-looking man. He was widely lampooned as the “ape from Illinois,” and Nathaniel Hawthorne once called him the homeliest man he ever saw. Bear this in mind when you get to the end of the story, as it will put a cherry on the top of this deeply moving tale.

So, according to the stenographer, in the summer of 1864, here’s what happened -

As we approached the office of the Secretary of War, the President pointed to a woman sitting in the waiting room and whispered, “Find out who that woman is and what is the object of her visit.” Then he passed into Stanton’s private office.

I saw a tall, gaunt woman in a plain, calico dress, whose eyes almost frightened me, the anxiety and despair in them were so great. I heard her whisper to a passing orderly, “I must see Mr. Stanton at once.”

“You will have to wait your turn, my good woman,” he coldly responded.

I beckoned her aside and said cautiously, “Perhaps Madame, if you tell me your business, I can obtain an interview more rapidly.” With a grateful look she stammered, “My son is to - to be shot today by sentence of the court-martial.”

I requested details. “My boy risked his life in every engagement of the Vermont Regiment for two long years. He is all that is left to me. Speak to Mr. Stanton for me. Hurry! Executions nearly all take place in the forenoon. Hurry!”

“I will speak to one who may aid you,” I said, but didn’t mention the President’s name, though I knew she would have a much better chance with him than with the iron-faced, glass-eyed man who sat with him discussing the destinies of the Republic.

I stepped up to Madison, Stanton’s office assistant and said, “Rap on the door of the Secretary’s office.”

With extreme hesitancy, he did and I could see him shiver in his boots as Stanton’s sharp voice shouted, “Damn you, come in.” At this moment the Vermont woman flew through the passageway and entered the dread sanctum of Edwin Stanton. Standing before him she said, “As you love God, give me the life of my son!”

“How dare you interrupt me, Madame!”

“How dare I interrupt! How dare I interrupt! My boy fought through the battles of the Peninsula, at Antietam, at Fredericksburg, at Gettysburg. He was wounded twice, enlisted again and now has been sentenced as a bounty jumper.”

“Ah, Private Charles Allen Putnam of the seventh Vermont,” responded the Secretary in frigid tones. “Madame, I’m sorry for you but I do my duty. Don’t distress me by an appeal that is useless.”

Here, the impressive, but kindly tones of the Chief Magistrate of the nation intruded upon the conversation. “Don’t be in such a hurry, Stanton. Listen to any woman pleading for her son’s life. You say your son, Mrs. Putnam, fought for his country for nearly 3 years? ‘Tis strange he is a deserter now.”

“Not a deserter. He is simply a boy made foolish by a woman.” As she said these words, she turned to see the kindly eyes and Western face of the President and gave a sigh of hope, knowing she was addressing the supreme head of the nation.

“God has sent you here Mr. Lincoln, to hear my prayer!” She broke forth. “I am a widow up in Vermont. I have given seven sons to death for their country. Will you take the eighth, the youngest one from me?”

“Seven sons?” The voice of Lincoln had grown as sad as that of the woman addressing him. “Seven sons? Stanton, you hear that? Seven sons!”

“Yes. All volunteered from our farm in Vermont. And this one, all that is left to me, he came home on furlough two months ago, and there saw the woman who has brought him to this. He returned to Washington and six days ago, he was arrested as a deserter. It was only to get a kiss or two from the fool girl and go back and fight again. Please listen to me Mr. President. Seven sons dead and this one to be shot because he wanted to kiss the girl he loves.

“Stanton, you must listen to this patriotic lady who was given up more than either your or I for this country,” muttered Lincoln, his voice husky and his sad eyes filled with tears.

But Stanton wasn’t listening. As the woman was speaking, after one quick glance at Lincoln’s sympathetic face, the Secretary of War had written a few lines hurriedly. Then he stepped to the door and handed an envelope to Madison saying, “Immediate! Tell the orderly to hurry!” Having done this, he now turned back to the President.

“Listen to this lady, Stanton,” remarked Mr. Lincoln, “and see if there isn’t virtue in her appeal for some revision, some commutation of her son’s sentence.”

“Mr. President, I have sworn to myself, for the salvation of the American army, that no convicted deserter shall have pardon or commutation of sentence. It is vital that we stop bounty jumping in the present status of the recruitment.”

