Soulshine

The present moment is all we have. So why don’t we stay in it? The question is simple, but the answer isn’t. We refuse to stay in the present moment, in real life, for multiple reasons. For some, the present moment is too dull. We want drama and we don’t know how to live without it. So we will escape from the dullness of the present moment through thoughts that create negative landscapes and emotions—thoughts that will guarantee our continued victim-hood or martyrdom. For others, the present moment is lacking. We want one of two things: Either something we have never experienced or something that we no longer experience in the reality of the moment. It may be that we are lonely for the great lover that we have never encountered, and so instead of living this present moment as it is, we escape into the fantasy of our thoughts about meeting that great lover; of experiencing him/her and all of the ecstasy that we believe we are missing. We are creating a fake future. Or it may be that...

All you need is now because now is all you have. Now is the reality of this moment and every moment. If you're not in the moment, you're not living life. Your not seeing life, tasting it, breathing in its scents, or hearing it; nor are you touching life or allowing it to touch you. Get out of your head. Stop thinking about what you're going to do next and focus on what you are doing or experiencing NOW. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and to feel life. Stop existing like a mannequin and start living by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and breathing in the NOW. It's all anyone needs to allow their soul to shine!

I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in Los Angeles, eating my cinnamon scone and preparing to cut my trip here short. I'll have to return home tomorrow and then fly to Omaha, Nebraska for a funeral. A young father in his 30s died there last Friday, leaving behind a wife and three small children. There are always questions in these types of situations: Why? Why someone so young? Why someone who had a wife and kids? The "why" questions can be endless, and there's never a quantifiable answer.  I don't believe in "it was just his time" or that God called him home. There's too much cruelty to these pat answers and they make God seem like a beast. What purpose could there be behind such imagined acts of God? I see no redeeming purpose to seizing a young man from his young family. I do believe that life happens. When someone dies and there is no acceptable answer to "why," I believe it's simply the human condition. It's the way...

A primary theme running through Howard Falco’s “I AM” is the importance of accepting the reality in our lives that we are powerless to change. He says that when any given situation challenges our happiness, life presents us with two options toward regaining our peace of mind: Either the situation itself has to change favorably or we have to change a belief we have that directly affects the situation. Let’s illustrate how this works… From the time we are small, most of us are prepped by adults for the fairytale happiness of wedded bliss. So as we grow into adulthood, many of us believe we cannot be happy until we meet Mr. or Ms. Right. It’s very easy, then, for a person who is 35 and still single to be depressed about the fact that all of their friends are “happily” married and he/she is not. In this situation, one of two things has to happen in order for our 35 year old to regain his/her peace of mind. Either they have to meet Mr. or Ms. Right and tie the knot, or they have to chang...

“You release yourself from the pressure of ‘time’ by the faith-filled act of acceptance, as opposed to the fear-based force of resistance.” Howard Falco, I AM The aging process is difficult for most people, and this is especially true today considering the make-up of our society. We have a huge number of Baby Boomers who are now 60-plus years old and living in a culture of youthful obsession. For many people, especially women, the pressure is intense to be something you can’t be: eternally youthful. And this may be especially true for the Baby Boomers who, back in the 1960s, declared themselves the generation that was never going to get old. Many of their slogans, like “never trust anyone over the age of 35,” have long caught up with them. And may be haunting them. To complicate matters, many people in their 60s and 70s today don’t feel as old as their years on earth claim. And there are books and music that reflect this fact. You see book titles like How Did I Get to Be 70 When I ...

“It might not feel fair or right that life has to be so hard. But accepting the disorders that we or our children have—and finding the best solutions we can for them and ourselves—is a loving choice we can make.” Melody Beattie, Choices Every moment of every day we have the ability to free ourselves from the unfairness of life by accepting reality as it is—not as we would have it be. Reality is simple to understand: Life is not now or ever fair to anyone all of the time and it never will be. And yet, so many of us enslave ourselves by complaining daily about how unfair life is in that we suffer from diabetes, or manic depression or obsessive compulsive disorder. Or in that we didn’t get the raise we thought we deserved, or that our special someone dumped us, or that the rain ruined our vacation. Complaining strips us of all our power—mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. It drains us of vitality, exuberance and hope as it becomes a cage where we brood, ruminate and wal...

Loneliness can be a terrible experience. And yet, it’s an experience that many of us create and perpetuate for ourselves. More times than not, when we are suffering from loneliness it’s because we have isolated ourselves by playing the victim of life. Often times our loneliness is accompanied by a feeling of being trapped. It’s as if our life is set in stone-- as if we have a ball and chain around our necks-- and there’s no escaping from our fate. We may also feel helpless and hopeless as we sit drowning in our sorrows; wishing that God or someone would rescue us from our lonely despair. Well, the only one who can rescue us is us. God can assist, but only after we have decided to help ourselves first. And that decision must be accompanied by some serious work on our behalf. We need to look at the reasons as to why we are lonely. First, we need toe examine our “I am” statements. Have we been clinging to beliefs like “I am not worthy of love,” or “I am not good enough to have people in...

Even after some lengthy recovery, we can still come down with a bad case of the Codependent Crazies. We meet someone new and an emotional fever comes over us. We kick into automatic pilot and we immediately start building dreams of a life together in our heads. We find ourselves thinking about this person all of the time. We have the compulsive desire to speak with them everyday. If they don’t pick up the phone and call us, we call them. Before we know it, we’re seeing this person almost daily. We’re positive we’ve found our Indiana Jones. Yahoo! We’re finally being rescued from ourselves! By now, everything we have learned in recovery has gone out the window of our mind. We worship this person. We can’t breathe without them. We jump into high gear emotionally and spill all over the person as we jump over the many necessary steps to normal courtship. We want the ultimate in intimacy and we want it now. We’ve roped our doggie and by God we’re ready to have him/her fill up our every i...

“All of the answers are inside of you” is something I tell everyone who attends one of my Serenity Retreats. And I very much believe that this is true. We hold the key to our own uniqueness and individual mystery; to our well-being and happiness. No one else can discover the key for us or give us our answers. We have to be willing to go deep within ourselves (usually with the help of God or a Higher Power), discover the key and begin to unlock the many closed doors and tightly hinged boxes buried inside our souls. Sometimes we have to consciously work to discover the doors that need opening and sometimes they beckon to us. Since my father died in March, the door to my childhood has been calling me to open it. And I have. I’ve found myself fascinated with the music of my childhood—that of the groovy 1960s. I’ve been listening with mostly fond memories to The Beatles, The Monkees, Donovan, The Grass Roots, Tommy James & The Shondells, and the Doors. I’ve also discovered some group...