Podcast 365: A New Way To Be Human with Robert V. Taylor

Robert V. TaylorIt was a pleasure interviewing Robert V. Taylor about his new book entitled ” A New Way to Be Human: 7 Spiritual Pathways to Becoming Fully Alive.”   This book is not just about another way to find your spiritual path. Through Robert’s story you get to learn about his own personal spiritual path, which by the way is truly fascinating.

Robert was born and raised in South Africa and had the distinct pleasure of working along side Desmond Tutu’s during the apartheid movement.  He also graduated from seminary school at Union Theological School and become the highest ranking openly gay clergy person in the Episcopal Church.   As you can already imagine his own personal spiritual journey makes him uniquely qualified to write and speak on this topic.

One of the important things that Robert advocates within “A New Way To Be Human” is to share your own story.  As he states sharing your story reveals the Holy present in you, speaking through your story to yourself and others.  If , on the other hand, you choose not to share your story, you choose to dishonor, devalue, and disbelieve the truths that your life reveals.  How right he is about stepping into your own and being proud of your story–it is the foundation of who and what you are, it is your authentic-self being expressed.

Robert makes reference within the book about stepping stones, and you will hear us speak about these stepping stones throughout the interview.  He discribes Stepping Stone Two as: Accepting the Invitation.  He states when you are secure in your own story, you discover that the stories of others offer you an invitation. As you accept these invitations, the vibrancy of the Holy at work infuses your life as you love, live, and celebrate your connection with others.  Transformation happens.

Throughout the book Robert has provided the reader with wisdom and invitations to explore their own spiritual life at a very deep level.  He also provides “Spirited Practices” designed to inspire you to awaken to your own spiritual expression and path.   These are just friendly reminders at the end of each chapter that jolt you into awareness about your spiritual journey and practices.

If you are on a spiritual path, and want to explore “A New Way To Be Human” I encourage you to read, practice and open up your heart to the ideas and stories that Robert has carefully crafted into his book.  If you would like more information about Robert V. Taylor you can click here to be directed to his website, or you can click here to be directed to his Facebook page.

Enjoy my wonderful interview with a great author and spiritual leader-Robert V. Taylor.

Podcast 356: Days Go By, Not Love by Therese Benedict

Theresa BenedictI recently had the pleasure of interviewing author  and clairvoyant Therese Benedict.  Her new book entitled “Days Go By, Not Love” has been written as she states from the words of God, and it is now time for his words to reach all of his children; to bring this world together.

Theresa herself as a  clairvoyant has helped many of her clients make connections with the angels around them who are there guiding and protecting them as they move through their daily lives.  Therese states that when you give your life to God knowing your angels will help you complete your change in life—you will be successful in your hearts desires. You will learn how they speak to you, and how to make it through this life of positive change.  It is important to trust what you are doing. To know you are making the right choices to better who you are as a person.

Therese says that anyone can learn how to speak with and intuit the angels.  You need to pay attention to your spiritual intuition as well as your surroundings, and the messages that the angels are relaying to you will become clear. Practice everything you learn and use it with your heart.  Give yourself to the angles; you will see miracles when this is in place.  Trust God, believe in the angels and believe in yourself.

I know at times we all can get depressed and down because things don’t seem to be going our way.  It is times like this is when we need to reach within and believe in a higher power, God, angels whatever provides you with the inspiration to uplift your spirit and touch your soul.  It is our soul that longs to make the deep inner connection with God, and if we learn to nurture our soul we certainly will look at the difficult and challenging times with a new perspective, and sometimes that’s all it takes.

If you are in need of an uplift and some inspiration then you ought to read “Days Go By, Not Love”. Therese new book has been designed to provide the reader to dig deep,  reflect and write through journaling pages as the end of each chapter .  I don’t know about you,  but journaling is very cathartic for me–and Therese’s book provides ample opportunity to read, reflect and write.

If you want more information about Therese  Benedict and her new book please click here to be directed to her website, or click here directed to her Facebook page.

 

Enjoy this great interview with a wonderfully authentic author–Therese Benedict.

Podcast 354: Blindsided by Arlene Blix

Arlene BlixI recently attended a Healthy People Conference at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, CA and was introduced to Arlene Blix by a very good friend of mine Dr. Steven Bizal.  I soon realized that Arlene had published a book about her journey through grief, loss and survival as a result of her husbands struggle and ultimate death from liver cancer.

