An Open Letter to Your Soul

What now, my friend?

You’ve come this far. Behind you, your victories have piled up. You did all those things that you once thought that you could not do. You found courage in the most intimidating of circumstances. And you found friends and encouragement in the most unlikely of places. You’ve built what could not be built and you’ve traveled roads reserved only for you.

Treachery, humiliation, betrayal and defeat have dogged your path… but today--you’re still a warrior, still walking your path, and still noble to your creed.

Your adventures have taken you far. They’ve shaped and reshaped you over the long years. Sometimes it even seems that you’ve had many incarnations in your singular life.

But still, but still…

It’s waiting for you…that one special thing that you must do to become who you really feel you are inside.

I know it’s been difficult, and you’re weary.

But still, but still…

Don’t you see…it’s there, deep inside of you, in the center of your feelings, in the heart of your heart. It’s a small thing, a flicker of a hope, a tendril of desire. But it’s you, and it wants to come into the world and be recognized.

I know you’ve done well. Your inner demons, for the most part, have been subdued. And the world that you’ve made around you and the relationships that you’ve forged and the career that you’ve molded and the learning that you’ve mastered make you much better than you’ve ever been before…but still, but still….

Perhaps you think it doesn’t matter and that you don’t have to liberate this secret dream that you’ve nourished in your heart despite all the logic for it existing.

Perhaps you think that the world doesn’t really need it anyway.

But if you don’t do it…and if you don’t make it happen…and if you don’t wake up today and seize the moment…something will always be missing.

The world needs your dream. You need your dream. Don’t let it slip away.

Somebody somewhere is waiting for it to happen.

A whole chain of universal causation is waiting to unfold…but cannot, because you keep this secret hope locked so deep inside, so tightly sealed from the light of your own acknowledgement that sometimes you can even fool yourself into believing that it’s not there.

But in the still small hours of the night, when all your distractions have fallen asleep…you’ll find it waiting for you, as discontent as a child calling for its mother.

How long can you keep denying the power within?

The climate will never be hospitable. Your friends will never understand. And your resources will never be adequate. Yet, somehow, these are the most dangerous of dreams.

Listen…

Once upon a time, Mahatma Gandhi, surrounded by the might of the British Empire, dared to dream of freedom.

Once upon a time, Martin Luther King, surrounded by historically-embedded racism, dared to dream of the equality of all beings regardless of their complexion.

And once upon a time, Nelson Mandela, sick and imprisoned, surrounded by nothing but oppression, dared to dream of a different world.

You, too, have greatness inside of you.

There is something inside you that is so magnificent that if you were to let it out, the entire world would stop and stare in awe. And from that moment on, everything would be different, the broad river of history, itself, would be altered and even the consciousness of humankind would be shifted.

How big is your dream? How magnificent is your soul?

Before you go to bed tonight, ask yourself this question: What can one person do to change the world and make it better for all human kind?

How much longer will you endure the petty and the mundane? Is your dream worth so little to you that you would rather squander your whole life away rather than finding a way to make it happen? A magnificent soul is never intimidated by consensus reality. The world needs your gift. Will you deny it?


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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7 Root Causes of Bitter Failure

There are seven critical features necessary for even moderate success. Should any of these features be at a low ebb, then you will find yourself living a life of quiet desperation and bitter failure. Ironically, these key elements can be healed with some sustained effort. Alternatively, should you be able to raise all seven levels of personal power, you will find yourself living in a whole new world, where success becomes the norm rather than the exception.

In your efforts to improve your life by healing these symptoms of failure, do not look around you for much reinforcement, because most people are in deep denial of their own inadequacies. In fact, you will find yourself a pioneer. However, if you do not heal the conditions of failure, you will eventually have to pay a high price for such negligence.

One: Low physical energy. In our modern day world of constant struggle to sustain ourselves economically, it is easy to let stress become predominant, and this in turn, will lead to compromising the immune system and creating illness, sometimes a fatal illness.

Low physical energy comes from insufficient sleep, little or no quiet time of restfulness when awake, little or no physical exercise, and poor eating and digestion. When physical energy is low, sluggishness is prevalent and little is achieved. Unless this is healed, a person is heading toward ill health and low moods. Dysfunctional and addictive behavior, bitter losses, and personal crises arise from not having enough physical energy to fix things in our lives when they break down. We succumb before the smallest of obstacles.

