Joy is your birthright and the channel of your spirit. Like a radio, when you tune into this station, you experience your nature. If nothing were wrong in your life, you would be happy. If you didn’t judge what you should or shouldn’t be doing, if you didn’t judge what others are doing or what life presents to you, you would feel good. When you stop running to the future and holding on to the past, you’ll feel good. There is only ever joy in the present. Be here and joyful here.

We often think that when we get more things done and accomplish bigger feats, we’ll feel better about ourselves. The truth is when you do less, you feel joy more. I’m not saying that doing more is bad; I’m saying the compulsive need to do more is the wrong mindset to have. You don’t ever have to do “more,” you have to do “good.” It’s the spiritual quality of what you do that truly matters.

In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon said, “Everything is vanity,” meaning every “thing” is empty on its own. No thing, no title, nothing that you garner on this physical plane is going to give you the joy and fulfillment you are truly looking for. Only finding your true self will bring you joy. We have to collectively change our definition of success from accomplishment and achievement to alignment, being in a state of joy, and loving our life as we journey toward our goals and desires.

Spirit Principle #2: You don’t have to search for happiness.You just need to see the barriers to it and remove them.

After I tell people that nothing can make them happy, the response I usually get is “Well, then, what will make me happy? How do I get it?” The problem is the question. The question implies you have to go out and get happiness. But remember, joy isn’t something you find; it’s something you reveal because it’s something that you are. When you stop living in everything that you’re not, the result is joy.Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interestingly, the pursuit of happiness is what holds us from our natural wellspring of joy. It doesn’t mean you can’t have pursuits, goals, and desires—no, not at all. But instead of pursuing happiness, pursue what you love from a place of happiness, which is your inner light.

When Michelangelo was asked how he made such a beautiful sculpture of a horse, he said, “I didn’t. I just cut away everything that wasn’t a horse.” Similarly, you can find your natural state by cutting away everything that isn’t you. You don’t need to find happiness. The search is over. All you have to do is go up to the wall that has been keeping it out and start taking it down. What is the wall? What is the barrier?

Spirit Principle #3: When we trade our faith for fear, we trade in our joy for pain.

What’s keeping us unhappy? What is blocking us off from our joy? We’re now going to come full circle. What blocks us off is fear. At a certain point in our life, we started fearing more than loving. That was an important part of our development because there is healthy fear as well. It’s important to know that when there is an armed robber, you should run and protect yourself. Fear is important to keep us from falling off the edge of a cliff or running through a red light. But the human mind has distorted the essence of fear and turned it into the background soundtrack of our lives without us even realizing it.

There is a fear of not living fully as your Self, about the need to be in control, fearing the outcomes of your life’s experiences. Fear, my friend, is what influences you to make decisions that deny the Truth of who you really are, leading you to experience the pain of not being the True you. We feel pain when we’re not being ourselves. We feel pain when we think we’re in control. We feel pain when we fall out of alignment with Truth.

There’s a proverb that says, “It’s better to be a living dog than a dead lion,” meaning it is better to be a living version of yourself (even if it’s a dog) than a dried-up dead version of someone or something that you’re not (even if it’s seemingly the king of the jungle). If it’s not really you, then it’s not real.

Spirit Principle #4: When you restore your faith in love, you will return to joy.

The root of all our fears is that we’ve fallen out of love with life. Life is a magical dance when you are in love. We fall out of love when we lose the conditions of Intention and Certainty and forget who we are and what life is all about. When we lose ourselves and our connection to the infinite source of light, love, and perfection, we feel fear, weak, and alone. This is spiritual unconsciousness.Remember that your Inner Being never leaves you. You are always being held. You don’t have to live in fear of what other people think, and you don’t need to have anything to feel worthy. The truth is you have to be true to yourself, true to your soul, and true to the source of all good. You are meant to be happy. You are meant to enjoy your life!

