Collective consciousness is one of the subjects of sociology.  Homogeneous groups of people, whether of religions, ethnicities, political parties, or nations will tend to adopt shared ideologies or social standards that permeate and govern their attitudes and behavior. For example, most Americans consciously acknowledge and value democracy as the most favorable form of government. And within a large homogeneous group, there will be subsets of collective agreement that interpret or apply the shared ideologies or social standards in various ways, or from a different perspective, hence we have conservatives and liberals and independents.  The size and strength of these subsets can rise and fade within the larger cohort as attitudes and sympathies shift and adjust due to various influencing factors, some of external causes and some from within.

One of the well-known ideologies of Ronald Reagan - “Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.” - appealed to a subset of our collective consciousness that made him one of the most popular presidents among political conservatives. Reagan’s ideology was often quoted in the most recent Republican primary campaigns as well as in the national presidential campaign. It is, indeed, a mantra of a conservative collective agreement.  Someone might disagree with its ideological absolutism, but there’s nothing covert about this political view.

Even if its specific social and political implications are less than obvious, the notion that less government is better government is a clear, overt position, IF it is indeed consciously understood for what it is. We are more likely to change our conscious agreements, if we intelligently observe and evaluate the consequences of our agreements. As a nation, the electorate majority may or may not decide to support this supposition.  As a result of the publicity surrounding the recent banking scandals, public opinion appears to have shifted back to a need for more governmental intervention and regulation.

Unfortunately, we are not always fully conscious. And if not, we may too easily allow ourselves to be triggered into our “survivalist” collective unconscious.

The collective unconscious is not the content of sociological science. First observed and defined by Carl Jung, we are most likely to hear it discussed in the realm of analytical psychology. Jung referred to the collective unconscious as “a reservoir of the experiences of our species.” He believed that the human species has an active unconscious code or instinct developed over many thousands if not millions of years and imbedded deeply in our psyches. It is not that much different in its origins and function from the primitive survival instincts of other living creatures. Aggressive “survivalism” is basic to our most primal nature, well hidden just under our “civilized” conscious surface. When feeling fearful and threatened, we can be triggered and converted into hostile actions against differing members of the human race. Given perceived threatening events, it is not difficult to capitalize on our primitive collective unconscious and then to incite a vengeful collective agreement to support of an aggressive attack on the perceived threatening peoples, even against a society or country that posed no real threat. We have a lot of evidence of this aggressive nature throughout history, and many adroit and powerful leaders have exploited it to their own end.  Adolph Hitler is viewed as one of the consummate masters of the technique.

The events of September 11, 2001 created a political opportunity to incite a revengeful collective consciousness that became the driving force behind our invasion of Iraq, the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, and support for many of the Bush administration’s questionable policies. Since “9/11″ and our county’s international response to the events of that day, many of us became, with increasing intensity, “news junkies”, and hence, drawn into an unfortunate and self-defeating collective agreement that triggered a deeper, more primitive instinct. One of George W. Bush’s stated campaign goals was to “unite the country”. And he did. With the complying assistance of a media that thrives on bad news, the Bush administration triggered our primitive, survivalist collective unconscious through the escalation of fear and desperation in order to create the political capital for the support of the “war on terrorism” as well as the justification for some of the re-interpretations of our constitution and our agreements with the Geneva Convention.

As with most Americans, my personal “addiction” to the political news reached its highest point of captivation with the 2008 presidential campaigns and election.  In retrospect, my personal vigilance of our political situation was fed by the frenzy of speculation that permeated our news media. My personal obsession with politics over the past seven years was driven to a great extent by my increasing concern with the consequences of the pathological level of fear and desperation being imbedded more and more deeply in our collective consciousness.

Were we being conditioned to consciously accept and expect worldwide conflict? Were we becoming psychologically conditioned to accept, and perhaps take for granted our hostility and aggression toward anyone with a different collective consciousness? Were we being conditioned to win “the war on terrorism” at any cost, including the forfeiture of our country’s longstanding values and integrity, even our own personal rights and freedoms? Were we being conditioned to expect, even initiate Armageddon?

Most of the commercial media thrives on bad news, because its producers and sponsors understand very well how we feed on the drama and how well it sells the “good news” offered in commercial advertising. The election of Barack Obama reflected a shift toward optimism and hope. But it did not take long for the media to shift its focus from the Bush drama and begin its amplification of the slightest potential controversy or conflict or challenge within Barack Obama’s next cabinet appointment or the Republican opposition to his economic recovery plan. One of the most audacious and influential of the conservative media personalities has arrogantly declared his hope for Obama’s failure as our country struggles to recover from the abysmal legacy of the previous administration that he, the media personality, supported. And the rest of the media swarmed to the story like ravenous sea gulls attracted to a bloated beached whale.

Are we we fascinated with obnoxious people? Are hooked on bad news? Are we addicted to, even anticipating the drama of a catastrophic horror story? Do we unconsciously want the excitement of a bloody fight or even Armageddon?

To often it seems that just as we begin our recovery from one catastrophe, some part of our fascination with anticipating the next misfortune draws us into a gaper’s block. For sixty years of my memory, seemingly every opportunity was taken by some hysterical evangelicals to revive the “fear of God” in all of us by pointing to the prophetic biblical signs of the inevitable certainty and proximity of Armageddon. The present perception of worldwide woe provides no exception to this opportunism. The History Channel recently got into the act and aired a series of programs on the “signs pointing to Armageddon”. Even among some of my new age friends, there wafts rather quiet, almost whispered speculations of the implications of the end of the Myan calendar in December 2012.

And then there’s “The Web Bot Project.”  Created in the 1990’s to help predict stock market trends, this powerful covert technology “crawls” throughout the Internet in search of keywords that trigger an analysis of the content of a given site. It then feeds this content into a mega computer that theoretically taps into the collective consciousness of our world. The project was intended to look for, analyze, and highlight “tipping points” on how the world market might move in the future. Interestingly, the operators of the project began to notice that the program was predicting more than trends in the stock markets.

In June of 2001, three months before the attacks of September 11, the Web Bot Project predicted that within the next 60-90 days there would be a catastrophic, life-altering event that would affect the world at large. The Project has predicted, coincidentally similar to the Myan Calendar, worldwide calamity near the end of 2012. Theoretically, the Web Bot Project made its predictions based not on objective events or scientific trends but on a global collective fatalism. It might be a temptation to blame the Bot Project prediction for potentially inciting hysteria through “digital hyperbole”. The mega computer of the Bot Project has no vested interest in creating panic.  It is our collective consciousness, our collective consumption of catastrophic drama and hysteria that is driving the prediction.

Are we doomed by our own worldwide collective fatalism? Are we self-condemned to create our own Armageddon?

During the seven years that followed 9/11, the collective consciousness of the American people gradually shifted away from support of the war and the oppression of Bush administration. This shift was tipped by several factors, especially those close to home including the administrations botched handling of the devastation of hurricane Katrina. The long-term contradictions of the declaration of “mission accomplished”, the revelation and controversy of potentially illegal interrogation techniques, the apparent loss of our national integrity on an international level, and the blatant violations of the constitution and the law painfully wore thin on the American people. Ironically, our over-saturation of the continuous bad news appears to have overloaded our consciousness.  Perhaps similar to the Schick Shadle method of aversion therapy, our collective frustration and exhaustion with our fear-driven survivalist aggression left a bad taste for more of the same. In its place was spawned a heightened desire for a positive, hopeful, peaceful change in direction. Barack Obama became a national phenomenon, a dominant collective agreement. This shift reached its summit in the 2008 elections, clearly evidenced by a record number of previously disenfranchised voters willing to stand in long lines for “torturously” long hours, not even certain they would make the polling deadline.

Fortunately, there is a lot more positive evidence that our collective consciousness has shifted. A majority of the American voters came to disapprove of the war in Iraq, and we voted in favor of change in the presidential election. Even with continuing bad news about the economy and intensified conflict in Afghanistan, there remains among the majority a sense of renewed optimism and hope for withdrawal from the war and our recovery from the economic recession.

