The Global Conversation

Tag: The Global Conversation

  • A path to the new world

    What is the message that we need to transmit to future generations of this planet — so that our children and all children to come are Self-loving beings with fully functional Self-Esteem, and capable of creating a joyful and healthy world for themselves?

    Where are we going? 

    The market economy is the modern GODDESS on Earth. This is the underlying message of this civilization to future generations of this planet. In the name of a “healthy economy,” we devastate the planet which is the home of future generations for millennia to come, and our most precious human qualities like compassion and solidarity, because our economy has to “grow” today.

    Huge debts run the global economy and our homes today. The global credit stock doubled from $57 trillion to $109 trillion in just ten years (from 2000 to 2010). It will need to double again to an incredible $210 trillion by 2020 in order to provide the necessary credit-driven growth. It is debt that governs our world.

    Our world—where one billion people, one-seventh of the total  population, now lives in total poverty—annually spends about $1.5 trillion on military expenditures.  As long as the strongest economies of the world enrich their national budgets with exorbitant earnings from its arms exports, there will be wars. And as long as the so-called “civilized world” silently watches the planet’s poorest countries import the latest “how-to-kill-your-neighbor” techniques, instead to spend money on the newest technology and know-how to make a living and become self-sufficient, there will not be peace and prosperity on Earth.

    The golden age of survival. This is the world of our immature ego. After millions of years of evolution, we still stand on the law of the jungle in which there is no value greater and no ideal cherished more than “survival at any cost.” And the more powerful and richer we are as we survive, the better. But as long as we continue just surviving, instead of really living, we will continue to struggle in fear. And as long as we live in fear, the law of the jungle remains our highest ideal. Debt, poverty, and pain pave the way for future generations—instead of happiness, prosperity, and joy.

    As within, so without. No human being with Self-Esteem will cheat, lie, steal, kill, abuse other forms of life, or otherwise harm another, or be indifferent to his/her environment. The shape of our current personal and global affairs directly reflects the actual state of our individual and collective lack of Self-Esteem. If this were not the case, we would all live in harmony and peace.

    The answer to the problems of our civilization lies primarily in our own approach to ourselves. This is where each of us must begin.

    When I look at our world today, I am still overwhelmed when there is another bomb exploding in a bus or town square, another escalation of war, another aerial bombardment “in the name of democracy”, another pollution disaster, another political or financial corruption scandal, another child murder, another school killing . . . and another . . . another act of destruction happening somewhere on Earth. It is as if the shockwaves of destruction are growing faster and faster, hitting us harder and harder.

    And yet I cannot help noticing that in all the confusion and chaos lies a certain sense of purpose, and with all the economic, political, and civil turmoil taking place in various parts of our planet, I detect an increased awareness, a rise of consciousness, a cleansing process underway, which will lead us to a new world of peace and tranquility.

    It is in these turbulent times that each of us bears full responsibility for the decisions we make everyday—as we choose between love and fear, Self-Esteem and Self-denial, between sheer survival at the expense of all other forms of life on the one side and meaningful and fulfilling life in the interest of all on the other.

    Now is the time to ask the fundamental question: What do I really believe in? Now is the right moment to follow the Spark of Light within and use our spiritual powers to help co-create our New World.

    “Your cure is in you,
    but you do not see;
    Your sickness is from you,
    but you do not feel;
    You allege that you are a small star,
    while you contain the whole cosmos.”

    ~ Sidi Mohammad Al Jamal – Sufi Master

    (Vladimir Bayer lives in Prague where he work as translator/consultant/writer. He is also the author of “From Darkness to Light: A Path to The New World.”)

    (If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)

  • Seeing what is “not” there

    I would like to invite you to take a little test.  This is not a difficult or complicated test.  And it won’t take up a lot of your time.  It is simply a fun experiment.

    Perhaps some of you have taken this test before.  But maybe there are quite a few of you have not.

    Below is a short video.  In the video, you will see four people wearing white clothing and four people wearing black clothing.  You will be asked to count the number of times a person wearing white clothing passes the basketball to another person wearing white clothing.

    At the end of the video, you will be given the answer so you can compare your findings to the correct number of passes.

    (Please view the video before clicking “read more”)

    I generally consider myself to be a person with a fairly high level of awareness, so I was humorously shocked to find out at the end of the video that I had “failed” this exercise completely.

    And as a result of this interesting awareness test, my mind could not escape the burning question:  If I missed something as seemingly obvious as a moon-walking gorilla dancing in the middle of a small group of eight people, what else might I not be noticing in the world around me as I go about the business of my day-to-day affairs?