It all begins with awareness. It all begins with seeing. The seeing is freeing. What I mean is that until you begin to pick up on the subtle and yet deeply entrenched belief system you’re living with, it will be very hard to change anything. But this is not just about change. It’s more about letting go of your mask. The mask is a belief you decided to agree with, and it has become the lens through which you see the world. It shapes the entire paradigm of your life. Seen in this light, a belief is an agreement we have each made with reality. Through conditioning we’ve signed a contract between us and ourselves about how we perceive the universe.

Where did this belief system come from? Every belief is really just a thought, but one you’ve had so many times that it has become your automatic-response thinking. It happens so fast, you are not even always aware that you are living this way. Thus you take it to be true without question, and it remains subconscious. It then becomes very hard to discern if you’re not looking for it. Because of this, it is easier to start by noticing your speech patterns. The tongue is the quill of the heart, and you can trace what you say back to your thoughts. You can become a witness and begin to notice when you are not experiencing Hishtavus.

THE SEEING IS FREEING.

BECOME THE WITNESS OF YOUR MIND.

Catch yourself using the language of the ego. Remember, beneath the surface, your soul sees the sameness, the Oneness, and the innate good in all people, places, and things. It is aware of the Divine purpose in all that is and the Infinite Intelligence guiding and directing life. The ego, however, speaks in a language that reflects disbelief in this loving presence. It speaks in a way that separates, compares, and judges.

Through the lens of Kabbalah we learn that there are a hierarchy of dimensions to reality. There’s the most external material and physical world, there are some energetic levels in between, finally there’s a level called connection to the source.

Most of us spend the majority of our time running out in the physical world and frantically looking for that fulfillment. Naturally, we start looking where we are. The problem is that if our view of where we are is distorted by our own ego, we can’t accurately evaluate where we are, or how to know if we arrive where we want to be. If we’re living our lives in a foggy distortion, we can almost be assured that we are primed for undesirable levels of pain.

Instead of looking out to find our wholeness, perhaps we should be looking in to find our fulfillment. Perhaps we should be looking up. We are looking for a higher mode of consciousness. The higher we climb on the ladder of consciousness, the closer we come to Truth. But what is Truth? How do we get there? How do we get to shleimus, that wholeness, that completion, that level of joy in meaning that we’re yearning for?

So, here’s the truth, and please hear me all the way out before you stop reading and walk away. The truth is, at the deepest level, everything is fine. You and I are fine. Actually, we’re more than fine. We’re good, whole, pure, and perfect. Right here, right now. And so is the world around us. The world is good. The world is on a powerful course in the right direction. Beyond all physical reality, there is a non-physical reality, a spiritual reality.

When we try to fill our spiritual desires with physical manifestations, our inner needs without our externalities, we’re always going to find the mismatch. You cannot fill your stomach with spiritual pursuits, and you cannot find inner peace in your outer world. The truth is, if you go all the way up and connect to what’s true inside of you, you’ll find a place that’s already whole, a place that’s already full, and the place that’s already inspired and alive. When you find that internal space, you open up the doorway for powerful positive energy to come into you and in turn, into your life.

I completely understand that so many of us feel that things aren’t okay. “Have you turned on the news? Look around! Life doesn’t always go the way I want it to go! People are suffering! People are dying!” I do not want to take away from the realness that people feel in their pain. However, if we’re only judging life by physical manifestations, and by physical things that are or are not happening in the world, we are going to miss the truth behind life.

There is always more going on in the non-physical world. The lack of ability to know that there is a non-physical reality and that we’re limited to the physical realm is what gives rise to all the fear in our life. If you know that you are part of something that’s immeasurable, indestructible, eternal, indivisible, infinite, if you know that you’re a part of this amazing experience called the oneness of life, in you know that you have a soul and that there’s an All-Loving and All-Good Higher Power that you’re a part of, it is this greater truth, when that knowledge is true for you that it sinks into every fiber of your being, then, at that moment there is nothing to fear.

