Soul’s Code

How to put the dynamic of hope into action. You have the same DNA as Gandhi, Václav Havel and Goenawan Mohamad

DAVID RICKEY — Hope is a great four-letter word, but it gets lost in the shuffle of our lives if it isn’t bonded with action.

Václav Havel, the first President of the Czech Republic, said ‘Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out’.

It is this certainty that allows — even emboldens us — to take action.

We have all faced survival uncertainty since the Great American Recession of 2008, and that uncertainty — can, and has — paralyzed some of us into in-action.

The Eckhart Tolle of Europe asks us a question: Why don’t we really like change?

BY TONY SAMARA — We each have an ego. And that busy ego plugs into, let’s call it, control systems.

Yes, we do have what the enlightenment philosophers called free will but we seem to make this choice every day. It’s an unconscious choice.

Control systems compromise the free aspect of ourselves. They always want things to be the same way — in the words of the 1980′s band the Talking Heads sang — the same as it ever was.

From Denzel Washington’s contender for an Oscar to the Scientology allegory, The Master, Hollywood’s biggest box office is hooked to addicts

The Master

Joaquin Phoenix plays a sex addict and violent drunk who seeks salvation from a guru who is part-Werner Erhard and part-Ron Hubbard. Director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) screened the film for the world’s most famous Scientologist, Tom Cruise.

Boardwalk Empire

America’s oldest addiction juiced every clan from the Kennedys and the Seagrams to iconic U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, according to HBO’s flagship series.

A heart-breaking work of staggering honesty: Sins of My Faith. In this Soul’s Code exclusive, a woman who lost her innocence to incest explains why she did not “out” her abuser

BY MARINA GIULLIANI: It’s commonly understood that incest refers to “sexual acts between close relatives”, but I know from first-hand experience that incest is a heinous act that no dictionary definition could possibly prepare you for.

Fondled by a respected member of our family, from the time I was much too young to know what havoc the guilt of sexual pleasure would bestow on my future, I lost my innocence to incest.

At one time I would have agreed with those who claim that rape is a far more serious abuse than touching. But now that I’ve put all the pieces together, it’s apparent that my subconscious made no such distinction.

Will Baby Boomers choose to expire in hospitals and nursing homes? Or will they take matters into their own hands?

BY DAVID RICKEY —  Would you prefer to die on purpose — or with purpose?

Late, great writers like Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon), Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and counter-culture figure Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) were larger than life.

Yet they each took their own lives — rather than let the life coded into their respective DNA take its course.

The most timely example: Tony Scott (above, center), a Hollywood producer and director who jumped off an 18-storey L.A. bridge that he’d once scouted as a location for a movie.

The Baby Boomers are the biggest generation in American history, the most vain-glorious generation — and also the most afraid of pain, if Prozac and painkiller prescriptions are any indication.

Tony Robbins, Neurolinguistic Programming, Milton Erickson and the physics of walking barefoot over hot coals

Just say, “Ow!”: More than 20 injured at Tony Robbins seminar in Silicon Valley

“I’m invincible, I’m on fire”: Tony Robbins makes David Letterman’s Top Ten list but for the wrong reason

The physics of fire-walking: Escaping injury has nothing to do with mind over matter

What does the 44th President, his family and friends really believe in — that is, beyond politics?

BY SOUL’S CODE — Barack Obama is the personification of this site’s meme, “spiritual but not religious.”

On matter’s of faith, it’s what makes it so easy for pundits to spin his story from both the fundamentalist right and the agnostic left.

Exhibit: A documentary released during the 2012 presidential election cycle, 2016: Obama’s America (links to free streaming here), suggested that our 44th president is an anti-Christian, anti-colonialist.

From the left: Liberal comedian and million-dollar Obama donor, Bill Maher, routinely says he hopes the prez is lying when he espouses his Christian credentials.

Test your spiritual knowledge about our president by clicking on the multiple-choice answers below:

From Stephen Hawking to Steve Jobs, big minds have changed your life. The saying goes that theses geniuses are born with a good-luck gene . . . or are they?

SOUL’S CODE — Every parent in America wants their kid to be the next gal or guy who changes the world.

But some of the people who actually did change our lives led extremely painful lives themselves, beyond their controllable lifestyle choices.

So we ask: Would you wish the genius gene upon your kids, or just as well leave that DNA alone?

Click on the radio buttons below to see what the likes of Oprah, Arthur Schopenhauer and Obama share in common — or not:

A personal reflection about a presidential candidate who moved me — and whom I met through Hunter S. Thompson

BY PAUL KAIHLA — The Soul’s Code community forged a space on the internet in the spirit of sharing, healing and insight.

It’s through that prism that I share a personal story that connects with a national event: George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for president against Richard Nixon in 1972, died on October 21, 2012. (May his soul be sanctified).

Many politicians die — longtime Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter died on October 14, 2012. So why these pixels about George McGovern?

In my experience, he was the most spiritual of politicians — and I say these words from direct experience because he granted me an interview in his Washington, D.C. office when I was 20 years old.

Find a single snippet of tape where George McGovern ever slashed an opponent.

What are we about? A 20-second tour . . .

1. PEAK EXPERIENCES

Have you ever had a peak experience? Read honest, life-altering accounts under our category, Peak Experiences.

The term was coined by one of the founders of humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow. Peak Experiences are aspirational stories about natural highs: (Paul Kaihla on the shaman origins of the sauna), first-person breakthroughs (Jennifer Scalia on her greatest love, ever), and psychotherapist David Rickey on his Aha! Moment that took him a lifetime.