The following is an excerpt from the book:
No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!
by Louise Lewis
Published by iUniverse, Inc.
May 2007;$18.95US
978-0-595-42971-4
Copyright © 2007 Louise Lewis

Introduction

I have always believed that everyone has a book in them. They merely have to take a look at their lives, past or present, to realize that life is indeed stranger than fiction. More likely than not, everyone’s lives would make for quite an entertaining story, to say the least.

Now I’m not saying that I think everyone’s book would be worthy of a Pulitzer or be chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. You’re holding the evidence to back up that statement on both accounts. But I do think there is something special and unique about each of our lives that should be written down and then shared with others. Having said all of that, I was totally unaware of the book that was lurking deep inside of me. I discovered it (or rather it discovered me) when I unexpectedly began a new chapter in my life.

The story I’m sharing with you began when I was set free (laid off) from my job of eleven years selling advertising space for publications in high tech. Being set free simultaneously marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. From day one of this new chapter, many truths were revealed to me. For instance, I immediately interpreted being set free from my job as something positive from which I would later benefit, rather than something negative that I would be challenged to overcome. Even though it would’ve been easy to panic about no longer having a source of income, I chose not to waste any energy thinking about the negative aspect of the situation.

Another truth that revealed itself was the knowledge that I was supposed to take advantage of the rare opportunity of having some time off. Therefore, I didn’t immediately start looking for another job. Granted, with no source of income, this was an odd decision to make. However, I had worked nonstop since the age of sixteen, and I felt that I deserved some time away from the rat race. That was my story, and I faithfully stuck to it.

Adding to the list of truths was the fact that I knew, without a doubt, that whatever I experienced during this new chapter of my life would have a profound and lasting effect on my future. Without knowing how or why, I was very aware from the start that I was being lovingly, divinely guided toward something special.
The last of my truths was knowing that the significance of the choices I would make during my new chapter would be revealed to me one at a time, and only when I was in the moment - not a minute sooner.

Armed with these truths, I not only felt excited but also well prepared to begin my new chapter. But no matter how ready I felt, I was acutely aware of the fact that if this indeed was a new chapter, nothing but blank pages stared me in the face. Where was I to begin?

After a bit of soul-searching, the one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted my new chapter in life to be based on a commitment to living in Spirit, rather than in Ego.

As I see it, the ego houses the more base elements of human nature, for example, fear, self-doubt, criticism, control issues, and selfishness that if left unchecked, will create negative energy in my life. On the flip side, when my life is focused on Spirit, the ultimate Source of truth, I am guided by more positive elements, such as courage, forgiveness, compassion and generosity.

Therefore, the first step of my journey involved making a commitment to allow Spirit to guide my every move and to let nothing stand in the way of that. I was convinced that by following Spirit, the pages of my new chapter would be filled with a very special story, one that would involve adventure, personal growth, and a change in lifestyle.

As my new chapter developed, my path crossed with those of many wonderful people — normal, everyday folks whom I met during my travels, as well as in my own backyard. I listened to their stories along the way. After each encounter, I asked these people (along with family and friends) for a gift. I asked everyone to answer one question: what is the meaning of life?

I also insisted that each person provide a spontaneous answer. In other words, he or she had to write the answer right then and there, while in my presence. Why did I insist on this? To answer that question, I have to adapt the saying “God lives in the details.” My version goes something like this: I believe that God (the ultimate truth) lives in the spontaneous moment. In other words, I believe that what you know to be true can be communicated in the moment, right now, without long deliberation or second-guessing. And you certainly don’t need an expert to tell you what you already know.

Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of people I met agreed to join in on the adventure of my book. And I walked away from this journey with my heart filled with memorable gifts that will reward me until the end of my days.

