Alan Cohen

I’m in a conscious state of launching. Thank you.

Alan Cohen

I tell people that the course boils down to one concept and that’s there’re only two human experiences. One is love and the other is fear. Balancing these both means finding balance in life.

Alan Cohen

All human pain is a result of coming from fear and all human joy, healing, and success that’s felt is coming from love. Balancing both these situations help us finding balance in life.

Every moment is a choice between the two. If we can recognize it and train our mind to choose love instead of fear, everything changes and we are able to be finding balance in life.

Alan Cohen

That’s a great question.

In my coaching sessions, I invite clients to identify the voice of fear and the voice of love. One of my clients is a doctor and he had to make a presentation to a group of doctors and he was really nervous.

I asked him, “What is the voice of fear tell you?” He said, “Well, I’m going to flop. Nobody’s going to like me. I’m going to get bad recommendations. I’m going to not be invited again. You know that scary voice.” I said, “Great. Now, what would the voice of love say by conscious?” He said, “Well, I could really help this people. I could turn them on to holistic principles. This is my field that I love and they’ll probably invite me back and even if they don’t, who cares. I’ve been true to myself.” I said, “Well now, which one feels better?” He said, “Well, the voice of love for sure.” This is how we are able to be finding balance in life.

So, when we put both of those voices on the table and tell the truth about what they’re saying and how each one feels, the voice of fear becomes absurd and the voice of love will come very attractive and very real. That’s a very simple process any of us can do in finding balance in life when we have a decision to make or when we’re upset.

Alan Cohen

The world that we think is so real is pretty much a story made up. If it’s a good story, we might want to choose living in it but if it’s a bad story, we can make up another story.

For example, when I was a kid, as Catholics, we’re not allowed to eat meat on Friday. It was a sin. And then one day, a group of people in the Vatican got together and had a vote and it was no longer a sin.

I said, “Wait a minute. How could something be a sin one day and not a sin the next?” And I realized that a lot of what we call religion or society or culture values is based on human whim and projections of frail human minds and has really nothing at all to do with reality.

Alan Cohen

It’s only a game in town as far as I can tell. I can make money. I can have sex. I can eat food and do all fun stuff but really, the quest for reality is the ultimate driving force of a spiritual being, which we all are. Recognizing the quest helps us finding balance in life.

Alan Cohen

Yeah, exactly.

You’re making a good example because we don’t see each other. We see our versions of each other. I select certain aspects of you that I like or don’t like and I decide that you and you do see certain aspects of me and you decided it’s me. We’re really playing on a very shallow playing field, so to speak and as you said, if we saw each other clearly, we would be so in love with each other that we wonder why we ever judged each other.

In fact, many years ago, someone had an experiment. He had a group of people who knew each other and worked together and he had them sit in a circle and he had them air all their thoughts and feelings about each other. One by one, they began with their judgements, upsets, criticisms, fears, and he had them kept going and going and finally, the result was all and said, “I love you”.

Alan Cohen

My help is that I can get there even before I wait to peel them all away and try to find that love energy even before I have to process my butt to death trying to get there.

Alan Cohen

I would agree to soon. I think it’s really important to express yourself and be honest because that leads to greater self-awareness but it depends on your purpose for telling the other person. Somebody said, “People who are brutally honest are usually more interested in brutality than honesty.”

Alan Cohen

Finding balance in life is sometimes interesting. If I value our relationship and I really want to go deeper with you and I really want to cultivate a loving connection, then I can say anything because my purpose is to connect. However, if I have a greater investment in being right or arguing instincts separating to get some kind of reward for being separate, then the expression my honesty will not lead me to deeper lover because my intention was not deeper love.

It really all depends on why you’re expressing your honesty and what you intend to get with it.

Alan Cohen

Yeah. That’s a good point in finding balance in life.

In my book A Course in Miracles Made Easy, I cited a turning point for me and I was invited to speak in Spokane, Washington. I had a buddy there name Alden and he offered to give me a ride one day and before the ride, I went from massage. I feel asleep on a massage table and I over slept and I slept to a point that I missed meeting him. I went to him but he had waited and given up and gone home and I felt horrible.

Here I was, doing the selfish thing of getting massage and this guy came out to do me a favor and I blew him off, not purposely. I wasted his time. I just felt really guilty and so, I saw him the next day and said, “Alden, I am so sorry. I’ve missed it.” I told him exactly what happened and he said, “Well, would you like a ride somewhere today?” That was the course in miracles in a nutshell.

Because the course says that the way you gain forgiveness for yourself is by offering forgiveness to others and, to teach them by model that the sin that they believe they have committed against you had no effect on you. This is how you will be able to finding balance in life.

Now, that’s a big stretch because we all believe other people’s sins have affect us but the quest says if you can get to the place where you realize that you are bigger than anything anybody has done for you or to you, you’re very close to home.

It’s all about taking our power back from things that we believed can hurt us or have hurt us and rebooting to the point that we know our home no matter what. It takes practice but that’s what the game is about.

Alan Cohen

I got chills as you are speaking Luis because what a beautiful holy thing you did to release your father from your upset and as you so eloquently stated, when you released this father, you released yourself and so, what we do to others, we do to ourselves in the moment we do it. Finding balance in life includes so many extraordinary things in life.

