I’ve been experiencing less than optimal health for a few weeks now. Nothing serious – a cold that seems to ebb and flow but never quite leave, some digestive problems, and a lack of energy.

According to Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, in their book Conscious Loving, the complaint of the victim is, “...this is not the experience I should be having”. If, they say, we take responsibility for our lives, then every experience we have is exactly the experience we should be having. So, on some level, I’m choosing to feel like crap!

What’s tricky about feeling sub-par is that it makes it more difficult to focus one’s thoughts on how we do want to feel, or what we do want to create i ...

The other morning, Kate and I watched a roadrunner getting his breakfast – a good-sized lizard. The whole process was filled with intensity, and, as it seemed to us, violence. The big bird repeatedly beat the lizard against a rock. The lizard repeatedly tried to run away, but was invariably caught by the roadrunner and brought back to the killing ground, until he was (finally!) dead, and could be eaten.

Then I thought, “…is ‘violence’ really the correct word/thought here?” The roadrunner was simply fulfilling his role in the divine design, which seems filled with predators and prey. He was just “doing his job” – and doing it well. All creatures need to eat.

Kate and I have had many discussions about predation and, and the fact that I am a carniv ...

I talk a lot in my workshop about how to live a conscious, mindful life, and a lot of that “teaching what I’m learning” involves how to live on this planet with less impact on the environment. The more closely I look at “walking my talk” in this area, however, the more I realize how far we are from how we would ideally like to live.

A friend of mine runs a non-profit educational group called the Post Carbon Institute, based in Vancouver. When we visited him last year, I hadn’t seen him for several years. We met at a restaurant. He and his wife and baby son arrived on bicycles. It turned out they are now vegetarians, not for ethical reasons, as many are, but more for environmental/energy conservation reasons.

Sex. Possibly the most loaded word in any language, and with good reason. Sex reaches deep down into who we are at our core, and tells truths about us that are undeniable. Freud tapped into this over a century ago, and his insights still reverberate across the decades, and did a lot to break apart the rigid taboos against talking about sex that are a legacy from the Victorian culture.

And yet most of us grew up with very little honest talk about sex, and very little guidance from our parents in this area. This is a real shame – it means we have to fumble around (both literally and figuratively!) learning about this most basic of energies all on our own.

This is one of the toughest things for me to do, and since the whole thrust of the Lifetools venture is to “teach what I’m learning”, I thought it was time I shared with you my thoughts on driving. In these days of “road rage”, I think it is more important than ever that we drive with civility, and that we are “in flow” when we drive.

Since I live in Sedona, a tourist town which is also a retirement community, I’m often stuck behind slow-moving cars, driven either by tourists oblivious to anything except (a) natural beauty and (b) the fact that they don’t know where they’re going or (c) they can’t find a parking space, or old folks who feel unsafe at speeds higher than 20 m.p.h. This is a great test of patience.

Sometimes, I find myself feeling actual ...

What I call "the second law of metaphysics" is this: "What you focus on expands".  So, I invite you, today, to be more aware of what you're focusing on in any given moment, and the way that that thought (or set of thoughts) creates feelings in you. What feelings are they?

Then, consciously turn your attention to something that is positive for you -- and then notice how you feel. Chances are, you'll feel better -- more optimistic, more hopeful, more joyful. One of the tremendous benefits of doing this is that, after a while, you'll realize that you are in control of how you feel. When something happens that stimulates difficult feelings in you, after the initial storm of those feelings has passed, you can take a deep breath, focus on something which has positive connotations for you, and feel better. I'm not saying this is easy -- like almost anything worth doing, it takes some practice. But it is simple.

This is why I recommend do ...