You might have read my last article, "Finding & Marketing Your Niche Within the Divine Plan," and said, "So what? I'm already doing all that…I'm already following my passion and I'm still not getting anywhere."

You're still not living the promised life of less struggle, more prosperity, and more satisfaction. So what gives? If you believe you're already doing what you're supposed to be doing, then what else is it going to take? …Or are you really following the path of "right livelihood"?

I know some people who say they are "following their passion in life," adamantly stating they don't want to do anything else. But yet they continue to struggle, year after year. One friend of mine has been barely surviving for nine years now, deeply in debt, but never deviating from what he thinks is his path in life. Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding what is required to holistically thrive in today's rapidly evolving world is vital to the millions of people who are now struggling to make ends meet in our weakened economic environment.

As the U.S. economy barely holds onto a lifeline to stay afloat, and vested businesses and government officials attempt to reclaim the U.S.'s once-admired economic stronghold in the world, in the meantime we are seeing an increasing number of 'victims' of the recession take the entrepreneurial route to find financial stability and, for some, hopefully find a niche and consequential prosperity.

Some of the entrepreneurial paths include direct sales and variations of direct-sales careers, including multi-level marketing and franchises. Many of these new entrepreneurs have become independent contractors (or more specifically, "independent consultants"  or "independent sales representatives"), selling other companies' merchandise or services. Spammers are an egregious example of direct selling. Others simply make money by telling you how to make money.

While for some, this movement away from being just a cog in the corporate machine or having an opportunity to climb out of the trenches of unemployment brings a new level of independence and steady income, but for others it can be a constant struggle to get "noticed" and to promote their products or services amid all the thousands of other competing marketers. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever imagined the amount of paper that is used by companies to send out flyers, catalogs, and solicitations to millions of homes across the country? On a daily basis?

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 44 percent of all junk mail is thrown away without being opened. This amounts to 4 million tons of waste each year. And this doesn't even account for the waste phone books — and duplicate phone books — generate. With three to five different directories delivered to each residence per year, about 8 lb of paper, the amount of waste staggers the mind.

You can put a halt to both junk mail and telephone books from being delivered to your residence, and here's how:

Go to the Direct Marketing Association's website (dmachoice.org) and submit a request to opt-out from thousands of direct mailers. You'll be able to discontinue delivery of catalogs, credit offers, and magazine offers, among other types of mailings.

To opt out of phone book delivery, you'll need to call the individual organizations that generate the directories:

Verizon (Superpages/Idearc): (800) 888-8448 (option 2)

AT&T/Yellow Pages (SBC/Bell South): (800) 848-8000 (option 1); for Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, or Texas call (800) 792-2665

Yellow Book: (800) 373-3280

Dex Yellow Pages: (877) 243-8339

Recommended reading: Inhabitat.com: GREEN RANT: Stop Sending Me Phone Books!

Steven Lane Taylor, author of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and one of my guest contributors, is the most insightful expert on the nature of the divine flow that I've encountered. His messages are gentle, loving, intelligent, witty, yet straight to the point. Every week I look forward to reading and posting his consistently illuminating perceptions on how the flow influences the different aspects of our existence.

My own awareness of how the divine flow runs through each of our lives has substantially evolved with the help of Steven's gentle guidance and my own personal observations and growing understanding of its dynamism. As I have occasionally, in retrospect, assessed the most significant experiences of my life, an important realization eventually occurred to me:  the paths that made my life simpler or brought me abundance, improved health, or meaningful friendships came to me out of the blue. I did not have to consciously pursue the specific opportunity, it just happened — unexpectedly presented to me by a friend, family member, or other acquaintance, or "accidentally" discovered online, in a store, at a meeting, special event, or even delivered to my door. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently brought home one of those free magazines you get at the health food store checkout because I usually find some tasty recipes. With January turning into the shed-the-holiday-pounds month, you can find weight-loss articles in just about any magazine lately, and the issue I picked up was no exception with a piece about how to lose weight — for good.

One of the sections of this piece talked about the importance of exercise with some suggested routines for weight loss:

If possible, get 60 to 90 minutes of moderate exercise every day to lose and keep weight off.

If you're the average non-athletically-inclined person reading that recommendation, you'll probably have the same thoughts I did. If I have to work out that much, I'd be killing myself and making myself miserable…so what's the use? And how could I fit 90 minutes into my schedule every day when I'm cramming so much into it already?

