Thoughts count, but if we don’t back them up with action, they fizzle into nothing. So we must have thoughts and then action, otherwise they are just general, unreal, illusory bubble rising in our brains.
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We can have a thought that we really need to get fit and work out with more energy. That’s a thought. Many people have that thought. But when it comes to actually doing something about it, they get other thoughts: “My knee hurts, it’s raining, it’s boring, I’ll run into ____ and they annoy me, I’m too old for this, I’m not cut out for this. . . .“ And so we stay home and play on the computer or binge watch something that will get our mind off of the thought of getting fit.

So I don’t put too much credence in thoughts. I need to see what a person does. However, on a deeper level, all action originates in thought. First we see the dirt path. We imagine how good it would look paved. Then we set the whole road-building activity in motion. In this sense the thought does count, but only as an initiator for action. It all began with a thought but it would have died if no one carried it out. The road would remain rocky and unpaved.

We can also have destructive thoughts and act on them, so acting on our thoughts alone is not always a good thing. People whose fears cause them to hate others because they belong to a certain group think its a good idea to act out their thoughts. They are the ones who righteously kill and enslave others base on a thought that they were superior or that others need to be stamped out.
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Wise people are humble about what they think they know and what they don’t know. They see the larger picture and realize that their minds are limited, their senses can report false information, and just because someone said it is so, maybe it isn’t.


Unfortunately, it’s the people who “know” they know all the answers that create the most suffering on this planet. Obviously, all the evil dictators that oppress and slaughter people “know they know” and will kill or torture anyone who doubts it. The wise person, understands ideas such as relativity and what is just a matter of opinion. The person who knows is inflexible and righteous in his puffed up egotism.


Certain oppressive groups of people “know” that women don’t have the capacity to be educated, that showing an ankle is a mortal sin punishable by public stoning, that certain races should be eradicated, and that singing and dancing is a sin that will take you straight to hell. This so-called knowledge is nothing but received, unexamined prejudice based on fear and dominance.


Wise people have the broad insight to see the beauty of natural individuality. They have a rich and vivid life of the imagination, spirit, and intellect. They don’t believe anything just because someone in authority said it. They examine things for themselves and come to their own conclusions. While knowledge is set in stone, wisdom is fluid, constantly growing, changing, and becoming more profound.

It is difficult to scientifically describe, or define, the existence of Soul or Spirit because in science we must prove them under laboratory conditions. And since we cannot even see the Soul or Spirit, how are we going to make a lab report about them?

Soul or Spirit is the organizing and underlying principle of the Universe. It actually is too big to put under a microscope. And, at the same time, no microscope is highly powered enough to see how infinitesimal it is either. We also know that the very process of viewing extremely small particles/waves that we call atoms, alters the atom itself through the light that shines on it.

A telescope is also useless in this regard. It depends on the human eye, human interpretation, and all kinds of other variables, such as the position of the earth in the vastness of space.

So we will never be able to describe the hugeness, the extreme smallness, or the qualities of Soul or Spirit in concrete physical terms, such as “The Soul is measured to be so high and looks like this.” All we can do is say that there is a probability or a possibility. That is, unless you experience your own Soul and Spirit.

Even then, you may not be able to describe it accurately, and only give an impression of what you felt. This is why people turn to poetry or art to describe what can’t really be put into regular language. However, some have tried:

• Gary Zukav: The soul is that part of you that existed before you were born and that will exist after you die. It’s the highest, most noble part of yourself that you can reach for.
  
  
• Iyanla Vanzant: The soul, I believe, is the fingerprint of God that becomes a physical body. I believe that. It’s the fingerprint... It’s unique to everybody.
  
  
• Deepak Chopra: The soul is the core of your being. It is eternal. It doesn’t exist in space/time. It’s a field of infinite possibilities, infinite creativity. It’s your internal reference point with which you should always be in touch.
  
  
• DeVon Franklin: The soul is the spirit. It is the connecting line to God. I believe the soul is where the Holy Spirit resides. I believe that it is literally, you know, when you pick up the phone and then you have your 4G network? The soul is the 4G network right to heaven to me.
  
  
• Debbie Ford: To me, the soul is a part of us that never dies. It’s who we are at our core. And it carries all the messages and the lessons that we’ve learned in the past, and will carry all the lessons and the messages that we will carry into the future.
  
