Being Here...Too: Short Stories of Modern Day Enlightenment

By Ariel & Shya Kane

Real, everyday stories that will touch your heart and transform your life.

When you are Being Here in the current moment…magic happens. Years of resentments dissolve, true love blossoms where it’s least expected, and ordinary moments become extraordinary. Award-winning authors Ariel and Shya Kane, along with f

• Language: English
• Publisher: ASK Productions, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781888043402

Ariel & Shya Kane

Ariel and Shya Kane are internationally acclaimed seminar leaders, business consultants and the authors of several award-winning books. In 1987, after years of diligently striving to improve themselves and their lives, they spontaneously experienced a profound and fundamental shift. They fell into the current moment, which sparked a new way of living - directly, in this moment of now, without stress, worry or guilt. They have been living this lifestyle and sharing it with others ever since. Their acclaimed seminars in New York City, Europe, the U.K. and Costa Rica open up previously unseen possibilities in people's lives, allowing them to live the life of their dreams. The Kanes also host a top-rated Internet radio show, Being Here. They have been featured in USA Today, The Huffington Post, on CBS, ABC and Fox News as well as Sirius XM, NPR and more. Through their work, millions have discovered how to be productive, effective and satisfied in all areas of their lives without working on their "problems." Ariel and Shya share their practical approach to everyday well-being in their seminars, books, articles, videos, Premium Excellence Club online subscription program and on their weekly Internet radio show Being Here. To connect with the Kanes' community, receive their newsletter, share your own personal stories of Practical Enlightenment on their blog, participate in one of their interactive seminars or attend one of the many Say YES to Your Life! Meetup groups around the world, visit: www.TransformationMadeEasy.com.

Book preview

Foreword

Like all of the contributors in this book, I have experienced Instantaneous Transformation: a way of accessing a deep sense of well-being developed by seminar leaders and authors Ariel and Shya Kane. I like to call it the lazy person’s way to enlightenment because it’s so easy. I remember walking out of my first transformational seminar with the Kanes in 2006 and strolling up 8th Avenue in Manhattan. Everything seemed bright, clear, and three-dimensional in a way it never had before. It was so…quiet, even in the heart of New York City.

I suddenly realized that for the first time in my life, my mind was quiet. I was simply experiencing what was around me, rather than listening to the incessant internal chatter that picked on me, picked on others, and worried. It was as if I had shed a skin during that course and found the person I truly was, hidden behind all that mind chatter.

Before long, life got busy and I drifted away from attending seminars. I missed the Kanes, the transformational community, and the feelings I remembered from that post-seminar walk up 8th Avenue – but I told myself I didn’t need it anymore and could find it somewhere else. While I wasn’t particularly happy, I was productive and successful during that time. Although my relationship broke down, I moved up in my career from being a New York City public school teacher to an assistant principal, and then eventually I became the founding principal of my own public high school.

One day, six years later, I was feeling stressed and tired and I realized that I wanted things to be easy again. When I searched on Google for the Kanes, I found they had a new book, How to Have A Match Made in Heaven. I ordered a copy and when it came, I took the book to Central Park, sat on the grass and started to read. Soon I felt a weight lifting off my shoulders, a weight I didn’t even know I’d been carrying.

I saw that I had been resisting all authority figures: my parents, my boss, other school principals, and even educational consultants that I had chosen and hired. It was so obvious, and yet I felt no remorse or regret. I just saw it as the truth, neither bad nor good. In fact, I was able to see the humor in it. Even though I was a high school principal, I was being as bratty and resistant as some of my students.

Over the next several weeks, I continued to see more examples of how I was resisting the life I had chosen and was currently living. I subsequently shared my experience with the Kanes in an email. Then one evening, I gathered the courage to come back to one of their Monday Night Alive seminars. My heart was pounding as the elevator doors opened in the New Yorker Hotel where the event was taking place.

Hi, Shya said. We know you!

And that was it. They welcomed me back as if no time had passed. That evening, I stood on the stage and said, Hi, I’m Julie and I’m a brat.

Ariel looked at me thoughtfully. You know, she said, "you wrote us the loveliest email about all these epiphanies you’re having, and thanked us for writing our last book. Maybe you were acting like a brat in the past, but you’re not a brat now.

It was true. Ariel’s words opened up a space of non- judgment for me to realize that I had transformed. All it took was for me to see my behavior and it dissolved, no work or pain involved.

From that day on, I became a full participant in the Kanes’ courses and their transformational community. Life has gotten simpler and far more fulfilling. I’m now in a loving relationship that is a true partnership. My job feels easy and satisfying. Whether I’m filling out paperwork, leading a meeting with teachers, organizing a fire drill, or coaching a student, each interaction becomes all-encompassing and satisfying, the only thing I want to be doing in that moment.

Of course, unexpected situations arise that don’t fit into my plan of how my day should go. But I’m quickly able to recognize that what I have planned and what I prefer doesn’t matter. Taking care of what’s happening in the moment does. So I drop my preference and handle each unplanned situation as it arises as if it’s my idea. All it takes is being here and engaging in what’s actually happening rather than investing in a complaint that things aren’t going the way I want.

The following chapters are written by ordinary people from all walks of life who are living extraordinary lives. Their stories are about discovering they are exactly where they want to be, whether it’s studying for an exam, going through childbirth, or being with a cousin on her deathbed.