Overcome with despair, the woman moaned, “Mercy Mr. Stanton!” Then she turned to Lincoln and said, “Mr. President. as you love your own offspring, listen to me. You have a kinder heart!’

“Recite your case to Mr. Stanton. I do not wish to interfere, if possible,” he replied sadly. “Tell me what he says.”

With these words, fortunately, he stepped out of the office into the passageway where I had been standing. “I believe her honest Vermont face. Women like her do not lie,” he sighed. “But it’s awful hard bucking up against Stanton.”

Emboldened by this, I whispered “Mr. President. if you have any intention of pardoning that man, you have no time to lose.”

“What you mean?” asked Lincoln.

“I mean, that if you do not act immediately, the sentence will be carried out before executive clemency can reach the condemned. An orderly just galloped away from this building toward Fort de Russy, the execution site. He carried with him the few lines Mr. Stanton wrote while the woman was appealing to you.”

“Well, I’m damned,” said the President, growing taller and his eyes commencing to beam with an expression that everyone knew meant business.

In a few long strides the President stepped into the telegraphic office of the War Department and said to the head clerk, “Call up Fort de Russey at once.”

“I can’t, Sir. The wire is in current use, Mr. President, on very important orders to the Sixth Corps,” he replied.

“Hold the dispatch!”

“Mr. President. It has Mr. Stanton’s personal orders that it be put through immediately.”

“Stop the dispatch! I direct it!”

It was done instantly.

“Now!” the president commanded. “Telegraph the Provost Marshal in charge of Pvt. Charles Putnam of the seventh Vermont, sentenced to execution today. Inform him, under the direct, personal command of the President of the United States, to disregard all other orders and bring the prisoner to the War Department immediately. Inform him that this dispatch is given to you directly, by Abraham Lincoln in person, and get his acknowledgment by telegraph of the receipt of this order. I will wait here until I receive your statement that the answer is received.”

Five minutes later, the wire came acknowledging the order and stating that the prisoner would be brought to the War Department forthwith. We returned to Stanton’s private office, where we found the hopelessly despairing woman pleading with the inflexible, draconian Secretary of War.

“You have concluded of course, Stanton to at least postpone the execution of this man until you can make further investigations?” Lincoln observed, judiciously.

“On the contrary, Mr. President,” replied Stanton. “In order to avoid discussion of this matter, you having promised me yourself, in such cases to withhold the pardoning power and leave it entirely in my hands, I have already taken such steps that discussion is ...

“Discussion is never useless as long as a man is alive,” Lincoln interrupted sharply,

“You intend to pardon my son, Mr. President!” screamed the woman.

“If what you have said to me is substantially true, I do, Madame.”

“God forever bless you!” she exclaimed.

“Now, my good woman,” he said calmly, “I will listen to the details of your story.”

Half sobbing, yet with a glimmer of hope in her eyes, she said her sons, inspired by her own words and notwithstanding that their father was dead, had one by one gone to the front and lost their lives. Charlie, the last one alive, the son of her old age, after reenlisting, gave his entire bounty to her, for her support in case he didn’t return from battle, He had spent his furlough with her in the old farm in Stowe Vermont.

“Such a happy month. But Mr. President, there he met a girl that he took to powerfully, and she, this fool girl who has brought him death, loved him like an idiot. He returned and fought at the battle of Fort Stevens. They say you were there, Mr. President. You saw my son fight. You saw the 6th Corp drive the rebels out of Maryland and run them back into Virginia and save this capital.

“My boy was wounded in the battle,” she continued, her tearful eyes filling with more hope. “Have my boy brought here and I will show you the unhealed wound upon his arm. The records will prove that he risked his life for the union not a week ago.

“Then that fool country girl came trolloping down to Washington and beguiled him. Charlie couldn’t get leave to come to see her. So, fool that he was and cajoled by her pleadings, he left the fort to have a day of bliss with her and he was soon captured by the Secret Service without a pass. I was telegraphed and came and found him sentenced to death. Yesterday, I saw him and he gave me his word of honor that he had not intended to desert. He was about to return to the fort on the very day he was seized.

