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Writing a self-improvement book was not an easy task for me. I had much to offer the world of my ideas and the wisdom I'd gained from my experiences; but I was quite daunted at the idea of writing this book. Did I have anything of value to say to my readers? Do I have the capacity to bring forth the wisdom that I needed to write, so that it would serve others well? Questions and doubts played in my mind.

But with the help, love, and undying support of certain people, I did find the courage to start my research and put that wisdom to writing...and now the book has come to its completion. These people urged me to tell my readers of the challenges that I had to face in order to grow, so that whoever read my book might be inspired to find the courage in themselves too, that they seek. So I would like to take the time to thank these very special people in my life, whose faith in me has always encouraged me to soar to new heights, and to never doubt my capacity to help others:

I would like to acknowledge my mother J Mary R for her continued support throughout the years, and for not giving up on me and my talents.

I would also like to thank my daughter Shivaughn S for her contributions towards making my life an interesting one.

I would like to thank my former boss Robert B for giving me the drive to "get things done.”

And I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone else who has been part of my life and contributed to my success as an individual.

Truly, we are never alone in the challenges we face. You have all been my angels, guiding me to always move to my own light!

INTRODUCTION

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life,

the whole aim and end of human existence”

- Aristotle

We all want to live successful and happy lives. We all want to see the best of what we can yet be. This is the reason you have come to this book now. But what does it take to be a successful individual? What does success really mean?

We live in a society that applauds the individual who attains financial wealth and career success. We see these kinds of people on TV all the time: Hollywood actors, business tycoons, and politicians. It is because of this that we often get a distorted view of what success is really about. No one ever televises the millions of parents in the world who persevere and sacrifice much in their life for their children's future; no one ever televises the many men and women in this world who might have lived a simple life, but it was one filled with love and generosity; and no one ever televises the many nameless volunteers of works of charity. The media wants glitz and glamor, and this is what 'outwardly' successful people have to offer.

I'm not trying to diminish the great achievements of Hollywood actors, business tycoons, and the like; they worked hard to get where they are, career-wise. Yet these people also face problems in other areas of their life, which we sometimes hear about as well, through the media. Career success is only a part of the whole picture of success.

Success as an individual comes in being able to manage all aspects of your life, whether it be in career, relationship, health, or mental and emotional well-being. What the media focuses on is but a small aspect of what it means to be successful. Truly successful people have something more than outward success; they have an unshakeable faith and strength inside them that we can feel, and they are kind, caring, and just to others as well. Perhaps you have met people like this. They come from all walks of life; not just from Hollywood, or Fortune Magazine, or the White House, or anywhere else that the media might look to find something interesting for its viewers. These kinds of people don't base their personal success on outward results.

An example of an outward result is fame. Fame comes to some individuals; but it doesn't come to all. You may have met many truly talented people who you thought deserved the recognition of a celebrity, yet they couldn't get a 'lucky break'. The truth is that there are millions of talented individuals in the world, but not all will be recognized by the media or other influential sources. The media is too small a group to cover what each and everyone in the whole human species is doing, and therefore have to resort to their own judgments about who they would want to shine the limelight on. And the few truly successful and well-rounded individuals who have gained fame from their work rarely had it as their goal to have this anyway; they were simply happy, and loved who they were and what they did, fame or no fame. In fact, they are usually surprised when they become famous. So fame should never be the basis for your happiness and confidence in yourself as individual; it's only one of many possible by-products of your happiness in what you do.

Happiness comes from within. You don't wait for yourself to have something before you become happy; you have to be happy in who you are and what you now have, and then you will never have to wait for happiness to come. You can strive for your goals because these are an essential part of your drive to keep living; but at the same time, you can be happy by enjoying the process.

What we all really base success on is how happy we are with ourselves and with our life as a whole. That's why even individuals who are successful in certain aspects of their life may still not be completely happy. If we want true success, then we must be well-rounded. We must pay attention to every area of our life, because each area contributes to the whole picture of our well-being.

The general areas of our life include:

Spiritual Life; our connectedness to the Universe, and our place in it
Mental and Emotional Life
Social Life
Career and Financial Life
Recreational Life
Physical Health
Relationship to the Self

Being happy is about having a balance in all these aspects. They are all intertwined in your life, so neglecting one for another will cause the one neglected to atrophy and affect the other aspects little-by-little. For example, if you don't take care of your health, no matter how successful your career is, it will be jeopardized by your inability to work when you fall ill. If you take care of the needs of your loved ones but neglect your own, your unhappiness will spill over to affect your family. If you focus on your relationships and recreation too much, your financial life may suffer.