    Nearly every day, I drive home past the perimeter of a beautiful state park.  It is a mile-long stretch of lush beautiful trees and other colorful varieties of Florida foliage.  One afternoon, I saw a family of beautiful deer grazing in the tall wispy grass.  It looked like a water-color painting, so peaceful, so natural, so perfect.  Of all the previous days, weeks, and months of me driving home on this same road, sometimes even traveling on it twice a day, I had never before seen any deer.  Ever.

    Well, the next afternoon, during my regular commute home, I intentionally looked for the deer, determined to lay eyes upon this picturesque setting once again.  And to my delight, and surprise, there they were again.  Not the exact same number of deer; there were only two this time.  And not in the exact same location; they were a hundred feet or so further down the road.  But there they were, peacefully grazing in the tall wispy grass.

    And on many occasions since that very first moment, I have seen deer along the side of the road.  But it couldn’t be possible that the first time I saw these magnificent creatures was actually the first time they ever appeared there, could it?

    Of course not.  It was only the first time my awareness included them.

    This experience was revolutionary for me and it stirred up quite a few questions:  What else am I not seeing in life?  Of all the events happening around me, why do some of them come into my awareness and others do not?  Am I consciously choosing this?  Or is it created by something other than me, being placed into the space of my existence?  And the biggest question of them all:  What does this mean?

    Of course, the answer to that bigger question, as I’ve come to know, is one that can only be answered by me as a creation of my own choosing.  For me, it means that there is much more going on here than what I currently see.  It means that when I think I know what I need to know, if I expand my perspective to include more, I will allow myself to experience that I actually know more.  Because I now understand that the way I view life is based upon my perspective.  And my perspective provides the underlying support system which serves to create the reality I ultimately experience.   The truth I hold, the thoughts I choose, and the emotions I experience are all sequentially tied into and foundationed upon the perspective from which I see things.

    So as hard as I might to try to tell someone “how” something is, or when someone else gets frustrated because I don’t “see” things in a similar way, it is important to remember that a thing can only be seen in the same way when viewed from the same perspective.

    We all have the ability to elevate our experience from one of a distorted reality (what we think is happening).  We even have the ability to move beyond an experience of observed reality (what we can readily see happening) and closer to an experience of ultimate reality (what is actually happening).  How do we do this?  By expanding the perspective of the Mind to include the Wisdom of the Soul.  It is from this vantage point that we will be given the opportunity to see without limitations, allowing us to embrace every aspect in our lives, including our relationships with each other, with a deeper understanding of what we have already always known.

    For a more extensive look at the revolutionary Mechanics of the Mind/System of the Soul process, I invite and encourage you to read the book When Everything Changes, Change Everything, which offers extraordinary spiritual and practical insight into what “creating your own reality” truly means.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • Unschooling: learning by the seat of your soul

    After dark on a summer evening, an 8-year-old boy named Allen and his mother sat on the blacktop driveway, which was still warm from the day’s sun, drawing with chalk. But they weren’t drawing daisies and rainbows and other normal-type pictures–they were doing geometry. Why? Because Allen wanted to know how the odometer on his bicycle worked. Why so late at night? Well, when better to learn than right after the question is asked?

    Allen remembers the night as having an exciting quality to it—like being allowed to stay awake to ring in the New Year—and he felt like they were up until midnight measuring the bicycle tires, calculating r2 and discussing the Pythagorean Theorem. In reality it was probably much less than that, but time warps when you’re engaged with something, and even geometry can be exciting to an 8-year-old when it’s applied to real life.

    Our childhood was filled with such time-warped moments; so much so that it was the norm instead of the exception. You see, my younger brother Allen and I didn’t go to school. Our classrooms were chalk on the driveway, the local riding stable, Girl Scouts, museums, beaches, Europe, Australia, caves, libraries, mountains, homemade movies, stage productions, cooking in the kitchen, managing family finances… We were (and are) unschoolers.

    Unschooling is an exciting alternative to contemporary schooling that empowers students to create their own education. Much like homeschooling, families are free to explore opportunities outside of the public school system, and even outside of the curriculums that many homeschoolers use. Unschoolers pursue their interest of the moment, and in the process find their passions of a lifetime.

