Are You Forcing Yourself? Are You Getting In Your Own Way?

You might say that not-forcing is the second principle of the Tao -- in Chinese it is called wu wei, and it means literally 'not doing', but would be much better translated to give it the spirit of 'not forcing' or 'not obstructing'. Wu wei when applied to human activity refers to a person who does not get in his or her own way.

If you are losing energy in the form of joy, health, money, or love, you have a leak in your system. There is no malevolent parasite that has invaded your world and is undermining you. Your leak is on your property, and as such you have access to repair it.

Consider this: 167 million men and women in the United States are on a diet at any given moment. If that many people are trying a solution and it doesn't work, something's wrong with the so-called solution. Contrary to what proponents of expensive diet regimens say, these diets can't work long term, no matter how much willpower you have.

Think about it... for years we have been molded and pushed to behave in certain 'acceptable' ways. We have been asked to adhere to tradition, to behave according to certain accepted rules of behavior, and to dress according to the norm.

Even though many of us had the illusion that reaching adulthood would mean we had achieved a sort of award-worthy final destination where we could live forevermore from a place of certainty and peace, knowing what to do and what to wear in every circumstance, this was probably not the case. 

The minute you awaken in the morning, access your first feeling and your first thought. That first feeling or thought of the day commonly sets the stage and the tone for the rest of the day. So, if that first feeling/thought is not to your liking, the choice is yours. Right then and there is the best time to change it with feelings/thoughts that ARE of your liking.

You cannot avoid truth. It is better to face it, it is better to accept it, it is better to live it. Right now, when you say something, your body says something else; when your tongue says something, your eyes go on saying something else simultaneously.

There is nothing good or worthwhile about having a low opinion of oneself. However, positive self esteem improves one's health, sociability, and general attitude towards life. Negative self esteem is a habit, a highly addictive habit. Perhaps you can see what an enemy to your well- being this is, and have a greater willingness to defeat it.

We have all gone through life saying certain things about ourselves, such as: I'm a shy person, or I'm intelligent, or I'm stupid, or I'm clumsy, or I'm slow, etc. Once we understand the power of the word and of the mind, we come to the realization that all of these statements were simply creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

I have a policy: On Sundays, I don't allow myself to come within five hundred yards of the computer; the phone goes on voice mail; and the cell phone gets to snooze in my purse all day. My friends know how I am about Sundays, and they respect my need for solitude. This soothing Sunday routine means a lot to me...

I teach, speak, and write about joy, peace, power, ease, and grace because I am learning to bring them more fully into my own life, not because I have mastered them. And to the degree that I have been able to make them a reality in my life, part of my life's work is helping others make...

In the film Being John Malkovich, an unhappy guy named Craig discovers a portal into movie star John Malkovich's mind, through which he can live vicariously for fifteen minutes. Soon there is a long line of people paying $200 to enter the portal and be someone else.

We are complex beings. Within each of us there are many, many aspects, some of which seem to be at war with others. We all have an Inner Critic: that voice that nags at us, puts us down, tells us we're not good enough. When we...

Some people feel that they are limited by their genes, by what is encoded in their DNA. Studies show that identical twins raised in different environments have some strikingly similar tastes and behaviors. While that may be true, one must be careful not to use that as an excuse...

When I asked the question -- How does it feel to be sixty? -- of my teacher at the Gurdjieff Foundation, she took her time to ponder it before answering. At last she uttered one succinct word: "Relieved." She went on, "In our teens and twenties, we are absorbed in educating ourselves and plotting our futures; then we are busy working toward realizing..."

When we look in the mirror we see “me”: a particular combination of features that matches our idea of who we are.

As a child, I was afraid of so many things. I was terrified during my parents' violent arguments. I was afraid of my mother's rage and my father's simmering undercurrents. My childhood was defined by my fears. As I grew up, I suppressed fear and denied its existence. But it shaped my life in hundreds of ways.

We cling to so many things without which we believe we simply cannot be happy. Some of us find it difficult to part with objects and mementos of the past, and many of us are pack rats to one degree or another. This may seem like an innocent habit, but the clutter in our minds and hearts...

In an eight-month workshop, which I went on to lead, we asked ourselves four questions each day. What did I notice that had nothing to do with me? What did I do today that I respect myself for? What did I do to help another person today (anonymously if possible)? What bothered me today, if anything? The assignment was to stretch beyond who you normally are.

