The poet Rumi once said, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”.

The same thing could be said of happiness. Instead of looking outwards for happiness, simply look within at all the ways you are preventing yourself from being happy in this very moment — and work on letting them go.

To get you started, here are 27 common things that prevent our happiness.

1. Forgetting our inherent worth.

Your worth is not contingent on external factors like your titles, relationship status, financial situation or career. These are just roles you play in life. As a human being, you are inherently worthwhile and whole.

2. Worrying about the future.

When you worry about what might go wrong in your life, you’re creating your own personal hell in an otherwise peaceful and beautiful present moment.

3. Comparison.

Mark Twain once said, “Comparison is the death of joy”...

Written by Wes Annac, The Culture of Awareness

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy (1)

A reader recently mentioned an interesting idea, which is that we can be aware of awareness.

How can we do this, you ask? From my perspective, the best way is to act on the things we become aware of. Awareness is a concept that doesn’t receive as much attention as it should, and if we’re more aware of it, we might make choices each day that are aligned with it.

Most of us consider ourselves spiritually aware, but how often do we act on the things we’ve learned? How often do we actually put our lessons into play? If we really ask ourselves these questions, we might find that we haven’t expanded or lived up to our awareness as much as we could be.

by Judith Orloff, MD

Empaths are highly emotional sponges that is heightened around negative energy, which overrides their sublime capacity to absorb positive emotions and all that is beautiful. If empaths are around peace and love, their bodies assimilate these and flourish. Crowds or negativity, though, often feel assaultive, exhausting.

For empaths to fully enjoy gatherings with family and friends, they must learn to protect their sensitivity and find balance. Since I’m an empath, I want to help them cultivate this capacity and be comfortable with it.

As an empath, I’ve always been hyper-attuned to other people’s moods, good and bad. Before I learned to protect my energy, I felt them lodge in my body. After being in crowds, I would leave feeling anxious, depressed, or tired. When I got home, I’d just crawl into bed, yearning for peace and quiet.

Here are six empath survival strategies from my book, The Ecstasy of Surrender to help you manage empathy more effectively and stay centered without absorbing negative energies.

February 18, 2015

29 Leo 59 / 29 Aquarius 59

February’s Aquarius New Moon starts the approach to the awakenings that will take us into spring. The event is as quirky and distinctive as the sign it occupies. Like January’s, this Moon is in Aquarius, but with a vastly different textures. It is like a diving board that propels us into objectivity, then drops us into boundless emotion and interconnectedness.

This Aquarius New Moon is at the last minute of the last degree of the sign, so far along that it may as well be Pisces. In fact, the Sun and the Moon both slide into Pisces only minutes after meeting. Their movement spotlights friendships, dreams and wishes while also immersing us in retreat, self-reflection and an inescapable awareness that more change is on the way. The quick transition is propelling and confusing, dousing cool intellect with empathy and sensitivity, tossing detachment like a life preserver to keep us afloat on the vast sea of life.

Imagine if meditation was a regular part of school life for children. Just think how different the world would be. If every child was able to connect to the ocean of consciousness that permeates all that is, the desire to do wrong by others would dissolve. Meditation allows us to discover through experience the truth of who we really are.

The problem in today’s society is that we are constantly running from ourselves, and consequently, from the truth. We’re so occupied with work and social events that we never take the time to discover who we truly are at the core of our being. Most of us learn to be something we are not. We learn to fit in, to conform and to abide by social norms. We learn how to put on a mask in front of other people. We learn how to be slaves to our own ego. We become so good at running from ourselves that we can’t stand the thought of ever taking off the mask we’ve become comfortable wearing. So we betray ourselves and we let our ego roam free. We become numb to the world and every living creature in it. We sell our soul for an illusion of who we are, and deep down, a part of us knows that we are on the run. Many of us have no hope of ever reconnecting with the self, as we have run too far…