The purpose of my blogging is to be of service to you and your adventure through life. I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing about myself but after a year of blogging, last week was my 52nd post, I figured you should know a little bit about me before we move onto our next theme of Thinking BIG: Focused & Organized. We spent many months exploring WIngMakers and the Lyricus material and now I want to give you the business side of Where Success & Spirit Meet. This blog will start to bring you up to present time me.

Last week’s blog centered on my learning meditation almost forty years ago and the profound and positive impact its had on my life right up to this very day. Yes, I still meditate twice a day for twenty minutes and I have never missed a morning meditation and only a handful of afternoon meditations. I loved being an initiator, a teacher of TM, so let me tell you why I’m still not a full time teacher of meditation. I’m calling this experience, Perception is Reality. Note: Reality is also perception as I learned from my psychologist brother, Rick.

We opened our first TM center in Edison, NJ in 1973. We offered introductory lectures every Wednesday evening and usually 7-10 people came to the lecture and about the same number learned to meditate every weekend. Then in 1975 Maharishi was invited by talk show host Merv Griffin to appear on his nationally syndicated show. Maharishi’s appearnace on the show was THE game changer. This show inspired millions to learn TM and meditation mania swept across the country. The first lecture right after the show we had standing room only in our lecture hall and were teaching upwards of fifty people every week for months and months. We had finally arrived and we were helping people along the way. It was an incredibly exciting time in our lives. Our dreams had come true beyond our wildest imagination. This high wave of activity lasted for about a year and then just as the crowds had appeared over night they also suddenly disappeared.

Here’s what happened. TM centers were popping up everywhere. We ourselves opened two more centers by the beginning of 1976. Because of its great popularity and scientifically verifiable results meditation was being taught in schools throughout America. An attorney in Maplewood, NJ, ironically my hometown, took TM to court stating that TM was a religion and that teaching it in schools was against the law since you can’t mix church and state. HE WON! It made the headlines and was reported on every news station in the country. And the crowds were gone. Three people showed up at our introductory lecture after the headlines hit and it stayed that way until we had to close all three centers by the end of 1976. Hey, as I wrote in a previous blog, I’m a nice Jewish boy who meditates, not a practicing Hindu (not that there’s anything wrong with that as they would say on Seinfeld). As the blog title says, perception is reality. The law said we were a religion and the people went away.

The next blog starts our merging of where success and spirit meet.

Mark Riesenberg, founder of Human Resources Unlimited since 1987, is a business and spiritual coach, author of How to Stop Whining and Start Winning and a renowned keynote, workshop leader and speaker. His second book, To Provide Guidance to Mankind, will be published in 2009. Click here for a partial client list and for testimonials.