“My son has never lied to me in his life, Mr. Stanton. He is no bounty jumper. If so, I would say execute him. Though I bore him, he is not my son. But he is, and has been true to his country. And he’s the only one left to me.”

Stanton just stared at her blankly, knowing he had already sealed the boy’s fate.

Suddenly I heard the clack of a military escort in the hall. A moment later Madison entered with a curious grin on his face and declared, “The Provost Marshal from Fort de Russey - with a prisoner!”

“What? Impossible!” exclaimed Stanton, springing up astounded.

Covered with dust from the ride, a cavalry captain entered. Saluting the shocked secretary, he reported, “I have the president’s direct personal order to present to him in your office, the prisoner condemned to execution today, private Charles Allen Putnam of the seventh Vermont.” With this, four troopers brought in the manacled prisoner, a young Vermont giant, with a haggard face, fair-haired and gray eyed, like his mother. In a daze, he looked around the office.

“Mother!” the boy gasped.

“My son!” the woman screamed and took him in her arms.

Then she tore the blue sleeve from his arm to show the awful wound inflicted by a Confederate bullet.

“See, Mr. Stanton, “this is proof that he risked his life for his country. I have a certificate from all his officers stating that he did his duty gallantly. And I have the affidavit of the girl that he told her he must leave her to return to command. He has been returned to my arms. You cannot take him from me to murder him!”

Stanton stared at her dumbstruck. Through all this, the President had been hastily writing. In another moment, he stood up and handed her a slip of paper. “The free pardon of your son,” he said, simply.

Stanton turned to the captain. “You received my clear command earlier today?” he asked sharply.

“Yes Sir, I did,” he replied. “But it was superseded by the direct order of the President of the United States, making it the highest military priority. It stayed the execution and ordered the prisoner to be brought here.”

“Stanton, that’s where I had a little joke on you,” chuckled the President. “You’re not up to the modern telegraph, Mr. Secretary. Electricity beats horse flesh!”

Mr. Lincoln then turned to the Private and said, “Young man, your sentence to death by court martial acts as a discharge from the army of the United States. My pardon has made it an honorable discharge. Go home and support and cherish your noble mother, who has given you a second life.”

Tears welled up in the deep-set eyes of the backwoods President as the mother, speechless and half-fainting, was escorted out by her freed son, whose manacles had been removed.

Mr. President,” said the Secretary. “This action of yours will produce 1,000 deserters in the Army of the Potomac.”

“I don’t care if it does,” replied Lincoln. “It has made one less broken heart in this country. Perhaps two. The fool girl who lured that young fellow away from his duty loves him also.” Then the President sighed, “Oh, if I could send all my boys in blue home to their mothers. Yes, and all the Johnnies, too.”

Suddenly, his voice grew commanding. “We’ll discuss the details of the reinforcements to be sent to Grant this afternoon,” he said, looking the Secretary in the eye. Then added curtly, “Good-bye, Mr. Stanton.”

When we were outside, the President remarked, “I had a pretty hard time in there didn’t I? Stanton makes a bully good Secretary of War. The only trouble with him is he shows no more caring for the boys than an alligator who buries a pile of eggs in the sand and thinks he’s done with his duties to his family.”

Later on, I was told that as the Vermont mother left the building with her son, overcome with emotion, she was heard to say, “Everybody always talks about how ugly the President is. But I think he has the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen.”

Well, that’s the end of the stenographer’s tale. I could probably write ten pages about what I’ve learned from it, but the story truly speaks for itself. And this is the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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Episode 12 – Revolutionary Advice

Sooner or later, we all have to face hard times. There’s just no away around it. And when we do, we have to find the courage we need to make it through the tough challenges that lie ahead. In that regard, I once read some tremendous advice about finding inner strength, and it came from a rather unexpected source.

Leading up to the American Bi-Centennial, I was researching the Great Seal of the United States for a potential film project. The seal was created to be the symbol of what the new country stood for. On one side, it has a pyramid, but in place of the capstone on the top, it has a glowing eye that seems to be peering out from another dimension. It also has two phrases written in Latin which mean “He Favors Our Undertaking,” and “New Order of the Ages.”

It’s been on the back of a one-dollar bill for almost a hundred years, but nobody pays much attention to it. It’s actually a fairly mystical design with cosmic overtones, and one of its creators was Benjamin Franklin. It turns out that along with being a major genius; he was also a pretty trippy guy.

