Author Archive

One of my audiences is high school and college students.  As such, I have been acutely aware of how bullying has escalated in the past decade to the point where it increasingly ends in a suicide or an attempt.  For awhile I could not understand what caused the upsurge in this particular form of insensitivity and intimidation.

I’ve figured it out.

It’s our leaders.  In government, in our churches, in business… the adults of the world have shown, through the behavior of both the bully and the victim, intimidation works.

Think about it.

The cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy, the ramming through of legislation whether or not it’s in the nation’s best interest, harassment and terror experienced by whistle blowers who witness criminal behavior or a lack of fiduciary duty in the private financial sector… all of these have been going on for a very  long time.  Long enough for an entire generation to observe what we do rather than what we say.  So now, we have a generation imbued with the belief that bullying is power.

Our children have watched people in the bully pulpit… acting like bullies.  Is it any wonder the problem has become endemic?

The only power a bully has is humiliation.  The way out of this pattern of behavior actually rests with the so called “victim.”   You see, you cannot bully someone who 1) has no secrets and 2) holds values worth dying for.

Moses, Jesus and Gandhi knew it.  It’s why their legacies have endured long past those of their oppressors.  Many others have known it as well.  It’s the principal of high moral character attributed to John Galt, the protagonist in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. And regardless of the century or the society, it’s still the surefire way to defeat a bully.

Live your life with integrity and know what you value enough such that to live with less would be to not really live at all.

If we each step up and live ethical lives predicated upon truthfulness and personal responsibility, we will know our self worth and be certain in our self esteem.  Bullies, be they ancient Egyptians, first century Romans, the British in India, sexually abusive priests, dictatorial governmental leaders or corrupt corporate executives… all need our cooperation in order to maintain their power.

Cultivate the highest version of yourself  and know what you believe in and bullies will be out of a job. That’s good unemployment.

As we embark upon this holiday season, may I make a suggestion?

Make a wish.  Now, don’t write this off as some fairy-tale-mental-meandering of a pie-in-the sky blogger.  Stick with me.  I’m going to make sense of it.

There are thousands of self-help and self-improvement books, tapes and CD’s out there and they sell for a reason.  We live in a high-tech/ high stress world and can use all the help we can get to…well… just get by.  In fact, the power of positive thinking has become the golden egg, so to speak, of this genre.  Whether the “Laws of Attraction,” “The Secret,” or a myriad of others techniques, they all teach, encourage and support focusing your mind to bring to you that which you want.

Well, before we had all the science and fancy words it was called “making a wish.”  After all, when performed properly, wish making shares much in common with these more advanced forms of manifesting your intention.  In fact, focused thought to manifest your intention sounds a lot like making a wish so your dream come true, doesn’t it?

Here’s something else they have in common.  Both require you to do your part, to do the work necessary along the way.  Neither focused thought nor wish-making is predicated upon you having a random thought or making a one-time wish and then sitting back, opening your arms and passively awaiting your bounty to arrive via FedEx or otherwise.

What both are predicated upon is that there exists a moment when no matter how much preparation and work you do, outside influences beyond your control may intervene to detour or totally obstruct the object of your desire.  And so, the power of intention or the laws of attraction hold that if you keep your thoughts focused upon what it is you want, even when you are not physically engaged in achieving it, you can perhaps outwit or end-run those obstructionist energies and thereby call to your assistance some inexplicable aspect of Universal energy.

So, too, with wish-making.

Its benefits engage at that point where all human effort leaves off.  And whether you believe an angel, a fairy, a leprechaun or God intervenes on your behalf to fulfill that which you seemingly could not… in the end its all the same.

What you are doing by positive thinking or wish-making is acknowledging a force that, when combined with your own, is able to co-create a specifically desired outcome.

So, this holiday season, try making a wish.  Here’s how:

Sit down, calm down and be quiet.

Look at something living.

Close your eyes.

Put your left hand over your heart.

Put your right hand over your left hand.

Breathe abdominally.

Now, on the exhale, whisper exactly what you wish for.

