“Cleanse your emotions, passions, impulses, attitudes, and reactions. That is the essence of spiritual discipline as laid down in all faiths.”
~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba, South Indian Guru and Spiritual Teacher

While you are walking the path of spiritual development, slowly building a greater awareness of your spirit, personal motivations, actions and your effect upon the world, you are also learning to recognize the difference between a spirit-thought and an ego-thought.

The easiest way to phrase this is that you are learning to discern your impulses from your inspirations.

Sometimes these impulses are big things like the impulse to drink a case of beer at lunchtime or the impulse to jump in bed with a beautiful stranger behind your wife’s back. But often what we are faced with are the collection of small daily impulses that, when followed blindly, drain us of our energy, our focus and our self-esteem.

For instance, this morning, between the moment of waking, kissing my beloved, taking a sip of water, then using the bathroom (a sequence which took roughly 4 minutes) I had a total of four self-defeating and/or distracting impulses. All of which were completely unrelated to what my true spirit or a healthy, happy mind and body would desire in reality.

These consisted of several old friends such as: the go-back-to-bed monster, the fear-of-falling-down-the-stairs demon, the ghost of sugary-cereal-for-breakfast and the sucked-into-the-internet-inferno dragon.

Why do any of these concern me? Quite simply because each of these thoughts carries with it an energy or, more specifically, a desire for energy.

Thoughts that desire to eat up a bit of your energy tend to give a kick-start in your mind to exactly the kind of energy that they are hungry for, amplifying its presence and its hold over your thoughts. Which would be fine, if the type of energy they ask for was one that feels good – like watching a butterfly on a sunflower or being a kid on Christmas morning or falling in love. But impulse thoughts, more often than not, are feeding off of fear, desire, desperation, discord and sluggishness.

Though I prefer to use positive language in my articles, I must be honest here and say that, when it comes to impulses, working to reduce their hold on you can seem like a battle. One where the battlefield is won on some occasions and then lost to the opposing side on other occasions.

The approach for achieving success here is really two-fold.

First, you must become aware of your thoughts and impulses, learning to tell the difference between inspired motivation and defeatist impulses. In other words, knowing which desires are truly the real divine you and which are power-based mind illusions. The best way to do this is to develop a practice of meditation, having daily bits of silence and calm in which you deliberately listen to your mind chatter and work on quieting it. Also, it may be helpful to institute a 30-second delay between motivations (thoughts and desires) and their respective actions (speaking and moving), just to give yourself time to gauge their true origin and value in your life.

Second, you must find a way to silence our disempower the illusion-based impulses and only act on the truly divine motivations. This is a game of constant mindfulness and willpower. What you need to have are a set of inspirations and intentions for yourself and your life. For example, knowing that you want a fit body, and articulating why it is that you want this, will give you a ready-made shield for the moments when ego shoots its French pastry ammunition at you. So, take the time to make note of your hopes and true inspirations for your life, whether it has to do with how you spend money, how your relate to your parents, or even how often you do your laundry. You can use your inspirations to help you stay on track.

For instance, I have some long held intentions and positive desires that helped the divine me win in the spirit & ego tug-of-war this morning.

1. I am trying to move closer and closer to waking up at the sunrise, despite the change of seasons or the silliness of daylight savings time.

2. Though I have an old knee injury, my intention and affirmation is that my joints are getting stronger every day and that my trust in them to support me is unwavering.

3. With a past of food issues, including anorexia and obesity, and the desire to build a body healthy enough to carry a baby in the near future, I now walk on a path that consists of organic, whole, vegetarian foods with the occasional indulgence in (not the every day gorging on) something sweet or cheese laden. Knowing the difference between occasional and habitual, I aim always to be mindful of the fact that what I put in my mouth becomes a physical part of this mortal body which houses my divine spirit.