This book will talk about all these areas then, and give you advice on how to improve each of them. You may skip chapters if you like, depending on which area you would like to learn more about first, as each of us may need improvement in a particular area more than in others; but I do urge you to start with the first chapter and end with the last (Chapter 8). The reason I urge you to start with the first chapter is because finding your purpose in life, your purpose for existence, is the base that will give you the drive to improve all the other aspects – the will to live life with zest. Without a sense of your true purpose for being here, you can't hope to find a real and lasting happiness. A sense of purpose is what we, as human beings, stay alive for. The reason that it's best to save the last chapter for your last reading is because this chapter will round up all that you have learned in the previous chapters.

I hope for you to keep this book as a reference from time-to-time in the future, to serve as your motivator for keeping in line with your personal growth and self-mastery. Digest this book through constant review and step-by-step application of the suggestions that you choose from it – maybe you will take some, or maybe all of them, depending on what you feel you need. This is how to reap its benefits.

There are summaries at the end of the chapters for your quick reference when you need it. Often, we tend to rush through self-empowerment books without having digested them properly, yet we hope that we can remember all we've read. But growth in life is a process; you will not be enlightened overnight from reading books about it. Growth comes with study, application of what we've learned, committing what we've learned to memory through periodic review, having our experiences, and reviewing our experiences. Give proper time for your growth, and I assure you that you will start to see your happiness grow, no matter what challenges you may be faced with in life.

CHAPTER 1

“WHY ARE WE HERE?” -- FINDING OUR PURPOSE

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life

to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.

Therein, he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.”

-Viktor Frankl

“I know I'm alive. I can see, hear, smell, and touch everything around me. I can think these thoughts that I'm now thinking. I can see other people, but they are not me; they have their own beings too, I've observed - like mine. But where did I come from? If the answer is that I came from my mother's womb, then where did my mother come from? And her mother, and her mother's mother?” These are the basic observations and inquiries of men and women throughout the centuries, yet the question always remains: “Why are we here?” So far, no God has come down from a Heaven telling us why we're born here, and then die. If only someone up there would tell us what exactly we have to do here on Earth, why we even exist. Life would be a lot simpler, right?

But have you ever tried to look at things the other way around? Being born and knowing exactly what you were here for? Maybe you were born to be a pianist. God told you that you had to go to school A, then move on to The School of B for Musical Arts in your college years, then train everyday until you're professional enough to work; then you have to move to New York and apply at Theater C, and start playing the piano for people – everyday for the next 40 years – because your destiny is to entertain and nourish other people's souls through music. You are to retire at 60 and will die of heart disease shortly after because you were born with a somewhat weak heart - this is part of the plan too. This is your destiny, and there's no getting around it. There's no point in even thinking that maybe at age 45 you'll want to be doing something other than playing music for people, no point in trying to live beyond 60 years. Your destiny is clear-cut...

Notice how you feel now. Did you get a feeling of freedom, or one of being 'trapped', while imagining this destiny that was given you? Would you still want God to come down from a cloud, telling you what you should do with your life?

You might have felt more sense of freedom from reading the above scenario and realizing that your life actually consists of endless possibilities for what you want to do with it. But then this poses the next question: “Given that I have an unlimited choice of possibilities for what I can do, how do I go about finding out how I REALLY want to live my life? Which choices will make me truly happy?”

And the reason we ask this question is because deep within each of us is the need to have meaning in our life. We know that when our life has meaning, we become purposeful, energetic and happy. We can face any challenge thrown our way, because it all means something, and we will be rewarded for our efforts; not necessarily externally, but in our satisfaction that we have shared something to the world of who we are as an individual. When our life has a sense of purpose, in fulfilling that unique purpose we become unique ourselves. Irreplaceable.

Consider the man who comes home from a grueling day at work, to find that his salary has paid for the family's dinner feast sitting on the table now, and he is greeted with enthusiasm by his waiting children who jump onto him as he walks into the door. He is also greeted by the loving affection of his doting wife who happily comes to his embrace, eager to be with him at the end of the day. Now consider the people who have committed suicide. What do they often say before they end their life? Is it not always the same statements that they make? “My life has no [more] meaning.” “No one cares whether I exist or not.” “I don't have any contribution to make that the world would really need.” “I am alone.” These people have lost a sense of purpose, and so the fire that keeps most of us alive to see the next day here on Earth is extinguished in them. They see no more point in living. “What for?” they ask. And that is a valid question. Why do we need to be alive if there is no purpose to anything anyway?

