My Publisher and Poet…

This is a poem sent to my agent by Shaye Areheart, who is now my publisher at Harmony Books, after we met with them about Epiphany. She said the project inspired it so she sent it along.  I love it and she has given me permission to post it here. A publisher poet, who knew?!   so cool…

Aha!

I had an epiphany.

It was snowing and everything was white.

I could not see anything that wasn’t pure light.

I stood in the storm and said my name over and over.

At last I found myself,

And rejoiced.

– Shaye Areheart

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Great Moments Often Catch Us Unaware

Great moments often catch us unaware,

beautifully wrapped in what others might consider a small one.’

– Kent Nerburn

This moving story was sent to me today.  This is what an epiphany can be…a great moment beautifully wrapped in a small one.  If we pay attention and choose to, we will see it, we will experience it, we will act on it…and it can change our lives forever…

The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget

This story, written by Kent Nerburn, website: http://kentnerburn.com/, appears in his book Make Me an Instrument of your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis. The author confirms that this story is true.

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes, I walked to the door and knocked. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940’s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.

‘It’s nothing’, I told her. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated’.

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy’, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly.

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.’  I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice. ‘The doctor says I don’t have very long.’

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. ‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she’d ask me to slow down in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go now’. We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked, reaching into her purse.

‘Nothing,’ I said

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.

‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. ‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.  I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life. We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.  But great moments often catch us unaware, beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

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Epiphany – A Year in Review…

As I reflect on the past year, I can’t believe how much has happened, and I really can’t believe how much has happened just in the last few months and weeks with the Epiphany Project.

In August, we launched EpiphanyChannel.com and I interviewed author and producer, Andrea Buchanan, author and meditation expert, Mark Thornton, and race car driver, Ali Afshar.  In September, we finished and sent out the book proposal to publishers and I visited Texas and New Orleans and conducted interviews for Epiphany with Carol Lanning, Lawrence Wright and Roy Williams.  October was a huge month — I was in New York meeting with publishers and accepted a book deal from Random House/Harmony Books.  I interviewed fitness guru Joel Harper and actress and mother Rachel Blaylock.  Also while in NY, I experienced my first Bruce Springsteen concert where I’ve never seen so many people in one place from every age, type and nationality be so joyously affected by an artist.  It must be incredible to be Bruce and have that affect on 70,000 people at once – every single person there was dancing and singing to every song and was so happy!  My thought was as I looked around, ‘This has got to be great for the planet for this many people to be joyous all at once for a couple of hours straight!’  I’ve been to a lot of concerts and events but I’ve never seen anything like this — I always liked Bruce but I wasn’t a huge fan like some people I know – now I get it…adding him to the Wish List of people to interview!

The first day of November, I attended the Day of the Dead celebrations in downtown LA and got amazing interviews from random people on the street, and mid-month I went to San Francisco and interviewed one of my absolute heroes, Craig Newmark (the founder of Craigslist.org) and teacher, author and speaker, Srikumar Rao.

Just in the last couple of weeks alone, I have spoken to master acting coach Harry MastrogeorgeDeepak Chopra on his radio show (whose Stress-Free iphone application is incredible and I highly recommend his book, The Ultimate Happiness Prescription – very impacting information yet short and sweet  – more on this later); Annie Leonard of the StoryofStuff.com which you absolutely must check out if you haven’t already; and Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff of The Horse Boy project – all of whom have had epiphanies that in simply hearing about them have enhanced my life.   I can’t wait to edit them and get them out there…(btw, I do have photos and some video of the above mentioned events and people and will eventually get them up – one of my new year’s resolutions is to be better about updating this blog!)

Thanks for following and reading and for your support of Epiphany!  2010 is going to be an incredible year…

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Once in a Blue Moon…

We have a blue moon lunar eclipse on New Year’s Eve this year.  A blue moon is when a second full moon happens in a calendar month.  Blue Moons only happen every two-and-a-half years on average, and this will be the first time since 1990 that it will coincide with New Year’s Eve. The event will not happen again till 2028.  According to Wikipedia, here is the schedule for the Blue Moons from now until 2015:

Two full moons in one month:[8]

  • 2009: December 2, December 31 (Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve)
  • 2012: August 2, August 31
  • 2015: July 2, July 31

This Blue Moon on Dec. 31 will be extremely powerful.  Full Moons are for releasing what you want to let go of – this one not only will be extremely powerful for that but also for manifesting your intentions for the upcoming year.  I would write down for this new year’s not just resolutions but really be specific about what you want to let go of and what you want to manifest for your life.