Two: Mental sluggishness. The world is fast moving towards becoming entirely based on knowledge as a key economic skill. The industrial revolution, where strenuous labor was sufficient to pay the bills, is being replaced by knowledge workers. Machines and sophisticated technology are quickly replacing manual labor. In a decade or two, robotic intelligence will far outstrip the most competent human technician. Yet, all educational systems are still using the archaic factory methods of mass production and if you wish to have an intelligent mind, you will have to develop self-reliance. Ignorance, stupidity, and emotional jingoism and dogmatism have wrecked havoc on human life…and unless our species learns to value artistic and intellectual achievement, we will self-exterminate through overpopulation, pollution, epidemics, the collapse of nations, or a final war.

Three: Low ideals. All greatness and all examples of cultural heroes arise from those who have held themselves up to a higher ideal then what the consensus reality deemed necessary. I am not talking here about morals, whose values arise from dogmatic creeds, but about an individual’s desire to better themselves and the world around them. Egoic desires for wealth, popularity, and total domination are not high ideals. Many world dictators have held all three, and they have brought nothing but misery to their countries and the world at large. Champions of worthy ideals have been people like Joseph Campbell, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and others. Dipping into the biographies of great souls is the beginning of your own greatness. When Buckminster Fuller decided to made the decision to make his life an example of what one man can do to improve the world, he created a precedent whose magnitude if replicated will have a far-reaching effect. A high ideal is one that is good for you, that is good for others, and that is good for all mankind.

Four: Dogmatic religiosity. Fanaticism is not spiritual. Understanding the great invisible forces of life can only come from original experience. Books and teachers may point the way, but ultimately, they do not light the path to deep understanding, and only make a false impression of learning. True spirituality consists of acts of kindness, moments of wisdom, and feelings of high inspiration. When we learn and absorb the lessons of our own life, enjoy genuine warmth in relationship to other people and experience wonder when contemplating the great scheme of all life, then we may awaken to spiritual understanding. Institutions, no matter how venerable, cannot make you spiritual. Gurus, no matter how advance, cannot make you spiritual. Only your own unrelenting efforts at seeking the origins and meaning of the good, the true, and the beautiful will put your feet on the path to spiritual understanding. Spirituality, ultimately, cannot be taught; it can only be learned.

Five: Superficial relationships. The entire fabric of life is based on relationships between various forms of life. The more superficial your relationship with other people, the more manipulative your interactions, and the more self-seeking your motivations, the more you hurt yourself. We know neither ourselves nor each other, and the results of this neglect of interest and affection is that we live lonely lives in a world where chaotic human behavior appears to be slowly but inevitably eroding the quality of all human experience.

Six: The unhealed past. All of us have been wounded by our interactions with the world, and as these psychic scars accumulate inside our emotional bodies, the more disturbed we become. Neurotic tendencies originate from psychic wounds. Over time, they only get worse. Unless effort is made to heal the experiences of hurt, disappointment, rejection, and humiliation from the past, then their psychic force will continue to have a debilitating effect in our lives. So numbed out are we to our own pain that often it takes skilled professional intervention to uncover it. All examples of dysfunctional behavior and poor life conditions arise from some psychic wound making its silent impression. All acts of rampant evil arise from a psyche that has completely deteriorated into psychosis.

Seven: No self-inquiry. Life is complex. Yet we respond with simple reflexes to what ails us. Rare is the person who takes time to journal, to walk in nature, or to discuss with others at a deep level what can be done to improve the quality of life. When we don’t contemplate the conundrums that face us, we continue to tread ruts of self-defeat. Reflexive living means a dearth of proactive solutions, and the more wrong answers we accumulate on what to do about things, the worse they get. Quickly enough a lifetime will pass and regret will be the last emotion experienced. The unlived life arises from the non-reflected life. It is better to reflect on what is happening in our lives when we have a chance to correct our course than to do so when it is too late. Perhaps there is no greater philosophical statement than that made by Socrates when he said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

It is a rare and wonderful thing to be born a human being. It is also the most difficult of undertakings. Unless we choose to heal these seven levels of failure in a consistently committed way, we will find ourselves impoverished by our own unwillingness to seek significance. Behind pain is pleasure, behind sorrow joy, and behind failure success…we have only to effort to turn things around for ourselves, and in the nobility of saving ourselves, we will look around and find that where we thought to find an abomination, we have discovered a god, and where we thought to have been cast alone, we have found ourselves one with all the world. All of us have a greatness and splendor that yearns with desperation to be liberated into the light of experience.