Let's begin then with the most important question to ask, if we're to try to gain any personal growth: “Why are we here?” The mere fact that you're reading this book is a sure sign that you seek to grow to your fullest potential. So let's start there. For what reason do you to want to grow to your fullest potential? Is it because you've witnessed truly happy and fulfilled people, and you want to know their secret to having succeeded in this? Is it because you believe that if you live your life well here on Earth, you will attain your great reward in Heaven when you leave this plane of existence? Is it because it feels good to be rewarded by the love and respect of others when you're being the best person you can be?

As individuals with different personalities, experiences, and backgrounds, we all have different beliefs. It would be senseless to try to instil only one specific belief about why we should strive to be the best we can be. I doubt the world would be the exciting, colourful place that it is if everyone were exactly the same in their goals. God should have made only one human being then, if this were the case. This is why I will not be talking about what reason you should have for existing. Everyone is entitled to be a theist or an atheist, single or married, goal-oriented or living day-to-day. What is important is that you come to realize your own meaning to your own life. You are the artist of your life, and this is why God has not come down to tell you what you should or shouldn't be doing. But there are definitely methods and avenues that can help lead you to becoming a great artist of your life.

According to Dr. Viktor Frankl, revolutionary psychotherapist who promotes a new therapy called Logotherapy (the study that bases psychotherapy on man's longing for meaning as his primary motivational force) and author of “Man's Search for Meaning,” there are three areas in which we as human beings can derive a life-meaning from:

creating a work or doing a deed
experiencing something or encountering someone
the attitude that we take toward unavoidable suffering

Let's consider the scenario I wrote about earlier, of the man who lived purposefully because he felt his family's love and need for him in their life. What happens to that same man when he comes home to this family one day, and then loses them all in, say a car crash, the next? He had created a fulfilling life in his work (creating a work or doing a deed) because it served a purpose to others, namely, his loved ones (experiencing something or encountering someone). What would he live for now?

Life is so full of changes and temporariness, that often times, we feel like there really is nothing that we can hold onto for at least some security in our happiness. Should it end here then, for the man who's just lost his meaning for his existence? According to Frankl, it doesn't have to end where our suffering begins.

Viktor Frankl, being Jewish, was a concentration camp inmate who lost his whole family during World War II to the Nazi tyranny over the Jews. In his book, he relates the meaninglessness that he felt for his life as an inmate. He could not be with his family, nor could he even know if they were still alive. And if they were, what conditions in their camps did they have to suffer? Everyday in the camp was a stroke of luck when he was still alive to see the next day; most met their deaths according to the whims of the camp guards. They were made slaves, working extraordinarily long hours under the harsh conditions of bitter cold, and inadequate clothing for the weather. They did not have a clue when it was all going to end – maybe, they surmised, for the rest of their life, which might even be soon, as they were also starving and malnourished while having to perform heavy labor suited for healthy, fit men. He, like most of the camp inmates, felt most times that death might be the better option, given what they had to endure. They had already lost the dignity and respect that being human normally entitled one to; they were treated no better than animals. They had lost the freedom to dream and create their lives, and be with the people they loved. It was tempting to just end their life to end their suffering - and many did.

Yet Viktor talks about the extraordinary inmates who still found meaning in their life despite this kind of suffering, this complete loss of freedom and human dignity to cruel but powerful hands. These were the inmates who spent time at the end of the day comforting their bereaved fellow inmates. These were the inmates who formed prayer groups to strengthen their companions; inmates who offered counsel, and inspiring words, and a piece of bread they had formerly saved for themselves, and even laughter to others, even though they were suffering the same conditions. What these inmates found was the one freedom that could never be taken away from them, and that was the attitude they chose to have, no matter what the Nazis took from them on the outside. The one - and the greatest - freedom they had was the freedom to choose how to make the best of themselves in their situation. They saw their situation as a challenge to move beyond self-pity, to move beyond themselves, and instead offer themselves in service to others. This service and love toward those around them became the very fire that kept their spirits alive.