Not only is that much regular exercise for the average person a formidable and unrealistic goal, but more recently the benefit of exercise for weight loss has come into question.  Several controversial studies have been published, or are underway, that give us a fresh perspective of the role exercise plays in our quest to burn body fat: Read the rest of this entry »

I usually turn down book reviews because they have proven to be a lot of unrewarding work. But when I learned that one of the subjects of a recent book offering is Dr. Andrew Weil,  a well-known integrative medicine practitioner who I greatly respect, I became curious about his earlier background and decided to accept the offer to review "The Harvard Psychedelic Club" by Don Lattin and participate in the TLC Book Tour.

Upon finishing the book I was pleased I accepted. Lattin, an award-winning author and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, expertly guides the reader along the '50s and '60s psychedelic time line full of fascinating historical characters — icons who were fundamentally instrumental  in establishing the American counterculture movement, which evolved into today's Mind, Body & Spirit era of holistic health, meditation, and yoga.

The storyline involves four legendary figures — Harvard research psychologist Timothy Leary, Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert (later in life known as spiritual teacher Ram Dass), MIT philosophy professor Huston Smith, and Harvard Medical School graduate Andrew Weil — men who passionately dedicated their lives to the exploration of human consciousness, spirituality, and holistic living. Read the rest of this entry »

Right now, at 7am in Colorado, it's -2° F. We might get up to 20° F today, if we're lucky. I finally gave in and bought some Blizzak tires since I got tired of sliding around on the slick roads that have been happening every now and then since October of last year. As I'm sitting here whining about the wintry weather, the Midwest is getting socked with minus double digits everywhere: -52° F with wind chill factor in North Dakota, -27° F in Nebraska, and Iowa is expected to receive another 10 inches of snow on top of the 2 feet it received in December. Chanhassen, Minnesota, has had five straight days of minus double-digit weather.

But yet climate scientists are saying that 2009 will be one for the record books, being one of the top 10 warmest years on record. How in the world can this be? Read the rest of this entry »

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." Depending on which website you visit, this quote is attributed to either Abraham Lincoln, Peter Drucker, or Alan Kay. No matter the source, those wise words are important in understanding the innate power you have to influence personal events — and the world in which you live — instead of being a victim to circumstances.

That's not to say that the future cannot and should not be predicted, for without having an inkling of where we are headed, how would we ever know we need to shift to the course that will lead us to fulfilling the roles we came here to serve?

In this article I suggest the best ways to become aware of probable futures (and it doesn't even require hiring a psychic in order to become aware of what you're creating) and the most powerful ways to then draw to yourself the desired probable realities.

Be Your Own Psychic

There are two very effective techniques anyone can use to access their own inner wisdom to understand where they headed and how they can guide themselves toward their life's purpose: Read the rest of this entry »

With the onset of the hard-hitting recession, and coming into an age where there is a growing awareness of our environmental issues and integration of more spirituality into our lives, there has been less emphasis on consumerism at Christmastime and more emphasis on improving the lives of others by helping to provide even basic necessities for many of us. One of our December posts on Holistic Future talked about Advent Conspiracy, a Christian organization in which hundreds of churches in at least 17 countries around the world have enlisted to participate in campaigns to spend less on extravagant gifts and instead use some of that money for charitable distribution. For instance, participating churches have donated millions of dollars to dig wells in developing countries through Living Water International and other organizations involved in supporting grassroots projects around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

A new survey found more Americans now integrate their spiritual beliefs from a variety of religions, including Christianity, Eastern religions, and New Age beliefs.

The poll, conducted by Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, found a third of the respondents regularly or occasionally attend religious services at more than one location, and a quarter of them worship outside their own faith. More Americans, over their lifetime, will try out different religions than will stay true to one faith.

S. Scott Bartchy, a professor of the history of religion at UCLA, believes that the Internet plays a part in our mix-and-match religious beliefs, with people going online and becoming more exposed to ideas offered by religions different from their own.

Bartchy said the findings were not surprising, noting the growing cultural diversity of the United States.

Approximately 25 percent of respondents believe in New Age ideas and Eastern religious concepts, such as reincarnation and the existence in ghosts, with many people identifying themselves as being on a "spiritual journey."

And approximately 65 percent of respondents either believe in or have had an experience with supernatural phenomena, such as astrology, contacting spirits on the other side, or psychic abilities.