You might wonder if this is a proper question to ask a spiritual coach. Such a question raises the issue, what is the spiritual life



all about in the first place? Does chasing after egoic desires constitute the spiritual life?

Here is my response: If you are living from the level of your personality, which is to say, your egoic self, then those desires you

most likely feel compelled to manifest are probably not going to come into your life very easily, or very soon. When we live from our ego

selves, our path becomes a struggle-the kind of struggle most of us are very well acquainted with.

The ego feels itself separate from and opposed to the world it lives in. The ego self believes it must seek friends and alliances in order to get what it thinks it wants. Those who live out of ego consciousness, seek health, wealth, and happiness through hard work. Making the right connections, getting the right education, searching out useful possibilities-we all know the routine.

And if through hard work we do manage to achieve the kind of successful life we all seem to hanker for these days, we probably

believe we are well-functioning human beings. But are we actually functioning that well?

When clients ask me how they can achieve abundance in their life, I take it they are mainly referring to getting a money pile. It is as if they assume having a big enough pile will take care of most, if not all, of their perceived problems. And, of course, with or without the big money pile, our problems persist. For generally, our problems

come from being possessed by a faulty personality; and secondly, the effort itself to keep the flow of money coming creates even more problems-physical, mental and emotional disorders (I leave the details to you). To put it bluntly, the state of health, wealth and

happiness we seek seems to forever evade us.

And so, at some point in your life, the question ultimately arises, "Might there not be a better way to go about this busy-ness? Does my life always have to be an arduous struggle for survival?"

And of course, being the spiritual coach that I am, my answer is a resounding, "Yes, there is a better way. It is the spiritual way; and

this way will provide you with all your needs-and even many of your wants."

Why is this so? Well, to begin with, living from spiritual consciousness, you automatically sense yourself belonging to the

whole. You know yourself as a full-fledged member of the universe, which includes all and everything. You are not a stranger in a

strange land struggling for survival. What you need comes to you practically effortlessly.

I realize that for many, the above statement is not easily believed. Well, friend, I'm not asking you to believe. The spiritual life is

not based on belief. The spiritual life is based on practice. You must commit yourself to practicing its principles. And the first step

is to remove yourself from the isolation-stop being entrapped within your egoic mind.

Shift yourself to your heart consciousness. Focus your awareness on heart feelings. Your heart does not pump blood alone. Your heart as

well circulates neuropeptides, which stimulate the feelings. When you focus on your heart, you automatically experience powerful feelings

of well-being. Receptors in every cell of your body receive these peptides. Every cell begins to vibrate with an emotional component

that can be verbalized as joyfulness. The cells of your immune system grow stronger. All of your vital organs increase their functionality-and your brain is one of those vital organs. Hence your mind, your

thinking aspect, becomes healthier. And thus, you are moving away from egoic separateness. You sense yourself as belonging to the whole

of life, to all of humanity, to the cosmos, connected and integrated with the Divine, encompassed by the All.

Contrary to the mind, which can vacillate between negative/depressed states and bursts of high/manic states the action of which brutalizes the cells' receptors with toxic substances, the heart sends out a

steady flow of those endorphin-like peptides that make you feel good,alive, and eager for life. And in this balanced state, you are much

better prepared for receiving what your life requires.

Well now you must be wondering, "What does all this have to do with making opportunities happen?" Doesn't this idea, "making

opportunities happen," sound like linear, cause and effect conceptualizing? Indeed it does. I wrote the title this way simply to

get your attention. The actuality is, we can't make anything happen.

But we can arrange ourselves as receptors of opportunities. When we live from our heart-self, we position ourselves as receptors. Our

heart desires are not the same as our egoic desires.

Our egoic desires are born from a sense of lack, of insecurity, of limitation. Not thinking we are good enough, we strive for

perfection, for acknowledgement, for some kind of achievement reward. Hence we tend to manipulate circumstances - make things happen, using the faulty technique of cause and effect. Our egoic oriented society develops concepts that attempt to regulate how to make things happen. But such actions, we truly sense, are never fully capable of

achieving desired results. "The best laid plans often go astray," as the old saying goes.

Plans developed out of our egoic minds are full of details, organized to offset every contingency we can imagine.

Heart-desires contain no such detailed planning. The heart-self connected to the whole, needs only to recognize its desires in a

generalized manner. Whatever the heart desires can only be fulfilled if only such is in harmony with the whole. So there is never a need to manipulate. Whenever a desire - or a need - arises, the being whom you are requires only to commit to the intention of that desire.

No sooner do you commit to your intention (born from your desire)than something almost like a miracle begins to happen. Opportunities

come into your awareness. Opportunities appear in the field of your perception. Prior to your

commitment, the field was flat. Nothing in your world of perception appeared useful to you. But suddenly, upon "knowing" your desire and setting your intention, your field of perception takes shape. Opportunities reveal themselves.

The word, opportunity, has for its components three elements that point to its subtle meaning: "op" relates to vision; "port" relates

to carry; and tune relates to harmonics, or being in tune. Thus, the whole word can be translated into a thought, something like "being in tune with what you see."

So the real question is, how does one move from egoic consciousness to heart consciousness? Most of us have spent almost our entire life living from the egoic mind. Perhaps only when we were infants and very young toddlers, did we live mainly from heart consciousness. This may be the reason for Jesus having said, be like the children.

But how to do this? How can we become the child that we were? One way that I am familiar with is a practice that can be done by anyone

willing to try. The practice is called "mindfulness" or "being present to the moment." Living in the "now" is another expression that points to this form of worship. I say "worship" because when we

are in this state of being, living from heart consciousness, we sense we are in touch with the sacred aspect of life.

The egoic mind lives in the past and the future-two states that are not truly real. They are only real to our egoic minds. In other

words, the past and the future are imaginary, fictitious. Only the present moment is of reality.

And being in the present moment, we are in the reality of the Divine Life. The more we live in the present moment, the more we experience

the magic of life. We become more aware of the vibratory essence. All of life-nature-reveals itself. We see our fellows, and ourselves as

well, glowing with this vibration of life. We see the trees and the other creatures of this world as if in a shimmering landscape.

We live from our hearts, and our heart desires come into being as if effortlessly. We see opportunities that are like portals through

which we enter into the realization of our desires. Our actions move in a straight-line motion toward our goals. No distractions appear to us.

From our egoic consciousness, distractions appear as possible opportunities, which we then chase after. And this is how we become

scattered, disoriented, frustrated and pinned to the wheel of karma.