I started writing this commentary a month before the elections of November 4. Looking back, it is remarkable how much my personal sense of wellbeing and hope has soared. The significance of the results of this election reflects a renewed consciousness that reaches well beyond its political implications.

As Barack Obama gave his victory address to a crowd of over 100,000 people in Grant Park in Chicago and his inaugural address to nearly three million in Washington, D.C., the television cameras captured the emotions of hundreds of faces. These were truly heart-warming, joyful images. Many cried for joy for the victory of hope over the oppression of the last eight years, but many tears were shed out of an overwhelming relief from the oppression of a collective agreement that once condoned legalized slavery and racial bigotry. This presidential election was the greatest conscious milestone for freedom and equality in this country since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862-63. But even more significantly, the election of Barack Obama may represent the a significant shift in our collective consciousness, from our fascination with fear, drama, and dominance to a more positive spiritual alignment with nature, hope, peace, joy, acceptance, tolerance, and love.

Rhonda Byrne’s book and video, The Secret, first appeared in bookstores and online near the end of 2006. There appeared to be a coincidentally renewed interest in Wayne Dyer’s books and videos on The Power of Intention.  Both received somewhat instantaneous attention. Oprah Winfrey interviewed several proponents and teachers of The Secret, making it the “talk of the town”. Almost immediately, everyone was talking about the power of attraction. Book and DVD sales skyrocketed. Law of Attractive support groups sprung up all over the country. It would be interesting to know just how many Americans created a “vision board” on their refrigerator doors or at the foot of their beds.

Less than two years after the release of The Secret in 2006, Oprah Winfrey co-produced an online study group focused on Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. In A New Earth, Tolle exposes the pathology of the “collective ego”, and he points the way to a worldwide evolution of a new collective awareness. If we closely examine Jung’s collective unconscious and compare his observations with Eckhart Tolle’s collective ego and the pain-body, there are some striking similarities, the most significant among them the degree to which our collective thoughts determine our perspective and consequential actions.

The Law of Attraction, most simply put, states that “thought become things”. But our collective thoughts generate not only things but also our peace and prosperity. Our collective consciousness can create entire realities. It creates poverty or prosperity, harmony or conflict, peace or war, heaven or hell. Awareness and focused positive thought are the keys to the most joyful and fulfilling of what we create.

If we are to create prosperity, harmony, peace, and heaven on earth, we first must be believe that we can. And we must shift our focus, our awareness on prosperity, harmony, peace, and the state of heaven on earth - not on fear, despair and catastrophe.  This is not Pollyanna. We do, indeed, create our own reality, and the collective conscience is the most powerful application of the law of attraction. Among my more spiritually focused friends, there’s considerable speculation about an evolving spiritual “enlightenment”, a “new hopeful consciousness”.  The fact that someone as popular and “household” as Oprah Winfrey would risk here enormous success on featuring such controversial philosophy as that of The Secret or Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now” is clear evidence of some kind of significant shift in populous trends. This is our only hope for our recovery from the worldwide distress and the conflicts that threaten not only our peace but our survival.  We must engage in a deliberate and conscious spiritual process; that is, it must come from the deepest part of our souls, from that part of us that is universal Spirit - our source of and connection with hope, peace, and love.

In a previous article, Some Thoughts on Thoughts: Don’t Worry. Be Happy, I discuss how Eckhart Tolle, in his book A New Earth, points the way to a renewal of spiritual consciousness. Tolle contends that our ego obstructs spiritual consciousness with thoughts, and it uses thoughts to feed itself, generating thoughts-for-thought-sake in an endless uncontrolled cycle that is emotionally and spiritually dysfunctional. An indiscriminate reader might conclude that Tolle considers all thoughts as unhealthy and counterproductive. Indeed, he makes a forceful and convincing argument, but not so much against all thinking but in support of the need for consistent, deliberately practiced downtime, what he calls being in the “Now”. www.eckharttolle.com/

The implication of our endless absorption in thought is that most of us, especially in our western capitalistic society, give much too much time to useless, dysfunctional thoughts. In fact, almost all of us suffer from varying degrees of obsessive thoughts. We may not be dysfunctional as in a classic clinical diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but Tolle believes that our pattern of unconscious, endless cycle of thoughts is spiritually dysfunctional.

Nonetheless, are all thoughts bad? Could we function without thinking at all? Of course not. Surely, some thoughts must be productive. After all, it is functional thinking to remember to pay our taxes, right? (Some of us in public office might do well to have this thought more regularly.) Is there a productive escape from useless thoughts? Can we practice more useful thoughts?

Everyday I am aware of some of my more useless thoughts, especially worrisome thoughts. I have not been diagnosed with a disorder. Three of my closest friends are clinical psychologists and consider me normally functional. And it may reassuring to remind myself that I am not alone in my “normal” thought patterns. But almost daily, I am aware of exaggerated, dramatic worry thoughts. The more conscious I become, the more aware I am of what Tolle considers a global disorder. But I am heartened that Tolle contends that the moment we are aware (or “in a state of awareness”), we are in the “Now” and we are connected with our “Source Being”, our spiritual being. Awareness is the source of healing. Awareness is the cure for obsessive thoughts. Awareness is our connection with our spiritual selves.

Awareness thoughts are some of our most useful thoughts we can have. They come from observation, introspection, and realization. According to Tolle, awareness thoughts are our most spiritual thoughts. In some ways, it could be argued that a state of awareness is technically not thought at all. Through being still and observing closely our inner visions, we might find an awareness of oneness and peace. The practice of meditation is a path to this kind of awareness. 

But out of awareness can come very useful, productive, even practical thoughts.  Out of awareness come thoughts that identify and solve problems, leading to appropriate actions. A very long time ago in our evolution we observed that water runs down hill, and we used that awareness to our advantage in our physical survival. Recently, scientists have observed that the polar ice caps are melting at an accelerated rate, and that the melting ice caps will lead to a significant rise in the level of our oceans. This awareness has led us to a renewed consciousness of the urgency to take steps to reverse this trend. These are the kinds of practical thoughts that come out of conscious awareness, and should result in more productive actions. Without these thoughts, we might never have discovered how to renew water resources or how to reduce hydrocarbons in our atmosphere.

It might be difficult to imagine how an awareness thought could not be of some benefit. It depends on how we react to our awareness. The recent “Miracle on the Hudson” is a superb example of extraordinary functional thinking and action out of awareness. Not only did the US Airways’ pilot perform a flawless emergency splash down, it appears that the attendants and passengers reacted equally as well. Had there been panic, some or many lives may have been lost.  Awareness of the need to remain calm and to follow the standard procedures for the safe evacuation of the airplane saved the lives of all the passengers and the crew.

Unfortunately, the loss of life in the Station nightclub in Rohde Island in 2003 was the result of dysfunctional reaction to the awareness of a fire and the need to evacuate the building.  There was panic. The crowd stampeded to the main entrance, the door they entered to the concert, where many persons were crushed, blocking what nearly everyone believed to be their only escape route. There were at least three other exits. Had the nightclub crowd functioned as well as the attendants and passengers of the US Airways flight, perhaps they too would have lived a miracle.

Awareness often helps to facilitate increased joy in our lives. We might note that we feel joyful when our grandchildren arrive for a visit, or that we feel a deep sense of joy when we contribute to efforts to reduce world hunger. This kind of awareness enhances the joy and stimulates the desire to repeat the awareness, to our benefit, to our grandchildren, and to humanity as a whole.

We might become aware that every time we lose our temper, we pay the consequence of stress, and so, we determine to take a more positive perspective on the things that we previously allowed to anger us. We might also notice that our more positive attitude produces more positive reactions in other persons, creating a self-perpetuating increase in tolerance and respect around us.

