Cynthia Morgan

Five Books I Most Recommend to Clients

2012-01-29T13:13:00.000-08:00

Like it's title, this book is a joy. It came out like 25 years ago and it's still worth reading. It's a simple classic book in changing your perception. And there are exercises to help you do it. Some of the material is dated, but as a whole it is by far the book I most recommend. I can vouch that the authors, Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer, are lovely people. This book is included in their "Earth Life Mastery Series." The other books in this series are great too. One of those books, Creating Money, I suggest to clients who are stuck in their careers or financially.

2. Many Lives, Many Masters

First let me tell you that the author, Brian L. Weiss M.D, is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School, and is Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.

Then let me tell you the topic of this book: hypnosis and past life regression. Clients often ask about past life regression. It's a fascinating subject. Many Lives, Many Masters is the story of a traditional therapist Dr. Weiss and his patient Catherine, a young Christian woman, who was riddled with anxieties and phobias that no one could cure. To her surprise, and to the surprise of Dr. Weiss, she began having remarkable past life insights and recollections as she relaxed in her therapy sessions. It reads like a novel as they embark on a journey of healing, gaining messages from "the space between our lives." He had a son who had died and she was able to contact him, helping him to heal, and he was able to eventually cure her through past life regression therapy. It's also about him having to move beyond his fear of being ostracized from traditional medicine by publishing these revelations, and her having to expand her view of existence and the after-life. Good stuff.

3. All Your Worth

This financial self-help book was written five years ago by Elizabeth Warren. Yes, the Elizabeth Warren that was just on The Daily Show last week. Yes, that Harvard Law School professor who is running for Senate. (Who I hope wins because we need more SMART women in politics.) Yes, Elizabeth Warren, the special advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She wrote a book for you and me right before she knocked it out of the park. This book has a simple formula for managing your money for life. I'm doing what she says. And it makes perfect sense. I've read a lot of financial self-help books and this one is tops.

4. The Easy Way to Stop Smoking

Smokers smoke through reading this book, and stop on the last page. Genius. It's by a guy who smoked 100 cigarettes a day for like 30 years and after trying to stop through various methods, he finally kicked the habit by seeing a hypnotherapist. He was so amazed by the process that he began researching how the suggestions worked. He came up with a formula, opened up stop smoking clinics all around the world, wrote this book, then died of lung cancer. It's helped millions of people stop smoking. Buy it for someone you love, if he or she can't get to a hypnotherapist themselves.

5. A Course in Miracles

Well, this is a touchy one. It's not often that I recommend this book, but I'm including it because it's the book that has had the most profound affect on those to whom I refer it. It's been my spiritual path since I was 19. I don't proseltyze when it comes to my spiritual path, in fact I rarely talk about the Course, but every now and then someone will walk into my office and I just know. I know they are a student of the Course, waiting to happen, seeking. I tell them about this book.

If you have a spiritual path that suits you, God speed. If you don't, and are looking, and are interested in spirituality and psychology and not having to join anything or go anywhere to find it, then this book might be for you. I wouldn't be a hypnotherapist if not for A Course in Miracles. I wouldn't be with my soul mate if not for A Course in Miracles. I wouldn't have purpose in my life if not for A Course in Miracles. I wouldn't have found peace if not for A Course in Miracles. I wouldn't be writing this blog if not for A Course in Miracles. I owe this lifetime to this book. In my opinion, it's the greatest book ever "written." But fair-warned: It's a serious life-long spiritual discipline just as, for example, Buddhism would be. (For more info, here's a previous post: "The Five Attractions to A Course in Miracles.")

Runner-up: HypnoBirthing

We pretty much do child-birthing wrong. This book sets all things right. Know someone who is having a baby? This is the book I recommend for pain-free childbirth. It even includes a hypnosis CD.

*****

All of these books are linked for your convenience to Amazon. A Course in Miracles has gone through numerous publications. The one I linked to is the newest edition in small paperback. The other paperback edition has 311 reviews and you can look inside, but it's a bit more expensive so I listed the less reviewed, cheaper edition.

There are so many books I haven't included like the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, or any Edgar Cayce or Seth material, all of which had a profound impact on me growing up. But there's a difference between books I love and books I recommend to clients.

Many of my clients know I'm a vegan and animal welfare advocate so they often ask me to recommend a book on this subject to them. That's my next list. Stay tuned. In the meantime, Happy Reading!

Meatless Monday Recipe #9: Fried Tofu Squares

2012-01-23T10:41:00.000-08:00

Photo: Brad Klopman

The seriously healthy might want to look away. These things are fried deliciousness!

I like to dip them into a soy sauce and fresh lemon juice concoction. I usually make rice or couscous and either a salad or sauteed spinach, and call it a meal.

I made these yesterday and the omnivores loved them! That's always saying something.

Fried Tofu Squares

1 package extra firm tofu, drained and pressed into towels to remove moisture, and cut into 2 inch squares. (Size is a preference. You could also cut the tofu into thinner long slices for sandwiches.)
4 T. oil (for frying.)
1/2 c. flour
3 T. nutritional yeast
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 t. dried sage
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
1/2 t. garlic powder

Sift the dry ingredients onto a plate. This is for breading your tofu.

Put oil in frying pan over med-high heat.

Roll tofu squares into the breading, getting a good coating.

Fry, turning over when well done to make sure all sides are fried. Add more oil as needed.

Dipping Sauce

1/4 c. soy sauce
1 T. fresh lemon juice

Happy fried vegan food!

Meatless Monday Recipe #8: TVP Sloppy Joes

2012-01-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

Photo: Brad Klopman

Today we are making Sloppy Joes from TVP (Texturized Vegetable Protein). Basically TVP is dehydrated soy protein. It's packed with nutrients and has more protein than meat. TVP is a good source of essential amino acids, and also contributes to calcium and magnesium in one's diet. It can be fortified with vitamins, including B12. It is very high in potassium. And it's super economical. There really is no good reason to eat meat when you have healthier meat substitutes like TVP that also have zero cholesterol, and could feed the world.

You can buy it in bulk at places like Whole Foods. It also comes packaged. Here's what it looks like:

TVP Sloppy Joes

1/2 large onion, diced
1/2 large green pepper, diced
2 Tbl. olive oil
1 1/2 c. boiling water
1 1/2 c. tomato sauce
1 c. ketchup
1 1/2 Tbl. chili powder
1 pinch of pepper
1 t. salt
1 Tbl. soy sauce
1 Tbl. mustard
1 Tbl. sugar
1 1/2 c. dry TVP

Saute onion and green pepper in oil. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 20 minutes.

You can play with the ingredients. If you don't have ketchup, add more tomato sauce. If you like your sloppy joes runny, add more water or tomato sauce. If you like them spicier, add another pinch of chili powder, etc.

It's that simple!

Meatless Monday Recipe #7: Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

2012-01-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

Photo: Brad Klopman

I thought I'd post a super easy Vegan dessert recipe. These chocolate peanut butter balls are so delicious that I had to make them twice during the holidays because they were eaten up quickly--and mostly by non-vegan friends and family.

I searched high and low for a good recipe and then tweaked it and veganized it. I added Rice Krispies for some crunch, and vanilla for a bit more flavor.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls (Vegan)

Filling:

3 cups peanut butter, softened

1 cup Earth Balance "butter," softened (I like the original whipped.)

1/4 t. vanilla (can be omitted)

5 cups powdered sugar

1 cup Rice Krispies

Mix the peanut butter and Earth Balance and vanilla, and then slowly add powdered sugar. Once well blended, stir in the Rice Krispies. I get in there with my hands at this point. Roll into balls and place on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Refrigerate for an hour.

Coating:

1 bag vegan chocolate chips (Ghirardelli makes them. Also Whole Foods has chips that actually say, "Vegan Chocolate Chips.")

2 Tbl. vegetable shortening (There is non-hydrogenated shortening if you prefer. Adding shortening seems to make the chocolate stick better and not crack as easily. It's not a deal-breaker though. Skip it if you like.)

Melt chocolate chips and shortening together and blend well. Dip each ball in chocolate and then place on lightly greased cookie sheet. The photo above is a full dip. The next batch I made I decided to dip only half of each ball, which made them much less messy to handle. I placed the non dipped half on the cookie sheet.

You can either refrigerate these, as my boyfriend prefers, or eat them at room temperature, as I prefer. Or do as we do and put half in the fridge and leave half out.

I also decorate them by putting sprinkles on top. Man, I wish I had some right now.

Meatless Monday Recipe #6: Chili

2011-12-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Photo: Brad Klopman

I won't lie. This is another one of my mom's recipes. She makes the BEST vegan chili. And it's so simple. Here's her recipe.

Vegan Chili

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 med. onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

16 oz. vegan "meat"(like the "hamburger"-type crumbles.)

In a big soup pot, saute garlic, onion, pepper, and vegan meat in 2 T oil until the onion is transparent. About 5 minutes or so.

Add:

24 oz. can chopped tomatoes and basil

2 c. shredded zucchini (white or green)

2 vegetable bouillon cubes or 32 oz box vegetarian broth

2 cans chili beans, not drained

2 cans pinto beans, drained

2 cans kidney beans, drained

You can use any canned beans to total 6 cans, but for best results always use 2 chili cans.

Add enough water to cover. Then add salt and pepper and chili powder to taste. Season to your liking. Simmer 30 minutes on low.

Enjoy!

Self-Esteem (Excerpt)

2011-12-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

I thought I would post an excerpt from my upcoming book, You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up. I'm hiring a company to turn the manuscript into an e-book, so my best guess is that it will be available for download in a couple of months. The following excerpt is from the chapter on self-esteem.

Our self-esteem is the internal picture we hold about ourselves. Whether high or low, right or wrong, it is our honest assessment of who we are. We present that idea to the world, and the world responds accordingly, which then contributes to our internal picture. How we were raised by our authority figures, what we have experienced along the way, and how we have interpreted those experiences contribute to our self-esteem.

High self-esteem generally results in an accepting, peaceful, confident, communicative, decisive, and productive human being. Low self-esteem manifests into such negative qualities as anxiety, depression, insecurity, aggression, passivity, blame, a need to control, aloofness, indecision, defensiveness, phobias, comparing oneself to others, and seeing only the negative aspects of life, themselves, and others.....

I use a hypnotherapy process in which clients uncover their core negative thought and then we reverse it, reprogramming the opposite idea in its place. I look at the process as going in and plucking out the weeds and then planting some new seeds. Most everyone has a core negative belief stemming from unconscious guilt. Mine was “I am unlovable.” Other popular core negative thoughts are “I am bad,” “I am not good enough,” “I am unworthy,” and “I am alone.” The latter is popular among smokers; thus, they join the “tribe” of smokers so as not to be alone, they huddle together for a smoke, they feel free to approach other smokers and bum a cigarette, and that’s also why they often refer to cigarettes as their “best friend.” There are two things we do with our core negative thought:

Prove that it’s true, so we won’t have to change: “See, my relationships don’t work because I am unlovable.”
Overcompensate for it and pretend we’re not it: “Look at how much I do for everyone because I am lovable.”

I used to be everyone’s best friend—the shoulder to cry on in the middle of the night—often helping my friends to feel better at my expense. People would introduce me as “Cynthia, my best friend.” And I would think, “Wow, really?” Then someone else would introduce me as “Cynthia, my closest friend.” And I would think, “I am? I feel like I barely know you.” It was a lovely sentiment, to be thought of that way, but I realized I was the best friend of ten people, and I didn’t feel the way they did.

After one particularly long night consoling a friend about her absentee boyfriend, I woke up the next morning exhausted and thought, “I have so many needy people in my life.” The next thought was “No, Cynthia, they’re not the needy ones—you are the needy one. You need needy people to prove you’re lovable.” Ouch.

Unconsciously, I was using those relationships to make myself feel better under the guise of being loving. I was expending copious amounts of energy overcompensating for a negative self-thought about myself that wasn’t even true. On the conscious level, I was just trying to be a good friend, lending an ear, giving advice, but the truth is, I wasn’t really helping anyone, because I was fulfilling my own ego's desperate needs. I was not coming from my superconscious mind. And I was feeling exhausted and trapped because nothing was really changing—they were still unhappy and so was I. When we come from ego, we can never truly know what we or anyone else needs in any situation.

I healed the thought that I was unlovable through hypnotherapy, and something interesting happened—those best friends disappeared. There were no heated confrontations. The relationships just fell away.

When we de-hypnotize ourselves of the core negative ideas we’ve been carrying around, we begin to live in accordance with a higher purpose, and those who are meant to join us on that journey will be there. We no longer look outside of ourselves for validation. We look within, where our true source of acceptance and strength lies. High self-esteem comes from a mind aligned with a higher source. Low self-esteem comes from a very low source—fear.

The book goes on to guide you on how to uncover your core negative self thought and heal it. I've also included tips, 30 daily reprogramming statements, and self-hypnosis exercises to build your self-esteem. I hope you'll check it out when it's available.

Meatless Monday Recipe #5: Stuffed Pasta Shells

2011-12-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

Photo: Brad Klopman

One of the best vegan chefs I know is my mom, and she's not even vegan, or vegetarian. When I go home she has tons of vegan dishes and baked goods prepared. How lucky am I? I just saw her last week and she had made these stuffed shells that were delicious. She wrote the recipe down for us.

Stuffed Pasta Shells

2 Tbl. olive oil
1 med. onion
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups mushrooms, chopped
2 cups vegan hamburger or crumbled "meat"
1 10 oz package frozen spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
1 16 oz extra firm tofu, drained (crumbled or diced)
1 2lb 13 oz jar pasta (spaghetti) sauce (Ragu, Prego, or anything you like)
1 package Daiya "cheese" mozzarella
1/4 c. red cooking wine
1 box jumbo pasta shells
parsley, oregano, italian seasoning, salt, pepper to taste

Saute onions, garlic, mushrooms, and vegan meat in 2 T olive oil in skillet over medium heat until onions are soft. Mix in the spinach and cook for a bit. Then mix in the diced tofu and the seasonings. (My mom doesn't measure, so just use your best guess.)

Cook the shells according to the box and then stuff them with saute mixture. It's easiest to stuff by hand. My mom says she had 10 shells leftover from a 12 oz jumbo box.

Pour 1/4 c. wine into the spaghetti sauce and heat. When heated, pour 2 cups of the sauce into a 11 X 15 baking dish.

Place shells on top with open side up. Pour remaining sauce over shells. Cover and bake at 350* for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes sprinkle with the cheese and bake 5 minutes longer, covered.

Remove from oven and serve.

Thanks, Mom!

Meatless Monday Recipe #4: Soy Rizo Tofu Scramble

2011-11-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

Photo and Meal: Brad Klopman

When I wake up to the smell of fried Soy Rizo wafting through the house, I know it's Sunday morning and I'm in for a delicious breakfast. This week I am posting a breakfast meal. My boyfriend Brad has created a Soy Rizo Tofu Scramble that is seriously better than any I've had in a restaurant. Also, you can skip the Soy Rizo if you'd like it less spicy.

Soy Rizo Tofu Scramble (serves 4)

3 T. olive oil

1 package hash browns that serves 4, frozen or refrigerated

2 T. Earth Balance "butter"

1 tomato, chopped

1 1/2 c. mushrooms, chopped

1/4 c. onion, chopped

12 oz. extra firm tofu

6 oz. Soyrizo (1/2 of package shown above)

1 avocado

1 cup Daiya mozzarella or cheddar "cheese"

Start off by making the hash browns, they will be frying while you will make the scramble because they take twice as long as everything else. Put the hash browns in a skillet with 2 T. olive oil and pat down and fry over medium heat until golden brown. Do not stir. Flip half way through, just like making a pancake.

While the hash browns are frying begin the scramble.

Melt butter in a medium to large skillet at medium heat. Add tomatoes, mushrooms, and onion, and saute for approximately 5 minutes until the onions are soft. (You can add any vegetables you like.)

Drain the tofu and wrap it in a paper towel to release excess water. Crumble it in a bowl to the consistency of scrambled eggs. You'll want some larger and some smaller crumbles. Mix into the skillet of vegetables and cover for 10 minutes.

Add 1 T. olive oil to smaller skillet over medium heat. Add Soy Rizo and flatten into a pancake. Fry until very slightly burned on one side and then flip it like a pancake to fry the other side. Approximately 5 minutes on each side.

Add fried Soy Rizo to skillet of scramble or combine them in a bowl. Mix well so the tofu turns a yellow/orange color.

You can either add the fried hash browns to the scramble or you can serve them separately as pictured above. I prefer the hash browns mixed into the scramble. Brad prefers them on the side so that they stay crispy.

You can also add the avocado chopped to the scramble, which I like. Or on the side, as Brad prefers.

What we do agree on is how much of this we can consume on a Sunday morning.

Garnish with Daiya and serve.

Thanks, Brad!

Enjoy!

Meatless Monday Recipe #3: Thanksgiving Sides

2011-11-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

I've always been a big believer that knowledge is meant to be shared. And I extend that to recipes too!

So I asked Tamar from The Curveball to guest blog a couple of her favorite plant-based Thanksgiving sides for us, and boy did she come through!

Two Thanksgivings ago Tamar went vegan, cold turkey style. I was so interested in her journey that I asked her to write an essay for my blog. That essay became my inspiration for The Vegan Decision, a website comprised of essays from people who decided to stop eating animals and how that choice has affected their lives. Here is her essay.

Veganism has more than affected Tamar's life, it's changed it. She has done a 180 in her career and is currently getting her certification in health coaching/nutrition. You can find her website here.

Here are the recipes Tamar shared with us. Enjoy!

