Authentic Living

This is that time of year when we talk about it. We sing about it. We even pray about it. But no one really believes that we are actually going to have peace on earth, right? I mean, look around man! You can’t really believe that this crazy place is going to one day be all peace, love and joy, right? We are not those people. We are not the people who can facilitate this. We are people who are weak, sinful, and definitely incapable of joining forces to bring about a peaceful outcome. Naaah. It’s a nice thought and all, and we can wistfully speak of it at Christmas time, but no one in his right mind takes that stuff seriously. Well, today, we are going to take it seriously, right mind or no. We are going to really, out-loud consider it—even do a feasibility study of the possibilities and implications. Because if it’s not possible, we just need to shut-up about it. And if it is, well then, maybe we need to get busy on it. Don’t miss this one.

What do we do with the enormous suffering created by such things as deadly illness and trauma? They say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But when the miracles come, what is it that happens within us, around us, about us? What is it that transforms us? Mark Nepo is coming back to the Authentic Living show to discuss his latest book, Inside the Miracle, in which he reveals his own miraculous recovery from cancer and all of the profound insights that came with it during, right after and in the years since. Mark is the bestselling author of The Book of Awakening, a poet, philosopher and spiritual teacher who has published 16 books, and 11 audio projects. This interview is going to be moving, profoundly insightful and it will offer powerful guidance to those suffering right now. Don’t miss it.

There are many spiritual teachers teaching that we should practice gratitude as a daily, even hourly part of our routine—so that we will maintain a positive outlook, increase our mood, decrease our stress and make us generally nicer people. Two problems with that: 1) when we add “should” to gratitude it ceases to be gratitude and becomes a duty; 2) anytime we add a “so that” to our spiritual routines, they cease to be spiritual and become conflated, contrivances meant to manipulate the gods. Gratitude is actually a form of presence. And presence is a spiritual practice that has only to do with embracing life on life’s terms. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to live, rather than merely survive.

If you are like most people, at some point in your life you begin to think that lasting peace or happiness will forever elude you. You may have had periods of satisfaction or contentment but deep, abiding peace seem to be impossible. This is a profound moment of possibility, because for the first time you are wondering about one of the most basic elements of the living experience—our own peace. Why is it that peace is so elusive? Is it possible for us to really have and own our peace? If so, how do we do that? Today we are going to be talking to Christopher Papadopoulas, author of “Peace And Where To Find It”, who is going to help us answer some of these very important questions. Don’t miss it.

What can you expect to happen next in your life? Will you get that job or relationship you want? Or not. What if it doesn’t happen? What will you do then? Better yet, what will you believe then? What do you imagine is supposed to happen in your life? What about what you deserve—what do you deserve to happen in your life? What if you don’t know? Are you doing something wrong? These questions and more are discussed and answered on today’s show. Don’t miss it.

Today we are very fortunate to get an opportunity to talk to bestselling author Andrew Solomon, writer and lecturer on psychology, politics, and the arts and winner of the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. He is an activist in LGBT rights, mental health, and the arts. His latest NY Times bestselling book, and the subject of our interview today, entitled Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, is also the winner of several awards, including being chosen at among the NY Times Ten Best Books of 2012. It has been called “A bold and unambiguous call to redefine how we view difference… A stunning work of scholarship and compassion (Carmela Ciuraru, USA Today) distinguished similarly by many other notables for its exceptional profundity, compassion and insight. Today we are going to take an intimate look at this entire concept of loving differentness. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to gain insight into the power of love.

We all have major life transitions, which come in many different forms. But these difficult times can be thresholds to a new adventure. How do we take the challenge to turn what appears to be a block or even a death, into a threshold? Rabbi Sherre Hirsch has come today to talk to us about her 2nd book, Thresholds: How to Thrive Through Life’s Transitions. Rabbi Hirsch is the first female Rabbi, who served for 8 years as the Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. She has since left the more traditional pulpit to serve a larger, more diverse “congregation.” She is now a nationally recognized personality who speaks across the country and frequently appears in the national media. She also serves as Spiritual Consultant to Canyon Ranch properties. Rabbi Sherre blends ancient tradition and modern day application to empower individuals to be their own spiritual guides. You are not going to want to miss this show.

