Cookie Bag Factors in the Lightening Round

The economic stress currently under way is part of a bigger picture that has to do with transitions in consciousness humanity is currently going through. (You can read more about these transitions in my article, The Spiritual Support Behind Intuitive Support.) The “downturn” is not God’s way of trying to give us a hard time -- it is a byproduct of a setup designed to help us let go of outmoded patterns, break up crystallized negative consciousness, release illusions of separation and separateness, and ultimately come back together at a much higher level of cooperation and awareness. It effects us as individuals, groups, communities, cultures, nations, and species, and it is the answer to your prayers for a better world.

What prayers? All the times you thought “God please help us to get along better… Please bring us peace… Please help us stop fighting…” And all the times your heart sank when you watched the news on TV, or heard it on the radio, and simply thought, “God help us”. The current situation is the answer to those prayers and inner longings for a better world.

There’s an old Southern expression that goes something like, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shake up your cookie bag!” Well, this is a shake-up, and as such it does tend to be, let’s just say, “unnerving”. But Creation does this kind of thing. It lets us build things up, and carry them to an extreme, until they reach a tipping point. Think “Tower of Babel”. It’s Nature’s way, and much as we try to pretend otherwise, we are children of Nature.

The upside, which is major, is that the shakeup allows us -- and if necessary forces us -- to find higher ground, morally and spiritually. It tends to make us reach out more to God, Spirit, and each other. When times are tough, we’re more willing to do things differently, and to let down our guard and receive from other people, as well as give to other people. We tend to get less attached to things like how shiny our car is, and come to appreciate simpler things. We discover we can get by with less, and in fact, that we can possibly be quite happy and comfortable with less. It's a shift away from the material level toward the spiritual level, and it's time.

To which you may rightfully reply, “But what about my… job, pension, retirement, rent money, dinner, children…”

I won’t pretend to know how difficult your situation might be. However, I believe that if you have lived a good life so far you will continue to have the opportunity to live a good life. The variables will be how willing you are to be flexible, responsible, creative, open to new possibilities, open to receiving, and open to asking for what you need. And if you have not lived a good life, you will still have the opportunity to do so, given the exact same variables.








Shake-up time is like the “lightening round” in quiz show parlance. The stakes are higher, and the opportunity is on for us to make major gains in matters of the heart and soul. You can rack up big points fast, by choosing to go into your heart, listening and trusting God, Spirit, and your Higher Self, as opposed to panicking, worrying, and letting fear dictate your actions. Lots of great opportunities to become rich are coming our way, based upon moment to moment choices of where you place your focus.

Well, I hope those thoughts are some small bit of help. But I have to go now, because that writing about cookies made me hungry. I think I still have some broken ones in a bag in the kitchen. (All shook up.) Mmm… cookies.

Happy You Near!

For more about Max Highstein, including information about his Intuitive Support Counseling Sessions, classes, workshops, guided meditation recordings, music, and more, please visit www.maxhighstein.com.

All contents included in this blog are copyright owned by Max Highstein. All rights reserved.

Spiritual Teachers & Groups – Joining & Leaving, Part 2

(Read Part One first – it’s just below this post)

Every teacher and group offers something different, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article in Part 1. You may be attracted to certain teachers at different points in your life as you become ready for what each one offers, and you may even find a teacher who you’ll stay with for the rest of your life.

The good news about being with a teacher, in their group, is that you get their support, teaching, grace, etc., as well as the sense of community that being in their group provides. The teacher may have new things to teach on an ongoing basis, or he may offer deeper levels of his teaching to share as you progress. Assuming the teacher is a good one, you’ll have an incentive to stay with him for some time, learning what he has to teach, going deeper into the work, and growing spiritually in the process. In general, the more fully you put yourself into the study/practice, the more you will gain.

The potential bad news is that the longer you stay with one teacher, in one group, and the deeper you put yourself into the study/practice, the more vulnerable you become to loosing perspective on the world outside of your group, and the less available you become to the teachings that might be offered elsewhere. It’s a little like getting all your news from the Fox Network. After a while, you’re getting only one narrow perspective of the world, and you come to believe only what Fox thinks you should believe.

The other problem is a certain “dependency factor”. The longer you stay, the more likely you are to become dependant upon that teacher to provide all of your spiritual input. Your teacher may tell you repeatedly that you are to get your spiritual connection from within, that you are to listen to your own heart, and that you can do for yourself everything that he can do for you. But as long as he’s the one telling you this, you’re still leaning on him to tell you.