Each time you have told yourself, I am this, or I am that, you kept yourself limited. You have conformed to a particular way of thinking and a particular way of acting in the world. You have restricted yourself to a certain code of behavior, dictated not by true desire of the heart, but by outside influences.

I would often say that I felt there was a party happening somewhere, but I wasn’t invited. Can you relate to that feeling? When with other people, I would pretend to be happy. I would pretend to have a good time. But inside, I felt a separation and a sadness that I couldn’t shake off. In short, I always felt I was missing out...

Nothing is more important than feeling good, and it doesn't matter beans how you do it. If standing on your head in Times Square will do it, terrific. If smelling newly cut wood will do it, grand. You know when you're there; you can't miss it. Whether it's just a decision to feel good in the moment...

Many people have real challenges in their relationships with other people. Are you one of them? One of the largest contributing factors to your ability to freely enjoy other people depends upon how much you enjoy yourself... how much you accept yourself.

Remember that the goal of this teaching is to facilitate the lessons of unconditional love and acceptance. There is no possibility of accomplishing this toward others if you have not first learned how to unconditionally accept yourself. Here are seven steps to lead you in that direction...

Our feelings are a foolproof guidance system, letting us know if we are experiencing heaven or hell, love or fear, well being or disease. Using your feelings as your guide is the most direct indicator of whether or not you are being peace and happiness.

Our brain is very often overcrowded with doubts and mis­trust. We start to feel lost and confused, no longer sure of what is right and what is wrong. We hope so much that we will develop confidence in our mind and yet doubt always creeps in. But what can be done? How can we achieve any sense of knowing in such states, with so many contradictory thoughts running around in our mind?

Andrea has been married four times, and divorced three. "I don't see myself as a four-time loser; I consider myself a four-time learner. Although those marriages didn't endure, I gained valuable lessons that helped me bring more depth and presence to the relationships that followed, and ultimately contributed to the successful marriage I now have."

Our understanding of the Emotional System today is still in the Dark Ages. This has its analogy to the time when people's understanding of our Solar System was based upon the belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth, as it certainly appeared that way -- however, just the reverse was true. The problem was, as long as we believed the Sun went around the Earth, we were limited as to how far we could go in the Solar System.

Our individual differences and unique expressions all fall into seven major categories related to the seven chakras. Indeed, each category defines a world unto itself comprised of tendencies, attractions, and passions. A closer examination of this principle convinced me that each of us identifies with one major chakra and, to a lesser degree, with one or two other chakras.

The world tries to mold every person into a commodity: useful, efficient, obedient - never rebellious, never asserting itself, never declaring its own individuality, but always being subservient, almost like a robot.

When we stop trying to make ourselves great and simply realize our greatness, it is easy to fall in love with who we are. The greatness that we try so desperately to conjure up is effectively buried beneath our best efforts to make ourselves acceptable.

We all have it ... those inner voices of pessimism and opti­mism ... an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. In fact, global religions throughout time have long attributed spiri­tual titles to these forces, often seeing them as external forces that affect our inner lives.

Many spiritual paths and religions teach you to draw energy from your mentor, guru, or savior. If you absorb positive healing energy, you will be healed. Yet eventually you must consider whether or not the healing energy is coming from outside you or from within you.

The search for love is one all humans, throughout lifetimes, have experienced. We search for those connections in each lifetime. It is our reason for being. We look for love believing we have to alter ourselves in some way in order to attract it, when in fact we need to be loved for who we are.

So many of us go through life trying to be better than someone else, or better than who we think we are, or better than who we've been. Just as Bruce Willis's character in The Kid, we go around trying to "achieve" -- achieve changing ourselves, changing others, and changing...

If you’re like me, you might be finding that you need a bit of a breather this month. It’s important to take time to rest, to let everything settle in, shake out, and shake down, and allow the inner and outer transformations that we have all experienced to take root deeply within our bodies, our psyches, and our souls.

Can you recognize your innocence when others are trying to convince you that you are guilty? None of us have truly sinned. Yes, we have made plenty of mistakes, but none of us has done anything that would cause us for even a moment to lose the love of God or deserve damnation.

What if I told you that you had a magical superpower that could transform your relationships while enriching your life dramatically?

