Mostly I meditate through journal writing in the early morning hours for 15 to 30 minutes each day. If I have time I also read a chapter from one of my top priority book on my reading list.

Part 2 of my obsevations regarding Burt Goldman's Interview.

About 20 years ago I quit my engineering job at Lockheed to become more creative and be more diverse in what I did in life. Driven by Gurdjieff's nudging to awaken from our sleepwalking through life and Maslow's message that we can rise to be self-actualizers and transpersonal higher beings I set out to discover my so called authentic self and to nurture the seeds within me.

Upon leaving my twenty something year job in engineering I enrolled in Junior College programs for Art, Computer Graphic Art and Technical Writing with a vague idea of earning a living doing those activities.From that program I learned to make watercolor portraits and landscapes, desktop publishing, I received a certificate in Computer Graphic Design and a certificate in Techinical Writing. Armed with these new skills I sought to earn my living doing what I loved. It was tough to get regular employment, however, so I moved from one temporary position to another and along the way I also made efforts to create personal businesses in Computer Graphic Design. watercolor paintings and electronic desktop publishing. Looking back over the past 20 years I feel my income suffered compared to my comfort zone engineering job but my experiences and fun in life made the journey well worth it. I worked at a series of jobs as an artist, a graphic design artist, a newspaper reporter, a technical writer consultant and an instructor at a junior college. Along the way I see now I then went through my own version of Quantum Jumping in mastering writing skills.I took about 10 online writing courses and read a number of books on creative nonfiction writing.

I confess I never earned a living with my writing but that doesn't mean I didn't fulfill myself in that area. I've been volunteering as editor of several newsletters for the California Alpine Club, Friends of the Willits Library, The Unitarian Fellowship, and now the California Grey Bears. And I've been writing personal essays and poetry. Furthermore, I've increased my efforts to be more disciplined in my reading of self-improvement books. Related to that I became a member of the PhilosophersNotes program with its summary notes and aids to big ideas.

At this time and place I'm concentrating on the book---The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks---which I hope will truly show me how to make giant leaps from my current and past styles and performances. Quantum Leaping matches my current goal perfectly.

I loved this interview of Burt Goldman because I've been focused on studying the book The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and Goldman presents a show and tell version of resetting our personal limits. Funny how I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself being 70 years old running out of time and then you show me Burt with his attitude and performance level living life with gusto. I have a voice in my head that keeps telling me I'm irresponsible for attempting to do too much in learning skills and applying myself to be all that I can be. Burt helps me override this message by example.

I am a fan of Maslow's self-actualization theory and Ken Wilber's Integral Life Practice to guide me to live an optimal life style balanced with humanity. Right now I have been somewhat stuck figuring out how to add love of activity with soulful connections as overlays on activities I have been doing that I feel fall within Hendrick's Zone of Excellence that I want to update to the Zone of Genius.

Thank you Vishen for sharing this interview with us. It truly inspired me to follow Burt's example for my remaining days.

The best result I got from doing this 50 lesson project was that the wide number of books and their different focused topics helped me resolve loose thoughts about how to integrate my life purpose and my current priorities. I particularly liked Gay Hendricks book The Big Leap and am working on using his suggestions to make a breakthrough of my own.

In general I concluded I had previously read about a quarter of the books selected in our project. Since I am 70 A I have had plenty of time to do that. Beyond that I decided to buy about ten other books recommended that I had not seen before. So although the course is over I have about ten books sitting on the sideline waiting for me to read and study.

I am a big fan of Maslow and his theory on self-actualizaton, Wilber and his Integral Life Practice, Tony Robbins and now Gay Hendricks.

My personal criticism of the program is in two areas: first although Debbie Ford's The Dark Side of the Light Chasers accounted for the dark side we all seem to have, one book out of 50 on that topic was too light from my viewpoint. I personally recommend the addition of Neurosis and Human Growth by Karen Horney to beef up and balance our human ways of being. Also, there were a small group of books that seemed to fall in the class of New Age thinking where we were coaxed to wish and make affirmations only. I have little trust in those methods.

