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Browse every published article connected to Marc Lerner, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
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Browse every published article connected to Marc Lerner, or search within this exact expert archive.
During the day, do you focus on thoughts or feelings? This is so subtle, it is hard to really know. That is where you place your focus during the day. Is it on your thoughts? Is it on your feelings? Or, is it on the combination? The combination is definitely used by a majority of people. This article will help you create an equal balance.
When someone you love deals with a health problem that cannot be easily solved, the healthy ego sometimes has a hard time dealing with it. Having no solution to their problem creates a disequilibrium that feels uncomfortable. Whenever we have nothing to do when we face a challenge, it is not only uncomfortable; it inhibits our deepest wisdom from manifesting. This is true for both the patient and the caring observer.
When the essence of your life, which is consciousness, connects to something (like another person or your work), a commitment is formed. A superficial level of commitment happens when your consciousness connects to the thoughts of something and you are just left committed to your own mind. The most common example of a deeper commitment is when your consciousness connects to another’s heart and you are conscious of more than your own mind. In this article, we will explore how commitment is used in healing.r
In today’s news, there is a terrible phenomenon that is happening too often in a conscious society. Bullied youth are committing suicide. We have to teach coping skills to empower our youth to deal with stress. The reaction to stress is determined by how it is interpreted. Being able to control how a traumatic event is interpreted can play a significant role in helping bullied children deal with their challenge.
When a person faces a challenge they cannot control, like an illness that puts them close to death, they need to learn to focus on the silence beyond their thoughts. We have been conditioned to focus on thinking our entire life, but there isn’t a comforting thought that really prepares us for that challenge. That preparation develops throughout a lifetime by developing qualities like confidence. Confidence, which in Latin comes from “con fide” or “with faith,” determines how you face that challenge. Real confidence doesn’t change your challenge; it just determines how you deal with it.
The US spends the most on health care, but ranks 49th in life expectancy. The problem is not smoking, accidents, etc. The problem is the health care system, according to researchers at Columbia University. "Smoking, obesity, etc. are major risk factors in all countries for an individual's health. (But) In the US, we have a highly inefficient health system that is taking away financial resources from lifesaving programs."
When a person faces a challenge they cannot control, like an illness that puts them close to death, they need to learn to focus on the silence beyond their thoughts. We have been conditioned to focus on thinking our entire life, but there isn’t a comforting thought that really prepares us for that challenge. That preparation develops throughout a lifetime by developing qualities like confidence. Confidence, which in Latin comes from “con fide” or “with faith,” determines how you face that challenge. Real confidence doesn’t change your challenge; it just determines how you deal with it.
A health crisis is one of the most challenging struggles we will face in our life. We will all face challenges. Sometimes, we can control what happens and sometimes we can’t. In both cases, it is how you approach that challenge that determines how you deal with it. In this article, we will see how your self-image plays a significant role in how you deal with challenges. For instance, when you first hear the doctor say that you have a particular illness; that is a significant challenge that you have to become actively involved with.
Many of us have lived a life where we have become proficient in accomplishing goals; we live our lives in that state of mind. When we are close to the end of life, what is our goal? In our lives, we have bee "the Doer," where we do things by focusing on our thoughts. Preparing for death requires us to also be "the Receiver."
When we think of trust, we think of people, places and things. That kind of trust, even though you experience it within, is directed outside of you. When we face a challenge, we need to learn how to trust ourselves. When we trust ourselves, we are open to receive powerful inner resources. When we do not trust ourselves, we can be resistant to inner resources because they do not fit into our self-concept. We trust what is important to us. In my work, I teach people how to take the importance out of their thoughts and return importance to life and their deepest wisdom.
A person who deals with a physical condition that is beyond their control has is forced to an inner depth, which is uncommon in society. If all we do is try to fit into society, we ignore the unique opportunity our illness offers. Our illness forces us beyond the socially accepted depth and allows us an inner exploration most people ignore. Your health challenge is an opportunity to explore that depth.