Also, you might want to consider a great tool I discovered this fall called the Vision Board or some people call it the Dream Board where you paste photos and words related to your heart’s true desires. I’d always heard about it but never really knew what it was or believed in it, but I had a feng shui expert tell me to do it and then several friends mentioned it at different times throughout the year and then I read about in O magazine or something.  Basically, when I heard about it for about the 6th or 7th time in 6 months, I finally thought, why not?  This is what I did:

Cut out images from magazines or create them of what you want in your life – no one else has to see this so it’s images of what things represent to you, it doesn’t have to be literal in any way as long as you know what the images mean to you.  You take the images and paste them on a red poster board like a collage (I also heard the things you want to let go of, put on the left side.  The things you most desire, put in the center and on the upper right.  I don’t know why or if this makes a difference, I just recently heard this – mine was not set up this way but I thought I’d pass it on…) so you paste all these images and words on the red poster board and then put it up so you’re seeing it at least once a day.  It’s nice to put it where you work and I have a place I can look at it while I’m in the bath.  Honestly, I COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW FAST THINGS MANIFESTED THAT WERE ON THAT BOARD.  Wow.  I met and dated men that looked like the photos I had on there, I had created a dummy book cover of Epiphany and now I have a book deal, I got invited to a designer’s sample sale that happened to be on it, I met some of the people that were on it, etc…it was incredible.  I told my friend, Justine, about it so she did one and things happened super fast for her, too.  She wrote about it here.  For me, it is a wonderful tool to help you focus daily on the things you really want and get your brain prepared and clear about them – especially if you’re into setting intentions and bringing those into meditation/prayer as well.

Happy Happy 2010 – may it not only be the very best yet for you but may it mark the beginning of an incredible decade for us all!  Salud! Prosit! Cheers!

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Happy (or not) Holidays…

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

An excerpt from a book called Love Without End was sent to me and I have been thinking about it so I wanted to share it here.  The holidays can be wonderful times or they can be more like a ‘holidaze’ and are extremely stressful and depressing for various reasons and can be especially bad because we are expected to be happy and joyous.  We seem to have a perfect picture in our heads of what the holidays should mean.  In this perfect picture, the holidays are supposed to be about family, connection and feeling happy and celebratory.  When perhaps our families are broken, we’ve experienced or are experiencing loss, and our lives are very much less than perfect and we’re not feeling joyous or celebratory at all, we sometimes tend to feel there is something very wrong with us.  The holidays can become a glaring reminder and magnification of our feelings of inadequacy, loneliness and sadness.  I had this experience when I was going through a separation and divorce, and actually for a few years while unhappily married before that.  Christmas and the holidays had always been my favorite time of year so to lose the magic of the season was a double whammy for me.  I didn’t want it to come and I just wanted it to be over.  But this experience gave me an empathy and understanding for people who find the holidays depressing and a time of year they dread – I had never really understood it before.  It happens to many of us for different reasons, but I think especially in America, we have this obsession with being happy and if we’re not, we think there is something terribly wrong with us.  The holidays just tend to magnify this attitude that permeates our culture.  Honestly, though, who is happy all the time?  That is really sort of ridiculous if you think about it – of course, it is important to be content with life, but I think it is impossible to be happy all the time – not if you are an observant, intelligent person.  You couldn’t possibly be happy all the time with all that is going on in the world around us, much less with all the life experiences we will all inevitably go through.  I don’t think that is what life is about – being easy and happy all the time.  How could we grow if that was what life was about all the time?  But for some reason we will beat ourselves up and think we are losers because we believe everyone else is happy and we are not.  But this is the secret — everyone feels like they are losers and alone at least at some point in life.  (If anyone says they never have, they are either lying, are narcissists or came in extremely enlightened.) If we realized this, maybe none of this would feel this way or at least it would be so bad and a source of shame.  I believe we may not be able to remain in a state of constant happiness (and perhaps this is simply a matter of semantics) but we can remain in a state of love – love of ourselves, the people around us and the world at large – that is the challenge and goal (especially the love of ourselves part) and this state is attainable.

Last week, I interviewed Kristin Neff, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who is a leader in introducing Self-Compassion into Western Psychology.  Her book about the practice of self-compassion (complete with exercises – yay!) will be out in a year.  Her short, laymen’s explanation about self-compassion is this: “You wouldn’t tell a friend that she was stupid or ugly or a loser or she should be feeling happy all the time, no matter what is going on in her life, but we tell ourselves these kinds of things and much, much worse all the time…we can be so cruel to ourselves…self-compassion is about treating ourselves with compassion, the way we would treat beloved friends.”   I’ve been thinking a lot about our interview and what we talked about and then I received an email with this explanation of love below.  It is complex and simple at the same time and seems to tie in with self-compassion to me and reminds me of epiphanies – of how everyone I’m interviewing is so very different and they all have such unique epiphany and life experiences, yet everyone has something to share that relates to us all and the human experience.  We are all unique yet alike.

‘Love has no opposites…It rules by lifting up.  Through its mastery of paradox, love ends duality.’

Wishing you and yours a week full of love as we end 2009 and the holiday season and race toward the new year…

“You cannot define love with even the largest definition, for your understanding is not external to it. Because love is who you are, you will never fully comprehend its mysteries…Love is the Divine Mystery. Love cannot be controlled. It cannot be predicted. It cannot be enforced. It cannot be enslaved. It cannot be killed. It cannot be defined. If you would speak of the depth, the power, and the infinite genius of love, think upon its ability to end all duality. Love has no opposites. It cannot be captured, and yet it willingly serves. It is infinitely free, and yet it abides in captivity. It cannot be enforced, and yet it is the basis of all law. It is the bringer of truth, and yet it never judges. It is the seer of all things, and yet it never condemns. It conquers by surrendering. It rules by lifting up. Through its mastery of paradox, love ends all duality.”

“Love Without End, “The Beloved.”

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