Anyway, unrelated to the research, I found a pamphlet by Thomas Paine, that was written during a real low point of the Revolutionary War. It opened with the stirring line that’s become world-famous, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Something about it got me and I decided to dig into it a little deeper.

When it was written, things were really bleak. The colonists had declared their independence on July 4, 1776, and the furious British Government had reacted quickly and violently. Before long, the Americans were in serious trouble. Out-manned, out-gunned and out-organized, the shocked rebels were facing the most powerful war machine on earth, brutally hell-bent on their destruction.

Within the first few months, 11,000 soldiers just gave up and went home. Then the British captured 3,000 more troops and chased the wounded Continental Army out of both New York and New Jersey. By the winter, shaken and freezing, the demoralized rebels were on the verge of giving up.

We can’t understand today how bad things really were. Defeat seemed certain. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin would be hanged for treason, along with countless others. And the brutal punishment that would follow would reduce the country to near slavery

Then, in December of 1776, to inspire the people to return to the fight, Paine wrote a series of pamphlets called “The American Crisis.” The opening line, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” took on a much deeper meaning for me now that I realized the true horror of the situation.

More than a million pamphlets were distributed and it quickly became a major phenomenon. Its effects were immediate and the country was galvanized. Washington had it read to his soldiers before they launched the surprise attack on Trenton, which changed the course of history.

One phrase near the end stood out to me. I read it carefully and it was every bit as wise as it was powerful. Like a blueprint for finding courage and inspiration, it has seven key points to it, which for me, remain empowering words to live.

The phrase itself is: “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

Let’s take a look at these seven key points:

Key 1 - “I love the man that can smile in trouble,”

I found this to be a truly powerful image – someone realizes they are facing trouble and they smile. That really got me. Nobody likes trouble and nobody wants it. So, when it comes, why would your reaction be to smile?

Of course, everyone will look at this in a different way, but to me, it speaks to the power of a certain kind of attitude. And it’s almost as much a question of what the attitude doesn’t have as what it does.

It has no self-pity. There’s no “why me?” There’s no self-doubt. It’s more like, “I’ll give it my very best. And if I give it everything I have, physically, mentally and spiritually, then no matter the outcome, it will bring out the best in me and make me a better person. And I’ll have a positive impact on everyone and everything around me.”

We all admire this kind of courage, and intuitively, we all know we have it. If we look within, we can find it, and like every other part of our being, it gets stronger with use.

Key 2 – “that can gather strength from distress”

This sounds almost counter intuitive. It seems like distress would weaken you, rather than strengthen you. But neuroscience holds some interesting information on this. It has to do with our fight or flight mechanism and managing fear.

The instant our survival mechanism senses we’re in danger, with a hair-trigger response that is much quicker than rational thought, it releases powerful hormones into our system, putting us on high alert and getting ready to either run for our lives or fight until death.

Now, thankfully, most of the challenges we face aren’t that extreme, but the fear reaction is exactly the same, only to a lesser degree. And if you can bring the fear into a manageable level, you can derive the positive benefits of the hormones strengthening your system and sharpening your focus. That’s a powerful combination.

When it comes to managing fear, we’ve all been doing it all our lives. Since we were infants, we’ve each evolved our own approach. But neuroscience offers a fascinating insight that can be quite helpful as well.

It turns out that the part of our brain that triggers our survival mechanism is the same part that regulates our breath. And there is a deep physiological relationship between the two. If you breathe a little slower and deeper, it automatically helps calm your nerves and release your fears.

This physiological relationship is the result of millions of years of evolution. So, by regulating your breath, you can regulate your fear.

Key 3 – “and grow brave by reflection.”

Reflection is defined as fixing your thought onto something and giving it careful consideration. So, when we’re facing trouble, we want to give careful consideration to the things that give us courage. And this takes some consciousness.

Many times, when we’re in stressful situations, our breathing becomes shallow and we automatically start catastrophizing our fear. Our thoughts can get out of control really fast. After all, it doesn’t take any effort to be afraid. Fearful thoughts just come with the territory. And like sharks in the water when you’re travelling on an ocean liner, the trick is to stay in the boat.