    Conversations with God, Book II talks about a new education system which is based on the values of awareness, honesty, and responsibility; a system that teaches the student to think critically, come to their own conclusions, and gives them a sense of “unlimitedness.” Unschoolers have been doing this for decades in our modern era, and humanity has been doing this in a sense for our entire history. Babies “unschool” themselves in learning how to talk and walk: Unschooling families simply let their children unschool the rest of life, too.

    While the students pursue their interests, the parents create the space for learning: they make sure resources and opportunities are available for their children to follow their interests as deeply as they want and to stumble upon new potential interests. In the process, a fully-rounded education emerges, which includes more than just mathematics, history, and literature. For us, and for the many unschoolers we know, we learned respect for ourselves and others because our parents respected us enough to take control of our own education. We learned to see the world with curiosity and with the awareness of the differences in people’s lives and cultures, and to appreciate those differences as beautiful. We learned personal responsibility in managing our time, making our educational intentions known, and following through with our goals. We didn’t always succeed, and we learned a lot from that, too.

    Love is freedom. We know this from the New Spirituality paradigm, we know this from Christ, and some of us know this from our own experiences. In order to unschool, parents must have the unconditional, unfearing love that gives the child freedom to make their own choices; the freedom to know themselves as individuals and as integral parts of a family unit and larger society; the freedom to hone their strengths and learn how to contribute to help the world move toward the grandest vision that it has for itself.

    In return for this freedom, the child is more likely to respect the parent’s suggestions for how to live a full, safe, expansive life. This is not theoretical: Allen  and I have a wide collective base of unschooled friends and rates of stereotypical teenage rebellion in unschooling families are next to none. For instance, even though I often felt annoyed at the inconvenience, I never fought my parents’ rule that I couldn’t drive a car with passengers without an adult present or express permission until I was 18, because I understood that I was an inexperienced driver and that friends could be distracting. I knew that the rule came from a place of love, wisdom, and experience, so it made sense to follow it.

    Because unschoolers have the fortune to grow up in a family culture of unlimitedness and exploration, they often have an advantage in adult life. They know how to pursue things they’re interested in (which translates to careers), and they’ve often had experience in approaching people and marketing themselves as worthwhile apprentices or employees. They already understand the principle that if you pursue what you love, the rest will follow. Most will not let themselves get caught up in the cultural story of needing to go to college and get a job that they hate so that they can buy nice things that will ultimately “make them happy.” Instead, they write their own story and live it, unafraid of being different and being satisfied with the choices they’ve made.

    Allen and I took vastly different paths as young adults, and we are both largely happy with our lives and our choices–perhaps mostly because we learned early on that our choices are simply that: ours. We have the freedom to choose our life paths, interests, emotions, reactions, thoughts…everything. And because we know that so deeply, it’s much easier to change our choices when we think we need to. My biggest “victimhood” struggle was when I went to college and felt completely imprisoned by the institutional system. I had to remember that college was my choice, and that because I wanted to see it through to the end, I’d have to make the choice to stop feeling imprisoned. After that, college flew by.

    Of course, we’re still figuring things out, we still make mistakes, and we still need guidance, as everyone does, but both of us feel better prepared for life than most of our peers. People from all areas of our lives, with relationships to us from friends to classmates to bosses, have commented on qualities like our maturity, perseverance, ingenuity, and intelligence that we ascribe to our unschooled upbringing.

    Not every parent is ready right now to be an unschooling parent, but the unschooling movement is growing. Since the modern emergence from the public school system in the 1970’s, our numbers have grown to an estimated 100,000 or more students of current school age. However, most of us consider ourselves unschoolers for life, since unschooling is living life, so I expect there are quite a few more of us than that. As our world goes through massive shifts and growing pains, Allen and I think that unschooling is only going to keep rising in popularity, not only because it works as an education system, but because it works as a parenting system and as part of a more coherent and functional cultural story. The unschooling society in the US currently is spread out, but still tight-knit and supportive. We’re not immune to drama and disagreements, but we tend to be creative in the way we solve those disagreements. We tend to quickly remember that freedom (and the love that is inseparable from freedom) is the basis of our unschooling culture, and that is the culture we want to plant, nurture, and grow in our world.

    And yes, it really is as simple as being willing to use your evening at the drop of a hat to explain to your 8-year-old how his odometer works. The rest will follow.

    Laura Allen(Laura Ellis is 26 years old and lives in Santa Fe, NM. She is enrolled in a Master’s degree program for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and has a background in writing, Reiki, horseback riding, and social sciences. Allen Ellis is 24 years old and lives in Orlando, FL. He is the Senior Motion Designer at Cybis Communications and has a background in videography, piano, web design, and programming. They can be reached at whyunschool@gmail.com. For more information on unschooling, visit whyunschool.info.)

