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The Day I Stopped Believing in God

Until 1997, I had a strong belief in god. When I was a child, my god was the god of The Ten Commandments movie — much like Charlton Heston on a cloud. As I matured, so did my concept of god. My god became less imaginable in the image of a person and more of an invisible force. I always imagined god to be benevolent and capable of awareness of each and every one of us simultaneously. The closest I could come to defining god was love – the experience of two or more gathered in goodness.

Then, one day in March, 1997, I was driving south on the Taconic parkway in New York on my way to work. I hit black ice going 60 mph. I no longer had any control over the direction or speed of the car — I was suddenly a passenger and not the driver. 

My car crisscrossed the road four times, and when it was clear I was about to go down a ravine into a swamp, a voice cried out from my belly saying, “I’m not ready to go yet, so you’ve got to take care of me. Please take good care of me.” In that moment, my car did what a mechanic later told my friend was mechanically impossible — it went into reverse. I hung on to the steering wheel while the car made a complete circle going rear first down the ravine and into the swamp. The trunk of the car was sliced all the way through by the tree that stopped the car. The rear window broke into a million pieces. My earrings and glasses flew off my head, landing in the foot area of the front passenger seat. My seat broke, and I was lying face up under the broken rear window, yet I didn’t have a scratch on me, nor was there any glass in my loose-weave wool coat.

I remember my euphoria when I realized the car had stopped. I touched myself and marveled, “I’m alive!” I sat up, retrieved my glasses, earrings, and briefcase and stepped out of the car into the swampy ground. Each step made a loud, moist, suctioning sound as I lifted each foot. I was in total shock, operating on auto pilot. I walked up to the road where the car that had been traveling behind me had pulled over, and this very nice woman beckoned me into her car to wait for the police and ambulance she had called.

I was taken to the hospital. It was as though everyone else I encountered was somehow different from me. They were all worried about me and making a medical fuss. Meanwhile, inside of me my euphoria grew and grew and grew. I was totally blissed out. I had had a spiritual conversion experience that I will never be able to translate in a meaningful way to another human being. I know that now, but at the time I just kept telling people that god is real. The doctors responded by wanting to treat me for post-traumatic stress. I wouldn’t let them. Through this accident I came to know that god is real beyond a shadow of a doubt. I no longer believe in god as an intellectual concept. I know god through personal experience. My knowledge was and remains irrefutable.

Nothing else has ever mattered so much to me as that wonderful gift I was given in a car accident that totaled my car to such a degree that the mechanic automatically offered his condolences to my friend who came to retrieve my belongings. He was incredulous when she told him I was home eating a turkey sandwich. To this day I recall the euphoria and the sense of a glass dome covering my body as the car crashed.

My mother and I were very close, and she shared my deep belief in god, but it wasn’t until two weeks before her death in 2012 that she also was given the gift of knowing god through personal experience. For her, it happened during a breathing treatment. She could barely speak at the time, but told me that she realized that god was breathing her. Like me, she was totally euphoric. That whole day she kept telling everyone who came into her room that god is real. Unfortunately, they all responded to what they thought was an elderly woman on morphine. I guess if you haven’t had the experience yourself, you have no frame of reference. All day, my mom kept asking me when they were going to make the announcement. “Who? What announcement?” I asked. The three most important people in the world she told me. I only remember two of them – the president and the pope. She was urgent about the need for them to let the world know that god is real. “People will want to live their lives differently.” she said.

Have you had an experience like this? If so, I would love to hear about it.

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Staying in the Here and Now

relaxing by the water, enjoying the "now"

There is absolutely no place or time you can ever be but in the here and now. And the here and now keeps expiring. We move through space and time, and before we can even get the words “here” and “now” out of our mouths, they have changed. It’s really a very funny business, this existence.

As fleeting as the here and now are, they are the most powerful time and place we can ever be. In fact, they are the only time and place we can ever be. We can involve our minds and emotions in thinking about or having feelings about the past or future, but we can’t go there. We are here. This might seem simplistic, but it is an enormously powerful awareness to work with to bring peace and harmony to our minds and emotions. 

Every time we focus on the past or future, we are abandoning the present moment unless we do something about our thoughts in the present moment. If there is nothing to do now to resolve a past concern or to anticipate a potential future one, then thinking or worrying about them only means we are probably making ourselves miserable and vacating the present moment. Our attention is not here, it’s there. So we end up being nowhere when we are worrying about the past or future, because we can’t go there and we aren’t present in the now.

Consider something you are worried about that lies in the future. For example, let’s say you are worrying about whether or not you will have good weather during your beach holiday next week. If you listen to your self-talk, you might hear something like this: “What if it rains? We’re spending all this money, and our holiday will be ruined if we don’t have good weather.” When you become aware of having this kind of thinking, you have an important choice to make. Do you let your worries pollute your experience in the here and now? Or do you nip your worries in the bud. Here’s what these two choices look like. If you feed your worries it will be like adding kindling wood to an already burning fire. Your worries will become bigger and bigger as you fantasize all the ways you might not enjoy your expensive vacation. You are just spinning your wheels in the here and now, making yourself miserable, and your vacation hasn’t even happened yet. In fact, it might turn out to be awesome. 

Alternatively, here’s how staying present in the here and now can minimize your worries. Instead of feeding on your worries, when your first concern about the weather comes up, ask yourself “What can I do about this concern in the here and now?” You might decide to look at the weather forecast to get more information. If it looks good, that might stop your worries. If it looks iffy or bad, ask yourself again, “What can I do about this in the here and now?” Maybe the answer is nothing, or you might think, “I’m not going to let that ruin my day today,” or you might decide to pack and plan for bad weather just in case. If there is nothing further to be done in the here and now, choose not to feed your worries so you can enjoy the present. This might seem obvious and simplistic, but it can save the day when autopilot patterns of worrying creep up on you. Try it and let me know how this works for you.

