BY ZACHARY FEDER
Crying? We don’t cry here. Crying is taboo. Forbidden. Verboten. Because if we cry then we’re weak, and if we’re weak then we’re likely to die, and if we’re likely to die then no one will ever want to be associated with us because even being in proximity to us will threaten their survival too. So if we cry we will be ostracized, isolated, and left for dead. So we don’t cry.
Instead we repress, anesthetize, and push down the emotions like an ostrich with its head in the sand, hoping that because we ignore the pain within us, it will never have any effect over us.
Do not be fooled. Your unprocessed emotions do not vanish when you ignore them. On the contrary, they continue to act out in spite of you in an ongoing attempt to heal the wounded part of you. Ignore your emotions and you have only two options. Either to continue repressing them in increasingly damaging ways with alcohol, drugs, food, work, or sex, or by simply allowing them to be triggered like a volcano erupting again and again when you least expect it. Either way, make no mistake—your emotions are stronger than you. While they can occasionally be stifled, they can never be silenced.
Exercising Emotion
If the gym of the body is the gym, then the gym of the heart is attention, the gym of the mind is meditation, and the gym of the emotion is catharsis. As the word itself suggests, “e-motions” need to move and require your active engagement to do so. Anger, depression, fear all thrive when you are stationary, still, stuck, and unable (or unwilling) to shift.
The Yoga of Crying is a practice that we have long forgotten. It is an upgraded way of using the body’s natural process of catharsis to move and cleanse internal wounds that would other wise remain in the body to fester indefinitely. The Yoga of Crying has three parts:
Jumpstarting the Motor
People have often asked me: “I understand what to do when I’ve be gun, but I can’t just sit down and push the cry button. How do I start?” The answer is simple: find a short clip of music or film that touches you deeply. For example, we all know music that can reach our hearts. We all know scenes in movies that choke us up. For some it may be a scene of unrequited love or a hero’s moment of sacrifice for the greater good. If you have shed a tear as a result of great drama or music, then you have your way in. Use these tools to help you pry open the door and jump start your tears. When you notice the process taking on a momentum of its own, simply press pause and take over the reins yourself.
How Deep Does the Rabbit Hole Go?
In the beginning you may find that you cry for yourself, for the struggles that you have undergone in your life, in childhood and beyond. Going deeper, you may find that you begin to cry for your family and for all the ways that those relationships may have been painful and challenging. Going deeper still, you may begin to cry as a result of your existential suffering, not simply for having been born, but for the pain of having manifested into form.
The Yoga of Crying and Death
The origin of this process comes from the feelings that began bubbling up in me a few years before my father’s passing. He had been diagnosed with cancer, and despite our attempts to delay the illness it was obvious he would not recover. As the end of his life began to loom large, I found myself wondering what more I could do to prepare.
It was then that my body began to whisper, “You do not know how to cry, and you must learn. Grief is approaching, and you are running from it. But if you think you can escape, you are wrong. Turn and face it now. Meet it head-on. Become conscious of it. Transform it.”
When my father did die I was grateful for having spent the previous year practicing the Yoga of Crying. I had already done so much active, conscious processing of practically every aspect of our relationship that I was able to be radically more present to him, and in the moments leading up to his death. When the time came I wasn’t simply overwhelmed with my own feelings, or wrestling with events beyond my control. I was able to experience them fully while remaining grounded and calm in the midst of the grief.
As a result, something else became apparent to me. On the night of his passing, around the exact time that he was leaving his body, I felt as if something had been wrenched from within me. If you have lost some one close, you may know this feeling. It is as if we not only hold a place for our loved ones within our hearts and minds but also in our bodies. When they die it is as if this space, this part of them that has been some how interwoven with our own selves, is suddenly and brutally ripped out of us, leaving a gaping hole mouthing a silent, agonizing lament.
Had I not spent so much time practicing, my father’s passing would have hit me like a tidal wave. The inexperienced, fragile boat of myself would have likely been thrown off course, perhaps even capsizing. In stead, I was able to ride the storm of this brutal, sacred moment with clarity and vulnerability. I was able to be there fully without shutting down and disassociating. This made the experience of my father’s death one of the most treasured and precious of my life.