    (If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)

  • First the Pope…then Pat Robertson

    In light of some recent unexpected statements made by some highly influential people in our world, I have been exploring more deeply the underpinnings of why we believe what we believe, and what it takes to create significant change in long and tightly held belief systems.   What is the aftereffect globally when someone who has the massive outreach of the Pope or the controversial but well-known televangelist Pat Robertson publicly speaks outside of the box which holds their traditional points of view?

    In an article published by The Huffington Post, “The 83-year-old televangelist [Pat Robertson] sat down on Sunday for the ‘Bring It Online’ advice portion of his Christian Broadcasting Network show, ‘The 700 Club.’ A viewer named David wrote in asking how he should refer to two transgender females who work in his office and have legally changed their genders. Instead of criticizing the trans individuals, Robertson approached the situation in a seemingly level-headed manner.”

    “‘I think there are men who are in a woman’s body,’ he said. ‘It’s very rare. But it’s true — or women that are in men’s bodies — and that they want a sex change. That is a very permanent thing, believe me, when you have certain body parts amputated and when you have shot up with various kinds of hormones. It’s a radical procedure. I don’t think there’s any sin associated with that. I don’t condemn somebody for doing that.’”

    “He went on to say he would ‘question the validity’ of someone who just says, ‘Well I’m really a woman’ because you ‘don’t count somebody as female unless they really are, or male unless they really are.’”

    “When his co-host said the viewer doesn’t know the intentions or medical history of his co-workers, Robertson rebutted, ‘It’s not for you to decide or to judge.’”

    Yes, Mr. Robertson’s unpredictable statements are still interwoven between layers of intolerance and judgment, but couple his message with the most-recent comments by Pope Francis which have been making spectacular headlines around the world where he told reporters “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” I am just wondering what might be happening here.

    When the people who have been placed collectively at the forefront of large groups of people — whose numbers easily reach into the millions — change their points of view about long-held beliefs, or when they express new thoughts about old ideas, how does this impact the belief systems of the people who associate themselves closely with those groups?  What is the ripple effect?  Do large numbers of people “change their minds” because someone now told them to, whether that be for “better” or “worse”?  How do we know when someone is a messenger versus a manipulator?

    Of course, we know that truth, real truth, is a knowing that emanates from deep, deep within.  So why is it, then, that so many of us experience our lives as a journey of seeking and finding, gathering our truth from places that exist external to us, perhaps even in the words of someone else’s truth, ignoring the accuracy of our own internal compass and pushing painfully past the true nature of our feelings?

    Imagine a world where each and every one of us stood in the light of our own truth, where we didn’t say “yes” when we meant “no”; where we didn’t say “no” when we really truly wanted to say “yes.”

    Perhaps in that kind of world we wouldn’t have parents giving birth to children on Saturday, July 20, and waiting until Wednesday, July 24, to name their newborn child, a precious new life, so they can find out what Prince William and Kate Middleton named their child first and follow suit accordingly.

    Maybe in that kind of world it would be highly unlikely that some of the highest-rated television programs would continue to be “reality” shows which depict the “reality” someone else is choosing for us instead of the one we have the ability to create ourselves.  Perhaps we would simply not desire to watch television at all…unless we do.

    Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be shooting people in our own neighborhoods because they look different than we do.  Do you think it is possible that within the space and light of our own truth we would not ever feel moved to hurt or oppress another because we would understand at a very deep level that the “truths” we have been told, the stories we have made up about each other or been handed down, the ones which cause us to hurt each other in the first place, are simply not true?

    And perhaps in that kind of a world people in positions of power and influence, such as Pope Francis and, yes, even Pat Robertson, will continue to break free from the bonds of history, tradition, and sameness to demonstrate that change, significant and lasting change, is not only a remote possibility, but it is something which is actually taking place right here, right now.

    I’m just wondering how the tide of change will roll onto the shore of Humanity in the wake of some of these surprisingly refreshing and recently made comments.   If we are going to live in a world where we continue to adopt someone else’s truth as our own, maybe we should be paying close attention right now to the new “truths” that are yearning to be heard and the new “story” that is desiring to be written.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • Take a walk on the dark side

    “Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light
    but making the darkness conscious.”

