Our emotions are everything. Not many people know this, but the term ‘emotion’ is really a contraction for “energy in motion.” This term could more properly be represented as e-motion. And what is this energy in motion towards? You!

Quantum physicists tell us that the fundamental nature of this Universe is energy, and that energy is always in motion. This energy can only move towards other forms of energy that are in motion at the same vibration. Thus, the law of attraction which states that “like energy attracts like energy.”

If our emotions are really “energy in motion”, either vibrating at a high frequency or a low frequency (positive emotion or negative emotion), it must logically follow that our emotions are truly indicators of the types of energy that are in motion towards us. That is, the types of energy that will be attracted to us.

So, it is useful for you to begin to shift your understanding of what exactly your emotions are telling you. From now on, when you notice yourself experiencing negative emotion, you should interpret this as: negative energy is in motion towards me. Likewise, when you notice yourself experiencing positive emotion, you should interpret this as: positive energy is in motion towards me.

Therefore, by law, if we are feeling good, we can only attract good. If we are feeling bad, we can only attract bad. It is that simple.

The existing paradigm and institutions around marriage are collapsing. Currently, approximate one half of all marriages end in divorce, with a great many of those who do remain committed in their marriages living lives of silent desperation. We are desperately in need of a new paradigm for intimate relationship. Gary Zukav, author of the best-selling “The Seat of the Soul” suggests that this new paradigm is “spiritual partnership.”

If you would like to have a spiritual partner in your life, all that you need to do is clarify the type of partner you would like to attract into your life, including the attributes that this individual would embody that are congruent with your own spiritual path. The challenge here may be that you may not currently be able to clearly articulate what exactly your spiritual path is. If the path that you are on is in practicing in one of the world’s major religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism), this should be very simple for you. But, if these particular spiritual paths do not resonate with you, you may need some clarification of exactly what your spirituality is.

From my perspective, spirituality consists of two primary components: cosmology and ethos. Cosmology is simply the prevailing worldview that you hold of this Universe and all of the forces in it (God, heaven, hell, angels, an eternal soul, extraterrestrial life, reincarnation, other dimension, black holes, etc.). An ethos is your sense of how you as a human being should conduct your behavior, as well as the ritual practices that assist you in evolving towards the ultimate aim implied in your cosmology.

I believe this definition of spirituality to be broad and all-encompassing of the diversity of approaches we as human beings have to living our lives. In this definition, every life is a spiritual life, as we all have a prevailing worldview and sense of the most appropriate way to conduct our lives in accordance with our worldview. Even the avowed atheist that has rejected all notions of God and organized religion has some conception of this Universe, and the most appropriate way to orient himself in relationship to this Universe. One form of spirituality on this planet is what I will term “party spirituality”. The prevailing cosmology here may include such beliefs as “life is short,” or “you only live life once”, and so you may as well have as much fun as possible while you are here. This worldview presupposes that certain “cosmic possibilities” are irrelevant (reincarnation, cause and effect, etc.). These  ritual practices tend to involve mind-altering substances such as alcohol, psychedelic, and psychotropic drugs. The “temple” at which such people would congregate for their rituals would be a nightclub or perhaps a warehouse. Therefore, if this type of person with this form of spirituality were seeking a spiritual partner, it would be most appropriate for them to seek someone that they could share their “party spirituality” with. That is, someone they could go to temple with. So it is with all of us.

Another important consideration here is the ultimate ideal to which humans must aspire according to the cosmology that they adhere to. For Christians, that ideal is heaven; for Hindus it is moksha (liberation); for Buddhists it is nirvana (enlightenment); for adherents to the drug culture it may be a unitive experience; and so on. This ultimate ideal to which we are aspiring to according to our worldview, must then be a significant consideration in our choice of a partner.

If one person has one ideal destination, and the other has another destination in mind, obviously there will be a problem.  How can two people be in a relationship when one person wants to travel North, and the other South? It is, therefore, imperative that each individual be headed in the same ultimate direction if they are to support each other in getting there. Thus, my assertion that two people involved in an intimate relationship be able to go to “temple” together, as temples are simply the vehicles by which a group of people attempt to arrive at a desired destination. It does not matter if that temple is a mosque, church, synagogue, nightclub, chemistry lab, etc. The point is that having decided the ultimate destination at which you would like to arrive, it would be wise to join someone that is headed there, as well. In short, your spiritual partner should be someone that you can go to temple with (whether that temple is formal or informal), in an effort for the both of you to conduct your lives in the way that is most appropriate for you to both reach your ultimate goal implied in your worldview.
 