Photo: A Alittlebitcrunchyalittlebitrock

Mark Bittman’s Quinoa w/ Caramelized Onions (serves 4)

4 medium yellow or red onions (about 1 lb), halved and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 T brown sugar or molasses (I like molasses with this recipe)
¾ cup quinoa (I like to use red quinoa as it has a slightly chewier texture)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1-1/2 c veggie stock, beer or water
2 or three sprigs fresh thyme

Put the onions in a large skillet with a lid over medium heat. Cover and cook, stirring infrequently until the onions are dry and almost sticking to the pan, about 20 minutes. Add the oil and brown sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions brown, another 10-15 minutes.

Turn the heat up to medium-high, add the quinoa, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Stir as the grains start popping and toasting, a couple of minutes, then add the stock and bring to a boil. Stir one last time, add the thyme, cover and reduce heat to low. Cook, undisturbed, for 15 minutes.

Uncover and test the quinoa for doneness. If the kernels are still sort of hard, make sure there’s enough liquid to keep the bottom of the pan moist and cover them to cook for another 5 minutes or so. When ready, taste, adjust the seasoning, and remove the thyme, adding a few extra grinds of pepper.
Variation: Saute about 1 lb of cremini, white button or oyster mushrooms in about ½ Tbsp coconut oil. Saute for a few minutes, until mushrooms release water. Season with salt, pepper, and ½ tsp liquid smoke. Add mushrooms to quinoa mixture.

Photo: Killer Bunnies, Inc

Shaved Brussels Sprouts with Tempeh Bacon and Toasted Pinenuts (serves 4-6)

1 Tbsp coconut oil, divided
1 package tempeh bacon (I like the Lightlife brand: Organic Smoky Tempeh Strips)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound thinly sliced brussels sprouts
¼ cup pine nuts (or slivered almonds if you don’t like pine nuts)

First, prepare the brussel sprouts by rinsing and draining, then cutting off the tip on the bottom and slicing the sprout in half lengthwise. Slice each half into thin, lengthwise strips. Set aside.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add ½ tablespoon of the coconut oil to pan. Add the tempeh strips to pan and cook over medium high heat for about 5 minutes on each side until brown and crispier. Remove from pan, chop up into small pieces, and set aside.

Add the remaining coconut oil to the pan and the garlic and cook for about a minute. Then add the Brussels sprouts to pan and sauté for about 5-10 minutes, until the leaves look browner and crispier.

While the brussels sprouts are cooking, in a separate small skillet, toast the pine nuts or almonds at medium heat, until you smell them! Take care not to burn the nuts, they can burn easily. It should only take a few minutes over medium heat. You can do this separately if you want. When both nuts and brussels are toasted/browned and crispy, take off heat and toss the nuts, brussels, and tempeh bacon together. Enjoy immediately.

What is your favorite Thanksgiving side? I hope you'll share a recipe with us!

Oh, and here's a link to more Vegan Thanksgiving sides recipes.

Happy Compassionate Thanksgiving!

Meatless Monday Recipe #2: Thanksgiving Loaf with Gravy

2011-11-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

Photo: Brad Klopman

Let this be the year you take yourself off the cruelty-grid and celebrate the beautiful spirits of all life with a meat-free Thanksgiving! Let peace begin on your plate. I promise it will spread to every area of your life.

Turkeys and chickens are not protected by law like our beloved pets. But they are no less sentient creatures that show tremendous love, form strong family bonds, and they've been known to mourn. Turkeys and chickens have the same desires as our dogs and cats--for love and safety and a peaceful existence.

Because they are not protected, the cruel conditions in which these birds live and die is unimaginable. And to think we are eating that energy! (Here is a NY Times article about what is unfortunately common practice in turkey processing plants. Click here.)

I simply want to suggest that there is kinder, gentler, healthier way for all of us to live. And this Thanksgiving, let peace begin on your plate with a vegan loaf.

When I ate meat, turkey was my favorite. So I would not lead you astray when I say the Tofurky loaf is delicious.

Tofurky also has a whole to-go Thanksgiving meal prepared. You can bring it over to your friend's or family's house so they don't have worry about how to feed the vegans! It feeds six.

The Feast includes the following:

One Tofurky Roast (made with organic non-genetically engineered soybeans)
Savory Giblet Gravy
Wild Rice, Whole Wheat Bread Crumb Stuffing
Tofurky Jurky Wishstix
Amy’s Organic Vegan Chocolate Cake
Happy Tofurky Day card & coupons
Each feast is 100% vegan, cooks in about an hour, serves six and tastes fabulous!

Yesterday I tried the Field Roast Celebration Loaf. (Available only at Whole Foods, I think.) And it was just okay. God bless them for trying, but to me it's not as good as other brands. (It's in the top photo.)

Word on the street is that the BEST veggie turkey comes from Gardein, pictured below. I'm excited to try it this Thanksgiving Day. I hope I can find some in San Antonio, where I'll be.

So the rest of the meal is just sauteed spinach with mashed potatoes and gravy. The most time consuming part of the meal is the gravy, but the recipe makes a lot and it lasts a long time.

Sauteed Spinach:

Heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil with about 1 teaspoon of garlic in a large pot over medium heat. (Don't let the garlic brown.) Throw in a bunch of washed fresh spinach with a pinch of salt. Saute for a minute. Put the lid on and let it cook for 2 minutes, then remove the lid and turn up the heat to high for about 30 seconds or so. I usually dribble a bit of lemon juice over it too.

Mashed Potatoes:

5-6 large potatoes, peeled, cut and quartered, and boiled for about 20 minutes, or until a fork can pass through easily.

When done, drain the water and add:

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 c. Unsweetened Soy Milk

3 Tablespoons Earth Balance "Butter"

Golden Gravy:

(Taken from The Real Food Daily Cookbook)
Click here for the recipe. It's so freaking good.

There you have it. Happy Cruelty-free Thanksgiving, friends!

Next Monday we have a guest blogger, Tamar from The Curveball, who is going to give us some easy vegan Thanksgiving sides recipes. Stay tuned....

"Let peace and love begin with me."

To learn more about the turkey industry, click here.

Meatless Monday Recipe #1: Pizza!

2011-11-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

My boyfriend, Brad, and I LOVE pizza. I seriously make it about once a week. Most of the time I make the dough and sauce from scratch, but when I'm feeling lazy, I make it with a ready made crust and a jar of pizza sauce. Finding a vegan ready made pizza crust was not easy. But I did, and it's really good. Here ya go:

Last time I checked the label, it was vegan. As far as sauce, I use this tasty, cheap stuff:

Now for the toppings. The one thing Brad and I don't agree on is pizza toppings. He likes olives. I don't. I like onions, He doesn't. He also likes his crust verrrry well done (hence the burnt pizza photo) and I don't. So we indent the pizza at the half way mark and top our respective halves. (When the pizza is done, we cut it in half and his half goes back in the oven.)

We both, however, agree on two ingredients always. The first is Daiya cheese. (Pronounced Day-ah.) Daiya is a god send. There has been a dearth of tasty, melty, stretchy vegan cheese until Daiya came along. It's so good. I promise. No one will know it's not regular cheese. The upside? Health. And not supporting animal suffering. And contributing to the destruction of the environment. (Here's a previous post I wrote on Gandhi's regret of drinking cow's milk. Click here.)

The other topping we love is vegan pepperoni. Honestly, you can't tell much difference, and again so much healthier. Either brand is very good.

From there, you can add whatever toppings your heart desires.

If you're up for making your own pizza sauce, I've experimented with lots of homemade pizza sauces and I've narrowed it down to this simple, no cook recipe.

Homemade Pizza Sauce

Just throw all of this in a blender:

6 ounces can tomato paste

1 cup warm water

2 cloves garlic, peeled

5 leaves fresh basil

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram

pinch of sugar

As far as dough goes, here's one that's simple, quick, and contains ingredients most likely already in your cupboard. Click here.

As you can see, I'm not going to be blogging many fancy shmancy recipes. But the upside is they're super easy. And not only are they meatless, they are totally animal product free. Doesn't that feel and taste good?

PS. If you are interested in eating less animal products, here's a list of my favorite dairy replacements. Click here.

Meatless Monday Recipes Coming

2011-11-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

I was at Real Food Daily (great vegan restaurant in LA) the other night having dinner with a friend who is not a vegetarian, and the topic of veganism naturally came up. She told me she wanted to start making more meatless meals but since she had two small children she needed the recipes to be fast and easy. One of her children, Sophie, who just turned 4 the other day, decided on her own at age 2 that she did not want to eat animals. (!) My friend was scrambling to make quick healthy meatless meals for her vegetarian daughter.

Synchronously, that morning I had the idea to blog Meatless Monday recipes (if you can call them that, they're more like mash-ups) of simple things I throw together and call a meal. The inspiration came from another friend's 5 year old son, John, who wanted to stop eating so many animals and drinking milk. (I hear he's now enjoying almond milk and other dairy substitutes!)

I like experimenting in the kitchen and trying new elaborate vegan recipes on occasion for myself and my boyfriend, but mostly I'm a lazy vegan. Not totally lazy, I eat more than a PBJ. But I'm no gourmet chef. I do, however, have easy vegan meals down to a science.

So on behalf Sophie and John and their awesome moms who heed their wisdom, I'd like to share my Meatless Monday recipes with you starting this Monday. Get ready for yummy, easy recipes that even the most die-hard carnivore will enjoy.

Me and the wise soul that is Sophie.

Photo: Brad Klopman

Dear John letter to negativity

2011-10-06T17:26:00.000-07:00

One technique I use with clients who want to change an unwanted behavior or release a negative emotion is to write a break-up letter to it. Just as if you were writing a break up letter to a person, it should include the usual, "it's not you, it's me" sort of ideas, such as why you needed it, what purpose it served in your life, and why you can no longer continue the relationship. Be gentle--I'm sure the relationship had its pluses. Here is an example from one of my clients.

Dear Lethargy,

Thank you for the time we shared together. You attracted me with the shrug of your shoulders, your slow pace, and your “who cares” attitude. When I think of us, I will remember all the time spent in bed or cuddled up on the couch watching T.V. Our bond grew stronger the worse I looked or the less I did. In fact, you continually assured me that you would be right by my side no matter how bad things got. Your low expectations were what I needed then but my heart tells me that it’s time for us to go our separate ways.

I very recently ran into Life and Purpose. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and, as we started talking, a familiar sense of hope and excitement returned. They have a light and a joy that is infectious and it made me recall why I first fell in love with them. They speak with such enthusiasm about Spirit, and art, and talent, and dreams. They encourage me to grow, and laugh, and participate. Sometimes they scare the heck out of me but I know that I can’t thrive without them.

Please don’t think that I lack appreciation for you getting me through one of the most difficult times in my life but, now, I desire more than the idleness we shared. I choose to believe that I deserve more and, amazingly enough, I feel as though I have something to offer.

I wish you well and, if I ever see you with someone new, I will be kind and understanding because I know that your listlessness and empty gaze are wrapping and tending to an unseen wound. May grace and peace always follow.

Sincerely,

Tara

GETTING UNSTUCK Workshop

2011-09-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

I am teaching a new Healing Through Hypnosis workshop this weekend called GETTING UNSTUCK.

Here are the details:

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

11:00-2:00

$45.00 pre-register (I've cut the price of workshops in half!)

At the beautiful Mondrian Hotel

Are you feeling stuck in your an area of your life? Relationships? Finances? Career? Anxiety? Body Issues? Self-esteem? Health? If so, then join me! It's going to be fun and transformational.

Click here to register.

RUSSH Magazine Interview

2011-08-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

Hey Friends!

Click on the article above to read an interview featuring me in the latest issue of RUSSH magazine. RUSSH is an Australian fashion, art, music magazine available on newsstands now.

Be prepared to be inspired!

2011-08-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's gotten in to me lately. All I seem to want to do is watch documentary films. Lately, I've been drawn to those on food and eating and agriculture in America. What I've learned is this: Things are severely screwed up. More so that I thought. But it doesn't have to be this way. There is another way available that is in the best interests of everyone. It starts with our daily, individual choices--in the grocery store, in a restaurant--and being conscious of what we are choosing to eat and drink.

I am begging you to watch these important films. The first documentary is KING CORN which came out a few years ago.

The second documentary is called FAT, SICK, AND NEARLY DEAD. And boy, is it inspiring! If you know someone who is overweight, or on loads of medications, this is the movie for them. I'm a fairly thin, healthy vegan, and it inspired me to make even more changes in my diet.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on them.

Your Daily Grind is Your India

2011-07-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends!

So I'm taking this week off to finish writing my book, YOU'RE ALREADY HYPNOTIZED: A GUIDE TO WAKING UP. Yeah, I know, I've been saying that for years now. But believe it or not, I really do see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm just working on final, final edits. I've decided to make it an ebook available for download and for electronic readers, so I've still got to get the cover designed and figure out exactly how to go about making an ebook. I have also recorded about forty hypnotherapy sessions that will be available with the workbook section of the book that I need to somehow get on a new site for downloading. (If you have any suggestions or know how to do this, please email me.) In the meantime, here's an excerpt from my book. Thanks for your support. We'll talk soon. Now back to the grind.

Excerpt from YOU'RE ALREADY HYPNOTIZED: A GUIDE TO WAKING UP.

Over the past nine years as a hypnotherapist, I have seen a thousand clients with a thousand different issues, and though I treat each client individually, at the root, every problem is the same: We are asleep. We don’t remember who we are. We have forgotten our identity as children of God—or goddess, love, our higher self, truth, spirit, source, the universe, or whatever you prefer to call that spiritual apex—and that forgetfulness has caused a sleep-like state that has manifested into myriad specific problems seemingly “out there."

To heal is to awaken. But we must first understand that we are asleep before we can awaken. Only then can we begin the process of undoing the false ideas we have accepted into our mind. Healing doesn’t actually require us to do anything. Rather, we must undo the roadblocks or, as I call it, “de-hypnotize” or “deprogram” ourselves.

The path of awakening is highly individualized. For some, the most spiritual and healing thing they can do is daily meditation. For others, however, it is to get out of the house and get a job, or learn about food and lose weight, or give up alcohol. By tackling the behavior, they develop the self-esteem needed to look at the underlying issue. It would be silly to tell a heroin addict to reflect on his deeply buried psychological and spiritual issues. He couldn’t do it. But if you change the behavior first by getting him clean, he would then have the capacity and perhaps the willingness to look at the cause of his addiction.

I’m not here to decide whether meditating or getting sober or finding a job is the right place to begin your awakening. I don’t have enough information to make that call. That’s why this book addresses common issues from all levels: physical, psychological, and spiritual. How do you determine the most “spiritual” thing to do? It varies with circumstance. It wouldn’t be mindful to pay for yoga classes every day if you owed people money. It wouldn’t be enlightened to follow a guru for months while neglecting your children, or spend hours in meditation in a filthy house. It wouldn’t be virtuous to teach healthy living while secretly living as an addict. Nor would it be holy to care about people, but not about animals and the environment, or vice versa.

This doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect before we do what we feel guided to do or are passionate about. If we all waited until then, we wouldn’t start anything. It just means we must be honest with ourselves. Awakening requires a certain amount of consistency. The outer and the inner need to reflect each other as much as possible. But until we are healed, we will be dreadfully inconsistent.

I remember a client who said her life’s goal was “to achieve enlightenment,” yet as we talked, I noticed she had trouble standing up for herself—she was scared to quit a job she was miserable in and too insecure to leave an unhappy marriage. I wanted to tell her, “If you’re too afraid to change jobs, you’re not exactly ready to transcend mortality.” But I didn’t. In hindsight, maybe I should have. The best I could do for her was to help her gain enough self-respect and confidence to be decisive and communicate her needs. Once she achieved that, her life took off. She switched jobs, got a divorce and a new boyfriend, and is much more fulfilled.

We can’t skip steps up the ladder of enlightenment. Our quest begins right here, today, exactly as we are. It’s true that no one becomes enlightened with a drinking problem. And no one can love herself, yet hate her thighs. No one is free who carries monstrous debt. And no one reaches self-mastery by being duplicitous, hurtful, or despising himself or anyone else. Not because we’re being punished if we do those things, but because our choice to do those things blocks our highest self.

Enlightened people don’t need drugs, food, people, or things in order to do, change, cause or fulfill anything. They have no lack. They’ve awakened to the truth that all they need is within. Our wounded behavior reflects our sleeping mind. And a sleeping mind is not aware it is sleeping. It desperately and unsuccessfully looks for its identity in the world. Our only real purpose here is to wake up. We begin that process by using whatever is in front of us—addictions, phobias, grievances. Anything can lead to awakening if we follow it far enough.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, hypothesized that we spend the first half of our lives developing an ego and the second half trying to get rid of it. I interpret this to mean that we must express individuality before we can know oneness. That’s why people rarely seek to know their spiritual self in their youth. They’re too busy figuring out who they are in the world. We first need to know how different we are from everyone else and gain confidence in ourselves before we can see the truth that underneath it all we are all the same. We must develop a keen sense of our individualized, egoic self before we can transcend that self—only then do we become truly revolutionary.

The spiritual journey is an inward journey of awakening your mind, not an outward excursion. You don’t have to trek through India, do yoga, or spend long hours meditating. All those things can be important if you feel guided to do them, and certainly the world would be a better place if we all stilled our minds each day, but everyone’s path is different. It’s a mistake to think the spiritual path is big and fancy and brightly lit or that it involves only what we think of as “spiritual.” The spiritual path is actually quite small and quiet and doesn’t necessarily look good in purple. It’s so humble that we constantly overlook it. You may be expecting a magic wand to change everything while neglecting the potential miracle of growth right in front of you.