    ~ Carl Jung

    I want to begin by saying that I am not a regular moviegoer, given that most deal with similar themes without a huge amount of substance or thought-provoking material. It is then ironic that the latest incarnation of one of the biggest movie franchises deals with an issue that lies at the heart of spiritual growth, that is the struggle to accept our dark as well as our light. So whatever our opinion of this movie, the imagery and symbolism cannot be ignored, nor can the theme of self-acceptance through an awareness of our origins.

    In the movie, Superman must confront his past in order to understand his present. He must look at the heritage that molded him and the circumstances that influenced his choices so that he can be laid bare to himself and begin the process of self-acceptance. This includes the acceptance of both his light and his shadow, two parts of ourselves that co-exist and command equal respect. The place where all our dark thoughts are stored, according to Jung “everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

    Interestingly, in previous movies we saw Superman fearlessly confront the repressed shadow of others that manifested in the form of violence and crime.Regardless of his opponents’ cunning and determination, Superman was ensured victory, as the light of our hero overcame the shadow of his adversaries. In this new installment, however, our hero must confront and accept his own shadow, at which point he will realise his true power because his shadow will no longer have power over him.

    On closer inspection, we see another reason behind Superman’s reluctance to accept his superpowers, and that is because of how different they make him feel to everyone else.The result is Clark Kent,a man whose timid demeanor could not be further removed from his true identity. The tension is virtually palpable between Superman and his alter ego, who could be seen as the manifestation of his fear of rejection. How dreadful for anyone to live like this, to feel they have to keep themselves hidden just to fit into society.  But how many of us are equally guilty of dimming our light so that the light of another can shine brighter? How many times have we allowed our power to be taken so that it could be used by those whose love or acknowledgment we desire more? It would not be an understatement to say that to live a power-filled life is a great achievement in a world that has only ever enabled powerlessness. One only has to look at the fate of those individuals who, throughout history, have encouraged us to stand confidently in our power, many of whom were relegated to the peripheries of society, if not removed from it altogether.

    There is a final connection that can be made between Superman’s power and our own, and that is the fact that he only experiences his full potential when in service to others. I recall listening to a talk by Neale Donald Walsch on this topic, that if we want to experience a particular quality, we must give it to another. So if we want to experience compassion, then show compassion and the same with love and peace. In which case, our superhero only becomes truly authentic when he is in service. The rest of the time he is just a regular guy. Maybe there is a lesson here for all of us, that only in service can we experience the full magnitude of our own superpowers.

    Gemma Phelan Head SHot(Gemma Phelan lives in Ireland where she works as an editor. She is also the author of “A Different Understanding,” a book which explores alternative ways of looking at the world.)

    (If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)

  • Control Freak

    Have you ever had one of those days where you are just skipping along, happy as can be, and seemingly out of nowhere a fun-wrecker comes in and attempts to steal your joy?  Are you the kind of person who has to exert some sort of power or control over others in order to feel somehow better than them or above them?  Do you know a person who is constantly putting other people down so at a later point he can swoop in and raise them up to fulfill some sort of hero role?  Some people will go as far as to become physically abusive to their spouses and children to maintain the illusion of power.  There are many more examples of power-trippers, and please feel free to share your experiences with us in the comment section below.

    Most often we think of “power-trippers” as having very low self-esteem and assume they are using the behavior as a mask for their supposed insufficiency.  The truth is they are addicted to something much more destructive and insidious: dopamine.

    Dopamine is the great “I am.” It is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter that, when flowing, produces a feeling of euphoria. Dopamine is our ego.  To understand this better, when a cocaine addict is using, the chemical response in the brain is to release more dopamine into our system.  So the person who has learned how to control that release simply by exerting control over others is just another drug addict who is under the spell of their drug of choice.

    There are not too many power addicts walking through the doors of 12 step programs to get their addictions under control.  Many of the people who have this affliction will take it to their grave with them.  There is also very little sympathy out there for these type of people, nor should there be; however, without the help of loved ones, addicts suffering seldom have the opportunity or the encouragement to make changes in their lives.  Without the understanding of what is triggering the nasty behavior of the “power-tripper,” family, friends, and loved ones eventually exit from the relationship.

    Compassion is what is needed to help the person suffering with this disease.  Yet without the knowledge of what is going on, most people cannot muster up the motivation to be compassionate.  Ultimately, life is about our interpersonal relationships.  Most of us would consciously choose not to be in relationship with a person who is constantly controlling everything and everyone around them.  Yet unconsciously we find ourselves having to work or socialize with power mongers fairly often.  So why is this?  What could the possible benefit to the continuing evolution of mankind be?