If you don’t know that as true, and you experience yourself as separate, not connected, alone, you feel small instead of big. You feel fragile instead of indestructible. If that’s the life that we live then we’re starting from a place where we feel weak, disconnected, and lacking. When I feel lacking, I see the world as lacking. I scramble for beliefs that have some chance to help me feel better. From my vantage point of lack, the way that I experience myself and the world around me is that things are bad, lacking, broken, and separate. We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. It’s coming into alignment with this deeper dimension of reality, which we step into by becoming present, that we start to surrender our opinions about the surface. There is a depth of love and peace that exists beneath and is available when we let go of the past and future, let go of attachments to things and conditions for our happiness, and allow life to guide us in the direction of our higher Truth.

Life is abundant. Abraham understood that the Universe is not lacking; it is abundant. There is an infinite source of whatever we could possibly need, and life is always working for you. When I say “life is abundant,” I mean that it’s not here today and gone tomorrow; rather, it’s here today and more tomorrow. It’s like sitting at a table with seven other people and the pie is finally served for dessert, it’s the certainty and knowing that each person who takes a slice isn’t taking your slice because there is always enough.

Shifting out of a scarcity mentality, where you think there is never enough, and therefore, you have to do whatever you can to take care of yourself, allows you to embrace that the world is abundant. In every area be that health, wealth, relationships, clarity, wellbeing, inner peace, and spiritual connection. There is always enough. We are all being taken care of. Things are good and okay right now. That means you can surrender your ego to a higher power, knowing that the Universe will take care of you. You will get whatever you need for your life’s unique journey and purpose. What you have is what you need, and what you don’t have, you don’t need. Life is supportive. Life is good. Life is abundant.

Life is eternal. The next layer of understanding is knowing that life doesn’t end after death, knowing that you’re going to live on beyond this physical plane. Therefore, if there is abundance in this world, there must be infinite and eternal abundance for a world beyond this physical plane. We are on this journey heading toward an even higher good than we could even imagine. There is eternal meaning and purpose to what we are doing here, and we will experience even greater love after this life.

Life is a partnership.Co-creation: that is our journey. This is the big aha moment for Abraham when he realizes that not only is the world abundant and that we are working toward an everlasting love, but that we ourselves are part of this loving force. We have the opportunity to choose love at every moment. We can choose life. Choose to collaborate with the loving force of the world and be the good for God. You are an instrument of love. You are an instrument of peace. You are an instrument of goodness. There is no greater experience than being Godly.

The rewards of this certainty are inner peace, happiness, mental clarity, and confidence. The peace of feeling taken care of and being in good hands. Your body somehow feels lighter. You carry a deep sense of belonging. Life seems to flow easily, and serendipitous events happen all around you. With this peace, you’re not stressed out, anxious, or upset, and you have access to creative thinking and insights that you just couldn’t have reached without it. You’ll experience an inner strength and confidence to unapologetically be true to yourself, to live with intention. With this knowing, we end the fear cycle. We live with trust that everything is fine right now and is moving in the right direction.

Hishtavus is related to the word Shaveh, which literally means “the same.” Thus, meaning “sameness,” “Oneness,” or “equanimity,” Hishtavus is a state of nonjudgmental awareness. You are able to totally accept reality as it is without labeling things as essentially better or worse. It is the beginning of what it means to live in the presence of God. It is the secret of life.
You can live in harmony with all of life and enter into conscious alignment with a higher order. This state of allowing and surrender opens a space inside of you that engenders renewed creativity, connection, and the experience of love to expand. Seeing life through this lens of Oneness lets you see the good and the love laced within creation. There are seven life-changing qualities related to sameness. Harmony, alignment with a higher order, love recognition, allowing, surrender, space, and a lens of Oneness. Let me explain.
Hishtavus means to live in perfect harmony with all of life. Life is happening. It stops for no one. It has been said that life is God in action. When Moshe (Moses) asked God, “Who shall I tell the people is setting them free from Egyptian bondage?” God responded with the words, “Ekyeh Asher Ekyeh,” “I am that I am” or “I will be Who I will be.” Things are as they are. They will be as they will be. To live in the denial of this truth is to deny the presence of God. To live in harmony with this truth is to live in the presence of God.
Hishtavusis to enter into conscious alignment with a higher order.There is a deeper intention behind everything that occurs. Nothing ends with what we see on the surface. There is always more behind the scenes. The Creator, Sustainer, and Director of life, as it unfolds, has intentions of the highest good and love. We only see a small fraction of reality. Being open to this spiritual guidance allows for openness in all our experiences, with the people we meet and the places we go. Living with equanimity, you will find a hidden harmony, a sacredness, a higher order in which the knowing, the known, and the knower are one.It is the fertile ground for wisdom and freedom and a space for compassion and love. True sameness produces radiance and warmth of being. There is an ease within that comes when we see a bigger picture. It is being able to hold space for unlimited potential and infinite possibility—an inner knowing that all things lead in the right direction, whether or not it unfolds according to how we think it should.

