Wayne Dyer on the set of the movie version of his book

Wayne Dyer’s new book, The Shift, is a sublime tome. A rather short book (112 absorbing pages), it is a satisfying primer of Dyer’s philosophy. Written in the author’s signature gentle tone, it is welcoming to any newcomer to the field of personal development, while also substantial enough to satisfy those in every stage of their spiritual journey.

The Monkey and I first came familiar with the subject matter of this book when we saw the film that the book is based upon, called: “Ambition to Meaning.” The title of the film has since changed to the more cinematic The Shift, but Dyer winds up literally structuring the book’s message according to the original title, word for word, under the chapter headings: FROM, AMBITION, TO, and MEANING.

In FROM, Dyer acquaints us to what it is that we’re coming from, something he refers to as Source. He suggests that readers can juxtapose whatever word they prefer in place of “Source,” like God, for example. Then he makes the connection that because we came from this Source, we are actually part of this Source, or one with Source, just as a glass of water poured from the ocean is as much the ocean as it is a glass water, as it is from the ocean. “We are what we came from,” he reminds us. Finally he offers suggestions on ways to tap into our “fromness,” through meditation and practical application of concepts such as nothingness, oneness, and surrender.

In AMBITION, Dyer discusses the origination of what he calls the “false self,” a persona borne by the EGO, which he defines through the acronym Edging God Out that he uses repeatedly throughout the book. There is a funny and telling line in his section on AMBITION that summarizes the point he is trying to make about how the Ego creates a false self and a false reality and attempts to derail the divine creation that we truly are:

Following that developmental time [in the womb], we were greeted by parents, a culture, and a host of well-meaning folks representing religious, educational, and commercial interests. They held us, admired the miracle of creation, and looked heavenward, saying, Great work, God! Absolutely, amazingly perfect. Thank You, thank You, thank You! But now we’ll take over from here. Thus began our shift to the bizarre twisted world of Ambition.

TO relates the journey of the great U-turn in life, when we begin to discover a lack of contentment on our current path and begin to make changes. In the film, Dyer uses the idea of a single day as a device to relate to the shift occurring in the “afternoon” of our lives. The book touches on this concept but the film drives home the point a little a deeper.

Another important concept to help us understand how we might recognize the changes occurring in our life is the notion of the “Quantum Moment,” which Dyer defines as some kind of surprising, vivid, benevolent, and enduring event that helps to solidify the changes that we’ve made in our journey towards MEANING.

In this the final chapter, Dyer presents a Turkish proverb that in his estimation relates the underlying premise of the entire book:

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.

What I like about this quote is that it reminds me of ideas I have about the concept of destiny, a subject with which the author is well familiar (his book, “Manifest Your Destiny,” was my first Wayne Dyer book, which I read as a lieutenant in the US Army).

The Monkey and I think that the quote above implies that with elevated awareness we may be able to discover for ourselves whether or not the current path we are traveling upon in our life journey is actually taking us where we want to go.

In the military I navigated with a compass.  In order to arrive at my destination,  I would walk at an azimuth (definition: an Azimuth

is the angle from a reference vector in a reference plane to a second vector in the same plane, pointing toward, (but not necessarily meeting), something of interest…) dictated by my compass.

Occasionally, I would discover that I would be heading in the wrong direction, in essence on my way towards a destination (or destiny) that I had never intended.  Even still, I still had the power to get back on the right path, no matter how far off track I had managed to find myself. In the this way, it is illustrated that just as we control which destination we point ourselves in each moment of our daily lives, we are also in complete control of our destiny, debunking the notion that our destiny is immutable and somehow beyond us or dictated from “above.”

We loved this book and loved the movie on which it is based perhaps even more so.  Highly recommended.

You may purchase the book from the publisher, Hay House, by clicking right here.

If you prefer, you may purchase it from Amazon by clicking here.

DISCLOSURE: Monkeyinmymind.com received this book at no charge for review from the publisher, Hay House.