So if a World War II concentration camp inmate could find meaning in the kind of life he had to live, couldn't we, all the more, with our gift of freedom to create our personal lives in today's world? Of course we can't deny that we are faced with quite different challenges now than in the past. Physical freedom – the freedom to create our lives the way we want to, with no one being able to stop us - is now ours, but the challenge is also new: How can we become more integrated, well-rounded individuals, so that our freedom can be served well, which ultimately, will lead to our happiness and fulfillment?

As we evolve toward greater and greater masterpieces of ourselves, it is no longer enough that we have a family, a job, and a roof over our heads. Basic survival, though it remains an issue, is no longer the biggest issue to most of us. We are now searching for a deeper meaning to our existence. We work hard to attain our goals, whether they be in career, relationships, financial wealth, or health. We are faced with juggling a host of choices to incorporate in our lives because of our limitless possibilities. Yet most of us still feel an emptiness at the end of the day, no matter how hard we work or how much we accomplish. What else could be missing? Are we not already living a productive and successful life? Why does happiness still elude us?

Dr. Frankl has a term for the feeling of emptiness that comes over us at the end of a day or week filled with activities, and we are suddenly faced with non-activity: the “Existential Vacuum.” It is a situation where we fill our days with goal after goal, activity after activity, in hopes of trying to avoid the boredom and depression that comes over us when we are faced with situations where there is nothing for us to do. We are a society faced with workaholism, alcoholism and other drug addictions, sex addiction, shopping or money addictions, and a ridiculous amount of guidance counselors and psychotherapists to turn to because we cannot pinpoint what the real problem is. We start to think there is something wrong with us psychologically, because we are incapable of attaining lasting happiness despite the freedom we possess to create whatever we want of our lives.

A lot of youth today are turning to substance abuse and violence to fill the void in themselves that they don't understand and that their parents can't help them out of, because their parents are busy trying to cover up that same void with 'workaholism' and other external addictions. Retired seniors suddenly find themselves depressed from shifting from a life filled with work and productivity to one of being confined in a senior home with no longer anything useful to make of their lives, because society dictates that they are too old and weak to be of any use now.

I suffered this same depression and void in my earlier married years. I was working as a manager for my older brother's pizza business, and my days were filled with company work, rearing my 4-year-old daughter who I was then home-schooling, and tending to house chores like cooking and cleaning. On weekends, my family and I would have activities to fill up the hours too: shopping at the malls and eating at restaurants, visiting friends and other family members, paying bills, and doing groceries. I could not stop from all the activities, and I knew deep down that I didn't want to; but my reason for delving in activity-after-activity came to haunt me anyway during my mornings when I'd just woken up. I found it hard to get up from bed with a smile. I felt the emptiness of all that I was doing.

I tried valiantly to appreciate all the blessings that I already had in my life. I had a hard-working husband, and though we had our disputes, I figured, “What marriage doesn't?” I had a beautiful daughter that I loved and cherished, and who gave me back an unabashed love in my daily life. I had a job that helped support us financially and that still allowed me to work from home and be with my daughter full-time. I had the support of my parents and siblings, who urged me to keep going. I had a comfortable financial life where I could have the freedom to shop for new clothes and take my daughter out for fun activities. What did I have to complain about? This is exactly what so many people want in their life, and here I was, whining about it.

I pondered and pondered on these questions. I kept a journal to figure out why I was feeling this way, and took the counsel of many self-help books. I used my depressed mornings to sort through my messy thoughts and feelings. Then, slowly but surely, it started dawning on me what was wrong: I had not been living my life authentically.

I was settling for what society said were the formulas for happiness: have a loving family, go out and make friends, hold a job and be grateful for it even if it's only a job you can afford to have for the moment, go out and entertain yourself every now and then, do your best in everything that you do. Now this is all very good advice – but the first question I really had to ask was why I should do all this. What was my intention? Was I doing all these positive activities because I had meaning in my life to do them, or was it because I was using them to pretend that there was meaning to my life? Sadly, I was doing the latter. I felt no true purpose for being in the world, so I filled my hours with all these activities that made my life look meaningful to the outside world.

The dawning of this understanding in me led me to finding what I had been burying inside me and that was what I REALLY felt was my reason for being. I had to come to terms with who I really was, and who I sought to be. I started listing things that I would love to do if I knew that no one would judge me for them. I started envisioning the kind of life that made me feel happy inside. This is what that life included:

I would be living in a place surrounded by Nature. This longing to be in Nature was ignited in me from my earliest years when I would wake up to the playful sound of the ocean and the greeting of the morning sun. I had times where I could be alone with the mountains around me, and felt so at peace with myself and with the world during these times. Nature had become my temple, and I suppressed this yearning for many years, in favor of what I felt my family and society demanded of me.

