Authentic Living

So, you are going through life making choices all day every day. But have you ever tried to discover all of the myriad “What ifs” plaguing your backroom brain-committee meetings? Well today, author Betsy Thompson is here to help us both discover and come to terms with some of these what ifs. Betsy is the author of recently released “What Happens if I?” as well as,Walking Through Illusion, The Mirror Theory, LoveParent, LoveHuman, and You Are What You Think so Make Your Thoughts Delicious. Betsy’s interesting twist on how life works forces us to ask and answer such questions as, “What if I do what I love but the money doesn’t come?” She does this in order to help us make our actions and reactions work for instead of against us. The search for truth means sometimes asking the hard questions. Today, along with announcing Oprah’s next Super Soul Sunday show with a special encore presentation of her interview with Gary Zukav, we are going to be asking and answering those questions.

Anger is a much despised emotion, considered by most to bring us all too close to the edge of that precipice over which we dare not fall, lest we have to consider ourselves to be bad or even evil people. For most religions, anger itself is thought of as a sin. Many New Age or even New Thought practitioners tell us of the dangers of being angry—dangers that range anywhere from anger’s power to make us operate from the “lower” self or the “ego,” to its supposed power to attract so-called “negative” people and events into our lives. We fear our anger. We are ashamed of our anger. Therefore, we suppress our anger so that it is left to leak out unconsciously through health problems, passive/aggressive or even aggressive behaviors. But what if all of these years we’ve been pushing away one of our most important transformative powers? Tune in this week to find out how anger can become a transformative force in your life.

Part of the problem with our concept of heaven, and one of the primary reasons why we don’t live in heaven right now on planet earth, is because we suffer. The Buddha told us that we suffer because we are attached to things, people, places, circumstances, etc. That if we could relinquish attachment we would no longer suffer. Some resent that idea because it seems to give the gods of fortune their way—and why should they rather than us? After all, why shouldn’t we have what we want and need? In answer to that question, proponents of the law of attraction say that if we can suspend so-called “negative” thoughts we can win over the gods of fortune. Which is true? Why do we suffer? And is it really possible to stop suffering on this side of heaven? Today we are going to give a considered answer to that question. And then we are going to hear another clip from Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday in which she interviews Grammy-Award Winner India Arie on spiritual awakening. Don’t miss it.

The concept of heaven has been distorted with so many of our fantasies about avoidance of struggle, suffering and pain. And since most of us can’t imagine a place on earth in which there is no struggle, suffering or pain, we’ve put heaven up there, out there, down there, anywhere, but here, on planet earth. What you are about to learn about heaven will change your thinking on this entirely. Heaven is not a place. It is not out there, up there, down there and it isn’t simply a place we go to after we die. It is right here, right now—but then it isn’t about avoidance of suffering either. Tune in this week— you’ll learn how to inhabit heaven NOW. AND you’ll hear our clip for this upcoming Super Soul Sunday, in which Oprah interviews one of the greatest American basketball coaches in history, NBA Championship coach Phil Jackson, as he discusses both his coaching philosophy and his own battle with cancer. Don’t miss it.

Our biggest problem isn’t fear. It is shame. Shame defines us deep down in the recesses of our sense of ourselves. It informs us of our identity. It makes our choices for us and interacts with others through us. It dictates what we repress and what we accept. In fact, it is shame that creates our fear. And the truth is that if we really knew who we truly are, shame would simply dissolve. But we live in a world in which to not feel shame is to not fit in. We live in a world in which our children shame each other into compliance with the social agenda. We live in a world in which shame at least a part of how we choose our careers, our mates, and our lives. It is, all too often, the ruler of our lives. So, this week, along with introducing Oprah’s next Super Soul Sunday with a clip of her interview with bestselling author and religious historian Karen Armstrong, we are going to discover how we free ourselves from shame. Don’t miss it.

There’s a lot of information “out there” right now about how to lower your stress, raise your joy level, increase your abundance and live from what some call the Higher Self—which of course means that we must do something with the lower self. There’s also other talk that tells us all about what it will be like in heaven after we die. The problem with all of this talk is that we don’t seem to realize that we are already in heaven—we just don’t know it. Heaven is within us—but our trance state of duality keeps us from seeing this—and all the morals and codes for our thoughts, feelings and behaviors only serve to keep us stuck in the trance state. And all of the advice that basically tells us to strive to be a better person only serves the same purpose. So, today, not only will we be playing a clip from Oprah’s next Super Soul Sunday with Brian Weiss, but we’ll be figuring out how to inhabit heaven NOW—all based on Andrea’s upcoming book, entitled “Inhabiting Heaven NOW.”

