There’s never enough money and always something that we believe needs to get done. The emails are piling up, customers are asking for more, the house needs cleaning, the laundry, the groceries, and our spouses and children need our attention. Then there are all the proactive things we know we should be doing: daily exercise, meditation, healthy cooking and eating right, getting enough sleep, yoga, spending time with loved ones, reading and our spiritual practice. Just 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there…sure, it all sounds good in theory.

Sometimes it’s just too much. On the best of days, I can barely keep up. Then one thing goes wrong and I’m left scrambling just to catch-up. How am I supposed to prioritize the pressures of money and work with creative pursuits, with parenting, with my spiritual practice, my other commitments…and through all of it I’m supposed to stay centered and feel good?

The moments I really feel good, if I’m being honest, is when I wake up late, enjoy a cup of coffee, spend time with my partner and children, listen to my favorite music, let the conversation wander, and feel the inspiration and the sunshine fill the room as the dishes pile up and the floor remains dirty. Yet, it is in this moment that I feel I should be doing something else…and so I get moving, and the entire cycle repeats. Oh, and I’m one of the lucky few—working from home according to my own schedule. If I had a regular job, I would sadly have to let much of my routine go.

We live in an age when we want to have it all, we know all too well what we should be doing, and so we set almost impossible goals. But impossible goals fail, and lead to stress and depression. I don’t have an easy answer to this problem, but I do know one thing: no matter what we feel needs to be done, the only real priority is that we feel good. When it gets to be too much, the least we can do for ourselves is to meditate for 15 minutes and reset. And there I go again, making it sound simple…just 15 minutes, right? We continue doing our best (nothing more and nothing less) tomorrow and each day after that.

Yesterday we looked directly at the ego’s violent thought system of sacrifice. There is another thought system that, when put into practice, offers everything you’ve ever wanted. This is the thought system of love.

Love isn’t exactly a thought system, but the thought system of love is needed so that the mind doesn’t block the natural love energy within you from flowing. To harness the power of love throughout every dimension of life requires that we re-condition the mind away from fear and toward the following:

Acceptance—no judgement of good and bad and no resistance. Respond to anything that happens with action if needed, but only loving action that flows as a calm response to full acceptance.  

Giving—love knows nothing of taking or getting. Perfect love is only concerned with giving. This may be as simple as giving your full attention to someone; but may also include service or value creation. The natural response to giving is receiving. To create value is to get paid. To serve is to be served. As I said, this is a very different thought system.

Honesty—speak your loving truths, be yourself, and let others respond however they do. Give only what you decide to give and feel like giving. State your needs and give others the space to do the same.

Openness—say yes to pretty much whatever comes your way. If someone or something comes into your life, it is for a reason. Accept it, fully experience what it is, then let intuition lead from there.

Tap into the power of love by practicing perfect union—which is freedom from ego, ongoing inner-peace as well as meaningful success and abundance. Everything we ultimately desire is found only in love, but only after we shed the thought system of ego. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

The thought system of the ego is held together with rules that can only result in misery. One of the fundamental errors of ego is belief in salvation through sacrifice. With the principle of sacrifice in place, what else but pain, misery and death can follow? What is sacrifice, after all, but the exchange of what you do want for that which you do not?

The only justification for such an insane belief is that somehow, magically, in the future, you will have sacrificed enough and will be somehow rewarded with your treasure. Yet the treasure you seek is forever within you and was never lost (only sacrificed). There is a clear problem with cause and effect. If you are able to look clearly at this, your ego cannot survive.

There is an ego-voice in the head that drives us mad with a narrative of fear and guilt. The voice is silent, yet still loud enough to fill the body with enough negative emotions and suffering that we are driven to madness. The unawakened response to this madness is either more sacrifice or some desperate attempt to escape from the thoughts. Whichever of these paths are chosen, the result is always the destruction of the self and of the planet. For what purpose?

The purpose of the ego is always your enslavement. The ultimate illusion is that this insane thought system is not yours. The voice in the head sounds like yours, but the ego’s thought system was relentlessly taught to you through endless repetition by those who have attempted to enslave you. The ego is the conditioned mind, and the conditioning was never meant to work in your advantage.

Let us start by seeing the illusion, the lie of sacrifice. Tomorrow we turn away from sacrifice to look at a thought system that allows us to live in abundance and freedom now.