I would raise my daughter in this place, because I did not really believe in all the technology of the cities. I saw and experienced the freedom and creativity and bonds of friendship that children formed in the arms of Nature, rather than in modern toys and gadgets that isolated them from each other. When I was a child, the world was free for us to create sandcastles, and draw on the sand, and climb trees, and run in the vast, open shores. We never knew boredom. This is what I really wanted for my daughter to experience in her childhood.

I would be part of a small community where everyone knew each other, and everyone could easily share conversations and sugar, because we all lived close together as a larger extension of the concept of family.

I would put up a small business that could support me and my daughter, and I would finally start writing – the long-cherished dream I had as a child.

I would be the kind of mother that I always wanted to be to my daughter: the mother that said, “You can be and do anything you want in your life” because I practiced exactly what I preached.

I knew this place that I wanted to live in existed, because I had been there many times, in the summers of my childhood. The problem was that my family and friends found it unrealistic for me to just 'pack up and go.' 'How would I feed my daughter? Would I just leave my husband to work in the city, since he found no life whatsoever in provincial living? What about my brother's business? My brother was relying on me to help him. How would I earn a proper living?' I told them that the financial demands of a simple life like that were not much at all. Besides, weren't people living there, in that place, surviving capably well, right now? So I also knew of what kind of opposition I had to take the courage to face, if I was to live what I truly believed my life was about. There was no one else in my sphere of people to tell me that it was possible, except myself. In my faith in myself was where I had to take my courage from.

There is no point trying to give you a rose-colored picture of what my life became because I chose to finally accept and embrace my authentic beliefs and values against those of others. Life doesn't always happen exactly the way we pictured it because we share the world with others who have their own ideas too - yet blessings also come in beautiful ways that we don't expect. Today, I live a simple daily life in Nature. I have a house by the ocean, and get to witness the awe-inspiring sunrise and sunset each day; I have a close community of good friends around me; I have been blessed with a partner who loves being in Nature just as much as I do (which admittedly, was not part of my plan, because I was set on living the single life after a hard-knock marriage, but this is what I'm talking about with life's spontaneous blessings) and we share very similar goals and values in life; I get my moments of solitude in Mother Nature, my own temple of worship; and I am now a writer.

On the other hand, I don't have my daughter with me. In the days when I decided to separate with my husband, I also had to leave my brother's business because my whole family was in opposition to what I was doing. I knew that if I stayed with my brother, I would get more and more of this opposition and their pressuring to get me back together with my husband. I had to literally start my life over in a new job, a new apartment on the cheaper side of town, and a new and very scrimped budget. As a result, my husband got to take my daughter, because he had better means of taking care of her, with retired parents as well, who would happily care for and look after her on a full-time basis. I had to work in the city for a few more months, only getting to visit my daughter once a week, until my ex-husband decided to take her away from me completely; because, he reasoned, it was very hard for our daughter to see me only now and then – better that she doesn't see me at all so she could adjust healthily. With no money then for a lawyer to help me get proper parental rights to my child, I had to swallow the bitter pill of not knowing when I would ever see her again.

I was met with much family conflict during these first years of separation. Abandonment by my parents, the hostility of my brother toward me, misunderstandings, court cases when I had the means, and then finally, counseling. Through counseling, my parents and I are now on much better terms and have come to accept and understand each other better. I'm also now in counseling with my ex-husband to heal the anger and resentments of our past relationship, and am able to visit my daughter each month. After 2 years, my daughter has become happy and well-adjusted with her home and school-life, so I have also learned to accept that she may want something other than the life with me that I would like to offer her. She is now happy to be living with her dad, and having me visit her on a consistent basis. She has come to accept her parents' separation, even though she would have liked things to be a different way.

You may ask why I didn't just continue my life in the city, and work toward smaller things that didn't require such radical change, like going into Nature once in awhile to get refreshed, or working on my writing while I was also working my day-job. You may ask how I managed to have so much courage to face all that I did, to stand up for the kind of person I believed myself to be, but could not have that same courage to just accept and embrace my life back then, with just a few changes. The answer is simply that I'm not you, and you are not me.