Don’t miss today’s clip of the upcoming Supersoul Sunday, in which we get the bigger picture on today’s top global headlines from Oprah, Rev. Ed Bacon, Elizabeth Lesser & Mark Nepo. And for our discussion today: There are many names for the divine including, the Jewish tetragrammaton YHVY; ‘elohiym, ‘el and Jehovah; the Hindu Brahman, the Islamic Allah; the Bahá'í Baha; the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda and others. We seem to have a need to name the divine. Well our guest today, Rabbi Wayne Dosick tells us that none of the names we know from the Bible for God are enough. Rather, he says, the real name of God leads to the revolutionary revelation of both the God of the universe and the inner God of breath and soul. Combining scholarship with the sacred and challenging long-held comfortable beliefs, the Rabbi’s latest book entitled, “The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine” reveals what he calls the real name for God—a name that unites us in a new way. Don’t miss it.

Not only are we going to get to hear another clip from Oprah’s 2-part SuperSoul Sunday interview with Maya Angelou today, but we are going to answer one of the pressing questions asked by today’s seeker: How do we move from the personal mind to higher mind? Oprah tells us that it’s not enough to know that you should do a thing, you must also know how to do it. Well today is a “how to” kind of day. Here today to answer our question is Psychiatrist, Dr. Maurie Pressman, author of Living the SuperMind. He tells us that the Supermind is the highest level of mind—the mind beyond the mind—that carries the power of love, health, wisdom and intelligence, through which we can make decisions, access talents, growth, healing and inner knowing. One of the early pioneers in both visualization and hypnosis whose work changed the focus of Olympic sports training around the world, Dr. Pressman moved on from there to studies of the higher mind. So you are not going to want to miss this one.

This week, the Authentic Living Show exclusively announces Oprah’s new Supersoul Sunday series, beginning with Mother’s Day and her interview with Maya Angelou. Listen for clips of that show on Authentic Living this week. And this week, we’ll also be talking about how we walk in this world and still maintain our walk in the world of the soul? How can we deal with issues of survival, relationships, work, finances, health, politics, war, etc., while simultaneously living in the world of stillness, joy, emptiness and peace? Some say that we should simply stop listening, watching, reading the news. We should just tell ourselves that this world is an illusion and the only real is the world of the soul. That way we can continue to suppress all of our so-called “negative thoughts.” But more and more people are finding that that way of living amounts to a lot of pretending and a lot of repression. So, how can we live the medial life between worlds? Tune into today’s show and find out.

If we were to set about to deliberately design a path that would bring us to our deepest essential self, could we do any better than the design of the soul on our lives? What does the mysterious journey of living really mean? What fierceness drives us deeper into ourselves? And what do we find there when we arrive? What persistent longing serves to write the poetry of our lives? When does the soul stand outside of us and when is it invited in? Byron Katie asks who we would be without our stories? I wonder who we would be without our codes, rules, morals, shoulds, ought-tos and have tos? It is unsettling to image a life without these guides, but are they really leading us to our deepest essence? So, the pebble has been tossed into the lake and the ripple is running outward—this show will be both the pebble and the ever extending ripple. Don’t miss it.

Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, a number one New York Times bestseller, as well as 18 other award-winning books, published in 25 languages, is coming back to the Authentic Living show to tell us how we can develop a religion of our own. We are currently in an evolutionary phase with regard to what we will do with religion. And Moore posits the theory that part of this shift is caused by a loss of identification with soul. His latest book, A Religion of One’s Own, coming out in January 2014, is going to address this issue. Only we are getting a special sneak peek today. Moore as undoubtedly been one of the world’s spiritual leaders in this age of spiritual transitions and his insights have altered the lives of many people and even many medical, hospice and hospital programs as he teaches us to care for the collective and individual soul. So during today’s show, we are going to find out how each of us can create a religion of our own. Don’t miss it.

We get a lot of double-speak when it comes to the past. Some tell us to forget about it: The past is over and done with, just don’t go there. Others tell us that the past is the key to the present. Which one is it? Or is it either? Most of us know that dwelling in the past is not very conducive to a happy life—but then we do it anyway. And most of us know that trying not to think about it is pretty useless too. So, what are we to do with the past? Does it have any useful purpose? At this point the word “lessons” begins to be thrown about, carrying with it connotations of both “punishment” and “reward” with a little karma thrown in for good measure. But really is that all there is? Today, we’re going to be talking about the past and it’s, typically buried, treasures. Don’t miss this one.

Have you heard about the river that runs under the city? Yeah. It’s there. It’s a true story. You have to be willing to spelunk down into the darkness to find it, but it carries the whole city. It runs through the dark caverns of shadowed soul and it comes from and leads to the exact same place. Everybody talks about it here. It’s story has been passed down from one generation to the next for centuries—or maybe it’s just another ghost story told by the fire on a camp-out. How can you find out? Well, today we are going to talk about just that. We’re going to learn whether this river of omniscience is the real deal or just a fabled illusion. And if it’s real, we’re going to find out how to find it, and to allow it to flow to and through us. You really don’t want to miss this one.