Zachary Feder is a writer and consultant supporting people in illuminating and resolving the unconscious, hard-to-find roots that block health, well-being, and happiness. ZacharyFeder.com
]]>Inhale, bring your palms together, and begin by dedicating this practice to all the great yogis and yoginis who are turning in their graves or laughing into their loincloths because of the Diet-Pepsimaxification that Western culture has unleashed all over their sacred path of transcendence. Take a moment to honor the great Patanjali who an entirely new wave of young mat-slingers often confuse with a sweet dessert that follows your dhal and rice course. Give reverence to the Rig Veda that is absolutely not the great-grandfather of the Lord Vader. Exhale and release any judgment around the effectiveness of hip-hop yoga, wine and yoga, or products like Water Mat Yoga to accelerate your union with “the god head.” If Western yoga culture is going through its adolescence, then it needs our support, wisdom, and compassion as it navigates through the madness of the modern-day mass media marketplace.
Sun salutation, raise your arms to the sky, and primal scream for every time that a teenybopper’s cellphone with a Taylor Swift ring tone has started playing “Shake It Off” during your Corpse Pose, causing your subtle body to crash into your physical like the meteor that ended the dinosaurs. Extend your neck and stretch out your fingertips as if you were reaching for a playlist that didn’t drag your already tender heart through an emotional roller coaster of breakup songs courtesy of Rhianna, Dido, and Adele. Release any guilt for weeping about the tragedies of your life while simultaneously staring at the hottie in front of you through the tears.
Exhale Downward Dog, and forgive yourself for practicing for years only to find that you may be single-handedly keeping two chiropractors and a gait specialist in business. Exhale love and appreciation because you eat organic and gluten- and sugar-free while still experiencing body insecurity and after-lunch fatigue. Tenderly acknowledge that most people you know are just doing what they can to keep their hair from catching fire in the perfect storm of their personal and professional lives while not consuming too much alcohol, coffee, cheese, and chocolate over the course of a single day even though it’s the quickest way to Samadhi at a fraction of the price. Be patient and allow everyone to take the journey in their own time. If that journey happens to be better looking than yours, avoid them. Exhale deeply. Plan to eat chocolate later.
Inhale Cobra, and stretch out that lymph system clogged with the smog of a thousand fossil fuel refineries, at peace in the knowledge that you and every single one of those fat-cat ExxonMobil executives are one. Exhale love for all the climate-change deniers, corporate henchmen, lobbyists, and Big Pharma hitmen who are just macro expressions of that
irritating newbie who spends the entire class grunting and splashing you with his man boob sweat. As each droplet hits you like acid rain on Mother Nature’s brow, inhale and delight as if being anointed by the savory tears of Lord Krishna himself.
Warrior 1, reflect without judgment on the predominantly white privilege of Western yoga and how it is often accused of being divorced from the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time. Warrior 2, extend your arms while considering yoga’s place in the Black Lives Matter movement, immigration, environmentalism, as well as the groundbreaking pioneers who are changing it by taking addiction, education, healthcare, prison reform, and a dozen other important issues to the mat. If you’re not already doing so, imagine a future in which you serve the greater good by sticking your neck out in more than just a Fish Pose. If yoga is union with the Divine, then I’m sure we can all agree that this doesn’t mean that place over there, somewhere else, in that non-dual VIP room of emptiness that’s often just escapism dressed up in its Sunday best. On the contrary, it means identifying with everyone and everything, everywhere no matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable it is, indefinitely. You know this.
And exhale into Corpse Pose. Surrender, give up, and die to it all. Die to the people who still claim that yoga is simply “expensive stretching” and to those who still believe that everyone “is constantly farting.” Die to the scandals about teachers sleeping with their students and to the overwhelming surge in trainings that have oversaturated the market. Die to the need to make sense of a spiritual path that has exploded like a $24 billion money shot into the very face of American culture without balking, or judging it as anything other than evidence that something, ironically, is working.
Above all, bring appreciation to the part of you that serves this very significant movement, and make an intention for the next chapter of its life—young adulthood. Then bring your hands to your heart and release yourself into the heartbreaking preciousness of this moment, knowing that you are not alone, that you are loved beyond measure, and that when the world gets too much to bear, you can always just press play, and shake it off. . . .
Zachary Feder, a writer and consultant, can be reached at ZacharyFeder.com.