Have you ever looked back over your life and thought to yourself, “I’ve been had?” Well, don’t feel alone, many of us have experienced deliberate gotcha’s perpetrated by those who want to manipulate, abuse or control us. But there’s a bigger story—a more global story to this whole thing of manipulation, and Eldon Taylor is here today to tell us about it, and how we may avoid falling prey to it. His latest book, “Gotcha!” tells us all about the silent battle that has been raging for more than a century for the territory of our minds. The book explores the 24/7 bombardment of information designed to win the hearts and minds of the public, and exposes the arrival of the Orwellian age in full-blown technicolor. In revealing the game, he helps us know what we need to do to avoid allowing others to puppet our thoughts and to maintain original thinking. This is going to be a mind-blower today. Don’t miss it.

Joan Borysenko is back this week for the third time to talk with us about guilt, for guilt can be a major block to our resilience factor. Her latest book, “It’s Not the End of the World: Developing Resilience in Times of Change” will be combined with one of her earlier books, “Guilt is the Teacher, Love is the Lesson” in an in-depth discussion of this devilish master craftsman of our lives. In the extreme, many of us live whole lifetimes driven by guilt and responsibility for other people’s stuff. But most of us worry over guilt at least some of the time. It works us over and compels us at times to do things that are not only unnecessary but often come down to downright interference with other people’s lives. And it eats at us from the inside out, through that niggling little voice that just won’t seem to let go until we finally give into it. Well this week, we are going to help it let go. Don’t miss this important discussion.

What is it that keeps us from living authentically? Well at least a part of it is the illusions, delusions and lies we believe that keep us from even considering that there is such a thing as the authentic Self, or that we can live an authentic life. We are so encumbered with these illusions, delusions and lies that we cannot see, are literally blind, to the authentic Self and its messages and urgings. This show is going to expose those illusions, delusions and lies for what they are, and tell the truth about the authentic Self. The truth exposed here today can create a breakthrough, so that you can begin to see, and begin to integrate the authentic Self. Don’t miss it.

When we experience a loss or a defeat, we often feel a great deal of pain. Added to that pain is also a self-judgment, self-recrimination, that has to do with our effort to spiritually by-pass grief altogether. Many are teaching that to have the typical feelings of grief means that we are unwilling to let go, or that we are “ staying stuck” in anger—one of the natural phases of acceptance of any difficult reality. But grief that is allowed its full array of phases and stages has a very natural transformative power. It changes us to the core with lasting and deeply spiritual changes. Today we are going to talk about how you can get the gift of grief. Don’t miss this show—even if you are not grieving right now, you will one day, and this show can help you know what to do when that happens.

Today we are so honored to have Iyanla Vanzant here to talk to us about her latest book, Forgiveness: 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything. Iyanla Vanzant, NY Times Bestselling author; host of the number one reality show on the OWN network, Iyanla: Fix My Life; and frequent guest on Super Soul Sunday and Oprah’s Life Class, is easily one of America’s most profound spiritual leaders, who empowers individuals all across the globe to live into the truest self. Her body of work spans over three decades and includes CDs, television, radio and on stage performances, 15 published books, and 5 New York Times Bestsellers, which have been translated into 23 languages. Iyanla’s no nonsense approach to helping others to live healthy and whole demonstrates her clear capacity for delivering the absolute truth with love. She warms our hearts while pushing us to grow. Today we are going to get to talk with her about the purpose, the power and the freedom of forgiveness. Do NOT miss this show!

We get lost in the holes in the sidewalk of our psyches. These holes are like the traps made for wild animals in the wilderness, all covered up with brush and dirt, so that we think we are just continuing on the path. But suddenly and without our knowing how, we fall into the hole—we are lost again. We’ve fallen into that old complex, that old default position. We don’t know how we got there, we don’t know how to get out—heck, we don’t even know that we are in it. We’re just doing what we’ve always done. This complex drags us around by our emotions, intense emotions that seem compulsive in nature. They tell us what to do and we are just compelled to do them. And what they tell us to do turns out to be just all wrong. Now we’ve done it and we begin to awaken to the facts of the fall and we are asking, “how in the world did this happen?” Well, we are going to answer that question today. Don’t miss it.

Most of us have been taught that loving others is our job, our duty—that we must love others in order to be considered to be good citizens of the world. But love, real love, is not a function of striving. It is not a function of “should,” or duty or loyalty or any other of those favorite words we use to shame ourselves into compliance with the duty of love. Love is not a duty. Love is an impulse. A deep, abiding and authentic impulse to behave in loving, kind, caring ways to self and others. We all have it, but we have all been taught to ignore that very natural impulse, in favor of obedience to the “should,” the duty, the obligation and the guilt. How do we get back in touch with that natural impulse? Tune in. We are going to tell you how.