I invite you to immerse yourself in Being Here…Too. That’s enough to bring you into the current moment where you, too, can effortlessly access your own brilliance and experience the extraordinary nature of life.

Julie – Bronx, New York

Preface

It was early in 1987 when a chance meeting on the streets of Manhattan led us to our careers as seminar leaders, coaches, authors and radio show hosts. On that fateful day, we ran into an old friend of ours. He’d known that we’d been seeking to improve the quality of our lives for years, trying every self-help technique under the sun – from affirmations and goal-setting to a two-year stint in a meditation center. Staring at us, wide-eyed, he suddenly said, What are you doing now? You are so different. I’ve never seen you so…peaceful, so relaxed, looking so well.

We assured him that we weren’t doing anything special, that we were just living. He thought for a moment, then asked, Can you come talk with my friends and my company? You’re clearly on to something real.

As we sat down with folks for the first time, we didn’t want to tell anybody how to live their lives. Rather, we wanted to do our best to describe how we were approaching our lives.

It was quite a challenge back then to articulate how our lives had instantaneously transformed. It was hard to explain because it was so simple. It often felt as if we were speaking a foreign language that people were struggling to understand. We saw that no matter how good our explanation, people translated what we said through what they already knew, which simply reinforced what they already believed. We recognized that we needed to create the experience of transformation, not explain it as a concept. It quickly became clear that one of the most effective ways to illustrate the ideas we were talking about was to offer real examples from our own lives. Perhaps we were calling upon humanity’s rich tradition of storytelling – harkening back to simpler times where important life lessons were passed on from one generation to the next through an oral tradition.

So we began to relate anecdotes about our experiences – funny stories, poignant encounters, and the ordinary moments that made our lives extraordinary. People listened and asked questions. We saw tension fall away as individuals dropped into the moment and spontaneously experienced well-being. Watching their faces light up we realized that transformation was a communicable ease. In that moment, our seminars came into being.

As we write this more than thirty years later, we feel fortunate to have touched the lives of so many people who now have experienced the possibility of Instantaneous Transformation for themselves.

Our approach is simple. It’s all about being here in the current moment – a rare thing for most of us since we’ve been taught to rehash the past and to strive for future accomplishments. The two of us have discovered that a new possibility exists to access and actually live in the experience of the current moment – that you can slow down enough to be here for your life as it unfolds. By merely being where you are in current time, rather than worrying about a future that hasn’t gotten here or fretting about things from the past, your life becomes an effortless expression of yourself. As this happens, your day-to-day experience of living literally transforms so that accomplishments come naturally and things you have strived to change dissolve on their own, like ice on a warm summer’s day.

The majority of the stories in Being Here…Too have been written by the people who have participated with us in this radical, yet gentle form of self-discovery. Each of the anecdotes is a roadmap to Instantaneous Transformation. In the following pages, we share with you the possibility that life can be easy and life will support you if you let it.

We’ve been deeply moved by the courage and magnificence of our contributors. As you read their words and absorb their experiences, we imagine you will be spontaneously touched by your own magnificence as well.

~ Ariel & Shya Kane

PART ONE: THE MAGIC OF BEING BOLDLY YOU

1. ANDY’S PERFECT EARS

By Ariel and Shya – Milford, New Jersey

One day, on an antiquated subway car, Andy discovered that his ears were perfect. Oh, but there had been a time when they were not. Kids can be cruel after all.

Growing up in St. Joseph, Missouri, Andy was a normal boy except for one thing – his exceptionally large, stick- out-from-his-head ears. For as long as he could remember his big ears had been a source of embarrassment. His parents loved him and his mom thought he was cute but she was his mother after all and Andy knew she was biased. He was certain that she was mistaken about how he looked and he had proof.

Once, when Andy was about ten, he waited with several other kids at the bus stop for Ol’ Yeller, the old yellow school bus. Wearing a red t-shirt, blue jeans and high tops, Andy was self-conscious. He kept looking down at his feet, which had started to outgrow the rest of his body, and he was upset when his friends began to taunt him. But they didn’t razz him about his feet. It seems that his ears had caught the early morning sun as it rose above a neighboring rooftop.

Look, it’s Dumbo! one of the boys said.

Yeah, just like that elephant. Hey Andy, you could fly with those things! another boy yelled. Everybody laughed. Andy was dumbstruck. He couldn’t think of anything to say in return. Ears aflame, Andy tried to hide them, which only made things worse.

Within the next couple of years, Andy began to dream about being an actor and he confided in a teacher about his ambitions.

You better get your ears pinned back then, his teacher said. Yours are just too much.

In middle school, Jake Pressman, a popular boy, said Andy looked like a taxicab with both back doors thrown open and that convinced him that he would never have a girlfriend.

In high school, Andy grew his hair as long as his parents would allow. When they made him get a haircut, he wore a stocking cap pulled down low to disguise his ears and he eventually began wearing that cap all the time, even in the summer. When he started to grow facial hair, Andy discovered that big, long sideburns drew a person’s eye and his ready smile was great camouflage for those unwanted flaps on the side of his head.

When Andy turned nineteen, he took a breath, took a leap and moved to New York City to pursue his dream of acting. He became a pizza server by night and an aspiring actor by day. He didn’t like his headshots and his