Category: inspiration

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Wasn’t That a Time?


“Wasn’t that a time?  Wasn’t that a time to try the souls of men?  Wasn’t that a terrible time?”

The lyrics from a sixties folk song made popular by Peter Paul and Mary reverberate through the decades and remain relevant today.

Unfortunately.

The lyrics to the folk song hearken back to the war for American independence and major conflagrations waged since including World Wars I and II.

I recently bought an album by Tom Paxton.  Listening to his music on YouTube brought me back to the turbulent sixties and my love for the folk artists who became popular then.  Listening to these songs of social conscience and satire, love ballads, Children’s songs and others that reflect beautifully, poignantly and heart fully on our human experience, I am struck by the purity of this music.  It moves me deeply.  It penetrates my soul.  It inspires me to pick up my guitar and sing.

Looking back, I realize that these artists, these wandering troubadours, were great men and women.  Some of them are still alive and singing.  What a time the sixties were.  What noble visions for a better world, given voice by these passionate musicians, arose from the struggle.

Some of these visions have been realized.  We live in a better world today in some respects.  Yet we haven’t yet learned our lessons.  We live in a world where human beings still murder other human beings in the name of God.  We live in a world where a Russian President is intent upon restoring Russia to its Cold War boundaries by invading autonomous neighbor states.  We live in a world where hatred and intolerance still threaten our very existence.

“When will they ever learn,” Mary Travers sings plaintively.  When, indeed, will we ever learn?

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

 

 

 

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Essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation philosophy

Cosmic Orange Juice


Transmission. Everybody has one. Not your car transmission. It’s more like an energy signature.

The transmission of an awakened human being can be life transforming and life enhancing.  It is like cosmic orange juice–a vitamin for the soul, water for the seed, nectar for a heart thirsty for joy, wholeness, well-being and fulfillment.

In his book, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, spiritual awakener Saniel Bonder writes:

“As [students] lose more conceptual, belief-based faith in their old pursuits, the pilot light of their intrinsic being becomes more accessible to the catalytic heat of our transmission. With a sufficient exposure to that energy, Being itself is then able to initiate the awakening and trans-formative process within the individual. The results are no less profound than that of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.”

One of the major obstacles to personal and spiritual growth is an inability to admit that we need something outside of ourselves to truly activate and accelerate the  process of self-realization. That something is hard to define and harder still to find.  We can admit that we need family, friends, a spouse or boy/girlfriend. We can accept the help of a trained mental health counselor when our limited internal and external resources are not enough to meet the difficulties life hurls at us. Yet it usually takes a rare form of desperation to seek the help and wisdom of a spiritual teacher.

It is only when everything else fails to satisfy that we are ready to go beyond the boundaries of convention and delve into the realm of the Spirit.

This point of extreme desperation is the beginning.  It may require a change from one teacher to another. The deep need for spiritual nourishment may begin with curiosity and deepen with time, perhaps lifetimes, until the time is right to dive deeply. You may audition innumerable teachers and philosophies until you walk into the right room.  Once you walk through that door, however, it soon becomes clear that what you hear and feel are what you are looking for. The transmission and the words fit like a glove—perfect for your needs. In time, you won’t hear everything that you want to hear, but that is another stage of the process.

I am grateful to have found in bountiful measure the cosmic orange juice that my heart craves. May it be so for you.

Blessings on your journey.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

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Essays inspiration issues life Making Changes motivation Uncategorized

The Golden Rope


In my last blog, I promised to write more about my residential retreat with Saniel and Linda Groves-Bonder at their home in Sonoma, California.  I left you and me hanging on the question whether I would have enough to talk about during my two-day retreat.  It turns out my fear was almost groundless.  I did run out of “personal stuff” to bring forward, but it didn’t matter.  We filled the space by working on two projects I’m doing with Saniel and Linda, and by simply being together in simple, every-day terms.

For instance, I volunteered to drive Saniel into Sonoma to do some errands, including buying cat food and six rather large sacks of bird seed.  Linda likes to feed the birds—every one of them, it seems, living in Sonoma County and beyond.  I can imagine word of mouth traveling at warp speed within the aviary community about delicious, free food.

Have you ever been inside a hay/grain/bird seed store?  Not this city slicker.  I had only been to the main “drags” in town.  Saniel helped me to experience Sonoma from a resident’s point-of-view.  It’s a quaint country town with a population of only 10,400.  Let me add, I gave myself a few extra days to explore some of the surrounding cities.  I found the city of Sausalito to be the most interesting of these.  It’s a beautiful town overlooking the San Francisco Bay with lovely homes terraced into the hills and populated by artists, musicians, New-Age thinkers, and other adventuresome souls.  The more conventional residents were probably working in nearby  San Francisco somewhere across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The weather in northern California at this time of year can only be described as “glorious and majestic.”

Pardon my digression.