Anxiety is often caused by the way you interpret what is happening to you or what is about to happen. There are very simple adjustments we can make that can transform the way we deal with our life's challenges. We direct our thoughts to our self-image and whichever self-image we focus on responds to that in-put. Think to a negative, anxious self-image and you get negative anxious responses or interpretations. Direct your thoughts to a positive, conscious in the moment self-image and you get conscious in the moment responses or interpretations.r
Too often, people with handicaps live their life just to survive. This happens to people when their focus is on what is wrong, but that is not the only focus a handicapped person can have. It is possible to find a peaceful center within you. When you focus there, it is easy to ignore the thoughts that bother you about your handicap. In fact, when you focus on that center, even the handicapped person is transported into a tranquil experience and can have fun.r
Today’s current events are dealt with by focusing on what people believe. For instance, some people believe that the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, was justified by the police. And others believe it wasn’t. Another issue is going to war in the Middle East against ISIS. Some people feel it is not our business and we should not be involved; others feel that they are a threat against America and we are justified to be active against them. A third issue is what the Republicans feel and what the Democrats feel.
Waiting is a skill we often ignore. It may seem to have as little value as nothingness, but in Zen, nothingness is a profound state of Being. When we focus on thinking, we tend to aspire to conclusions. This could be attempting to achieve a goal, attaining a desire or simply ending what we are doing, but the art of waiting has a different focus. With the focus on thoughts, we are much more aware of time. When our awareness goes beyond thinking, we enter a timeless moment where the Wisdom of the Body choreographs our life.
When the essence of your life, which is consciousness, connects to something like another person or your work, a commitment is formed. A superficial level of commitment happens when your consciousness connects to the thoughts of something and you are just left committed to your own mind. The most common example of a deeper commitment is when your consciousness connects to another’s heart and you are conscious of more than your own mind. In this article, we will explore how commitment is used in healing.
The hospital is a place where a lot of frustration and anxiety meet professional care. It is a place where an incredible amount of information is shared. In this article, we will focus on the patient’s role in dealing with being in the hospital. Ideally, the patient should strive to be in a super-conscious state of mind. This means being totally aware in the moment without the distraction of their own thoughts.
It seems as though being sick means you are not supposed to have a good time…but why not? If you are going to deal with health challenges, have a good time doing it. If you have a choice, which you do, why not choose to enjoy yourself? Humor can set the tone of how you deal with difficult challenges, either light or heavy. How you interpret your reality defines the quality of your life and your ability to meet your challenge. Humor is an amazing tool for conscious communication. Let’s look at you relating to others, their relating to you and you relating to yourself.
In a health crisis, you will find many suggestions that come from the professionals you see that tell you what to do, but equally important is how you do them. In the past, the doctor’s role in healing was to be the unquestionable authority. Today, in the interest of reducing medical expenses, the doctor/patient partnership is the most authoritative way to get the best treatments. The doctor’s training and medical treatments are constantly evolving, but we need to learn how to develop one important aspect of healing-the patient’s role.
A person’s character is often determined by their exte al possessions or actions, but the real quality of character comes from the habits created in your mind. Habits that create your self-image are based on how you were related to when you were younger. The way people related to you teaches you how to relate to yourself. This article focuses on the habits we create that define our character.r
When people greet you with, “Hi, how are you?” most of the time they do not expect you to answer the question. But, when you are dealing with a chronic illness, that question can be very annoying. A person in a health struggle has to be very aware of who they are speaking to and not share with people who cannot consciously deal with it. This may seem like a small thing, but sometime the little changes you make in your mind can completely change your perspective.
When a person deals with a health challenge, they are forced to learn amazing life lessons. You don’t have to be sick to learn them; you just have to follow the mental path they were forced to follow as they coped with their challenge. Maybe their self-image sabotaged their life and they got sick as they struggled with it. You don’t have to get sick to go through that transformation; you just have to be willing to change.
If pure consciousness is at the core of everyone, your environment starts with your body. Most people look to their environment to find quality, but the highest quality exists at your center. When you develop habits that aspire to connect to your center, you can deal with every challenge with confidence, utilizing powerful inner resources. When you go that deep, you naturally find quality in life totally independent from any struggle.r
When a habit is formed, it contains the consciousness you were in when it was developed. The self-image you had and the quality of self-trust you had when it was developed automatically define the quality of the habit. So the simple way to break a bad habit is self-development. Simply by developing the habits of these life skills, you will be conscious enough in a week to avoid falling into the trap of your bad habit. Only you have the power to control this internal phenomenon.r
One of our most valuable gifts is our focus. I define focus as how we direct our awareness; for what we give our attention to, is what we become conscious of. Even though our visual focus may seem little more than a glance, our awareness has the ability to transport our consciousness. Unfortunately, most of our glances are unconscious and that is like spilling our consciousness out without any concern. When you deal with a health challenge, you have to be even more aware of how you are conscious.
