A friend of my Facebook page asked me this question: I get these negative feelings of people… I know I have to stop the negativity but it isn’t easy. I know every thought you think has energy… so what steps can I take to maintain a positive outlook especially about other people? My answer: Step 1. Stop thinking you have to stop your negativity. There is nothing you “have to” do. We spiritual people tend…
“I realize I need to love myself more!“ I hear people say that a lot these days. Self-love is hip now. Even my 64 year old mother, who hates internet listacles, emailed me an article the other day called “5 Ways to Love Yourself Before You Leave the House”. “Read that,” my mom said on the phone. “And eat more salad!” Yet it seems nobody has a definitive answer on what self-love exactly entails. The…
We are light beings coming into a universe of dense matters. The transition between worlds was a difficult-to-adjust, even traumatic experience to many. Even if no major trauma happened to you that you could remember, the physical existence itself is heavy, sometimes painfully heavy. If you go through life with a nagging feeling that you never belong in this world, you’re in good company. And there’s nothing wrong about it. Most of us find ways…
We live in a very tired world. Over 60 percent of workers in America suffer from burnout and extreme fatigue. And things are not better in other countries either. In case you haven’t tried it, I assure you that getting burned out is the fastest way to downgrade your quality of life. If you want to experience a rapid downfall in your creativity, productivity, and well-being, just get insanely busy, heap a senseless number of…
In this video I talk about what I call “transformational fatigue”, the burnout feeling you get sometimes when you’re going through a re-wiring of the energetic make-up of of your being. Any change, including change in your consciousness, can be exhausting. The intangible transformation can take up more energy and mental space than you’ve ever realized. Don’t judge yourself for being “negative” or unproductive. Respect your own metamorphic process. And give it space to happen. Watch…
Do you feel like an impostor at work? You know, the nagging feeling that you’re just faking your expertise and people will find out about you soon. Most experts would say that what you need is more self confidence or higher self esteem. But no, you have enough of those already. In this video I talk about the real reason why you feel like an impostor, and how you can truly thrive at your work…
I got an email the other day from a friend who is a talented writer. She felt discouraged that other people’s work gets attention and praise but not hers. “I’ve worked a long time on my craft,” she said. “But still I don’t know if I’m any good at this. Sometimes I feel it is all hopeless.” I totally sympathize. I’ve been there before. And it got me thinking: why is pursuing our dreams so…
The new year started in a whirlwind. I wrote three essays over the holidays. Two of them got on media outlets of high traffic volume. The third one was picked up on the front page of another popular website. Visits to my blog grew in leaps and bounds. I got more email followers in the first week of 2015 than in the past 12 months combined. The sudden popularity felt surreal. I haven’t changed after…
I used to believe that positive thinking is the key to a happy life. We’ve all heard it before — try to look at the glass half full and you’ll be happier that way. And who knows, maybe you can even “think (positively) and grow rich” or “attract what you want with (positive) thought wave,” as well-meaning motivational speakers want you to believe. I worked diligently on my thoughts. I did daily affirmations and tried…
This video is my intuitive visioning of what 2015 means for all who check any of the following – A. are energetically sensitive B. are going through a major transformation C. felt like shit sometimes in 2014 D. still feel like shit E. feel “emptied out” F. feel life has been a standstill If you’re not any of these, you can still watch. I won’t judge 😎 Happy New Year to all! * *…
(This article was published in Elephant Journal.) I was reshuffling my book collection when my old vision board tumbled off the shelf. Thud! It plunged into the floor face down, stirring up a mist of dust. My cleaning lady Andrea, who came to help me tidy up the house for the New Year, was vacuuming the carpet. She glanced up, first at the board and then at me, with a wide-eyed look saying “I didn’t do…
(This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.) I was having lunch with my friend Jenny recently. She told me she just got a promotion at work, which I knew she had long desired. But Jenny didn’t look too excited. When I congratulated her, she said, “Yeah, but it’s a job nobody wants. I’ll need to manage all these people who don’t get along. And the deadlines are just insane!” I tried to convince her…
Having options is freedom, until it’s not. The modern life offers a plethora of choices. So many that it becomes a burden. We spend insane amounts of time and energy gathering information for the choices we need to make. The process can make you run around all day yet accomplish little of meaning and value. The solution? Makes less choices, have more callings. This video tells you how. * * * Like this post?…
Has this ever happened to you? You give a loved one some advice on their life. You try hard to not make it sound like a criticism. After all, you don’t mean to hurt any feelings. But as soon as you’ve spoken, you see the expression of horror on their face that confirms your worst fear– they feel hurt and betrayed. And now they hate you. I know, I know… how unfair! You mean well.…
Have you ever felt empty? You know, the hollow, blank, ennui, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-f**king-doing-with-my-life kind of empty. If so, does it bother you? FYI: if your answer is no to either question, you’re a rare gem of humanity and no need to read further.
I had my first conscious encounter with emptiness when I was eight. Now, I’m that absent-minded person who’ll forget your name the second after you tell me what your name is. But I remember this non-event distinctively.
It was the end of summer. I had spent the entire summer break catching earthworms in the yard and not much else. School was starting in a week and I hadn’t even touched the homework. As I lied in bed one night, a feeling of hollowness sneaked up on me like Lord Voldemort’s dark ghost. It happened so fast. Before I could make any noise, it seized my gut and raged into my stomach. Suddenly, nothing in life appeared to carry any meaning. All was wasted. Life was in vain. And I was being devoured by a stifling emptiness. A thought immediately followed— My life is going to end futile, because I squandered all my time on worms and will amount to nothing. The sensation and the subsequent thought were so frightening that I found my heart racing and my mouth dry. Tears streamed down my face. I lied there feeling paralyzed.