For the third time, we are interviewing the gentle and powerful poet and author, Joyce Rupp. She is well known for her work as a writer, a spiritual “midwife, and a retreat and conference speaker—having led retreats throughout North America and in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. She is a member of the Servites (the Servants of Mary) community and the author of several books, including The Cup of Our Life, Fragments of the Ancient Name and her latest, my soul feels lean: poems of loss and restoration—about which we will be interviewing her today. Poetry is such a powerful expression of the deepest urges of our beingness, and so it is that her poetry will lead us to a powerful discussion about how to work with loss. Don’t miss this show.

Taoism teaches that it is the natural in us that is our power. And yet our society teaches that the natural in us is to be feared, for it is wild, untamed energy that will get us and others into heaps of trouble. But as we talk about the differentiated aspects of the psyche, the ego and the soul, what we discover is that that natural self turns out also to be mystically united with the transcendent. As we walk into the deeper regions of the inner human, we discover the transpersonal—which is also quite natural. Yet we’ve divided life up into natural, miracle and supernatural for so many centuries that it is extremely difficult for us to imagine that who we already are, underneath all the fakery, scamming and spamming that we’ve been taught to do to survive, is both natural and divine—a union of opposites. So today we are going to take a journey into the natural world of authentic power and learn what your natural power can do in an unnatural world. Don’t miss it.

So many of us, who consider ourselves to be more or less spiritual beings; so many of us, who consider ourselves to be Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Taoist, or any other religion, believe that being good means helping and healing others. In fact helping and healing others is a defining characteristic of a good person regardless or religion or spiritual path. What will we do when we really get it that we can’t help or heal anyone? Ever. The concept of reception is a very difficult one for us to accept particularly in the Western world where being “out there,” “doing,” “seeking,” “hunting,” “giving,” “helping,” “healing” are the ways that we prove to ourselves and our worlds that we are worthy. But if worthiness doesn’t really have to be earned, then we can consider the concept of reception. For, what if everything that is truly worthy is received—which means that our giving means only what it means to us, unless the other person chooses to receive it. Don’t miss this one.

So, we’ve spent the past 2 shows talking about the reality of real life in a dualistic world with its darkness and its blindness. Today we’re focusing on that elusive bliss—evidence for many of enlightenment. Bliss, joy, ecstasy—these largely synonymous terms have not historically been used much in any secular way. Yet, in today’s social world we hear them used to either mock or poke fun at the bliss-seekers, or as a way of describing a fulfilling career. Regardless, most of us think of bliss as a state. A state is a place for the psyche to rest for a while—like taking a vacation in the state of Hawaii. When joy is related to career, if the career is doing what we want it to do, we have joy, and if it isn’t, we don’t. When it’s related to meditation, it’s a state to which we arrive after getting our minds in the right place. But what if bliss is who we actually are? What if bliss is our primordial essence? Don’t miss this show. It could change your life.

Must we have the dark to see the light? Is that the only purpose of darkness? Must we have the evil to see the good? What is the point? During this show we are going to explore the purpose of life from the perspective of darkness: The silence of the ethers when you are screaming for an answer; death that comes when life is what was wanted; the essential ingredient necessary to evil. These are the things that many who practice the tenets put forth in books like The Secret don’t want to talk about. In fact they tell us not to even have a so-called “negative” thought. But if we never think about the dark, aren’t we keeping the dark in the dark? What if it has beautiful gifts for us too, more beautiful at times, even than those gifts we get from the light. So, today we are going spelunking into the dark, murky, slippery underground caves of life. Get your gear and bring your cameras. You are going to want some good shots of this.

My mother used to have a saying. She had a lot of those. But one she used to say a lot was: She/he wouldn’t know truth if it flew up and hit her/him in the face. And you know, sometimes she was right. Truth is, as they say, relative. But is it, really? Is there an absolute truth? Or, do we have enough light to just see the truth that is relative to the moment—ready ever to let that go for a higher truth in another moment? Well, if there is an absolute truth, I would say that it runs deeper and goes further than any one religion or tradition can encapsulate. And if that is true, then how do we know when we’ve run into—or been hit in the face by—truth? This show is going to delve into this muddy issue and give it some clarity. But not only that, for it is also going to illustrate some ways that we can know when we’ve been hit by truth. And along that way we’ll discover something about the mystery of knowledge itself. Don’t miss it.

Okay, now that I have your attention—let’s talk about intimacy. Real intimacy—of which sex is but a small, though important, part. Primary relationships—these are those had between a husband and wife, or two partners, whether of the same or opposite sex. Primary relationships work when intimacy is the primary endeavor of the relationship. They work less well or stop working altogether, when intimacy is not the primary endeavor of the relationship. So, what do we mean by intimacy if we don’t just mean sex? Remember the Na’vi in the movie Avatar? They said it well. They said, “I see you.” What they meant was that they really saw the other person. Saw them for who and what they really were. Saw all the way down to their souls. Intimacy allows both parties in a primary relationship to really see each other. How do we learn to see and be seen this way? Do you want a solid relationship that has lastability? Don’t miss this show.