The part of you that listens to your thoughts is the subtle consciousness which is the essence of life. Most people think life is represented by their thoughts, but this essence is beyond thoughts. From this consciousness, imagery can communicate to your body. Most people think about their body simply using their thoughts. That is like talking to a foreigner in a language they do not understand.
The human brain is an incredible creation and we have not yet scratched the surface of its real potential. The purpose of this article is to give you a framework for how to use your brain to perceive a broader view than we usually use. The majority of us have a constant focus on our thinking mind. This has been a necessity to advance society, science and personal interactions. This new framework does not limit the potential of our mind, but it includes certain aspects of the brain that we overlook.
This article will give you an alte ative perspective in how to deal with a traumatic challenge you cannot control. The basic point is when you don’t have the ability to avoid the challenge, you do have the ability to control how you deal with it. The simple fact of how you approach it determines the quality of your involvement in this struggle. Here are some important questions you have to consider. Of course, in the moment the challenge is before you, there isn’t time to think about the answers. If you consciously deal with these questions now, your responses will naturally manifest.r
Over 90% of deaths are preceded by an illness. After first diagnosis of a serious illness, but when death is not yet a threat, you can develop habits to make that time in your life have quality. Living a quality life to your final breath is something we all can do, if we consciously prepare to do that. It isn’t the easiest thing to do, but all it takes is to live your life in the moment.r
Everybody has wisdom; we just do not always know how to tap it. We value our thoughts and identify with them, sometimes more than our wisdom. To really tap inner wisdom, we have to go beyond thinking and be receptive to the Wisdom of our Body.
Some people get more attention by sharing their problems than by striving to go beyond their limitations. This is especially true when you face a health challenge, for it is easier to get sympathy and kindness from others than to get praise for being well. When you focus on what is wrong with you, you are actually giving life to your problems. Our weakness seems to grab our attention and trigger the need to seek getting care from others. When we are sick, we need to consciously avoid falling into these habits.
Who we are seems to be the most important issue in our life. Our personality is how the world knows us. It was created from the habits we learned beginning as a very young child. We developed those habits by the way people related to us, especially the significant people in our family. Also, the habits formed by the way we related to the exte al world helped teach us who we are. The personality is like the clothes we wear; it covers us so we are acceptedr
We all carry a lot of unfinished business along with us all the time. The more we accept death, the more in the moment we are. Accepting death is possible, for it makes us reject the parts of us not living in the moment. That is a spiritual gift. If you looked at your life imagining you are going to die soon, unimportant things would fall from your character. Just do the following things and allow your imagination to be real to you. • Sit and become deeply relaxed. The deeper you go, death is more than an idea to you. • Imagine a realistic situation that brings you closer to death.r
We all face challenges in our lifetime. Some people ignore them or only look outside for help. Others take them as an opportunity and tap inner resources to help themselves. How can a difficult challenge serve you? You need to tap new inner resources to deal with it. We too often rely on the old habits in our mind and find comfort in them. When your old habits don’t meet your challenge, you are forced to explore inner resources you seldom use.r
Would you do something that improved your conditio 10%? Then, if you did one thing with that improvement, would you do three more things? I have a chronic illness myself, MS, which really has no medical cure. I do, though, have the ability to change the way I interpret my condition and how I deal with it, which can create changes in the quality of my life. Here is what I can do and the minimal effects they have; • I can change my self image, which changes the perspective on
When a person experiences the negativity of depression, his or her natural reaction is to look for an instant cure. Fortunately, today there exists effective medication for depression, but that doesn’t excuse a conscious patient from actively participating in healing. A study of depression provides an interesting situation to realize the necessity of harmony in the patient-doctor relationship in managing a chronic illness. Depressionr There are 2 types of clinical depression
When the essence of your life, which is consciousness, connects to something, a commitment is formed. A superficial level of commitment happens when your consciousness connects to the thoughts of something and you are just left committed to your own mind. The most common example of a deeper commitment is when your consciousness connects to another’s heart and you are conscious of more than your own mind. In this article, we will explore how commitment is used in healing. We a
We are often challenged when we face something to do that we have not been prepared for. When most of us prepare for a challenge, we think of what we can do. I want to propose a way to prepare for challenges that involves developing oneself on a subconscious level. If we could prepare to develop life skills, like a positive self-image, self-trust and a way of connecting to inner resources, every challenge we face would naturally be easier to deal with. The conscious condition