The longer you are in a group, with a teacher, the more you may come to derive your fulfillment that group, that teacher, rather than from becoming your own, fully realized, standing on your own, individual self.

Some teachers are better than others about preventing these downsides from happening. The problem is that when you’re in a group, working with a teacher, it becomes rather difficult to know the extent of the problem. There is a certain “love is blind” aspect to working with a spiritual teacher that naturally comes into play, that’s a natural part of the dynamic. In order to receive the grace that a true spiritual teacher has to offer, and in order to fully embrace what they have to teach, it is necessary to surrender your judgments, cynicism, and even to some extent your skepticism, and just dive in. Otherwise, it’s like trying to learn to swim without being willing to get wet.

So, the upside is that you can make great progress from working with a teacher, and the downside is you can still get stuck in the process. Eventually, if you get too stuck, your higher self, (and your guidance system, your soul group, God), will give you a push. Something will happen that lets you know it’s time to move on. How will you know? When the time comes, you’ll just know.

It can be a bit difficult leaving a group, even when it’s time to go. There is a certain magnetism within the group that tends to hold you in. And one of the biggest challenges can be the sense that if you leave, you’ll miss something really important. But when the time to go is right, you’ll know that if you stay, you’ll miss something really, really important. And then you’ll know what to do.

Working with a great teacher is like finding a diamond on the ground. It’s extremely valuable and precious, so you pick it up. Maybe you’ll get some dirt on your hands. A little dirt can be washed off, but as the ads say, a diamond is forever.

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For more about Max Highstein, including information about his Intuitive Support Counseling Sessions, classes, workshops, guided meditation recordings, music, and more, please visit www.maxhighstein.com. All contents included in this blog are copyright owned by Max Highstein. All rights reserved.

Spiritual Teachers & Groups – Joining & Leaving • Part One

At this point in time, there are spiritual teachers and groups to fit just about anyone’s level of growth and personal preferences, and if you have not found one you like, it’s probably being formed as you read this. From the huge traditional organized religions and all their sects, to the smallest collective, they’ve got you covered. The more recent organizations, those formed over the last 40 years or so, are in many ways the most interesting, and if you are a free spirit, outside the box kind of person, perhaps you’re already associated with one of these groups.

In most Western groups of the alternative or “New Age” variety, the focus is on a particular leader or teacher, in some ways following the model of the traditional Eastern Guru-disciple approach. In this dynamic, the teacher offers wisdom, energy, and often some form of grace to his or her students. The idea is that this person is hooked up spiritually in a powerful way, and has the ability to convey something intangible, but precious and rare, to his students, that might otherwise be very hard to come by.

You may have noticed that I said this “the idea is…”, but I didn’t say whether I agree with the idea. Actually, in many cases I’ve seen I do agree, and if you read my own web site you’ll find that I even place myself in the category of being a teacher that offers that kind of intangible “something”. However, I believe this can be a “good news bad news” kind of situation. More on that follows below (in this post, or in the next one if I don’t get that far in the writing today).

What is that something -- that grace -- where does it come from, and why do some people seem have a gift for “dispensing” it?

Grace is another word for love bestowed on an individual, and angels, masters, and various evolved souls, both in spirit and in human form, have the ability to channel, i.e. receive and dispense, love. Really, everyone has this ability to some extent. Consider someone you know who seems particularly kind, warm, or upbeat, and you’ll probably agree that it feels good to be around that person. They have love going through them, and when you’re nearby you pick up some of it. If you take that intangible good feeling, filter it till it becomes very pure, and amplify it till it is many times more powerful, you have the kind of charge you might get by being around a gifted spiritual figure.

But it’s not just the teacher/guru/spiritual figure you’re getting the energy from. Your teacher may actually be a focal point for a group of beings in spirit who work through him (or her), sometimes without your teacher even being aware of it. Human souls tend to come from groups of souls, each group with their own particular philosophies, cultural similarities, and specialties. Your teacher is a representative of his soul group, the “man on the ground” so to speak, fronting for his team.