The law of attraction states -  ”that which is like unto itself, is drawn.” More succinctly, like attracts like. What are the implications of this for our experience of intimate relationships?

Many of us are actually quite frustrated with the reality of our love lives because we either have a pattern of attracting unhealthy, neurotic relationships to us, or, no intimate relationship at all. It is rare indeed for any of us to attract to ourselves a partner that we are actually compatible with. The reason for this is that like attracts like.

If you are willing to take an honest look at yourself, you would have to admit that many of the neurotic relationships you’ve been in have been reflective of your own neurosis. In truth, though at the deepest level of our Being we are perfect, at the level of our actual human experience we are all neurotic to some degree, and  must continually strive to work through our neuroses. So, an honest appraisal of one’s own psyche, which will reveal your own neurotic tendencies, shouldn’t lead to self-judgment or loathing. We are all growing, and we are all healing.

However, as far as our experience of intimate relationships is concerned, it is those very same neurotic tendencies that dictate the nature of our relationships. In fact, it could be said that, in regards to love relationships, like neuroses attract like neuroses.

So, if you want to change the nature of your experience of relationships (provided you are one of the many that are unsatisfied with your present and past experience) there are only two things you can do. First, you can accept the fact that it is your own neuroses that draws to you those individuals that reflect your own neuroses back to you. In other words, you can accept the fact that the people that you draw to you in relationships are really just reflecting your neuroses back at you, by embodying them, and therefore, are not really causing you pain. Second, you can change your own habits and patterns to be more consistent with the qualities of your ideal mate. You can strive to Be that which you want or expect another to embody as your love partner.

For example, if you want to date a non-smoker, and you yourself are a smoker, you shouldn’t be terribly upset to find that it is only other smokers that are drawn to you. Or, perhaps you want to date someone that has a regular spiritual practice, whereas you are very inconsistent in your own practice. Again, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that it is only other semi-committed spiritual practitioners that are drawn to you.

My point is this: the people that you draw to you in relationships are, in a very real sense, reflections of yourself. You could say that you draw yourself to yourself in the form of another. Therefore, if you are not satisfied with the version of yourself that you are currently drawing to yourself you must strive to bridge the disparity between your actual self and your ideal self. For it is only as you become our ideal self that you can draw to you your ideal mate. Truly, you must find your own soul before you can find your soul mate.

“Money comes after success… I don’t really think that money makes you successful. I think that once you have success, then the money takes care of itself.”

Whitney Herzog

In our society, we have been taught to think of success as consisting entirely of material wealth. That is, a person is deemed to be successful only to the extent that they are earning large amounts of money, and such earnings are accompanied by the ownership of luxurious status symbols including expensive houses, cars, jewelry, etc. Often times, no consideration is given to the nature of the work a person is engaged in to acquire their material wealth, or the degree to which they enjoy the work they do. In this regard, I believe that the conventional definition of success is extremely limiting, and therefore, limits many of us from the experience of true success.

In my opinion, success is not only having a satisfying amount of material wealth, but having a satisfying experience in the process of accumulating that wealth. Therefore, there are really two components of success: the outcome and the process. The outcome of success is quite simply the amount of material wealth that you have amassed as a result of your employment.  The process of success is your employment or vocation. In our society, one aspect of success is given importance (outcome), while the other aspect (process) is considered irrelevant.  As a result, it is not uncommon that many of the most materially affluent people in our society are completely unhappy with their lives because the process by which they earned their affluence is so unsatisfying. After all, how much could one enjoy arriving in paradise if you completely lost your health on the way there? The point is that the process towards accumulating wealth determines the extent to which we enjoy reaching our destination (outcome) of wealth. And therefore, the process is actually more important than the outcome. As Deepak Chopra puts it, “success is a journey, not a destination.”

So, the question we must ask ourselves if we are to experience true success is: what is the most satisfying process by which I can arrive at my desired destination of material wealth? The answer to this question is simple: do what you love. Most of us, as a result of our social conditioning have been lead to believe that the only way to attain material wealth is by having a job that we don’t necessarily enjoy, or even hate. But, the truth is that the true way to acquire wealth is by doing what we love. This is because that which we truly love to do is something we are also gifted at doing. Just think about it: have you ever known someone that has an undying passion for something that they are utterly incompetent at? Of course not. This is because part of the reason why we truly love something is the feeling of worth we have when we are truly excellent at something.