No matter our gender or sexuality, we all want to love and to be loved. We also want a love that lasts a lifetime. But if this is true, why do so many relationships end in breakup and why do so many others result in ongoing misery?

By establishing rules and limitations in a relationship, we instantly end the blissful feeling of love only to enter into an arrangement that drains us of all vitality and slowly kills us. We ruin love the moment we close our hearts or ask our partners to do the same.

Falling in love is most amazing feeling in the world. The reason is simple: love rescues us from a depressed state in which we are closed. True love inspires us to fully open our hearts, minds, and bodies in ways that are new and exciting. This feeling can last forever, but only if we don’t close.

The problem is that we love this feeling so much that we cling to our loved ones. We become possessive and we fear losing this feeling. So we get jealous and controlling, we start demanding attention and time together, we agree to never again have feelings for people outside the relationship. Now, tragically and unexpectedly, the love energy starts to fade.

In such a relationship, we feel isolated, trapped, cut off from the energy of freedom. Now total honesty is no longer welcome because everything that falls outside the rules is forbidden. What started out as love becomes a cage. This kind of relationships leaves us cut off from the world and even separated from each other.

Spirituality teaches us that salvation is possible by extending perfect love to all our brothers and sisters. We are taught to practice unconditional acceptance and total honesty. But how can anyone practice perfect love with all of humanity if we are forbidden from practicing perfect love with our romantic partner? It’s impossible. As long as we accept this reality, we are deciding against healing.

This message is perhaps the most unpopular message of all these days. But the truth remains: we will need to fundamentally change the way we love if we're ever going to heal the world from sickness and insanity. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

Perhaps more than anything else, every single one of us wants to be loved. Tragically, most people don’t know how to approach love, and so the experience of love feels fleeting at best and unattainable at worst.

Love is the normal state of existence—the very essence of what we are. If it ever feels as though love is lacking, it is because we are blocking it.

We block love by withholding it. We know that the other person wants our love, and by withholding it through various forms of attack or attitudes of resentment, we try to teach a lesson. We believe that, by making things uncomfortable enough for the other person, that he or she gets it and changes. But even if the behavior does change (which is unlikely), you will not get what you really want; which is always the experience of more love.

Withholding only creates more withholding. You begin to believe that resentment and attack works, and so you do more of it. At the same time, you are teaching the other person that this is the way. So you both grow colder to each other, more resentful and even violent. How can love survive such a situation?

We also block love by failing to forgive ourselves and others. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you always condone everyone’s behavior; rather, that you love the being on a level that is beyond the behavior. You recognize that we all make mistakes, and that the best way to undo error is always the loving response. The first person we need to forgive, categorically, is ourselves. Self-forgiveness unblocks love within us. Now it can flow freely as we extend that same forgiveness to others.

We also block love by limiting it. We set rules, we accept rules, we reject people for countless reasons, and we attack our partners with our jealousy. To forbid love in any form is to withhold it.

Love can only be lacking because of these and so many other tragic errors. We want perfect love, so we must learn to unblock it. This is what we continue doing here tomorrow and each day after that.

All human relationships are inherently sacred and have the potential to lift us up. When we fail to see this—choosing instead to respond to a brother or sister with superficiality, judgment, suspicion, or with any form of resistance—we are making the tragic mistake of choosing failure and depression instead of liberation and abundance.  

What would happen if, instead, we were to open our hearts and our minds to each other in faith that every interaction with everyone is sacred?

When we meet every human interaction with total acceptance and total honesty, what always happens (as Michael S. Singer points out in his book Untethered Soul) is that we become filled with positive energy and inspiration that never fades. Open heart. Open mind. Feel the energy flow.

When we then orient ourselves toward service and value-creation, what always happens is that we experience wealth and abundance. Only by creating value for others does value return to us. Money isn’t the source of value; only a storage container. The source of value is our willingness and ability to practice perfect love in our relationships (even our challenging business relationships). Love is giving and serving—which of course is value creation.

You want to feel good, you want to succeed, and you want to be happy. The simple truth is, you can’t do it alone. Isolation is hell. Union is heaven. Salvation is the act of meeting each human relationship with perfect love. This is the purpose behind the “I Am by Infobeing” mobile app experiment. Join the community to practice this relationship yoga with others who share the same purpose.