Much of what I offer as a life coach begins with building awareness.  Indeed, the greater the awareness, the better are the chances that my clients will achieve their goals.  The process of awareness is like shining a light where there has always been darkness. The revelations can be remarkable and miraculous in the process of healing and renewal.

Life Coach Chuck

Eckhart Tolle, in his book A New Earth, points the way to a renewal of spiritual consciousness. At the core of this renewal is a refocusing away from our self-absorbed ego toward our true selves in the Now, our Source Being. Tolle contends that our ego uses thoughts to feed itself, and it generates thoughts-for-thought-sake creating an endless feedback that, for the most part, we have little or no control, distracting us from our truest spiritual center. Continuing this unconscious cycle for decades can result in internalized dysfunctional anxiety that Tolle calls the “pain body”. www.eckharttolle.com

As I read A New Earth, I examined my own internal processes, and I concluded that clearly Tolle’s theory applied to me. I am, like most people, a compulsive thinker, too often an anxious thinker. I’ve seen first hand the dysfunction of obsessive worry in various people in my life. There is a lot of evidence in support of the potential of destructive thoughts. But if any reader were to apply Tolle’s theory in a purist manner, that is, with an absolute prohibition against all thought, is that reasonable?  Is it even what Tolle intended? Is all thinking bad or harmful or dysfunctional? Obviously not. Certainly, not thinking at all is not a plausible option either. That would be the ultimate in dysfunction. Therefore, some thinking must be a good thing. What then is good thinking, and what is bad thinking?

As I tried to sort this out, I was encouraged to find examples of productive, useful thinking in my own life. Here’s one. I regularly pilot an airplane. As an aviator, I must give quite a lot of consideration to safety. That means that I learned and adhere to a rigorous set of procedures and practices that assure a reasonable degree of safety while in flight. Prior to any flight it’s a good idea to calmly and closely examine the airplane’s tail to be as certain as I can that it is well attached and in working order. Consequently, before every flight I have a conscious thought to examine the tail of the airplane. In fact, I use a rather lengthy checklist to assure that I examine and check all essential working components that determine the airworthiness of the airplane. This practice allows me to focus on the “Now” of flying while I am flying.

Now, that’s very productive, useful thinking, don’t you agree?

But let us say that I complete my pre-flight checklist, start the airplane’s engine, taxi to the runway, get my clearance, and I depart the airport. As I’m cruising along at 9,000 feet above terra firma, I begin to wonder just what it would be like if the tail suddenly fell off. I try to imagine the resulting sounds and the shutter of the airplane. I try to visualize how the airplane might tumble end over end, and how I might thrash around in the cockpit. I try to imagine how I might panic, hyperventilate, and scream out. I try to feel the emotions of utter fear and desperation. And I try to imagine my last thoughts just before impacting the ground. I wonder exactly what injuries I would sustain and the cause of my death. I might even try to visualize my body in the wreckage.

Now, unless I’m writing a horror story, this is definitely useless, non-productive thinking.

Although pilots regularly anticipate and practice for malfunctions and emergency situations, it serves absolutely no useful purpose to try to imagine, visualize, and feel the terrifying details of a hopeless catastrophic tragedy. It’s especially useless while piloting the airplane. Engaging in this kind of thinking would be not only distracting to a pilot while in flight, it would clearly serve no useful purpose in assuring a safe flight. It might even create a hazard.

Sensible, knowledgeable precaution is very useful thinking. But worry, especially in wraparound screen, Technicolor, and stereo sound is a clear example of useless thought. It is the ego creating its best diversion from being in the Now, in the present.

A good, useful thought might be to check your bank account balance from time to time, if only to make certain a bill was paid, or to assure you don’t overdraw your account. But a dysfunctional thought might be to visualize the complete tragic scenario following your discovery that someone stole your identity, bought himself or herself an island in Tahiti, emptied your account, and continued writing bad checks until you were put in jail.

A functional thought might be to check your tire pressure before you leave on a long drive on an extra hot day. A useless thought might be to imagine the gory details of a tire blowout resulting in a tragic accident with you being thrown out of the car, run over by an eighteen-wheeler, and your mangled body found in the ditch by your cousin, the paramedic.

A good thought might be to offer to help your neighbor trim the hedge on your shared property line. A bad thought might be to project onto your neighbor that he’s secretly an agent of the KGB, he’s trimming the hedge so the Russian spy satellite can keep a better eye on your private activities, and his daughter is trying to seduce your son into defecting.

It seems rather clear that there are productive, useful thoughts and there are dysfunctional, useless thoughts. Senseless, vividly embellished worry heads the list of some of the most useless thinking. It’s good for neither your mind nor your body. Tolle advises that it is one of the tools of the ego to keep us focused on itself distracting us from our true selves and our spiritual wellbeing.

I am reminded of Ceasar Millan’s (The Dog Whisperer. www.cesarmillaninc.com ) most repeated rule for dog owners: “Stay calm and assertive.” Dogs are very astute in picking up on our projected anxieties and uncertainties. They know when we are distracted and focused on our worries, and they react in kind. Ceasar’s simple mantra would serve all of us well, not only in training our dogs, but in our everyday consciousness.

Don’t worry. Be happy.

Chuck Jennings

Life Coach Chuck

Prologue

I truly wish not to offend anyone of the variations of the Christian persuasion, but I consider myself a survivor of many years of indoctrination in evangelical fundamentalist Christianity. For me, it was an extended spiritually troubling and misguiding experience. I have since found spiritual healing and peace. From that spirit, this text is a mollified distillation of a much lengthier, rather strident personal story.

I suspect that there are many stories of spiritual recovery much like my own, troubled by years of doubt, guilt, and spiritual disappointments. Hopefully, by sharing my recovery process, I might shine a little light on a path to your recovery. After reading the following, if you feel you might find some personal catharsis from a more detailed account of my experiences in the evangelical Christian sub-culture, I would be pleased to share with you my full twenty-four-page saga.

You can contact me at lifecoachchuck@gmail.com.

My Spiritual Recovery

The greater part of my story revolves around my struggle with and eventual recovery from my personal experiences with evangelical fundamentalist Christians. As you read on, please understand that I am concerned that you might conclude that I am anti-Christianity. I am not. But I admit that I have held a deep resentment for the Christian sub-culture I grew up in. It was much like those persons who might be inclined, in some of the most peculiar situations, to opportunistically interject into a conversation, “I’m a ‘Christian’.” Whenever I hear one of these curious declarations, I always have the same questions. What is your point? What is your motivation behind such a declaration? Is it intended to indicate some sort of superiority, some special qualification? Is it a password for some kind of exclusive God-granted privilege? I feel the urge to quizzically reply, “Ah! Yes, and I’m a member of Mensa”.

I apologize if I may seem a little annoyed with professing “Christians”. I admit that as a result of my painful past experiences I come from a biased perspective. For twenty-five years, I too was a dutifully professing Christian. I now come from a broader spiritual perspective, and I am convinced that I am not alone in my hypersensitivity. There are many other people who share the weight of similar experiences and have yet to resolve their feelings about those experiences. I hope that by sharing my transition from my troubling past to my present spirituality, I might help others discover a sanctuary of common identity and find some support to move on to a place of healing.

Earliest memories of my religious indoctrination begin at a vulnerable young age. My lingering childhood impressions extended well into my adulthood. Unfortunately, those impressions are unpleasant. It was not a spiritually nurturing influence. Instead, it was for many years a covert manipulative through relentless fear and guilt that conditioned an unpleasant reflex accompanied with considerable resentment. The symptoms are akin to a religiously-styled form post-traumatic stress disorder. Even today, when I am caught off my guard, blithely thinking, “I’m over it”, confrontations with presumptuous professing “Christians” can trigger surges of adrenalin accelerating my heart rate and blood pressure into a nasty headache. I feel the threat of impending manipulation and coercion. I vacillate between urges of fight and flight.

