يَـٰٓأَهۡلَ ٱلۡڪِتَـٰبِ قَدۡ جَآءَڪُمۡ رَسُولُنَا يُبَيِّنُ لَكُمۡ ڪَثِيرً۬ا مِّمَّا ڪُنتُمۡ تُخۡفُونَ مِنَ ٱلۡڪِتَـٰبِ وَيَعۡفُواْ عَن ڪَثِيرٍ۬‌ۚ قَدۡ جَآءَڪُم مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ نُورٌ۬ وَڪِتَـٰبٌ۬ مُّبِينٌ۬ (١٥)  15. O People of the Book! Certainly Our Messenger has come to you; he clarifies for you much of what you kept hidden from the Book, and he absolves much. Indeed a light from Allah has come to you, and a clarifying Book. يَهۡدِى بِهِ ٱللَّهُ مَنِ ٱتَّبَعَ رِضۡوَانَهُ ۥ سُبُلَ ٱلسَّلَـٰمِ وَيُخۡرِجُهُم مِّنَ ٱلظُّلُمَـٰتِ إِلَى ٱلنُّورِ بِإِذۡنِهِۦ وَيَهۡدِيهِمۡ إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ۬ مُّسۡتَقِيمٍ۬ (١٦)  16. Allah guides with it whoever follows Its contentment to the ways of peace, and It causes them to come out of the darknesses into the light, by Its consent, and It guides them to a straight path. Every time I see a verse beginning with “O People of the Book,” the first person that comes to mind is my Catholic mother-in-law, and then all the various professors who taught me at Syracuse University. I have always felt like despite differences in our religious backgrounds, our approaches to faith and inner peace were similar, and we had a deep kinship in our spirits. Verse 15 speaks to the “People of the Book,” those who understand the Book of Life, regardless of personal origin. The Qur’an appeals to all people, as we all share the experience of humanity. As human nature is, however, it is normal that over time, people in power have hidden important truths from the public. This is as true in earthly politics as it is with regards to our sacred inheritance as human beings; history is written by the winners, and scriptures have been manipulated by those with various intentions. Surat al-Ma’ida verse 15 calls people out on this tendency and announces that “Allah” (Source, God) claims and confirms the purpose of the Messenger bearing the Qur’an as one who helps make sacred truths (co-creating, manifesting, living the abundance which the Divine has made fundamentally available to all, etc.) accessible once again to humanity.  Importantly, while verse 15 points out that the light and clarifying message comes from the Book of Life, its direction is open. The message is not restricted to only men or women, Arabs or non-Arabs, or earthly followers of the Messenger Muhammad. It is a broad statement offered to anyone listening who wants to follow a path of peace and harmony, and it causes people to come out of darkness and into light. Thankfully we still have the original text of Qur’an available today. Although its meaning has not escaped misrepresentation through shallow translation and interpretation, we can still return to the original Arabic text and dig deeper to better understand the universality of its message. Let’s explore the light of the Qur’an as it guides us on our human journey.

