Alan Cohen

I saw a romantic greeting card which showed a couple kissing in the front seat of a car. The message said, “If you can kiss while driving safely, you are…

Why would you continue to engage in a behavior or pattern you say you do not prefer?

Everyone is our teacher. Some teach us through joy and others through challenge. Reframe challenging people as angels who have come to help you clean the glass of your perception. Everyone is potentially loveable, but we must choose to claim the potential of our relationship rather than the limits we have superimposed over it. When we reframe relationships as opportunities to experience love, they shift in our favor.

One of the most famous Buddhist mantras is “Om mane padme hum,” which means, “the jewel in the lotus.” The lotus represents the surface appearance of life, and the jewel represents the spiritual reality underlying the obvious reality. The obvious reality is but relatively real. The spiritual reality is ultimately real. If you truly seek reality, look deeper.

A Course in Miracles tells us that the world we see is inside out and upside down. We value the trivial and overlook the monumental. We are enamored with things and ignore people. We worship at the altar of limitation and forsake our potential. We live disconnected from the worthwhile and then wonder why we are in pain.

There are, of course, things we have to do whether we like to or not. But there are other things we would love to do, but don’t. When we take the time and self-honoring to do the things that fill our soul, the other stuff becomes easier, lighter, and in many cases the volume of distasteful activity miraculously diminishes. You can create a tipping point in favor of joyful activities by engaging from the heart rather than the head.

Reality is not for sissies. To live authentically in a world steeped in illusion is the gift of lifetime, spreading light in ripples from your own life to the lives of everyone you touch.

Do you know anyone who is so firmly fixed on what he or she wants to talk about that you don’t stand a chance to talk about anything else with that person? Here are some ways to change the conversation:

When Christopher Columbus and his crew were sailing their long and arduous voyage to a world they had heard about but never seen, the sailors grew discouraged. Eventually the faith-tested entourage began to wonder if they would ever find land. Then one day the scout in the crow’s nest excitedly shouted, “Twigs!” The crew ran to the rail and observed scattered debris of small twigs and leaves floating past the bow. An impassioned howl rose from the deck—land was not far away.

My friend Jenny owns a Subway sandwich shop in a large city. When local teenagers began to loiter near the entrance to the shop, Jenny politely asked them to leave. When they continued to show up, Jenny contemplated how to clear the walkway for patrons. Finally she set up some speakers at the doorway and played classical music at the shop’s entrance. Within minutes the teens scattered as if a stink bomb had been dropped in their midst.

Where are you with ‘stuff’ in your life? Alan Cohen isn’t against it… he is for ‘enough’ stuff and the good, appropriate, life enhancing stuff

The universe rewards authenticity. Things are supposed to go right, and they usually do. When you say yes to what you choose, and no to what you do not choose, you are living in alignment with yourself. Life asks no more—or less—of you than this.

Where are you trying to get to? Here! proclaims Alan Cohen

Do you want to see an angel? Alan Cohen says we just have to look in the mirror