Your daily grind is your India. It is the spiritual classroom you chose in order to learn your life lessons. Each new day brings you to a precipice with the opportunity to leap into greater awareness. You just don’t see it because it’s hidden in the mundane like washing dishes after you use them, accepting your body as it is, letting go of addictions, being able to receive a compliment or say “no,” or “yes,” learning to walk away or to stay, choosing love when you want to choose fear, and finishing what you start. Those perfunctory tasks can teach us the mindful qualities of integrity, discipline, honesty, responsibility, and respect—all necessary ingredients for self-realization.

That’s why Buddhist monks lead simple lives: wake up, meditate, eat breakfast, clean, meditate, eat lunch, meditate some more, prepare dinner, meditate again, bathe, and sleep. Their day-to-day routines rarely change. Nisargadatta Maharaj, arguably the greatest Indian sage, was the keeper of a small goods store and lived in a very modest apartment on a crowded street in Bombay. People flocked to his apartment from around the world, crowding each other to sit on his bare floor and listen to the wisdom of non-dualism that flowed. Nisargadatta’s life was uncomplicated and ordinary in form, but extraordinary in content.

Another Great Documentary: Buck

2011-06-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

Wow, this documentary blew me away. It made me want to be a better human being. Here's the link to the movie's site. Check it out.

Must See Movie: Forks Over Knives

2011-05-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

Man, I've missed you, blog. We needed a break, but I'm ready to have some fun together again.

My dear blog readers (anyone still out there?), if you haven't yet read the fascinating book The China Study, don't worry, they've already made a movie about it. A new documentary called Forks Over Knives, which is based on this seminal book, has just been released. May I suggest that you RUN to see it?! It is not an exaggeration to say it could save your life.

ECOLUXE magazine

2010-12-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to tell you about a fabulous new magazine called ECOLUXE that has hit the Internet with gusto. I'm thrilled to have been asked to be the monthly "spiritual columnist" where I answer readers' questions and give tips. Here is my first installment. If you have a question for print, please send it to me!

Bad Habits (and tips for stopping)

2010-11-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from my upcoming book, You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up.

"Holy Child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give you peace?"—A Course in Miracles

….The reason we don’t quit our bad habit even though we say we want to is because our subconscious thinks we’re better off with it. It’s called a negative payoff. There is always a negative payoff underlying any bad habit. Even though the habit may be destroying us at worst or annoying at best, subconsciously we think it’s serving us on some level. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.

The bad habit is often the only way our subconscious mind believes it can get its deeper needs met. From what I’ve uncovered with clients, the biggest negative payoff is protection. The maladaptive behavior becomes a defense mechanism protecting us from what we fear: getting hurt, succeeding, failing, conflict, feeling our feelings or being held responsible.

It’s a good idea to get rid of the bad habit, but consciously taking it away or just stopping cold turkey doesn’t cure deeper subconscious beliefs. We might stop that particular behavior, but we start another one, or pick it up again later. Our subconscious believes the habit gives us something of value, and though we easily let go of what we no longer need or want, we cling to what we value, even though it’s hurting us.

Giving up an unwanted habit then requires a change of value, which is nothing more than a change in perception about what the habit is for. If a smoker, for instance, thinks cigarettes are her best friend, she’s not going to give them up. But if, through hypnosis, I take away that value by changing her subconscious mind, then what she gives up is valueless and therefore easier to relinquish.

What a smoker thinks she gets from smoking takes precedence over the harmful effects. All smokers know it’s bad for them. Respiratory infections, emphysema, lung cancer, heart attacks, wrinkles and impotence don’t faze them because smokers value smoking, and their cars, more than their body. Most smokers hold their cigarette outside of their car window while driving. It doesn’t make sense. They fear the smoke dirtying their interior and the smell lingering on their dashboard, yet they inhale it into their lungs. It takes some reorganizing of their subconscious for them to see the habit from a right-minded perspective. My job is to convince them that smoking offers only an illusion of value. In and of itself, a cigarette has no value. Our mind assigns meaning to things outside of ourselves, and it’s that meaning that keeps us stuck, not the behavior.....

All of the smokers I’ve worked with say smoking relaxes them, but that's a lie they've come to believe. They are not questioning the reality of the problem. Smoking, like any unwanted habit, does not provide true relaxation. On the contrary, cigarettes cause agitation in the body through the withdrawal of toxic chemicals and nicotine. The perceived relaxation from a drag on a cigarette is simply the rush of nicotine back into the system. Is a heroin addict truly relaxing with each hit? He might think he is, and it feels that way for a moment due to the rise of dopamine in his brain (the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure), but the truth is, he’s simply feeding the craving that caused his anxiety.

And this is true with any bad habit. They feed anxiety. They do not allay anxiety. Healing comes from a different part of you. Bad habits and anxiety go hand in hand. When you are deeply relaxed, like in a hypnotic state or asleep, the need to pull out your hair or drink or smoke disappears. Your body is in the parasympathetic relaxation mode, not the sympathetic fight or flight response that generates cravings....

We all know that we use things and behaviors and other people to fill a void. We also know this void is basically a lack of love. Typically, most psychologists and hypnotherapists trace the void back to childhood. But this void is ultimately not about what our parents didn’t give us, though we can begin to heal it there. The void is deeper than that. It's an absence of God, or truth, love, whatever you want to call that connection to your highest self. That’s why bad habits never bring lasting satisfaction. The ego’s edict is “seek and do not find.” We are seeking a physical solution to an essentially psycho-spiritual neurosis.

When you decided long ago that you would live a life separate from God, you became unhappy. But you didn’t know why, so you turned to the ego for a solution. That was the only mistake you have ever made, and it’s the only one you keep making. The ego told you to seek that fulfillment though your body and in the world. So you did. And you’re still searching: in a person, a candy bar, a whiskey bottle, pot or lip gloss. But the ego will never tell you that your real addiction is to suffering. Your addiction is to your own ego thought system. The cause of pain is the choice to choose against God, because it is a choice against yourself.

If you want to permanently change your behavior, you must go back to your mind and relinquish the value you have placed on the habit by listening to a different teacher. Ask God to use your bad habit for His holy purposes. Anything the ego makes can be reinterpreted by God to bring you Home. Today you are given the opportunity to live your life differently. The past is over. Every attempt at healing, no matter how little, has great strength behind it. God will use the situation, just as it is, to bless your life, rather than as your ego has been using it, to hurt you....

Tips

ü Call upon a higher source. Welcome God, your higher self, Jesus, Buddha, whoever or whatever, into your mind or to sit down beside when and if you indulge in your bad habit, or if you simply feel the urge. It can be as simple as “I invite God into my relationship with alcohol.” You can’t be in the mind of God and in your ego at the same time, and bad habits are ego. By remembering your right-mind, you naturally relinquish fear and allow a wiser perception to guide you. Keep inviting a higher source into your mind to help you see things differently.

ü Rubber band trick. Habits are often unconscious and habituated responses to stress stimuli. Healing then requires being conscious and aware. Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it each time you are tempted by the unwanted habit. This helps “snap” you out of unconscious behavior. Use this, or something similar, to distract yourself with for thirty days, which is the length of time it takes to replace an old habit with a new one.

ü Stop signs. Stop signs are everywhere so we might as well use them for purposes other than stopping our cars. How about stopping unwanted behavior or thought patterns? Stop signs can be great reminders to change. Each time you see a stop sign, see it as Switch To Opposite Perception (STOP) and simply say, “I can stop __________________.” (Insert bad habit.)

ü Use an alternate activity. If you are addicted to internet gambling, for instance, put A Course in Miracles by your computer and when you have an urge to go online to gamble, open the book and read a section. Or have the daily reprogramming statements associated with this chapter with you at all times so you can distract your mind and change your perception. This will eventually hardwire your brain for a different outcome to the cravings. I heard about a man who was attempting to heal his internet porn addiction. Every time he went online with a craving to search porn, he instead searched for ways to heal his addiction.

ü Delay. Challenge yourself not to partake in the behavior for as long as you can. Delay it for a few minutes, then work up to an hour, and then perhaps a couple of hours. Keep pushing yourself to delay for longer periods of time.

ü Label your feelings. Notice what you are feeling when you have the desire to cave to your bad habit. There is always a feeling associated with it. Is it loneliness? Boredom? Frustration? Address the feeling by doing something to satisfy it—call a friend, take a walk, or meditate.

ü Meditate. This is probably the fastest, most effective way to heal your mind. Research indicates the effectiveness of meditation in overcoming addiction. It’s been shown that meditation trumps behavior strategies in healing addictive thoughts. If you don’t know how to meditate, not to worry, use the self-hypnosis induction in this book to induce a meditative state. Make meditation a part of your daily routine.

ü Mark your calendar. Pick a day that feels like the right day to stop your bad habit and mark it boldly on your calendar. It could be today or tomorrow or in two weeks, or maybe it has already passed. This is a very important day, as significant as an anniversary or a birthday. If it’s appropriate, tell your family and friends so that you are held accountable.

ü Count the days. Keep track of how many days you have gone without indulging, and be proud of yourself for each day. When you’ve reached a week, or a month, reward yourself. Take it day by day, but make thirty days your first goal. Then another thirty days, and so forth.

ü Forgive yourself when you relapse. Relapse is often a part of recovery. I have many clients who have healed their addictions and bad habits, and most of them relapsed at some point in the beginning. We learn through contrast. Relapse does not have to be a hindrance to healing, in fact, it can be a part of the recovery process. I often liken relapse to bad break-up sex. Sometimes we have to go back to what’s familiar in order to realize that we don’t want it. We trick ourselves into believing that our old ways will fulfill us as they once did, but we only end up feeling worse. We are held accountable to what we know. If we know we should be making better choices, and we don’t, we will always pay a price. The blessing in relapse, however, is that it can solidify our commitment to staying on the right path.

ü Avoid people or situations who have the same bad habit or trigger your cravings. While in the process of recovery, you are not strong. However, you are in the process of learning that you have strength within you. This is a fragile time of rebuilding your self-esteem, so be kind and gentle with yourself. Protect yourself vigilantly against any and all trigger responses to your bad habit. It’s not unusual for those stuck in their bad habits and unhealthy patterns to attempt to sabotage our healing because it reminds of what they are neglecting within themselves. Misery loves company. Keep the company of healthy individuals who are walking the high road.

ü Clean your environment. Get rid of anything and everything that reminds you of the addiction or contributes to it. If you are a smoker, for instance, have your car detailed, and toss all cigarettes, ashtrays and lighters. Delete sites on your computer. Buy a sage smudge stick and cleanse the energy in your home. Create a safe and healthy environment.

ü Talk to someone. Tell someone about your addiction, a trusted friend or loved one, a family member, counselor, minister, or support group or even a stranger you meet online in a recovery program. Secrets and isolation hurt us; joining heals us.

ü Do the exercises for this chapter. As mentioned, it takes thirty days for a new habit to replace an old habit, which is why each chapter contains thirty daily reprogramming statements. Using these daily will make the healing process much easier. The only reason people experience adverse withdrawal symptoms is because they have not changed their subconscious mind. Without changing your core thoughts, you will fail. And you were not meant to fail. You were meant for greatness.

Daily Reprogramming Statements for Bad Habits

(Repeat each statement for throughout the day aloud or silently then move on to the next statement the following day. Do this for thirty days.)

I am ready to change.

I can stop ____________________ (drinking, smoking, biting my nails).

__________________ has no value.

__________________ will never improve my life.

I have made the final decision to stop ___________________.

__________________ doesn’t make me happy.

I don’t enjoy _____________________.

___________________ may have served me in the past, but it no longer serves me today.

I replace ___________________ with self-respect.

As I relax more and more, I no longer need _____________________.

I forgive myself for _______________________.

I will not fool myself into thinking that _____________________ fulfills me.

Let peace replace _____________________.

I no longer use ______________________ to mask my problems.

I express myself instead of repressing myself with ___________________.

___________________ does not make me smarter.

The longer I abstain, the easier it is.

I am patient with myself as I let go of _____________________.

I do not have to ______________________ when I am upset or lonely.

I no longer weaken myself by _______________________.

____________________ is self-punishment, and I don’t need to punish myself anymore.

I am stronger than my urge to _______________________.

_____________________ is ego gratification, and I am not my ego.

I enjoy challenging myself to be better.

I develop new habits that empower me.

When I stop _____________________, I make room for miracles.

I stubbornly refuse to _________________________.

Under no circumstances do I ever _______________________.

I do not envy people who _______________________.

My craving for _____________________ is vanishing.

I am happy to be alive.

Money

2010-08-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Excerpted from my upcoming book, You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up.

We’re confused about money because we’ve been wrongly programmed. We were fed conflicting ideas from authority figures. On one hand, religion has indoctrinated us with the idea that money is a hindrance to God. The Bible says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t want to put words in Jesus’ mouth, lord knows that's been done, but, if he even said that, I think he meant it’s more difficult to find peace while invested in worldly things. Nevertheless we turn on Sunday morning television and see ministers pleading with anyone in the tri-state viewing audience to donate their life savings. Yet if money is a barrier to God, why do they want so much of it?

On the other hand, society teaches that money is good; the more we have, the smarter and more valuable we are. Some people have tried to escape these mentalities by adhering to different new age philosophies only to discover the same old ideas concealed in a different phraseology. Contrary to traditional religion, which equates a lack of money with godliness, segments of the new age movement promote the thought that a lack of money equals ungodliness. In the least, these days a shortage of cash is shamefully very un-power-of-attraction-like.

Growing up, I would go to some new age or metaphysical lecture on something or other and hear things like, “Money is a gift from God,” or “Money comes when you’re aligned with the universe” then look at my bank account and think, “Wow, I’m bad and unaligned.” I would shake off any lingering self-loathing by remembering that the last thing that could be said of someone like Nisargadatta Maharaj, the Indian spiritual teacher who by our standards lived in poverty, is that he was out of alignment with God.

Both of these thought systems are built on guilt. Guilt that we have money while the rest of the world suffers. Guilt that we are not disciplined enough or psychically powerful enough to bring prosperity into our lives. Guilt that we’re not thinking with God. The only difference between traditional religious doctrine and new age philosophy is that the combination of God and money as “bad” has changed to God and money is “good.” But both make the same mistake: they drag God into our financial nightmare.

We make the same mistake over and over again in different forms: we bring truth to the illusion instead of bringing our illusory thoughts to truth. We attempt to bring God into the world and ask Him to fix our finances. But that’s kindergarten stuff. All that does is sustain a deep sleep, recreating the same problem again and again. We are asking God to heal what God cannot heal. God is not in the world. God is in your mind. God does not manipulate a dream. He doesn’t put checks in your mailbox. Instead we must bring our thoughts about money to God. We must ask that our thinking be replaced with His.

It is the decision to forgo the ego that brings true prosperity. Following the ego’s advice about what we need has only left us destitute. The ego doesn’t know abundance. It lives by what A Course in Miracles calls the “scarcity principle,” which essentially says, “You are empty. And there’s not enough to go around, so you better take what you can get.” The world is founded on this deep-seated scarcity principle.

By placing value on money, we make the mistake of making the ego’s world holy instead of God’s. And that will always have unprosperous consequences. Get rich seminars, lectures, workshops, and books abound not because we don’t have enough money, but because we are living in an impoverished state of mind—we have excluded our only source of real abundance.....

Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

2010-07-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

Taken from my upcoming book, You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up.

I’m no astrology expert, but I do believe, like Edgar Cayce, that astrology can be useful in understanding ourselves—within the dream, of course. The universe resides in us as we are in it. There is no separation between us and the planets and the stars and the moon. All affect each other, as the moon changes the mighty tide of the ocean and the wind messes with our hair and the snow freezes our fingertips and the sun burns our skin and dreary days influence our mood. We cannot will the wind not to blow us about, just as we cannot will the planetary atmosphere not to stir our being. If you’re here, you cannot not be affected by cosmic movement on some level.

Most astrologers agree that in the year 2000 we left the Age of Pisces, which has ruled us for the last 2,000 years, and began our venture into the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Pisces is a symbol of duality, two fish swimming in opposite direction. We are moving out of a duality consciousness—Left/Right, Republican/Democrat, science/spirituality, East/West—and into an inclusive age of non-dualism, or oneness.

This “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” is about to make things very interesting in terms of what we do with our lives, and specifically our careers. A Course in Miracles tells us that before we can experience miracles, “All shallow roots must be uprooted.” We must pull up the weeds of our primitive thinking in order for something new and more beautiful to bloom. It’s time to think outside of the box, fearlessly.

If you are alive on the planet today you are a pioneer. Whether you take the reigns of this fast moving shift or sit on the sidelines is up to you. But we are all being called to blaze a trail into the Aquarian Age while the old paradigm gives way. And though it’s an exciting time to be here, it’s also unsettling. Everything feels as if it’s being turned upside down, individually and collectively. But the truth is, things are being turned right side up. It’s been upside down. When you’re in the midst of it, however, it feels the same. Similar to cleaning out a closet, you first have to pull everything out, which just makes a big mess of confusion, before you can figure out what to discard and what’s worth saving. Then you have to put everything back into its new, rightful place.

The key phrase for Aquarius is “I know.” Aquarius rules knowledge, innovation, technology, science, idealism, individualism, social causes, and humanitarianism. Our new world will be constructed on these ideas. In terms of our careers, this consciousness means forging life’s work that contributes to unity, healing, compassion, and truth. Careers founded on these principles will thrive during Aquarian rule. Take hypnotherapy, for instance. When I started out, hypnotherapy was considered wacky. Fast forward eight short years and I can hardly keep up with the demand. I tell clients looking for a new career to consider hypnotherapy. I’ve had five clients quit their day jobs and become hypnotherapists after going through some sessions with me. Hypnotherapy’s appeal is skyrocketing as people become aware that healing, like everything, is in their mind.