Photo by: Vivek Chugh

Flying home to snowy Massachusetts from California this weekend, the Monkey and I were finishing a chapter on meditation in my latest spiritual reading selection, “THE BOOK OF LIFE,” by Eugene Roy.

Wheels touching down in Boston, I closed the book and realized that if I wanted to take my personal and spiritual growth to the next level, I might want to start actually meditating. Again. For real this time.

My largest perceived constraint, which I am sure makes the Monkey and me completely unique, is lack of time available for daily meditation. Today is Wednesday and I have meditated everyday, but Tuesday I ran out of time in the morning and conducted my first-ever driving meditation.

Now I’m not talking about closing your eyes and drifting off to la-la land while at the wheel of moving automobile. Why I am referring to is taking one of the benefits of meditation, heightened awareness, and applying that concept to driving a car. In other words, I turn off the radio, remove the cell phone headpiece and turn the phone on silent, sit up in a position of optimal cockpit visibility, grasp the wheel with both hands, and apply heightened awareness and single-minded focus solely towards the functions of driving the car.

Each time thoughts arose concerning anything at all not related to what was happening on the road, in my mirrors, on my dash’s instrument panel, I dismissed them from my awareness. I had to do this over and over again. Until the Monkey and me could remember that we were actually trying to focus on driving here, not to mull over and over all of the upcoming challenges and obstacles that the present day would soon offer.

It wasn’t easy, but in time, I felt one with my car and the road, confident of the day that lay ahead. All said, only 15 minutes passed in my first attempt at driving meditation.
DISCLAIMER: We hope it’s clear that we’re not advocating doing anything unsafe while driving. In fact, we’re advocating extreme presence and awareness, thereby promoting road safety. So there.

The Monkey and I are on record as supporters of NFL living legend Brett Favre’s decision to return to football in 2009, specifically to the arch-rival (Minnesota Vikings) of his former club (the Green Bay Packers).

We also contend that one’s view of Brett Favre has a lot to do with one’s view of one’s self:

• Do we believe that individuals should have a right to make decisions for themselves?
• Do we believe that individuals should have a right to pursue their dreams, aspirations, and goals?
• Do we believe that it is on the individual to decide what is best for one’s self?
• Do wish to blame a person or deride a person for being torn about his or her personal decisions, which are solely their own to make?

I mean, the man is a Libra.  Should we be surprised when we behave like “ourselves,” when we live up to our inherited and fully incorporated character traits?

Love him or hate him (and there seems to be a lot less love out there) there are several undeniable facts that should be pointed out.

1) The 2009 NFL Football season was arguably the greatest single season of his Hall of Fame career from a statistical standpoint. In 2009, Favre posted the highest quarterback rating of his career (107.2), the lowest interception total of his career (7), and the second highest completion total (563), and third highest yardage total (4,202).

2) Following the devastating loss to the evidently voodoo-enhanced New Orleans Saints, Brett Favre said that if he is to finish his career, that he would be going out “on top.”  While that statement was met with much derision and criticism from fans and the media, from a personal statistical standpoint, his statement rings true, for the following reasons:

• Most of us are familiar with his “Ironman” record, the most consecutive starts for an NFL football player (309 – including playoffs [as Favre himself said, "Why wouldn't you include the playoffs?"]).  For quarterbacks, #2 on the list is Peyton Manning with 209 consecutive starts, meaning he would have to start every single game consecutively for at least the next 6 regular seasons to surpass Favre on the list, provided Favre doesn’t return in 2010.)
• Favre also hold several other significant passing records.  He is #1 all time in Attempts (8,758), Completions (5,377), Touchdowns (442), and Yards (61,655).  All things being equal, his claim to the number one spot in all of these statistical categories is evidence enough to qualify him as being “on top.”

3) Not only did Favre just complete arguably the greatest statistical season of his Hall of Fame career, but he was rated as the #2 passer in the entire league in 2009, indicating that there is no doubt there is more in the tank for this quarterback.