Life exists in relationships. To be successful in life, we should work on establishing and maintaining successful relationships. Relationships, being mutual, require balance in give and take. We need to have a sense for what to let go of (Detachment), what to hang on to (Devotion), and how to keep going despite difficulty (Determination). Detachment is letting go, not insisting on clinging to that which does not serve us. Here are seven things we should detach ourselves from. You can choose a day of the week to practice each one, until you can release them consistently: Let go of identifying yourself based on your religion, culture, and race. Let go of identifying yourself based on your achievements and reputation (good or bad). Reputation is not located in you, but resides in the mind of others, so avoid allowing your self-concept to be dependent on whom others perceive you to be. Let go of how you compare to others, and any need to be seen as better than others. Let go of the need to be recognized by others. The less you need to take credit for your work the more you stay connected to God/Source. Then you become free to achieve with peace, compassion, and love. Let go of the need to be right, and allow yourself to learn and expand your perspective. Let go of the illusion that feeling offended serves a higher purpose. Release your negative emotions to make room for positive ones. Let go of dreams you have not yet fulfilled. Be grateful for the experiences, abilities, and blessings you already have. Devotion is the commitment to love. We can be devoted to a deity, to a sports team, to a TV show, to our families. Devotion means consistently showing up in support, through good times and bad. It means holding something or someone in your heart, cherishing it, and consciously directing your actions to create positive results for the object of devotion. Devotion is grown through repeated, deliberate action conducted with love. Love in a relationship cannot be cultivated spontaneously or learned academically. You will only find true love by actively engaging in relationships. In order to experience love in a relationship, you must choose to put yourself fully into working on this relationship with consistent and sincere effort. Determination is a key factor in maximizing the results of our brief human experiences. Determination is working with strong intention, a primary source of power for energy beings like ourselves. Putting energy into intention creates vibrations that propel us towards a desired situation. In order to achieve your goals, you must maintain your focus on your own intention. Do not allow others to derail your journey. If you work unflaggingly towards your own goals, step by step, you will not be deterred from achieving them. Your existence in this life is as a temporary expression of consciousness. The same applies to all other elements of creation, human and non-human. Allow yourself to observe the interactions between these elements and use your experience to learn and grow as an individual. If you balance your attention between what deserves to receive your intentional effort and what will benefit from release, you successfully interact with the other consciousnesses around you. You have success in your relationships. You have success in your life.

You are a farmer. You have lost everything in a natural disaster. All you have left is the land, however ravaged, and one seed. Just one. But you know the power of this potential. Grateful for the possibility, placing your faith in the miracle of the unknown, you tuck it into the soil. You give it water, and time. Soon enough, it sends forth its first jade tendrils, and then its sturdy stalk. By and by, you harvest fruit and seeds. Back to the beginning, you sow, and tend, and reap. And soon, your hands are full, your arms overflowing with bounty. All of this you owe to the one seed, a vessel for your gratitude and awareness that quickened the sustaining life you enjoy today. Without thankfulness and knowledge, you may have cast aside what appears to be an insignificant thing. But with appreciation in your heart, you were able to overcome the obstacles and give the future a chance. With determination to share what you had, however little, you smoothed the road to an easier tomorrow. And in the end, you grew success. So it is with our hearts. A man can be materially wealthy well-beyond average, and feel his life is lacking. Or, you can be barely able to offer guests clean water and coarse, homemade bread, but you do so with honor and sacrament, and for this it tastes all the sweeter, seems all the more sustaining. When we feel grateful for our blessings, however small, our excitement to celebrate “little things” easily infects those around us with positivity and delight, spreading happiness and love. It is true that “the more you give, the more you get.” As we raise the vibration of our hearts and of those around us, we grow in courage and resiliency, and feel the pulse of abundance more in tune with our own hearts. Grateful, again, for our experience of provision, we step up a level in our celebration, our sharing, our strength. Our gratitude , giving , and growth become a self-perpetuating cycle of celebration and success built not on having, but on being. Tune in to the presence and potentials around you in your life. Take advantage of your opportunities to extend what blessings you can share to those around you. Recognize the room to grow. Become your better life.