Face it -- the one person you never spend time with is yourself. It's almost too mind-boggling when you think of the questions that would immediately come up if you did: Would I find myself amusing? And here's the big one: Would I even like myself?

If you have all or most of the following symptoms, please be advised that your condition of PEACE may be so far advanced as to not be treatable. 1. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experiences. 2. An unmistaken ability to enjoy each moment.

We all have times in our life where we find ourselves caught in the middle of dramas or 'impossible' situations. Our first tendency mighty be to find who's to blame and/or how to fix it. However, Alan Seale suggests: "This situation has happened for a reason. It wants to tell us something. The drama is a wake-up call..."

Each of you have a masculine and feminine energy in your being, and both need to be activated and brought to an equal place. The feminine spirit must be reawakened for ultimate healing of the planet.

In an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jane Fonda revealed that it wasn’t until after she turned sixty that she realized one of life’s most important secrets: She had to give up her incessant desire to be perfect so that she could begin to experience herself as whole.

Americans are deeply ambivalent about the solitary person in our midst. On the one hand, the lone hero is much admired in national folklore. On the other side of our ambivalence is the belief that to be alone, even temporarily, is to have been abandoned and to be sunk in a black misery of loneliness.

Fault finding serves as a means to justify an illusory sense of superiority. To become a love finder requires us to be vigilant and self-realized. Most of us are just regular, ordinary people; therefore, vigilance will be our primary tool for taking note of our blaming and fault finding.

A critical step in the embrace of silence and solitude is setting aside the notion that we have to be "doing something" throughout our waking hours. For most of us, this goes against what we have been taught since childhood...

Each of us has the opportunity to accept and welcome the gift of living fully in the present. When we awaken to the eternal here and now, we feel alive, mobilized, our senses quickened. Each moment fully experienced becomes an integral part of the sculpting of our future. As we live today, we create our tomorrows.

A successful relationship has two very important components: learning to love yourself first, and then learning to love another person. Too many people ignore the first part, then wonder why it’s so hard to love another. It’s like expecting to water a plant with an empty water pitcher. Or trying to put on your child’s oxygen mask when the airplane cabin pressure drops, but passing out from lack of oxygen before you can get it on.

We look around at the world's problems and wish they would go away, but they stubbornly persist despite our most heartfelt desires. So we end up living in a kind of ethical haze. It seems that everything and everyone is for sale. Nothing remains sacred.

Nobody wants to feel hopeless. There are some who attach themselves to it because they know nothing else. Even people who are suicidal don't want death as much as they want the pain to stop.

Our subconscious is a truly wonderful partner. It finds many ways to communicate with us. The other morning, I found myself humming "Slow down, you're going too fast..." Now, that was a clear message. Have you ever paid attention to the songs that you find yourself humming, or whistling?

In high school I looked up to my classmate Rick Brown, the quintessential cool guy. He was the good-looking captain of the football team and president of the student council. He had a cheerleader homecoming queen girlfriend and was liked by everyone. I envied Rick because he was at the epicenter of the in crowd, and I saw myself as a distant outsider.

You are living a life, not running a race. Slowing the pace so you’re not racing and constantly playing catch-up begins one step at a time. And the first step is to understand what motivates your behavior and the comfort the behavior provides you.

I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming, "Don’t follow me -- I’m following my bliss." Good advice! How much more creative and successful would your life be if you remained true to your own inner guidance rather than imitating the paths chosen by others?

As the subconscious mind takes in information from the outside world, things that tend to consistently happen in a particular way begin to form into beliefs. Then these beliefs can become “truths” to us - something we know to be true and don’t question anymore. In many cases these “truths” can be helpful...

Do you find you minimize parts of yourself such as health, emotions, talents, and abilities for the importance of the outer physique? We have been conditioned to equate the media and beauty industries' approved images with success...

The ancient Greeks knew the unexamined life was not worth living. They knew that the knowledge of self was the key to all other knowledge. This is very profound for each of us today.

Relationships are funny... You go around searching for the 'perfect' mate, and of course, the 'perfect' mate turns out to be not so perfect. What happened? Since everyone is your reflection, you ended up with the perfect reflection of yourself. And of course...

The essence of our being is love. What, then, is love? Because it must be experienced in order to be meaningful, I can't define it for you except to say that it is the total absence of fear and the recognition of complete...

