Personal Life Media

This week, Adam reflects on a comment by Joel Osteen, that toothy evangelist of the Prosperous Christ. When we truly believe in what we create at work, we throw ourselves in heart and soul and assure success. What if the product of your creativity, your widget, was not a web design, a crafted contract or mended teeth. What if the "thing" you created daily, the object of your focus and your creative efforts, your "widget"… was love itself.

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We stand at a confusing crossroads of history. Women are discovering their masculine side just as men are discovering their feminine side -- the gender equivalent of tornado conditions! Sadly, there is much bitterness rather than curiosity, recrimination rather than exploration. My guests this week, Rajyo Markman and Britta Johnson, drawing on several traditions including that of Osho, discuss their life-changing workshops, where men and women work with, and support each other through… healing and new openings to love.

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How do we let fear fun our lives? The better question: how do we learn practical steps to decouple fear from our moment-by-moment choice-driven evolution? This extraordinary dialogue with Guy Finley, teacher, spiritual master and director of the Life of Learning Foundation explores how fear and the projection of fear undermines our ability to experience what is truly happening in any moment, as well as our ability to fully love those whom we love in true freedom and openness. Based in Christian mystical teaching, but resonating with deep Taoist and Buddhist understandings, Guy Finley will not only change how you think about fear, but show you boundless horizons of joy, freedom and opportunity on your path to love.

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This week, we talk to the remarkable Jim Dreaver, who does every listener a service by moving us past our individual stories. Does it mean anything to you when I say it is possible to love someone "through" themselves to something else? You could call that something else could be their core, their divine masculine or feminine essence, their highest self, their highest intention or, if you like, God. Deep loving, I believe, grows from the ability to love another through - or beyond - their personality. To stay locked into your story, or your partner's story is a recipe for dissatisfaction and nit-picking. Listen to Jim, deeply grounded in the advaita tradition, and see if you agree. Then let me know what you think…

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In this episode, we speak with the insightful Marriage and Family Therapist, Richard Platt, who with his wife runs an exciting phalanx of traditional therapeutic and bold workshop practices. As a shrink, Richard discovered that traditional psychology often misses the deeper mark: namely, connecting to root source, touching the core of being. In essence, knowing that you have the power to start over, again and again and again. It is the idea, as he discusses, that "initiation is available in every moment."

This is a powerful, refreshing and inspiring concept. In fact, in my opinion, it can serve as the foundation of a moment-by-moment practice that can turn your intimate life into a broad, easy river that washes over the little dams that our fear quickly assembles to undermine the love we truly are.

Listen, open and enjoy!

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This week, I talk to Lorraine Platt, who, with her husband, runs a thriving Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists/ Relationship Development practice just north of San Francisco. What got my attention was the deep and broad rooting in spiritual practice and spiritual traditions that Lorraine and Richard bring to what might otherwise be what David Deida, for instance, calls, "second stage therapy." Most therapy intends to help heal the wounds of the past. Lorraine's work also helps men and women look forward boldly. In this interview, we discuss her Buddhist roots, serious practices for men to learn how to feel and listen to their bodies, and how women (and men) can embrace a kind of powerful caution that is devoid of fear. Their goal, which is the goal of the Fearless Lover is to create, foster and explore relationships that are not merely good, but inspiring.

For more about Lorraine and Richard, go to passionpurpose.org

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"Have you seen the movie, The Secret? Have you read the book? Bathed in "The Secret" Bath Salts? Buy "The Secret" infused spring water? Well, some of the secret isn't so secret and some is hokum. But it did jolt another title into my head: "The Obvious." With all the well intentioned "how to create the life of your dreams" intentionality and huckstery P.T. Barnumbification of the American mind, a truth burned through to me. An... obvious truth. And it reminded me of a startling conversation that Ram Dass had with a mysterious seeker early in his travels in India. This Obvious Truth struck Ram Dass dumb when he realized how it stripped him of all the security blankets he had piled on top of his naked, loving soul.

This week, we throw off some of the blankets that we have consciously or unconsciously smothered over our ability to love in any moment. And, it is my secret -- and obvious -- hope, to help you breathe love more freely, here and now.

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This week we continue our discussion with Dr. Gino Yu of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  Dr. Yu is a unique amalgam of media savant, spiritual seeker (and finder), neuroscience enthusiast, loving father and husband, visionary, composer and… rapper.

How can you communicate an inner state?   How can you expect that when you say, “love” – your partner understands the word, “love” in the same way?

This week, Dr. Yu gets into the three ways we communicate our inner life: mythology, art and ritual.

What fascinates him, and what we can apply to our daily lives is that the core of all of it – mythology, art and ritual -- is the attempt to communicate one great truth, and that is this:

“The experience of right here, right now… it’s good to be alive.”

From this anchor, he argues, you will find wells of wonder, gratitude, joy… and love. 

And, tying in our discussion last week, we explore what distracts us from that fundamental knowledge.

I dare you not to feel provoked and inspired!

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This week I begin a fascinating discussion with my friend, the multivalent thinker and creator, Dr. Gino Yu, Director of the  MulitMedia Innovation Center at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, of all things.

Dr. Yu is on the global forefront of exploring how media can raise consciousness, help us let go of our fears and unwanted emotions, and cultivate the life of love and awareness we all desire.