One good way to stay in the boat is by giving careful consideration to all the positive elements in your life. Maybe look back on the successes you’ve had and how some things have worked out positively for you. Or look at all the lessons you’ve learned from all you’ve been through. Nothing brings more courage than wisdom.

When it comes to taking courage from reflection, one of the most basic things you can reflect on is the fact that you’re alive, you’re breathing, your heart’s beating and your brain is thinking. And every one of these is purely a miracle, which means that they surpass all human understanding. Maybe give that particular perspective some careful consideration and see how brave you get.

Key 4 – “Tis the business of little minds to shrink,”

This is a deceptively deep statement. According to many wisdom traditions, our intelligence has two basic components – our ordinary mind and our essential self, which is also called “the heart.”

Shrinking from a challenge is a common reaction of our ordinary mind because that’s where self-doubt lives. But the larger part of our intelligence, our heart, is very different. It doesn’t shrink, it expands.

If we can understand this basic difference, we don’t need to be weakened by negative thoughts and feelings. Many of them are just products of self-doubt. And maybe we can’t stop the ordinary mind from thinking these thoughts, but we don’t have to inhabit them. We can gently shift our focus to the stronger part of our inner self, our heart. And again, like every other skill, this takes practice.

Key 5 – “but he whose heart is firm,”

Speaking of the heart, over the centuries, many highly evolved beings have told us that the heart is actually the true home of our consciousness. All the ideal characteristics of humanity flow from there. As the seat of our intuition, as well as our conscience, it is not only kind and gentle, but also firm. It knows right from wrong, is an unparalleled anchor of stability and it doesn’t waiver. The mind might waiver, but not the heart.

When your consciousness is with it, it feels like home. And it feels like home because that’s exactly what it is. Again, you don’t have to create or manufacture it, all you need to do recognize it. Truly firm and firmly true, it makes the hard times easier to bear and always enhances the happy ones.

Key 6 – “and whose conscience approved his conduct”

I guess you can sum this idea up in one word – integrity. According to the dictionary, our conscience is our inner sense of knowing what’s right and wrong. And when our actions are in line with it, we feel the strength of integrity. And not only does it feel good, it’s a very formidable power as well.

This is one of the reasons that challenging times can produce so much growth in us. They make us stretch to uncover all the best traits that we have.

Of course, nobody’s perfect and everyone is faced with their own personal learning curve. But in the growth process, while it’s impossible to avoid making mistakes, when you face your errors with integrity, you can transform your mistakes into life lessons, and that is a very powerful form of alchemy.

Key 7 – “will pursue his principles unto death.”

To me, this says that when you have found your courage and you heart and mind are aligned with integrity, you won’t cease to serve the noble principles of your being. You’ll persevere and stay the course, no matter what the outcome may be.

This reminds me of a story that I once heard Ted Turner tell on TV. He had become close with environmentalist pioneer Captain Jacques Cousteau and was funding some of his efforts to preserve the planet. I haven’t been able to find a recording or transcript of it, so I’m going to paraphrase it to the best of my memory.

They were travelling on the noble ship, Calypso, going from port to port and wherever they went, they ran into one environmental catastrophe after the next. There were appalling amounts of garbage and pollution everywhere.

“Captain, I’m getting discouraged.” Turner said to Cousteau.

“Don’t do that,” Cousteau responded. “Even if we knew that we had no chance to protect the earth, and even if we knew our efforts were doomed to complete failure, we would still carry on with smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts, grateful that we had the opportunity to serve the highest.”

This has always been one of my favorite stories, as well as one of the most instructive ones I’ve ever heard. And there’s nothing I would add to a statement of this level of nobility, so this will be the end of this episode.

As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here goes -

Do not compare and you cannot be unhappy.

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

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

We are punished by whatever we hide from ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The necessary is always possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Transcript of Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Open it,” Pip responds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Episode 1: The Animal That Can Think

The human being is the only creature that is known to be able to think rational thought. And while as a species, we literally had less than a one in a million chance to survive, because of it, we beat the odds and became the most dominant life form on the planet. But tragically, this double-edge sword might also be the cause our own extinction. What’s in our favor?