Overall I am pleased I took the program and feel It will continue to influence me in positive ways in the future.

I have heard of Marcus Aurelius for most of my adult life yet never read his famous notes to himself. So Brian's summary of PDF notes and a TV video review really hits the spot with me. My biggest impression though is that many of his great ideas are being taught by other teachers these days. Don't worry what others think of you. The big idea that each day is another opportunity to live fearlessly with courage once more really seems meaningful to me since I'm now 70. But I also see another insight here, perhaps due to my own declining days. If you are fortunate as I have been you may have experienced enlightenment for moments during your life or maybe even eternity in the moment. If so you can look forward to living such eternity moments during on day at a time rather than planning out years of a life that may never unfold.

The first thing that strikes me cold about this summary lecture is that my own spirituality is a force that wants to connect with life and humanity and this book Seven Spiritual Laws of Success seems to concentrate on me, me, me. It seems the me society is responsible for much of the trouble in the world. So I would have to carefullly read the book to filter out what I see as spiritual and not so much just accepting what Deepak is teaching as aspects of spirituality.

Now having said all that I now admit to being quite close to the teachings of Buddha and as such I was quite taken by Brian's personal story of finding his Dharma for his calling in work. To find the truth within ourselves that will most make us useful and happy truly seems great. While I think I have tried that a number of times I never really based my search on the word of the Buddhist Dharma concept. Now I will. Thanks to this lesson and Brian.

I am a big fan of Emerson so I readily believe in self-reliance and taking charge of our own life. But this Erroneous Zones went further be suggesting that I believe much more in myself to reach my own dreams. That may be the biggest ah haw I encountered from this lecture. Although I must admit I am a big believer in dealing with our dark side and negative aspects such as neuroses.These two rules would be major transitions toward the human we would become.

According to my understanding of the TV lecture for The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire essentially the theme of this book is directed toward the type of person we need to become to sparkle in this life. We need to operate from our soul and do authentic creative actions that only we can contribute. We need to integrate ourselves of the fear and the darkside and the conscious enlightened side. We need to be certain about what we really want to do and have and then we need to go after them. We need to create dreams and then make them real. So this book is a master plan on how to be an enlightened, spiritual, compassionate human being the best we can be.

Joseph Campbell was the first scholar that caught my attention and handed me the message that I needed to follow my bliss and dreams. I was 45 at the time entrenched in a lifetime job at Lockheed as an Industrial Engineer. Three years latter I quit that job that I'd had for 21 years and became a writer/artist (what I thought was my bliss). That was 25 years ago. Over these years I have changed my faith from a lifelong Protestant to an agnostic Buddhist, Taoist, spiritual person who now sees God in a very different way. However, I can imagine that God if he or she exists is likely within each human walking the planet. So to say being in touch with your bliss is like also being in touch with God could be possible with my beliefs.

While I have believed in following my bliss ever since I heard Campbell advise that I never heard that one should bring back what they found while experiencing that bliss, which was one theme in this lesson from Paths to Your Bliss.

The truth is I can think of several important new understandings that I discovered when I dove in my art bliss. I learned to honor my work and my values which worked well back on other work I did. I learned that in some settings painting could be cathardic and healing just by concentrating on the process. I also learned that if I was following my bliss it was easier to overcome fear associated with projects. In other words if my soul was connected with my activities I was much stronger and brave.

Another remark from this lesson that I observed but never emphasized was that leaving work that is your bliss and returning to mundane activities subjects that are not connected to your bliss or soul you lose your spirit doing such work. So while some may need high salariies as a payoff from working on a blissful job I found that aliveness was the most important payoff for me.

No matter what your intention is it ought to be part of your awareness and part of your designed plan for your life. Therefore, I strongly feel that our greatest intention ought to be our purposes in life and thereafter a long list of the priorities of what our goals and values are and just how we expect to reach and honor them. Dyer defines four steps to be necessary for intention to be successful: discipline, wisdom, love and surrender. How could you not succeed when you intentionally rely on these techniques?