I did try these little changes in my life at first, holding onto comforting words like, “It's not where you are, but who you're with [..my loved ones],” to keep me content in my city life; but I'd found that I'd been using these 'little' compromises only as an excuse to keep from facing others squarely with the truth about myself. The distinct feeling that I got when I took full responsibility of following my own path was of freedom and finally making peace with myself. There was no more battle raging inside my head between what I think I should be doing 'as the good and caring person that I am' and where I felt I would be happy.

There can be no compromises when you are ready to tell the world who you truly are. Each of us must answer to our own life about who we are, whether that requires small changes or big ones. Be honest with yourself. The courage that I found in me to face what I needed to face came from the sense of meaning I realized was authentically mine. When we live in complete honesty and acceptance of ourselves, when we find the true purpose that we want to live for and not just something handed down by family or society, we are energized in this purposefulness. We know exactly why we are doing what we do. Remember this quote from William Shakespeare, as you go on your search for your own true life-meaning:

“To thine own self be true, and it follows as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man.”

By honoring yourself, you are honoring the God/Universe/Being that created you as you are, uniquely. By being happy in who you are, despite that you may not know all the answers to life, your cup overflows, so to speak, and the joy you have in yourself will be the joy you will spill over to others. Have you ever heard of a miserable person who brought joy to others? I was definitely not much joy to my daughter back then. I once wrote this phrase to myself:

“I would rather that my daughters have a poor life with a mother rich in spirit,

than a rich life with a mother poor in spirit”

My depression was in not following through on this belief that I held dearly.

Only people who are truly happy in themselves can give joy to others. And only we know whether something truly makes us happy, or whether we are just settling for second-best. We must uncover our real feelings in order to discover our authentic self.

So how can you go about finding that unique meaning to your own life? I will give you some stepping stones in the next chapter, which I have applied to my life; but it is necessary to first understand our connectedness with the Universe, as this goes hand-in-hand with finding our life-meaning. Before I move on to this next topic, I would like to leave you with a thought from Dr. Viktor Frankl, to hold onto in your daily life and spiritual work:

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is,

but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

In a word, each man is questioned by life;

and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life...”

OUR CONNECTEDNESS TO ONE ANOTHER AND THE UNIVERSE

The fact that we can see, hear, smell, touch, feel and think obviously leads us to concluding that we are conscious beings. We see ourselves, and we see our surroundings separately from us; we and our surroundings are different. We are conscious of this. Yet why do we have consciousness? Where did we get this power of observation? Where did our consciousness come from?

Deep inside all of us is a yearning to know how we came to be. Did we all just appear into the world out of nothing? Did the world just appear out of nothing? This is an idea we cannot fathom because our rational minds know that things don't just come from nothing. We are all born through parents; animals are born through their parents too; plants grow from seeds; rain comes from clouds, which came from the evaporation of water on the Earth, and so on. Scientists have pondered over this same question for ages. But at one point, we all had to stop questioning the source, because the answers have been exhausted. This questioning only led us to Adam in the Bible - the very first man on Earth. Where did the first man on Earth come from? This is why men and women have debated for ages about whether a God, a Creator, an Ultimate Source of all things in this world, exists. We want to know that there is a primary creator, because then we can know that we have been made for a purpose; we have a reason for our existence and death.

But we don't need to know absolutely everything about the Universe; we can be grateful that the world holds its mysteries, else we would probably be bored with it, right? Women instinctively know of the beauty and necessity of having mystery, and this is how they keep the flame alive in their intimate relationships. Movies play on this sense of mystery in their plots in order to keep the watchers in anticipation for what will happen next. We feel a sense of satisfaction after having watched a movie whose ending we couldn't guess at, at the time that we were watching it. It gave us an element of suspense. As children, we waited eagerly for Christmas morning to come so we could find out what was inside those mysterious boxes wrapped in pretty paper; we found it difficult to sleep. And more than that, we found the process of unwrapping the mysterious package even more exciting than when we had uncovered what was inside! We can learn to love the mystery of Life by understanding that it is the thing that is responsible for keeping our passion and enthusiasm for living alive.

So we can't conclude that there really is a God, and so far, neither can Science. But we can open ourselves to this possibility by thinking about our own consciousness. If we are conscious and intelligent beings, then couldn't it be reasoned that the source we came from is also conscious? After all, how can a non-conscious source make something that is conscious? How can something that cannot think or feel create something that can?