Alan Cohen

It’s to reframe our identity. We think we’re small little bodies with bad personalities, relationship failures, monetary angst and stuff like that, and that exist only at the most superficial level of life.

The truth is we are magnificent, whole, empowered, shining, spiritual beings regardless of the dramas going on around us. We just need to be learning finding balance in life. I have my ups and downs. I get upset about this. I worry about that but when I sit down to pray and meditate to do my Course in Miracles lesson, I walk my dogs or do my yoga, do stuff that connects me to spirit, suddenly, I remember who I truly am as far bigger than any of that little stuff and that reconnection with higher identity gives me a leverage that allows me to walk through the ups and down of life without being tattered or shredded by the events of the moment.

One of the course lessons that is actually repeated more than any one is I am as God created me. And I said that nothing has happened in this world has changed who you really are. It’s a meditation of a lifetime.

Alan Cohen

Thank you for your honesty and God bless you both. You’re working on your relationship and you’re growing. That’s really commendable.

I was on a radio show many years ago and these two wacky guys from New Jersey and the head, it’s a metaphysical show. They’re actually pretty wacky but they are pretty smart as well. And someone called onto the show and said, “Why is there so much road rage?” They asked me as the guest and I gave my opinion. Then, one of the guys in the show said, “Well, there’s so much road rage because people want to be angry and they want an excuse to be angry at something.”

When he said that, I said, “Oh, man. That’s pretty profound.” What I got from that was for some odd reason, we pick some kind of a sick reward in being upset like there’s a benefit to it that we perceive. It’s not a real benefit but a perceived benefit. So, if you want to be angry, you can find anything you want to be angry at whether it’s Luis, the economy, or your body. You can make up any story that you want and you might notice also that when you’re angry, you’re angry at everything. When you’re guilty, you’re guilty about everything. When you’re loving, you’re loving about everything. Knowing this helps us finding balance in life at all levels.

It’s really a choice that we make. It’s a choice that we choose to perceive love rather than fear.

In fact, I’ll give you one more funny illustration. When motion pictures first came out, a group of cowboys got together in North Dakota and they watched the first movie in a cabin and they had a sheet on the wall of the screen. In this movie, they’re a band of wild Indians coming up on the ridge with war paint and, when one of the cowboys saw that, this is his first movie, he stood up and he took out his pistol and he fired six shots at the Indians in the movie and everybody laughs and lights came on and they were six bullet holes in the sheet.

The illustration is when we’re firing bullets at anybody, we’re firing at our projections. We’re firing in a movie. We’re firing at a story we made up rather in a story that’s really there.

So, a lot of The Course in Miracles and a lot great spiritual pasture is about reeling in your projections like reeling in a fishing line and removing the investment that you have that you’re somebody out there who’s doing to you or for you and claiming 100% responsibility that I am doing it to myself or for myself.

Alan Cohen

Well, we have to decide the outcome we want.

I was just watching the Tony Robbins video and he said, “People get so caught up in details that they forget about the outcome they’re looking for.” He said, “Never mistake motion for achievement.” Meaning that you can be going through motions but it doesn’t really mean you’re getting where you want to get.

When I feel that there’s something bigger than me, I have to remember what is the outcome I want to happen? Do I want to worry about this? Do I want somebody else to be more important to me? Do I want somebody else to take away my peace? Or is it more important for me to keep my peace no matter what? And it is.

One of the most frequent questions I get in my coaching is, “Well, I have to work with people who are really annoying.” Or “My boss is a pain in the butt.” Or, “I have to go home and see my parents for thanksgiving and they still think I’m 12 years old. They treat me like that.” I give them a prescription, a little exercise, “Okay, when you go home for those 3 days or whatever, I want you to make it your goal that no matter what anybody says or does to you, you’re going to remain at peace. You’re only goal is that when you leave that room or house, you’re going to feel as good as you did when you arrived or better.”

In that sense, what we’re doing is we’re setting our priorities.

Alan Cohen

So I want to keep my peace no matter what. That’s my goal. That helps me a lot because money things come and go, relationship things come and go.

Alan Cohen

Yeah, beautiful point.

One of the best places to practice forgiveness is to forgive your non-forgiveness. Someone’s upset. Someone’s pissed off, so I think this person wronged me. Okay, got it. Can you give yourself space just to feel that? Okay, I’m a human being. People are getting pissed off. So, let me do whatever I can to return to my heart.

And for me, it can be walking my dogs or taking a nap or watching a video. So I tell people if you get upset, anything you can do in that moment that gets your head on straight again is holy. Even eating ice cream, if that’s going to give you peace in a moment and going to give you clarity to make your next move, I think it’s okay.

I’m into soothing. I’m into relief. I’m into taking the edge off of eruption. There were some psychiatrists from Chicago say, “We’ll dive into you,” I would say, “That works.” However, for me, I prefer gentler approach. I prefer to be kinder to myself. I prefer my clients to be kinder to themselves and we extricate ourselves from fear by choosing love whatever that means in a moment.

Alan Cohen

I sure enjoyed being with both of you. Thank you for your honesty and your open hearts.