Encountering challenges is an evitable part of one’s life journey. How we approach this process affects both the experience of existing within the challenging situation, and our resulting quality of life once we move beyond it. Of course, one can choose to merely cope–tread water, if you will–or one can accept the challenge head-on, and approach it strategically with informed determination. The first step to an empowered approach to encountering challenges is the acknowledge the obstacle . Obstacles range in intensity–perhaps an athlete pulls a muscle, or a musician’s instrument falls out of tune–or perhaps a major investor withdraws from a project, or a life partnership dissolves. These challenges test our willpower for success. By throwing a wrench in our plans, obstacles present us with an important choice: do we grow in flexibility and capability, or do we wither at the touch of difficulty? For that matter, without obstacles, how can we be forced out of our comfort zone? Challenge, though it may present itself in an ugly way, can itself be a beautiful and valuable experience. We all need to grow–we are all here on Earth to grow and evolve. Accepting the inevitability and necessity of obstacles in life is the first step to overcoming them. Once we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we must engage our powers of observation . If we allow the obstacle to overtake us, we will become absorbed by the problem, as if trapped in a whirlpool. If we are able to step outside the immediate difficulty and examine it from the outside, we can find our footing faster to deal with whatever has come up. It is like climbing a set of stairs: we must pull our vision slightly back from each step in order to more accurately assess the height and depth required to move our feet in order to ascend further. You can ask yourself: if this problem were happening to a dear friend or loved one, how would I want to support her? How could I help her analyze the situation, and brainstorm solutions? Treat your situation with as much objectivity as you can muster, and you will find yourself able to stay calm and collected. Finally, we must always commit ourselves to achieving order of the highest degree. When we put ourselves, our habits, our homes in order, we inevitably also help put society in order. Do what you can to maintain order in your physical and spiritual environments. If you, at least in theory, enjoy a regular prayer or meditation practice, there is no better time to recommit yourself to the sacred repetition of this habit. Or perhaps you need to exercise on a daily basis–a quick jog around the block might be all it takes to help maintain a sense of order and control in your daily life that gives you a sturdy baseline to fall back on. When everything else seems unpredictable, at least you can make certain choices to reaffirm your commitment to seeking and contributing to beauty and positivity in the universe. When we encounter obstacles in life, then observe and assess from a calm mindset, keeping ourselves in order becomes all the easier. When we maintain order and balance, the obstacles we encounter will decrease in number and perceived severity. As we grow from each experience of handling challenges, we can thus strengthen our response protocol. Challenges become gifts life gives us to help us grow.

Tranquility of heart and contentedness of spirit are the ideal modes of existence. To achieve this blissful state of being, we must practice prayerfulness, patience, and peacefulness.
Prayerfulness is living always with the awareness that you are in the presence of your Lord. Prayer itself can take many forms, but no matter how it is conducted, prayer is, really, touching the blueprint of reality. We are at the core spiritual beings. We are not just our bodies; we are intelligence, love, abundance, and so on. We are reflections of God, vessels of the light of God. Prayer, or commitment of spiritual intent, taps into that core energy, and realizes the presence of God.

The classic misinterpretation of prayer as a way to make requests of “God up there” often results in disappointment when one does not receive what one has asked for. But if we switch our awareness of God to focus on the constant presence of the divine within our hearts, then we can get in touch with It, and take a more active role in using this core energy to make requests of the universe.

To accompany our efforts in prayer, we can also engage in meditation. If prayer is a way to connect our hearts with the core essence of Reality, then meditation cultivates our awareness of our place within this Reality. It helps us sharpen our awareness of reality, even as it lets our separate self dissolve, and returns our consciousness to the Source. This allows us to remember, on the deepest of levels, who we are and what our plan is on Earth. Meditation releases our minds from the circumstances of our lives, so we can better recognize both the guidance of our guardian angels, and our ability to follow it. Therefore, when we connect our efforts in prayer and meditation, we can both clarify our goals, and reaffirm our innate ability to realize them. Patience is having trust that at the end, everything will be fine. Even when our hearts and minds are fully committed to achieving the goals we have set for ourselves, it may take some time before we see the results we desire. It is important to acknowledge that instantaneous results are not an everyday miracle. If we have faith that ultimately we will see the results we seek, then we can spend our time not angsting for results, but looking forward with joyful anticipation.