The call of the Age of Aquarius is for mindful service. We will assist others, the planet, and animals with more empathy. We will find solutions that don’t involve cruelty, recognizing that when the smallest part of the Sonship suffers we all suffer. We will see others as ourselves. We will expose darkness and hold untruths to the light of reason. We will feel a burning compulsion to express ourselves or die. Being helpful will usurp money and power as our mission. And there will be tremendous breakthroughs in science and technology, contributing to planetary inclusiveness and wholeness.

We all have an ability or talent that can be used for awakening during this impassioned time. A Course in Miracles reminds us, “Salvation has need of all abilities….”

We need what you have.

Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food Workshop

2010-07-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

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I'm excited to present a new Healing Through Hypnosis workshop called "Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food." Join me for this transformational day!

Sunday, July 18, 2010.
10:00 am - 1:30 pm.
Mondrian Hotel
8440 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90069. MAP
$85.00

(All day valet parking for $9.00.)

For more information and to register, please visit my Schedule page of my website.

See you then!

David Lynch Talks Meditation

2010-06-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

David Lynch is one of the coolest, most unique guys on the planet. Here he is speaking about meditation. Also, he wrote a great little book called Catching the Big Fish. Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.

New Workshop and Interview

2010-05-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

HEALING THROUGH HYPNOSIS: A WORKSHOP

An interview with Cynthia Morgan

May 2, 2010 by The Dove

Hypnotherapist and regular The Green Dove contributor, Cynthia Morgan, will be sharing powerful healing techniques at an upcoming workshop: Healing Through Hypnosis, to be held at the Mondrian Hotel, Sunset Boulevard on Saturday, May 22.

The Green Dove caught up with Cynthia to get the inside goss on what life-affirming tips people can expect to gain from the workshop experience and how the technique can change lives.

TGD: What can participants expect to learn at the workshop?

CM: The premise of the workshop is based on the idea that we really are our own worst enemy. No one holds us back, trips us up, or stops us from achieving a happier, healthier and more successful life than ourselves. And more specifically, it’s our thinking that limits us.

Most people attempt to use the power of will or positive thinking to overcome their limitations and improve their lives, and although those are worthy tools, they are limited because they are generated from the conscious mind. Whatever your problem is, it’s not in your conscious mind. If it were, you would have resolved it by now. The problem—relationship issues, finances, addiction, insomnia, illness—is tied to a deeper part of your mind, your subconscious.

The subconscious mind is like a hard drive. You can’t have a different picture on the computer screen of your life without changing the hard drive. And this particular hard drive is programmed by thoughts. Our subconscious thoughts are running us.

So, based on that premise, using hypnosis techniques, which bypass the conscious mind and get to the core of the matter, you can discover the deleterious self-thoughts programmed in your mind and undo them. Freud basically said that the only way to heal was to make the unconscious conscious. Once you expose the negative beliefs that are holding you back, you can them heal them. In fact, just looking at them often heals them.

Through the techniques that I will teach them, participants will begin to uncover their “bad programming,” learn how those thoughts have been holding them back until now, and they will learn how to heal them. I expect miracles to happen in this workshop. That’s my goal with each participant—real internal transformation. Of course, we’ll have lots of fun too.

It doesn’t matter whether you know what those thoughts are, or if you’ve been working on healing them for years, or if you don’t have a clue as to what those thoughts are. Wherever you are on your journey of self-discovery, my hope is to take you to that next level of healing.

TGD: What are some of the most common beliefs that hold people back from realizing their true potential?

CM: Having looked into the subsconscious mind of over a thousand people, I can assure you that we are all more alike than different (although that might not be reassuring to some!). A few of the more common beliefs are that we are not good enough, we are bad, we are unworthy, we are alone, we will never get what we want, and we are unlovable.

TGD: Are most of our beliefs cemented in childhood?

CM: This is a fascinating topic that I will discuss in more detail at the workshop, but generally, most of our beliefs are very, very old. I do not believe that we come into this world a tabula rasa. We come in already programmed with fears, ideas, and thoughts from the womb and beyond. And we continue to get programmed with specific ideas once we are here, particularly up until the ages of 9-11 years old. Before that age, we are an open subconscious mind. That’s why you can tell a child about the tooth fairy and he or she will believe you. You can also tell him that he’s a loser and he will believe you. Or that she will always be fat, and she will believe you. Whoever we looked to as an authority figure had the potential to program our mind.

It’s worthy of a more lengthy discussion, but there is no concept of time in the subconscious mind, everything occurs at once. So, though you accepted these ideas at six years old, they’re still affecting you at 35. The body ages, but the mind doesn’t. It constantly projects out what is in it. That’s why changing the hard drive is necessary for a different result

We will be doing some childhood regression work in the workshop—looking at those events in which you accepted false ideas about yourself.

TGD: What advice would you offer to parents who are conscious of helping to shape positive beliefs in their kids?

CM: Well, the first thing I would say is that bad programming by authority figures is part of the deal here. We have all been programmed badly and we will program others badly. We are not healed human beings, and until then, there’s going to be an awful lot of bad ideas passed around and down. As a parent, be gentle with yourself when you fall into that, but also know that one positive thought outweighs a hundred negative thoughts. Speak to children of their potential not their limitation.

Whatever your child’s issue, you can come up with a couple of positive reprogramming statements for him or her to repeat to themselves (conscious mind repetition programs the subconscious). Also, get your child to visualize himself in the situation accomplishing their goal. If he’s afraid of swimming, you could have him say, “I love to swim. Swimming is fun.” And tell him to shut his eyes and see himself swimming in a pool with other children, jumping off the diving board, and having a good time. Make a game out of it.

TGD: Who is your typical client?

CM: I have a very specific client base. I feel like I could be a great friend with any of my clients. They are all referrals so they’re all closely connected though they’d never know it. Generally, it’s pretty evenly divided between men and women. They’re usually in their 30s and 40s—open, learned, interesting, cool people. But I also have a 6-year old client right now and 77-year old too.

TGD: Your upcoming book is titled “You’re Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up”. Are most of us asleep?

CM: The book title comes from something I say to each new client on a first session. Often they come in excited to do hypnotherapy but perhaps with a bit of trepidation lurking from all the myths surrounding hypnosis. So I tell them that I am a really a de-hypnotherapist. Because it’s true. They’re already hypnotized. Meaning, by the time they walk into my office their minds are already filled with false beliefs. It’s my job to help them identify what those thoughts are and relinquish them. The way I see it, we are all asleep to our true nature, to our potential, to love, to meaning, and to the truth that all minds are joined and there’s really only one of us here. My mission is help people wake-up to reality. Once you glimpse your true nature, you become happier, healthier, more peaceful and more successful in the world.

TGD: What are the typical characteristics of a) someone who is awake and b) someone who is asleep?

CM: Very simply, someone who is awake is not run by fear. He or she no longer buys what the world is selling. Awakened ones have undone their old programming and taken back control of their minds. Ultimately, with every hypnosis session I perform, whether it’s a regression session of a past trauma or a reprogramming session for smoking, my goal is help people wake-up. Sometimes the best place to begin to awaken is by stopping smoking, or losing ten pounds, or forgiving your father. Awakening can begin anywhere, anytime, with any issue. In fact, every issue is just trying to get you to wake-up. I don’t believe in hierarchies of healing.

TGD: The greatest misconceptions about hypnotherapy?

CM: Oh, how much time do we have? There are so many! Keeping it short, I think the greatest misconception is that I have control over a client. I don’t. The client is always in control. I can only guide him or her. Along with that is the idea that I have the power to adversely program someone’s subconscious. The truth is, the subsconscious mind will not accept any thought that the conscious mind would be in disagreement with. So, I can’t program you to rob a bank unless you think that’s a really good idea.

TGD: How do you see the future of hypnotherapy?

CM: I get excited when I think of the future of hypnotherapy. As more people begin to recognize that the problem, whatever it is, individually in our own lives and collectively on this planet, is ultimately a problem in our mind and that subsequently the solution is there too, hypnotherapy will flourish. I’ve been doing this work almost every day for the last eight years, and I’ve watched hypnotherapy become more mainstream. It’s now frequently in newspapers, magazines and on television. I can hardly keep up with the demand, which is one reason I wanted to do this workshop.

The potential use of hypnosis is limitless. As I’ve mentioned, it’s beneficial for resolving personal issues and healing illnesses and addictions and phobias, but beyond that it can be used as a means to achieve enlightenment and even for exploring the nature of reality. The more you do this work, the more you awaken to the truth that everything begins in the mind.

Traditional talk therapy is antiquated. Interestingly, the use of hypnosis predates not only chemical anesthesia but psychotherapy as well. Hypnosis was hugely popular at the turn of the 20^th century, and even though it has taken a quiet back seat to traditional therapy since then, there have been tremendous advancements and discoveries in the art of hypnotherapy, making it, in my opinion, not only the future of therapy, but the future of healing. What’s old is new again.

To find out more and sign up for Cynthia’s Healing Through Hypnosis workshop click here.

ABOUT CYNTHIA MORGAN

Cynthia Morgan is a board certified hypnotherapist, but her extensive clientele consider her to be much more than that. Her unique approach to the art of hypnotherapy has redefined its practice as a powerful form of spiritual teaching, emotional healing, and behavior modification. Incorporating her highly creative hypnosis techniques Cynthia provides an experience for her clientele that continues to transcend expectations.

Cynthia is an on-going contributing writer to The Green Dove and her articles have been published in a variety of online magazines. She has been interviewed for magazines as well as numerous newspapers.

Cynthia’s spiritual journey began very early when she was initiated into Transcendental Meditation at the age of seven. Her formative years were spent learning from some of the most celebrated spiritual teachers of our time. In 2002, Cynthia graduated from the prestigious Hypnotherapy Academy of America, and earned her professional certification into the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners.

Since that time, Cynthia has practiced hypnotherapy full-time, incorporating her considerable background in hypnosis, meditation, spirituality, healing, mind/body exploration, and 25 years of experience working with A Course in Miracles.

Her philosophy that we don’t need to do anything to heal ourselves, but rather we must undo the thoughts that stand in the way of healing applies to addictions, illness, phobias, pain, depression, and any other issues faced by her clients. Cynthia’s techniques have proven to be highly successful in transforming the lives of thousands, establishing her as one of the most innovative and respected practitioners in her field.

She lives in Los Angeles.

My Ten Favorite Everyday Nontoxic, Vegan, Cruelty-Free Beauty Products

2010-04-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

International Symbol of Cruelty-Free Products

I began my venture into cruelty-free beauty products back in 1989 when I read about the unimaginable horror that Proctor and Gamble was inflicting on animals just so they could save themselves in a lawsuit if a customer had a bad reaction to one of their detergents or shampoos. (And we thought they did it for our safety. Ha! That’s kind of like thinking the FDA has our backs. Please visit www.PandGKills.com for more info and boycott their products.)

It doesn’t make sense. If they have to test a product on an animal to make sure the poor rabbit doesn’t go blind, trust me, it isn’t good for YOU, even if it passed their asinine test. It means it’s toxic. The way I look at it, my skin is my largest organ. It absorbs and distributes what I put on it. I wouldn’t slather toxic chemicals on my lungs or my heart, so why would I apply it to my skin? Since that revelation, I’ve tried a lot of nontoxic, cruelty-free beauty products. Lucky for us, they get better every year. Here are my favorites.

Skin: Spectrum coconut oil. Mother Nature does it best. We really don’t even need nontoxic, cruelty-free beauty products manufactured when the best products are sitting in our kitchen cabinet. Coconut oil is not only healthy to eat, it’s also good for your skin and hair. I put a tablespoon of coconut oil in my bathwater each night. I prefer "refined" over "unrefined" because, although I like the smell of coconut, this is strong stuff. And it’s my dog Kansas’ favorite treat. He goes bananas for it. I give him a tablespoon each day for his skin and coat and his digestive system, and he gobbles it up. It’s his secret beauty product too.
Astringent: Bragg's apple cider vinegar. Keeping in theme with kitchen products, not only do I drink this in a glass of water daily, I use it as a facial astringent. Just put it on a cotton pad (or in a bottle with water) and apply to your face. It quickly removes excess oil and dirt. I often bathe Kansas in it too. It relieves his itching. And it’s good for cats, keeps the fleas away (add a drop in their water bowl.) Like coconut oil, it’s a staple use-it-for-everything product in my home. By the way, both coconut oil and apple cider vinegar are great for sunburns.
Eye makeup remover: Spectrum grapeseed oil. Any brand will do. It's a light oil made from compressed grapes so it’s packed with antioxidants and good for your skin. Works great as a lotion too, dries quickly when applied to your face.
Deodorant: Tom’s Lavendar Deodorant Stick. (No more, read Update.) The bane of my existence has been searching for a good natural deodorant. This is the best one I’ve found thus far. The search continues. The next one on the list to try is Real Purity’s. I've heard good things. Ditch your aluminum based deodorant that has been linked to all kinds of health problems like alzheimer's and breast cancer. UPDATE: Tom's of Maine was bought by Colgate. No thanks. On a lighter note, I'm super excited to tell you that I am in love with Kiss My Face's Liquid Rock Summer Scent Roll On. It's aaaaaamazing.
Toothpaste: Jason Power Smile Cinnamon MInt. Flouride is toxic. According to Dr. Tom Lees, a dentist of 40 years, "In the scale of toxicity, flourides fall between arsenic and lead." That can't be good. He believes flouride should be banned from all toothpastes and drinking water. (Especially toxic for children.) I switched to Toms of Maine years ago, and my teeth are happy.
Day face lotion: Jason Ester-C lotion. I'm linking this to their Vitamin C line because I use multiple products from this line.
Eye cream: Jason Ultra-C Eye Lift. I can actually feel this product going to work on my fine lines.
Mouthwash: Jason Healthy Mouth Mouthwash. I'm kind of addicted to this.
Face soap: Kiss My Face Olive Oil Soap. A few years ago I read about a woman who was like 90 years old and had the most beautiful skin ever. She said her secret was this soap. I immediately bought some and haven't looked back. Don't trust me, here are the reviews. Seems I'm not the only one in love with this soap.
Perfume: Kate's Magic Anointing Oils. (Venus: A Love Oil). Read this fascinating article on how the perfume industry is trapping and killing endangered species at an alarming rate to produce perfume. I gave up commercial fragrances a few years ago. It took a lot of sniffing and gagging to find the perfectly scented natural oil for me (scent is so personal) but as soon as I smelled Venus: A Love Oil I was done. I am hesitant to include Kate's products here because it's been my little secret fragrance. And secondly, I wrote the company and asked if they made it as a body spray, or would consider selling it as a body spray or if I could pay them to make it into a body spray, and I never heard back. That makes me almost not want to ever buy their products again, let alone include it in a list for everyone else. But dang it, until I have time to mix my own perfume, which I've been wanting to do for a long time, I'm going to overlook the never returned email. I found this great blog, by the way, on how to make your own perfume. I can't wait to try it.

Check out Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Reviews by the Environmental Working Group. Type any beauty product into their database and see how it rates on a toxicity scale. And don't forget to come back and share your favorite nontoxic beauty products with us.

Support nontoxic, vegan, cruelty-free products for the earth, for the animals, for your body, for companies doing business with integrity, and for your BEAUTIFUL self!

The Collective Unconscious and Edgar Cayce

2010-03-31T12:55:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up.

THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

“Collective unconscious” was a term coined by Jung to distinguish this part of the mind from the personal unconscious—what I described as the subconscious mind. Where the subconscious holds beliefs, ideas and memories from past personal conscious experiences, which are now for the most part forgotten, the collective unconscious, or universal unconscious as it is sometimes called, is impersonal. It is ancestral, or inherited, so to speak, because it contains all universal knowledge from the beginning of time.

Every thought, idea, deed, feeling, event and action that ever existed from any life form at any time is stored in this vast universal part of our mind. I think of the collective unconscious as a deeper depth within the subconscious, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll describe it a separate part of the mind since it functions differently. There is ultimately only one mind, and any division is merely a way of understanding the dynamics of the mind from our current fragmented level of perception.

The collective unconscious has been referenced throughout history by various spiritual systems and mystics. You may have heard it described as the Akashic Records, which is a non-physical library containing the books of knowledge and events compiled throughout existence. It is said that each soul from the time it comes into existence to the time it returns back to the Mind of God (or oneness) has a personal book of records that contains all thoughts, experiences and actions.

This book also holds all probable realities. Some seers believe it is used in the afterlife to help us understand our lessons, like relationships or addictions, and to better prepare us for our next life. (In the career chapter, there is a self-hypnosis exercise for glimpsing your Akashic Record.) Nostradamus, the 16^th century seer, was said to have accessed the Akashic Records, as did Edgar Cayce.

Edgar Cayce, commonly known as the “sleeping prophet,” was undoubtedly the world’s greatest psychic and healer. Born in Kentucky in 1877, Cayce was a modest, humble man with an eighth-grade education. By all accounts he was a normal guy—a loving husband and father, a photographer and a Sunday school teacher—but he was far from typical.

Cayce had a remarkable ability to enter an unconscious hypnotic trance state, tune into the bodies of other people (most of whom he had never met and who lived in other states and countries) and accurately diagnose their ailments and prescribe alternative remedies, usually with things found in any kitchen. While in trance, Cayce spoke in complex biological and medical language, but upon awakening he could not remember or sometimes even comprehend what he had said.