Of particular interest, listen for Gino’s idea: “follow the love.”

Love is always there.  As he says, you don’t have to create it, you find it, which is often just a process of stripping away of what’s covering love.   It’s always there.  As Gino says,  “all emotions are rooted in love, even those you don’t think are love.”

Yu urges us to dig beneath surface communications.  Where investigators say, “follow the money,” he counsels, “follow the love.”

I found his insights on using breath to bring unwanted emotions back to love illuminating and hopeful!

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"Love is never displaced by additional love, it is enhanced, because all of our different loves are expressions of the one embracing love."

In other words, your capacity to love is infinite. So says our guest this week, Rabbi Bradley Artson, Vice President and Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles.

Rabbi Artson is a passionate, brilliant, warm and sensible presence on the spiritual scene, and I wanted top share his down-to-earth spirituality with you.

Listen especially to his ideas about how love recycles -- the more you give it, the more it engenders more love. He calls it "mutually reinforcing love" For example, knowing that it's possible to love a spouse strengthens our love and trust of others, and of the divine. Cherishing ourselves allows us to receive unconditional love from without.

Love doesn't compete with love. Love multiplies love.

I found this interview particularly inspiring and encouraging.

And I'm convinced you will, too!

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This is part 2 of an interview with Author/Teacher Will Johnson. more.

Part 1 of an interview with Author/Teacher Will Johnson. Sometimes the simplest practices can bring the most extraordinary results. In this two-part series, I talk with Will Johnson, author of The Spiritual Practices of Rumi,about how to achieve "union" with your beloved. Fascinating is how Will met his own "Shams" before he had even read Rumi, and how he has since made a life of teaching this practice. Rumi, of course, is the great Sufi mystic, beatific 13th Century street-rapper, whose simple words carry an uncanny ability to jar us into sudden expansive consciousness. Will is a deep and gentle guide into this practice which so transformed the once scholarly Rumi, and is something that is certain to deepen your relationships and free you from the small boundaries of your "I" as well. Meet Will... more.

In this show, we wrap up our three part series based on the work of David Deida -- really only a sliver of his work, which is expansive, to say the least. Here, we explore several specific practices to help men (and in some cases, women), hone the gift of masculine presence, freedom and directionality. Men - if you've been wanting to create more sexual polarity with women -- take notes -- and do the homework. Women, if you want your man to provide more structure and a trustable container inside which you can dance your beauty -- figure out a way to get him to listen (but without TELLING him to). Therein lies one of the gifts of the feminine, which we will explore soon in more depth. Enjoy! more.

This week, we continue delving into the work of David Deida, exploring how the masculine expresses love. Deida provides a lucid corrective to both the bullying female-diminishing "First Stage" of Masculine hubris and the "Second Stage" of the needy-weenie-wussy-pleasy mendicant love of guys who are afraid to express strong individuation and directionality. Deida's famous "Third Stage" Man openly and fearlessly expresses purpose, presence and freedom, and lives in service both to this own high sense of mission in this world and to the heart-opening of those he loves. A tall order. And, ultimately, in most cases, the only real satisfying one for a man. Write me and tell me if this week resounds with you... more.

What gifts do we bring to each other as men and women? As embodiments of masculine impulses and forces and of feminine impulses and forces? How are they different and how are they the same? There's been a whole lot of confusion over what it means to be a man or a woman and all combinations thereof, during the past 40 years. We have outgrown the latest phase of history, where the masculine dominated, with production and violent change shaping social relations. Feminism succeeded in equalizing the right of both genders to be masculine -- and now with a sense of equality, women are re-discovering that feminine power is unique. And men are being forced to realize that it is no less powerful. As men struggle to find a way of being in relationship with the feminine that is both powerfully masculine and self-aware, they are discovering the gifts of the masculine to be liberating -- both from the brute stereotypes that preceded the modern age, and from the wishy-washy "soft" man that women find so emasculated -- though wonderful feng-shui partners. This week, we begin our 3-Part exploration of the great gifts of the masculine, as we drill into the first two of the The Three Pillars of the Masculine -- Purpose, Presence and Freedom -- as I have culled them from the work of David Deida . Fully embodied, they are a gift -- to everybody. Enjoy -- and let me know what you think... more.

Many traditions understand that it's fear that keeps us from loving openly, fully, unabashedly, wholeheartedly, unshakably and all the time. But what are the qualities of those fears? What exactly are we scared of? Few people have explored the battle between fear and love better than Don Miguel Ruiz, informed as he is by the Toltec Tradition. Ruiz is best known for his book, The Four Agreements, which has not only been a best seller, but has also actually been read by many of the people who have bought it. Why? His style is clear. His wisdom is solid. And his books are short! Today's podcast is based on another clear, solid and fairly short book of his -- The Mastery of Love -- which, in my view, is even more life-altering than The Four Agreements. It had a huge impact on my thinking, forgiving and loving, and articulated for me how fear really does block the flow of love. Call this work The Fifth Agreement: Love! When you are finished listening, let me know if it makes as much sense to you as it did to me. Enjoy! more.

In this episode, we explore the challenge and opportunity of loving fully, no matter what life throws at us. more.