Soul’s Code

Negative karma happens when we try to store up life’s riches for our own use. Positive grace takes place when lessons happen that an Intelligence wants us to know

BY DAVID RICKEY — Ever since I was kid, I’ve had an insatiable need to understand how things work. I used to take my toys apart to try and figure out what made them go. I even took my father’s pocket watch apart . . . which had the extended benefit of learning how to fix things. I learned, for example, that it was better to go slowly and not panic. Not easy, when the goal was getting it back together again before my father got home.

As my toys got more complicated, I took them apart less, and instead just experimented and observed. But still tried to make sense of what I saw.

Vegas TV magician claims tarot and divination are not in the cards for him as “Mindfreak” blasts psychics

GUEST COLUMN: DANNY KENNY — In a CNN interview, Criss Sarantakos (a.k.a Angel) told Larry King, “no one has the ability, that I’m aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And if somebody claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I’m going to bust [him] live and on television.”

Ironically, Criss is Greek, and the word psychic also seems Greek to him (from the Greek psychikos—“of the soul, mental”) as it refers to an alleged ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception, or to people who claim to possess such abilities.

Criss, like most great stage magicians, is a master of misdirection, so let me redirect you for a moment to one very key word in there. . .

What do men want, sexually and spiritually speaking? A somatic therapist draws on psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the Tao Te Ching and personal experience

The first in a two-part series by SMADAR DE LANGE — What is a man’s deepest longing?

Some believe the simplistic psychological answer: men are predisposed to merge with their primal mothers, to feel once again the ultimate fusion and primal dyad of mother and son.

Perhaps, in actuality, this longing is for a space in which they may feel absolute safety, sweetness, and bliss.

Call it a peak experience, meditation or tuning in. To one Aussie teacher, “it” felt like a bliss called love

GUEST COLUMN: NHYS GLOVER — Once while teaching a personal development class  in Australia, I asked my students to relate the feeling of one of those moments in their lives when their cup was running over with joy.

They stared blankly at me.

“You don’t know this feeling? Not even when something really good happened in your life?” I asked incredulously.

They all shook their heads. I was gob-smacked. To live life without having those moments of intense joy or happiness seemed like no life at all.

I wondered how people could survive without those moments. I wondered what life would be like without them. I can’t even imagine.

A meditation and affirmation for the weekend on how to live the meta-high life

PHYLLIS KING — So much of living a practical metaphysical life has to do with practicing principles, and living them.

The process of flowing with life is often one of remembering. We will always meet with hardship and struggle when we hold an expectation that life must accommodate our timetable, and our perspective of what life should look like.

The game is always to shift our perspective to one of expansion. We are called to expand our point of view to see the greater objective at play. It is our job to understand  . . . call it life, call it the universe, call it whatever you want.

Pamela Wilson, who is featured in the Soul’s Code slideshow Female Mystics, shares her insights about the true nature of depression

SPECIAL TO SOUL’S CODE: PAMELA WILSON — Sorrow has been a constant companion for many of us, and yet we are content with the mind’s interpretation of what it is. What if sorrow is not what it appears to be?

What if it is a deep invitation to return to authenticity and naturalness? What if, in your heart, you know that sorrow is a sane response to the human condition of confusion and suffering?

Everything in nature has a function, and depression’s function is to dissolve the sense of isolation and the unnecessary defenses.

How I rediscovered myself through Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

BY RAQUEL TAVARES — I recently told my mother that I was tired of all those “self-help” books. Then, shortly after, I bought one again — this time, Eckhart Tolle‘s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

All this is to say that Tolle’s book transcends the ‘self-help’ pigeon-hole, and reaches way beyond ‘the Oprah book club’ labeling. I’m happy that both the genre and seal-of-approval draw the attention of a mass audience, but let’s just say that this book deserves its very own shelf. It should be tagged: the ‘growing up human’ section.

It’s rare that I’ve been so taken by a book that I recommend it to others. With this one, I usually lay this line on top of my recommendations — “This book has changed my life.” And it has.

Eckhart Tolle, the Grandmaster Flash of spiritual teachers, has been living the reclusive and contemplative life we kind of expect of a post-modern mystic. He hasn’t made a public appearance for more than two years. (One of the very last was recorded as this talk in the fall of 2004 in Santa Rosa, CA). His publisher, Penguin, blew eight head valves when he declined to do a single signing, speech or interview to promote his 2005 book, A New Earth. And we loved it! There’s a definite symmetry between that style and Tolle’s teachings, which revolve around the connection between being and silence.

But today, Tolle entered a new phase when he posted the itinerary for a speaking tour that will take him from Dallas to Denmark — and a fundraiser on Feb. 22 in Beverley Hills that has stars like Rosie O’Donnell, Ben Stiller and Paula Abdul attached to it.