Hishtavus is recognizing the love that exists everywhere. It is the awareness that the energy of all things and events are flooded with a loving presence of the Creator, despite their outer appearance. It is possible to literally feel the connection between you and all other creations, all part of the love story being told by God. You are totally conscious of the miracle of life and see how love is the epicenter of creation.

Hishtavus is a state of allowing. To allow things to happen with inner resistance is not weakness. It is strength. Non-resistance doesn’t mean letting people walk all over you or allowing your house to burn down. Whatever is happening, instead of wishing it were different, you allow it to be exactly as it is, then take action from that place of allowing.

Hishtavus is a state of surrender. Although we associate the word surrender with a negative charge or loss, surrender is a powerful door opener for peace, love, and harmony. We seem to constantly be in a fight with reality. There’s never enough time, not enough money, and we’re always doing the things we wish we weren’t doing. But to surrender means to let go of how you think things should be and accept them as how they are.

Hishtavusis a space inside us that allows creativity, connection, and love to expand. Connection and flow happen within the space of sameness. It is not a form of doing. It is a space, an inner stillness that allows for and fosters authentic connection. It is the silence out of which a song is born, the quiet from which breakthroughs and epiphanies emerge.

Hishtavusis seeing life through the lens of Oneness. According to Kabbalah, there are five levels of consciousness, the highest being yechida – Oneness. Instead of seeing division, we see unity. Instead of separation, we see togetherness. Instead of difference, sameness. It is an all-inclusive way of viewing the world.

It does not mean repressing our emotions. It can be easy to confuse sameness with denial, but it is not about denying a particular situation. Rather, it is about accepting each situation for what it is and dropping all resistance. Denial means looking into the face of reality and covering it up with a label that says something to the effect that, “Everything is okay. Don’t get angry.” Denial leads to more pain, while Hishtavus leads the way to freedom.
It doesn’t mean you always feel amazing.It might seem that if we’re at peace with everything that happens, we will always feel fantastic, but this isn’t the promise of sameness. On the outer layer of reality, i.e., life as we know it, things are always changing. Nothing stays the same, nothing lasts forever, and nothing is everything it seems. Because of the nature of life, there are things we experience that make us very happy and things that make us sad. This is how it’s supposed to be. The only difference is that with sameness, these remain on the surface, while behind them you rest in a deep sense of peace, presence, and love that is unshakable. Wishing you only peace and blessings in your journey forward.

– Excerpt from It’s All The Same To Me

If we call living with a miracle mindset and living in alignment being connected to the Tree of Life, then the following are where it’s BRANCHes extend in your life:Behavior, Relationships, Attraction, Negation, Channeling &Creativity, and Healing.