The book is aptly titled “Blindsided” which is what many people who go through an experience like Arlene’s feel like, at least that was the case for Arlene.  Her husband was the image of perfect health, and suddenly started having leg pain then intestinal issues before being diagnosed with liver cancer.

This book is as much about Arlene’s journey with her husband Glen, but it also brings to light the feelings emotions and the roller coster ride that the loved ones take when cancer strikes so close to home.

I know that many of you know my personal family experience, my eldest son at the age of 21 was diagnosed with Leukemia.  I took Arlene’s journey, and am well aware of the grief, and emotional pain that one experiences when a loved one is battling cancer.

Frequently,  I think that the people who are diagnosed are more prepared than the families and spouses.  At least this was the case with Glen.  As a matter of fact he stated to Arlene that he was prepared to die, and that he had a good life.  He was spiritual and had a wonderful relationship with God–death was an opportunity to reunite with God.  A relationship likes Glen  is so important in facing our impermanence, it makes the journey through death so much easier.

What I loved about Glen’s message in the book “Blindsided” is that he challenged all that knew him to serve humanity, and to maintain connections and model love.  What a wonderful way to leave your legacy.  Eight three people came to Glen’s and Arlene’s home for what was referred to as a “living funeral”.  An opportunity to say good by, acknowledge and honor someone you love before their death.  What a beautiful way to help someone move into the hereafter.

On March 19, 2002 at 9:50PM Glen took his last breath and moved into the heavens. Arlene’s book is a tribute to a man who really knew the meaning of life.  I encourage you to love, live and connect with others this is such an important part of being able to move through the grieving process.

 

If you want more information about Arlene and her work as a grief counselor, please click here to be directed to her website. I hope you enjoy this interview with Arlene Blix the author of “Blindsided“.

Podcast 344: This Is The Moment with Walter Green

Walter GreenHow many of you have really thought about the importance that being grateful plays in your life?  I recently interviewed Walter Green the author of a new book entitled ” This Is The Moment-How One Man’s Yearlong Journey Captured the Power of Extraordinary Gratitude“, and was throughly impressed at the lengths Walter took to express his gratitude to 44 of the most influential people in his life.

In my interview with Walter we discussed the impact this experience had on his life.  He wanted to tell these men and women how much they mattered to him before anyone’s health or life was compromised and the opportunity was missed.  Walter mentions that you might think of his life as as rags to riches story, but that it is anything but that.  He realized that significant contributions to his learning and success these  44 individuals played .

As Joseph Campbell articulates in his book “The Hero’s Journey” we go on the departure, then have the initiation and ultimately the return.  I think in the case  Walter departed  on his own spiritual journey and through the beauty of gratitude  was able to experience the freedom  upon his return as a result of his profound gratitude.

Walter experienced mastery which leads to the freedom from the fear of death.  You see, Walters father died he was a very young age, and his death made a significant impact on the journey that he embarked upon to recognize and express his gratitude to the people that had a deep heartfelt role in the molding of his life.

As Walter states in ” This Is The Moment“, ” Their pieces of input allowed me a unique opportunity to answer the question; ” Who am I?”  What an empowering gift! . I never set out with an agenda of learning about myself; doing so was parenthetical and incidental, but not inconsequential.  Not only that it started me thinking about my personal legacy.  We all have a perception of ourselves, and everything we do is consistant with that vision—our integrity, our energy, or performance, our giving to others.  This leads us to keep an internal scorecard and wonder how we’re doing. Am I doing the right things? Am I doing enough?

But the scorecard get buried with us.  When we’re gone, only the perceptions other have of us live on.”   If you have at ever thought about expressing your gratitude to someone one you love or who has made an impact on your life, what is stopping you?  Go do it!

Walter’s experience and the stories he tells in “This Is The Moment” will certainly move you to want to express your gratitude.  I encourage you to read this book and  also share your stories of gratitude with Walter by visiting his website by clicking here.  You will also want to watch a video by clicking here about the book.

Walter will be speaking at an upcoming event in San Diego for Renaissance Executive Forums you can register for the March 20th event by clicking here.

 

Enjoy this great interview with author Walter Green.