Suppose there were a place we could go to learn the art of peace, a sort of boot camp for spiritual warriors. Instead of spending hours and hours disciplining ourselves to defeat the enemy, we could spend hours and hours dissolving the causes of war.

Hero worship has existed "forever"... it seems that humans have a need to worship someone or something "greater than" themselves. Whether we choose to worship an external God figure (like a saint), or a hero figure from a comic strip or movie, or the movie stars themselves...

Your Inner Compass is constantly sending you signals, but what happens when you don't listen to the signals and act accordingly? Well, the signals don't go away, they simply get louder and more powerful. So when you ignore your Inner Compass, it tries harder and harder to get your attention. This means that what started out as maybe a vague feeling of mild discomfort will become a stronger feeling of discomfort.

I wrote about my difficulties, my challenges, my full and often overwhelming life as a wife, mother, daughter, and full-time professor with hours of evening paperwork. All of these roles took huge chunks out of me, and my exhausting days were underscored by a line I came upon in my journal, one that actually took my breath away as I read it twenty years later...

Everyone says that they want to change, but who is ready, willing, and able to actually do so? Are we ready to give up the comfy, secure little nest cozily settled at the bottom of those ruts, those psychological habits...

Being asked by someone what we believe our “identity” is can be difficult. Whenever this author hears a police officer on a television show yell out, “Identify yourself, please!” she has to laugh. Should the person respond with “I’m a single woman in her 40s who owns six cats and brews my own beer in my spare time”? Or perhaps, “I’m a Leo, and I love to jet ski and eat junk food”?

We are all becoming ultrasensitive now, and our level of telepathy is increasing. Without realizing it, you may frequency-match the low vibrations and troubled thoughts floating around just below the surface in the nonphysical world — and wonder why your mood suddenly changes from cheerful to somber...

When you do something with a negative attitude or in a negative (resentful) frame of mind, you will get the same kind of results on an energy level. As you sow, so shall you reap.

None of us ever truly forgets the nurturing, warm comfort of the womb. We spend our lives trying to re-create that feeling of being held and protected. Nor do we forget the pain of individuation, of leaving Mother and home. We seek throughout our lives to have the separation and the resulting loneliness filled with meaningful relationships...

Although most of us don't mind doing favors now and then, unhappily, some people have no qualms about inconveniencing others if doing so helps them achieve their goals. Although helping these people may give us some pleasure initially, our good feelings vanish when we finally realize we are being used.

We do not need history to tell us that having created every kind of sacred space around the world has not ensured that human beings are guided by unconditional love and the wisdom of the soul. The missing link is the heart. This is why the wisdom teachings of heart-centeredness are always revolutionary at whatever time and wherever they appear.

When we talk about it on paper, detaching or reducing our level of attachment doesn't sound so dif­ficult. There is no need to complicate anything; we keep it simple, moving from one interaction to another without becoming too attached to any one outcome. But in life it rarely happens this way...

Willingness to explore your self-imposed limitations is essential to growth and to healing, but you cannot simply decide to be willing. Everything is a journey and a process of unfoldment. You may be saying right now, “I am willing!” And what good does it do you?

About six months into my heartbreak, I had a rude awakening. I was sitting on my bed pulling up my stockings. A mirrored door was ajar and its reflection caught me off guard. In a flash, I recognized the woman hunched over her feet, glowering at the mirror. It was me, caught in a moment of self-revulsion.

A big clue that you’re caught up in the concern for looking good is if you’re burned out, stuck, deadened, resistant, or experiencing a loss of purpose or inner peace. That’s a signal that somewhere in there the real you is missing. When you feel that way, your energy...

I have been rethinking selfishness, the ego, and self-centeredness. In some schools of thought these are dirty words, nasty attributes to be subdued, transmuted, and overcome. But maybe they're not so bad. Maybe it's all how you look at them. Baseball star Reggie Jackson said, "The only thing I don't...

Everything comes full circle when you make it a priority to take care of yourself. While I know it’s easier said than done, you will definitely reap the benefits almost immediately when you attend to yourself before you attend to others.

When you live with the belief that something about you makes you weak or not good enough, it is difficult to enter into mutual relationships seeking the best for each person. When you do not see your own belovedness and magnificence, it's difficult to think about being a healthy person, much less imagining a mutual relationship...