Cayce learned of his ability at 23 years old when he contracted an illness that resulted in the loss of his voice. It became a medical mystery. Prominent doctors could not diagnose nor cure him. After a year of not speaking, Cayce resigned to the belief that his condition would be permanent. At the time, hypnosis was becoming increasingly popular. A traveling hypnotist put Cayce into a trance with the suggestion that he would recover his voice under hypnosis, and he did! Out of trance, however, his voice was again lost.

A local hypnosis aficionado, Al C. Layne, heard about the strange case and made a proposition. He thought he could help Cayce diagnose himself under hypnosis, and prescribe his own cure. Sure enough, in hypnosis Cayce described his vocal cords as having been paralyzed due to nerve strain. Cayce went on to explain that he could be healed through a hypnotic suggestion to circulate more blood to the region. As Layne gave the suggestion, Cayce’s face and neck flushed with blood. Twenty minutes later, while still in trance, Cayce pronounced himself cured. And he was.

Later in life Cayce used this unconscious trance state to obtain universal information on the nature of reality. By the end of his life he had become a celebrity, having helped tens of thousands of people heal where traditional medicine had failed, and illuminating the metaphysics of life where religious and educational institutions fell short. Cayce became the Father of Holistic Medicine, ushering in what we now call the New Age.

Cayce’s wife, Gertrude, became his “hypnotist” for the readings. She made the authoritative suggestion to Cayce’s mind before each session that he would answer all of her questions and then diagnose the problem and prescribe cures. Cayce would then be able to access the deep reservoirs beyond his subconscious to the collective unconscious. This is his account:

I see myself as a tiny dot out of my physical body, which lies inert before me. I find myself oppressed by darkness and there is a feeling of terrific loneliness. Suddenly, I am conscious of a white beam of light. As this tiny dot, I move upward following the light, knowing that I must follow it or be lost.

As I move along this path of light I gradually become conscious of various levels upon which there is movement. Upon the first levels there are vague, horrible shapes, grotesque forms such as one sees in nightmares. Passing on, there begin to appear on either side misshapen forms of human beings with some part of the body magnified. Again there is change and I become conscious of gray-hooded forms moving downward. Gradually, these become lighter in color. Then the direction changes and these forms move upward and the color of the robes grows rapidly lighter.

Next, there begin to appear on either side vague outlines of houses, walls, trees, etc., but everything is motionless. As I pass on, there is more light and movement in what appear to be normal cities and towns. With the growth of movement I become conscious of sounds, at first indistinct rumblings, then music, laughter, and singing of birds. There is more and more light, the colors become very beautiful, and there is the sound of wonderful music. The houses are left behind, ahead there is only a blending of sound and color. Quite suddenly I come upon a hall of records. It is a hall without walls, without ceiling, but I am conscious of seeing an old man who hands me a large book, a record of the individual for whom I seek information.[1]

Understanding this nonphysical phenomenon of the Akashic records is difficult for those of us trapped in a linear perception of reality, but if you think of everything as energy, then every thought or action leaves an imprint in the universal energetic field. Someone like Cayce tunes into this in their mind and translates that information through their field of reference.

Cayce believed that anyone could do what he did. He understood that all minds are joined. When we tap into that collective unconsciousness, we tap into universal knowledge.

Jung is famous for his idea of archetypes that exist within this collective unconscious. An archetype is a universal image or symbol, like a hero or a wise old man (like the one in Cayce’s experience who hands him the Akashic book) or even events like birth and death, which transcend time, language and culture but are imprinted in the collective mind. Because of those imprints we all intuitively understand those symbols when they show up in our experience or in our dreamworld.

Attributes of the Collective Unconscious Mind:

· Universal record of all knowledge and events

· Archetypes

Check out the featured video on Edgar Cayce on the right. (This is part one, the rest can be seen on YouTube.)

My favorite Edgar Cayce books are There is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce and The Essential Edgar Cayce.

For more information on Edgar Cayce, visit his organization ARE.

[1] Edgar Cayce Reading 294-19 Report File from A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc.)

Vegetarianism and Blood/Body Types

2010-03-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

This article is written by me as a lead in to Daniel Kucan's article which follows.

If I were told that in order to live a long healthy life I would have to eat meat, I wouldn’t do it. If I were told that it would make me feel better and look better, I wouldn’t do it. If I were told that it was for my blood type or my body type, I wouldn’t do it. If I were dying and someone said that I just might live if I ate meat, I still wouldn’t do it. Lucky for me, researchers have found that the healthiest diet for human beings is a vegetarian diet. Not for some human beings, but for all human beings.

Studies show vegans and vegetarians live 6-10 years longer than meat eaters. They’ve also found incidents of cancer and heart disease and strokes and diabetes and Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis and high blood pressure and a whole host of other serious health issues are significantly lower in vegetarians and even lower still in vegans than in meat eaters. Yet, none of those are the reasons I am vegan. Those things are just the proverbial icing. Nice side effects. Bonuses.

The reason I wouldn’t eat meat even if it were the best thing for me is the same reason Gandhi didn’t drink cow’s milk on his deathbed when doctors ordered him to do so or die—because most of the meat and dairy we consume is a product of horrific cruelty. And I have always known with everything that I am that what isn’t good for an animal isn’t good for me. And that’s good enough for me. I don’t need to hear someone rattle off the health benefits. I’m sold on pain and suffering. I hear that and I’m out.

When people say, “I can’t be vegetarian because it’s not for my blood type.” I want to say, “What blood type is that? Cold-blooded?” I’m astounded that we care more about a fad diet than years of sound evidence that clearly states NOT eating animals is the healthy way to go. I’m even more shocked that we care more about this diet than the fact that millions of animals are suffering in silence, hidden away from our protected eyes and ears.

Dogs and cats and horses all have different blood types within their breed. And some horses don’t “have to eat meat” while other horses are better off with plants. All horses eat the same—on all seven continents. Just like all cows. And gorillas. And elephants. And so on. It should also be noted that horses, cows, gorillas, and elephants are four of the strongest animals in the world, and they’re herbivores!

Human bodies are not elite bodies. The human body isn’t more of a miracle than a cat’s body. We’ve just decided it is. With varying degrees, generally, all of these bodies have the same needs: food, sleep, water, sex, and activity. They all have hearts and lungs and a sense of smell and sight. In fact, our human body is often slower, weaker, and less agile than many animals. So what makes us think the human body is so much more special than a horse’s body? How much better could our bodies be if we have astoundingly higher rates of disease than animals’ bodies? What makes us believe that we are the only species of bodies that have to eat differently among us?

I contend that all human bodies need the same fundamental diet, just like all other animals left to their own devices would eat the same things within their breed. As studies continue to show, ALL human bodies live longer, healthier lives on a plant based diet. In a later post I will write about how the human body is most similar to herbivores (teeth, intestines, without claws) and radically different from carnivores. We have not always eaten meat, we have been conditioned to eat meat. As the ADA (American Dietetic Association) says, “Most of mankind for most of human history has lived on a vegetarian or Lacto-ovo vegetarian diet.”

Today as I was mulling over this whole blood type theory, and the myth I think it is, it dawned on me that there was only one person I should turn to to get another opinion—my whip smart, funny, thoughtful, vegan, animal rescuer, super fit, ex-physical trainer, television personality from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and now star of HGTV’s Desperate Spaces, friend: Daniel Kucan.

Here’s what he sent back. (Scroll down to see his post.) I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks for taking the time to be a guest blogger, Daniel. I still believe in astrology though.

The Magick Behind "Eat Right 4 Your Type" and the Difference Between Thinking and Believing

2010-03-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

My first guest blogger and I couldn't be more happy to have him! None other than Daniel Kucan, television personality from "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and HGTV's "Desperate Spaces." (The above post explains why I asked Daniel to give us his take on this subject.)

There are all sorts of stories that I wish were true. There are fairy tales, urban legends, creation stories, pseudo-scientific theorems, all manner of folksy bits of wisdom that appeal to me on a sort of mythic, dramatic level. Or, and I find this aspect of myself even more disturbing, I occasionally find myself believing an inscrutable story because it speaks to my prejudices and predispositions; I often make the conscious decision to believe something because it is useful as evidence to support a position upon which I have already made a choice.

I believe it is this exact same principal that makes people believe in astrology. It’s lovely for a complete stranger to tell us “you have a lot of unused potential” or that “you will soon experience a big change.” In my opinion, we believe these things because we want to.

I have no doubt that it’s this exact same phenomenon that explains why the “Eat Right 4 Your Type” fad diet is being accepted as even mildly valid. The blood type diet is advocated most famously by naturopathic physician Peter D’Adamo. (Anyone rational should have huge issues with the term “naturopathic physician” anyway. It is exactly as oxymoronic as “creation science,” but that’s a subject for a different article.) D’Adamo’s thesis is that, as human beings evolved, they moved throughout different parts of the planet and developed certain dietary requirements based on the locations in which they now found themselves. Since blood type also seems to coincide with certain geological locales, D’Adamo links these two things and “presto!”, he can now magically tell you what you should be eating.

And it’s really that simple, and really that magical. While there is a certain appeal to the notion that those of us with ancestral ties to the Himalayan Mountains should be eating foods that were plentiful there, there is no scientific justification for this at all. There have been no peer reviewed studies to support this theory, and in fact, D’Adamo himself hasn’t published any studies, although he claims to be conducting them. Likewise, anyone with even a fair understanding of evolution knows that the timeline proposed by D’Adamo doesn’t provide nearly enough time for this to have occurred.

The other fly in D’Adamo’s ointment is that, sometimes, people do get really sick. What happens then? What happens when someone has been eating right for their blood type, and they get an infection and develop kidney disease, or they smoke and are stressed out and they have a heart attack? Now, they have to change their eating habits in order to minimize their risk of further damage. But their blood type HASN’T CHANGED, only their dietary restrictions. There is NO EVIDENCE linking blood type and the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.

The most preposterous bit of hokum is when D’Adamo claims that eating wrong for your blood type can cause blood agglutination, where the red blood cells start to stick together and clot. Blood agglutination kills people. It is not caused by eating the wrong kind of toast, or eating too many grains when I should be having a starch.

The question is further clouded by a particularly pernicious turn in the dietary advice D’Adamo suggests. More than half the country is type O, and the diet given for type O is a completely reasonable, healthy, well balanced one. Anyone who was to follow this diet, would almost certainly lose weight and feel good. Since statistically more than half the people reading the book and following that diet will get good results, good testimonials are a sure thing.

I am not so cynical as to suggest that D’Adamo has done this on purpose, but it wouldn’t surprise me either. Book sales are books sales, after all.

I have a particular disdain for this type of pseudo-science. It plays on our romantic notions of uniqueness and our craving for history and ancestral ties. It’s a beguiling fairy tale to be sure, but until someone can do a double blind study that statistically proves it, it’s a fairy tale nonetheless. But quackery like this also relies on the idea that, as long as it makes emotional sense, then we will accept it as truth.

Let’s be honest. If no one had proven that the Earth moves around the sun, then I wouldn’t believe it. It just doesn’t make emotional sense. I believe, deep down, that the Earth is the center of the universe, even though it’s completely, demonstrably false. Or flying; I don’t for a second believe that an airplane can fly. An airplane is like a gazillion pounds of metal and polyester, it can’t possibly fly. But I know that it will. It is this conflict between what we “think” and what we “believe” that provides a platform upon which folks like D’Adamo can build their “science.”

I refuse to seek answers grounded in irrationality. I demand to look beyond my prejudices, my simplistic, emotional demands. Simply because something pulls at our emotional strings or makes sense in a mythic way, does not make it science, and I refuse to base my ethical decisions upon it; and you probably shouldn’t bet your health on it.

Five Attractions to A COURSE IN MIRACLES

2010-02-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

This is a course in mind training.

If A Course in Miracles was a church, I wouldn’t attend. If it was a week long retreat in some exotic locale, I really wouldn't attend; and if it was a school, I’d rather sleep in. To me, the greatest thing about A Course in Miracles is that it’s a book. Apparently, I’m not alone. Without an advertisement campaign—simply by word of mouth—nearly two million copies of A Course in Miracles have sold worldwide since its publication in 1976. The Course has been translated from English into countless languages.

A Course in Miracles was first published as a set of three hardbound books but is now sold as a single three-volume book. Contained within the Course is a Text, which sets forth the theoretical foundation of this spiritual thought system, a Workbook for students with 365 lessons, which guides students through a year of daily application of those tenets, and a Manual for Teachers, which answers questions students might have. In addition, a short paperback containing two supplements were published three years after the Course: Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice, and A Song of Prayer: Prayer, Forgiveness, Healing.

I think the best place to begin to understand A Course in Miracles is with Freud who, after years of brilliant research, concluded that only a radical psychological re-education would get us out of the mess we’re in. In other words, if we want to be happy, we need to change the way we think. A Course in Miracles is just what the good doctor ordered. The Course agrees with Freud’s statement, except the Course would say it’s going to take a radical psychological undoing.

The Course could be described as a process of "undoing" in the framework of a spiritual psychotherapy. “Spiritual” because it combines universal spiritual themes, uses spiritual language, and is a path that leads to Spirit, God (or Oneness as the Course defines God), Truth, Nirvana, the Divine or whatever you want to call that spiritual apex. “Psychotherapy” because that journey is treaded through the psyche—by examining and changing, or undoing, thoughts.

This process of undoing requires the relinquishment of a thought system based on fear and replacing it with a thought system rooted in love. That shift in perception—from fear to love—is how the Course defines a “miracle.” A Course in Miracles is not a course in manipulating the world—making an ex-lover appear or your boss disappear or winning the weekly lottery. It is a course in attaining inner peace, not stuff. Changing your life, in Course terms, means changing your mind about your life. For that reason, A Course in Miracles calls itself a “mind training.”

I believe it is the content—the Course's totally radical message—that is its number one main attraction. But over the years of teaching A Course in Miracles I've noticed five primary reasons people are drawn to its form.

1. It’s a book. Ultimately, the Course is a self-study program. You need not attend anything or utter the word “miracle” to anyone. The study and application are done on your own time, in your own head.

2. It's a practical step-by-step guided, daily spiritual path. The Course stresses “application rather than theory, and experience rather than theology.” If you can read and follow directions, you can obtain the goal of A Course in Miracles: peace. Simple, right?

3. It does not dictate rules of behavior. You can keep doing whatever you’re doing. The Course does not change behavior, it changes meaning—why you’re doing what you’re doing. Along with that new perspective, however, it is not unusual for external circumstances to change. But again, that’s up to you. If your lifestyle changes, it will be because you want it to, not because you have to.

4. It’s a beautiful communion of universal spiritual themes. And more than that, the Course is a revolutionary fusion of psychology and spirituality. Spirituality and the intellect have often been at cross-purposes--each terrified of the other. A Course in Miracles, however, breathes new life into the finest ideas of Plato, Gnosticism, Schopenhauer and Freud, while delivering its own message.

5. It has immediate results. Doing one Workbook Lesson changes you—your day, your feelings, and your experience.

Being a student of the Course doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. If you are more of a social butterfly than a hermit, don’t despair. Many people find that discussing the material with others helps them better understand the principles. As a result, there are more than 2,000 study groups around the world—1,700 in the United States alone. On any given night, in any given state, Course students gather.

There are no churches are officially associated with A Course in Miracles, but as it gains popularity its message is finding its way onto more liberal pulpits (and its hard to find a mainstream spiritual book that doesn't reference it). This is partly due to the Course’s use of Christian terminology. But it should be noted that the Course redefines traditional Christian terms and concepts in very non-traditional ways. Essentially, it threw out the baby and kept the bathwater. (I will talk more about this and how the Course could be considered a correction to Christianity in a later article.)

A Course in Miracles does not claim to be every person’s path. And it does not claim to be the only path to God. It says it is but one of thousands, all leading to the same outcome. In a world of religious righteousness what is refreshing about the Course is its humbleness. That'd be #6.

Three Levels of Relationships

2010-01-27T19:08:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from from my upcoming book, You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up.

We have all heard that the best relationships are comprised of two whole and complete individuals coming together as one. It’s a nice theory, but unrealistic. I don’t know any whole and complete people, do you? If we all waited until we were healed before we had a relationship, we'd be sitting home alone every Saturday night. It would be more accurate to say that the best relationship is made up of two people willing to grow toward becoming whole in the presence, and with the help, of each other. Then at least we stand a chance.

Relationships are the most important aspect of our lives because through another we come to know ourselves. One of my favorite lines from A Course in Miracles says, “The ark of peace is entered two by two.” The story of Noah’s ark is a metaphor for how we save ourselves from drowning in this illusory world. We arrive at the safe haven of love by bringing another with us.

Under our current hypnotic spell, it appears we live in a chaotic universe of random, accidental meetings. But the conscious mind’s perception of life is painfully narrow. There are no accidents, even in relationships. A Course in Miracles tells us relationships are assignments. They are chosen by our higher selves for one purpose: To learn to see each other as God sees us. As we see another, we see ourselves. As we see ourselves, we see another.

Every person we come in contact with is a holy encounter. Meaning, within the relationship is the potential for us to awaken to Truth. The form of each relationship assignment is different, but the content is always to remember that only love is real.

A Course in Miracles says there are three levels of relationships.

Level One Relationships

Family members do a good job of testing us, but there is another group who sometimes test us even more: People we don’t know—the woman who doesn’t let us merge into traffic or the pushy man in the bank line. In our hustle-and-bustle world, they are some of our greatest teachers, catching us off-guard while we’re asleep. We would call them "chance encounters" but A Course in Miracles tells us, "Those who are to meet will meet." Level One assignments are people you seem to know very little about, but this may be your tenth lifetime of spilling a drink on one another. Whether we label it bad, pleasant or uneventful, no matter how brief, the relationship carries tremendous potential for healing. You will continue to meet until your assignment is complete and forgiveness is found.

