Category: motivation

Categories
essays inspiration Issues life Making Changes motivation philosophy poems reflections

I Sing the Body Ecstatic

 

Here is a vision of my future self and a vision for anyone else who desires to achieve something along these lines:

It is not just another day.

I swim in the ocean of bliss.

I merge with the beauty that I am and the beauty that we are.  I sing the body ecstatic.  I consciously raise my vibration out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.

I am alive with the wellness of Being.

I am no longer bound by the constraints of frustration and the boredom of routine.  This is the new world I have been seeking.  In this moment, amidst the peace and the flow, nothing else matters.

The problems of the world don’t exist.  My perceived problems don’t exist because the wall of separation is breaking down—like the Berlin Wall.

The minor irritations don’t exist because everything is taken care of in this moment of sublime peace and bliss.

Yes, it is possible to live in an ocean of tranquility; to drink divine nectar; to radiate joy to every person I meet; to live beyond prescribed norms.

The Heart of Life opens.  I jump from my perch of uncertainty and the light opens its arms to me.  It is a good light.  It will not hurt me.  I trust it will take me where my heart truly wants to go.

I am not alone.  I fear no evil.  I have faith.  I have trust.  I believe in myself and the essential goodness of my creator.

I am love.  I am beauty.  I am everything I want to be and beyond.

There is no end to the depths and heights of this glorious reality.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

Categories
current events essays inspiration Issues life motivation positive thinking reflections

The Field of Dreams

Door to new world

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

George Bernard Shaw

There is a child in me that wants to romp and play in sunlit fields.

If there are no sunlit fields to play in, then the child invents one with his imagination.

The child knows that there is a real world beset with serious problems and pitfalls.  The child also knows that there are admirable people who face these problems head on every day to make the world a better place.  These people have a calling to do what they do.

The child prefers to live in sunlit fields, dreaming of a better life.  The child knows that if it can make its dreams come true, then others will be inspired to do the same.

Perhaps dreaming is the child’s calling.

I have dreamed big dreams.  Some of them have come true.  I cannot measure the impact that my dreams have had on others, nor should I care.  I can only go on dreaming and manifesting them.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

Categories
essays humor inspiration Issues life Making Changes motivation musings positive thinking reflections success Uncategorized

Innate Goodness

There’s a lot of stuff happening in the world that is bad—really bad.  We know this, and we tend to focus on the bad stuff.  So, I’m asking myself: what is good?

For starters, we are good—even the worst of us.  The trick is; how do we get to that goodness?

I have found that it takes some work to get to the goodness.  In my case, it’s taken a hell of a lot of work.  It’s taken constant digging.  I know what I should do and what I’m supposed to do.  I’ve gotten pretty good at doing the stuff I need to do and should do.  For example, I’m thinking about working for the best democratic presidential candidate that I can find.  Am I excited about doing this?  Not really.  It’s just a matter of necessity.  We have to remove the lunatic currently occupying the White House.

Okay, so there are all sorts of things we have to do and should do.  What about the good stuff?  What about the place inside where goodness happens naturally?  It’s a feel-good place and the source of true inspiration.

When I meditate in the morning, I have, on many occasions, experienced the good place inside me.  I’ve experienced peace, love, and joy.  I like these feelings.  Who wouldn’t?  The problem is that these feelings fade away too quickly.  I often wonder how so many people do so many good things consistently.  I’m thinking of people like doctors and nurses, of gifted mental health counselors, of social workers, of accountants who work hard under heavy pressure to provide essential services to businesses and individuals.  The list goes on.  How do you guys do it EVERY DAY?  If you are a hard-working person, please clue me in.

Why do I wonder?  Well, I like to PLAY.  I try to make a game out of everything I do, except going in for a colonoscopy.  I admit that one is a bit of a challenge.  Not too long ago, I held down honest jobs in sales, marketing, and real estate.  I even did accounting for a while.  I worked in a family business for thirty years doing all of the above–not hard work, mind you–just plain old don’t kill yourself work.  After all of those years of (ahem) work, you would think I’ve changed, matured, and learned to accept that life is hard and full of work.  Nope.  I haven’t changed one bit.  I still like to play.  I envy people who like to work.  I imagine it’s much easier to live in the world as an adult if you like to work.  I wouldn’t know, of course.