Do so in precisely eight words or syllables.

Then trust that your wish has been received in thought and will, when the time is right, manifest in matter.

If that all seems to “fairy-dust-esque” for you then purchase a copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” or Esther and Jerry Hicks’ “The Laws of Attraction.”

As for me, I’m simply wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a blissful coming year.

Well, let me say this from the outset:  If you’ve misplaced, or totally lost your sense of irony and humor in the midst of all the chaos, don’t read any further.  You simply won’t get it.  But if you’re still holding out for some sweetness and light, here it is.

The connection between the newly discovered Star of David on the roof of the Iranian National Airlines building and the chaos resulting from the WikiLeaks disclosure of classified documents is Cosmic Humor.

“What’s that?” you want to know.

Cosmic humor is when God (sometimes referred to as the Universe or Source) is having a good old time doing what it does best… creating.

What is being created at the moment is so obvious one could almost miss it in its simplicity.  Chaos.  Chaos is being created in order to affect real change.  Now there are two plots being acted out here.  I’ll refer to them as the “lower” and “higher” vibration scenarios.

In the lower vibration scenario, individuals and organizations with money and/or power think they are manipulating the masses in order to acquire yet more money and more power.  They are deliberately creating chaos (with a small “c”) to reach their desired ends.

Simultaneously, the higher vibration scenario, commonly referred to as God, is orchestrating (perfect word since we’re literally talking about a higher frequency of energy) events and occurrences that are, in fact, using the lower vibration energies to effect an outcome that moves humankind to its highest and most expansive role ever in the history of the world.  Chaos with a big “C.”

How?

NO MORE SECRETS!

So, back to WikiLeaks and the Star of David on the top of the Iranian National Airlines building.

The information that WikiLeaks is now disseminating has been suspected, and in some cases, known for awhile.  Yes, we now have details… names, dates and places that were heretofore only vague suspicions… but it is really all that startling?   Hasn’t common sense and good old instinct told you this stuff has been going on forever?

And the Star of David?  Really? Come on.  Google Earth just spotted it?  No one knew of it before or saw it?  It’s been there for 30 years!!!  It’s so ironic…funny, actually… that I’m smiling as I type.  A Star of David on the roof of a government building in the center of a country set out to destroy a country and an entire people represented by that star?

You tell me God isn’t having a whopper of a time!

So, while I know the DOW is rocky and the dollar is heading for the dumper and Congress is a joke… take heart.

NO MORE SECRETS.

God is busy reorganizing things.  While He/She is busy cleaning house, let us put up with a little inconvenience for humanity’s sake.  And while we’re patiently waiting, let’s look on the bright side.  The Star of David is watching over everything.

Wasn’t that the original deal?

An awful lot of people are on edge (and that’s putting it mildly) over the latest release of classified government documents by WikiLeaks.org.   It’s no wonder.  The documents reveal conversations, intentions and strategies that were intended to be kept secret not only from the public in general but also from our enemies and allies alike.

Is the content shocking? In some cases, yes.

Is the release itself shocking? Only if you’ve been unconscious for the past several years… or    not reading my posts.

You see, for at least that long I have been writing about the paradigm shift and its concomitant effects.  The most reliable of them being that with the shift there is more high frequency energy inundating our consciousness.

Higher frequency light energy.

What happens when you bring more light into a darkened (a/k/a/ denser) environment?  The light illuminates the environment and the result is less darkness… fewer places where you can obscure or hide things.  Things are brighter, clearer, and more easily accessible.

Now if you apply this principle to the obfuscation of facts, the obvious conclusion is that with higher consciousness there will be fewer secrets.  Less ways and means of obscuring the facts as they are.  The “behind the scenes” disclosures being disseminated by WikiLeaks are simply the result of the presence of light.

No more secrets.

My friends have been listening to me say that phrase repeatedly for the past several years.  Mainly, because I somehow knew that the unfolding paradigm shift would bring with it real change.  Not superficial change… not slogans about change… and not change for the worse, either.