The idea that Favre could walk into a new team and instantly lead them to a Superbowl is far-fetched.  But there is no doubt that Favre exceeded nearly every single person with at least a passing interest in the NFL’s expectations.  He just played 18 of the most brilliant games of his entire career.  One’s athletic ability, even at age 40 doesn’t simply fall off the cliff.

With the 2009 season Favre demonstrated not only his great toughness, but his great natural athleticism.  The notion that a man of his age, with so many years of beating and abuse under his belt, could negotiate an NFL football season with so much poise, and so few mistakes is evidence enough that he has one more year in him.

Love him or hate, Brett Favre is good for the NFL.  He is a ratings juggernaut.  The ratings numbers from the Championship games were ludicrous.  One-third of all televisions in the United States were tuned into the NFC Championship game between the Vikings and Saints.

He likes his team.  The team has rallied around him.  There is no clear heir-apparent in the quarterback department in Minnesota.  There is a possibility of no football in 2011 due to strained labor negotiations.  It is now or never for Brett Favre.

Regular readers of this blog will tell you that it isn’t our style here at Monkeyinmymind.com to feed into the negative and endless terror-cycle repeating everyday on cable news and the MSM websites.  Giving our valuable life energy to disturbing and violent occurrences only perpetuates those undesirable outcomes, due to a simple law of the universe that states: “thoughts create things.”

So our attention to this disturbing outcome at Fort Hood, Texas feeds energy and attention and focus into the consciousness that created the horror on 11/5/09.  That being said, I will attempt to keep what I’m about to say brief, because I’d like to address some cursory issues that we have discovered since the tragedy.

But First, a Movie Review?

Friday evening after work I took myself to see the new George Clooney picture, “Men Who Stare at Goats,”  which I found to be flawed, yet mostly entertaining.  The main problem of the film is its tone and its purpose.  Regarding its tone, it feels something like a facsimile of Cohen brothers film (perhaps due in part to its cast members’ Clooney and Bridges being Cohen bros alum), without the intelligence and wit underlying many of their screenplays.  Regarding its purpose, viewers are left not sure of what to make of what they’ve just seen.  Is it fantasy?  Is it real?  While of course we watch and enjoy countless fictional stories, in the case of this film, how real the story is does enliven our enjoyment and appreciation of what we’re seeing.

Anyway, the main thing I wanted to mention about “Men Who Stare at Goats” is a short scene that appears somewhere around the midpoint of the film, in which the movie depict a situation in which one of the “New Earth Army’s” psy ops soldiers goes off the deep end and steps onto an Army base with a gun and winds up killing himself in a scene that is chillingly reminiscent of the Fort Hood Massacre… Watching the scene, I was in horror and heard audible gasps in the theater when the images came up, as I am sure most of the audience had been feeding themselves over the previous 24 hours on the images and stories of the Fort Hood situation and must have been as shocked as I was when we witnessed a scene in the movie playing out in a strikingly similar fashion.

What Are The Odds?

While I am absolutely not contending that there is any conscious connection between the events of 11/5 and a movie that was released on 11/6, I do find it incredibly baffling how similar the visual images of the two events were.  Did one cause the other?  Of course not.  But is one a reflection of the other?  Obviously, yes.  What are the odds of this movie releasing just 24 hours within the timeframe of the attacks?  The film, which is about paranormal and psychological experiments on soldiers, was shot months or perhaps even a year ago, and yet it was released on virtually the same day that a member of the Army’s psychological community allegedly perpetrated a horrible crime against his own forces.

While I am NOT attempting to say that the film and the recent events at Fort Hood share a causal relationship in the physical world, I will assert that the consciousness that created the horror on Fort Hood was the same consciousness that created that fictional scene in that movie, and it is this negative consciousness that we must protect ourselves from.

Government Mind Control Program?

Besides the thematic and dramatic connections between the film and the actual events of 11/5, a few other facts about this case demand at least some attention.