Are you resonating with any of this?  If yes, please drop me a line or two.

Let’s get back to the essential goodness inside each one of us.  How do I (we) tap into it more consistently?  It drives me nuts how it comes and goes.  If I’m feeling more peace, more love, more joy, than I can be and do more for other people.  I’m working on making these good feelings more consistent.  If I can pull it off, I’ll be sure to brighten your day with some goodness first aid.

Update:  I have found a way to make this happen with something called Somatic Experiencing.  In my third session, I felt and visualized light pulsating throughout my body and mind.  Now, I feel more grounded.  I feel more ALIVE.  Since I know blogs are not supposed to be too long, I’ll write more about this in my next post.  Stay tuned.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

Categories
essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation philosophy

Cosmic Orange Juice

Transmission. Everybody has one. Not your car transmission. It’s more like an energy signature.

The transmission of an awakened human being can be life transforming and life enhancing.  It is like cosmic orange juice–a vitamin for the soul, water for the seed, nectar for a heart thirsty for joy, wholeness, well-being and fulfillment.

In his book, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, spiritual awakener Saniel Bonder writes:

“As [students] lose more conceptual, belief-based faith in their old pursuits, the pilot light of their intrinsic being becomes more accessible to the catalytic heat of our transmission. With a sufficient exposure to that energy, Being itself is then able to initiate the awakening and trans-formative process within the individual. The results are no less profound than that of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.”

One of the major obstacles to personal and spiritual growth is an inability to admit that we need something outside of ourselves to truly activate and accelerate the  process of self-realization. That something is hard to define and harder still to find.  We can admit that we need family, friends, a spouse or boy/girlfriend. We can accept the help of a trained mental health counselor when our limited internal and external resources are not enough to meet the difficulties life hurls at us. Yet it usually takes a rare form of desperation to seek the help and wisdom of a spiritual teacher.

It is only when everything else fails to satisfy that we are ready to go beyond the boundaries of convention and delve into the realm of the Spirit.

This point of extreme desperation is the beginning.  It may require a change from one teacher to another. The deep need for spiritual nourishment may begin with curiosity and deepen with time, perhaps lifetimes, until the time is right to dive deeply. You may audition innumerable teachers and philosophies until you walk into the right room.  Once you walk through that door, however, it soon becomes clear that what you hear and feel are what you are looking for. The transmission and the words fit like a glove—perfect for your needs. In time, you won’t hear everything that you want to hear, but that is another stage of the process.

I am grateful to have found in bountiful measure the cosmic orange juice that my heart craves. May it be so for you.

Blessings on your journey.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

Categories
essays inspiration Issues life Making Changes motivation Uncategorized

The Golden Rope

In my last blog, I promised to write more about my residential retreat with Saniel and Linda Groves-Bonder at their home in Sonoma, California.  I left you and me hanging on the question whether I would have enough to talk about during my two-day retreat.  It turns out my fear was almost groundless.  I did run out of “personal stuff” to bring forward, but it didn’t matter.  We filled the space by working on two projects I’m doing with Saniel and Linda, and by simply being together in simple, every-day terms.

For instance, I volunteered to drive Saniel into Sonoma to do some errands, including buying cat food and six rather large sacks of bird seed.  Linda likes to feed the birds—every one of them, it seems, living in Sonoma County and beyond.  I can imagine word of mouth traveling at warp speed within the aviary community about delicious, free food.

Have you ever been inside a hay/grain/bird seed store?  Not this city slicker.  I had only been to the main “drags” in town.  Saniel helped me to experience Sonoma from a resident’s point-of-view.  It’s a quaint country town with a population of only 10,400.  Let me add, I gave myself a few extra days to explore some of the surrounding cities.  I found the city of Sausalito to be the most interesting of these.  It’s a beautiful town overlooking the San Francisco Bay with lovely homes terraced into the hills and populated by artists, musicians, New-Age thinkers, and other adventuresome souls.  The more conventional residents were probably working in nearby  San Francisco somewhere across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The weather in northern California at this time of year can only be described as “glorious and majestic.”