I define consciousness as our life force. When you take away all of our distractions and limitations, we become more conscious. It isn’t that consciousness evolves, for it is we who evolve to be conscious. From our most intelligent thoughts to our best perceptions, we appreciate them because we are conscious of them. The most important aspiration human beings have is to be more conscious, more alive in the moment and not limited by their own mind. Since our limitations are su
When we face difficult times, how we perceive the situation we are in may cause depression. It is not what happens in the world around us, what other people say or the promise of a dismal future, but by our own mind. When we focus on our thoughts, our own brains create our experience. If you believe that, then you have the power to create positive experiences during difficult times. When you face a life-threatening illness or the loss of your job, that positive experience may
Think of a wheel with a hundred spokes all meeting at the center. Each spoke represents a different aspect of you, but the center represents your self image, where all your thoughts are directed. You may think differently on each spoke, but all of your thoughts are directed to your self image. So as you think, depending on your self image, you get responses to your thoughts. At the center of that wheel, we have the ability to connect to a positive or negative self image. When
When our consciousness runs with familiar habits, boredom seldom exists. It is when consciousness doesn’t benefit from the old habits and you lack interest or purpose in what you do. Boredom is basically getting stuck in your mind with nothing to do and you lack the courage to explore the unknown. To most people security is found in familiar habits. These habits can be thoughts, beliefs or behaviors. Security like that requires no courage, so the unknown poses no challenge. I
The idea of facing a challenge and feeling as though you are given a second chance develops because of your perspective. Too often, we look for exte al situations to be the reason we have a second chance, but what happens within your brain creates the feeling as though you can deal with this challenge again from a better part of you. If that is true; you have the power to create second chances independent of any exte al change. For instance, relating to some people you love c
The most spiritual people I know don’t have to talk about spirituality to be spiritual. I sense them in the moment and their focus inspires me. I used to go to philosophical geniuses to satisfy that thirst, but now I find it in the people I love. Their expression of the heart directly talks to my heart without my intellect and associations intruding. It is as if I don’t exist when I am with them. Now that is a special gift. When I focus on my thoughts and intellect that is ho
Happiness is the simplest expression of life without the limitations of our mind. Unfortunately, most people are used to looking for happiness outside of themselves. In this article, we will explore the reality of finding happiness within. For most people, happiness depends on their interaction with the world around them. For some people, their source of happiness is no longer there and causes disappointment. Let’s look at what happiness is: Every experience in our body is cr
Thinking is the vehicle our consciousness travels in when our ego does the driving. That is how we get what we want...but that is actually a very small part of life. Attraction happens when our consciousness is not locked into our thought patterns. Let me share how the power of being attracted to more than your thoughts really serves you. Let us explore five aspects of life that improve when you are open to being attracted to the reality beyond your thoughts, which I call the
We all possess an amazing power to create the world we live in. The simple act of how we interpret what happens to us is usually subconscious. When you face a challenge you cannot control (like a chronic illness, losing your job or the decision of another person); you can always control the way you interpret your perception of what happens. Victims are people that accept what happens as the only reality they deal with. The empowered person realizes what happens is something t
We live in a world where value is captured in thoughts or it goes unnoticed. Imagine really desiring something without being able to express it in words. Desires have power when they are put into words. Because our focus is on thinking most of the time , we would seldom strive for what we wanted if thoughts didn’t capture it. Thinking is the vehicle our consciousness travels in when our ego does the driving. That is how we get what we want…but that is actually a very small pa
When you face a challenge you cannot control (like a chronic illness, losing your job or the decision of another person); you can always control the way you interpret your perception of what happens. Victims are people that accept what happens as the only reality they deal with. The empowered person realizes what happens is something they have to deal with, but how they interpret what happens determines the quality of their life, their response and how their response is recei
Our Intellect, regardless of how developed it is, seldom taps our powerful inner resources as we face challenges. The power of a confident self image is not an idea. The empowerment of simple self trust does not come from intellectual understanding. The ability to focus accurately does not come from reading a book. Our most useful life skills are developed as our past conditioning meets our challenges and we trust our deepest wisdom. Learning how to develop conscious habits g