• One is the disclosure that the alleged shooter was supposedly under investigation, or at least on the FBI’s radar, due to anti-American comments the shooter allegedly placed up on websites several months ago.  Being a former military officer myself, it is unconceivable to me that an officer, a major with over ten years of military and psychological training, would place inflammatory comments on websites and still receive a promotion to Major.  I will accept that somehow that information was not shared between the FBI and the military, as information-sharing is one the largest roadblocks to inter-agency coordination in law enforcement and the war on terror, but it is truly remarkable to me that someone so deranged was able to slip through the cracks, especially in his field of speciality.
• The other thing I find incredibly baffling is how a guy like this alleged shooter was actually able to pull the trigger so many times and so efficiently against his comrades. It takes years of training to help individuals overcome the natural-born aversion to killing that humans possess (extremely well documented in the book, On Killing by Major Dave Grossman, one of my West Point psychology instructors).  With zero weapons training (Army doctors do not attend basic training and at most would receive at best only weapons familiarity training) it is quite remarkable how he was able to first, summon the will and resolve to murder his fellow soldiers, and second, carry out the task with such “success.”
• Thirdly is the simple fact that this individual was trained extensively about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  HIS JOB was to counsel soldiers experiencing battle fatigue and to also help prepare them to transition from a warzone to home when their hitch was up. That he himself became the victim of PTSD and carried out these killings as his response to his disaffection with the military and as a result of the supposed taunts his received as a man of Middle Eastern descent without ever serving in combat or experiencing true debilitating battle stress is a bit of stretch for me.

Is the military really that inept at training people to deal with PTSD that they could actually manufacture a victim of PTSD without the prerequisite “traumatic stress” that causes the disorder in the film place?  Inconceivable!

• But what really struck me was the fact that this individual attended Virginia Tech University, which will unfortunately live in the memories of many as the site of perhaps the most grisly gun attack in United States history.  The fact that these two shooters are fellow alums I will accept possibly as coincidence, but further research reveals that apparently the Central Intelligence Agency not only recruits frequently at Virginia Tech but also has a facility at the University.  There are also apparent connections between DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), an agency behind numerous high-concept military technologies, and Virginia Tech.  Two mass murderers within the last few years both attend Virginia Tech, the supposed site of government psychological training and experiments, one of whom is a government-trained psychiatrist?  The only real explanation I can wrap my ahead around that doesn’t involve some sort of conspiracy or cover-up is the possibility that the Fort Hood shooter was on mind-altering drugs or anti-depression drugs that caused a negative reaction, a possibility that is rather plausible considering his position as a psychiatrist and his theoretical ability to easily obtain prescription drugs for the treatment of psychological disorders.

Bottom line, the are two main points I wish to get across in this post:

1) The consciousness of killing creates more killing. Studying killing, talking about killing, publicizing killing, replaying images repeatedly that are related to killing, are all ways of cementing into our collective psyche the consciousness of killing.   In this way, we are all slowly becoming more and more de-sensitized to killing.  We are enlivening killing by talking about it, literally giving it life.  In a way, we are becoming killers by delving so deeply into the consciousness that created the killing in the first place.  Remember, if we believe “thoughts create things” in the pursuit of our goals and dreams, then this universal law also applies when we think about things we may not want at all, but still wind up focusing on anyway.  If we want killing to end in our society then we must first divert attention away from death and towards life.

2) Don’t think that the facts are what they seem in the Fort Hood case. Whether what happened there is related to mind control, the themes expressed in “Men Who Stare at Goats,” and the massacre at Virginia Tech, will probably never be fully known, but certainly the evidence that at least “energetically” connects these events in the material world is somewhat alarming.  Even if these events are not causally related and I am simply regurgitating alarmist conspiracy theories, on a energetic level there is no doubt about their relationship to one another.  The common consciousness binding these events to one another is that consciousness of death and killing.