Thus, having established that whatever it is that you truly love to do must, by definition, be something that you are excellent at, it should be obvious then that excellent skills leads to the creation of an excellent product. And, an excellent product must, by necessity, be a product that is extremely valuable in the marketplace; and therefore, must lead to excellent returns.  Thus, the answer to the question of process is that it is by doing what you love, which, again, by definition you must be excellent at, and therefore creating excellent products which yield excellent returns, that you have a satisfying journey on the road to material wealth. For, as we have demonstrated, doing what we love is a guaranteed path to material wealth.

Now, many of us, having been indoctrinated to believe that we must do what is necessary to earn money, rather than doing what we love, may have a hard time rediscovering what it is that we love to do. Here is a simple indicator that you ca use to rediscover what it is you truly love to do… if you had all the free time in the world, and money was of no concern to you, is there any one thing that you would find yourself doing all day, every single day, just because you enjoyed it so much? Whatever that thing may be, it is your true purpose in life, and your personal “pass code” for experience true success.

Before you answer this question, keep in mind that there are likely to be a myriad of activities that you really enjoy, and that you could easily devote many hours to, on a daily basis, for the sake of your personal enjoyment. But, this is not necessarily your true purpose in life. Your true purpose in life is that thing that you would do from dawn to dusk, every single day, provided you had the time to do so. The former, the activity or activities that you really like doing, should be thought of as a hobby. The latter, the activity which you truly love and could spend countless hours doing, is your purpose in life.

And so, it is in uncovering our true purpose in life, which is to do whatever it is we truly love to do for the benefit of others, that we allow ourselves to have a satisfying journey towards the destination at which we all hope to arrive – material wealth and success.

“Persist. Stay with it. Don’t expect instant gratification. Stay with it and be determined.”

Bill Parcells

Along the way in this long, arduous journey towards transforming our thoughts, that we might transform our lives, we will all fall into the inevitable pitfalls of doubt and despair. That is, no matter how far along this journey we have come it is vitally important that we remain vigilant of being derailed from the path of transformation by our residual negative thinking patterns.

In my own life, I have developed a practice that I have found to be very useful in both preventing such derailments, and getting back on track in the event of falling into those unavoidable moments of despair and doubt. I call this practice the “practice of inspiration.”
 
Quite simply, the practice of inspiration is using, regularly and consciously, various forms of art and entertainment as a means for uplifting one’s spirit from a place of negativity to one of positivity.

For example, I have always been a big fan of the sport of basketball. In my younger years, the game represented for me physical conditioning, competition, and enjoyment. As I’ve evolved over the years, the meaning of the game for me has also evolved. At this point in my life, I watch the game solely for those moments in which an athlete makes the “impossible possible.” In other words, every so often, an athlete in this sport does something that was previously thought to be impossible, and even inconceivable. In doing so, they transcend what was once thought to be a limitation. And, for the aware observer of such an event, we are all reminded of the greatness of the human mind and spirit, and that truly, we too, are capable of making the impossible possible. So, it is my conscious decision of observing such events, either in real time or through the genius of human archiving (DVD, VHS, streaming videos, etc.) that I am referring to as the practice of inspiration.

Another inspiration practice that I utilize is routinely watching inspirational movies. As a matter of fact, thanks to the pioneering work of film director Stephen Simon, there is now an entire genre devoted exclusively to such films- “spiritual cinema.” In short, spiritual cinema is movies that tell stories of hope, redemption, overcoming adversity, perseverance, the hero’s journey, and other inspiring archetypal journeys. After viewing such a film, I always walk away from the theater feeling incredibly inspired and hopeful, and always reminded, to quote best-selling author Neale Donald Walsch, that “God is with me always, and in all ways.” In short, the practice of inspiration is simply using various forms of art and entertainment as a means of giving oneself a “dose” of inspiration for those moments when you find yourself falling into the illusions of despair and hopelessness along the path of transformation. If you keep in mind the law of attraction, which states that like attracts like, you can see why it is important to avoid falling into negative thoughts and emotions, if even for a few moments. For, it is very possible for those negative thoughts and emotions to attract to you negative conditions, which, in turn, reinforce your negative thoughts and emotions, and launch you into a vicious cycle. The antidote to such an occurrence is the practice of inspiration. This practice can be thought of as a type of “energy drink for the soul.” “Ingesting” this “elixir” provides you with an instant dose of positive thinking that will consequently assure that you continue to attract positive conditions.

So, on a daily basis, some of the practices that I use include listening to inspiring music, watching an inspiring moment in sports history, watching an inspirational movie, and reading an inspiring passage from a variety of spiritual books. I am certain that you will find such practices useful in your own life also, so that you insure that you are always inspired (in-spirit), always attracting to yourself the most favorable conditions.