While these disclosures, on their face (prima facie as we lawyers like to say) seem damning, they are, to the contrary, liberating.  They will help free the world from strategies and backroom deals that have perpetuated, for millennia, deception and greed.

As I have also said, while the transition may be difficult… it’s always difficult to move from one way of doing things to another… to change a pattern… in the long run we will be better off in a world where the Light shines brighter and there are fewer dark corners in which the least of what humankind is capable of has a chance to fester and breed.

Out of the shadows and into the Light.  A paradigm shift worth the effort.

For sure.

I am a Jew.  It’s one of two reasons why I feel compelled to weigh in on Glenn Beck’s recent three-part presentation about financier George Soros and the puzzling response to Beck’s presentation.

I am particularly intrigued today by the New York Times piece painting Beck as an anti-Semite while actually holding out the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a source for that conclusion.  The glaring inconsistency between quotes from Abe Foxman of the ADL in the Times article versus a personal letter from Foxman to Beck implies behind the scenes intrigue.  The Times quotes Foxman as calling Beck an Anti-Semite while just three weeks prior Foxman wrote Beck acknowledging his stand for Jews and Israel and calling Beck an obvious “friend”of both.

So what’s up?

As I said, my Judaism is the first reason I’m writing this.  The second is that I am a lawyer by education and so the facts matter to me.

I have watched and listened to Beck for several years now.  My impression and conclusions about him are derived first- hand.  He has been unequivocal in his support of Jews and rationally wavering on his support of Israel.  I say “rationally wavering” because even Israel makes mistakes and when Beck, in his opinion, perceived one to have occurred he has been vocal in his criticism.  Such criticisms have been the exception rather than the rule.

On the Soros airing and analysis, Beck could not have been clearer that the issue was not Soros’s choices and behavior at age 14 in working for the Nazi’s in confiscating personal property of Jews being condemned to the concentration camps, but rather Soros’ audacity, insensitivity and obvious lack of conscience in stating, after the passage of almost 7 decades,   that he had “no regret” about his behavior and that it has been “the best year of his life.”

I think Beck’s synopsis of Soros’ life experiences and financial dealings was less about an Anti-Semite than about a sociopath.

Quite frankly, any interpretation that paints Beck as an Anti-Semite for his having aired Soros in Soros’s own words has to be based in either 1) ignorance of what was actually presented or 2) a masked agenda to distort the facts in order to denigrate Beck.

Either way, as a Jew and seeker of truth who is trained to base her conclusions in fact, I can assert with certainty that Glenn Beck has consistently been an advocate for Jews, a supporter of the Jewish homeland, and a darn good investigative reporter (my characterization of him… not his own).

The New York Times could learn a thing or two.

You know how you look for sun block with “SPF” in it to protect you from harmful rays of the sun?  Well, there’s “SPF” for your soul…to protect you from harmful thinking.  First, let me tell you what SPF for the soul is and then how to apply it.

SPF stands for Suffering, Pain and Fear.  What these three feelings have in common is that when you are experiencing them, they bring you present in your life.  Whether it’s suffering poverty, oppression or the loss of a loved one… the physical pain of illness, a broken arm or a finger pinched in a closing door… or fear of facing down a wild animal, economic loss, the dark or even death… each of these feelings causes living in either the past or the future just too burdensome.

Whenever you are lured away from living totally in the present, living solely in the Now, what you inevitably run into is some variation of SPF.  For, you see, there is no SPF in the present.  In the present, everything is manageable and capable of being tended to.  In the present, there can only be joy and wonder at life Itself… in the pure experience of It All.   It’s when we project too far forward or languish too far back that life appears to be either overwhelmingly complex or filled with regret.

So this is how you apply SPF to your soul.  You do it by becoming aware of when you are in it.  Once you have the awareness that you have inadvertently wandered into the past or the future you use that SPF awareness to bring yourself present. You effectively use it to remind you to block out everything that is not real.  And all that is real is what you are experiencing, Now, in this instant.