Podcast 343: Living Fully with Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche

Shyalpa Tenzin RinpocheWhat an amazing interview with Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche about his new book entitled “Living Fully“.  The essence of the Rinpoche’s book is the importance of each breath and the life force and joy in each breath.

Now I am aware that at the pace we move in the Western world, understanding the importance of our breath is so essential; but really how many of us pay attention to our breath or are aware of the gift of each breath.  When you distill the message of this book into these terms and the simplicity of what we all take for granted you begin to see the beauty and transformational power within the message of “Living Fully”.

As Rinpoche state in “Living Fully” “Whether we realize it or not, our deepest aspiration is to experience the richness and fullness of our being in every moment. Each of us has the capacity to live fully, but how do we recognize our potential? ”  In my interview with Rinpoche we discuss the many desires and attachment we have to the physical world and how these desires and attachments really are not bringing us happiness and joy and distract us from “Living Fully“.

Happiness and joy are fulfilled when we look deep inside and content with who we are regardless of all of our worldly possessions.  As Rinpoche mentions in “Living Fully” instant pleasure is not the true way to enjoy our freedom.  When we know how to surrender, we can truly appreciate our freedom. This ability to surrender comes from a disciplined approach to life.  Surrender is not submitting to a higher authority, like an army recruit saluting a drill sergeant.  Rather, we surrender when we give up trying to satisfy all of our hopes and expectations.

If we abandon our efforts to fabricate a “perfect” world, we all experience genuine freedom that is not corrupted by endless craving or something better.  Understanding the philosophy and practice of the Buddhist way is quite simple.  Finding our essence of our precious human nature is learning how to live in the moment, enjoying each and every breath and the joy that it brings.

While this might sound like utopia, because we are all aware the plethora of distractions our material world brings, it  would certainly be nice to not just capture these moments but to become one with them permanently without programming our brains to remember how to remember what it feels like.

So if you are so inclined and want to learn from a master then I would recommend that you read and emerse yourself in the teaching of Rinpoche.  His new book is delightful, and something all of us in the Western world need to become more aware of how important the aspect of something as automatic as our breath teaches us about the joys of life.

 

If you would like to learn more about the book click here to be directed to the Rinpoche’s website or listen to a YouTube interview with the publisher Marc Allen at New World Library by clicking. here. Enjoy this great and inspirational interview with a wonderfully compassionate man.

Podcast 340: Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living with Allan Lokos

Allan LokosIn a recent interview with author Allan Lokos we discussed his new book entitled ” Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living“.

Allan’s book was born one summer evening when a dear friend made a comment “Just about every mistake I have every made and every unkind word I have ever spoken might have been avoided if I had been more patient.”  Allan thought that this was a stunning statement revealing remarkable insight, and it was the birth of this book.

The development of genuine, open-minded patience may very well lead one to also examine one’s experience of anger and its root causes.  Although impatience and anger are not the same, they live in the same neighborhood states Allan.  In fact, it is as if they live in the same house with barely a flimsy curtain between them, anger ready to join in when impatience shows the slightest interest in emerging from its thin-shelled cocoon.  Not coincidentally, the journey that develops patience is traveled along a path similar to that which undermines the deceiving appeal of anger and what at times can appear to be anger’s uncontrollable nature.

The development of patience requires an understanding of the  root causes of our stress, anxiety, and frustration.  Then we must be willing to relinquish the type of thinking that leads to the loss of patience.  Although anger and patience are not opposites, they can be thought of as two side of the same coin.  When one side is visible the other is hard to see.  When one side is active the other is unlikely to emerge.

Allan is a teacher of Buddhist practices and his approach is not to get attached to the emotions that anger and frustration stur up within one.  To become more mindful from moment to moment which includes being nonjudgmental.  Because of anger’s enormous potential for danger, it would be an exaggeration to say we call on patience to come to the rescue, to save the day, perhaps even to save a life.  The courageous act of starting to address one’s anger and develop greater patience is, to me , a sacred act.  The simple act of pausing invites the mind and body to stop, to allow fiery thoughts to cool and subside before giving them expression.

 

If you want to cultivate more patience and reduce the dangers of anger and frustration, then you ought to read and take in the very important message of “Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living“.  This is a book worth the read, and especially in the complex world we are living in today that frequently tests our patience.

If you would like more information about Allan Lokos and his new book please click here to be directed to his YouTube video.