I am absolutely shocked and surprised that the alleged killer is still alive, but mark my words, and I hate to say this, but I would be absolutely flabbergasted if this guys survives the hospital.  We NEVER get mass-murderers alive.  They ALWAYS commit suicide on the scene before law enforcement gets to them.  That he is still alive is completely novel.  That he will survive is highly unlikely.

Which means we may never know the true motive behind these killings.

And the sooner we can divert our attention away from the horror and the confusion surrounding these events, the sooner we can get back to promoting the consciousness of life.

Photo by: Stephanie Berghaeuser

For those of you who have followed monkeyinmymind over the last two years, you may have learned about my wife and her online parenting business, OrganicGreenMommy.com.  I have mentioned her from time to time in the pages of Monkeyinmymind, particularly in several of the posts that I wrote reacting to online Self-Help guru Steven Pavlina’s decision to “go poly.”

One of the posts I wrote was called “Steve Pavlina’s Take on Polyamory Causes Me to Re-think My Marriage.” While the title of this post was perhaps a bit spicy, implying that Pavlina’s foray into the world of multiple sex partners was inspiring me to do the same (it wasn’t), the article wasn’t at all about ending my marriage, but rather more about taking a deeper and more introspective look into the contractual aspects of marriage.  I wrote:

the issues of love, fidelity, sex, and marriage have surfaced to the forefront of my consciousness for a reason. I went off on Steve for his choice but perhaps should have instead used it as a wakeup call asking whether or not I am up to the task of deepening my intimate relationship. If I believe what I said in my response to Steve then my job now is to walk my talk. I realize that there is no better crucible of change than a marriage. Either you change and grow and live happily, or remain the same and live a life of misery. Hopefully if we chose the latter we have the strength and courage to distintegrate the unhealthy marriage.

When Circumstances Collide

Turns out, almost exactly 10 months later, that change would indeed not occur in my marriage; we chose not to change as individuals in the relationship and live happily within the context of the marriage.  But we still didn’t exactly have the required reservoirs of strength and courage to purposefully disintegrate our unhealthy marriage.  It took an unexpected circumstance, completely out of our control, to force us to face the current state of affairs of our marriage and make rapid and permanent changes in our lives.

On September 26th, my wife and decided to take some time apart from one another.  We agreed to work out a living situation that would minimize our exposure to one another so that we were unable to argue, fight, or poorly communicate in front of our impressionable, extremely perceptive three-year old.

Two days later, on September 28th, we learned that my wife had a 3 centimeter brain tumor, known as an acoustic neuroma. On October 3rd, she was admitted to the Neuro-Surgical unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.  On October 9th, Lauren underwent a 12-hour procedure to remove the tumor from an area just behind her right ear.  The surgery was a complete success, although an unfortunate side effect of the procedure was a complete loss of hearing in her right ear.  On October 17th, she was released from the Intensive Care Unit and returned home to her mother’s home, where we had agreed she would go following her release as her mother worked out of her home and would be able to provide care for Lauren.

Neurological post-op is no walk in the park.  This may sound horrible, but the only way I can put it into words for people to understand what she was like while in the ICU unit post-op was that she looked and acted as though she had just survived a car crash.  She was shell-shocked and physically disabled to a far greater degree than she was following either of her c-sections, the most recent of which she still hadn’t fully recovered from, giving birth to our second daughter just three months prior to be diagnosed with the brain tumor.

It’s important to note that this tumor didn’t just appear overnight.  These acoustic neuromas are slow-growing.  By the looks of it’s huge size (3 centimeters), this one had been around for a long time.  Who knows what kind of physical and mental impact growing a brain tumor has has had on my wife over the years.  Although the tumor was not malignant, and not mutating brain cells, the tumor was still occupying space in her brain, throwing out of balance the equilibrium of her brain fluid and providing tons of pressure on surrounding nerves, inner ear functions, and her cerebellum.

Anyway, this ordeal obviously affected both of us in a significant way, arguably her to a degree that I will never fully understand unless I expect to one day find myself in a similar situation (I don’t).  Shortly thereafter arriving at her mother’s home, she called me and informed me that she would like to end the marriage as soon as possible.