Level Two Relationships

These relationships would most likely, though not exclusively, be friends, lovers, co-workers or exes. More time is spent in Level Two relationships, offering you deeper self-examination. Once you enter a relationship, you remain connected through the love you shared or through the need to unveil it. You may appear to separate when the assignment is over. Often this is the feeling of having “outgrown” each other. Or you may simply take a break from the relationship to learn other lessons before you continue healing with that person again. It can also be true that you are never physically with these people again in this world. Regardless of the circumstance, the lessons of Level Two relationships can impact an entire lifetime.

Level Three Relationships

Level Three relationships are life-long. They include parents, siblings, children, spouses and close friends. Life-long does not necessarily mean amicable. It means there is a considerable amount of karma, so to speak, with these people. Level Three assignments can be extremely gratifying and offer profound moments of love, but they can also be ugly and messy. These people bring out the best and worst in us. I understand these relationships as soul contracts that we form before coming here. Both parties agreed they would try to learn their lessons of forgiveness and love through what the other had, or didn't have. The growth potential is nothing short of a quantum leap if we are willing to perceive these people as our teachers in awakening, rather than just "mom" or "dad."

Dreams: A Royal Road to Knowing Thyself

2009-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

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The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. -Sigmund Freud

We’ve all skidded by on our good looks and charm long enough. In this New Year, it’s time we use more of ourselves, not just to help ourselves and the world, but to know ourselves. That is, after all, why we're all here.

I contend that the subconscious mind is our most highly underutilized tool. We know our conscious mind all too well; it’s always chattering. The conscious mind is the analytical, logical, willful, judgmental, discerning part of ourselves. Necessary, but not who we are.

There is a “hidden” part, the subconscious mind, that holds deeper truths and vast untapped potential. And I don’t mean potential in acquiring things like in The Secret-type stuff. (Aren’t we beyond all that ego-driven “get, get, get” “me, me, me” mentally? That’s all just child’s play that keeps us stuck in the illusions of this world.) I mean, using this hidden part of ourselves that we know very little about to come to realize our true potential.

In short, the subconscious mind is the picture mind and feeling mind because it’s the storehouse of all of our memories—from this life, past-lives, even natal (womb memory)—and it’s the feeling mind because it is the seat of our emotions. It's also a wellspring of creativity, and a link to other states of consciousness and awareness. Through the subconscious we can even access the Divine, amongst other things.

If we use the perennial iceberg metaphor, the conscious mind is the small visible tip of the iceberg above the water's surface while the mass and strength and power and driving force of the iceberg floats below the water's surface. This is our subconscious. We can’t glimpse it with our conscious mind. We need a different type of vision.

Accessing this deeper part of ourselves requires going under the water’s surface. Two ways of diving into those bottomless waters and exploring the subconscious are hypnosis and dreaming. Both are natural states of mind that we experience within any given 24-hour period—one during the day, the other at night.

The hypnotic state is an altered state (as opposed to our usual conscious state) of awareness whereby we have bypassed the conscious mind. Watching television, daydreaming, driving on the freeway, being in the “zone” while playing a sport or painting or writing can put us into this state by collapsing, so to speak, the analytical mind, giving way to the subconscious. We’re no longer thinking critically, rather we are allowing, responding, receiving or creating from a stream of consciousness.

We also bypass the conscious mind through nighttime dreaming. Although both hypnosis and dreaming are natural states of mind that we don’t consciously conjure up, they can be honed and utilized as tools for self-realization, or to just help us find a misplaced sentimental necklace. The possibilities are endless.

Neither state needs to be taught, each needs to be cultivated. Today we will focus on accessing our subconscious through dreams. In a later post, we'll talk about doing it through self-hypnosis.

We all dream, we just don’t remember our dreams, at least not all the time. But that’s only because we don’t care to remember them. If we wanted to remember our dreams, we would. (On a side note, I have noticed in my practice that clients who smoke cigarettes or pot have a much more difficult time accessing their dreams.)

I encourage you to want to remember your dreams. Within your dreaming mind are messages, ideas, potentiality, dimensions of reality, creativity, connection with others, teachers, those that have lived before, time and space travel, your Higher Self, and the location of your lost necklace.

Don’t take my word for it, here is what Seth says about dreams:

When I speak of the dream world, I am not referring to some imaginary realm, but to the kind of world of ideas, of thoughts, of mental actions, out of which all form as you think it emerges. In actuality, this is an inner universe rather than an inner world. Your physical reality is but one materialization of that inner organization. All possible civilizations exist first in that realm of the inner mind.

And I like what Edgar Cayce says:

Man approaches the more intimate conditions of that field of the inner self when the conscious self is at rest in sleep or slumber, at which time more of the inner forces are taken into consideration and studied by the individual.... It is each individual's job...to understand his individual condition, his individual position in relation to others, his individual manifestation, through his individual receiving of messages from the higher forces themselves, thus, through dreams.

I have been studying and using my dream-state for years. For some reason, in the last couple of years, one thing that state has made me become psychically aware of is earthquakes. In May of 2008, I woke up and said, “There’s been an earthquake.” I turned on my computer and saw that 10,000 people had died in an earthquake in China while I slept. I said the same thing the morning of the Indonesian earthquake.

It might have to do with the fact that when I fall asleep at night I ask my consciousness to be of service to the world in any way it can to whomever needs me during my sleeping hours. Of course, this starts with the idea that 1. I am not my physical body and 2. that my mind is joined to the mind of every mind. In other words, there’s really only one of us here. My understanding of the nature of reality rests on these premises. My point being, we spend a third of our lives asleep, why not use it for healing ourselves and helping others?

I've also used the dream-state to communicate with people who can't communicate with me on the physical level, like deceased relatives, philosophers from times of antiquity, even a little boy I used to work with who had severe autism. He didn't speak, but in my dreams we conversed.

My friends, the resources are limitless.

Here are some of my tips to remembering your dreams.

Before falling asleep:

Put a special notepad just for dreaming by your bed. Title it “Dream Journal.” And write the date. Start tomorrow. Jan. 1. 2010. Or if you’re serious, get a voice-activated tape recorder. They probably have an app for that. (No, I don’t know if they do or don’t.) But with voice activation you don’t have to fumble for a pen and paper or turn on the light. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written down a long, very important dream in the middle of the night only to wake up and find that I wrote over the same line twenty times. I thought I wrote a whole page of notes, but I scribbled one jumbled, illegible sentence.
Tell yourself before falling asleep, “I want to remember my dreams and I will remember my dreams.” And feel that desire. It’s a desire to know yourself. We should all have a deep desire for that. In fact, that should be our deepest desire. Get in touch with it and say it with all the meaning you can muster.
Then, if you have an issue that needs resolving, talk to your subconscious, “I ask my subconscious to help me resolve ________ through my dreams tonight.” Or “I ask my subconscious to help me know the right thing to do about _______ when I awaken.” Or "Give me the message in my dreams as to what is causing this illness, or how I can begin to heal it." Or something like that. You get the idea.

When you awaken:
Take a moment to check in with yourself. Be still and reflect on the issue that needed resolution. Notice what your instinct tells you to do to resolve it. Usually, it’s not what your conscious mind would say if you asked it after lunch. Upon awakening, your conscious mind isn’t quite back in full-atencion!-force; use that leftover dreamy link to your subconscious to know the right action.

Now write down what you remember from your dreams and analyze it. You don’t need a book. You are the best interpreter of your dreams. If you don’t remember anything write “nothing.” At least you’re putting energy in the direction of remembrance. Willingness is the key that opens the door to your subconscious.

If you just have a feeling, write that down. Start somewhere. Then ask yourself, “What is it about myself (or this problem) that makes me feel _______?” If you only remember a color, write it down. “Blue.” Then ask yourself, “How does blue make me feel?” “Calm” or “It reminds me of when I lived near the ocean.” Write it down.

If all you recall is a single symbol (symbolism, by the way, is the language of the unconscious.) write that down, “Tree.” What does a tree mean to you? List some descriptive words for a tree. How do trees make you feel? Do you have a favorite tree? What could a tree be a metaphor for in your life? Protection? Needing to be rooted? Nature?

Then title the dream, “Tree.” And turn the page for the next night’s dream.

Keep doing this and soon enough your sleepy subconscious will shake off the dust and get to work for you. It’s like a beautiful, luxurious car that’s been sitting in the garage for years while you’ve been trekking twenty miles in the snow every day to work because you forgot you had it. It may take a few tries to start the car, but once you do, it will open up a whole new, interesting and fun world.

Sometimes you won’t know the meaning of the dream until months or years later. You will be amazed to look back in your journal only to realize that a particular dream was actually a premonition, that the event unfolded exactly as you had dreamed it.

The subconscious is so much wiser than the conscious mind that the conscious mind doesn’t even know how much it doesn’t know. This year, seek to know what you didn't know you knew. "Know thyself," through dreaming.

Check out these books to learn more:

Edgar Cayce on Dreams by Mary E. Carter

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen Laberge, PHD

Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness by Jane Roberts

Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner

Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud

The Vegan Decision

2009-12-27T20:11:00.001-08:00

I want to introduce you to a new blog: The Vegan Decision. It is comprised of essays submitted by people who have stopped eating animals and how that decision has affected their lives. Please support this site by submitting your unique story of your journey to vegetarianism or veganism. Your story may be just what someone needs to hear in order to make a kinder, more healthy choice for themselves and the world.

12 Keys to Life

2009-12-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

1. Do not be guided by fear.

There is nothing more detrimental than making decisions out of fear.

2. Seek not to be loved, but to be loving.

My clients are generally single men and women in their thirties and forties. And most of them are unhappy. The rest of my clients are in relationships, and guess what? They’re unhappy too. So who’s happy? Well, I know a few and their happiness has nothing to do with a partner or lack thereof. We have been programmed to believe that if we just find the right partner our problems will be solved. But I’m sorry to say it is an illusion. Sure, you can be fulfilled with a partner but you can also be fulfilled without one. What you seek is within. Everyday my prayer is the same, “Help me become more loving.” Let go of the need to be loved and seek instead to be loving. Only then will you find true fulfillment.

3. Pick a spiritual path.

And stick to it. All of our problems would disappear if we committed to daily spiritual practice. Truth is simple. You can read about this in an earlier post.

4. Read great writers and philosophers.

Studying people who are smarter than us is crucial because there is nothing more important than knowing we may not be right. Here are some books I like.

5. Listen to music.

Crank up one good song a day. Start with this video of Unity by Trevor Hall featuring Matisyahu. I just saw his show the other night. He glows. Be sure to catch him when he comes through your town.

6. Clean yourself up.

Release your past. Heal your addictions. Let go of debilitating emotions. And don't spend a ton of time and money trying to do it. Hypnotherapists can help you do that. The best way to find one is through referral. E-mail me if you can’t locate a good hypnotherapist and I will be happy to help you. Check out these interesting statistics on my website.

7. Surround yourself with people who can teach you.

This is easy and the pay-off is huge. Wise people push you. They hold you accountable. They don’t necessarily coddle you, they elevate you. There’s a reason a lot of enlightened people have gurus. Every smart person had a teacher.

8. Give away what you don't need.

Good feng shui and good karma. Your home is a reflection of your mind.

9. Maintain integrity.

Your self-respect is all you’ve got. Treasure it.

10. Become vegan.

Becoming vegan is like volunteering. That's how I see it. There seems to be a sacrifice involved but it’s really a gift that comes back to you a hundred-fold. I have not experienced a single choice that has had such beautiful and far-reaching effects, not only in the world, the environment, and the animal kingdom, but in my own life and body as well. Start small. Educate yourself on what you're eating and where your "food" comes from. Rent the DVD Food Inc. or check out GO VEG to get started.

11. Don't procrastinate.

The world awaits your gifts. We need your vision, your talent, your perspective, your ideas. I guarantee you, depression is inevitable if you don't apply yourself. Reread number 1.

12. Be of service.

Adopt a pet, or a child. Volunteer. In the least, smile and say hello to those you pass along your way. If there is no love or joy in your life it can only be because you are not giving love or joy.

All of these keys have one thing in common: they are challenging. In this world of complacency and complicity, we have gotten lazy. And it shows. I understand the pull towards indolence, I fight it on a daily basis, but it is a battle that must be fought. It is only through challenging ourselves that we heal, that the world become a better place, and that we achieve greater things. If not you, who? You are the who we are waiting for.

Introductory Class on A COURSE IN MIRACLES

2009-11-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

For those that are interested, I'm teaching an Introduction to A Course in Miracles on Sunday, December 13th from 11am-2pm. Click here for more information. Hope to see you there!

A Must-See Interview About EATING ANIMALS.

2009-11-29T10:53:00.000-08:00

Knowledge is power.

Book Recommendations

2009-11-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

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Reading is the basic tool in the living of a good life.--Mortimer J. Adler

I recently heard that for the first time three vegan books are in the top 100 books on Amazon. It made me want to share some of my favorite books with you. (Though I'm going to stay on topic of this blog and stick with categories like spirituality, philosophy, etc.)

I’m often asked for book recommendations, and it’s one of my favorite things to do—match a book to a client or friend in need. You’ll notice there's no fiction on this list of beloved books, because I don’t read fiction. Also, most of these books are over twenty years old because I don’t read anything contemporary, except those books on veganism. More than not, the authors I read are dead.

It’s unusual for me to be reading more than one book at a time (I couldn't multi-task to save my life) but right now these six are on my nightstand, though I wouldn't call some of them my favorites.

Eat to Live. Dr. Joel Furhman. I’ve only just started to read books on veganism, though I’ve been a vegan for three years and a strict vegetarian (no eggs, no milk, no ice cream) for over twenty. The problem is that because I post about veganism, people sort of expect me to know what I’m talking about nutritionally and, truth be told, I’m not that well-read on the subject.

I just know in my entire being that’s in not right to eat animals, therefore it cannot be healthy. That’s always been good enough for me. I don't need to be proven that it is so. Lately, however, I’ve been more interested in the nutritional benefits, which has always been secondary for me.

Eat to Live is a weight loss book but it’s really just the most sensible way to eat and be healthy. Dr. Mehmet Oz writes the forward. Check out Dr. Oz on this video that I recently posted.

Becoming Vegan. Brenda Davis. I found this book at my favorite used bookstore Jackson Street Booksellers in Omaha, NE. Very good info for vegan neophytes.

The Red Book. C.G. Jung. (Jung's never never before published writings.) This is a behemoth. It’s daunting. I read one page a week. Seriously. That’s all I can take.

The Shadow of Sirius. W. S. Merwin. Ahhhh, poetry. Recently won the Pulitzer Prize.

Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. Iris Murdoch. This has been sitting on my shelf for years (again, from Jackson St.) and I’ve only just decided to tackle it. Did you see that film about her called Iris? I'm a sucker for fascinating, whip-smart women.

Hypnosis Questions and Answers. (Jackson St. again) Unless you’re a hypnotherapist, you would find this dry and boring. Actually, I do. And I'm a hypnotherapist.

And I’m always and forever reading A Course in Miracles, which is my spiritual path.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

(I've linked them all to Amazon.)

VEGANISM (See those above as well.)

Eating Animals. Jonathan Safron Foer. Everyone seems to be reading this right now. He's a young, hip (once carnivore) writer with a few novels under his belt. Here he is talking about his book on Ellen. It's one of those vegan books on the top 100 I previously mentioned.

Diet for a New America. John Robbins. Classic. Of the Baskin-Robbins fame.

Skinny Bitch. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. The language can be a bit vulgar sometimes. (Hence, the title.) But I don't mind. They're right on.

Quantum Wellness. Kathy Freston. She puts it nicer.

The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World. John Robbins and Dr. Dean Ornish. Enough said in the subtitle.

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight-Loss and Long-term Health. T. Colin Campbell. For the dedicated reader.

PHILOSOPHY

The World as Will and Representation. Arthur Schopenhauer. My favorite philosopher. I read this book about fifteen years ago and FELL IN LOVE. I adore this man and wish I knew him. Too bad he died in 1860.

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers. Will Durant. A great introduction to philosophy and an enjoyable read to boot.

The Portable Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufman. Nietzsche inspires me like no other.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Friedrich Nietzsche. I can't believe someone wrote this. No wonder he lost his mind.

PSYCHOLOGY

Freud: The Man and the Cause. Ronald W. Clark. There are about five Freud fans left in the world and I am one of them. I will go down fighting that he was one of the most important persons to grace this world.

The Portable Jung. C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell. Worthwhile.

Toxic Psychiatry. Peter Breggin. An education. Anyone on anti-depressants should read this book.

Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl--a psychologist and Auschwitz survivor. This classic book is also one of the most inspiring. He constructed the theory of "positive thinking."

EASTERN THOUGHT

Autobiography of a Yogi. Paramahansa Yogananda. Classic spiritual literature. Completely transformational.

I am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Mind-expanding. Truth.

Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Gandhi. Made me want to be a better human being.

Think on These Things. J. Krishnamurti. Absorbing and helpful.

SCIENCE

Holographic Universe. Michael Talbot. Very interesting stuff here. The whole is in the smallest part. I see things differently now.

Taking the Quantum Leap. Fred Alan Wolf. Physics for the non-physicist.

Tao of Physics. Fritjof Capra. Blends physics with Eastern philosophy.

METAPHYSICS/SPIRITUALITY/OTHER

Seth Speaks. (Any and all Seth books.) Jane Roberts. My first spiritual teacher. Nothing would ever be the same when I read this at fifteen years old.

Emmanuel’s Book: A Guide for Living Comfortably in the Cosmos. (And II, III) Pat Rodegast. Immensely enjoyable and comforting books. I come back to these again and again.