Unfortunately, my childhood experiences that conditioned my weariness of all things “Christian” also created lingering unjustifiable guilt. I struggled with that guilt for many years. Gratefully, I have found spiritual healing, and each day I feel more at peace, and thus, the courage to publish this story. It is my hope that by sharing my spiritual recovery you might discover there are empathetic hearts that understand and share your desire for recovery from similar experiences. Perhaps I might provide some solace for those persons still struggling toward purging their religious infection and healing their spiritual lesions.

From my early childhood, I had had so many disappoints with “Christians” and evangelical fundamentalist churches, at thirty-five years I stopped attending church all together. I stopped professing Christianity. For the first time in my life I lived without my  “Christian” façade. It was simultaneously unsettling and liberating. For the next ten years, I participated in nothing religious or spiritual. I needed a rest, a reprieve. I wanted no religious conditions, no ideological constraints, no pretentious facade. I had to heal my guilt, find my true self, and learn to love myself as I was.

I had had a long history and deep underpinning in studies of Jesus and the message of Christianity. I was well grounded in the Bible, Christian doctrine and beliefs. For nearly twenty-five years, I had studied all about Jesus’ life and teachings. I had attended Sunday school and Sunday services nearly every week. I had read several Bibles. I had read hundreds of assigned lessons. And I had memorized numerous Bible verses. While I was in college, I was required to attend chapel services five days a week. I was required to take six semesters of Christian studies including Old Testament, New Testament, Christian Doctrine, Apologetics, and Prophecies. I taught college level Sunday school in a Baptist Church.

But my religious orientation had been based on appeasing a judgmental and wrathful God who condemned all the “unsaved” to eternal damnation. And I grew increasingly disappointed in the lack of integrity of my fellow “believers”. I gradually became gun shy of those people who opportunistically declare “I’m a Christian”, as if differentiated from anyone who might say it or spell it or profess it in any less authentic way. I grew especially suspicious of “Christians” that took a hard line on their ideologies and were convinced that their belief system was the only spiritual path to God. I grew weary of those who profess to have the only true interpretation of the Bible or profess to read it without interpretation. I had serious doubts about the absolutism and literalism in the teachings I had been exposed to. I needed to resolve these feelings in order to find my own spiritual identity and peace.

My Recovery

Around 1990, I began to explore other spiritual paths. I looked in many different directions. Out of curiosity, I attended a Unitarian church, a Unity church, a Lutheran church, an Episcopal Church, and a Catholic church. I studied Native American spiritual concepts. More recently, I studied Buddhism, and other eastern philosophies, including mysticism. I’ve studied numerous “new age” spiritualists and philosophers. Recently, I initiated the creation of a small local men’s spiritual sharing group that includes several different spiritual perspectives with no direct allegiance to any organized religions or formalized ideologies. Our focus is on exploring and finding our own spiritual path.

I have begun to find a deep spiritual peace and resolution through what I believe to be a new emerging spiritual consciousness from within.

Some might dismissingly stereotype this as just another of one of those “new age” religions. No matter what you call it, by its very nature, it is not “religious”. It is too individually mystical to be confined to a set of limiting doctrinal ideologies or organized conventions. It is a new “awareness spiritual”- a new paradigm of our universal connectedness, love, and optimism. It is a restructuring of how we understand our spiritual selves, our relationship to our ego, and our relationship to the Source of everything that exists. Some of the important illuminators of this new spiritual awareness are authors and teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Esther and Jerry Hicks, Brian Weiss, and Neale Donald Walsch. I encourage you to read their words to most accurately express this renewal of human spirituality. Tolle’s books, The Power of Now and A New Earth are two of the most important chronicles of spiritual insight into this new awareness.

I continue to find renewed resolution and peace with the doubts, conflicts, and guilt I felt for many years.

I believe that we are all of a one universal Spirit and that Spirit lives in all of us, no matter what we think of or believe about Jesus. Some of us have found more peace in our spirit than others have found. Some are very separated from the Spirit that already dwells within. Some have not yet found their optimal peace. We all have our own journey to the source of the Spirit within us. But I see daily evidence that collectively we are on the cusp of a great awakening.

Our Spirit is eternal. Our physical form and our spiritual growth are continually evolving throughout this life, many lives that preceded, and many yet to come. There is no hell in the afterlife. We make our own hell and our own heaven right here, right now. Our hell is our separation from the source of the Great Universal Spirit (GUS!) that dwells within us.

Many people are looking for a meaningful, lasting, and deep felt spiritual recovery from a traumatic loss or event that challenged their spiritual wellness. Others may be seeking recovery from the damage of a harmful religious past. Some of us are simply awakening to a new spiritual consciousness. Many of the already spiritually enlightened say we are on the wave of a new collective awakening, a shift in universal spiritual consciousness. I have found within the Source of my own healing and my personal path to spiritual recovery.

There are many, many more like me who have shared a similarly unfulfilling, spiritually distressing religious past, who are seeking spiritual awareness, spiritual recovery, spiritual peace.  Chances are if you are reading these words, you too are on your own quest for spiritual peace, perhaps for spiritual recovery from a harmful religious past.  If so, you have a willing partner in your quest. I offer no spiritual authority. I do not consider myself a spiritual guide. Each day I continue to grow and find greater peace and fulfillment. I offer to share with you my discovery and recovery, and perhaps help you find your own .

Footnote

A wonderful and invaluable friend who generously and patiently noted that in my reference to the “Great Universal Spirit” I may have coined a new acronym for God, “GUS”. I was both amused and intrigued with the apparent coincidence. And so, if you need a more “user friendly” link to your own Spiritual Source, just look within, and enjoy your Tuesdays with “Gus” (or any other day of your choice).  

Chuck Jennings

Life Coach Chuck

You don’t have to watch much television to get a lot of advice for a secure retirement. Celebrities, such as Dennis Hopper and Robert Wagner, have become our retirement financial advisors. Indeed, there’s a plethora of advice for retirees, but it’s almost exclusively about financial planning. It is as if financial issues were the only matter to consider in retirement.

I have a close friend, a psychologist, with a successful practice in a fairly affluent community in Northern California.  My friend has counseled numerous retired CEOs in the top five percent of our economic stratum. Although the recent stock market news is pretty alarming, these retired CEOs are so diversified in their wealth they will never have to worry if the Social Security office has their correct address. So why do these financially secure retirees need a psychologist? They should have everything they need for those “Golden Years”, right?

Although financial security is important, it doesn’t secure a sense of wellbeing or self-worth or fulfillment. Retirement is a “holistic” state of being and requires a holistic strategy.  That is, planning for the best of your retirement years must consider the total health and wealth of you, a whole person with complex human needs. 

There are five essential issues involved in a holistic strategy for fulfillment, self-worth, and fulfillment in retirement. 

            •Financial/Estate

            •Physical/Health

            •Environmental/Dwelling

            •Social/Relational

            •Emotional/Spiritual

Notice that the financial/estate issue appears first on my list. Certainly, there’s a very good argument that without financial security, or perhaps in absolute destitution, the remaining four issues may approach meaninglessness in the struggle to survive. That’s a realistic concession to its priority in the overall strategy, because all the financial security, even extraordinary wealth, is no guarantee that the remaining four issues will be equally fortified. My “mission” as a life coach is holistic. Consequently, my goal is to look at the larger picture, including the physical and health issues, the environmental and dwelling issues, the social and relational issues, and the emotional and spiritual issues.

There certainly are better expert resources than I to give specific financial advice. I’m not a financial advisor. Nonetheless, in a later chapter I will offer an outline and some thoughts on financial considerations, a kind of financial checklist, to consider with your financial advisor. In this chapter, I’d like to begin to focus on physical and health issues in retirement, and then follow with subsequent discussions of the remaining issues towards a complete strategy for fulfillment, joy, and prosperity in retirement.