  
• Eckhart Tolle: The soul is your innermost being. The presence that you are beyond form. The consciousness that you are beyond form, that is the soul. That is who you are in essence.
  
  
• Michael Singer: The indwelling consciousness that watches the mind come and go. That watches the heart come and go, the emotions of the heart. And watches the world pass before you. You, the conscious, the consciousness, the center of being, is soul.
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• Wayne Dyer: The soul is the birthless, deathless, changeless part of us. The part of us that looks out from behind our eyes and has no form. The soul is infinite so there is no in or out of it. It is everywhere. There’s no place that it is not.

If you are enlightened, then your twin flame is enlightened because you are the same soul in two different bodies. Therefore, twin flames are on the same level with each other in terms of spiritual understanding.

Achieving enlightenment is not the same thing as discovering your twin flame. Meeting your twin flame may cause you to examine the spiritual aspects of life and can then take you both on that journey. But, in general, enlightenment is out of the equation. Bonnie and Clyde were twin souls and they went on a robbing and killing spree that caused a lot of distress. So enlightenment and twin flames don’t necessarily go together.

Most people on this planet right now are not enlightened. They do not look within and see their connection with the Universe or with their Eternal Souls. So wherever they are on the path, their twin soul will be exactly where they are too. The purpose of meeting our twin flames is deeply spiritual. When you feel the wonder of it, that can catapult you into understanding the unseen mysteries of life.
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Maybe you are an old soul, who has incarnated many times. Your twin flame will be on exactly the same level. Even if you live in New Jersey and your twin flame is in Australia, you really are the same soul. So it isn’t possible for one of you to be enlightened and the other one not. Both of you are One, and enlightenment has nothing to do with it. But be sure that meeting your twin flame always shakes you to your roots.

It does seem that society is pushing us to fit into a mould but actually we are the ones who unconsciously try to conform to its dimensions.

Societies in which we grew up had certain rules that evolved for the smooth functioning of groups of people living together. Human sacrifice during the time of the Aztecs and Mayans was thought to be a good way to conduct their societies’ rituals. At the time, everyone thought it was a great idea. It was the best thing a person could do to repay the gods, whom the believed had also sacrificed their lives to keep the Universe running.

Of course, we see this as completely absurd now, as did the Spanish conquerers of the Aztecs. The Spanish had their own absurd practices, which they imposed on the the Aztecs, but they were the ones who prevailed on the Aztecs to stop killing people to appease the gods.

As children, we are taught rules and beliefs of the society we were born into. If we want to be loved and accepted, we conform to them. Then, when we grow up, we mindlessly pursue those values, unless we are part of the few who question them. But usually, people just go along with them. They will be accepted and even rewarded, while those who buck the system will be considered outsiders.

Being alone and friendless in the world is a very unhappy state. So we fit into whatever mould our society presents. If it is a materialistic society, we will be a success if we amass lots of money and possessions. If it is a society that values sharing the wealth, we will be unselfish and giving. If it is a society that values spirituality, as in Tibet, the highest attainment is uniting with Divine Consciousness.
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Society is just made up of lots of people who go along with the program. The problem is when a society aggressively imposes its belief system on others. It punishes people, imprisons them, or kills them. So that is why so many just fit into it. It is easier not to question the values and just try to get by on a daily basis.

Consciousness is a spiritual thing that cannot be measured or even seen. But yet it does have a material basis when it is tied to the body.

If we stopped eating and especially if we stopped drinking, our bodies would run out of energy and manifest life-threatening symptoms. We die and our consciousness leaves the body. Those who have clinically died and then returned to life tell of their out-of-body experiences, in which they saw their body lying lifeless while their consciousness hovered over it nearby.
They returned to life and became once again the individual personalities that came with their unique bodies, memories, and experiences. But they are never the same, for they are aware of this amazing quality of consciousness. It is tied to the body for a while and then it diffuses into the Universal Consciousness.

