We have all had the experience of hell - the helplessness, the hopelessness, the misery. We got ourselves there by persistent thoughts of our lack of value, thoughts that there is something wrong with us, or shame or guilt. Whatever it was that got us there, we did it and we can undo it. Once we understand how to get out of hell, we can do it anytime and we don't have to fear hell anymore.

How do we go about creating a truly wonderful life? In this podcast we use the metaphor of the great French seafood stew, Bouillabaisse, to explore the elements of a rich, satisfying life.

We are all given the breath of life, but too often we block that living vitality. In this episode we explore how we restrict our life energy using my own story and the metaphor of Frankenstein's monster.

There are many things in life that demand our attention and we need to give them some attention to live safely. But without a daily focus on feeling good, we miss the essence of life. And if we want to feel really good, something we might call Heaven, then we need be choosing those feelings throughout our day.

For more thoughts and perspectives like this, check out my website at www.stewartblackburn.com and my YouTube channel under Stewart Blackburn.

My next course with Pete Dalton, Changing Reality, starts on March 24, 2025.

It seems that in this busy world of ours that we have lost sight of how valuable and important fun is. There are so many things that seem to need to be done first. Things like duty get priority and we get to have fun if and when there's time. I would suggest that fun is much more important than being last on the to-do list.

While healing is very important to us, is just healing enough? Is there more to a full life than healing? I suggest that we go on beyond healing to full-fledged thriving, thriving in ways that we can barely conceive of right now. What might that look like? In this podcast we take a look at what else might be out there.

There are a great many philosophies that organize our lives around why we are here. Most of them are very disempowered. Suppose we choose to live lives of freedom and choice, seeing what we want to do and exploring those things as an adventure. It's messy and unpredictable, but its true to our nature and we get to become our whole selves this way.

When we decide to be powerful and accept the intensity and responsibility of being powerful it can be an overwhelming experience. In this podcast we look at our internal processes of taking up our power. This is a necessary procedure that often gets overlooked. We make life easier when we know what we're facing.

We all have to decide for ourselves what is real and what is not. That choice may be to agree with some authority, but those of us who choose to think for ourselves must confront the challenge of saying what we're going to accept as real and true. In this podcast I present my response to the question of how do you know what's real. I think this is fundamental to our taking charge of our lives and being responsible for the realities we create.

Very often our mere loving focus goes a long way toward helping us heal. Today we want to send loving attention to our eyes and the other places in our faces that need our help. This is a meditation best done with the eyes closed. Let yourself just relax into the soothing words to encourage your body to heal itself.

Our personal rules become the blueprint for our lives. Some of the rules may no longer serve us, or maybe they never did. But if we don't examine them and change the ones that need to be changed, we will go on shaping our lives in ways that don't quite work of us. This podcast is about the need to review these rules of our personal reality so that we can live more joyous and fulfilling lives.

You probably find that you don't like the feeling of being disoriented. That's quite understandable. But disorientation has its uses. Disorientation forces us to reevaluate where we are and what we think is going on. Yes, it implies change, but that can be a good thing. When we look at disorientation positively we can gain valuable insights and perspectives on what we have previously taken for granted.

Shame is the most crippling emotion we can carry and we don't have to. It's a choice and we don't have to make that choice. In this podcast we look at some of the ways we can counteract feelings of shame. Shame undermines our self-esteem and self-esteem is one of the most important aspects of a healthy life.

Since everything we choose is based on our desire to feel better than we currently do, doesn't it make sense to spend some time looking at what we actually want to feel? Don't we want to choose the very best feelings that we can as we make our way through life? Since we have the power to choose which feeling we're going to experience for the most part, it makes sense for us to adopt the attitude of a connoisseur and examine the relative pleasure of various feelings. In this podcast we'll look at this delicious process.

Not only is overall pleasure the motivation for every choice we make, it is the yardstick by which we judge which action we take. In a miraculous calculation, we quickly imagine what our expected pleasure will likely be with each of our choices and then we pick the one with the most anticipated pleasure attached to it. This is a remarkable process that we will explore in this podcast.

We need trust. It allows us to move about in the world and to rely on our assumptions and expectations. But trust comes from, and only from, our choice to trust. And it order to do it wisely, we need to pay attention to many inner factors. In this podcast we go over many of the aspects of trust that need our review before we trust sensibly.

It's natural to be passionate about the spiritual path and to be excited to explore new worlds within. But there is great wisdom in taking the time to let the process of growth proceed in their own time. We learn from nature and this lesson can be learned effectively from a lobster.

For more of my thoughts and perspectives go to www.stewartblackburn.com or look for Stewart Blackburn on YouTube.

There are many wonderful techniques for manifesting our desires and they rely on envisioning our desire, energizing it, and allowing it to come to us. But nothing seems to work better that simply loving our desire into being. Trying to manipulate other people doesn't really work, but fulfilling the desire for specific feelings does. And it does especially well when we love it into being.

For more of my thoughts and perspectives go to www.stewartblackburn.com or look for Stewart Blackburn on YouTube.

Sure, remembering things is important. But so is forgetting things. With so much emphasis on remembering most of us have neglected to fine art of forgetting. There is so much to forget that we usually overlook how critical this process is and even how to do it. In this podcast we go over the skills and importance of forgetting.

For more thoughts and perspectives like this, go to www.stewartblackburn.com and Stewart Blackburn on YouTube.

Nobody likes to be criticized. We generally feel bad or worse when we're criticized. But the fear of criticism is an even deeper level of feeling bad. But we don't ever have to fear it again once we know how to deal with that fear.

For more thoughts and perspectives like this, go to www.stewartblackburn.com and Stewart Blackburn on YouTube.