Since most retirees are approaching or have qualified membership in the senior citizens club with full benefits including discounts at the movies and Hometown Buffet (Solicitations for membership to AARP begin at age 50!) the physical and health issues must be addressed within the context of the aging process. I am over 60, but I am not a gerontologist. And if you are in the beginning stages of planning your retirement, gerontology is likely not eagerly considered at this time in your life. But it is important to begin to think about, anticipate, and address the aging issue with regard to your medical care. For example, the more we age, the more important is our relationship with our primary care physician and the various supporting specialists.  I needed neither an ophthalmologist nor an optometrist until I turned 40. That’s when it seemed my arms weren’t long enough to hold a map far enough away to read the fine print. And as my eyes have continued to age, I now have a favorite optometrist who examines my eyes once a year. In fact, I now have five doctors I see at least once a year: My primary care physician who specializes in cardio vascular health, an anti-aging specialist who focuses on my hormonal balance and body mass index, a dermatologist who regularly removes pre-cancers, an optometrist who keeps my prescription up to date, and a dentist who has, on occasion referred me to an oral surgeon.

Now, I am in good health for my age. My real age, according to Real Age. Com (www.realage.com) is somewhere around 47 years. (I didn’t reveal that I fly airplanes and ride a motorcycle.) But in the last fifteen years, I have had seven different primary care physicians, four of whom after implementation of HMOs quit their practices for more stable income on the California state payroll. The point is this, you may have a physician you admire and trust, but by the time you turn retirement age, your current physician may no longer be in practice, especially if that physician is your age or older. 

As you age, most likely you will progressively need more of the services of a good primary care physician. But chances are, in retirement you will likely not have the same physician you have now, and you will likely have a growing list of specialists. If you are approaching retirement and you have a trustworthy and reliable primary care physician, you need to ask that physician how much longer he or she intends to remain in practice, and anticipate when you may be faced with looking for another. 

Talk to your age-contemporary friends. Ask them about their primary care physicians. Are they happy with them? Are they getting good care? How old is their physician? How much longer will their physician remain in practice? Keep an eye on your local medical community and develop a list of the best doctors in your area likely to be in practice when you may need them in the future. 

Of course, there is a lot of useful information on the web. There are sites that specifically address the issue of choosing a doctor for senior care. One of the most complete sites with links to many specific health issues is Medline Plus at www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/choosingadoctororhealthcareservice.html. A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, this site is one of the most complete sources for help in evaluating and finding the best physician for you and your specific needs.

I highly recommend that you select a doctor that practices a holistic approach to care with an emphasis on preventative medicine and healthy lifestyle. The more you address your aging process ahead of the game, the less you will need that long list of specialists down the road of retirement. Without physical prosperity, plagued by unattended health issues, your sense of wellbeing and your financial security may be seriously compromised in retirement. The idea is to live long and well. Poor physical health can not only threaten your longevity and wellbeing, but also your financial security. Plan ahead and pro-actively take care of your health through healthy preventive life-style and health care measures.  

In referring to those persons I partner with in my life coaching practice, I have never been comfortable with the term client. Although Webster’s definition is perfectly appropriate, somehow the vernacular connotation of “client” seems too impersonal - too commercial – too contractual. Certainly, I serve as an advisor, and my “clients” pay a fee for my time and experience, but I’d rather like to believe that my relationship with them is more of an empathetic partnership than one of simply “providing goods and services” for a fee. I’ve searched for a more compassionate synonym, but the alternatives have even less appropriate connotations. Among the alternatives are customer, consumer, patron, user, buyer, purchaser, and punter (Yes, punter! Look it up!)

The term partnership is a very good description of my relationship with those persons I coach. But there are problematic implications with referring to my many clients as my “partners”.  This could be misunderstood as referring to a multi-co-owned business relationship or perhaps as a multiple indiscriminate “love-in”. The former is too corporate, and the latter is simply too risqué (and risky, too!) Even though “partnership” is a good description of the relationship, “partner” just doesn’t fit as the description of those that I partner with as a coach. Some synonymous alternatives to partner are cohort and associate.  But cohort refers to persons of some similar interest and commonalty in a large group. (Most of my life coaching work is with one person at a time.) And the term associate has been badly demeaned by the likes of Walmart, Kmart, and Jiffy Lube. I have no “associates” in my practice.

Just for the record, I never (nor should any life coach) consider my clients as my patients. That would be presumptuous and misleading. Life coaching is neither therapy nor medical treatment. Life coaches are neither licensed therapists nor physicians. We are, in a real sense, mentors in all of the various nuisances of living life.

Of course, that begs an obvious question. Are we coaches in the game of life? Would it be reasonable to call our clients our players? Well, perhaps that makes sense, but I think it’s a corny and overly obvious analogy. To a great extent, the game of life demeans the complexity and seriousness of many of the issues our clients face.

I build partnerships in my life coaching practice, but none of the terms client, customer, consumer, patron, user, buyer, purchaser, partner, cohort, associate, patient, player or punter (Really! Look it up!) are suitable descriptions of my “partnering clients”. Perhaps partnering client IS the most apropos description after all. It’s not singularly eloquent, but it works. My clients and I partner in a process of practical problem solving. We work together in a compassionate and empathetic relationship toward achieving personal goals.

The inspirational slogan, “Follow your dream” has been around for a long time, adopted by many well-meaning organizations such as a charitable foundation in support of children with Down’s syndrome. In everything from television commercials to religious sermons, we are earnestly urged to pursue our dreams. More recently, we have been encouraged to following our passion, and probably for good reasons. In my blog posted April 10, 2008 entitled Your Passion – Your Career, I encourage following your passion into your career. If you Google the term “passion”, you’ll find 211,000,000 keyword links to everything from pornography to Steve Jobs and Jesus Christ. If you Google “follow your passion”, you’ll find sites that extol the many benefits as well as sites that question the wisdom of it. The problem is, as a British friend of mine so aptly noted, we might be a little confused as to whether we’re following our passion or our dream or our fantasy. 

After my British friend, David, had lived in the United States for a few years, I asked him what he perceived as the single greatest difference between “Brits” and “Yanks”. He thought for a moment and said in his heavy British accent, “You Americans are just a tad sloppy with your use of words.” I asked him to explain. He said, “Well, for example you often interchange words such as fantasy, dream, and passion as if they had the same meaning.  The words may be related, but they are not synonyms.”  He was right, and since hearing his observation, I’ve given this matter quite a bit of my own personal vigilance (For you linguistically sloppy Yanks, vigilance is the condition of being watchful.). Now, I’m neither a linguist nor an English professor, but a close observation of American mass media reveals our casual corruption of English word usage. At least some of our “sloppiness” might well be attributed to our “pop culture” vernaculars common in mass media advertising gimmicks. And most of us are relentlessly exposed and conditioned to this corruption, so much so that we take it for granted as “proper”. 

In our mass-media-market-driven-culture, single words are redefined and given superlative meaning to imply superior product value. For several years, Nissan built an entire campaign around the word awesome. Obsession and Euphoria became synonymous with Calvin Klein. Think became a synonym for IBM. For two years we’ve seen a series of Apple ads that cleverly exploit the long-standing feud between the geek-oriented PC “thinkers” and the cool “creative types” that have a passion for Macs. (Or could it be a fantasy for Macs? Or maybe we dream about our Macs? Whatever!) Since IBM originally coined the acronym PC for personal computer, all other computers that use the IBM operating system are also referred to as PCs. Might we then reason then that all PCs Think?  And if so, what do Macs do?  Hmm. Maybe they feel?

The point is that as we are bombarded with commercial reasoning and the media’s use of words and slogans urging us to pursue a passion, follow a dream, or make a fantasy come true, it’s no surprise that we might just be a little confused and a little sloppy with our native language. No wonder that we might interchange passion, dream, and fantasy.

The problem is this: Real passion is quite different from a dream or a fantasy. The manner in which we pursue a true passion is based on first-hand experience and knowledge, not a dream or a fantasy. 