Pardon my digression.

I become really happy around Saniel and Linda thanks to their powerful transmissions.  During our time together, we laughed, worked hard, and had lots of fun. There was a bonus event (for me) on Sunday called “a sitting” where Saniel and Linda hosted nine local people for a two-hour session of meditation and sharing.

After these two and a half days, I’m cooked.  I can’t say if I’m rare, medium, or well-done.  I just know I’m cooked and it’s a good thing.

While meditating at the Sunday morning sitting an image came to me: hands knitting golden threads into a golden rope.  The image suggested to me a certain perfect harmony that surrounded everything Saniel, Linda and I said and did.  There was another entity at work with us, weaving together the strands of our collective efforts into a golden rope.  Everything that happened just sort of fell into place, as if by magic. (I know what my next book project will be about.  It fell into my lap as lightly as a feather.)  The golden rope brought us closer together; more comfortable in our Being and knowing of one another—linked heart-to-heart, now and into the future.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

 

Categories
essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation philosophy reflections

The Ultimate Goal

The question is, how can I make the best use of my time?

I’ll bet you’ve asked yourself that question a few times. It used to come up for me once in a while. Now it pops up at least once a week. It’s because I have less time. I can hear my “consciousness clock” ticking louder and louder, like a woman who wants to bear children hears her biological clock ticking.

The child I want to bring into the world is my realization of consciousness. It’s time for me to awaken. I don’t even know what that means. I’ve read about it extensively, but it takes more than reading. It takes practice, focused intention, an activating, energetic transmission, and I don’t know what else. Maybe that last missing ingredient is “grace.” I don’t know what that is either.

Most of the people throughout history who have realized consciousness have done so with the help of a teacher or a series of teachers. Finding a teacher is usually a matter of sincere intention. When this intention reaches a “boiling point,” an appropriate teacher, or adept, enters the student’s life. It’s a phenomenon well documented by inspiring stories handed down through the ages.

And so it falls to me to take full advantage of the teachers and the community of fellow students who have recently come into my life.

Achieving any major goal is a tricky business. It helps enormously to have a carefully chosen team of mentors, teachers, and peer support to overcome the inevitable obstacles and downright perplexing passages along the way.

It is so easy for me to be distracted. For example, my mind constantly presents me with pressing issues that aren’t truly pressing, and concerns that have little importance in the big or the little scheme of things.

That’s where my team comes in. They help me to stay focused on what I consider to be the ultimate goal of human existence; awakening to the bliss of the infinite Self, and then learning how to integrate that consciousness with my individual self. It will take a small or large miracle, but when I get right down to it, there isn’t much else on my drawing board that really needs to get done.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

 

Categories
essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation musings reflections

Highest and Best Use

There is a phrase I learned when I was a commercial real estate broker;  “the highest and best use of a property.”

As time passes, economic conditions and neighborhoods change.  A commercial property originally built as a three-story parking garage can generate higher income and justify the cost of construction if it is torn down and rebuilt as a high-rise office building.

I feel something analogous is happening to me as my awakening unfolds. The highest and best use of the property given to me, my body, is evolving into something that can be of more use to me in terms of enjoyment and of greater use to others.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m morphing into, but I’m positive it’s not a new X-Man character. I’m excited to find out who I become. In the meantime, I’m writing a few more blogs.

 

 

Categories
essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation musings poems positive thinking reflections

As Being Comes Alive

Well-being - Beach Silhouette

As Being comes alive in me, fear and anxiety dissipate.

I feel more peace.

Every action I take has meaning.

Heaviness yields to lightness.

Clarity, simplicity, and focus become second nature.

The future is uncertain yet full of possibilities for creativity and enjoyment.

I can make every breath serve a higher purpose.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

Categories
essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation

Hugging the Buddha

awakeningThe title of this blog is misleading. I wrote it to get your attention. If you feel manipulated, PLEASE DO NOT STOP reading. I promise to make this interesting.