A cutting-edge, revolutionary new branch of Science called quantum physics looks into these questions about the source of our consciousness. One of the ideas of this theory is that “energy is not continuous but comes in small but discrete units”. What does this have to do with us? Let me explain further:

The Physical Universe is made up of energy and information; therefore, all objects and all things in the Universe are within these fields of energy and information. But if you go deeper into the levels of activity in Nature, you would find that there is what the scientists call a discontinuity. Deepak Chopra, world-renowned medical doctor, public speaker and spiritual guru, would explain this simply as that even though our perceptual experience of the Universe is that it is continuous, it actually isn't, because the Universe goes “on and off” at the speed of light. The “on” part is the one we already know of, which is the part that consists of energy and information. We use this energy and information all the time in technology, through cellular phones, Internet, e-mails, etc. But what is in the discontinuity? What is between two “on's”? Many of the quantum physicists hypothesize that this discontinuity is what is responsible for Consciousness itself. From the 'off' or 'nothing' comes everything that is now here. The 'Nothingness' is 'Nothingness' because It is pure potential; and from this pure potential emerges our Universe – potential that has become actualized. These scientists say that Consciousness is not just a by-product of evolution or the by-product of our brains, as has been the theory in the past; it is actually the reverse of this old theory! Consciousness expresses itself through our brains, and It is the common-ground of existence that segregates the Universe into space, time, energy, information, and matter. This Consciousness is responsible for our thoughts, feelings, interactions with others, our biology, and our environment. It is the ultimate source of all that's here, and It's found in that brief and constant mysterious discontinuity.

Some scientists still believe in the old paradigm that “matter is the essential reality, and consciousness is its effect” – meaning, we're nothing but the result of evolution. Yet quantum physicists argue that when we perceive colors, sounds, tastes, smells, or visions in our heads, the activity of the brain has been found to be just a “code of changes” that go on and off, as we do these activities; so how can that “code of changes” become physical reality? If we use the quantum model, we can realize that we are not actually in the physical world, but the physical world is in us. The physical world is created by our perceptions, observations, and creation of this experience in our imagination. It's not that our physical bodies and minds are actually creating our Universe, but that the deeper domain of Consciousness is doing this. This deeper domain of Consciousness.. “conceives, governs, constructs and becomes everything in our physical reality,” as Deepak Chopra puts it. All this is what is being studied now by scientists in both the fields of Neuro-Science and quantum physics. This model of consciousness is also what has been explored by great sages and seers in the past, like some of the authors of the famous and fundamental Hindu philosophy book, the Bhagavad Gita. Through Quantum Physics, Science and Religion/Spirituality have been starting to bridge their gaps.

A bit heady stuff; but it's always good to know we are slowly opening up to new avenues to explore, and are discovering more and more still about the Universe and our place in it, and even the question about God. It's best to keep an open mind on these matters and accept that something may or may not be. By keeping an open mind, we open ourselves to the possibility that there is much more than what we currently know, that there will always be an infinity of possibilities for us to explore, and therefore, that we can always keep on moving upward and evolving into greater and greater versions of ourselves and our knowledge about life. We can accept not knowing everything there is to know about the Universe, and simply letting it uncover its mysteries for us, as it has always done. Let the Universe do its work. But we can do our part by working with what we do know at this point.

We know that on the physical level, we are connected to others in such a way that our actions affect them, whether positively or negatively. We learned this as children. When we cry, it upsets our parents. When we are selfish and never share our toys, other kids don't want to play with us. When we are happy and kind to others, they become happy and kind to us, too. Yet we are also finding out now that we may be more connected than just in the physical cause-and-effect sense. We are evolving to having a strong sense of something non-physical that connects us all, and this can be perceived by a brief look into the theories of quantum physics already. This non-physical reality also includes such things as intuition. Intuition is when we have no basis in the physical world for feeling a certain way about certain events, yet we feel this way anyway. 'Coincidences' also fall into this non-physical category, where we can simply think about something or someone, and that thing or person would suddenly appear to us physically. So how can we observe just how connected we are to one another, without necessarily having to be quantum physicists?

I remember one experience years ago when I was in one of my most depressed and hopeless states about my life. This depression lasted for a week, and I was unable to function well in my activities. I would stay in bed longer than usual and do the most minimal activities required, and my mind was constantly on one thought: I needed to go into Nature. I was tired, and I needed to go into Nature. But I couldn't go because tasks were demanding to be fulfilled at home and at work. As a consequence, I went through my activities distractedly after having lain in bed for hours, and my inability to function well left many other tasks undone. My husband came home to an untidy home, for one, which caused more strain in our relationship.