Writing this book has been a personal journey for me as well as for some of the people you are about to meet. Due to the personal nature of some of their stories, I am not divulging every detail out of respect for each person. However, I will share with you the fact that with each person I met, I was reminded that I was not alone.
With each meeting, I was reminded that no matter what their race, religion, or geography, people possess far more similarities than they do differences. When you think about it, we all eventually experience pretty much the same stuff that life dishes out: the same joys, the same pain, the same sorrow. Somehow, believing this allows me to walk through life with a greater sense of belonging in the world.
I will forever be grateful to the people I met along the way. Because of them, I’m more committed than ever to being a more curious participant in life, a more compassionate listener, and a more adamant believer in the saying “We are all alike.”

I know that I cannot change the whole world, but I most certainly can change my world by asking those around me to lay focus to the meaning in their life. Therefore, it is my sincere hope that this book ignites conscious thought so that more people can find their own answers to the meaning of life. With this hope in my heart, I invite you to begin your own journey of discovery, which may very well begin by you asking this question to those people who cross your path. You’ll be amazed by what you hear.

And so, the tale of my journey begins. Thank you for coming along!
(more…)

The following is an excerpt from the book Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting
by Lynn Grabhorn
Published by Hampton Roads Publishing Company; March 2003;$16.95US; 978-1-57174-381-7
Copyright © 2000 Lynn Grabhorn

The Magic of Appreciation

There are only three states of being we run around in all day long. If we could be even a little more aware of which one we’re wearing during each moment of the day, we’d have a big leg up to changing our vibrations.

Victim Mode
This is the oh-dear-they’re-doing-it-to-me-again-and-there’s-nothing-I-can-do-about-it frame of mind where we go nowhere but around in negative circles, forever magnetizing the same old same old.

Flat-Lining Mode
In the Flat-Lining Mode, we’re neither down nor up, just bumping along on second-rate gas. We’re not flowing our energy to anything, and surely not attracting anything. In Flat-Lining we’re not only living the results of our own erratic flowing of energy, but that of everybody elses. (Like attracts likes, remember?) Very unpleasant! And what most of us do most of the time.

Turned On Mode
Now you’re up! You’re on! Your high frequencies are no longer attracting the negative vibes of others. You’re fueled with the pure positive energy of well-being, vibrating in harmony with your Expanded Self, flowing positive energy out and pulling positive events in while being wrapped in unsurpassed safety and security.

Victim Mode, Flat-Lining, or Turned On, we will always find ourselves in one of the three. Our goal, of course, is to make it the Turned On Mode as often and as long as we can, which is why we look to the high, high energy of appreciation.

The vibration of appreciation is the most profoundly important frequency we can hold, for it is the closest thing to cosmic love that exists. When we’re appreciating, we’re in perfect vibrational harmony with our Source energy, or God energy — call it what you will.

You can jump-start it, or you can jam straight to the feeling, it makes no difference. What’s important to know is that one minute of flowing the intense energy of appreciation overrides thousands of hours spent in Victim or Flat-Lining Modes.

But take care! No fair just thinking appreciation. That won’t wash. Thinking is out, feeling is in. You can’t just make a decision that you’re going to appreciate something and let it go at that. There has to be that surge of significant emotion flowing up from the depths of your being for this to work.

But neither does that mean you have to have just been saved from a life-threatening incident by 911 rescue workers to feel deep appreciation. In fact, flowing appreciation is really no big deal. You can flow it intensely to a street sign if you want. Don’t laugh, I do that all the time stay in shape. Like any skill, flowing energy requires constant practice, and there’s something so absurdly satisfying about flowing buckets of love, adoration, and appreciation to “SLOW: MEN AT WORK.” I flow it to stoplights, billboards, birds overhead, a tree stump, a dead animal, a winter storm, and of course, to people.

Sometimes in the supermarket I’ll pick the meanest looking low-life I can find and just open up and douse the unsuspecting soul with the highest vibration I can muster. Maybe it’s appreciation, maybe it’s honest-to-God love. One time I did that to a scroungy old biddy who looked like she’d rather eat me than let me pass. I blasted her, and in that very moment she wheeled around, searching angrily for whatever she felt hit her, while I smiled back in pure innocence.

That’s my “Hug-A-Bum” game where I envision me and a perfect stranger on the street (or wherever) rushing into each other’s arms like we were old best friends who hadn’t seen each other for ages. You start with acceptable “targets,” like someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to at a lunch counter if you had to. Then you move up, bit by bit, to targets that are increasingly difficult for you socially, until finally it doesn’t make any difference what kind of slobs they are.