I once watched a documentary of former Tibetan captives who spoke lovingly, with smiles on their faces, of how they had prayed for their abusive Chinese captors while their captors were beating them.  I found it incredible.  But I have come to understand that if you believe in the concept of Oneness…that we are all connected…and you are living totally in the moment, it is not possible to experience anything other than love and joy.  Not an easy state to achieve… but one worth aspiring to for sure.

Directions: Apply SPF to your thinking and allow it to bring you present so that you can experience the best of life without becoming damaged by the harmful rays of the past or the future.  Re-apply as needed.

I have a friend who has conquered several addictions in her life.  It has taken much effort and courage on her part to do so.  And yet, she is still plagued by an incredible amount of fears that sometime nearly immobilize her but, more commonly, pop up just often enough to just keep her from actualizing her full potential.

Today during a phone conversation with her it dawned on me she’s addicted to fear.  It’s a strange statement to make, I know.  Why would anyone be addicted to fear?  Well, if that’s pretty much all you’ve ever known… it would be easy.

So I got to thinking how we in this country have been so conditioned with “manipulation by fear” for so long that, like my friend, we’re addicted to it.  We can‘t seem to get along without it.

After all, almost all media to which we are exposed can be summed up in the adage “Dog Bites Man” doesn’t sell.  “Man Bites Dog”…now that sells!  Why?  Because for a lot longer than I can attest to personally (hello? original sin?) we have been conditioned to respond to a negative rather than a positive.  And, like any conditioning, we’ve become used to it.  Like hanging.  Isn’t that how the saying goes? “If you hang long enough you get used to it?” Problem is, when you get used to hanging its death you’ve grow accustomed to… not life.

So it is with fear.

Whether it’s an erratic Dow Jones Industrial Average, a potential terrorist attack, a category 4 hurricane, possible flu pandemic, toxic green house gasses, or the endlessly broadcast, telecast and webcast stories of tragedy, thievery and criminality… we are hooked on being afraid.  And left unchecked, fear gets in the way of movement in a positive direction.  In fact, in the extreme, fear gets in the way of movement.  Period.

Our addiction makes us slaves… no matter how democratic and free we think we are.

What’s the answer?

Well, it’s like I told my friend today.  She kicked diet pills, gambling and smoking by going cold turkey.  Like Nancy Reagan suggested… by just saying “No.”  My friend got angry at herself each time she reached her tolerance limit because the substance controlled her.  She didn’t control it.

Now getting angry is not usually a good thing.  But when you use anger-energy to motivate your own Will to overcome that which has overrun you… then anger gets put to constructive use.  And after all, isn’t anger just another form of energy?  When used correctly, all energy can be used for the highest good.

My thinking is that a nation addicted to fear needs to go cold turkey.  But we need to start one person at a time.  So today, turn off or tune out or walk away from anything that emanates or generates fear.  Say “no” to fear and take back your life.  The alternative is slavery and death.

You’ve got a choice, you know.

It’s called Free Will.

The past two weeks have been challenging.  First recovering from a virus followed by a sprained shoulder… it’s been a lot of “non-activity” to ask of someone who is inclined to always be working on something. However, since I make it a practice to walk my talk I have to ask myself, “What is the higher lesson to be learned here?”

I think I have it.  The Universe has a rhythm.  In order to successfully live within the Universe, and in harmony with its rhythm, requires us to feel it and more importantly align with it.

I have a tendency to try to move things at my own pace.  This translates into impatience.  It’s kind of funny that I still find myself impatient since I tell my clients that impatience is “the absence of trust in Divine Timing manifested as a need to control outcomes.”

You’d think I’d remember and follow my own advice.

But, like everyone else, I have an ego that occasionally enjoys getting in my own way.  When I fail to recognize or acknowledge the rhythm of the Universe (also known as Divine Timing) I am under the illusion that my will can oppose Thy will and prevail.  And while I use terminology that is religious or spiritual to make the point, it’s somewhat misleading.