Living with Joy. (All of the "Earth-life Mastery Series" books. There are five others.) Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer. The book I most recommend to clients. It's probably the most self-helpish book on the list, but not. Easy reading and helpful exercises.

Many Lives, Many Masters. Brian L. Weiss. Second most recommended book to clients. Deals with hypnosis and reincarnation.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Baltasar Gracian. I'll just reiterate what Schopenhauer wrote about this book: "Absolutely unique....a book made for constant use--a companion for life."

The Essential Edgar Cayce. Mark Thurston. How does one begin to describe Edgar Cayce? Except to say that he should be required reading.

The Story of Edgar Cayce: There is a River. Thomas Sugrue. An engaging life. Cayce ushered in the idea of holistic medicine and what we consider "New Age." There, I just described him.

Love, Medicine, and Miracles. Dr. Bernie Siegel. I recommend this to clients who are dealing with disease.

You Can Heal Your Life. Louise L. Hay. Just good commonsense to me.

The New Astrology. Suzanne White. My favorite astrology book.

There you have it. I'm sure I will continually update this list.

Reading is not only one of the most important things in life, it is also one of life's great pleasures.

Happy Reading!

Meat Loving Cowboy Goes Vegan and It Changes His Life!

2009-11-08T12:24:00.001-08:00

FINALLY! Smart doctors getting airtime. Times they are a-changin. (Thank you, Diary of a Vegan.)

Yes, I Make My Dog a Stew

2009-10-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.--Hippocrites (Greek, 460 BC.) Founder of medicine and considered the greatest physician of all time.

As I write this the crockpot stew I'm making for my dog Kansas, a five-year old Australian Shepherd/Lab/Golden Retriever mutt, is wafting through the house. Call me crazy. Call him spoiled. I call it good health.

Kansas has had hip dysplasia since he was a puppy. Vets have all said the same thing, "It's genetic. There's not much that can be done except hip replacement later down the road." Well, that answer was never good enough for me. I'm Scorpio Rising. We research. I embarked on my own investigation and came to the conclusion that canine hip dysplasia isn't genetic. It's nutritional. Mostly, a Vitamin C deficiency.

Vitamin C is necessary to build collagen, which holds bones in their joints. Hip dysplasia is more common in large breed dogs because their bones are growing bigger at faster rate, and without the proper vitamins and minerals their joints and tissues can't develop properly and do their job.

There is an interesting article by Sylvia Hammarstrom, a large dog breeder for fifty years, about this very subject here.

Partly to blame for hip dysplasia is commercialized dog food, not the poor dog's mom or dad. You see, canine hip dysplasia is relatively new. Before commercialized dog food, say fifty years ago, hip dysplasia was nonexistent. Back in the day, dogs ate scraps--fresh and nutritious foods. Today most canned and dry dog food is rubbish. We're asking dogs to survive on a diet of processed junk food. No wonder dogs have so many allergies and skin problems.

We wouldn't feed a child a can of processed food every day of his life or a scoopful of fortified cereal and expect him to be healthy. To me, it's simple physiology. Bones and tissues and blood and organs and nervous systems need vitamins and minerals that come from healthy foods--whether those bones are in a child, an adult, or a dog. A bone is a bone is a bone.

Have you ever read the label of some of those dogs foods? They say, "animal meat" or "animal byproduct" or "meat byproduct." Animal meat? Is the animal so abhorrent that they can't name it? Yes, it is. It can be ANY animal. A rat, a dog, a horse (commonly used), or roadkill. I once read about a woman who found a rabies tag in a can of dog food. True or false, I don't know. But I don't doubt it. I mean, think about what goes into a hotdog, and that's for human consumption.

Kansas went to a well-known holistic vet once and he said feed him people food. (Though I don't think he meant pizza, more like veggies, etc.) Interesting. Looking back, our family dog growing up, Sport, used to only eat table scraps. When we were done with breakfast or dinner we would put our plates on the floor and Sport cleaned them up. He lived a long healthy life and I don't remember that we ever took him to the vet, not once.

My biggest regret with my dog before Kansas, Mason, is that I forgot all this and fed him canned and dry food throughout his life. He developed numerous fatty tumors all over his body. I am sure it was due to his diet. And he died of kidney failure. Remember two years ago when there was that big pet food recall? The dogs who ate the contaminated food died of kidney failure. I don't know if there's a connection, but a life of processed food can't be easy on the kidneys.

Dogs are akin to wolves, being their domesticated subspecies. Wolves have balanced diets because they eat plants, fruit, grass, berries, and also birds, elk, fish, and all kinds of animals that are herbivores so they absorb what those animals have digested. And I'm pretty sure wolves don't have hip dysplasia.

All I know is that Kansas' hips are at least 50% better since I've been feeding him this stew. He's no longer scratching, his allergies have all but disappeared, he's spunkier, and he's walking better.

Here's my recipe. Although it's basically a hodgepodge of whatever I have on hand. Throw this all into a crockpot:

1 pound free range, organic ground turkey (I don't use red meat/beef. Bad, bad, bad stuff.)

2 c. water

1 zucchini, sliced

1 yellow squash, sliced

1 yam or sweet potato, sliced

1 tomato, sliced

2 stalks celery, sliced

1 c. green beans

1 c. peas

2 carrots, sliced

1/2 c. blueberries

1 c. water

sprinkle of flax seeds

1 t. parsley

I toss in a 1/2 c. brown rice, but you have to add a little more water.

Also, this can be made vegan, which I do frequently.

Before including other veggies make sure to check their toxicity for dogs. I know there is some debate about broccoli, so I usually skip it. The ASPCA has a list of what not to feed your dog.

Cook on high for about 5 hours, or until everything is soft, then scoop it into a blender or food processor to puree. It usually lasts about a week in the refrigerator. I might feed him 2 cups for dinner or I'll throw it over a can of some outrageously expensive organic dog food.

Although cooking homemade dog food sounds indulgent it's just common sense. Or as I like to call it "uncommon sense" because--have you noticed?--common sense seems to be lacking these days. This stew is actually cheaper than buying good dog food. Plus, it has saved me a ton of money on vet bills. And it makes Kansas happy, and healthier. Good enough for me.

(That's him above having just licked his plate.)

You can make this for cats as well, but don't add root veggies like yams and potatoes which are not healthy for cats.

For more info visit: TRUTHABOUTPETFOOD. and click here.

The Quiet Mind

2009-10-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved.--A Course in Miracles

I have heard it said that prayer is asking for help and meditation is receiving the answer. If that’s the case, we are much better askers than listeners. Everybody has prayed, but few listen. That, however, is beginning to change. Meditation—the process of stilling the mind—has busted out of the closet it’s been hiding in for the last thirty years.

As far as I can tell, its rise in popularity is due to three things.

1. Information. Scientific studies “proving” the benefits of meditation with respect to our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing are making their way into mainstream media. Transcendental Meditation, for instance, is the most widely practiced and scientifically studied form of meditation with over 600 studies to date.

2. Desperation. I’ve always thought desperation was highly underrated. It has been a driving force for drastic change in my life on more than one occasion. When we’re desperate, we are willing to try just about anything to surmount our problems—whether it be stress, illness, or general life malaise.

3. Increased awareness. There is a rise in the collective unconscious moving toward all things spiritual. In other words, meditation is trendy. We can only hope it’s a trend that sticks. After all, it was in vogue in the 60’s and 70’s but definitely kooky through the 80’s and 90’s.

We see and hear about meditation everywhere now, not just in spiritual circles. Commercials are jumping on the bandwagon—using meditation to convince us to buy stuff we don’t need. There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to begin. I recently saw a commercial for yogurt that featured a woman sitting in the lotus position immersed in meditation. Wow, you mean if I spend money on eating dairy I’ll become enlightened? Oh, don’t get me started….

Some medical doctors now prescribe meditation for their patients, and Fortune 500 companies offer meditation respite programs for their employees, even professional sports teams are participating in various techniques. These corporations and athletes may not be looking for peace as much as to cure ailments, produce happier employees, make larger profits or secure wins, but whatever the case, they have learned what the wisest among us have known for centuries—meditation makes us better.

When I was initiated into the Transcendental Meditation program, meditation was not commonplace. I learned the technique, but I wasn’t quite sure why I was doing it. I was only seven. I did know two things. 1. It somehow felt meaningful and 2. My family were the only meditators on the block—maybe even the whole city. Meditation embarrassed me. I told my friends it was just about “relaxing.”

Meditation is about relaxing, but it is much more than that. In quietness, we reconnect with our Source. Call that God, truth, love, universal consciousness, or your higher self. It doesn’t matter. But in those moments something magical happens. We transform.

Quieting the mind redirects our worldly focus within. Through this process, we reach deep levels of heightened awareness. The attainment of this awareness is very important because it reminds us of what is true. Truth is not found in the world. Truth is within. The world gives us a false identity; we look within when we want to know what is real.

In those moments we break free from the onerous chains of false ideas imposed upon us by ourselves, others, and society—even television commercials. The more we are reminded of that truth, the more freely we demonstrate it in the world. We become different; as a result, our life becomes different.

David Lynch is a good example. You know, the enigmatic filmmaker of Twin Peaks fame and movies like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. He’s different, for sure. And his creativity is beyond. Mr. Lynch has been practicing Transcendental Meditation for over thirty years. We get an insightful glimpse into his world through his short and immensely enjoyable book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity. As he says, meditation is the key to life, peace, and creativity.

I don’t believe we can achieve anything truly innovative, interesting, creative, worthwhile or meaningful without first going within. In stillness, our mind expands. We tap in to a well of infinite possibilities, and we listen. Everything is realigned, giving us a proper perspective. When we come back to this world, we can’t help but make better choices because we are in our right mind. And by the way, meditation as I speak of it here is only one way to accomplish that.

Although we access what I like to think of as our natural state in meditation, it doesn’t come easily. First, you have to want it, and not many do. Second, you must place the quest for truth above all else, and only a few are willing. Third, it takes practice, which nobody has time for.

Stilling your mind feels counter-intuitive. We are taught to go out and make it happen. Take the bull by its horns. Be the fastest, the quickest. Get up and get going. The world doesn’t teach us to stop and meditate—unless they’re trying to sell us something. (Insert nasty dairy product commercial.) This world is a world of ego, and the ego’s edict is Seek and do not find. It’s the opposite of truth’s motto: Go within and find.

If you are looking to quiet your mind, here are a few tips I've learned over the years. By the way, these tips are based on a mantra (word) style meditation, which I find to be the easiest.

Pick a time when you will not be disturbed and turn off the phone.
Find a comfortable place to sit. Always sit up. Otherwise, you will fall asleep.
Take a few deep breaths and with each exhale sink deeper down into relaxation.
After a minute or so, introduce a mantra or word such as “peace” “love” or the universal mantra “om.” (“Amen” is actually a mantra as well.)
Repeat the mantra in a friendly, relaxed way. You can expect other thoughts to interfere, that’s just what your ego and your conscious mind does. Don’t fight them, don’t favor them, don’t try to ignore them, don’t hope they go away, don’t get frustrated, don’t judge yourself, just gently bring your mind back to repeating your chosen mantra-word.
When you get antsy-pants and want to open your eyes, hang on and meditate for another minute or two. I find that’s when I go the deepest.
When you’re ready to stop, gently bring yourself back into the room.

Your smallest attempts will change you. Every effort is meaningful. Try at first to meditate for just five minutes a day. A Course in Miracles tells us that five minutes of a stilled mind will save you thousands of years. Begin there. Then extend that practice to as much as twenty minutes.

I think it’s better to be consistent for a shorter amount of time—five minutes every day—rather than longer durations less frequently, like twenty minutes twice a week.

And then forget about it until the next meditation. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder, along with Guru Dev, of Transcendental Meditation, says meditating is like taking a bath. When you take a shower in the morning you don’t keep thinking about the shower throughout the day. You have done it, you’re clean, now you are free to move forward and focus on other things.

Stilling your mind can be frustrating at first. The ego will constantly interfere, proclaiming your efforts a waste of time. The ego thrives on chaos because it disappears in peace. Meditation means death to the ego. And the ego will do anything to stay alive. When you make any attempt to loosen its stranglehold, it will offer all kinds of distractions. Taking out the trash becomes all-important. Do not be discouraged. Starting anything new is difficult at first. Quieting the mind is no different. It’s like building a muscle that has atrophied.

With time, you will see and feel the results. With consistency, meditation moves from being a chore to a gift you give yourself.

The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself is worth consistent effort.--A Course in Miracles.

My Favorite Dairy Substitute Products

2009-09-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk. --Michael Klaper, M.D.

After my post about milk, a few readers sent me emails like this one.

I am convinced about milk, but how am I to give up cheese and ice cream?

Giving up dairy, or at least scaling back, seems more daunting than it is. Health and environment and animal cruelty aside, the truth is, non-dairy food products often taste better than dairy. That's for sure true about ice cream. I promise.

Here’s a good example. Last month while my uncle was visiting me from out of town, his 82-year uncle stopped by. I’m not related to his uncle, and I’ve never met him, but we had a lovely conversation that went on into the evening. We all started getting hungry so I offered to make dinner. Luckily I had a jar of spaghetti sauce stashed in the cupboard to which I added some chopped vegetables and vegan ground hamburger “meat.”

I quickly made croutons, which I learned in a vegan cooking class (thanks Spork Foods) and threw them into a tossed salad. Then I stuck a loaf of bread slathered in non-dairy “butter” and fresh garlic into the oven and topped it all off with a dessert of non-dairy “ice cream” and vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Now, my uncle’s uncle comes from Omaha. He is a born and bred meat guy. I didn’t tell him that the entire meal was vegan. He tried the pasta and said, “Wow, this meat sauce is delicious!” My uncle and I smiled at each other. Then he took a bite of the garlic bread with “butter” and said, “This is really good!”

When it came time for dessert I thought he was going to bounce out of his chair, "That is the best ice cream I have ever had! What kind is it?" I showed him the label but he was so busy licking his bowl he didn't see that it was made out of beans.

I must admit, I got a little satisfaction out of that evening. Seeking the best dairy replacement foods paid off. But it didn't happen overnight. I've spit out some pretty nasty non-dairy cheeses in my time.

So I thought I would compile a list of my favorite dairy replacements for those of you considering making the switch to non-dairy, or for just pulling a little switcheroo on someone you love enough to care about what he or she eats.

Like my uncle and my uncle’s uncle, I was born in Omaha, famous for their Omaha Steaks. In fact I used to smell the stench of meatpacking plants wafting through the air where we lived and on my grandmother who used to work at one. I was also raised, amongst other Midwestern states, in Wisconsin. I am a true Cheesehead. I come from the heartland of meat and dairy. And I can say with complete confidence that there is no sacrifice in switching to non-dairy foods.

Butter Replacement

Earth Balance

I use this for spreads and for cooking and baking. It's made with omega-3s, and has no trans fats, hydrogenated oils, GMOs (genetically modified organisms), or artificial ingredients.

Yogurt Replacements

Update: March 28, 2010. I just tried So Delicious soy milk yogurt (agave sweetened) and I'm not crazy about it. It left a funny after taste. (Blueberry). As far as soy yogurts, I'd stick with Silk Live or Whole Soy as mentioned below. However, I do have some So Delicious coconut milk yogurt that I will try very soon. (Okay, I tried it and don't like it. Sorry So Delicious, your yogurts don't match your ice cream, which I love!)

Silk Live

My favorite is Key Lime. They're all so good.

Whole Soy and Co.

Silk Live is slightly tastier than Whole Soy and Co. But Whole Soy is organic, and better for you.

Ice Cream Replacement

Turtle Mountain (Soy Delicious and Purely Decadent)

With the copious amounts of vegan ice cream I have consumed, I could be a professional taste tester. Some ice creams are made of rice milk but you won’t find them listed here because I don’t think they’re amazing. Kind of icey. But the creamier ice creams I prefer are made of soy or coconut milk. I've only been eating the coconut milk ones lately because I don't want to OD on soy. (Though I have been eating copious amounts of soy for twenty years and I am very healthy.) My favorite Purely Decadent Coconut Milk flavors are Cookie Dough and Chocolate Mint. Careful, very addicting.

Ice Cream Sandwich Replacement

Tofutti Cuties

Everyone I know, vegans and carnivores, loves these. It's like happy food.

Milk Replacements

Almond Breeze

This is available in sweetened and unsweetened, original, vanilla, and chocolate. Almond milk is good for you too. I use it a lot.

Silk Soy Milk

They too have a variety: Omega-3s and calcium added, unsweetened, sweetened, light, organic, vanilla, and their chocolate milk is amazingly rich. Also, try their non-dairy creamer. Silk is also making almond milk now and it's so great!

Rice Dream

Some of my vegan friends prefer almond milk, some like rice milk, others only drink soy milk. I like them all. You kind of have to trial run them and see what you prefer. I’m not picky when it comes to non-dairy milk because I don’t drink it plain out of a glass. If I did, I would choose Silk. I think it tastes the best. I use all of these milks for different things--cereals, baking, cooking, and protein shakes--so I don’t notice much difference. Okay, maybe rice milk is my least favorite.

Cheese Replacement

Follow Your Heart

I think cheese is the last food item most vegans relinquish because, dang-it!, they just can’t seem to make a non-dairy cheese that tastes as good. We just have to accept that it’s not going to be the same, because it isn’t. But this one does the job better than the others I have tried.

Whatever non-dairy cheese you purchase make sure it is casein-free. Casein is a milk protein made from the stomach lining of a calf. It’s a bonding agent that gives cheese its elasticity. Look for “casein” or “caseinate”on the label. It’s widely used in other foods as well, and it's the cause of all kinds of health problems--iron deficiency anemia, internal bleeding in kids. They used to make plastic and glue out of it. Now we just eat it. Go figure.