• Behavior: When you feel good, you behave differently.You are more productive; you act with clarity and precision; you are nicer, friendlier, and more positive in situations and regarding outcomes;your actions and reactions to life’s situations flow seamlessly; and you make better choices. You’re also more flexible and confident. Why are all these the results of the miracle mindset? Because we make choices based on how we feel. We can always justify and rationalize our decisions, and as a general rule, we do what we want. The heart is king. Feeling good is the most important decision you can make.Feel good first. The miracle mindset is a bridge back to the feelings of our natural love, joy, and peace.
• Relationships: People can instantly feel your energy. And when your energy is uplifted, this immediately strengthens communication and connection. It isn’t just because your behavior is nicer; it is actually the energetic effect of being near someone who’s in a truly positive space. When you are deeply connectedto Consciousness, to God, you are in your presence. You elevate the entire room without even saying a word. People may not even realize that it’s happening or why, but they are drawn to you. They desire a relationship with you and are more likely to be influenced by you. When you align with your natural sense of inner joy, your influence expands and your energy is magnetic. It shifts the energy of your home, sharpens your ability to make new relationships and business deals, and brings peace to those who are struggling. Your presence instills calm, leaves others feeling energized, allows people to feel better about themselves and part of something bigger, inspires a sense of purpose, and builds people’s trust in authentic personal connections.
• Attraction and Abundance:The Zohar, an ancient Kabbalistic text, explicitly states that the world shifts for you and leans in your favor when you are happy and positive. Our mental state and emotional reality define our vibrational frequency and, thus, what we draw into our lives. That includes the people, experiences, and things that correspond with how we feel. Abundance follows abundant thoughts and feelings. Love follows love. Joy follows joy. That is why we experience tremendous synchronicitywhen we’re in the right mental space. The powerful Wayne Dyer phrase “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” isn’t just nice wordplay. It is reality. In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill writes,“Our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts which we hold in our minds, and, by means with which no man is familiar, these ‘magnets’ attract to us the forces, people, and the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.” This is why amiracle mindset attracts all forms of abundance and a miraculous life.
• Negation:When you’re in a powerful state of positivity and light, you don’t just bring good energy to a room; you actually negate and soften negative energy. Lower energy vibrations and frequencies can’t stand in the face of higher ones. The Baal Shem Tov poetically explains that this is the meaning of the verse “Mountains will melt like wax before God.” The mountains of negative thoughts and energies can’t stand in the light of Godliness and higher consciousness. You become an island of peace in the middle of what others would consider a chaotic sea. It is almost like you are walking within an invisible bubble that keeps away negative forces. Misery likes company, and that also means it won’t like being around you! When we have the miracle mindset of light and love, nothing negative and destructive in the world can get in our way.
• Channeling and Creativity: When you feel good in your high-energy state, you become a channel for divine insight.You can receive new information and creative ideas easier and become a clear conduit for miracles and spiritual guidance. The world will literally bend for you and your intentions asyou receive obvious divine messages. In this state, your intuition is heightened and your ability to contribute to the world is multiplied.

• Healing: Aside from being clinically proven to enhance one’s healing process, universally all spiritual paths recognize that being happy and in a peak energetic state has potent healing properties. Through the power of a miracle mindset and the joyous energy it engenders, people all around the world, throughout all of history, have experienced cures and healing from life-threatening diseases, anxiety, depression, and even ailments as simple as headaches, pulled muscles, and the common cold. The way you feel changes the way your body heals. Healing doesn’t just refer to the recovery of the physical body; those ailments are often physical manifestations of something happening within. True healing occurs when one’s spirit has released a long-held fear and/or negative thinking pattern toward oneself, others, or life. This healing is activated by living in spiritual alignment through the miracle mindset.

You have the ability to live the life you want to live; build the relationships of your dreams; attract incredible abundance; negate all negative energy; channel insight, wisdom,and guidance; and heal yourself and the world around you. This is the promise of shifting your level of consciousness. This is the power of reconnecting to the joy of your life. This is the outcome of marrying your inner soulmate and unifying the truth of your Self.

It’s not that they’re happy and positive because life is going their way; life is going their way, because they are creating for themselves a positive space. God created the mirror system, or The Measure for Measure System, which is, as is below, so is above, as is above, so is below. The most powerful energetic place of reflection isn’t just in the things that you do or the words that you say, or the thoughts that you think, but it’s actually the way you feel. This is what’s called the law of resonance.