Transcript:

We’ve each been born with a most amazing gift and how well we learn how to use it will determine how satisfied we’ll be in this life. We have each been given a human brain along with its conscious awareness. And a good case can be made that of all the trillions of biological innovations that have taken place on Earth in the 3.5 billion years since life first appeared, the human brain is the single greatest masterpiece ever created by nature. And we each have one of our own.

Now that’s a pretty big thing statement. So, let’s step back a little and put this incredible gift of ours into a larger perspective

The truth is, Earth can be a really tough place to live. So far, over five billion species have tried it and about 99 percent of them have failed, becoming extinct for one reason or another. They came. They stayed a while and then vanished. Gone for good.

Yet somehow, we human beings have been able to survive, which is nothing short of a miracle. Given our relatively puny bodies with our lowly position on the food chain, natural selection should have wiped us out thousands of years ago. We’re not the biggest. We’re not the strongest. We’re far from the fastest. Compared to sea creatures, we’re pathetic swimmers and we can’t fly at all. And when it comes to reproduction, our babies are born helpless, it takes them years to get to where they can survive on their own and our overall offspring statistics are pretty weak.

So, with survival of the fittest, we should have been long gone by now. And indeed, we would have been just one more unknown creature that came and went, except for this one small feature that was bestowed upon us by nature. We were born with this incredibly powerful brain. And although we’re clearly outmatched on every other level, this one small organ, with its endless creativity, has given us an overwhelming advantage over the competition.

At first glance, it doesn’t appear to be much. About the size of an average cantaloupe, it’s less than 100 cubic inches and weighs only about three pounds. But of all the biological evolution that has manifested on Earth since the appearance of the microbe, with its 100 billion neurons seamlessly wired for endless creativity, it’s in a class all by itself.

With just its ability to invent tools, starting with primitive flint rock knives, it altered the survival equation, and soon we were at the very top of the food chain. But it did much more than that. With its boundless innovation, we didn’t just survive, we became the dominant creature on Earth, radically transforming the entire planet.

Now, whether this has been a positive or negative development remains to be seen. On the one hand, we’ve come so far that we have it in our power to create a harmonious, interdependent world that can support everyone, almost a heaven on earth. The natural resources are certainly here and in great abundance.

But on the other hand, we could be in the midst of causing an unthinkable catastrophe. We might take the very instrument that helped us survive in the first place and misuse it to become the first species in history to actually be the cause of its own extinction. The irony of such ignorance is too tragic to even consider.

Obviously, the outcome of nature’s great experiment – “What becomes of an animal that can think?” is still in question. But basically, it all depends on how the animal chooses to think. Which brings up another astounding fact about our brain. Not only do we each have a mind of our own, we’ve also been born with the innate power to be able to decide how we want to use it. Whether it seems like it or not, we actually do get to make our own inner choices and the fact is, they really matter. And they matter far more than we know.

So, the big question becomes - How can we use our intelligence in the best way possible, both for our own happiness and well-being, as well as for those close to us and for the world at large?

Well, when it comes to learning how to use our awareness, the very first thing to do is to simply become aware of it. To have an incredible awareness and to be largely unaware of its magnificent abilities would be a terrible shame, but that’s where many of us end up. So, let’s take a quick look at some basics.

Essentially, we live in two worlds – an outer world and an inner world. Our outer world revolves around the external circumstance we find ourselves in, this endlessly changing drama filled with people, places and things. It can have hundreds of moving parts. But our inner world is very different. In that realm, there are only two things happening and they’re always happening. We’re always breathing and we always have an awareness of some kind. This constant factor stays that way from birth ‘til death.

Now, with our awareness, as infants, we begin with our focus on our inner world and gradually blend it with the outer. In our early years, our consciousness is vibrantly alive, always growing and expanding with a joyful sense of wonder. But then, for the most part, by the time we reach a certain age, we become focused almost exclusively on the outer world. Losing touch with our inner awareness, we start running on automatic, impulsively reacting to an endless stream of external happenstances. It can get overwhelming and sometimes you feel like the roller ball in a pinball machine constantly rebounding from one jarring bumper to another. But whatever it is that we may be aware of, the simple fact is, we’re always aware of something. Awake or dreaming, our awareness is always on. It never stops.