THIS JUST IN: UPDATE to the Cheese post. There is a GOD! There's a new cheese on the market called Daiya and it's ridiculously good! And it's not made from soy. And it melts! I inhale it in large quantities.

Cream Cheese Replacement

Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese

This comes in different flavors as well.

Sour Cream Replacement

Tofutti Sour Supreme

Great on tacos. Follow Your Heart makes a good one too.

Mayonnaise Replacement

Vegenaiese

Can't be beat for sandwiches. It's also available with healthy additives like omega-3s and grapeseed oil.

Egg Replacement

Ener-g

This is just for baking. I first used this product with mixed results and then I went to a vegan cooking class and Jenny told me not to add the water as per the instructions. She's genius! Everything turned out much better.

You can also use ground flaxseeds (great for pancakes) potato starch, and arrowroot as egg replacements. I've used them all with excellent results. Eggs are basically just binders in baked goods so replacements are common. I made a coconut lemon meringue pie with arrowroot recently for a dinner party and everyone loved it. I took the recipe from my favorite vegan cookbook Veganomicon. You don't notice the eggy-ness of baked goods until you give up eggs. I think eggless cakes and cookies and cupcakes taste better because you can taste the other flavors, not just egg. Here’s a helpful website: EGGLESS COOKING .

So those are my choices, what about yours? If you have a non-dairy item you love please share! I've been looking for a good parmesan cheese and I have a lead, so I'll get back to you.

Also, don't be afraid to ask your local grocer to stock these foods. Every grocer I’ve asked has happily done so.

I'm headed to my freezer.

For more information on a dairy free life: GO DAIRY FREE

The Overwoman

2009-09-05T20:28:00.000-07:00

Art by jdgomezmo

I decided to name my blog. I'm calling it The Overwoman. (Update Feb. 28, 2010: It's no longer called "The Overwoman.")

Can you tell I’ve been reading Nietzsche lately? I love him. I love everything about him. I love the way he lived and I love the way he died. I love that he was a loner and that he liked to walk. I love that he never married. I love that he was a music aficionado. I love that he attempted to be a vegetarian early on. I don’t even care that he gave it up. (Though he was a vegetarian again in the end.) I love the myth and the man and the force that is Friedrich Nietzsche.

Like most of the dead men I admire, I tend to have slightly more affection for who they were than what they wrote. I don’t agree with everything Nietzsche philosophized, but I agree with some.

Nietzsche’s basic philosophy from what I can tell is that the purpose of existence is not simply survival, but the betterment of man.

Mankind is in a state of “sickness,” and as a result it’s destroying itself. This collapse is due to what Nietzsche calls the Herd Mentality. (Yes, he coined that brilliant phrase.) The herd consists of a society of people who lack will, those who are content with mediocrity.

Within the herd, there is a set of morals and conduct by which everyone abides. But outside the herd lies a better man. Nietzsche calls him the Ubermensch, translated from German to mean Overman. (This is also where we get the concept of Superman.) Nietzsche believed this better man lies within us.

The Overman disregards the herd mentality. He rejects the accepted values of society. He has obedience only to self. The Overman has overcome man's limited ideas. He is the pinnacle evolution of mankind.

Growing up the son of a pastor, much of Nietzsche’s philosophy was a backlash to traditional Christianity. He felt the ruling values of Christianity were of no use. Hence, his famous expression “God is dead.” (Meaning, the Christian idea of God). In place of God, there must rise the Overman.

Nietzsche believed there were people who exemplified the Overman and could serve as models: Socrates, Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Napoleon, and Jesus— of whom Nietzsche said would “deny everything that today is called Christian.”

The concept of the Overman inspires and fascinates me. I look for the Overman in others. I yearn for the Overman. I think I’ve always been seeking my latent Overwoman. And I'm still trying to find her. For a long time, I was afraid of her. Or maybe I feared what the herd might think. (But that doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore, as noted in the post Misunderstood.)

Bringing forth our inner Overperson no longer seems like a choice. It feels like a requirement. It's not about thinking one way or the other. It's about using your own self as your guide.

Nietzsche leaves us with these words from his seminal book Thus Spake Zarathustra.

“I teach you the Overman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

Mercury Retrograde and My Social Sabbatical

2009-09-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

No dinners, no lunches, no parties, no movies, and (gasp) no Dodger games for one month. Starting today. I'm on social sabbatical. Or at least that's what I'm calling it.

I sent out an email a couple of weeks ago informing my friends that I’m going underground. Please don’t tempt me with texts about box seats at the Hollywood Bowl.

August was a lovely month to get away and spend time with family and old friends, but now it’s time to get down to it. I’ve got a book to finish and a blog to post to. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Or drastic measures, however that saying goes.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that Mercury was going retrograde in Libra (my sign) for all of September. What? You don’t know what that means? Okay, well, let me explain in the only terms of astrology I understand: layman’s.

I’m no astrology expert, but I do peruse my monthly forecast at what I think are two of the best sites on the net. Astrologyzone and Astrostyle. Through reading them, you start to get acquainted with the lingo.

Each astrological sign is ruled by a different planet, except Libra and Taurus--they share the planet Venus. Venus rules love, relationships, beauty, art and music. (Which is why the visual aesthetic of this blog is just as important to me as what it says.)

Mercury rules Gemini. Geminis are known to be intelligent, witty (they have a way with words), restless, changing, traveling and mercurial. I’m sure you’ve seen that image of the Greek god Mercury. He's depicted as flying through the sky with wings on his back. Hence, the word mercurial.

Mercury is the planet that represents communication and moving parts. For most of the calendar year Mercury travels forward, bringing progress in all of its areas. But three or four times a year, for I’m guessing two weeks or so (like I said, I’m no astrologer) Mercury goes retrograde. It travels backward. The dates for the next retrograde are Sept. 7th-29th. But astrologers agree that we are affected by it up to two weeks before and two weeks after--so, until mid-October.

During this time it feels like we've got cement feet. Not only does it seem we’re not progressing, but things also go a bit wonky in the areas that Mercury rules. Communication and travel mix-ups happen. Computers and phones break down. Oh, and people from your past come forward.

Here are a few tips to survive Mercury retrograde.

1. If you must travel during this time, double-check flights, hotels, reservations and itineraries.

2. Do not buy anything with moving parts—electronics, appliances, computers or phones.

3. Avoid signing any new contracts because miscommunication is likely to happen.

4. Do not start any new projects.

5. Do not make any major decisions. Things are processing. You'll have more information later.

So what are we supposed to do?

Complete what you’ve already started.

Even though Mercury retrograde is seen in a negative light, I quite like it. It’s a time when the universe is asking us to chill out. Regroup. In fact, it’s a time to do anything that has a “re” at the beginning of the word. Re-do, re-write, re-connect, re-charge, re-view, re-think, re-vamp, re-apply, re-consider, re-model, re-flect, re-organize.

In a talk given on Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi compares TM to archery. He says TM is the action of pulling back the arrow before shooting it. There can be no accurate forward movement without first pulling back. Meditate so that you can go out into the world—more surely, more clear-mindedly and more effectively toward your target.

That’s how I see Mercury Retrograde. We can take full advantage of this phase by pulling back. When Mercury goes direct again, we’re ready, full steam ahead.

Additionally, each time Mercury retrogrades it does so in a different sign. This particular retrograde is in Libra. Meaning, Libras will feel it the most.

But that’s not all. Libra’s take note. The Sun, for us, is in Virgo in our 12^th house. I have no idea what that's all about, except I read that placement means "rest and escape" for us this month.

Mercury retrograde in Libra? The Sun in Virgo in my 12^th house? I never stood a chance. I am at one with the stars and planets. I am on social sabbatical.

Who Said Vegetarians Were Stupid?

2009-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

Twenty really smart guys. And vegetarian too.

If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because…its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing.

Leo Tolstoy

I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat.

The Dalai Lama

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Albert Einstein

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all living beings, we are all savages.

Thomas Edison

There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Noble Prize)

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.

Abraham Lincoln

The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies....they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.

Plato

To avoid causing terror to living beings, let the disciple refrain from eating meat…I will not permit meat eating in any form, in any manner and in any place; it is unconditionally prohibited for all.

Buddha

I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?....I do not want to make my stomach a graveyard of dead animals. A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

George Bernard Shaw

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore.

Franz Kafka

Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth and, plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood...then, and then only, would he be consistent. Percey Shelley

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants....The greatness of a nation can be determined by its treatment of animals.
Mahatma Gandhi

As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Pythagoras

Vegetarianism is a greater progress. From the greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension that motivated him to become a vegetarian. Flesh eating is an unprovoked murder.

Benjamin Franklin

What my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Henry David Thoreau

If you have men who exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men. Not to hurt our humble breathren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them wherever they require it.

St. Francis of Assisi

I have since an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.

Leonardo ad Vinci

It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.

Albert Schweitzer

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

Charles Darwin

Gandhi's Greatest Regret? Milk.

2009-08-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

My copy of Gandhi's autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth arrived a few weeks ago and Holy Cow! I have a newfound appreciation for Mahatma. I knew he was a vegetarian (oh, and that in his spare time he liberated India from British rule and single-handedly established the civil disobedience movement) but I had no idea he was the central figure in pioneering the animal rights crusade in India.

Do you know what this spiritual and political leader writes as the greatest "tragedy of my life"?

That he ever drank milk.

You see, Gandhi had made a lifelong vow never to drink a cow's milk due to "the torture to which cows were subjected by their keepers." He gave it up after vacationing at vegetarian Leo Tolstoy's home in which a discussion ensued about the harmful effect of drinking cow's milk.

From then on Gandhi eschewed animal products and considered nuts and fruit the optimal diet. He attributed this dietary choice to his very healthy and fit life. However, in 1914 he contracted a serious illness that dropped him near death's door. The attending physicians told Gandhi he would die if he didn't follow their strict order and drink a glass of cow's milk, which was a popular treatment back then. Gandhi compromised and drank goat's milk.

Gandhi's wife, Kasturba, had made a similar vow. As did their sons. She and Gandhi proclaimed they would rather die than drink cow's milk. And they meant it. Total radical nonconformists.

I haven't had a glass of milk since my mom had to pour it for me, but I was surprised at Gandhi's staunch stance on cow's milk when facing death. Then, there wasn't much information. You'd have thought he would've listened to the doctor. Then again, there wasn't dairy industry propaganda hypnotizing the masses into thinking it's healthy either. Today it's super easy to abstain from milk with all the more nourishing substitutes.

Gandhi knew the truth. The whole "milk does a body good" thing is a lie. It's a marketing ploy. It's their dirty secret. They don't care about our bodies. I always feel sorry for those celebrities with the idiotic milk mustaches who are oblivious to what they're promoting. (Oops, I'm veering into previously blogged territory.....)

Unlike Gandhi's day, we now know milk does a body no good. Well, we know if we research the people who are researching it. Milk is being targeted for all kinds of ailments, certain types of diabetes and cancer, even mental illness.

I've always had really strong fingernails that grow too fast. I guess they're noticeable because people have commented on them over the years. I tell them it's because I don't drink milk. I heard early on that drinking milk causes calcium loss.

Humans are not meant to digest cow's milk. It's too hard on our system and forces the human body to produce a gastric acid to break down the milk. The body then steals calcium from our bones to neutralize the acidic environment left behind.

Studies are revealing that--are you ready?--consuming milk causes osteoporosis! Countries where people have very little dairy intake rarely see cases of osteoporosis. We're not often told that green, leafy vegetables and nuts and seeds are high in calcium. The most calcium rich food? Dried herbs!

Also, milk (unless organic, and even organic isn't immune to its problems) is laden with antibiotics and growth hormones, which researchers link to the cause of young girls developing more quickly and getting their periods, thus pregnant, at an earlier age.

There's a really interesting study on the effects of the Americanization of the Japanese diet. (By Kagawa, published in Preventative Medicine, 1978.) Before 1946, Japanese did not consume milk. After that, milk and dairy became staple foods.

In 1950 the average person in Japan ate 5.5 pounds of milk and dairy products. The average girl was 4'6" tall and weighed 71 pounds. She began menstruation at 15.2 years old.

In 1975 the average Japanese consumed 117.4 pounds of milk and dairy products. The average girl had grown 4 1/2 inches and gained 19 pounds! And she started menstruating at 12.2 years old! Keep in mind, this is not due to calcium but growth hormones.

This study was done 34 years ago. Frightening to think what these numbers are now.

Some researchers are linking the rise in breast cancer to the copious amount of dairy products we now consume. It's a fascinating topic. And serious.

You know something's wrong with this milk picture when the Director of the Department of Pediatrics at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at the John Hopkins Children's Center, Frank Oski, MD, writes a book and calls it Don't Drink Your Milk.

I didn't make the choice to not drink milk for health reasons. Though that would definitely be a factor if I were making the decision today. And I didn't give up milk because of the industry's calamitous impact on the environment, which would absolutely convince me today.

I don't drink milk because it's meant to fatten up calves, not me. (We are the only species to drink another species milk.) I don't drink milk because I find the idea disturbingly repugnant and, did you know, it's full of white cow pus. Uh-huh. No one says that in their ads.

Mostly, I don't drink milk, like Gandhi, because of the cruelty dairy cows are subjected to--constantly being impregnated to produce milk, having their babies immediately torn from them, chained to a cage day in and day out, never seeing the light of day or breathing fresh air, hooked up to a milk machine that painfully tears their udders.

The way I see it, what isn't good for an animal isn't good for me. It's going to have an effect. Somehow, someway. Lovelessness is going to show up, asking us to pay up. It always does.

To learn more: NOT MILK

Here's a list of my favorite dairy replacement foods.

Spirituality is a Map

2009-07-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

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When I see the word religion I see realign. The utmost task of any sincere religious and spiritual thought system is to realign us back to Truth, or the Divine, or as I call it, God. Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn, veered off course and ended up lost. Now we need help. It only makes sense that in order to get back Home, we turn to those who have found the way.

Who are they? Thankfully, they're generous, charitable folks who left us some direction. They are truth cartographers, seekers who once wandered this earth dazed and confused like us. Yet replete with diligence and faith, they hit the road, blazing a path, arriving at a destination and leaving a marked trail of the smoothest road for the rest of us to travel. Their maps--their guidance and instruction--are the foundation of our most truthful religions and philosophies and spiritual thought systems.

These people have become our great mystical thinkers. They are the brilliant, the enlightened, the yogis, the sages and seers. They have touched God. And they are too few and far between. Despite their perspicacity, however, not one of them can accurately depict what we will discover once we get to our destination. Why? Because the experience doesn't translate well into words. How does one begin to describe an experience that is not of the world? How does one put into words a feeling beyond words? Words will always come up short.

If someone who has never been in love before asked you to describe it, what could you say that would equal the experience? That person wouldn't get it until he actually falls in love. He or she needs an experience to know. Likewise, mystical cartographers can't tell us what God is like, they can only chronicle the steps they took to get there, "I turned left here, made a sharp right there, walked straight ahead over that hilly terrain and ran right into God."

Truth is inexplicable, but getting to Truth can be explained. Thus every spirituality, religion, philosophy and science is built on a map. Perhaps a better word would be story. Every map tells a cartographer's tale of what he went through, what he encountered, what was essential to the journey and what he discarded.

These stories do more than show us the way, they make abstract theoretical concepts such as the nature of existence or God a bit more comprehensible. Christianity has the Genesis story (well, two stories actually), Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims have their stories, philosophers have as many stories as there are philosophers and A Course in Miracles has its unique metaphysical story.

Students choose their particular story, or spiritual belief system, based on factors such as their past, their parents, their intellect and sensibilities, their strengths and weaknesses, where they grew up and what they needs to learn. Which is why many diverse paths are necessary--each story attracts its followers through a form that speaks to them. Each form allows someone to hear what he or she might have missed, or dismissed, had there only been one story.

Again, these stories are not Truth itself, because Truth is an experience. Rather, they are concepts, words, theories and symbols of Truth crunched down to fit into nice neat frames of reference. These stories glimpse the infinite through a finite lens. Thus loopholes and doubt will reign throughout the myriad attempts at explaining the inexplicable. Words are fallible because they are as A Course in Miracles says, "twice removed from reality." Words are symbols of symbols. And somewhere in the crunching down, something's going to get crunched out.

Through times of antiquity philosophers have warned us of the pitfalls of words and language. As American novelist William S. Burroughs put it:

"Words become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not the image of the thing itself....Truth is here when all the words are rubbed out."

We cannot, however, minimize the importance of the words, or the story. No one in their right mind would confuse a road map with the destination, but without the map we'd be lost. We wouldn't arrive at our destination, or at least not as quickly or as easily. So it is with spiritual narratives, they lead us to abandon words. They guide us to a wordless place--to "the image of the thing itself"--which is where we all, deep down, wish to be. We don't want to just talk about peace, we want to know peace. And we will never be satisfied with an intellectual understanding of unconditional love, we want to experience love pouring out of our pores.

All serious spiritual thought systems lead to this same place. For me, A Course in Miracles is the only story that answered more questions than it raised. Choose a spiritual path based on reason, one whose story makes sense. Then go as far into it as you can. This doesn't mean you will agree with every tenet (take the love and leave the fear) but we move more swiftly toward our destination if we stick to one path rather than pick pieces of five. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Follow your sincere chosen path whether it be yoga, meditation, Buddhism or the Kabbalah whole-heartedly, and you will come to that wonderful wordless place. Of this, we are guaranteed.

I'm Digging This Song "Unity" by Trevor Hall

2009-07-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

And he's only 21. So cool.