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Obesity: Part 1 of 2 The Facts

Obesity is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. The American Medical Association (AMA) declared obesity to be a disease in 2013. As a result, increased research and funding are being directed towards obesity drugs, surgery, and counseling as well as for obesity-related diseases, such as type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Labeling obesity as a disease was also intended to decrease the stigma that comes from the widespread belief that obesity is just the outcome of excessive eating and not enough exercise. 

A new study – F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2013– from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Trust for America’s Health has recommended that there also be increased attention and funding directed at such initiatives as:

  • Providing healthier food choices in schools
  • Greater access to physical activity for children and adults 
  • Having restaurants post caloric information on their menus
  • Food and beverage companies marketing only healthy choices to children
  • A greater investment in health and the prevention of disease 
  • Increased availability of healthy and affordable food choices for all

Body Mass Index (BMI) is currently the common measurement for obesity. It is calculated as a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in meters. This is a crude and misleading measurement at best as it defines the consequences of obesity rather than its causes. BMI is intended to indicate whether someone’s body weight is normal or not as follows:

  • If your BMI is less than 18.5, it falls within the underweight range.
  • If your BMI is 18.5 to <25, it falls within the normal.
  • If your BMI is 25.0 to <30, it falls within the overweight range.
  • If your BMI is 30.0 or higher, it falls within the obese range.

What is commonly referred to as morbid obesity is a BMI of over 40.0.  Thirty years ago, 1.4% of Americans were morbidly obese, compared to 6.3% today – a rise of 350%.

The United States now has the second highest national level of obesity according to a report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. In that report, published in July 2013, Mexico’s adult obesity rate of 32.8% was just above America’s 31.8%. Why are so many Americans obese? 

Obesity is a chronic disease affecting 95 million Americans – that’s one in three of us. That’s more than three times the number of adults with diabetes. Yet, there remains difficulty in accurately defining the condition, its root causes, and the many ways that it affects our lives. It is not merely a physical manifestation but can be a debilitating social and emotional challenge as well. There is a pervasive misconception that a person is obese solely because they eat too much and exercise too little. In reality the situation is much more complex than that. Aside from genetic and individual variations in our body’s ability to metabolize food, surely our culture and the food industry play significant parts as well.

When we look at obesity within the context of our social and cultural norms, several relevant observations can be made:

  • Food manufacturers give a greater priority to pleasing our palate than to fueling our bodies. Grocery store shelves and marketing campaigns are filled with foods loaded with sugar, salt, fat, and carbohydrates.
  • Snack foods and desserts have become our go-to foods for parties and celebrations, “treating ourselves,” and pushing down negative feelings.
  • Restaurant portion sizes are typically much larger than what is considered to be a healthy serving.
  • While the diet industry offers all sorts of diet programs, none have proven to result in long-term success for the obese. The average estimate is that 95% of diets fail.
  • We have learned to choose fast foods rather than living at a pace that allows time to prepare and eat more nutritious meals.
  • Those who are obese find it difficult not only to fit into restaurant booths and airplane seats but to be socially and professionally accepted on a par with the non-obese as well. 

Notice how you think about and behave towards obese people. Where judgment comes naturally, try compassion. It’s not easy being fat in a world that caters to the thin. Help break the stigma of obesity by recognizing that there are many contributing factors beyond a simple equation of calories in and out.

In Part Two, I will share my personal journey through the world of obesity and how I found the answers that work for me.

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Practicing Soul Awareness

What does it mean to be a soul? Conceptually, in its most general definition, being a soul has to do with living in part as a non-physical being. In other words, part of our “self” is beyond time and space and, according to some religious traditions, is divine in nature.

On a practical level, what does it mean to exist in a body with a personality, mind, and emotions and yet to exist beyond all that on a dimension that cannot be adequately captured in language? How can I be something I cannot even talk about? 

I find myself most aware of being a soul or spiritual being when I experience a sense of oneness with another person, my cat, a tree, a flower, or a butterfly. In other words, for a fleeting or lingering moment I merge with the other, and all the definitive ways in which we are different are of no consequence. They disappear from my awareness while I experience a sweet oneness with the other. Sometimes I practice this walking down the street and intentionally make eye contact with another and smiling, invite them in. Some come, some do not. Yet, we all have that capacity. 

I have discovered that practicing soul awareness is a great way to break free of my judgments of myself and others. When someone really gets on my last nerve, for example, I could go on and on, telling myself all the things I don’t like about that person and how wrong they are for behaving as they do. I have that choice, but I have come to realize that only makes me increasingly unhappy. I have another choice. I can lift into the oneness that joins me together with this person and feed that awareness instead of building up my unhappiness. I may find myself continuously allergic to this person’s personality. However, every time I am bothered by that dimension of their expression, I have the option of shifting dimensions and focusing instead into that non-physical dimension where we are all one. The mere act of shifting my focus reminds me that I have a choice and that either choice has consequences. If I can be conscious enough to see this option I can save myself a lot of heartache. I can also be part of the solution of greater kindness I choose to participate in rather than allowing myself to fall back into creating more negative vibes. 

Each choice each of us makes like this is like casting a vote for the kind of world we want to live in. So, what we are doing within our own inner awareness really does have an impact on our collective consciousness. Each of us in our own inner worlds is contributing to the quality of consciousness we share. Imagine the upside potential of each of us choosing to strengthen our soul awareness instead of judging and rejecting each other. Are you willing to practice soul awareness by being a mental and emotional ecologist? 

For further insight into mastering the art of being you, read more here.  If you’re feeling social, I also provide daily wisdom and tidbits on my Instagram account. Give me a follow so we can thrive together!

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