But beneath it all, something barely noticeable is also taking place. We’re always breathing. And our breath brings us the power of life which animates our entire being. This power, which is the most basic part of our lives, is at the very core of our intelligence and connecting with it can play a transformative role in improving our lives.

The first thing to understand about this breath of ours, which we take basically for granted, is that it is, by definition, a miracle. In the dictionary, a miracle is defined as “a welcomed event which takes place for reasons not explicable by natural or scientific laws,” which fits the breath perfectly. Afterall, it has no discernable power source. There’s no plug, battery pack or solar panel, nothing. Still, even though it defies the basic laws of physics, it goes on and on.

And it’s running completely by itself. We have nothing to do with it. Wide awake or totally unconscious, ecstatically happy or morbidly depressed, with no conscious effort on our part, we’re still breathing. And not only that, we have no control over it at all. We can hold our breath for a very short period time, but then we just have to breathe. It’s so essential that if we’re forced to go without it, in a just few minutes we’re seriously brain damaged, and then, moments later, we’re dead.

So, to sum it up, two things are always happening within us at the same time – we’re always breathing and we always have an awareness of some kind. Now there’s a critical distinction between the two. One is completely dependent upon the other. We have our awareness because we are breathing. But we’re not breathing because we have our awareness. Our awareness has nothing to do with our breath. But our breath has everything to do with our awareness. And a little-known fact is that connecting our awareness to our breath, even to a small degree, can have a majorly beneficial impact on our lives.

To help illustrate this, let’s use our imagination, which is another amazingly ingenious element of our intelligence. Imagine you’re in a restaurant and all of a sudden, there’s a crashing noise and the ceiling caves in, blocking the front door. You hear a disturbing hissing sound and the smell of natural gas starts to fill the room. The manager comes bursting in with a large sledge hammer and in a panic, says there was a gas explosion in the kitchen and everyone must get out, but the back door has also been blocked.

Then, with the sledge hammer, he starts slamming the glass of the large picture window that leads outside. The gas smell is getting worse and soon, you can hardly breathe. You’re almost ready to pass out when the manager finally smashes through the window and along with everyone else, you stumble your way outside, through the smashed glass into the open air.

As you’re gasping for breath, trying to re-oxygenate yourself, an EMS team shows up. After a while, they examine you and tell you that thankfully, you’ve suffered no harm and you can just go home. You’ll be fine.

You get over the trauma and things become stable over the next few days. Of course, you experience profound gratitude for your narrow escape from death, along with all the other positive feelings that accompany it. But as you get back into normal life something very powerful is going to happen to you.

At some point, in the middle of an ordinary moment, you are going to take an ordinary breath and something extraordinary is going to happen. You are going to feel how wonderful it is just to be able to breathe and you’re going to feel incredibly grateful for what you used to take for granted. By connecting with the real pleasure of breathing, you will have found the extraordinary within the ordinary. Your consciousness will grow into the next level, in a certain way, you’ll never be quite the same again, and the change will be for good.

Now we don’t need to encounter a near-catastrophe to be able to grasp the deeper meanings behind this imaginary tale. Our intelligence has its own source of wisdom and we can get to this lofty summit of understanding on our own if we want.

As a takeaway, you might want to play around with the idea of feeling how precious it really is to be able to breath. Stop and feel your breath and get in touch with the fact that you are not in control of it, that it is coming and going on its own, and that every single part of your life is completely dependent upon its power.

This kind of understanding can bring real gratitude and humility into your life, which is always a good thing. Then see if you can feel the subtle, but distinct pleasure that accompanies the act of breathing. It’s really not hard to do at all. Every little baby gets blissed out by their breath all day long. You may want to give it a try and see what happens.

In the coming podcasts, we’re going to offer you small, easy changes of focus like this. They’re all deceptively simple, but there’s a lot of power wrapped up in them. Well, that’s it for now. Keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together again in the next episode!

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Welcome to our Podcast: Stop Making Yourself Miserable.

This introductory episode shares what this weekly podcast will offer the listener as well as a sample clip from a forthcoming episode.

These are not meant to be teachings, but innovative ideas that you might want to consider to see where they lead.

So, absorb the information, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and watch what happens.

Stop Making Yourself Miserable: Recent Episodes

David Richman