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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Understanding Your Heroic Journey

Everyone on this planet is on their own particular heroic journey, an archetypal journey of the hero or heroine that has been portrayed throughout recorded time in the mythology of the world.

It begins with departure from the known or conventional, from consensual reality.

It proceeds onto initiation.

And it culminates in our return to tell others about the lessons of our adventures, and hopefully to provide a map to those who may follow.

During the departure stage, there is a call to adventure, a sudden understanding that things are going to change. This call disrupts a comfortable routine and the person often feels inadequate and unprepared for the journey. However, once a decision is made to take the leap into the unknown, supernatural aid appears. This is usually in the form of meeting the right people or stumbling upon some necessary new information or resources that will initiate the journey. Once the first threshold is crossed, the journey begins in earnest. And it is now when the hero or heroine finds themselves in the belly of the whale, which is a time of metamorphosis, an entry into a dark place where the skills learned before the journey no longer work.

Now begins the initiation. Before the transformation can occur, trials, tests, and heavy ordeals must be borne. Failure is now the norm because the new has to be explored through trial and error. As the trials proceeds, the Goddess is met. This is a symbol for unconditional love and acceptance of self, a renewal of self-unification, an amplification of intention. Then, something unexpected happens…the temptress is met. This in world mythology has been personified to be a woman. It comes to symbolize the desire to be seduced by the lure of what once existed, the comfort of returning to the known. If this temptation is resisted, then something else has to be confronted in its place: atonement with the Father. This means that one has to die to the old in order to fully assume the powers of the new. An incredible power is met and surrendered too. Only in this way can the old self die so that the new self, the transformed one, can live. Once this condition is met, there is an apotheosis, deification. A heavenly state is attained; the person becomes divine in some way. With this transformation, the ultimate boon is granted, the Holy Grail is found, the journey is successfully completed and what the person came to get has been secured.

After this, however, the return has to take place. Again, as in the very beginning, there is a deep reluctance. There is an initial refusal to return. Sometimes, too, once one has secured the goal, one must escape from the jealous guardians of the secret that has been won. Now, with the journey in its descent, after reaching a lofty ascent, the hero or heroine once again is in need of guides and assistants on how to return. Again, too, a threshold has to be crossed, this time back to where the person came from. Now the person has become master of two worlds, the new and the old, or the inner and the outer. A new freedom to live has been experienced.
All of us travel through these three stages, with their numerous substrates, when we begin and complete the heroic journey. When a new mother has her first child, when a young person secures their first job, when a traditionally employed person leaps to become an entrepreneur, when a writer sets to create a new book, or when somebody goes to a specialist to seek healing for a wounded psyche…the heroic journey begins.
Mythology speaks of this journey and gives us all a map on what the stages of it are. Understanding the symbols behind the myths help us complete our own particular journey. Without truly grasping the import of the heroic journey, as told throughout time and transmitted via the language and traditions of diverse people, we may not recognize that we are all heroes, and we may either get lost along the way or shirk the completion of our unique quest.

People can be obvious outer heroes, whose name and accomplishment are made known as significant points in history; and they can also be inner heroes, spiritual adventurers seeking a refinement of sensibility that leads to deep spiritual understanding; and they can be you and I, as we step into a new phase in our lives where we must transform ourselves because vital structures of our lives have collapsed and something new has to be grasped.


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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It can be another way

It can be another way.

I don’t think you came into this world to work day and night for small wages, to suffer ill health, and to be lonely. I don’t think you came here to lose, over and over again.

I think you came here because you have a dream.

And this dream represents the best version of you.

All around you are people fulfilling their dreams, but their numbers are small. It’s hard to meet them and draw inspiration from them.

Instead you are surrounded by those who do not have time for dreams and who are silent about what is buried in their hearts. They are afraid to speak and to know themselves.

And yet somehow—you know it can be another way.

Listen, here is what you must do.

First, you must craft a vision.

