Are You Here To Be A Successful Author? 131Back when I was an educator, in one of the weekend human potential
trainings that I attended, we were asked to visualize going up to the top
of a mountain, entering a temple, and receiving a gift in a golden box
from a wise old person, who had descended down into the temple through
a beam of white light. We were told that the gift in the box would be a
symbol that would represent our life purpose. The gift I received was a
golden heart. It is clear to me that the essence of what I was here to
experience, express, and teach is love.
Over time, whenever I would think about my purpose, I would
get this image of myself climbing to the top of a tall mountain, where I
would then gather up a huge ball of light in my arms (the light representing
the healing power of love). Then I would take this big giant ball of light,
and I would come back down the mountain and hand out snowball sized
handful’s of light to everyone I encountered. That seemed to be a
representation of my teaching, running seminars, coaching, counseling,
and doing therapy. When I would run out of light, I would walk back up
to the top of the mountain and gather more light. This would play itself
out in real life as me going to another spiritual retreat or meditating
more—any way to go to a higher level and take in that inspiration of
love and light, and then bring it back down and share it with others.
Then there were a number of years that I was a trainer for a
company called Insight Training Seminars. The names of our courses I
taught were Awakening The Heart, Centering In The Heart, and Opening
The Heart; so for a couple of years there I was very focused on teaching
people to experience and express more of the love that they truly are.
Paul McCartney said, “All you need is love,” and I truly believe
that, but what I also find is that in this lifetime here on earth I am equally
interested in helping people manifest their vision, but always in the context
of love.
Another major event that occurred for me was that I took a 10-
day Vipassana meditation retreat. It’s an ancient Buddhist technique,
over 2500 years old, and you just basically follow your breath for the
first three days, and then after that, you just observe your mind as it goes
where it goes. You simply observe your physical sensations, thoughts,
memories, and fantasies. I found that after about eight days, I got into a
very compassionate state. I remember driving home with my wife, and
we were driving about 30 miles an hour on the freeway. Everything was
so slowed down. The most amazing experience was when we passed a
dead cat on the side of the road, and I noticed that there were a bunch of
maggots eating the dead cat. I thought to myself, Five years ago I would