    Love.

    What greater practice could there be than loving a person who is exhibiting unloving behaviors?  Where we get mixed up is, what does “love” look like?  Do we give in and let the person treat us badly?  Is “taking one for the team” ever a productive or effective way of loving someone into wellness?  No.  Love is strong, love is confident, love is trusting in the way of the universe.  Love knows that each individual must walk his or her own path, and that we can influence but we cannot manipulate.

    There is much room to explore this topic together.  Please take some time to comment down below about your experience as a power-tripper or with a control freak.  Have you or someone you know recovered from this disease?  How do we spot this behavior before we get in to deep?

    Last month we kicked off our first in a series of Path to Peace recovery retreats.  A small group of people all shared a life-changing event.  If you are in recovery and not experiencing great joy and freedom or are still suffering with addictions, please consider giving yourself this opportunity to soar into grateful recovery.  Our next retreat will held in San Jose, California, Sept 19 -22nd, 2013.  Click here for more information.

    (Kevin McCormack, C.A.d ,is a certified addictions professional. He is a recovering addict with 26 years of sobriety. Kevin is a practicing auriculotherapist, life coach, and interventionist specializing in individual and family recovery and also co-facilitates spiritual recovery retreats for the CWG foundation with JR Westen. You can visit his website for more information at www.Kevin-Spiritualmentor.com  To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@TheGlobalConversation.com)

  • Take a ride on the abundance superhighway

    I recently had a conversation with a very dear friend about what could possibly be one of humanity’s most perplexing and misunderstood relationships:  our relationship with money.  This particular friend of mine was noticing how every time she dreamt up new and exciting ways to draw more money into her life, she found herself experiencing abrupt roadblocks being constructed in the pathway to that effortless flow of financial abundance that she continues to witness others experiencing with seemingly much more ease.

    Confused by more questions in her life than answers, she asked God:  “What the heck is going on here?”

    She is doing what she loves.  She is being who she knows herself to be.  She is creative and passionate and has a heart called to serve and help others.  She gives of herself openly and lovingly and asks for very little, if anything, in return from anyone.

    So why does the experience of financial prosperity continue to mock someone who is doing all the “right” things in their world?

    Then the answer revealed itself in the very next question from my sweet, wonderful friend:  “Is it bad or “wrong” for me to want to make money?”

    Ah, the sponsoring thought.  The underlying trap.

    Somewhere along the line, money has gotten a really bad rap.  We have been taught to desire it and despise it in almost equal measure.  Intimate relationships, friendships, and families have been torn apart over money, both in situations of lack and in situations of plenty.  Basketball players and movie stars make copious amounts of money.  Teachers and social workers barely make enough to pay their basic household bills.  And then there are those who have a deep desire to “make a living” in the spiritual community, those who consider themselves to be key players in the New Spirituality movement, who abruptly discover that they fall into a category for which many believe they simply should not get paid at all.

    If we want to take a ride on the “abundance superhighway,” we must change our views about money and refuel ourselves with the energy that flows and radiates deep beneath the obvious paper and coins we hold in our hands or deposit in our bank accounts.  One of the quickest and surest ways to experience the magnificence of our own abundance is to give to another that which we believe ourselves to be lacking; and in doing so, what we are then allowed to discover about ourselves is that we are already plentiful in what we imagined ourselves to not have.  And not only are we given an opportunity to experience already having it, but we are given the opportunity to experience it to the degree that we actually have enough to give away.  This is just one of the many extraordinary concepts offered to us from the Conversations with God material.

    If we change our belief about money, how might that change our experience of money?

    If our experience of money is changed, might we be given the opportunity to experience our abundance in a new way, in a way that has nothing to do with money at all?

    And if our natural state of abundance has nothing to do with money at all, what does it have to do with?

    I love money.

    I love receiving it.  I love giving it away.  And it has been my personal experience at numerous points in time in my life that I can live quite contently without having much of it at all. I have never been someone who has had what one would call a “lot” of money.  And I solemnly recognize the disproportionate number of people in the world who are barely getting by in their day-to-day lives with the amount of financial resources they have available to them compared to the tightly guarded segment of our population who holds and controls the vast percentage of our world’s wealth and resources.  It is my hope and my vision that one day that model of our world will change.  But in order to reach that stage in our evolution, we must reflect upon and restructure some of our most basic and fundamental underlying beliefs not only about money, but about who we are and about why we are even here in the first place.