Then you must educate yourself and learn what the new thing requires of you. You must study and practice in the still, small hours of the morning. You must persist past your own self-doubts and fatigue.

And this vision has to be planted upon the ground of your old reality, for the world will not move aside while you struggle to create anew.

You have to take your subconscious mind aside as you whisper to it the new version of you. It will resist. It likes the old. It likes the familiar. But if you persist, the inertia, the procrastination, the sudden, low moods with which it guards the old paradigm will begin to weaken and your messages of hope will take root in fertile soil.

Slowly, imperceptibly, things will change. Each day as you invent yourself anew while laboring with the old, you will move forward.

And one day, despite the outer and inner critics, you will prevail.

You will look upon riches and a life of ease, robust health, and an enduring relationship based on mutual affection and respect. You will do work that helps the world. You will act in a way that is pleasing to your soul.

Create a vision. Hold on to it. Study and practice. Overcome your hesitations. Things will change.

It can be another way.


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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When you're down to nothing

Are You an Ugly Duckling?

Sometimes in life, we may feel like ugly ducklings.

We can’t fit in. Our walk is not the right waddle and our squawk is off-key. In fact, we wonder if the other ducks are snickering behind our back.

Our life is an example of what does not work. And, in quiet desperation, we feel we may soon be down to nothing.

The original sin appears to have found its full manifestation in us.

But consider this: we may actually be swans.

And amongst swans, we fit in perfectly. Our feathers are the right shade, length, and texture, our gait is regal, our voice has a perfect pitch, and we swim with grace. And what we reflect is the original perfection.

Swans aspire to their spiritual splendor.

They recognize that this life is transitory and that they have a hunger to connect with the source of all life. In essence, a part of them wants to feel a connection with all of life.

They’re really focused on reaching enlightenment itself.

It’s a novel situation to be a human being, and when we grasp this simple concept, we aspire to move ahead in a different way than other people.

As a swan, you’ve realized for some time now that your beliefs will cause you to create or attract situations and events that you experience as your life.

It’s your goal to explore your own belief system and you search to equip yourself with tools to modify those things which you wish to change.

You also seek to balance the understandings that you glean from world lessons, or experiences, as well as from word lessons, or intellectual understanding.

When you touch your true swan nature, I suspect, you will find an amazing love for life, and you will be a catalyst for positive change in the world. Your health, your relationships, your career, and your finances will all be touched and improved when you master deeper levels of your own consciousness.

Imagine feeling a profoundly deep connection to your own being, a connection that defies description. Imagine meeting others and see within them your own humanity and struggle for the light of truth.

As a swan, you aspire towards an experience of compassionate, accepting connection with all of life. You seek your own true power. In a world of lies, you seek truth.

If you find your life impossible right now--where you don’t quite seem to fit in and things aren’t going quite right for you--it may be that you’re a swan pretending to be a duck.

It may be time to accept that a greater game than you had imagined is afoot.

Sometimes when you’re down to nothing, your Spirit is up to something. The ugly duckling is about to recognize that it is a swan.
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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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A Way of Being In the World

When you come to recognize that all consciousness is aligned in a vast network of cooperation, then you come to find a unique way of being in the world.

You come to recognize that it is rare that one is born a human being. It is difficult and rare to get the opportunity to understand spiritual teachings that lead to an exceptional way of being in the world. And it is rare, indeed, for one to make one’s life a blessing to all.

If you make an effort to be kind to all creatures, no matter how simple or primordial their form, and if you make it a point to be slow to anger and quick to forgiveness, then you are on your way to finding a way of being in the world that will magnify even beyond death.

Adopt this way of being in the world and revelation, a complete understanding of things, will come to you spontaneously. You will see that gratitude is a blessing, and that kindness, generosity, and compassion are the only options for true and abiding success.

The greater your station in life, the more it behooves you to become cordial to all; for, ultimately, you are answerable to yourself.

Transformation can only occur when you are in sympathy with all of life; when you reflect on your experiences and sweeten them with correction and resolve to express even more compassion and generosity in the future.

Caught in the cycles of economic survival and social interaction, we miss the central message of how rare it is to be a human being and how necessary it is to use our short time on this planet to work on evolving a better way of being in the world.

To be kind to all creatures, to be forgiving of all, to be reflective of your past experiences, and to be determined to bestow cordiality upon all will make you a blessing to all of life.