4. My partner and I have both come to our own realization that we tend to disappear into our computers and forget to live life in the real world. As a joint decision, we now have three days a week that are “unplugged” days – days for hiking, gardening, canoeing, cooking, knitting, reading books, etc. Therefore, I can stimulate my intellect and need for information on “plugged” days. Hence, I have no need to run to the computer on a Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday.

So, with a few moments of awareness, armed with these above intentions and a small snippet of willpower, I was able to silence each of these defeatist impulses and carry on with my morning. I opted to actually remain awake, to walk confidently down the stairs, to eat whole rye toast and old-fashioned homemade oatmeal, to steer away from checking my email and to instead focus on our planned morning hike.

Will spirit and positive intention always win the tug-of-war with ego, fear and imbalanced desires? Most certainly not. But today, this one fine morning, my spirit takes the prize.

“We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.” ~Lynn Hall, Children’s Author

Numerology has always fascinated me — the way that numbers can predict the energy of a day or even the underlying lessons of a person’s life.

With a new year dawning and the vibration of great change in the air, both personally and globally, I felt I would share a bit of inspiring information on the upcoming date and year with you all.

January 1st, 2010 breaks down numerologically as the number 5. Five is always a number of completion, of a definite end to one thing, or phase, and the beginning of another. Number 5 says, “Hurry up and make a change, already!”

“Well, duh,” some might say. “Of course it is change, because January 1st ends one year and begins a new one.” But the five energy in this case is not only referencing something so mundane as the start of a new year. This particular instance of the 5 is signaling to us all the end of one long era in our lives and the beginning of a new era, with a fresh clean slate.

Don’t let yourself waste this opportunity by subscribing to the mundane aspect and missing the bigger divine message. Breath in the divine energy and take a moment to think now of what era or trend you would like to come to an end in your life. Harness the power of the New Year’s 5 energy to get moving on what you would like to become the new trend in your life.

Do you want to become a person who speaks more gently to others? Put it into action now and let it become the basis for a new era in your life!

Have you always wanted to be a painter but it has just been a distant dream? Grab some brushes now, or take a class and make it your new hobby… it could set a trend that unfolds a new meaning for you!

Has eating fast food and frozen dinners been having a poor effect on your health and vitality? Turn your attention towards organic and homemade cuisine now and don’t look back!

Of course, we can choose to make a change and institute a new habit at any time, any day. But what is happening now is that the Universe is offering to give you a hand, emitting powerful energy to help make your new change a permanent one.

It is nice when the energy around us is working with our intentions instead of against them. This is one of the occasions when the strength of the “new beginnings” energy is really up there and is available everywhere — empowering all humanity to become even better than they have been before.

I, for one, plan to harness the power of the new decade and the power of the 5 completion to put to rest my fear of working and channeling directly face-to-face with people. I am going to get over that hump and start offering workshops as soon as possible. First up, Beginner’s Meditation. After that, the sky is the limit!

Aren’t sure what you want to end or begin? Just let the five energy fill you and it will subtly guide you onward, so that when you look back you will think, “My goodness, my life has changed SO much this year!”

Blessings and light!

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

~Will Rogers, Cowboy, Comedian and Actor

In our hectic everyday lives it can be so easy to become complacent about things that bother us and about the things that we know we are supposed to do. A deep lethargy can set into us, and do it so slowly and subtly that we don’t even realize we have fallen asleep on our own life.

We can be sitting in a pile of junk, knowing that we would feel better if it were only clean. But yet we seek out that one clear corner and cower in it day-after-day. Or we can be feeling depressed knowing that our self-esteem would improve, if only our backside didn’t have so much cellulite, but we never get on that treadmill. Or maybe we are wanting a change in career, knowing that we should learn a new skill, but never seeming to implement that thought into action.

When we have a big task to complete or a large challenge to overcome, it can seem so overwhelming that taking it past the point of realization and thought is virtually impossible.

Well, I have been there, I have faced the place of hopelessness, daydreaming and inaction so many times in my life. After all those false starts, after living through the periods when something that could have taken me two weeks wound up taking me two years, I have finally mastered the ability to face that lethargy monster and move it out of my way quickly and efficiently.