A person in a coma is not deemed to be conscious, though reports have shown that they respond to prayer. I have heard of comatose people who were ready to cross over to the Other Side and were held back by prayers from loved ones. The neuroscientist, Holley Alexander wrote an excellent book called Proof of Heaven about his own near death experience and coma. This is what he has to say:
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"For me, it's become clear that the best way to look at it is to turn it around and realize that consciousness exists in a much richer form, free and independent of the brain, which has everything to do with the eternity of our souls and the fact that our awareness, our consciousness, our soul, our spirit, does not depend on the existence of the brain in the physical universe. In fact, it's freed up to a much richer knowing when we're outside."

Enlightenment has nothing to do with gender. It has nothing to do with age. It is about wisdom and the ability to be at peace with all of life.

Just because a male has a preponderance of testosterone coursing through his bloodstream, it does not mean he is on a faster track towards enlightenment than a women endowed with estrogen. Enlightenment has nothing to do with the body at all! It is about consciousness.

Consciousness is not something you can see or touch. A man who is unaware of his deeper and higher Self is just as benighted as an unaware woman. Children who have come into contact with their connection with the Universe have more wisdom than foolish adults who blindly seek after perishable and impermanent things that don’t bring happiness.

So enlightenment is not gender-related, nor does it have anything to do with cultural prejudices or how many years a person has spent time on this planet. There have been many great, enlightened women, most of whom are content to live quiet lives and not broadcast their wisdom. But some like Anandamayi Ma were so radiant, they attracted students from many countries.

Don’t limit yourself by thinking that wisdom and deep understanding only come from someone who happens to be born a male this time around.

We filter out so many things in our environment just so we can navigate through life. We don’t hear sounds that birds and animals can hear. We don’t see infrared or ultraviolet light that other creatures see. If we took in everything around us at the time, we would be dazzled by it all, and so we perceive the world as humans do—in a very narrow perspective—compared to what is “out there.”

So it is with our conscious and subconscious minds. We simply could not function if every memory of this life and past lives flooded our brains. But everything that happened to us, especially trauma, is stored in the subconscious mind. This is where all the messages of our particular culture are resting. It is where everything our caretakers taught us about who we are, what we are, and how “good” we are resides.
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Our conscious minds are our survival mechanisms but the subconscious mind is behind so many of the decisions we make. We usually cannot access our subconscious mind and yet it is doing a lot of work in the background. The subconscious was formed when we were too young to have discriminating intelligence or the ability to form our own opinions. And it sits there, unseen and undetected, like the huge hidden mass of an iceberg.

Mindfulness is committing to the present moment instead of letting our minds wander and drift into past recollections and future imaginings—all the while judging and commenting. This idea of how to conduct our lives cleanly and clearly, without stressful meanderings is not new. The Buddha came up with it roughly 2500 years ago. So I wouldn’t exactly call it a movement.

It is such a simple idea, I’m sure others thought of it before Buddha but he is the one who articulated it. Mindfulness means the ability to keep something in mind. This means the skill to keep one thing in mind instead of being taken off course. It takes three forms:

• Stay alert to what you’re doing in the present moment.
  
  
• Recognize the skillful and unskillful qualities that arise in the mind.
  
  
• Know how to get rid of the qualities that get in the way of concentration, then developing the skillful ones that promote it.
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I don’t think anyone can find a flaw in mindfulness. Maybe someone could say that if our minds don’t drift, we wouldn’t have imagination and therefore we couldn’t come up with creative solutions. But even in problem solving, being mindful is more effective than being scattered and all over the map. Furthermore, mindfulness brings peace and clarity, which brings happiness and cleans away distress.

I have seen people’s personalities change after they became meditators.

Many years ago I was a high school English teacher in an inner city school. Two of my most difficult students, who acted wild and hostile, began to change before my eyes. They became mellow, they smiled with glowing friendliness towards me. I felt a completely different vibration coming from them—a loving inclusion that stunned me.

Soon after this personality change they came to me and told me about Transcendental Meditation. I went with them and was initiated. After that, my bond with these two young men was completely of the heart and of the Soul. It was such a drastic change and showed me how important it is for us to be still and get into contact with our deepest Selves. Not the mind-stream that never stops its fearful antics, but our deepest, eternal Souls.
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If I had not seen the complete personality change, I could not attest to the fact that meditation changed both of these students. Interestingly, it also changed me and my attitude towards the students in general. Whereas before, I had been hostile in my own way, I was able to soften up and still maintain a quiet learning environment. Though many years separated me from these two students, they brought me to a humble understanding of how much I learned from them.