]]>BY ZACHARY FEDER
Food gives us life, and then one day we realize that it also offers us escape. When we suffer we eat, and when we eat, we fall asleep awake. Fine dining in the modern world isn’t simply a competition to create the most delectable dish but to design the most effective existential anesthetic. Isn’t ice cream just a “10-Minute Distraction from the Suffering of Life Milk Product,” a spicy tuna hand roll simply a “Forget Your Troubles for 30 Minutes Fish Wrap”? Do you remember the moment when taste, succulence, and texture became less important to you than the degree to which a meal could capture your attention and transport you into a dopamine-fueled bliss state?
When the ennui of life dawns on the unenlightened self, the logic of making every meal an escape suddenly becomes self-evident. Because god forbid I find myself experiencing a moment of neurochemical sobriety between my bruschetta buzz and the ego annihilation of my burger to realize that I’m attempting to fill the hole in my soul by stuffing the one in my face.
Yet so goes the journey—yearning day after day for more caloric luxury, more mouth-watering moments of ecstasy—until we become sick of the indigestion bouts and tired of the sugar spikes and decide that it’s time to free ourselves from food. So we slowly begin to increase the quality, subtlety, and purity of what we eat while decreasing the quantity and variety. Instead of gorging, we begin to fast, to try macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan, raw. Little by little we begin to rehabilitate our palate so that one day, in a revelation on par with the grandest spiritual experience, we recognize that even a single leaf of lettuce is exquisite.
But the journey is not necessarily selfevident and for most of us involves moving through several stages. Here are four of the main ones that can help you determine if you’re overdue for an upgrade.
Toxic Food
Championed by every gas station and convenience store selling products in off-gassing cellophane and tarred with preservatives to outlast uranium, “toxic foods” are temples of high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, and monosodium glutamate. These unperishables include every candy bar, soft drink, cereal, and bag of cheesy poofs in luminescent colors you’d expect to find in toxic waste. If some of your diet consists of “the Toxic,” you’re the part of humanity that will either mutate to become the first generation of X-Men or whose genetic line will be eradicated.
Unconscious Food
Found at every deli, chain restaurant, diner, and supermarket that cuts corners to provide you the cheapest sustenance, “Unconscious Food” has substandard nutritional value that’s conveniently imperceptible to the average consumer. It may look wholesome but rest assured that you’re likely being served misidentified fish laden with heavy metals, vegetables saturated with pesticides, and industrially farmed meats from traumatized livestock. Hiding in plain sight, these seemingly innocuous emporiums can be identified by their enthusiastic declarations of “natural,” “fresh,” and “healthy.”
Conscious Food
When you eat consciously, you’re shopping organically, locally, and ethically with the bag that your mom got when the co-op opened in 1973. Your fish is wild, your water pure, your vegetables lush, and your meat grass-fed and sprinkled with fairy dust. Now sugar is your nemesis. Gluten your kryptonite. Trans fat your al Qaeda. Sure, you get laughed at by your biochemically oblivious friends , but you can console yourself with the fact that you don’t have leaky gut and an anger issue. When you go conscious, there’s no going back. You’d now rather go hungry than fill your body temple with crap just to save a buck. Your greatest discovery from going nutrient dense? You end up eating not more, but less.
Vibrant Food
When you take the leap to eating vibrantly, your junk food becomes cacao and goji berries dipped in unicorn tears, your condiments include gourmet sea salt dried on the crown chakras of ascended masters, your desserts are now sweetened with honey infused with royal jelly wrenched from the panties of only the most fertile queen bees. You’re consuming neurologically protective oils and algae, gut biome–balancing pickled sea vegetables, and anti-inflammatory herbs and elixirs. You juice with religious fervor. Fruit is dehydrated on sight. Even the idea of using your placenta to make a stem cell–producing minestrone isn’t out of the question. At the vibrant stage, you’re not a foodie so much as a modern-day druid on homeopathic steroids.
But Why Should I Eat Better?
When you eat poorly, you’re dim-witted, sluggish to revolt, fearful to rebel and stand up for what you believe in. You’re literally fueling your subservience to the leviathan consumer industry. Conversely, when you take on the burden of eating consciously and endorse businesses pioneering a healthy food alternative, you’re not only buttressing your energy, supporting the balance of your brain chemistry, and improving your hiring potential, you’re lobbying for a whole host of preventable, manmade illnesses to be eliminated, and for Mother Nature to be finally included in the women’s liberation movement.