I become really happy around Saniel and Linda thanks to their powerful transmissions.  During our time together, we laughed, worked hard, and had lots of fun. There was a bonus event (for me) on Sunday called “a sitting” where Saniel and Linda hosted nine local people for a two-hour session of meditation and sharing.

After these two and a half days, I’m cooked.  I can’t say if I’m rare, medium, or well-done.  I just know I’m cooked and it’s a good thing.

While meditating at the Sunday morning sitting an image came to me: hands knitting golden threads into a golden rope.  The image suggested to me a certain perfect harmony that surrounded everything Saniel, Linda and I said and did.  There was another entity at work with us, weaving together the strands of our collective efforts into a golden rope.  Everything that happened just sort of fell into place, as if by magic. (I know what my next book project will be about.  It fell into my lap as lightly as a feather.)  The golden rope brought us closer together; more comfortable in our Being and knowing of one another—linked heart-to-heart, now and into the future.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

 

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Something Different This Way Comes*


 

Blood Is the Nectar of Life

A year after writing Scarlet Ambrosia, I see the story through a different pair of eyes.  At the core of the novel is a young man’s struggle with darkness and light.  The vampire archetype, I now realize, is a metaphor for my heart’s dream to realize its divine nature.  The supernatural powers and turbo charged energy level Devon acquires as a vampire make him half-human and half-god, something like the mythological Greek gods.  He can choose to use his new powers for good or evil purposes.

*Blog title inspired by Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

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Essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation philosophy reflections

The Ultimate Goal


The question is, how can I make the best use of my time?

I’ll bet you’ve asked yourself that question a few times. It used to come up for me once in a while. Now it pops up at least once a week. It’s because I have less time. I can hear my “consciousness clock” ticking louder and louder, like a woman who wants to bear children hears her biological clock ticking.

The child I want to bring into the world is my realization of consciousness. It’s time for me to awaken. I don’t even know what that means. I’ve read about it extensively, but it takes more than reading. It takes practice, focused intention, an activating, energetic transmission, and I don’t know what else. Maybe that last missing ingredient is “grace.” I don’t know what that is either.

Most of the people throughout history who have realized consciousness have done so with the help of a teacher or a series of teachers. Finding a teacher is usually a matter of sincere intention. When this intention reaches a “boiling point,” an appropriate teacher, or adept, enters the student’s life. It’s a phenomenon well documented by inspiring stories handed down through the ages.

And so it falls to me to take full advantage of the teachers and the community of fellow students who have recently come into my life.

Achieving any major goal is a tricky business. It helps enormously to have a carefully chosen team of mentors, teachers, and peer support to overcome the inevitable obstacles and downright perplexing passages along the way.

It is so easy for me to be distracted. For example, my mind constantly presents me with pressing issues that aren’t truly pressing, and concerns that have little importance in the big or the little scheme of things.

That’s where my team comes in. They help me to stay focused on what I consider to be the ultimate goal of human existence; awakening to the bliss of the infinite Self, and then learning how to integrate that consciousness with my individual self. It will take a small or large miracle, but when I get right down to it, there isn’t much else on my drawing board that really needs to get done.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

 

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Essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation musings reflections

Highest and Best Use


There is a phrase I learned when I was a commercial real estate broker;  “the highest and best use of a property.”

As time passes, economic conditions and neighborhoods change.  A commercial property originally built as a three-story parking garage can generate higher income and justify the cost of construction if it is torn down and rebuilt as a high-rise office building.

I feel something analogous is happening to me as my awakening unfolds. The highest and best use of the property given to me, my body, is evolving into something that can be of more use to me in terms of enjoyment and of greater use to others.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m morphing into, but I’m positive it’s not a new X-Man character. I’m excited to find out who I become. In the meantime, I’m writing a few more blogs.

 

 

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Essays inspiration musings reflections

I Am Who I Am*


divine humanI’m growing out of this idea of “becoming a better person.”

Now, it’s more like honing my skills or adding another tool to the toolbox to move forward in this process of becoming.

It seems to me that self-improvement is just a concept with no substance, no foundation in the field of Reality.

My daughter emailed me a list of 30 “Earth Shaking” self-help books. I said, “Danielle, I’ve read more self-help books than you have miles on your five year-old car. None of them helped, but this practice of Waking Down is transforming my life.”

I wasn’t trying to convert my daughter. I was just speaking my truth.

*I may have stolen the title of this blog from Popeye.

Photo: http://www.soulmirror.net

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Essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation musings poems positive thinking reflections

As Being Comes Alive


Well-being - Beach Silhouette

As Being comes alive in me, fear and anxiety dissipate.

I feel more peace.

Every action I take has meaning.

Heaviness yields to lightness.

Clarity, simplicity, and focus become second nature.

The future is uncertain yet full of possibilities for creativity and enjoyment.

I can make every breath serve a higher purpose.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.

 

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Thumbs Up


Three Days to DarknessIt’s time to blast my own horn again.