I act the same no matter what role I am in—facilita­tor, woman, mother, or teacher. Every single person that I come in contact with in this world deserves all of me—not part of me, but every molecule.

When I first heard of the concept of Self Love, I laughed out loud. I was sure it was the most pretentious and ridiculous idea I’d ever heard. I ridiculed the concept for a good long minute and gave it hell. Then I went back to despising myself (that was so much more “humble” and “honorable”).

Today, the number of single adults in the U.S. – and many other nations around the world – is unprecedented.

It is a paradox that if we cannot open our hearts to ourselves, then we have no foundation for dealing with other people lovingly and compassionately. We've been trained not to ask loving and compassionate questions of ourselves. 

Triggers are hooks that summon emotional experiences of other times when you were frightened, harmed, and helpless. When you succumb to a trigger, you feel a sense of guilt, shame, and failure as you add another layer of fear, punishment, and helplessness to your original experience...

The shift from living with attachment to the judgmental mind to living with kindness is perhaps the most important part of our work with the critic. It requires us to embrace all of who we are — the good, the bad, and the ugly. This can require a radical shift in our inner world...

Passion is a very holy thing. You can lose many material things, but if you lose your passion, you're a goner.

No one gets through childhood without some degree of wounding. If we stay blind to these wounds, they have a way of unconsciously ruling us. Our inner child is the full complement of childhood feelings, needs and...

Being attached to negative be­havior is addictive to the brain. In such cases, we are predisposed to make choices based on patterns that seek out unnecessary drama. Could all of this be because you have set a pattern in your thinking that anticipates the worst?

Growing up in Appalachia, many women abided by two rules: it’s impolite to say no, and be as nice as you possibly can be, and everyone will realize you’re the better person. For me, this translated as always say yes and play nice.

Innocence is what we find within ourselves when we stop being suspicious and fearful. When we let go of our socially conditioned caution we discover we have a core of innocence and playfulness. Innocence is a state of self-love and self-acceptance that has almost nothing...

Growing older is inevitable and, as has been said, better than the alternative. Limiting ourselves by age, though, is a state of mind. But often we accept stereotypical statements about age, aging, and what is supposed to happen at certain ages. We don’t need to accept any of these thoughts!

If you find yourself time and again in relationships that make you feel unlovable, then you’re probably short on self-love. I had relationships like this. Wanting love from someone else led me to do crazy things like elope with a man I’d casually met on the beach...

The idealized self — the mask you put on for appearance’s sake — reaches the breaking point during burnout. All that work to maintain the facade, and it couldn’t even deliver the goods. You still don’t feel happy and fulfilled. As a result, the false self finally...

Are you — right now — living a life completely by your own rules? I’m not talking about your parents’ rules, your boss’s rules, or your partner’s rules... Here's how to make your own rule book so that you’re not living their lives, dreams, frustrations, and visions for you...

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration...

If we are to love humanity as a whole, we must first love humanity in a unit of one -- our own self.  I started looking at what loving someone really meant, and...

One of the qualities Buddhists strive for on the path to enlightenment is called “sameness of being.” It means being exactly who you authentically are, no matter who you are interacting with. To be your most authentic self, you must get over your habits of worrying about....

Sadness can become a very enriching experience. You have to work on it. It is easy to escape from your sadness — and all relationships ordinarily are escapes; one simply goes on avoiding it. And it is always there underneath... the current continues...

Did you ever wonder what characterizes a psychologically mature person? I’ve thought about it a lot – both on my own personal inner journey of awakening and because I work as a therapist and coach on a daily basis, helping other people with their issues. Here are some of the things I’ve discovered.

Difficulties we are having in our relationships often mirror parts of ourselves that we need to heal. Such difficulties may involve a family member, a close friend, a coworker, or even a clerk in a store. If you are having difficulty with a relationship take...

How can you free yourself from being lost in your thoughts? To understand the answer we must examine the chain reaction of thought. Every thought that passes through your mind sets the background for the next one. Your attention keeps reacting to each thought in a way that makes way for the next. For example...

Too often the inner brat influences us to say or do things that we later regret, just because it can't tolerate even mild frustration. Representing primitive desires and impulses, the inner brat wants what it wants, when it wants it, without considering the consequences.