Why Do We Fall In Love?

"What we regard as normality is our collective, protective madness,

in which we repress the grim truth about the human condition." - Ernest Becker

The Same Reason The Flowers Grow. 

World's Best Sunsets San Clemente

"Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement." - Darwin

Join Jason Silva every week as he freestyles his way into the complex systems of society, technology and human existence and discusses the truth and beauty of science in a form of existential jazz. New episodes of Shots of Awe every Tuesday!

The Power Of Sunsets

We Don't Cry Because We're Sad

"The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be." - Alain de Button

The Sky Does Not Rain From Sadness 

Your Heroic Story

What is the story of your life? Is it one that you would want your great-grandchildren to remember? Have you been living your life fully? 

Sometimes I have good ideas and I procrastinate before I put them into action. I get busy and find so many other things to do instead of beginning a new project. I tell myself I am not ready, but if not now, when? 

Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way says that procrastination is simply fear disguised.

If this is so, what could I be afraid of? What am I afraid of? Could I be afraid of feeling great? Of looking good? Of loving myself?  Could I be afraid that I won't keep going and that I will quit or be not very good at it (whatever the thing I am thinking about starting is.)

Perhaps I am afraid of my own magnificence, the heroine within. 
. 
Marianne Williamson's quote comes to mind:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

What insight this quote has for us! Being liberated from our own fear, allows us to step forth as the heros and heroines that we really are! Some of us have been taught that we should be polite, not hog the spotlight, not to talk to loudly or stand out from the crowd. Yet if we really knew who we were, we would be happy to let our unique light shine.

Jason Silva, a modern-day mystic, discusses the Hero's Journey in his Shots of Awe:

Shots Of Awe In San Clemente

Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey has proposed that our ability to awe was biologically selected for by evolution because it imbues our lives with sense of cosmic significance that has resulted in a species that works harder not just to survive but to flourish and thrive.

Are you looking for a "Shot of Awe" in San Clemente? Look no further than "The Center For Spiritual Living"

A Shot Of Awe From San Clemente

Layers of Truth in San Clemente

Christopher Uhl reminds us that "while gazing 'up' at a night sky, one in fact hangs off the planet and near the edge of a galaxy, vertiginous, suspended over the infinity of space...

Layers of Truth in San Clemente 

Contemplate: Become consciously aware of this open channel between the human and the Divine.  Can you tell where one starts and the other leaves off?

Saturday Photowalk With Arpad Petrass

Come explore Salt Creek on this months San Clemente Connected PhotoWalk with our featured photographer Arpad Petrass

Inspiration is Therapy 

Where Salt Creek Beach Park

33333 S. Pacific Coast Hwy. Dana Point, CA 92629
Date: Saturday- February 8th
Time 3:30-5:30PM
Click Here To Sign Up! 

• Lots of opportunity to take pictures here. 
• Large park for the kids 
• Practice portrait photography on the beach 
• Shoot the sunset 
• Take pictures from the golf course overlooking the beach 
• Take Pictures from the Ritz Carlton

Arpad says that “Photography should delight and excite the senses." There are so many magical moments in life that if you were to just stop, pause and look around, you could begin to experience life’s extraordinary beauty. "Just by giving ourselves the ‘gift’ of opening our eyes and be willing to see clearly, we will experience the wonder and magic on this planet like never before."

"Photography can be classical, whimsical, realistic, dramatic,breath taking or artistic. It can be created through the eye of just the photographer and his camera or enhanced and embellished in a lab. What really matters is not how the photograph was created, but what emotions that photograph invoked in you. Did you want to own it, experience it, taste it, be it or do it. After all, this is our life, what we experience and believe about the world , is our perception of it. “ 

If you don't already know Arpad come to "Not just another Wednesday Wisdom" here at our center tomorrow at 7pm

Beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment between poetry and grace.  And So It Is!  

Go To Oz, But Return To Tell The Tale

We might say that both the artist and the neurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an ex­ternal, active, work project...

- Ernest Becker

Lately I have been dreaming that I can fly, not in a movie kind of way, but in a visceral 4D,  touch taste and feel, first person kind of way. I find myself hovering over the trees, then floating down to meet with people on the ground, and loving this round world. I find myself so involved that I don't want to wake up. But in the end, Kate kicks, or the light comes. These dreams all seem to be connected in some way, like watching a TV show from one season to the next.  I have been sharing these dreams and the insight I get from them with my friends and family. It is a story that is better told than read.

What have you been dreaming of lately? Do you find yourself flying in your dreams? What is your unconscious mind trying to bubble to the surface of your experience? Are dreams our connection to a quantum multidimensional universe or just an escape from our everyday reality? That you must decide for yourself.

Want to know more about your dreams? Then sign up for our "Dream Interpretation Workshop" Sunday, January 26th from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. We hope to see you there.

A Dreamy Little Waterfall

Is Love a Religious Problem?

Ultimately when we fall in love, it is a prayer, it is a sacrifice, we give ourselves and hope that this being of light will save us from our animal condition,

We can dispense from being Gods with Anuses into being just Gods. - Jason Silva

And So It Is! 

Day of the Girl

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results." -Herman Melville

Something to contemplate on October 11 the "Day of the Girl"

And So It Is!