You just see — and deeply feel — the two of you joyfully recognizing each other and flying together in this gigantic bear hug as profound love surges between you. I don’t know how many people I’ve done that with while walking down a street, and watched them turn around to look for whatever it was they felt.

The vibration of appreciation is also the highest, fastest vibration we can use for attraction. If we would shoot appreciation at anything and everything . . . all day long . . . we’d be guaranteed to have heaven on earth in no time, living happily ever after with more friends, more money, more beautiful relationships, in total safety, and closer to the God of our Being than it’s possible to fathom.

Copyright © 2000 Lynn Grabhorn

Author
Lynn Grabhorn was a long-time student of the way in which thought and feelings format our lives. Raised in Short Hills, New Jersey, she began her working life in the advertising field in New York City, founded and ran an audio-visual educational publishing company in Los Angeles, and owned and ran a mortgage brokerage firm in Washington State.

Lynn’s books, which also include The Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting Playbook and Beyond the Twelve Steps, have received high acclaim from all corners of the world. Her last book was Dear God! What’s Happening to Us?

Lynn passed away in 2004 at her home in Olympia, Washington. We all miss her.

For more information, please visit www.lynngrabhorn.com

By Masaru Emoto

Author of The Secret Life of Water

Why do people go through life looking for happiness? Dogs and cats look for food and comfort, but they certainly don’t go to all the trouble that people do in their continual search for happiness. I suppose the reason is that we are the only ones who can align ourselves with the hado of happiness.

Many years ago, I had a discussion with Dr. Ravi Batra, a well-known international economist, and he said something that has stuck with me:

Why do you think people continually search for happiness? The reason is because we people have a link to unlimited existence. But many of us make a serious mistake. We set up conditions for happiness based on riches and fame, momentary pleasures, and things that are limited and always changing.

There are those who are rich beyond most of our imaginations, and yet they continue to want more as they strive in vain to find happiness. The reason it’s in vain is because they are looking to find unlimited happiness in limited money and riches.

Unless we can become one with the unlimited existence, we will never find true happiness. This requires that we raise our consciousness.

All that can be seen with the human eye is of this limited world. Sooner or later, the material trappings will end, and as long as that is how we define happiness, our hearts will always feel hollow.

Of course I understand that casting aside all desire is not possible or even advisable. In fact, desire is not what’s preventing us from finding happiness. An appropriate amount of desire is needed to make people strive for something better, and it’s what made it possible for human society to rise to its current level. The problem arises when we become slaves to our desires. Our modern society operates on the ability to stir up desire in the masses.

It’s no easy task to find happiness in a society established on insatiable desire. So what is it that we need to do to escape never-ending desire and find happiness? The answer is to have a thankful heart.

More than ever, we live in a time when love and appreciation is truly needed. And I think the right ratio for appreciation and love is 2:1 — the exact ratio of hydrogen to oxygen in the H2O molecule!

We have seen where words of appreciation and love result in crystals of indescribable beauty. There are no conditions needed for appreciation. We can be thankful for life and for our freedom to move about.

When you align your soul with the hado of appreciation and love, a small drop of happiness will seep into your heart and spread throughout your body. This will link you to the vibration of happiness, and happiness will become a part of your daily life. And this is the secret for finding happiness right now wherever you are.

Reprinted from The Secret Life of Water by Masaru Emoto. Published by Atria Books. December 2005; $22.95US/$31.50CAN; 0-7432-8982-X. English translation copyright © 2005 by Beyond Words Publishing, Inc., and Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Author:
Masaru Emoto is an internationally renowned Japanese researcher and an independent thinker. Certified as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine from the Open International University, he is also a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University’s department of humanities and sciences, with an emphasis on International Relations.

Masaru Emoto’s research has visually captured the structure of water at the moment of freezing, and through high-speed photography he has shown the direct consequences of destructive thoughts and the thoughts of love and appreciation on the formation of water crystals. The revelation that our thoughts can influence water has profound implications for our health and the well-being of our planet.