We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

Image by Jo Sam.

How do you know whether your mind is causing uneccessary worry and stress, or whether your thinking is productive?

There is a big difference between problem-solving and worrying. Lying awake at night in worry is very different from lying awake in creative problem-solving mode.

The human mind is the most advanced, most capable problem-solving machine we know of. While spiritual leaders often talk of a state of no thought—and it is essential that we learn to create gaps in our thinking to undo ego—in this world we also need to use the full potential of our minds.

A mind absent of ego is optimized because it is aligned with truth. A mind that is optimized can accomplish anything because it is free of illusion, calm and steady, and in service to love, beauty and truth. It’s okay if your mind is racing with new ideas, spinning out different scenarios or possibilities and solving problems. But as it does, pay attention to your inner-body and your emotions. Do you feel stressed, worried, fearful? If not, then everything is great and your thinking is clear.

But a worried mind isn’t capable of solving problems. Real solutions always come from a state of positive clarity. Positivity is the high-frequency energy of love. Love energy always accepts, forgives, cares for, creates and serves in a way that is fun and effortless. A fearful mind, on the other hand, only causes more problems. The energy of fear is violent, selfish, attacking or depressing at best. This only leads to action which causes more problems. Fear also causes stress…which accelerates the aging process and makes us ill.

Whenever you experience fear or worry about the future, the best response is to connect with a spiritual teaching and meditate. Let that stuff go. But if your mind is aligned with love, following the excitement and positive energy of intuition with in, then by all means unleash your thoughts and actions fully! This is the sacred process of consciousness coming into this world of form through you—which is the purpose of our lives. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

We are so afraid of suffering that we suffer. Or, as Peter Russell explains, “We have lost the very thing we seek.”

Fear rarely exists in the present moment. There are perhaps only a few moments in our lives when we are in legitimate danger, yet each day we allow fear to persist as a normal part of our thought processes. In some cases, ironically, it is our desperate need to escape the suffering of worried thoughts that drives us to do things that are dangerous (extreme sports, drug abuse, creating conflict and fights, etc.). By making fear real, we are creating real reasons to fear.

We fear because our minds cannot foresee the future. Reality is far too complex to be fully grasped by the mind. There are too many variables—most of which are out of our control. Deep down, we know this but cannot accept it. This is what causes the fear, the worries, the urge to hide from reality, and the desperate and ineffective attempts to interfere with rather than accept reality.

But life doesn’t have to suck! We can learn to stop taking our worries about the future so seriously. The antidote to fear and the solution to any problem is perfect love—which is practiced when we meet the present moment with full attention and acceptance. We need only do our best each day, become open and willing to accept reality without judgments of good and bad, and then react lovingly. Follow the signs, let intuition lead rather than the mind. Try this and you will find that things tend to work out.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

We continue tomorrow and each day after that.

There is a relentless, natural drive within each of us toward happiness and fulfillment. The problem is that we are seeking salvation in external form. This is materialism; the tragically errored belief system of the world.

Materialism teaches us that happiness is found in possessions, or in the right relationship, in fame or recognition, or in wealth and in luxury. While these things are nice, and perhaps even enjoyable for some time, nothing in the world of form has ever brought anyone closer to fulfillment. We are sacrificing everything for a belief that has never delivered on its promise.

When you think about it, everything we most deeply desire is found in the invisible realm, not in form. We want lasting love. We want to feel good, to be understood, and to be respected. We want positive energy and inspiration. We want lasting freedom and safety. We crave truth and beauty. This is the stuff of spirit, consciousness—the realm of our true identity which lies beneath the surface. None of this can be experienced or found in the material realm.

To awaken is to undo materialism. Consciousness is a knowing that we are not our bodies and minds; rather, we are the invisible life within that is observing the thoughts, the drama, the experiences of this life. Fulfillment begins with the deep recognition of this dimension within and is experienced fully through the practice of connecting with others in this ego-less realm of oneness or union.

We are consciousness—empty space, no thing, invisible. We were brought into this world to bring consciousness into this material realm so that the universal energy of life can learn and grow. When we awaken to the purpose of life, we instantly find what we were seeking. We continue tomorrow and each day after that.