A Dream Scenario:  I asked a twenty-five-year-old what was his passion in life.  He said that since a very young boy, he had dreamed of being a professional water skier.  I assumed that his dream was also a perceived passion that came from some considerable first-hand experience that began from a very young age.  Certainly, this young man had spent many joyous hours making high-speed turns around slalom marker-buoys behind a Ski Nautique or a Tige’ or a Master Craft.

I asked, “Who’s your favorite professional water skier?”

He replied, “I don’t know any.”

“Do you prefer a certain brand of water ski or tow boat?”

“I don’t know what they are.”

I then asked, “Surely, you must have started water skiing at a very young age?” 

He replied, “Well, no.”

To say the least, I was surprised at how little real experience he had with his “passion”.

I asked, “Well, how long have been water skiing?”

He said, “Oh! I’ve never been on a water ski.”

I paused to ponder his apparent naiveté.

As kindly as I could, I asked, “Well, how do you know that you have this passion to be a professional water skier?”

He answered, “Oh! Well, it just looks like it might be really cool and a lot of fun.”

My client had no “passion” for water skiing.  He had a dream. A fantasy.  Had he pursued his dream with the motivation, persistence, and dedication consistent with the passion of a real would-be-professional, he might rather accurately have called his dream a passion.  But his dream was not based on real first-hand experience. He actually had no concept or feel for what real water skiing required. 

A true passion is discovered, honed, and proven in real experience.

Had my want-to-be-water skier a true passion for water skiing, by the age of twenty-four years he would have had a long history with the sport.  He would have understood every joy and every sacrifice associated with the sport. His passion would have been founded in an in-depth knowledge with a realistic perspective of its benefits and hazards.

Dream Scenario #2: Many years ago, one of my students declared her passion for package design, primarily because it was the one design class in which she most excelled. Her “dream career” was to work as a designer for the leading package designer in San Francisco. 

After graduating, she moved to San Francisco and worked for several different small design firms as a junior-level corporate identity and editorial designer. After a few years of dedicated hard work, she had built a professional portfolio worthy of an appointment with her “dream” package design firm.  Much to her delight, she was hired. But her dream soon felt more like a nightmare.

The “dream team” stuck her in a back corner as a junior-level designer. None of her assigned work capitalized on her best creative talents. For most of a year, she was limited to refining and “cleaning-up” someone else’s concept, never her own. By contract, she was not allowed to do any freelance work to keep her creative problem solving skills honed and energized. She was not allowed the slightest contact with any of the clients of the projects she worked on. All of the projects were kept highly guarded secrets, and she was not allowed to put any of her work in her own portfolio. She was like a musician in a large orchestra performing someone else’s music on someone else’s instrument in a concert hall with no audience. She received no more recognition than a paycheck.

After a year, she left her “dream job” with nothing in her portfolio to show for it. Her dream had been bathed in the harsh light of real experience. And reality turned out to be nothing like her dream. Her perceived passion for package design vanished. She moved on to pursue other interests, and discovered a real passion in the wine industry.

A true passion is evidenced by extraordinary self-motivation - perhaps an obsessive compulsion - that never requires a forced self-discipline.

Had my want-to-be-water skier a true passion for water skiing, no one would have had to stand behind him encouraging him to “get our there on the water” everyday. If the best water were at the crack of down, every morning he would have been at the pier just before sunrise.  He would have been on the water even when it was too cold or too windy or too rough for most others. He would have been on the water even when he was tired, stiff, and sore.  A hard fall or a disappointing run through the slalom course would never have had him sitting on the dock. A lack of finances would never have kept him out of the water. He would have found a way to finance his passion at the denial of a nicer place to live, a new car, a cool wardrobe, or the most beautiful girlfriend. What others might have considered sacrifices, he would have considered insignificant to his passion.

Had my design student had a true passion, her experience with her “dream job” in San Francisco would not have discouraged her pursuit of a career in package design.

A true passion is evidenced by eager and total immersion.

Had my want-to-be-water skier a true passion for water skiing, he would have been able to give ten names of the top professional water skiers, male and female. He would have not only had a preferred brand of water ski, he most likely would have known quite a lot about how water skis are designed and made with in-depth knowledge of all the various nuances that made them preferable to him. He likely would have known a great deal about specialized ski boats and all their different features and qualities. He probably would have known a great deal about skiing technique and training. He probably would have had a rigorous training schedule that included weight training and cardio fitness. He probably would have had a collection of ski equipment requiring a dedicated garage that kept his car sitting at the curb in the street. He probably would have had a library of books, periodicals, and media on the subject. He probably would have had some experience in teaching others how to ski. He might have worked in some area of the sport, perhaps a ski rental shop or ski boat sales.  And in order to ski all year round he might have had to relocate his life to someplace like southern Florida.

A true passion seldom feels like work, but when it does, you really don’t mind.

How many times have you heard a professional golfer or actor or racecar driver or fireman say, “I never have to work a day in my life. I can’t believe I get paid for doing this.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone could say that about his or her life’s work? If your work is also your passion, your work will seldom feel like “work”.  That’s how I felt about teaching, and that’s how I feel about coaching.  Every time my telephone rings, I hope it’s a client. 

If your dream turns out to feel mostly like work, your dream is not and never was a true passion. The only time a passion feels like work is when some peripheral part of the work interferes with the passion.  For example, when I was teaching, I greatly disliked grading. It was a necessary requirement of my responsibilities, but had I had a choice, I would have eliminated grading and concentrated all of my time on the teaching. 

Almost every passion has at least one part, one task, one dimension that requires a bit of patience and discipline.  That’s when you discover if you have a real passion, for if you do, you’ll suffer almost anything to continue the passion, even the part that might feel like a pain in the neck.

Until you have real experience, until you have totally immersed yourself, until you have proven to yourself that you are committed beyond any level of discouragement, your perceived passion is no more than a dream.

Dreams and fantasies are fleeting. Passions endure.

Finding Your New Path to Personal Prosperity in Retirement

No one could watch network television for very long without seeing multiple advertisements selling financial planning and investment strategies for retirement. Dennis Hopper leans into your screen and enthusiastically cajoles, “You can’t start this journey without knowin’ where you’re goin’. My friend, ya need a plan.” The ads are aimed, of course, at persuading us to buy stocks or equity funds or life insurance. This is all well and good. Indeed, we do need a financial plan that will assure that we have enough income to continue to live the good life in retirement. But after we’ve come home from our fabulous cruise in the Mediterranean, we’ve paid all the bills, and we’ve had a good day on the Dow Jones, will it be enough to sit around and count our money? We need more than financial prosperity. What is our path to our personal prosperity?

For those of us who have tended well to our financial prosperity, retirement must surely seem the ultimate lifestyle: a steady, guaranteed income with plenty of reserves, and plenty of time to relax with no obligations to anyone but our weekly bridge partners and our grandchildren. But this vision can conceal a trap – the trap of overwhelming uselessness.

Many years ago, I knew a successful building contractor. He built my first and second homes. Vern had a hectic lifestyle, but financially, he had put together a “bundle” that allowed him to retire “early” and to pursue his dream.  He had family connections that allowed him to own property in Mexico. His dream was to retire there and go fishing. He bought a beautiful view lot near a little town on the coast of the Baja Peninsula, built a spacious and comfortable home, and retired there with his wife.  Three years later, I was shocked to see him at our local County Fair. Vern had moved back to California and resurrected his construction company. I asked him what had happened. I’ll never forget his answer.

“You can go fishing and to the post office only so many times before you start to feel pretty useless. I felt so useless, I started to go crazy.”

This is not an uncommon story. Vern came out of his “dream retirement” to restore his sense of self-worth and usefulness. Anyone looking forward to immanent retirement is well advised to consider a plan to revise his or her model of self-worth. Some take on a new career. Some get involved in community service and volunteer work. Some commit more time to family. And some devote their life to nurturing their spiritual growth. One’s self-worth is a personal matter, unique to each individual. When a major part of that source of self-worth shifts away from your career, be careful to have a plan to reconstitute the “New and Improved You.”

