Reading at the park the other day–as I often like to do–I was thinking about the idea that God is in everything, and is just different manifestations of the One.

Having an idea like this is nice when you know it intellectually, but it is quite another thing to truly realize it for yourself. While I was pondering this thought, I was idly staring at some dandelions in the grass.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
-Carl Jung

A common misguided belief is that positive thinking will fix everything in your life. Somehow by ignoring the negative things that happen and focusing on positive thoughts–no matter what–will miraculously turn everything to puppies and rainbows.

Granted, I believe there is a great deal of truth to positive thinking; but there are limitations that must first be understood. The real secret is that you are still going to have negative thoughts, and bad things are going to happen to you.

Once this is realized, one can move forward with appropriate positive affirmations. Trying to cover up the dark side of yourself will not fix anything. Instead, it will just temporarily hide that aspect of yourself.

Reading Dr. Edward Tick’s “Warrior’s Return,” and hearing him speak recently during an intimate gathering at Sounds True gave me a different perspective on the return from military service.

Ed Tick has been working with veterans for over 35 years, and he has a interesting take on the warrior archetype. He believes one of the causes of psychological trauma of our returning soldiers is that they are expected to return to a civilian way of thinking after their service.

This creates conflict in the psyche of the individual, who is unsure how to behave. Are they supposed to return to “normal”? How do they incorporate their military mindset?

While riding my bicycle along Boulder creek to the library last weekend, I had an interesting insight. You see, I generally don’t change gears on my mountain bike, even though I have something like 18 of them.

I prefer to stick with one gear, and pedal faster or slower depending on the incline or decline. Somehow I got in this habit, and I’m not sure how. It is actually not typical of my normal behavior. I usually like to utilize any technology I have available to me.

While I was struggling to get up a hill, I questioned why I wasn’t changing gears. Thinking about this, I came up with an analogy for life in general.

Admittedly, I am a recovering perfectionist. I have always thought that was a virtue rather than a flaw. Until recently, however, when I had the thought: What does perfectionism accomplish, except procrastination?

Now, by no means am I saying that we should perform low-quality work. Whatever we are doing, I think we should give our full effort. It is admirable to give our all, and it leaves us feeling fulfilled.

However, whatever we do is never going to be perfect. No amount of time or effort will ever leave a project flawless. We can find myriad ways to refine whatever it is we are doing, but all we will accomplish is exhausting more time.

For most of my life, I believed that although I wasn’t likely to convince some people of my spiritual beliefs, that they should be grateful that I was sharing my wisdom with them.

Recently, however, I’ve come to see that these people who refuse to agree with me are my greatest teachers.

Do you remember growing up, and thinking that parents and teachers were almost an entirely different species than you? They seemed so far removed from us, that they almost seemed superhuman.

Do you remember when this illusion was shattered? It is similar to finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real.

As we grow up, most of us realize that our teachers were really just regular people. This happens for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that we become teachers and parents ourselves, or at least have close friends who do.

“Sleep my little baby-oh
Sleep until you waken
When you wake you’ll see the world
If I’m not mistaken…”
―Neil Gaiman

How can we truly know if we are awake? Only by first recognizing that we are dreaming can we begin to know what it means to start waking up.

I am going to use an analogy that will run through this blog, which I hope will help illustrate how waking up happens. The analogy will be having your eyes closed or open (partially or fully), and I will explain the 5 progressions.

Of course, I am referring to the spiritual “waking up,” not merely the physical act we perform each day. To wake up spiritually is to raise your consciousness so that you become increasingly aware of the true nature of reality.

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Writing is something I have–like most people–been doing since grade school. Only recently, however, I’ve begun to take it very seriously. I can’t believe how long this has taken me, but the other day I discovered a trick which will help anyone who ever writes.

Unless you are illiterate–which you mustn’t be if you’re reading this–then this blog will apply to you. Let me begin with some basic physiology about the brain, and how it operates during writing, and then I will give an analogy to better illustrate the point.

“Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”
-Wayne W. Dyer

I literally have tossed hundreds–if not thousands–of pennies onto the street, because I never felt like they were worth keeping.

At least that’s what I did until recently. The other day I was having a conversation with a coworker, and she excitedly showed me a penny she found lying on the ground.

We’ve had many spiritual conversations, so I knew she was familiar with terms like “abundance” and the “law of attraction,” so I wanted to learn more. It seemed strange at the time that she was so enthusiastic to have found a penny, so I asked her about it.