You’ve heard the old adages: Make hay while the sun shines. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. No time like the present. Just do it.

The truth is clear, if you want to have the energy to complete something, if you ever want to manifest your desire in your life, all you have to do is start! And that is always the hard part. Whether it is something pleasant or something harrowing, the best way to move beyond it, to achieve it, to get it out of your life or whatever, is to just do it! Can’t argue with that logic.

Things which seem very difficult at first glance tend to grow into absolutely terrifying obstacles the longer that you procrastinate on them. I don’t care if it’s a paper that’s due, a room that needs painting or getting that lump in your breast checked, it is always more stressful, more frightening and more depressing when you choose to live with the knowledge of it instead of simply doing it now. Honest.

So instead of ignoring that skeleton in the cupboard until it rots away or instead of trying to swallow a whole pie at once, a great approach for making that guy seem less threatening and less daunting is to gift yourself with five minutes of action.

Here is how it works. You are watching t.v. and some hot guy (or chick) comes on the tube. You instantly look down at your not-so-svelt abs and feel a momentary dislike or discomfort about yourself. BOOM. Stop right there.

You don’t have to feel bad about yourself and then reach for the chips and turn back to the t.v. Sure, you can do that but, what will that change? Nothing at all. You will keep feeling those glimpses of derision and continue subconsciously piling them up upon yourself. All of which is in no way going to lead you to the happier result.

So you stop at that moment, when you feel dislike for your current circumstance. Now, you don’t have to turn off the t.v., throw away the bag of chips and tie on your sneakers for a ten-mile run. Just gift yourself with five minutes toward achieving your positive goal. You can just mute the t.v. and set down the chips for five minutes. Only five minutes is all that it takes!

Now, get up and use that five minute gift to jog in place, or do jumping jacks, or walk around your house, or throw a ball with your dog. Then, when you have used up your five minute gift, go back, un-mute the t.v. and unroll that bag of chips, if you choose.

There is now an elevated vibration about you. You feel better about yourself and your life. You can continue what you were doing before, without feeling guilty and bad about yourself. Whether the feeling lasts for five minutes or five hours, you know that you are taking right action on your own behalf.

Do this every time you catch yourself consciously feeling bad about something that you could be taking action on. We feel bad only when our actions are not in alignment with our own highest goals and desires. By following this simple habit, at the end of the week you may have done 30 minutes of exercise or cleaned ten square feet of that pile of junk or written half of that paper that’s due.

Marathon runners don’t just wake up one day and decide to run 26 miles, so you don’t have to either. Run the 1/4 mile that you can squeeze into your five minutes. That is a start. And, instead of the low vibration of depression, you will have the heightened vibration of knowing that you have taken some action for your own betterment.

Eventually you may find that, when your five minutes is up, you are actually not wanting to stop. Instead you may find yourself just getting up when you see something that needs doing and bringing it to instant completion. Imagine how good that would feel!

Even if you never find yourself on such a roll, at least there will be positive progress towards your goals. And, when you achieve them, you can say that you did it all in just five minutes.

“The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”

~Ben Okri, Nigerian Poet and Novelist

I get so many requests to write more guided meditations like Reading the Trees. Sometimes the muse just will not descend. Of course, I write a lot of targeted meditations for my own spiritual path. But very few of them are appropriate for others. We are all on our own unique journey.

In response to the level of requests, as well as to a directive from the universe, I have decided to try my hand at visual meditation. Please go easy on me as its my first foray into such territory. Also, email and let me know if it works for you. If a lot of you like it, I will try to make it a regular feature here at Awaken to Light.

Of course, you can tell by watching this what my story for the meditation is. But I thought it might be fun if you make up your own story to the images. Include them in your comments. Or if you have a similar video of your own, feel free to include a link in your comments. A little bit of thought-sharing never hurt anyone.

So without further adieu…

Universal Soul: