Authentic Living

In this day in which we are being taught to build self-confidence without even making reference to an authentic Self, we think that vulnerabilities make us weak. But actually, just the reverse is true. For, how might one come to know one’s self completely without getting intimate with one’s own vulnerabilities? How will we know our deepest needs, and most authentic desires, without coming to know our vulnerabilities? And isn’t it our vulnerabilities that allow us to take loving care of ourselves? There are many more things that our vulnerabilities do for us. And we are going to talk about them all this week. Don’t miss it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the most important aspects of adult life is the journey to finding a soulmate. This is an urgent mission for so many in our world. And now with the addition of online dating sites we are making the mission an E-mission in many cases. So many of us think we have found Mr. or Ms. Right, when in fact we have just found again the same Mr. or Ms. Wrong we found the last time we looked. Simran Singh teaches us how to take the spiritual journey to your soul’s true mate, in her latest book “Your Journey to Love: Discover the Path to Your Soul’s True Mate.” And we are going to be talking to her today about that very journey. If you are looking for your soulmate, tune in, and take notes. This show is for you.

We hear the word “abundant” quite a bit these days. Mostly we think of this word in terms of money. We can’t seem to help it. Our world is virtually run by money. When we want something, the first thing we think of is whether or not we can afford it. When we want to go somewhere, the first thing we think of is how we will pay for it. This is the way the world works. But it is not the way abundance works. In fact, abundance is the truth of our existence—we just don’t see it. During this one hour show, we are going to learn all about the nature of abundance and how we can learn to see it. Don’t miss it.

In our third week of our Countdown to Heaven, we are talking to Bruce Lipton, bestselling author of The Biology of Belief about his latest book, The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth. We all understand either the actuality of the honeymoon effect, or the dream of it. But most of us see it as temporary—because we have to get back to “real life.” The Honeymoon Effect is a state of bliss, passion, energy and health resulting from huge love. But we cannot imagine that we can have that on a regular basis. But Lipton tells us that the Honeymoon Effect is not a chance event that happened to us because the right circumstances collided, but rather it is a personal creation. In fact, he tells us that love is the most potent growth factor for human beings. How can we manifest this heaven on earth? Tune it to find out—and to hear the clip from Oprah’s upcoming Super Soul Sunday. Don’t miss it.

We are so excited this week to have Dr. Clarissa Pinkoa Estés (Dr. E, as she is affectionately known) back on our show for the fifth time. Bestselling author of “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” which sold over a million copies; and the multi-volume audio series “The Dangerous Old Woman,” and her most recent book, “Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul,” which we will be talking about today; Dr. E is also an internationally recognized scholar, award-winning poet, diplomate senior Jungian psychoanalyst, and cantadora (keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition). Her warmth and wisdom have captivated millions with humor, enlightened discussions and profound insights. The feminine in all of us—male and female—is moved and grown every time she touches us with her stories and gifts from the soul. You are not going to want to miss this one.

Do you find yourself doing all manner of things you don’t really want to do? Do you often hear yourself saying “I have to…”? Do you find yourself having fantasies of saying what you’ve always felt about someone who gets your goat just about every time you see them? Do you look back on your yesterdays thinking of the many times when you have been used and/or abused by others? Well, you can get out of the game anytime you want. Really, you say. But you don’t know my mother (or father or husband or wife). You don’t know how hard it is for me. Or you might try saying, the most fatalistic of all excuses: “That’s easier said than done,” with a vacuous sigh that heaves responsibility back onto the world. But, really, you can. You can get out of the game anytime you want. How? Well, that’s what we’ll be talking about this week. Don’t miss it.

For centuries we have been attempting to fight the good fight, to finally put an end to evil once and for all. Mostly we think that we will accomplish this through government, philanthropy, and the power of wealth in groups of people bound together on a mission to do away with evil. But we also think of it very personally, so that we must go to war within ourselves against the “evil” within. And if someone were to say to most of us that there is no such thing as good or evil, we would vehemently argue that a) it is just that kind of thinking that creates even more evil and b) that if we ever were to stop fighting the great battle, we would not only lose our sense of nobility, but we would be overwhelmed with all the evil that really is always lurking around trying to find an open door to fly through. We are terrified of realizing that though we have been fighting this battle for centuries, nothing has changed. And yet that is the truth. So, what is to be done? Tune in to find out.

“What’s-a-mattah? Got a guilty conscience?” Remember hearing this as a child? I do. And I remember that having a “guilty conscience” meant that you’d done something wrong. When you put that in reverse, you come to understand that we might not know we’ve “done wrong” unless we have a “guilty conscience.” We were all raised on this notion that guilt is a good thing. It helps us know when we’ve done or are about to do something wrong. On the other hand we all know those people who identify as “guilty”. They introduce their problem with guilt by saying “I’m a good Catholic,” or “I’m Jewish,” or “I was raised Baptist.” What these more extreme illustrations clearly demonstrate is that guilt is taught. In other words, guilt is not natural to us. Many would say, “well, of course it isn’t, that’s why we need to teach people to feel guilty.” But what if guilt, any guilt, actually blocks the pathway to an authentic connection to the divine? Let’s talk about it.

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

Mark Nepo is an author, poet, philosopher, beloved teacher and cancer survivor who has, for thirty years, been exploring how we can stay awake and authentic when our wounds make us numb and hidden; how we can minimize what stands between us and our experience of life; how we can create a practice that wears down what thickens around our hearts and minds. And today we are going to talk to him about those very things, as we explore together the meanings and messages of his books, The Endless Practice and Reduced to Joy. The Endless Practice explores how the soul works in the world, and how by engaging our soul in the world, we are shaped by the endless practice of becoming who we were born to be. Reduced to Joy is a book of poems about the nature of working with what we are given until it wears us through to joy. This is a special opportunity to come closer to your own soul. Don’t miss it.

There are many people out there telling us today, that the shadow is the bad, sabotaging part of us, and that because it is, we need to clean it out. Those same people tell us that the ego, though also bad, is the opposite of shadow and what we need to do with ego is to get rid of it altogether. But what if the divine Self is also in the unconscious, and the ego is just a liaison between the conscious and the unconscious? You see, since most of us have lived largely unconscious of who we actually are, the Self is hidden from us in the unconscious. Instead of living as Self, we’ve lived in an identity that isn’t at all who we are, but rather a mask and costume meant to help us cope with and survive our childhoods and families of origin. And the liaison of the ego is, in this case weighted way too heavy on the outer world. So if what we have learned about the shadow isn’t really true, how do we work with the shadow? Tune in to find out.

Isn’t that what we all want—to get what we want? And if I told you today that all you would have to do to get what you want is to do A, B and C, you’d probably do it, right? Well, that’s what’s been happening—with all kinds of strategies, from commercials for toothpaste to marriage proposals, people are always promising to give us what we want. There are two primary problems with this: 1) most of us don’t know what we really want; and 2) there is no bargain with the universe which will absolutely guarantee that after we have done A, B and C we will definitely have what we want. These promises leave out the possibility of the wondrous mystery of life. There is, however, a trust we can offer to ourselves, a trust that defines the divine as desire. And we absolutely can own that trust. Tune in today to find out how.