In order to explain how resonance works, we’ll use a metaphor from music. If you take a look at a piano you’ll see that there at 88 keys on the piano. The note all the way to the right is a C note; this C has a special name, C₈. This is because on the piano there are 8 complete octaves, each containing one C note. The note in the middle of the piano also happens to be a C. This C also has a special name, C₄ or “Middle C”. When you press down on a piano key a little hammer hits a thin wire which then vibrates at a specific frequency. What is amazing is, when you hit the middle C piano key, and that little hammer strikes the middle C piano wire, the remaining 7 C notes begin to vibrate as well. This is true regardless of which of the C notes you play. All the other C notes will begin to vibrate even though they were not stuck by a hammer! There is a resonance, or a similarity in the frequencies, of all the C notes. Resonance means when one of them begins to play, they all begin to play. In the same way if you were to take a cello and put it in one side of a room and a violin on another side of the room, and  made sure that they were tuned right in the same way, and you played a certain note on the cello, that note on the violin is going to start vibrating. Because of their similarity, their resonance, their vibration will cross the room and awaken any object that vibrates at the same frequency.

When you feel a certain way, when you vibrate a certain energetic wavelength that awakens a certain resonance in a deeper reality, in a part of Existence that we don’t see or experience with senses. It awakens a corresponding frequency in another place which then starts shaking very loudly. That sends a message down to this world and things start to unfold in resonance with that given vibration. It is all about coming into alignment and tuning in, to a resonant frequency emanating from a higher place. The practice of life is about learning to refine and tune yourself to be in key with those higher frequencies. In order to create space to allow our desires to manifest we must try to mimic the higher vibration, the higher ideals of what life is about. Whether that frequency is love, joy, peace, gratitude, or any of the good things that we like to experience. All of these wonderful things are the Will of God. It is the will of The Creator, of The Master of the Universe. When you can learn to vibrate with the positive frequencies of Existence, you enliven the world around you with resonance from above.

When you play an emotional energetic frequency in this world the spiritual dimension shakes with a resonant frequency that creates a symphony of vibrational energy which changes the way we experience a world down here. The question is, how willing are you to mimic that Higher Will? How willing are you to take your lower desires, put them aside, and go into that higher space and will yourself into feeling good and playing positive frequencies?

Maybe you’re thinking that all of this sounds a little selfish. You may be thinking, is all I care about feeling good? You have to realize that willing yourself to feel good is the most giving thing you can do. You’re truly providing a service to the world when you take your energy and emotional wellbeing seriously. Take a moment and think about what the first thing is that you bring into a relationship. Whether it’s a business meeting, saying hello to someone passing you on the street, or spending time with your kids, think about the first thing that sets the tone of that interaction. It is not what you say and it is not what you think. The thing that sets the tone of every single interaction in your life is your energy. How you feel affects the people around you almost instantaneously. Over the past 50 years, body language researchers have discovered that anywhere from 70% to 93% of communication is nonverbal[1]. Willing ourselves to feel good on a simplistic level may feel selfish but willing ourselves to feel good because we know that it will have a positive effect on others is one of the greatest acts of giving. Feeling good so that we ourselves feel good as well as for those around us is what we should be striving for. On a deeper level, feeling good opens up the gates of flow that we’re looking for in our own lives and in the world in general. Coming into alignment and tuning in is what makes you a receiver.

When you tune a radio dial to the right station, it is able to narrow in and pick up a specific frequency out of all of the radio waves that are all around it. When you tune into the right station, you start drawing that frequency into your life. One of the most beautiful parts of this practice is that you can’t fake it. You are going to get what you feel. If you feel a certain way, you can’t pretend that you’re not feeling that way. The most you can do is try and suppress a certain feeling, but you’re not doing anybody any justice. At your core, you know how you feel, the people around you are picking up on how you really feel, and more so than any person, the universe and God who created the universe knows how you feel. What you feel and what you want is the only place in your life where you really can’t fake it. Manifesting the life you want is all about being able to learn to master your inner space, which is going to be the key in tuning into those resonant frequencies above and drawing down what you want into the world.