Rosanne Cash comes to the Authentic Living show this week to discuss her latest book, Composed: A Memoir, the powerful, poetic and poignant story of her own inner journey, which touches us at a deep essential and spiritual core. Rosanne is one of America’s preeminent singers and song writers with fourteen albums and eleven # 1 singles to her credit. Her albums, which reach people from across the various music genres, include: Right or Wrong, Seven Year Ache, Somewhere in the Stars, Rhythm and Romance, King's Record Shop, Interiors, The Wheel, 10 Song Demo, Rules of Travel, Black Cadillac, The List and The Essential Rosanne Cash. First known as the daughter of Johnny Cash, she moved on to find and live into her own genuine perspective, talent and personality, as she created song after song that reflected on the deeper meaning of life. She is also the author of two other books, as well as several essays and short stories published in major national magazines. You don’t want to miss it!

With so much information floating around out there in the spiritual world about how to manifest abundance and, in the secular world about how to attain your goals, it’s difficult to consider such concepts as staying in the moment. Michael Brown, our guest today, helps us bridge the gaps. Author of two books we’ll be talking about today, “The Presence Process” and “Alchemy of the Heart,” as well as a DVD entitled “Awakening to Innocence / Inner Sense,” Michael can teach us all how to both release the imprinting of our childhood and begin to experience the now of authenticity. In Michael’s own words “The Presence Process is not about changing who or what we are. This is impossible. Instead, it is about releasing our attachment to our manufactured identity so that we may gently return to an awareness of our authentic Presence.” Who are you, really? Come listen to Michael and explore the inner terrain of yourself.

Today we are very fortunate to get an opportunity to talk to bestselling author Andrew Solomon, writer and lecturer on psychology, politics, and the arts and winner of the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. He is an activist in LGBT rights, mental health, and the arts. His latest NY Times bestselling book, and the subject of our interview today, entitled Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity, is also the winner of several awards, including being chosen at among the NY Times Ten Best Books of 2012. It has been called “A bold and unambiguous call to redefine how we view difference… A stunning work of scholarship and compassion (Carmela Ciuraru, USA Today) distinguished similarly by many other notables for its exceptional profundity, compassion and insight. Today we are going to take an intimate look at this entire concept of loving differentness. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to gain insight into the power of love.

Most of us have been raised to be good. We were to share, be kind, be loving, say thank you when we didn’t feel grateful, say I’m sorry when we weren’t, hug people we didn’t want to hug and say we loved people we didn’t even know, much less love. But the idea of goodness held a magical quality for most of us. We thought that IF we were good enough, THEN we would be worthy, we would be loved and we could finally rest secure. We assume, therefore, that being real means being less than good—and the magic will go away. We assume that then we will not be worthy and we will not be loved. But being real doesn’t mean being bad, mean, unkind or unworthy. Being real means being genuine. And this show is not only going to clarify the difference but it will bring home the reasoning for why we drop the act of being good and begin to adopt and adjust to our genuine Self. Don’t miss it.

The first question before that, of course, is “Can people really change?” Well the answer is “yes,” but we’ve all heard about those Road to Damascus changes that leave us scratching our heads and waiting for them to change back, right? Well, Bruce Grierson, author of the book, all about these kinds of changes, and entitled “U-Turn,” is going to talk to us about the mystery of this kind of complete 180 degree shift in a person’s consciousness. I read his wonderful article in the March 15, 2015 issue of Psychology Today, entitled “Eureka,” and knew I had to get him for this show. This one is going to be fascinating. Don’t miss it.

Joan Borysenko is back this week for the third time to talk with us about guilt, for guilt can be a major block to our resilience factor. Her latest book, “It’s Not the End of the World: Developing Resilience in Times of Change” will be combined with one of her earlier books, “Guilt is the Teacher, Love is the Lesson” in an in-depth discussion of this devilish master craftsman of our lives. In the extreme, many of us live whole lifetimes driven by guilt and responsibility for other people’s stuff. But most of us worry over guilt at least some of the time. It works us over and compels us at times to do things that are not only unnecessary but often come down to downright interference with other people’s lives. And it eats at us from the inside out, through that niggling little voice that just won’t seem to let go until we finally give into it. Well this week, we are going to help it let go. Don’t miss this important discussion.