Energy is the source of All That Is, including us.  When we fail to align with the Universal or cosmic flow of energy, it’s like attempting to swim upstream.  Better to move in tandem with that energy, or wait it out, until there is a change of either speed or direction that is more supportive of where it is we want to go.

Nature is great example.  Plants have no ego.  They have a time to germinate, a time to grow, a time to bud and a time to bloom.  They make no effort to impose alternate timing or an alternate outcome.  If I can take some liberty and attribute to them a quality they may not exactly have… they trust the Universe.

I think someone tried to tell us to do the same when they said “To everything there is a season…”.

So, its now two weeks into this “slow down period” and the smartest thing I can do is align with it.  Having tried to do otherwise for these past fourteen days, I’ve decided today to begin doing just that.  I meditated for half an hour this morning and now have written this blog.  It is 10:30am.  I am about to spend the rest of the day on the sofa reading, watching uplifting DVD’s and… well…  not much of anything else.

Except awaiting a change of speed and direction, that is..

Like the rest of the world I watched with rapt attention and welling emotion as the last, heroic Chilean miner was lifted from the collapsed mine after being trapped for 69 days. Defying logic and the odds, all 33 men survived an unimaginable nightmare and did so with both grace and dignity intact.

Two thoughts come to mind.  1) There are no accidents, and, 2) there are only two emotions, love and fear.

I have always been a believer that everything happens for a reason… even those things that seem to make no sense at all.  For while we may not be able to make sense of some events or personal experiences, everything that happens offers the potential for growth.  This is Life.

And so, in a world adrift economically, politically, and socially… 33 miners show us how to defy the odds, rise above limitation and scant resources, and accomplish the impossible.

But there’s more.

What the recent rescue teaches us is the power of Love.  In a world so long enamored with the love of power, this is a much needed lesson.

The people of Chile are apparently of hearty stock, with an indomitable spirit, national pride, passion for life, unshakable belief in God, and comfort with the expression of emotion regardless of gender. Love of life, love of country, love of one another and love of God.

And the complete absence of fear.

I did not hear or see fear anywhere.  Not among the trapped miners, not by the President of Chile, not by the waiting family members who camped out in the desert for months on end. Fear was absent in Chile and in the absence of fear, miracles occur.

There are no accidents.  What we have witnessed in Chile is a lamp unto the nations… the hand of God… reaching out to guide us in the direction of all that is good.

May we pay attention, set our intentions, and proceed with unbridled love.

It seems that the Obama Administration has today lifted the Gulf off shore drilling ban it imposed after the BP oil explosion.

A skeptic might say that the sudden reversal is nothing more than a political move to try and gain whatever votes can be had for the upcoming mid-term elections in which polls show the Democrat party taking a severe beating.  After all, the ban has hurt an already struggling economy by eliminating 10-15,000 jobs.  Until recently, the Administration seemed tone deaf to the voices calling for the lifting of the ban. Now, with the Democrat majority in both Houses in jeopardy, the President’s hearing has taken a turn for the better. A skeptic just might say.

I’m not a skeptic.  I’m a spiritual warrior moving through a paradigm shift who always looks for the highest message.  I think the message here is that try as they may, the methods, policies and tactics that were effective in the old paradigm are unquestionably impotent in this one.  I also think that you cannot now impede what some call the “will of the People”… but what others call the collective consciousness.

What we are going through is real change.  Real change means the way in which things get accomplished defy the methods of the past.  Real change is each individual awakening to the full scope of their own internal power to effect change.  Real change is the stuff of legends and miracles.  There will be many miracles beheld and many legends born of this time of transition.

And so, I leave the political analysis context and finger pointing to those still mired in the old paradigm.  Looking at it all from higher ground, all that happened was all that needed to happen… whether those with “apparent power” planned on it or not.

It isn’t that we drill or not in the Gulf.   It’s how we drill.

We must do so with a consciousness of gratitude for the abundance of energy that is there and respect for how we obtain that energy and use it.

That will be real change and now we’re being given the chance to show that we can rise to the occasion.