Above all, you’re powering your courage and determination so that you can meet the injustice and unconsciousness of the world day after agonizing day with your eyes wide open and your heart on fire. Healthy food isn’t just the breakfast of champions, it’s the breakfast of revolutionaries. And in case you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of one, and the front line is the cash register. So whether you want to change government policy, live your dreams more boldly, or hope to experience nonduality more quickly, the quality of your consumption—on all levels—is essential to the degree of life that you bring to the party. This is why every time you put something in your mouth, you’re not just making a choice for your body, you’re making it for humanity.
Zachary Feder is a personal and business development consultant specializing in high performance and the resolution of unconscious trauma. He has been regularly eating food for almost 40 years and can be reached at ZacharyFeder.com.
]]>BY ZACHARY FEDER
One of the great unacknowledged shadows that plagues modern men, and by association modern women and society as a whole, is embedded within the secretive, often-unconscious act of male masturbation. Your relationship to this topic may be reflected by the amount of anxiety, relief, or projection you experience from reading this. It’s not a subject we enjoy talking about. In fact, it is one of our last taboos. And for good reason.
First, I think we can all agree that there’s nothing empowering about cowering in a corner of your house several times a week like a dribbling medieval peasant frantically trying to strangle a weasel. It’s just not a good look. There’s also the side effect that masturbation, if done quickly (which it usually is), trains us to ejaculate prematurely. Just what everyone wants more of.
And what of the advice about jerking off before a date? Really? What towering intellect came up with the idea of shooting all your unagi into an old sock before meeting an expression of the divine feminine? What if you make it to home base? The release of your cosmic life force should have the power of a samurai sword chopping off the tip of a fire hydrant. It should explode with the force of Old Faithful. It should be an event. Do not jerk off before a date.
What’s really going on here is far more disempowering than simply losing control of your chi in the presence of a powerful woman when you should be transmuting it back up your spine and shooting it out of your third eye like a boss. What this is really about is where modern man has been trained to go when masturbating, that from a young age we have been indoctrinated to focus our awareness onto a specific, secretive place inside our psyche that is often contrary to what a fulfilling sexual experience looks like.
What I’m talking about is not your everyday “wank bank,” but your secret vault, your concrete bunker—that place that all men exposed to advertising, television, film, celebrity magazines, and pornography have been unconsciously conditioned to desire when getting off. Simply put, that lust for sexual violence or any other variation of the classic “dominator hierarchy” that couldn’t be further from the kind of healthy sex life that most of us want.
While most of us know this toxic place exists, few of us ever turn and face it, so it grows until it eventually spills over into our public life like an Elliot Spitzer, Dominique Strauss Khan, Anthony Wiener, or any of the other public examples we see every day.
In the midst of a mental health epidemic, let’s consider how we teach young men to explore their sexuality in a way that doesn’t simply hardwire some version of abusive toxicity within them, so instead they can begin to set themselves up for a healthy sex life. Because there’s nothing worse than having a nice young chap with good intentions give off a lecherous vibe because for a few minutes a dozen times a week, he trains his brain to wire around some twisted power struggle simply because he hasn’t been offered a healthy alternative. But for the most part, we’re still too immature to even talk about it.
So what does this really come down to? Sexual slavery. If you’re a man (with the exception of those with a testosterone deficiency) then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Because all men, in spite of our best intentions, have felt completely at the mercy of our libidos. In an age where emphasis is finally being placed upon the Feminine, it can be a curious thing to suggest that men need to be understood for the biological pressure we’re put under by the heavyweight champion of the chemical world: testosterone, Mr. T., aka The Dark Lord Ballsdemort.
But for those without a pair, trust me, Ballsdemort has the power to instantly put your higher functions into a chokehold. To cast a spell that forces you into believing that you have no choice but to go to your office bathroom on a Tuesday morning and beat one out simply because you’ve never been shown another way. For men all over the world, this constant struggle isn’t a joke—it’s life.
So if this applies, and you’re ready to jailbreak yourself, then I offer a few suggestions:
Identify where you go in your darkest fantasies.
But don’t just stick your big toe in or glance at them cowardly from a distance. Dive into them fully. If they’re unconscious then you may have to force yourself to go there with your eyes wide open, which may inflame the part of you that is outraged in the face of your shadow. Yeah, it’s a Gordian knot. But until you understand them clearly, then no matter how painful they are, you won’t be able to identify the underlying need that’s asking to be resolved.