In 2000, when I first considered taking an early retirement from my professorship at the university, my life-long friend urged me not to retire from but to retire to. As a practicing clinical psychologist, he noted that over the years he had counseled (and consoled) retired successful CEOs who had found themselves in post-retirement depression. These retirees were financially elite. They had abundant financial security. They surely needed no advice from Dennis Hopper. But they had failed to put together a plan that replaced the challenges associated with the fulfilling leadership responsibilities of their careers.  After long successful careers that profited them with financial prosperity, golf and polishing the Mercedes fell far short of their expectations for those wonderful retirement years. The sudden transition from a “Somebody” to a “nobody” was traumatic to their sense of self-worth and their morale.

Heeding my friend’s advice, I thought long and hard about my own transition. Certainly, I was not in the same income league with a large corporate CEO, but for many years I had been in a position of leadership over the operations of an academic department. I had felt a great sense of fulfillment both as a professor in the classroom and as the Chair of a nationally recognized academic program. I realized that as I transitioned into retirement from a long career, I needed to be mindful to guard against the potential for my own post-retirement depression.  I would need to re-constitute my “Somebody”.

I considered several options. In the end, I decided to take advantage of California’s Faculty Early Retirement Program. This gave me the opportunity to transition gradually while teaching part time for five years before I finally emptied my office and turned in my keys. During this five-year period as a part time faculty, I not only adjusted to my reduced leadership responsibilities, I took advantage of my reduced time commitment to transition into my new career as a full-time life coach. It was the right decision for several reasons, but most relevant in this context, it gave me something fulfilling and productive to look forward to in “retirement”. Expectantly, I transitioned from college-level teaching to my second career. I love my new “responsibilities” as a life coach, and I have yet to feel any loss or depression from my transition from the classroom and the rigors of academia.

As a life coach, one of my areas of emphasis is helping others transition into retirement. Although I encourage clients to maximize their financial options, I am not a financial advisor. I have no stock options to sell, no bonds to peddle, no investments to add to anyone’s portfolio. My approach is more holistic. I consider my retiree-client as a whole person, and together we focus on how to rediscover fulfillment and self-worth in the transition from a job or career.  Together we rewire the “Somebody” into the  “New and Improved You”.

We begin by re-assessing personal passions and priorities. We look closely at what really matters - what’s most important. What gives the client the greatest sense of fulfillment? We then look at options to focus on those priorities. Let’s say our priority is to generate a feeling of fulfillment through service to others. What are some of the ways we could be of service to other people? Options might include consulting, volunteer work, or mentoring. In what context might my client feel most fulfilled? Perhaps we determine that the client would enjoy assisting others in a learning environment. Maybe he or she has always had a passion for working with kids. What options might be considered in that context?

Next, we determine a realistic goal. Sometimes, there may be more than one realistic goal. Let’s say that the goal is to volunteer as a teacher’s aide in an eighth grade science class. Now we need to know just what that means. What are the requirements? What would be the workload? How does the school district regulate teacher’s aides? Would there be any physical demands beyond the client’s capacity?  Knowing the specifics related to becoming a teacher’s aide, we need to determine a set of objectives, the specific steps needed to achieve our goal. And then we need to put those objectives into an action plan with a timetable. Finally, the client needs to follow-through with the plan.

Yes, Dennis, to find our path to prosperity in retirement, we need a plan. We need a financial plan, AND we need a “fulfillment plan”.  And we need to be as deliberate and as determined with our “fulfillment plan” as we are with our financial plan.

It is said that in Nature the key to survival is adaptability to changes. The changes that come with retirement may seem benign, but all too often require more adaptation than we think. The key to finding our personal prosperity in retirement is to optimistically and positively anticipate and plan for the inevitable changes. With some careful and thoughtful planning, retirement really can be the best years of our lives.

Thank you, Tom, (http://www.coachingloft.com/Coach.htm) for your comments on Physiological Benefits of Meditation. Thank you also for sharing a bit of your personal experience with applications of meditation in physical therapy. It is encouraging to hear that modern conventional medicine is effectively applying what some would call “alternative medicine” in healing severe injury and coping with chronic pain.

As I noted, I was first introduced to meditation in the late 1970’s while in therapy under Dr. Michael Emmons. At that time, I was having acute symptoms of hypoglycemia, including tremors, lack of concentration, irritability, and severe fatigue. For three years I tried anything that sounded as if it had a trace of hope for relief.  I tried a high-protein, low carbohydrate diet. I went on a regular exercise program. I saw several different specialists and had my blood glucose tested several times. I lost thirty-five pounds. But my symptoms persisted, and I was having difficulty focusing in my university classroom. I felt desperately hopeless.

Although my memory of my meditation sessions with Dr. Emmons has likely diminished over thirty years, I remember that it was not explicit that the intended purpose of the meditation therapy was to reduce stress or to relieve my symptoms. Dr. Emmons asked me to simply describe any images I was seeing from my subconscious during the meditation sessions. The outcome, after many sessions, was the revelation that I was in denial about the stress I was under at the time. This precipitated a radical change in my life; so radical that some would think I would have brought on even more stress and more symptoms. But surprisingly, as soon as I removed the original source of the stress, all of my symptoms immediately disappeared. 

At that time, I was not aware of any relief from my physical symptoms as a direct benefit of the meditation. I saw the meditation as a process of discovery that revealed the source of my symptoms. It was like watching a strangely edited movie with disconnected images that made no logical sense. But as the movie progressed over weeks, I began to notice recurring themes. One day, Dr. Emmons asked if I noticed that the images kept coming back to one issue. That was the revelation that opened the door to solving my physical symptoms.

Like many people, once my symptoms were relieved, I returned to “business as usual”, and I discontinued with the meditation. From time to time over the next fifteen years, I noted that the symptoms would briefly return, perhaps for a few days or a week. With apprehension I would anxiously wonder if I was falling back into hypoglycemia. I would begin to feel that same hopelessness. But then I would reflect on my previous experience, and I would look for a source of stress in my life. In retrospect, it is curious that I did not turn to meditation in this state of reflection. But in each case, I noticed that I was feeling trapped in a stressful situation. When I addressed the stress, the symptoms again immediately disappeared. I learned to recognize the warning signs my body was sending to my awareness about the negative effects of stress, and I addressed the source of the problem before the hopelessness set in.

Although meditation had been a window that revealed how stress was (and is) a source of ill health, it wasn’t until fifteen years ago that I began to understand the direct health benefits of meditation practiced on a daily basis. It wasn’t a sudden “conversion” experience. Instead I have gradually come to increasingly appreciate how the process of silencing my mind (that likes to worry way too much!) for even short periods of time each day is beneficial to my mental and physical well being. It has become as important as daily physical exercise, a healthy balanced diet, and eight hours of sound sleep.

Occasional practice of meditation for some quick relief when we realize we’ve slipped into the “stress zone” and then to soon return to “business as usual” is not the most effective way to create a consistently healthy life. That’s much like dieting to lose ten pounds, and six months later, you find yourself five pounds heavier. Effective meditation is a lifestyle habit that grows more effective with consistent, daily practice. And it does not require a lengthy commitment out of your day.

A close friend sets his alarm to awake every morning at 3:30, meditates for an hour, and goes back to sleep. That sounds like a rather radical commitment. But many adults, including myself, awake around that time of the morning without an alarm, lie awake worrying about something for an hour, and go back to sleep. Conversations about this common pattern among my friends have led me to call this “the worry hour”.  I suspect that it may have some deep primeval function left over from when our survival required hyper-vigilance to night predators. But putting this in the context of my friend who meditates for an hour each morning at 3:30, his practice seems to be a perfectly logical and workable adaptation. By quieting his mind at that time of day, he is quite effectively diminishing a large block of time that might otherwise be committed to worry.

