Blog
St. Francis is my Patron Saint of Gratitude. He made praise and thanksgiving his daily spiritual practice. Gratitude was his spiritual path.
St Francis’s Canticle of the Sun is a prayer, spiritual song and poem all-in-one. It’s beautifully lyrical, full of high teaching, and it offers a powerful meditation on gratitude. Here is a version of the prayer, translated from the original Umbrian, and below that are some musings by me on the joy of gratitude.
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Honoring the Legacy of a Master Teacher
As I write this today, I’m on a cruise ship, the Silhouette, heading for Jerusalem. I’m on the Holy Land & Beyond Tour, a 14-day spiritual pilgrimage hosted by Life Journeys and Hay House. There are 550 people in our party. We’re here because of one man: Wayne Dyer. It was Wayne’s dream to take a group to The Holy Land. Alas, Wayne Dyer died on August 30th, this year.
In the last few weeks, I’ve attended three public tributes to the life and work of Wayne Dyer. In London, at the I CAN DO IT!® conference, I led a tribute to Wayne. A week later, at the Orlando I CAN DO IT! conference, I sat with Maya, Wayne’s assistant for 38 years, as Hay House and Wayne’s family paid tribute to Wayne. And last week, in London Continue Reading
The First Four Beatitudes
My family and I have returned from the Holy Land Tour & Beyond: A Tribute to Wayne Dyer. Five hundred of us were on board the Celebrity Silhouette.
We visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, The River Jordan, the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, Ephesus, the last home of Mother Mary, and a few more places besides. It was a truly life-transforming voyage organized beautifully by Ibis Kaba, her Life Journeys team and Hay House.
One highlight, among many, was our visit to the mountain where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount. Sister Mary Rose, from the Church of the Beatitudes, granted special permission for us to hold an open-air lecture on the Mount. Continue Reading
Practices For Greater Abundance And Happiness
I’m grateful to have given several talks over the last few months on Life Loves You, the book I co-wrote with Louise Hay, because it has helped me to deepen my own inquiry.
In the postscript to Life Loves You, I wrote,
“This book is nearly finished, but it feels like the inquiry has just begun. Each of us has a self-image, an ego that we hope is loveable, but our egos are full of holes. These holes hide buried fears and doubts, and they cast a shadow on the world as we see it. Life loves you asks us to dig deep, to excavate the ground of our being, where our true nature lives. Here is our buried treasure. Here is where we meet our Unconditioned Self. This is the Self that life loves.” Continue Reading
Including 6 Mantras to Bring More Happiness Into Your Life
In the course I often talk about the paradigms of happiness. A paradigm is a pattern of thinking based on concepts, values, and beliefs. Your happiness paradigm, that is, the way you think about happiness, is reflected in your speech and it arranges the shape of what you experience. Hence, your paradigm either opens you up or closes you off from a greater experience of happiness right now.
When I listen to people talk about happiness, I am listening for signs of six popular happiness paradigms. The first four paradigms are commonly expressed by people who believe that happiness exists outside them; the fifth paradigm is commonly expressed by people who believe that happiness exists inside them; and the sixth paradigm is adopted by people who experience happiness as beyond the duality of inner or outer. These people experience happiness as a quality of their essential self.
For each paradigm, I have included a “Red Flag” that highlights a possible block to happiness, and also a “Joy Mantra” that is designed to help you be more open to a greater experience of happiness now. Continue Reading
How to Turn our Negative Society on it's Head and Start Looking for the Good News.
What you focus on most often becomes familiar, and what is familiar feels real to you. — Robert Holden, Ph.D.
My training in psychology, with its almost exclusive focus on pain, is a very common story.
It also reflects a tendency in our society to focus on negatives. Doctors, for instance, study illness, not health. Business leaders analyze failure, not success. Economists study cost, not value. Philosophers mostly debate original sin, not original blessing. Christians talk endlessly about crucifixion, not resurrection. Mental health organizations publish books on “Understanding Depression,” “Understanding Stress,” and “Understanding Bereavement,” but not on “Understanding Joy” and “Understanding Love.” Continue Reading