It is also important to have patience with ourselves as we cultivate our mental and spiritual practices. As we practice tapping into this power, we must remember that accessing its full potential requires repeated application of effort. No skill is instantly acquired. For example, a musician practices for hours before a concert, a marathon runner hits the road regularly before a race, and the same is true for anyone trying to achieve excellence in any discipline, be it arts, sports, or professional occupations. If we have the patience to practice well, we will be rewarded with high quality of performance in the future. Peacefulness means having a sense of inner calm that can be accessed in moments of stillness, silence, and gratitude. It is a type of harmony with God. When our daily lives swirl with activity and buzz from interaction with other beings, we expose ourselves to varying degrees of physical and spiritual noise. Cultivating the ability to step away from this commotion into a special interior space reserved for calm quiet helps maintain mental balance and gives us access to immediate respite. No matter the chaos around us, if we can access peacefulness in our hearts, we can choose to remain in control of our emotions. We can reset our patience, and remember to choose a prayerful approach to overcoming obstacles.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Ideally, the answer is something more nuanced than "my alarm clock." When we have a fire under our feet, we are delighted to dance through life and face whatever comes. Passion "Find your passion." "Follow your passion." "Live your passion." Often these alone are easier said than done. Even more, it can feel that our passion eludes us--do we like this, or are we passionate about it? When something becomes a true passion, though, the emotion is unmistakable. Passion is a feeling so strong that it can propel you through anything. When you are passionate about something, it fills you with even more energy than it takes to do it. When your passion is also your job, come Friday evening, you are not desperately trying to escape work for the weekend--you are excited for what new prospects tomorrow will bring. Passion is the exciting feeling of commitment to what keeps us going, because it feeds our souls. ​ Power Passion propels us to do more. Feeling excited, curious, inspired, and energized unlocks abilities we might not have known we had. Infused with passion, we become Supermen and Wonder Women, ready to rise and meet any challenge with the best of our abilities and a steady willingness to learn and grow. Passion charges us up and says, "Go forward. You've got this." ​ Purpose Our purpose is the reason why we believe we are here on earth. It is a life goal beyond perpetuating our species. Sometimes we plan our purpose, and someone our purpose finds us; either way, if you do not claim your purpose, you risk getting trapped helping others fulfill theirs. Of course, helping others is part of what life is all about, but doing so at the exclusion of reaching your own goals will not help your own soul evolve. Know your purpose, and you will set yourself on missions directing you towards accomplishing the greater goal. Set on this productive path, your commitment will grow stronger, and your output will be of higher quality. When you are fueled by passion, nothing stands in your way that you cannot brush aside. You realize your purpose, and your soul is at peace.

"Enjoy every experience." Perhaps easier said than done, right? After all, some experiences feel instantly positive: happy, joyful, exciting, hopeful. Others tempt us to assign them negative qualities: sad, painful, anxiety-inducing. All these emotions, however fleeting or enduring, are real and valid. To help us manage them with contentment of the soul, it is best to notice them as an observer. It is the difference between watching leaves float down a river, and diving into the current. When we observe, but are not absorbed by an experience, we can appreciate its movement, the ripples in the water, and also the passage of time, which inevitably renews the rushing water itself.

Three guiding principles can help anyone approach life's challenges with confidence and the promise of success. When difficulties arise, those who are prepared to meet them will surpass any obstacle. Adapting these principles will help you sail over any bumps on the road. Accountability Accountability means taking responsibility for your actions and reactions. It requires a will to notice and keep track of your emotional experiences, flawed as they may be, and use this information to chart a course for change. In order for us to evolve, we must face our faults head-on. ​ Acceptance A common misunderstanding of this word suggests that one must sit back and accept whatever hardships come along without putting up a fight. True acceptance, however, is far from being resigned to fate, nor does acceptance imply one must be content with one’s circumstances. Rather, acceptance is simply the ability to acknowledge a situation as it is in the present moment. At the same time, acceptance is not sitting back and letting life steamroll us or pass us by. Acceptance allows us to take stock of our surroundings and to take appropriate action . ​ Appreciation Appreciation comes from understanding and enjoying every thing and every moment for the value it brings. When we recognize the value in an experience, especially when it is challenging, a unique optimism takes root and flourishes in our soul. Appreciation encourages us to protect and celebrate that which is good, and transform that which is not. Appreciation can be practiced at any moment, anywhere, and at any time. With appreciation in our hearts, we situate ourselves in a nexus of limitless gratitude. All possibilities open up to us, and the light of awareness is within sight. We stand ready and confident to face the tests of life.

With the opening of this blog, I look forward to sharing more thoughts about Consciousness, and keeping you all updated about our events and other interesting things happening through our consciousness community connections.