I cannot say that I regularly commit an hour of meditation at 3:30 A.M.  I can say that whenever I awake at that time and I find myself worrying about something, I use meditation techniques to quiet my mind.  My personal preferred time to meditate is an hour or two after lunch. Most people feel a bit of a lull in energy at that time of day, and for me, it’s a natural time to relax and quiet my mind. I concentrate on deep easy breathing, inhaling through my nose, and I allow my whole body to relax. It’s an effective “de-stressor” and I feel wonderfully refreshed.

The point is to make a commitment to find that time each day for yourself according to what works best for you.  It should not require work on your part. Simply find some quiet time, relax, and focus your mind on something as simple as a soft sound or a calming image. Quiet your mind and your body will follow. 

When I was growing up in my predominately Euro-protestant mid-western culture, eastern philosophies and religions were at best a distant curiosity colored by our naïve stereotypes made worse by popular post WWII generalizations about “Orientals”. Among those stereotypes, we dismissed meditation as a strange and useless religious ceremony of cross-legged sequestered monks humming in monotonous monotones about nothingness.

(As I said, it was a naïve generalization.) I’ve since grown to appreciate many of the ancient eastern traditions, both cultural and medical. In the late 1970’s, I was serendipitously introduced to meditation through a groundbreaking form of therapy practiced by Dr. Michael Emmons, author of The Inner Source, and co-author with Janet Emmons of Meditation Therapy (Impact Publications, 1999).  Since that time, meditation therapy has become a more widely practiced therapeutic technique. If you Google “meditation therapy”, you will find over 250,000 sites.

It is no secret that meditation has its primary origins in eastern philosophies. Indeed, meditation can be traced as far back as 5000 B.C. in Hinduism. But the practice of meditation can be found in many religious traditions, including Christianity and Islam. In Christianity we know it as “prayer”, especially the ritualistic forms of prayer such as the rosary and the Adoration in Catholicism. As late as 1975, Benedictine monk, John Main, re-introduced a form of meditation characterized by a repetitious chant of a prayer-phrase. In 1991, the World Community for Christian Meditation was founded.

New Age, an outgrowth of the hippie-counterculture and the astrological coming of the “Age of Aquarius” of the ‘60s and ‘70s, synthesized contemporary western ideas of science (psychology) and ecology with Yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Because New Age was/is more of an individualized spiritual movement than an organized religion, it significantly contributed to a wider, more secular acceptance and practice of meditation. The increasing recognition and validation of the benefits of Yoga have resulted in an increasing number of secularized Yoga training centers, not so much as a religious practice but more as a body/mind fitness regimen. Many fitness and exercise clubs offer Yoga and Yogic fitness classes in addition to their physical exercise classes. My wife is a certified instructor in a Body Training Systems (BTS) program called Group Centergy, a synthesis of Thai-chi Yoga and Pilates. The increased popularity of Yoga and its symbiotic relationship with meditation have by mere association contributed to an increased secularization of and familiarity with meditation in the mainstream of contemporary western culture. 

With the ever-increasing recognition of life-style induced psychological stress and its negative side effects on health and longevity, the medical disciplines have taken a closer look at the long-professed benefits of meditation. This has been accompanied by an increased interest and acceptance in ancient non-western medicine (sometimes grouped in the category of  “alternative medicine”). As early as the 1920’s western physicians were making scientific correlations between reduction of muscular tension and reduction of anxiety. In the 1960s, Dr. Ainslie Meares published Relief Without Drugs, a secular treatise on Hindu relaxation techniques to reduce stress and chronic pain. In 1975, Dr. Herbert Benson wrote The Relaxation Response, an expansion of the same subject. Today, Yogic meditation is common in western theories of counseling and psychotherapy. But more interestingly, medical research is finding more and more scientific evidence of the physiological benefits of meditation.

We know that undue physical and psychological stress can have short and long term negative consequences on our health and our longevity.  Our contemporary culture is looking for more and more for ways to “decompress”. But with our modern lifestyles under accelerated two-income-family financial pressures it’s difficult to find the “down time” from the negative stressors. Certainly, weekend escapes from our multi-tasking lifestyles provide short-term relief. And the annual vacation to the slower pace of the tropics (if we can afford it) may lower our blood pressure for a while. But how often do we hear about a friend that arrived home from their vacation more exhausted than when they departed. It seems we are so conditioned to our activity-packed lives that even when we escape, we tend to plan our vacations as if we were in one of those shopping spree contests, frantically running from one tourist attraction to another making sure we get our money’s worth.

The question is, how can we reduce and counteract the effects of stress in our everyday lives?

There are everyday proactive strategies for de-stressing. For starters, there is scientific medical evidence supporting the benefits of singing, laughter, and meditation. Not only can these activities reduce stress, they can significantly strengthen our immune system. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider the physiological benefits of meditation.

Our mind in concert with our vagus nerve, the primary monitor of infection throughout our major organs, reacts to stress as if it were detecting the pathogen cells of a bacterial invasion. If you had an infected cut on your finger, the mind/body reaction is to send in the white blood cells to fight the battle against the infection. Our finger at the point of the cut inflames - turning red, swelling, and radiating heat. Under stress, the vagus nerve can over-react telling the brain to defend our primary organs and our cardiovascular system. 

When our vagus nerve detects the tension in organs associated with stress, it tells the brain to send in the troops to fight the battle as if we had an invading infection, the same way our immune system will order a response to the infected cut on our finger. This leads not only to increased stomach acid and inflammation but also to the inflammation of the linings of our arteries making us more susceptible to arterial sclerosis and stroke.

It has been found that meditation helps to calm the overly sensitive vagus nerve and shuts down the physiological mechanism that causes these types of inflammation due to stress.  Meditation does not eliminate the stress. It alleviates our physiological reaction to the stress. It can also reduce our level of pain.

We certainly know our body’s need good quality air rich with oxygen to function at its best. Football fans have seen players sitting on the sidelines breathing supplemental oxygen to restore their depleted oxygen due to the demands of the physical exertions, especially in cities at higher altitudes such as Denver. You may have noticed that the players inhale deeply through their nose. To increase stamina and endurance, long distance runners inhale through their nose and exhale through their mouth. Obviously, we are should be able to inhale much greater quantities of air (and oxygen) through our mouth. So why would a distance runner or an exhausted footfall player benefit from inhaling through their nose? The reason is not due to an increase in oxygen intake but an increase in nitric oxide (NO) that allows blood vessels to relax and dilate thus increasing overall blood flow.  We hear little about this very important but ephemeral gas (it lifespan is mere seconds) that plays a major role in our bodily functions. Nitric oxide, normally in small percentages of the air that we breath, is absorbed only through the lining of our nasal passages. Since it has a very short lifespan in our system, we need to replenish it by breathing as often and as deeply as we can through our nose.

Some exercises of meditation encourage deep inhalation through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. This appears to have quite positive effects in restoring and rejuvenating organ function, especially associated with the cardiovascular system. Improved absorption of nitric oxide through meditative deep breathing acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain, similar to serotonin and dopamine, having a calming effect in reducing stress at the same time it promotes wakefulness. Consequently, this type of meditation is best practiced shortly after awakening from sleep. Nitric oxide also promotes healthy skin and reduces hair loss.

Meditation may not be a cure for baldness, but there is considerable evidence that its benefits in the reduction of stress and increased blood flow contribute significantly in improving immunity to infection and reducing cardiovascular inflammation.  Heart surgeons are more routinely prescribing mediation as part of the post-surgery regime for their patients.

If you would like more information on the benefits of mediation, I highly recommend reading You Staying Young, by Dr. Michael F. Roizen and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz (a.k.a “Doctor Oz” as frequently seen on the Oprah Winfrey Show), Free Press, 2007.