Then one day before the week ended, my sister-in-law whom I was working for called to ask how I was. I said I wasn't feeling too well, so she suggested that I take a few days off from work to relax. She and my brother offered me some meditation music to help put me at ease, and my daughter was taken off my hands and to my brother's house until my husband came home at night. My stress was greatly alleviated as soon as I was offered this help. I then started to relax, and in three days was back to my normal activities and energy level again.

After that incident, I recounted to my brother and sister-in-law exactly what I had been going through. Prior to this, they only thought that I was feeling physically sick because I hadn't bothered explaining any more than “I wasn't feeling well,” and they opted not to ask anything more because I was already feeling sick. Then my brother suddenly let out a shout of realization... he had been wondering why he was feeling depressed all week because he had no reason to be during that time. He couldn't pinpoint any real cause for why he was feeling that way. What's more was that images of the seaside kept creeping into his mind, even though he had no desire to go to the beach. My sister-in-law also confirmed the strange feeling that had been continuously bothering my brother all week, and everything I told them that I felt was exactly how my brother had felt all throughout my week of depression! The moment I got out of the depression and started re-energizing myself with positive affirmations was also the same moment the depressed feeling started leaving my brother. He said that the feeling just slowly left him, and he couldn't figure out why it chose to leave him in those moments.

Another story of this same intuition at work is that of my partner's experience. He used to own an apartment close to the town hospital, and everyday at 10am, he would walk past the hospital to go to the gym. On one particular morning, as he walked past the hospital, he was suddenly overcome with a strong feeling that his brother was in there. He ignored this feeling and proceeded to the gym. Walking by the hospital again on his way home after his workout, he was suddenly hit by this feeling again, that his brother was inside the hospital. He once again ignored it and continued on his way. A few minutes after he had gotten home, the phone started ringing, and he 'knew' it was his parents calling him to say that “His brother is in the hospital.” Funny enough, it was his parents on the phone, telling him those exact words. And my partner was not surprised by this because the feeling in him was so strong that he just 'knew' this was what was happening. He took the news matter-of-factly.

Do you have experiences similar to this, on just knowing something but couldn't explain why, in rational terms? Perhaps you've even had little coincidences that you've dismissed before, such as thinking about a friend that you hadn't seen in years, and then suddenly running into them at the mall. Or maybe you wanted to purchase a particular music CD, but you knew it would be hard to find because it's almost out of circulation in the market, so you dismissed the idea; and then one day, strolling through a department store, you find the music section and decide to aimlessly skim through a Sale rack of CD's; and surprise – the CD you've been wanting is there, and it's on sale. These experiences have happened to all of us, whether we're aware of them or not. Are they simply coincidences, or could it be that there is an inter-connectedness among all of us and in everything in the Universe that is at play, and it's far more than a physical/action-based connectedness? Could it be that we are connected through our thoughts (the non-physical realm) as well? Could it be that the Universe is alive as well, manifesting physically for us, what was previously only in our thoughts? And if this were true, what effect does this knowledge have on us?

Well, for starters, we would come to a better understanding of long-puzzling statements that sages and great spiritual teachers have made throughout the centuries, that “We are all One.” For so long, we have relied on our physical senses to answer questions about our existence. Yet now we are finding, not just through countless people's experiences around the world of intuition, psychic phenomena, and 'coincidences', but through our own experiences as well, that there might be something more to the world than we've previously known.

Try this exercise for a moment:

Look at your hands and feet, and then look at all the things (and people, if there are any) around you. Obviously, you can see that you are physically separated from the things and people around you. You are your own individual. Now try to look into your memory-bank of experiences you've had when you seemed strangely connected to others around you. For example, a mother who is actively rearing her baby is in tune with what the baby needs, even though her baby can't speak yet. When the baby cries a certain way, it would mean that he's hungry, and when he cries another way, the mother will have already learned that the baby needs his diaper changed. Guests that the mother brings to the house may be puzzled about how exactly she knows, but she knows because she has, in fact, become fine-tuned to her baby's specific needs. We often call this the “Intuitive Bond” between mother and child, but in calling it this, we know, either consciously or unconsciously, that people can be connected at this finer and non-physical level. Twins experience this “Intuitive Bond” all the time too. Have you ever had an experience of feeling what another person very close to you was feeling? Have you ever thought exactly the same thoughts that the person you were with was thinking, at the exact same moment? Could we be physically separate and non-physically connected at the same time?

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