Check yourself out in the act.
Take a moment to really engage your pattern, really commit to going to that secret place physically, emotionally, psychologically, and then right in the middle of it, check yourself out in the mirror. It’s like having a bucket of cold water thrown over you while being hit by lightning. It’s humiliating and allows the spell of your illusion of what you think you’re doing to be momentarily broken. At the very least, it may inspire you to bring some dignity to the act. Think: “The Masturbations of Marcus Aurelius.
Stop it with the celebrities.
They get enough energy as it is without you beaming your first chakra directly into their psychic storage center. More importantly, masturbating over public figures can perpetuate the unconscious belief that your sexual fulfillment will always remain unattainable, always within the realm of individuals you may never meet. Then again, if you’re in a position where you may meet them, then even more reason not to. The last thing you want to do is to walk into a meeting and find yourself shaking hands with someone with the same five digits you beat off to them with.
Quit porn.
Porn is erotic junk food and the greatest example of an unrealistic and (usually) unhealthy expression of sexual fulfillment. So try going cold turkey, and if that’s too difficult, then gradually phase out from full-fledged porn into art photography, then into “normal women” photography. This will help to bring the fantasy back into reality so that your erotic taste buds can rediscover the ecstasy of a fresh salad over the dank lasciviousness of a Big Mac.
Learn to defend yourself against your environment.
You’re being bombarded by sexually provocative images constantly. On every website, magazine, television show, or commercial for cheap plastic razors, you are being aroused by artificially augmented Amazonians shaving their perfectly Photoshopped pins in the buff. The mass media perpetually attempt to turn you on, and as long as you tolerate it, you’re going to remain a Pavlovian dog unconsciously stimulated by every sexual bell that marketers ring. So begin to take stock of your environment and the triggers that you allow into it. Look at your home, your bedroom, your browsing, reading, and television habits. Where are you being stroked unwittingly? Take the Huffington Post. Do you think you’re capable of scrolling down that front page without having your libido jacked by those erotic little thumbnails even if you’re not looking at them? Because you’re not. Your unconscious mind is always aware of your peripheral vision, especially if it contains a cheeky piece of ass and some side boob.
Wake up to the objectification of women, once and for all.
When you’re objectifying a woman, you’re not seeing her as she truly is. You’re not seeing someone who poops twice a day and bleeds for almost a week a month so that a little thing called humanity can perpetuate. You’re not seeing a mother, sister, or daughter. You’re simply seeing an illusion of your own mental conditioning that has been designed solely to give you pleasure. So the next time you see a beautiful woman, just remember that fundamentally, this divine creature is a reflection of the sacred emptiness that gave rise to the entire universe.
More importantly, realize that when you imagine sexually demeaning someone, you’re not getting off. You’re just getting angry. And not because of their sense of entitlement, or because they’re obnoxious, or a corporate lemming, or a New Age elitist, or because you can’t have them. But because your life is painful, and you’re suffering. When you step into sexual unconsciousness, you’re not raising your middle finger at them, you’re raising it to life. To your life. Even to God, or whoever you believe is responsible for creating this cosmic freefall of beauty and horror, where even the simple task of waking up and facing the impossible preciousness of existence, compounded by a global crisis day after agonizing day, is an act of heroism.
Address this, and you will find the solution and not the smoke screen. Because in the end, we can either die to our suffering with escapism and the little death of the orgasm, or with an unflinching awareness and the big death of meditation.
Zachary Feder supports individuals to go to places that scare them for the purpose of healing and developing. He can be reached at [email protected].
]]>Congratulations, you’ve had a spiritual experience. After years of training, you’ve finally touched the absolute nature of reality, resulting in an ability to heal and guide others there too. In a word: whatever. Seriously, were you expecting a medal? A band of followers to hang on your every word? A book deal? I mean, did you really think that all the flowers were going to bloom and the birds would break into song? Sorry to disappoint, but that didn’t even happen with the Buddha. Why? Because it was a metaphor, silly.
But seriously, nice work. While all your friends were building their careers, you were sitting on your ass in the middle of the jungle next to some old man able to warp time and space solely with the power of his BO. Now all your friends have houses, 401(k)s, and passive income streams that support their vacations in the Mediterranean while all you’ve got is access to “cosmic consciousness” and a ton of student debt. What the hell is going on?
