Live Your Life With Gusto!

Greetings!

Here we are finishing up another week. If you noticed, this week I tried to express my gratitude to a few of the writers who most powerfully influenced my own thinking. I got to tell you, it was difficult narrowing it down to only one per day. (Actually yesterday there were two). In any case, I am sincerely indebted to each one of these, and many more, in a great way. I recommend you read whatever you can by any one of these beautiful people.

Today I would like to introduce you to another incredible man, James Arthur Ray. I first heard about James while watching Larry King Live during one of two segments he did on the Law of Attraction. I was totally captivated by Mr. Ray’s energy.

After watching more of him in the hit DVD, The Secret, I searched for anything I could find by him. I first read The Science of Success, a great book on creating a wealth mindset. Later, he came out with another book, Harmonic Wealth. This book was more well-rounded, in that it speaks not only of the money aspect of wealth, but what he calls "The Five Pillars of Success."

Financial

Relational
Mental
Physical
Spiritual

He teaches that each of these aspects are important to maintaining a full life. He also says “balance is bogus.” Not meaning to be contradictory. Rather that any one of these aspects may take on more meaning in your life than the others at any given time for a while. You really need to be in touch with what your inner self is telling you.

What I learned from James Ray is that spirituality can go hand in hand with wanting to create a more abundant life, even if this means more money. Everything in life is spiritual anyway. This is a part of spirituality that causes much grief for many people. Many do believe that you cannot consider yourself to be a spiritual person while you are seeking to earn more money.

James Ray is a very spiritual person. He has dedicated much to the search for personal enlightenment. Enlightenment is growth and can only be had by seeking out a new path in life. Much of our lives are lived out merely by following the habits we have formed for ourselves. To grow, you must force your mind to think in new ways.

He uses the analogy of cutting your way through the dense jungle underbrush to create a new path. This may be very difficult to do. While taking the same path you have always taken before would be much easier, you cannot grow unless you do put forth the effort to hack out a new trail.

If you stick with your new path and follow it daily, you will find it gets easier to follow as the “new” trail becomes more worn. At the same time, the old trail will begin to experience a new growth of vegetation as it is not being used any more. Soon it will be much easier to follow your new path. And you will find you have grown. This is what spirituality is all about!

Some of the experiences James has had on his spirituality have been nothing less than fascinating. He has traveled extensively and studied in great detail different disciplines. He explained in an interview with Bill Harris (also of The Secret) of his experiences in the Amazon jungle, studying under a Shaman.

Shaman are well known for using many herbs and mixtures to enhance certain experiences. In one question Bill posed to James that was about the increased popularity of “New Age” thinkers and followers looking for drugs to “take a short cut to enlightenment.”. Bill asked if one could get an enlightening experience from a drug, might this perhaps speed up the process of becoming enlightened, rather than spending years in study and contemplation.

As James Ray explained, there does exist very powerful formulas that may shed a glimpse of what it is like to be enlightened, this effect is temporary. You still have to do the work. You still have to consciously decide every day that you are going to stay on this same path and remain focused on your growth until it becomes ingrained as habit. There are no shortcuts.

The path to enlightenment is a never-ending one, for sure, but it is a path on which we are all destined to follow eventually. Don’t be afraid to stretch your mind, to seek out a way beyond your mundane life. Most important of all, Live Your Life With Gusto!


Thank you,

Jeffrey B. Brandt

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