Podcast 337: God Works with Dr. Jonathan Ellerby

Jonathan EllerbyI not only had the pleasure of recently interviewing Dr. Jonathan Ellerby about this exceptional enhanced book for Apple iPad, but Wiseologie Media Group that I am a partner in had the honor of helping create and publish “God Works, Why God Is Nothing You’d Expect and Everything You Need.”

In my interview with Jonathan we speak about this unique book and what Jonathan refers to as the God Stigma.  Just what is the God Stigma–simply stated it is our willingness to admit that we believe in a higher power, and we trust in that higher power but when it comes to expressing our feelings with others about our beliefs in “God” there is a real stigma in society.

This new book not only addresses this conundrum that we are all faced with, but it explores our inner beliefs, values and how we might shift these patterns and beliefs in a way to support our spirituality.

Jonathan expresses that one of the underlying factors associated with the “God Stigma” is our fear of expression and that it is important that we disgard that fear to take on a God-consciousness or God-understanding.  God is not an idea to be debated, but a feeling, and experience to be cultivated.  To debate about the nature of God for too long implies a lack of true awareness, because God, like love, is something so real to those who have felt it, and yet impossible to explain or analyze to those who have not yet fully been struck.

So, if we are responsible about it, then the key to a helpful conversation in which God is referenced, is to first know that God is best felt, not explained, and then, out of respect, to ask, “What is God to you?’

If you are truly interested in exploring “God” from a spiritual context and don’t want to get ensconced in the idea of  separation, that frequently takes place when we open up to others about our beliefs in “God” then I recommend that you download a copy of  “God Works” for your Apple iPad.

In this new enhanced book author Jonathan Ellerby explores the true nature of “God”.  The real heart of all energy, matter and awareness, and to talk to God as a divine friend who is in charge of all things and also happens to be infinitely wise and powerful.

 

For more information about “God Works” please click here to be directed to the Apple Store to purchase your copy.  Our you can watch a couple of video’s with Jonathan Ellerby that are also part of the book by clicking here.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful interview, and that you will experience a very immersive and engaging enhanced book especially created for  the  Apple IPad.   Jonathan speaks from his heart about how “God Works” and you can watch a video introduction by clicking here.

Podcast 327: The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred with Guy Finley

Guy FinleyIf you have been looking for a book that will stimulate your soul, then you have come to the right place.  Author Guy Finley in his new book entitled ” The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred” has truly written a book that will stur your soul and get you thinking about your spirituality.

I personally love book that are designed to get us to think from our heart, and not our head.  ” The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred will truly inspire your heart center.  The book offers the reader a collection of universal spiritual quotations that the author has collected over the last thirty-five years.  They are divided into three distinct categories, within which they are presented chronologically–from the earliest to the most recent.

Guy starts the book off with a great quote from Walt Whitman’s classic work “Leaves of Grass”. And I quote ” Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world? Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur to every life; the something never still’d–never entirely gone? the invisible need to every seed? It is the central urge in every atom to return to its diving source of origin, however distant.

As Guy writes ” In the first of these four lines, we’re asked a vital question: is the a part of us that longs to know–that’s willing to seek out–what lies hidden just beneath the thought–tossed surface of ourselves? If our answer is “Yes”, then Mr. Whitman goes on to suggest what awaits us there in that great, undiscovered country of our innermost Self.

In my interview with Guy we explore the wisdom of the Mystic Masters and the timeless ideas and what they help us reveal to ourselves.   These timeless ideas are designed to ignite and allows us to remember our “seeds of fire”–discrimination, intention and illumination.

 

Please join with me in a wonderful interview with an amazing author and man with ageless wisdom.  Guy will share with us timeless insights, thoughts that will stur our soul and settle our hearts.

This book is part of a much larger vision and quest for author Guy Finley called One Journey.  It is Guy Finley’s vision to allow his readers to share their insights, vision and wisdom at a new his new community based website One Journey.net.  You can be connected by clicking here.

encourage your to visit the website and watch the great video–it will truly inspire your soul.

Podcast 325: Live Off Your Passion with Scott Dinsmore

Inside Personal Growth with Greg Voisen · Podcast 325: Live Off Your Passion with Scott Dinsmore I was recently introduced to author Scott Dinsmore’s work