    Where do we begin?  What can one person do?

    Perhaps we all can throw an extra dollar or two onto the tip for our next waitress.  Maybe we actually do have enough time and money to pull into that youth group’s car wash on the corner.  Might we allow ourselves to share 3 or 4 or 5 dollars with the homeless man or woman on the corner without worrying about how they spend it or why they are there to begin with?  What would happen if we bought our groceries from the local Mom-and-Pop store in our community, where the prices might be slightly higher, but the service is extraordinary?  Would we really miss the extra few dollars and cents in the long run?

    I’m just wondering…

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • The “Bucket List” that is healing the world

    13-year-old Talia Joy Castellano’s six-year battle with cancer ended Tuesday as her body finally succumbed to a disease too relentless for it to overcome.  “Tiny” and “frail” may be words to describe the condition of Talia’s physicality from outward appearances, but they definitely are not words anyone would use to describe the ferocious spirit of this young Lover of Life.

    “Castellano, who was diagnosed with stage-four neuroblastoma when she was just 7 years old, started using makeup ‘as a wig’ shortly after she found out she was sick. In July 2011, she began filming makeup tutorials in her bedroom — short, how-to videos for the glam, colorful looks she invented. Within months, she had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views on her more than 150 YouTube clips,” US Magazine.

    Talia became an honorary “Cover Girl” with the help of her friend Ellen DeGeneres.  But one of the biggest gifts Talia has given to humanity is her Bucket List.  Five days before she died, Talia jotted down 76 items she wanted to cross off her Bucket List and posted them on her Facebook page.  And while she actually got to experience a few of her young heart’s desires, Talia’s request to the world was that we, you and I, go out to all the wonderful places that she had so far only dreamt of and live out those special moments in each of our lives, just in case she did not have a chance to in hers.

    You see, Talia, even in her most vulnerable and weakened physical condition, understood on a very deep level that her life was not about her.  It was about those whose lives she touched.  And even after her passing, she is gifting to us all an opportunity to experience Who We Really Are through the expression of Who She Really Is.  Her life is a bright light of hope.  Her message is one of love and peace.  Her Soul is a spiritual activist, continuing to do the healing work it came here to do in a world which weeps to know and experience itself as one without pain, even though, ironically, she endured extraordinary physical pain and suffering for the largest portion of her physical life here on earth.

    Perhaps today, or maybe sometime in this upcoming week, we can each find a moment or two to cross off one or two things on this colorful  and playful list.  After all, how could we turn away such an extraordinary gift?  And as we do, maybe we can find a quiet space in the center of each of our hearts to send a prayer of gratitude and appreciation to Talia, a beautiful young girl who most of us have never physically met, for giving us the opportunity to remember once again who we truly are and to experience why we are truly here.

    Here is a photo of Talia Joy Castellano’s Bucket List:

    bucket list

    If you want to share photos of you completing any of Talia’s Bucket List items, you can post them on her Facebook page Angels For Talia.

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • Florida has much bigger problems
    than George Zimmerman

    Contrary to the way in which the media is portraying it, Central Florida actually has problems much larger than the recent “not guilty” verdict in the George Zimmerman case.  And one of the most significant and glaring dilemmas is the rising number of human beings who have no place to live and very little, if any, food to eat.  In other words, a growing number of individuals who are what we have collectively classified as “homeless.”

    While overly ambitious newscasters clamoring for ratings continue to spoon-feed the drama of this high-profile Zimmerman murder trial to an audience all too willing to devote their free time and undivided attention to their television sets, an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people in the state of Florida are spending their days and nights on the streets, probably much more concerned, I presume, with where their next meal is coming from than the status of George Zimmerman’s criminal case.

    I find it shocking that one criminal case can cause thousands of people across the United States to leave their homes and stand in solidarity to protest what they believe to be an injustice, but the fact that last year 633,782 people in the United States alone were without a place to call home does not even create a tiny ripple.

    Where is everybody?

    How are we choosing what is important to us…and what is not?

    Is it that we assuming that someone else is taking care of this?

    In the City of Orlando specifically, efforts by local activist groups to organize food offerings for our community’s homeless population in downtown parks have been strategically and legally blocked by local government at every angle over the past several years.  The city has designated blue boxes painted on the sidewalks where homeless individuals are permitted to ask for and receive money.  If they do so outside the blue lines, they are promptly arrested.

    We can’t feed the hungry – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable.