Prior to our discovery of her tumor, our decision was to simply temporarily separate, so as to assess the marriage with a little distance and perhaps a perspective of self-respect, self-love, and concern for the kids.

Following the near-death aspect of removing the large tumor, Lauren’s decision became more urgent and less “exploratory.”  She no longer wanted to separate as an attempt to save the marriage, but instead wished to separate immediately and divorce as soon as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would allow.

Bless This Divorce

I have always believed that a “spiritual relationship” should always serve the maximal mutual benefits of both or all members of the relationship.  Otherwise, the marriage is not equitable; the marriage embodies a “win-lose” or “lose-lose” philosophy.  Who the “loser” is depends on the circumstances, but in an unhealthy marriage, usually everybody involves loses in one way or another.

I consider my relationship with Lauren to be a “spiritual relationship,” one rooted in love, respect, and trust.  When those parameters can no longer be maintained through physical contact, the only logical course is to abandon physical contact.  This usually involves similarly abandoning all of the material trappings of the marriage, to include the legal union itself.

A dissolution of a relationship, or a divorce in a marriage, doesn’t necessarily represent a failure of that relationship.  Instead, a divorce can represent the logical and natural evolution of that relationship, or the “next right thing” that serves the greater good.

When the relationship no longer serves the  mutual benefits of both members of the partnership, then the partners appear to separate in the physical world.  In many cases there are no victims or perpetrators in such an occurrence.

That being said, we have an appointment in two weeks with our spiritual advisor to help us bless this divorce.  Our intent is to separate with love and respect, in a way that hopefully minimizes the negative impact on our kids, their future, and our finances.

Stay tuned to see how it goes…

Photo by BengLim

The third meditation in U.S. Andersen’s THREE MAGIC WORDS closes the discussion on the topic of MIND, in which Andersen explains that the human mind is dualistic in nature, comprised of the Subconscious and the Conscious Mind.

Beyond The Pain & Pleasure Principle

The Conscious Mind is ruled by the PAIN & PLEASURE PRINCIPLE, in which it constantly “imagines escape from pain and flight into pleasure.” The sole purpose of the Conscious Mind is to ensure the survival of the organism. The Subconscious Mind, on the other hand, is composed of the very substance of infinite creation and is our connection to the divine.

Why Meditate?

I like this chapter because he really explains why daily meditation is so important. As we begin to understand that it is our thoughts that fuel the reality we experience, we discover that if we can consciously control our thoughts, our mental chatter, the endless cacophony of the monkeymind, we can begin to manifest in the physical world that which we think about. Meditation is the tool with which we learn to control our thoughts and thereby control our world.

ANDERSEN’S THIRD MEDITATION

For more information on the topic of the Mind, Andersen suggests The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science by Thomas Troward, a turn-of-the-century text that was supposedly the inspiration behind the film, “The Secret.”

Here’s the meditation:

I know and recognize my oneness with all things. I know that all form and all circumstance are the creation of an infinite intelligence that is in and around me. I know that all things are the result of conception and desire, that my world is ordered according to my own thoughts and convictions. Therefore I concentrate on harmony. I see nothing but cooperation and assistance. I know that we all seek the same answers and the same goals. I know that each person must follow a different path toward his vision, and I understand the searchings and the copings of everyone I know and see. I have sympathy and tolerance for all things and all people. i know that inasmuch as I help others I help myself. In my brother’s eye there is my own soul. In my friend’s smile there is my own humor. In my neighbor’s sorrow there is my own loss. I have compassion and understanding for all things, fore this life in which I have my being strives for understanding of itself. I deny error; it is simply progress toward truth. I know that it is impossible to fail when faith is present. I do not order things to be made in my time or in my place, but trust the Universal Mind in its own great knowledge of the time and the place and the need and the way. Each moment of each day brings my life closer to realization. The objects of my work are being accomplished this very minute. Success and harmony, peace, and confidence are mine.