Reason 1: You’re playing catch-up.
You turned conventionality on its head and did life backward, my friend. While everyone else started the career marathon on time, you had the good sense to realize that you were fundamentally handicapped and stepped off the hamster wheel early. Then you walked the desert, climbed the mountain, and went in search of the ghost orchid of internal transformation. And you found it. Amazing. Honor yourself for that and never stop. But also acknowledge the tradeoff that you accepted for the treasure at the end of the rainbow, and cut yourself some slack. Because now that you’re on your feet, with that impeccable flower clenched between your teeth (or braided into your hair), the pack may be miles ahead, but you’re now able to run faster than before, with a deeper understanding of yourself and the terrain ahead. And most importantly, you’re beyond the game. So act like it, and acknowledge that you’re not crazy or stupid, just an early adopter.
Remembering the parable of the tortoise and the hare doesn’t hurt either. (Spoiler alert: the hare gets a herniated disk from not integrating his ego and healing his mommy issues.)
Reason 2: While you’re now more valuable than ever, you’re also more annoying.
Can you even remember what it felt like back in the day when you’d never meditated before and someone came up to you with that big, radiant smile that reflected an authentic inner peace that just made you want to punch them in the throat? Well, guess what—that’s you now.
That’s right, welcome to everyone else’s perception of the new you: incredibly valuable and terribly annoying. Wonderfully healing and super irritating. In short, you’ve forgotten where you’ve come from. The greatest of all spiritual pitfalls—you think you’re different. You actually think you’re special. And you know what? People can smell it a mile off.
So no problem. We’ve all been there. And the answer is simple. Just remember what it was like to be in pain, and be willing to meet people there by acknowledging that part of yourself that will never be healed. That’s right—never. Forgot that part existed? Perhaps you did. So just remember as you rejoin humanity to lead with your humility. Because if you have a gift to offer and it’s not being received, then you’re in the way. Which leads to . . .
Reason 3: You have an immature relationship with the concept of selling.
You’re incredibly skilled but keep failing to attract people you know you can help. Why? It’s simple. You’re not honoring the game of selling because you have an immature relationship to it. So just admit it.
Look, I get that you “don’t like selling” and you “can’t stand marketing” and you “want to connect with people more spontaneously.” I hear that. But those are just rationalizations for why you haven’t been able to connect with more people, more often. Let me explain.
Do you believe that you have value to offer? Damn straight you do, badass. Now do you believe that there are people in the world who you can help, and who are actively looking for someone like you, right now? Of course you do. Which leads to the final question: How do you expect those people to recognize you if you’re not even able to explain what you do in a way that they can fully understand?
Wake up and smell the astral wind, my friend. Doing that well is called selling. Real selling. Not coercion, not manipulation, not marketing. No, it’s simply articulating the value of what you have to someone who can actually benefit from it. And if you still have a problem with that, then you’re either triggered by the word “selling” and have a past trauma around it that needs to be healed, or you actually don’t believe in the quality of what you’re offering, in which case you will have to go back into training until you meet your own standards. Which leads us to . . .
Reason 4: You may be fully enlightened, but your breath still stinks of cortisol.
You’re an animal hotshot, and most of your communication is nonverbal. Just like me. So if you’re not using your gifts to the degree that you know you’re capable of, then either your communication sucks, or your energy does, or both. Lord, you could have the secret to eternal life, but if you’re not radiating a confident love from your heart in a totally chilly-willy kind of way, then you’re not going to be triggering the oxytocin in others that will make them feel good about hanging around you, let alone working with you.
This means you haven’t actually practiced how you’re coming across with potential clients line by line. I’m going to repeat this because it’s not only the most important thing that you still haven’t done, it’s the last thing that you’d wanna do. Ready? Now open your heart and take a deep breath. Here we go: you still haven’t practiced how you engage with potential clients line by line.
Now hear me out. This is a subtle point that’s taken me years to understand.
Every conversation we have with a potential client is a moment-by-moment process of either inspiring them or deflating them, fueling them or draining them, from one word to the next. All it takes is for one of your words, just one of your responses, to resonate an ever-soslight twinge of uncertainty for the potential client to unconsciously feel that you doubt yourself. And the minute they feel that, it’s game over. An opportunity lost.