The Midwest Book Review gave “Three Days to Darkness” a “Thumbs Up.” It’s encouraging when anyone other than my wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and best-friend Joe Canzano responds positively to my novel. (My mother read half the book. She liked the writing but not the story). 

Here’s the review by Diane Donovan, Mid-West Book Review eBook reviewer:

“The magic number is three. Three days to save the world. Three people to help Darius McPherson succeed. And three important life lessons to learn in the process.

The setting is a war being planned in Heaven itself by a reluctant warrior too young to be in Heaven in the first place, and the mission involves saving humanity from its own follies: no mean assignment for a young man killed in a drive-by shooting and suddenly tasked with saving the world.

Three Days to Darkness is about magic on many levels: the incongruity of Heaven and its purposes, the absurdities of Mankind, and the passionate concerns of a boy faced with apocalypse on a scale that moves beyond singular death and into the destruction of humanity itself.

As if this wasn’t enough, add demons and a road that literally leads to Hell (albeit paved with good intentions) and you have a fast-paced thriller novel that defies the usual genre definitions of fantasy, thriller or action piece and creeps into the realm of the impossible.

Three Days to Darkness darkens rapidly as Darius investigates company clinical trials, angel operatives, and deadly courses of action, spicing his approach with a cocky blend of offense and defense that presumes a degree of training he actually lacks: “Crooking his arm, Darius lifted his hand just below chin level with all five fingers splayed. He reminded himself of David Carradine as Caine in a “Kung Fu” TV episode. A more experienced angel operative would certainly prepare to attack with “way more” subtlety, he figured.”

Doses of humor are tossed in for effective comic relief as Darius questions why a Heaven governed by the concept of free will would intervene in the affairs of man – and why it would choose to do so for one event and not another: “Darius sat perfectly still for a while with his hands in his lap before speaking again. “I’m confused,” he said with a solemn expression. “On the one hand, you say everything that happens to a man is the result of free will, and on the other hand, you send me to Earth to stop a pill from going on the market. I don’t get it.” “Good observation, Darius. It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s more like a distinction. We have to pick our fights carefully. We try not to interfere with the operation of human free will. We sat by and watched in horror, for example, when Roman soldiers crucified Christ and terrorists flew commercial airliners into the Twin Towers. But there are times when we must take action, when a worldwide catastrophe could result from human failure, to put it in a shorthand manner. We intervened during the two world wars and the Cuban Missile crisis, to cite a few recent cases. We have also been involved when the psychological, moral or spiritual evolution of the species is at risk. A literal example of such a case was our influence on the outcome of the famous ‘Scopes Trial.’”

What lessons will Darius learn in his latest incarnation as a new angel? He has only three days to absorb them – or witness the end of all days.

Three Days to Darkness is a fast-paced, vivid read that incorporates all the elements of a superior mystery, thriller, and fantasy. It’s certainly not a portrait of a predictable afterlife, a conventional Heaven, or a banal post-life mission. All these facets merge to create a uniquely involving story

blending amusing moments with engrossing encounters between disparate forces; each with their own special interests and agendas.

And Darius? He’s in it for the ride, and takes readers along with him in an unexpected journey through Heaven, Hell, and beyond.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Essays inspiration issues life Making Changes motivation reflections

Some Advice I Need to Follow


I wrote this seven years ago.  I just updated it.

I have found one of the best ways to keep my life interesting is to make a regular practice of doing things I haven’t done before.

If I am bored, apathetic, uninspired, or generally in a rut, it is usually because I have allowed myself to become a creature of habit.   I have found the best ways to renew enthusiasm include exposure to new ideas, a new hobby, continued education, or even a new career.

We are all born with a natural curiosity to explore the world around us and the world within ourselves.  This innate curiosity is often most evident in children.  As we grow older, there is a tendency to lose touch with this curiosity as survival needs, responsibilities, and pressures to conform literally choke the life out of our thirst to know more.

Nature hates a vacuum.  If I am not moving forward, I am automatically moving backward, even though it may seem I am standing still.  Within us, there is an urge to expand.  I must make a conscious choice to move forward; to expand.  If I don’t, the default choice of moving backward and becoming smaller will automatically be engaged.

It takes an act of will to grow, to reach my highest potential.  It takes courage, determination, and perseverance to blaze my own path. I must constantly remind myself the rewards far outweigh the risks.

I must always remember Self-realization and the achievement of personal freedom require discretion, discernment, and self-examination.  I am endowed with the creativity to shape my life into the reality I carry in my heart.  The path stretches before me.  I only have to take one step at a time.

How do I begin?  I listen to my heart.  I summon the courage to follow my heart, even if it tells me things that may make no sense at first.  I live with my heart on fire as much as possible.

I am very clear about what I want now.  I am Love.  I am Peace.  I am Joyful.  I am creative in a way that benefits others.  I am Radiant.  I am having fun.

The most important thing to remember is that I am not alone.  I make an effort to connect with my Divine Self every day.  I seek the things my heart yearns for, and then prepare to receive them.

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.