The reason you are attracted to any particular teacher may be that you are also a part of that group, or have a prior association with it. Or, perhaps you as a soul decided -- or your group may have decided -- that it would be helpful for you to fill in some of your life experience with exposure to a particular kind of energy, information, or skill that another group specializes in. So as part of your life plan, you’re scheduled to hook up with that teacher, from that group. It’s like going to college in another country because they have a special program you’re interested in, say cheese making. (“Blessed are the cheese makers” – Monty Python).

So, at some point in your life, perhaps when you’re in a transition that’s left you feeling a little unbalanced or out of shape, needing some help, you hear about a certain teacher, and a little bell goes off. Ding! “I want to see that teacher!” You go check it out and there are warm fuzzy feelings, or you are intellectually stimulated, or there’s this hot student in the group you’d like to meet. Whatever, somehow there’s a pull, and before you know it, “your in”.

Once you’re with that teacher and therefore in the group, you become part of the group’s culture. Every group has a culture. The culture includes the way people in the group relate to each other, the ideas of what’s right and wrong, particular language that is used to help define the philosophy of the group, sometimes the way people dress, and so on. Some people in the group are more culturally indoctrinated than others, but sooner or later, if you stay in the group long enough, you become “encultured” to that group. Should you meet another person in your group from, say another city, without knowing they are in your group, you might recognize something about that you can’t quite put your finger on, until you ask if they are in your group, and they say, Why yes! (What a coincidence!)

Part of culture of these groups includes some form of hierarchy, whether defined overtly or not. The ones who spend the most time with the teacher, whether through personal relationship or those who work with the teacher supporting their work directly, and those who have been in the group the longest, are generally higher up on the scale than the newbies. There may be clear privileges afforded to these people, or it may just be an intangible sense that’s felt about them, that they are special in some way. That’s not to say that this is wrong; it’s a fairly unavoidable part of human nature and group dynamics that this would occur. Whether or not it has a negative effect on anyone, or places anyone at an unfair advantage is something that’s up to the teacher to monitor.

Every group has it’s own “energy signature”. It’s the particular sense or feeling you get when you’re around that group, and if you happen to be sensitive to such things you’ll pick it up right away. For example, think of walking into a Catholic Church, and consider what that feels like. Then think of walking into a Baptist Church. It just feels different. When you’re in the group, you don’t notice that so much. When you’re not, and happen to visit, it’s more obvious.

There are upsides and downsides to working with specific teachers, in particular groups, and there is often a point of diminishing returns. More on that in the next post.

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For more about Max Highstein, including information about his Intuitive Support Counseling Sessions, classes, workshops, guided meditation recordings, music, and more, please visit www.maxhighstein.com. All contents included in this blog are copyright owned by Max Highstein. All rights reserved.

New Age Philosophy Vrs. Prayer

Most of my clients are spiritual seekers whose path has led them away from organized western religion. Many of them were numbed by religion forced upon them at an early age, and as a result they rejected prayer as having no value.

But rediscovering prayer is like finding gold in your pocket—it is the most direct way of communicating with the divine and bringing about positive inner change, and it can be invaluable to the true seeker.

Often part of what blocks those on a spiritual path has to do with past difficulties in their relationship with God, so prayer can be difficult, like visiting to an estranged parent. Situations in this or other lifetimes where one has, though their own misunderstanding, had their belief shaken, felt betrayed, or been bitterly disappointed by God leave us with the bitterness inside. God doesn’t apologize, because He didn’t do anything wrong, the problem was in our perception. So it’s up to us to soften our hearts and let go of any hard feelings we might be harboring, consciously or unconsciously.

I try to help my clients let go of any limitations in that regard, and establish a heartfelt connection to the divine within. If the word “God” has a charge for you, I actually suggest that you use it anyway, rather than substitute a euphemism like “Universal Love”. That way you have the opportunity bring up any charge you might have picked up about God, and clear it.

My wish is for my clients to open their inner channels to all the love, support, energy and information that can flow from God and their own higher self, into their conscious awareness. One prayer I often use and suggest to others is this:

Dear God:
Please help me open my heart to receive your love,
and please help me to let go of anything in the way.

Should you decide to sincerely pray that prayer, get ready, because the world inside you may change faster than you expect!

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For more about Max Highstein, including information about his Intuitive Support guidance sessions, classes, workshops, guided meditation recordings, music, and more, please visit www.maxhighstein.com. All contents included in this blog are copyright owned by Max Highstein. All rights reserved.