The man who became the Buddha lived and died 2500 years ago. Since there was only one Buddha, it is entirely impossible for me to have ever hugged him. I also admit that I’ve never hugged the Buddha in a dream, so that pretty much takes care of Buddha-hugging in my case. I’m also under the impression that the Buddha did not make a practice of hugging his disciples, but who knows?*

I did have a chance recently to hug Saniel Bonder, the founder of Waking Down in Mutuality. Saniel makes absolutely no claim to being the next incarnation of the Buddha. He is not a Buddhist, nor is Waking Down a Buddhist teaching. Saniel does not refer to himself as a Guru. He calls himself an “adept,” someone who has achieved proficiency in a particular field or endeavor. I don’t want to say anything more about what Saniel is or isn’t. He speaks for himself eloquently, powerfully, and courageously in his books and in person.

I attended my first seminar with Saniel this past weekend. The first thing that struck me was the intimate setting. About twenty people sat in the cozy living room of a two-story house in the suburbs of Atlanta. I sat only a few feet away from Saniel and his wife, Linda Groves Bonder, a Senior Teacher in the Waking Down in Mutuality organization.

I mention the setting and my proximity to Saniel and Linda, the seminar leaders, because it all contrasted sharply to the decades I spent sitting in large auditoriums filled with hundreds or thousands of people, listening to a Guru on the stage. For many years, I felt these experiences were impersonal, but I could not find a suitable alternative.

It appears I have found that alternative. My Waking Down experience has been warm and highly personal, from the first moment I walked into a WDM meet up group in Miami, to the Human Sun seminar I attended in Atlanta.

In his book, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, Saniel refers to the Waking Down work as “aspirant-centered.”  I came to the Atlanta seminar to put Saniel’s words to the test. I have to say that Saniel, Linda, and the three attending WDM mentors passed. They answered questions and commented on everyone’s sharing with compassion, love, deep insight, and a profound commitment.

I came to the seminar thirsty. My head buzzed with questions about the teaching. I left filled with precious feelings of relief, love, peace and joy. I made some new friends. The only question that remained in my head for the moment was, “Why did it take me so long to find this?”

*I do not intend, in any way, to disrespect or denigrate the Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhists, or Buddhist teachings. I’m just having a little fun here.

Categories
essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation musings philosophy positive thinking reflections success

Moving to a Better Happiness Neighborhood

 

stairs going upward

Here’s a mind-blowing thought: We are born into this life with a predisposition towards happiness or unhappiness.

Call it a happiness quotient. It can also be described as a mindset, a unique calibration on the happiness scale embedded in the foundation of a human personality. This mindset is usually affected positively or negatively in early development by parenting, external circumstances, and life experiences.

Recently, I’ve discovered, or perhaps admitted to myself, that my internal atomic clock is set in an uncomfortable sector of the happiness scale. Let’s call it a bad neighborhood and be done with it. I don’t want to dwell on where I’m at or how I got there. Suffice it to say I won’t be spending precious time or disposable income on past-life regression therapy. The past, as a wise man said, is dead. I’m going to re-set my internal clock and, like George Jefferson, “move on up” to a better neighborhood.

I have a reasonably good plan that I’ve been working on consciously and unconsciously for the move. This past weekend, the elements of the plan came together as if by magic, and not a moment too soon.

What I’ll be doing is sort of like breaking down a plaster statue and recasting it into a far more pleasing figure. I intend to transform my inner weather from dark and cloudy into radiant sunshine. It’s entirely possible with the right elements in place. Goodbye self-limiting thoughts and beliefs.  Hello person I always wanted to be.

I feel strongly that anything can be accomplished with a combination of will power, exposure to uplifting and self-empowering thoughts, and a loving source of spiritual energy.

For me, the essential element required to ascend on the happiness scale is spiritual energy.  I believe the right energy at the right time facilitated by the right teacher(s) unlocks human potential.  I have found I can attract all of this “right stuff” by knowing what I want, asking for it, and keeping an open mind as to the package it arrives in.

Blessings on your journey.