All your other successes are but a footnote to this type of greatness, for only in expanding the magnanimity of your soul will your life have been well spent.


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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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God Helps Those Who Help Themselves

I don’t know about you, but I often don’t know whether I should act on something or just surrender it to God and let it show up in my life.

Reviewing my experience with both these approaches, I find that both have worked and both have failed.

Sometimes when I surrender, things do show up. Sometimes nothing happens until I act.And sometimes I do the wrong things, too, and it still doesn’t show up.

Last Sunday, I got lost on my way to a new location. I decided to surrender. Intuitively, I knew when to turn left or right on each crossroad. Suddenly, remarkably, I found myself upon familiar ground and was able to complete my journey to my intended destination.

Last night, for example, no amount of praying helped me ease my hacking cough. Since I had not been able to sleep for three days because of coughing every time I dozed off, I was in a highly agitated state. Finally, out of desperation, I jumped out of bed, wrapped myself up in multiple layers of clothes, stumbled out into the freezing night, climbed into my car and drove around until I could find a pharmacy that was open past midnight. I found one; purchased a coughing-sneezing-aching-let-you-sleep at night medication.

For the first, in what seemed like a very long time, I slept very deeply and woke up completely refreshed.

I know that these are small and perhaps trivial examples, but they do point to a much larger theme. God helps those who help themselves.

Basically, you have to act in this world to get things done. Rarely do things just show up by themselves. This does happen, but not at a statistically significant level to count on it.
However, after you act, you have to let it go. You can’t predict the outcome, and you definitely can’t control it. Thus, I have come to the conclusion that our best recourse is to do what we can and then let go the results. Basically, we act and then we surrender.

Here is a small fable to illustrate my point:

In a time long ago, there was a clever merchant who bought some camels from a distant town and had to transport them to his home through the desert. On his first night in the desert with his new herd of camels, he did not know whether to take the time to tie them all up before he went to sleep that night in his tent. Should he just trust God and hope that he would be able to see them still flocked around in the morning? Should he make the effort of spending several hours tying up each camel to a stake in the ground?

Mysteriously, a monk showed up. He was passing through and asked the merchant for some food and shelter.

After dining the monk, the merchant asked him what to do about his camels.

“Tie up the camels,” said the sage, “and trust God to keep them there until morning.”

And here is a true story that illustrates it:

I once worked with an MLM person. I joined his team when he was making direct sales and doing $10,000 a month. He was a wizard at the cold call. He could charm the fleas off a dog with his words. He was also highly religious. What he did was make the effort and surrender the result. Avalanches of abundance flowed to him.

Then he became enamored with the surrender texts in his Bible and shirked the doing part. Within four months, everything that he had built up collapsed.

In conclusion, God is the ultimate mystery. Sometimes our life lessons are to be proactive and change the world. Sometimes it is to be passive and let the invisible powers make all the necessary contacts and experiences. As human beings, we seldom recognize the lesson until later on. From our limited perspective, we don’t know what things mean and what to do. Thus, I think action and surrender is the best way to play the game of life.

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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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Free Book For My Readers!

Dear Reader:

I was reading through my blogs recently and I suddenly saw a golden theme run through them. I immediately set about connecting the dots and accidentally created an ebook.

For the first time ever, I saw that I had been trying to give myself a message, but because the message was scattered in my many essays, I did not grasp the secret that was buried in the depths of my subconscious mind.

After I wrote the book, I thought about marketing it and making some money--but then it occured to me that what I had found was a priceless gift.

It's not as if I had discovered something new, rather I had discovered something old. And it's not that I had discovered something obscure, rather I had discovered something so obvious that everyone, including myself, missed it.

I had found a universal theme. A series of ideas, spinning around a core idea, that would make anyone who followed my simple plan successful in anything that they did, whether it was to make a million dollars, find the love of their life, or embark on some epic voyage of discovery.

I want you to have this gift. And I hope that you will share it with others.

Go here to download it: Your Gift




I'll see you at the top,

Saleem Rana

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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago. He now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have been read by over ten thousand people from around the world. He loves to share inspiration and motivation for personal development. He offers numerous ways for you to radically improve the quality of your life. To find out more, please visit
Peak Performance Engineering


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