Masaru Emoto has written many books, including the New York Times bestselling The Hidden Messages in Water and The True Power of Water.

For more information, please visit www.masaru-emoto.net

The following is an excerpt from the book Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We’re Still Single
by Jillian Straus
Published by Hyperion; February 2006; $21.95US/$29.95CAN; 1-4013-0132-0
Copyright © 2006 Jillian Straus

The First Date Interview

Those singles who can’t stand ambiguity from the very beginning develop a more direct dating approach. Meet, for instance, Steven Kaplan — as several of my girlfriends did. I was on yet another blind date — my third in the last two weeks. Here we go again, I thought, as I walked out my front door, and waved to the night doorman, Stan. Stan was my friend, and he had watched me return home forlorn from every date in the last month, except for one night when he happened to catch the end of a good-night kiss — albeit from a man who never called me again.

Like most of my friends, I had a careful semiotic clothing code that I had worked out for different kinds of dates. Tonight I was in full date battle mode: wearing my new fitted red V-neck sweater — the effort was to be attractive but not too slutty — paired with Diesel jeans, to give a “casual” impression. I had avoided my usual uniform of black cigarette pants, black top, and Gucci bag (on sale, but no one needed to know), because I did not want to convey that I was too high-maintenance. Hey, I am being honest here.

I was on my way to meet a friend-of-a-friend named Steven Kaplan. I didn’t know much about him, except that he was supposedly a good-looking, thirty-six-year-old Jewish oncologist — with a full head of hair. In my mother’s mind, of course, he was already fully qualified, sight unseen, to be my husband; in mine, he sounded like he could go any number of ways, but it was at least worth meeting him for dinner on a Tuesday night in the West Village.

I arrived at a cozy, unpretentious restaurant, Gradisca, and looked for someone fitting his description: “I’ll be wearing a green sweater and I have salt-and-pepper hair,” he’d told me during our short phone conversation. The first person I saw was a man wearing a green shirt — with the largest nose I had ever seen. As I walked toward this man with trepidation, trying to stay focused on the beauty of the soul, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Hi, I’m Steven,” this man said.

I breathed a sigh of relief. He fit the description, and was actually better looking than I had anticipated: 6′2″, with thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair and, thankfully, an entirely ordinary nose. We sat down right away. The restaurant was buzzing with beautiful people. We were seated at a quiet table in the corner, away from all the activity.

I was impressed by Steven’s sophistication: he perused the wine list and selected a full-bodied red wine; it was delicious, and we lingered over the bottle for about twenty minutes before ordering dinner. By then, I had a nice buzz, and I was beginning to feel chemistry between us. Steven looked particularly handsome with the shadow of the candle flame flickering on his face, turning his eyes into deep reflective pools. Hmm, I thought . . . He asked the usual first-date icebreaker questions: “Where are you from?” “What do you do in your free time?”

Who in New York has free time, anyway? I thought vaguely, as I admired his deep voice and silky lips. I was wondering what it would be like to kiss him.

Before we’d had a chance to order, however, the scene shifted from Last Tango in Paris to Nine to Five. My date had started to put me through a job interview:

“Do you want to stay in the city for the next couple of years?”

“Why did your last relationship end?”

“How many kids do you want?”

I was floored. I was thinking what it would be like to make out with him, and he wanted to figure out where we were sending our kids to school! When the waitress came and rescued me from his relentless battery of suitability questions, I was thrilled. The romantic mood had been extinguished the moment he seemed to scan my resume for the position of Mrs. Kaplan.

He sensed my unease, politely walked me home, and gave me an obligatory kiss on the cheek.