    We can’t offer financial assistance to the poorest of poor – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable.

    And these people have nowhere to go – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable for them to go.

    Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe we should and do live in a world where it truly is each man or woman for him or herself.  Maybe those men and women standing on the street corner with signs pleading for money don’t deserve the extra dollar or two I have tucked in the drink holder of my car and I should just continue to act as though I do not even see them.  Perhaps that seemingly able-bodied man IS perfectly capable of getting a job and I shouldn’t enable his obvious choice not to work by throwing him a few bucks.  Perhaps I should question why those souls who have come to share a portion of life’s journey with me have not experienced their own abundance in the way that I have.  After all, they must have done something wrong to get to this point and this place, right?  And finally, maybe it is entirely possible that the George Zimmerman trial is way more important than any of this, and that is where I should be focusing my thoughts and energy, as thousands of others are choosing to do.

    I don’t think so.

    I have never been homeless.  But I have had times in my own life where stretching $20 in the grocery store for a week’s worth of meals for my family was a stark reality.  And it is not difficult for me to recall many turning points in my life which pivoted upon a compassionate helping hand from someone else.  So I’m just noticing.  I’m just taking a closer look at what we as a society appear to be fixated on, what issues cause us take a stand, which events in life we choose to outwardly define ourselves by…and which ones we do not.   I’m just noticing and wondering how we got here, why we are here, and asking:  What will it take to change it?

    “When someone enters your life unexpectedly,
    look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…
    I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.”
    “Conversations with God” – Book 2

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • Genocide underway in Burma:
    We must act with one voice

    There is currently a genocide underway in Burma – as you read this, an “ethnic cleansing” is happening, with unspeakable horrors being committed against the peaceful Rohingya people.  The President of Burma, Thein Sein, has done nothing so far.

    What is the crime of the Rohingya people?  Why are they hated so much?  Is it because they are murderers, or terrorists?  No.  Is it because they are polluting the land, destroying vital crops? No.  They are hated “simply because” their skin is darker and the majority fear they’re ‘taking jobs away’.

    The real question before us is not why do we continue to witness so much suffering and violence, but rather why do we allow it?

    I agree that this question may be difficult for us to hear – however, whilst this life-threatening situation is most certainly not our fault, it is most certainly our responsibility.

    Are we going to stand by and idly watch hundreds of thousands of innocent people be massacred from the comfort and safety of our own homes?  Or are we going to cry out to all of our powerful world governments and insist that they do something!

    Burmese President Thein Sein has the power and resources to protect the Rohingya.  All he has to do is give the word to make it happen.  Yet, rather than deal with this urgent situation, he is instead looking to come to Europe to sell his country’s new openness to trade. It beggars belief!

    These terrible atrocities happening on our planet continue to be tolerated, regardless of the fractures they create in our collective unconscious, because we continue to put commerce before vital, humanitarian interests; because we have constructed our individual and collective lives around such false paradigms as ‘survival of the fittest’, we continue to experience life as a massive struggle.

    Right now is the time to change all of this nonsense – and we must act, with urgency! All of us, together, as ONE voice. This situation demands it.

    To change the results we are witnessing, we have to change ourselves; we cannot keep saying we are going to change things but then fail to act.

    We cannot keep listening to greedy, naive or inept politicians, and those governments and institutions who would deliberately mislead us, and then seek to placate us with excuses of how they could do nothing, and how their hands were ‘tied’, when they could easily move into action.

    We keep waiting for a better time, a better future… but it never arrives because we have not arrived. We have not had the courage to act as ONE. To be as ONE.

    Natural disasters are terrible enough when they do happen, yet human acts of war and genocide are many times worse. They betray us all at the deepest level.

    The invitation is to BE HERE NOW. To act from presence, not powerlessness.

    What will you do today? What stance will you take?  Will you shrug your shoulders and walk away – or will you sound the clarion call of freedom, respect and dignity for all?

    We cannot allow this to become another Rwanda, or Sarajevo….

    Sign the Avaaz petition here, and get involved.

    Thank you for being part of a movement of change.

    Namaste,
    Jaime Tanna

    jaime-tanna (2)(Jaime Tanna is the founder of Energy Therapy and an active Reiki Master and Spiritual Mentor, Healer and Teacher. Together with his wife Jennifer, their unifying vision is to empower others through spiritual education and energy-based healing treatments, to help them become aware of their true natures, and to live more joyfully and consciously. You can visit their website at www.energytherapy.biz)

    (If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)