So unless you have literally role-played and practiced your every response to every possible question with one of your most “highly sensitive friends,” or someone who knows what they’re doing, to gauge the degree to which you are able to own every single element of your gift under pressure, then you’re not going to be slowly increasing your conversion rate, you’re going to be hitting and missing at random and then rationalizing that you “only work with people when it feels right.” Which is bullshit and just another way of saying that you’re too lazy to leave amateur hour and go pro.
The solution: write out every answer to the usual questions (there are never as many as you think) and begin practicing in front of someone who knows what they’re doing. I guarantee that you’ll find that you don’t sound half as badass as you do inside your head. Once you’ve exorcised all the areas in which you unconsciously project a subtle, stinking spinelessness, you can begin to relax back into your spontaneity.
Reason 5: You associate money with the bad guys.
There may still be a part of you that has trouble distinguishing money from greed, wealth from corruption, and abundance from selfishness. If so, find out why and heal it now. Your poverty complex isn’t helping. Worse than that, it’s actually tacitly complying with the age-old status quo of tyranny. Sound a little grand? Well, what do you think it took for India to seize its independence? For America to abolish slavery, women to get the vote, for marriage equality, or for poverty to be obliterated? Oh wait, we haven’t done that yet. Why not? Because not enough individuals with a moral backbone and the realization that we’re all in this together have seized their power.
If you work hard and have skills that are valuable, then you deserve to be adequately remunerated. Not tackling this head on and then unconsciously telling yourself that poverty has something to do with spirituality demeans the bounty of Spirit herself. Man, that gets me riled.
Reason 6: You read The Secret and now think that intention is everything.
Rhonda Byrne already gets a ton of crap, so I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon . . . much. Suffice it to say that while intention is the capstone of accomplishment, it’s not the entire pyramid, and frankly, you know it. You also need to involve other people in the process of your success (you misanthrope) while taking advantage of the tools around you (like technology).
Very little is going to happen if you just sit on your duff trying to Jedi mind trick the universe into giving you a raise or finding you a soulmate or getting that book deal. Why? Because the universe is the Jedi mind trick! It wants you to connect with others so that you can learn humility and cooperation. Dear lord, do we have to go over this again? No one does it alone. It’s literally hardwired into the blueprint of success, and intention is just the smallest (albeit most nascent) part of that process. So get your A-team together now and make sure you don’t mistake yourself for Hannibal (the leader) when you’re actually Murdock (the crazy one).
Reason 7: Your spiritual realization is just a memory.
Is the jewel of your realization actually growing? Not just as a concept but as a measurable skill of giving and receiving love that is perpetually increasing in scope and depth? Or is it just a memory from that one time you did acid and temporarily hacked your way to unity consciousness, or when you did ayahuasca in the jungle for three days and spoke to a tree, or that time you meditated so hard that the Kundalini serpent power-shot out of your head like a geyser?
In other words, is your spiritual wealth authentic, current, and gaining interest? Or just a memory of a blip in time that no longer exists here and now? If it’s just a memory, then you’re resting on your laurels. And in case you didn’t know, laurels don’t rest well. They just get brittle and brown and crack and die.
The solution? Reinvigorate your practice every day and continue to seek your own reflection in those who have a deeper (or radically different) realization than you do. You think spiritual wealth can be harnessed 4-Hour Workweek style? Bullshit! War is happening, people are dying, the environment is burning, healthcare is collapsing, the legal system’s a joke, education a farce, and journalism has been bought—and you think you’re able to meet all that with poise and transcendence and super-powerful equanimity with 15 minutes of Zazen and some hot yoga? Dude, please. Wake up and smell the ashwagandha. If you want to face life in a way that inspires others, then you need to make sure that your consciousness isn’t just smoldering, it’s roaring.
Now get out there and heal the world, you gorgeous, powerful, fearless snowflake, you.
And for god’s sake, say Om.
Zachary Feder is a developmental catalyst, essayist, aphorist, and author of the upcoming Spiritual Singularity & Coming Age of Transparency and How Old Is Your Soul? The Ultimate Pissing Contest: Spirituality’s Dirty Little Secret Question Revealed. When not serving the global (r)evolution, he divides his time between writing and speaking and his beloved wife, Jagna, and their dog, Tomorrow. LionHrt.com
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