I wasn’t the only one of my circle, as it turned out, who’d had a date that ended up as a job interview. A few days later, I was having drinks with some girlfriends, and we were comparing our recent dates. I told them about Steven Kaplan. “He was really attractive and sophisticated, but he grilled me about my long-term life plan ten minutes into the date,” I complained. Rory, thirty-four, a blunt casting agent with baby-blue saucer eyes, explained my baffling evening to me in her own terms. Her clinical analysis of the different stages in which people approach courtship helped me to understand why so few of these dates we were all going on seemed romantic in the slightest: “He’s just trying to figure out what phase you are in. There is ‘Phase One’ and there is ‘Phase Two’ for people in the dating process,” she said. “Phase One involves buying some nice clothes and looking after yourself — for instance, taking care of your apartment, your job — and having lots of sex. I did that until I was about thirty, and I loved it.”

Rory continued, “Then there is Phase Two: This is when you want to put your money into building something for your future, you want to make your place a home in preparation for a partner and eventually a family, and most of all you want to share the life you’ve built with someone. For a woman in Phase Two, it can be challenging: you can try to put a Phase-One guy in a Phase-Two situation, but it rarely works,” she explained. Of course, the same applied to women, she said. That was clearly part of the disconnect between Dr. Kaplan and myself. But Rory felt she was now too often on the Phase-Two side of the equation, waiting for a Phase-One man to commit, and she was tired of it. I knew all too well what she was talking about, since I had spent much of my dating years chasing non-committal men.

But the interrogation on the first date is not particularly romantic. Besides, this tendency of young people to be either partying wildly or on a manic Google-like search for “the one and only” complicates the hope of simply falling in love; if we did not assign ourselves these rigid life categories, we would perhaps be more open to being persuaded to move, by the connection with another person, from Phase One to Phase Two — or even better, to simply want to be close to someone and intimate for its own sake, rather than for the fulfillment of an external timetable. But as long as we continue to approach our search for love this way, perhaps we’d be better off if we wore visible distinguishing signs: “NC” for non-committal or “R,” for ready.

I never saw or spoke to Steven Kaplan after that. I heard he got engaged to someone six months later. I was not surprised. The first date interview was an obvious, but unsubtle, way to weed out those who were not in the same place in their lives. Many of the people I heard from talked about the tormenting challenge of trying to find someone with whom you “connect” — that central word again — who is “ready” for the same things you are. On the whole, more women than men whom I interviewed had this complaint, but there were plenty of men who were pining after women who were “not ready.” The “readiness factor” was usually a sense of one’s own place in one’s life, rather than a reaction to the pull of the relationship itself. Steven Kaplan was ready, and he wasn’t going to waste any time trying to figure out whether I really was — or, for that matter, whom I really was.

On more than a dozen occasions, I had lent an ear to tortured friends who had waited and waited for a commitment, constantly hoping for clues, signs that their potential mate was coming around. I told the Steven Kaplan story to one of my ex-boyfriends, a semi-reformed non-committer who had broken my heart over ten years earlier. Years after the breakup, he had said, “Jillian, it wouldn’t have mattered if you were Cindy Crawford — I just wasn’t ready.” Here we were now, friends, and he explained my date with the doctor this way: Most guys don’t necessarily end up with the woman they love the most. “It’s like a game of musical chairs; you sit down in one chair, then you sit in another, and when the music stops, whatever chair you are sitting in is the chair you end up in.” It was the most unromantic thing I had ever heard and I thought I would never be able to buy that line of thinking. While this approach provided a shortcut to finding a mate in an ambiguous dating culture, I doubted that in the long run it resulted in many happy, permanent matches.

Gen-Xers are accustomed to figure-it-out-as-you-go-along dating and seem to resist any early pressure in a relationship, no matter what phase of dating they might be in. The Gen-X approach gives men and women the ability to get in and out of their relationships as easily as they change their jobs or apartments. The lack of formal romantic cues give this generation freedom, but with that freedom often comes a price: the inability to decisively commit.

Excerpted from Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We’re Still Single by Jillian Straus. Published by Hyperion. Copyright © 2006 Jillian Straus. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold.

Author
Jillian Straus spent eight years producing programs for The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she interviewed hundreds of men and women about their lives and their relationships. Prior to that, she worked for ABC News. She received a B.A. and an M.A. at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Straus is currently a fellow of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, training young women in communications. She lives in New York City.

For more information, please visit www.unhookedgeneration.com.