HOPE for 2026

We've heard people reference saving the soul of America before. Particularly now, when it seems that the soul of America needs saving. Yet, we rarely hear anything about the shadow of America. But the shadow of America is definitely showing now. Everything that we renounced and pretended into the closets of America's collective closet is now out in the open for us all to see. That is, if we are looking. The good news, however, is that the more we see the shadow, the closer we get to the soul. If we consider what happens with an individual's psychological growth and apply it to the collective, what we'll see is that the same growth that happens when an individual encounters shadow material is the growth that can happen when the collective encounters shadow material. And we are definitely encountering the American shadow now. Tune in to learn more. 

It is very hard for us to compute, but it is possible to live out an identity--which we might even call a personality--that is not who we really are as a Self. That Self--with a capital S--is different from the self--with a lowercase s. The self is who we believe that we are as a personality, which often turns out to only be an identity. The Self is the deepest essence of who we really are. So, today, we are talking about the various identities, how they are formed, how they live out their introjections, how they interact with others and how they might start the pathway to the more authentic Self. 

Passed down through the generations is this idea that once we commit to another person, we are now "One." Two hearts have joined together to become one. That's what we say. But what if that very idea about relationship is actually has no validity. That idea seems to indicate that we can have love or we can have freedom. We can't have both. But the reality is that those relationships that allow both parties to bring their whole selves to the dynamic are the healthiest. Tune in to learn more. 

Most of us think that we are being kind when we give someone the benefit of the doubt. But what we forget when we do that is that there IS a doubt. Generally, we just give the benefit and forget the doubt. But what if that doubt has very important information to give us. Information that might be guidance, even guiding us toward safety. Tune in for more information on tuning into your own internal guidance system. 

Based on my book, "Letting Go of Good," endorsed by Caroline Myss, Dr. Larry Dossey and others, today we are going to talk about the difference between being good and being real. Since the time when we were toddlers we've heard "Be good" from our parents. Even was they waved us off to college, with tears in their eyes, they gave us the same tired advice, "Be good." But first, being good is a dubious concept, since what is good to one is not so good to another. Further, there are many ways in which we think we are being good, by following all of the dictates of society for duty, obligation, loyalty, should, have to, ought to but we are also filled with a sense of meaninglessness or even resentment. So, is any of that genuine. Regardless of how it looks to others, and even to ourselves, being good can be done from very insincere motivations. Further, people who are always striving to be good as a method of gaining or maintaining a sense of worthiness are often taken advantage of by controllig and even abusive people. Sometimes that idea means we are not using skills such as intuition and discernment. So, tune in today and let's find out how to stop being good and start being real. 

We have arrived at adolescence in our understanding of relationship—in other words, we have a long way to go. But, well, what do we expect? Only 150 years ago, marriages were often still arranged even in first world countries. We arranged for a good dowry, good property, money, inheritance, prestige, even good teeth and good hips. So this thing of marrying someone we love is new, and we have only begun the work of understanding how to do it. But you know what typically happens in adolescence: we fall in love and out of love very quickly.We stumble and bumble and slowly make our way into something we might call a forever relationship. But because we are stilling learning what it means to have a healthy relationship, these forevers often don't last. But is is possible that each stumble and bumble, each forever that doesn't last can teach us a little more and a little more? If so, what are we learning? Tune in to learn more.

We typically think of duality in terms of its spiritual consequence. But today we are talking about duality in terms of its PSYCHOSPIRITUAL consequence. Psychospiritual duality has created a split between consciousness and unconsciousnesss so that, since we are not fully either, we live in a semi-conscious state. The fact that we cannot fully be either does, in and of itself, argue against that duality that says that everything is polarized into "either/or" rather than "both/and." But since we can't really be "both/and" when we are semi-conscious, we will need to do something about that. Semi-consciousness is not a state we can call truly alive. So, it is essential that we begin to talk about it. And today, we will. We will talk about how that split happened and what we can do about it. 

If you did something you didn't like, and I ask you why you did it, you might have to say, "I don't know why I did that." And, if we are honest, we might have to admit that there are things that we do, things that we say, even things that we think or feel, about which we might have to say, "Where did THAT come from?" These things are not "bad" things as much as they are just things we do without having to think about it. We just do it, because we do it. These things commonly come from something called a family trance. In our families of origin we often develop certain ways of thinking, feeling, acting and interacting that have more to do with the unconscious demands of family than they do with who we actually are. In fact, many of us, even as early as infancy, gave up who we actually were to this family trance in which we were assigned a role and everafter just did whatever that role told us to do. Want to know more? Tune in. 

As we come to the end of 2025 and look back over the devastation and fear of more devastation that many, if not most, of us have experienced this year, it is hard to imagine feeling any hope for 2026. But there is hope. There is HOPE. This show will expose that hope for what it is and facilitate its expansion. 

Emotional abuse can be just as devastating as any other form of abuse. When parents or caregivers emotionally abuse a child, they are basically defining that child according to how they perceive that child. So, if a parent tells a child to stop feeling emotions, they are telling the child that emotions are not to be felt--defining the child as someone who will not allow themselves to feel emotions. That's just one example. There are many things that a parent can say/do to a child that define the child in ways that make life much more difficult for that child as they grow up. This podcast will briefly explain emotional abuse and talk about how an adult who has been emotionally abused as a child may find healing.