My father came in to say goodnight, and was surprised to find me crying in bed. He asked me what happened. And I, not able to comprehend the experience or put it into words, told him what I thought it was: “I didn’t do my homework. Now I feel so bad about myself!”
My father, finding it amusing, stroked my hair and softly said, “It’s ok. Just be more diligent next time.”
My father was a strict parent and we rarely shared any tender moment together. So I was a bit surprised by his response. My gratitude to him at that time was beyond measure. Not only did he rescue me from the emptiness monster, but gave me the forgiveness that I was sure not even God was able to bestow.
Neither of us realized that I just had my first rendezvous with the No. 1 primal fear of humanity. Death, annihilation, oblivion, nonexistence. Call it whatever. It’s the opposite of life, which most of us don’t know–and probably don’t want to know–much about. Most people, no matter what belief about death we buy into, unconsciously assume that there’s nothing fun about nonexistence. It’ll be a meaningless void going on and on to eternity. Cold, dark, immobile, like a black hole that the stars die into.
It’s natural to feel that the experience of emptiness is a dreary preview of our worst-fear scenario. No matter whether you’re on top of the world or trampled under Fortune’s wheel, you can get a visit from emptiness anytime. You hear it say: “Hey, come here! Look closer! Yes, this is the dingy dungeon you’ll end up in, exactly like you suspected!”
I don’t blame you if you try to get away from it as much as humanly possible. I did the same, without ever understanding what it was.
As I grew older, emptiness came back again and again. The interesting thing is that it often showed up after I had been relatively unoccupied with activities. So I took it as a sign of having too much time on my hands. I thought it meant that I wasn’t productive or diligent enough. And if I could just get my act together, work harder, and accomplish more, I’d chase the dreary void out of my life for good.
I call this the Over-Achiever’s Plan to Escape Death, aka OAPED. I was never conscious of this plan, but I executed it religiously.
Although few people ever compare notes on this, OAPED is a popular plan shared by many. People’s individual experience of emptiness may differ, but our response to it is almost consensual– Look away! Get busy! Occupy every waking moment with life, life, and more life! In fact, if you want to know how hard someone was bitten by the emptiness bug, just look at their schedule, and count the number of diplomas, gold medals, romantic partners and start-up companies they’ve acquired.
Looking back, I realize that my idleness didn’t really “cause” the emptiness. Instead, it was simply that when body and mind are unoccupied, it leaves more room for emptiness to enter one’s field of awareness.
But does OAPED work? To the same extent that ibuprofen works for your toothache. You can banish the emptiness out of sight for a while. And then when you’re not paying attention, it may come back with doubled force.
After many, many years, one day I finally decided not to run away. I was tired of freaking out whenever emptiness struck. I wanted to change. I held out my hand and tried to be friendly. The first few moments were excruciating. Being eaten alive by a boa constrictor would be more enjoyable. But as I started fudging, a voice in me said, “Stay, stay. You can’t live the life of an escapee forever.” I stayed, as much as I could, jaw clenching and stomach reeling.
At one point, something in me softened. I got a silent message from the void:
“I’m not here to destroy you. I’m here to show you the truth of your own nature. I’m here to give back your power, the power you lost when you thought you were separate from me.”
At that moment, I seemed to see the entire creation happening inside of me. I saw the Universe emerge out of nothingness. I saw star lights expand and shrink into solid black. I saw ten thousand flowers bloom and die. It was so beautiful that I wept, and wept, my heart supple and fresh like a newborn.
The truth is you can never escape emptiness. It is the constant that underlines every existence, the invisible non-structure upon which life weaves its majestic stories. Every moment dies into nothingness. Every moment gets created out of nothingness. Nothingness is in everything.
The moment you stop running away from emptiness is the moment you start living free.
The more at home you feel about nonexistence, the more you triumph over existence. For some of us, that’s when life truly begins.
And even at this very moment, if you allow yourself to be still, you can touch the edge of emptiness with your being. Notice that it is always in you. In fact, it is you.
How does it feel? What do you see?
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Good news: You don’t have to “believe in yourself” to be confident. In fact, it’s optimal that you don’t. The macho, ego-centric kind of confidence is so 20th-century. The truth is that no success is entirely “self-made”. Yes, believing that you created all your accomplishments makes you “confident”, for a while. But does it help you and the world on a greater scale? Many a inflated ego have resulted in a world full of conflicts…
When I was little, my father sometimes let me tag along on his work trips. One time I went with him to this remote northern county in the province of Yunnan, China, where he worked. I had a major motion sickness and constantly dozed off on his lap as we drove along the poorly-maintained mountain roads for three days. The county was then called Zhong-Dian, an out-of-worldly place where horses and gods legendarily roamed free.…
Certain religions want you to believe that desire is somehow an awful thing– a sign of the spiritually unenlightened and a symptom of degenerating materialism in modern society. If that were really the case, then I’m afraid Creation itself would be fundamentally flawed. Because by its nature, desire is an essential part of being human. It’s designed to work for you, not against you, and certainly not against your pursuit of the divine. Just like…
I was a vegetarian for half of my 20s. At that time, to me being a vegetarian simply meant you were on a diet, and I was never not on a diet. Being a vegetarian was especially convenient when sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of people, where I would be under peer pressure to participate in eating activities. Because if pressed by some overly curious person (OCP), we could then have the following…
There are two opposite camps when it comes to how to find those who will end up playing a large role in your life– the mentor, the mate, the good boss, the investor in your venture, the dog walker who’ll keep your neurotic pup exhausted. (Not necessarily in that order of importance.) Some say you need to be proactive, as in going on a hundred dates per week, calling every phone number in the industry…
