Archive of past articles by Jean-Claude Koven
Each article is approximately 1,000 words in length and delivers a complete, stand-alone teaching. You are free to use any (or all; one per issue) of these articles to reprint in your publication, provided you include the entire tag line appearing at the bottom of each article. If you are reproducing the article in electronic format, please use the link to the article. Thank you.
Articles
I have been to state fairs and street fairs, county fairs and school fairs, but none of my previous experiences prepared me for the three-day bash billed as the Oregon Country Fair. My expectations of mingling with prize pigs and heifers nurtured by loving 4-H clubbers couldn’t have been further off the mark. Although I should have gotten the message when we passed a road sign some seven or eight miles from the fair grounds ...
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Do You Really Want to Know the Truth?
by Jean-Claude Koven Back in 1992, Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise co-starred in a movie entitled A Few Good Men. The high point of the film, in my view, was a classic, heated exchange between their characters, during which Kaffee (the military attorney played by Cruise) says: “I want the truth,” and Col. Jessup (Nicholson) responds: “You can’t handle the truth.” The movie makes Jessup the villain. That’s not surprising in a courtroom drama that’s ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven Star Light, star bright, The first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, Have the wish I wish tonight. From the time of our infancy we live awash in a sea of prayers made either by us or by others on our behalf. Some wishes manifest, others don't. Wouldn't you like to sneak a look behind the curtain of creation and find out how God decides ...
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The battle lines have formed and the combatants have already begun exchanging volleys in mortal debate. We’re being asked to choose sides, for if we are to believe the protagonists, neutrality is no longer an option. The war is the growing rift between believers in God and atheists, who claim there is no God. The two protagonists maintain that this is the ultimate battle between faith and reason, between creationism and evolution, determining whether we ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven I often wonder about why the world is in such dire straits, why wars seem to be the chosen means to resolve matters when ideologies clash. What I have discovered through this introspective process is fascinating. If, as the great teachers tell us, there is in fact only Oneness, then there is no us and them; rather, we are all one. Not only that; the conflicts I am seeing in the ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven --------------------------------------- If you are unable to harness the Law of Attraction, you might well be luckier than you know. A revealing interview with James Twyman, director of the record breaking new movie, “The Moses Code.” --------------------------------------- The next time someone complains that despite all their best efforts, they haven’t been able to make the highly publicized Law of Attraction work, tell them to count their lucky stars. The naive misuse of ...
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You’ve Been Living in a Dream World
“Most people are other people,” Oscar Wilde once remarked. “Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” If he’s even half right, then chances the vast majority of us are not who we’ve been pretending to be, and the life we’ve been living up until now has been molded by someone else’s rules and values. It would seem that the mass of humanity is stuck in someone else’s discarded ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven --------------------------------------- Life offers us countless opportunities for love that we have been too frightened to accept. How do you summon the courage to break your conditioned patterns and let yourself love with reckless abandon? --------------------------------------- When I was 19, there was nothing about love I didn’t know. I was like a religious zealot infused by the Holy Spirit, prepared to battle any force standing in the path of my (hormonal) convictions. The equation ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven Several months ago I spoke before a weekly spiritual discussion group in Phoenix, Arizona that calls itself “Out of the Box.” The moment I entered the meeting room, I could feel the electricity in the air. Clearly, it was going to be an exceptional evening – and it was. I learned something very important that night about the palpable benefits gained by being an active part of an open-ended group that ...
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OK, God, We’ll Take It from Here
By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven Fairy tales begin “Once upon a time ...” and end with the blissful words every child loves, “... and they lived happily ever after.” As we grow up, however, we confront the unpleasant reality that in fact nothing lives happily ever after. Just because the prince meets every challenge and saves the damsel in the nick of time, and just because they fall madly in love and swear eternal vows, doesn't ...
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By Jean-Claude Koven The movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? challenges us with the question, “How far down the rabbit hole would you like to go?” In the safety of a movie theater seat, it is easy to confuse the invitation to glimpse another dimension with a ticket to a virtual A-ride at Disneyland. A rabbit hole seem such a benign thing – leading curious Alice to a grand adventure in Wonderland on the ...
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by Jean-Claude Gerard Koven I first heard of the Anunnaki some twenty years ago when I read The Twelfth Planet by Zecharia Stichin. His book, the product of extensive research into Sumerian tablets and other ancient writings, describes the Anunnaki as the inhabitants of Nibiru, a planet that circles the sun in a 3,600-year elliptical orbit opposite in direction to all the other planets in our solar system. It is not easily seen, the story ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven By the time I reached my early forties, I knew I was in trouble. I had achieved almost everything I set out to accomplish in life and had little to show for it other than a respectable stock portfolio and a shoebox full of badly tarnished brass rings collected while riding society’s merry-go-round. In the world’s eyes I was a successful entrepreneur; in my own I desperately wanted a do-over. I ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven --------------------------------------- Albert Einstein once predicted that when certain alarming events actually occurred, humankind would be facing imminent extinction. Is nature giving us final notice that we’re in serious trouble? --------------------------------------- I freely admit that I don't like being awakened from a deep sleep. The sound of an alarm clock rubs against my consciousness like a fingernail along a blackboard. Even if I'm being jarred awake by the scream of a fire ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven It is said that when the student is ready, the master appears. This adage is usually associated with going to India to sit at the feet of some swami-ji who speaks in parables and gives his students the occasional whack on the head. Certainly I've met countless disciples who fairly waft through life inhaling the intoxicating wisdom of their manifested master. And I've always been left wondering when it would be ...
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A few weeks ago I received an early morning phone call from my niece who asked my advice in dealing with Levi, her six year-old son. Although I love children, nobody in their right mind would ever confuse me with the good doctors Laura and Phil – or even Seuss, for that matter. Promising to give it my best shot I asked what the problem was. Levi, I was told, is greatly distressed by the ...
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by Jean-Claude Gerard Koven As I travel about the country and speak before more and more groups, I’m discovering that two questions are foremost on people’s minds. The first is: what is really happening on and to our planet? It’s tough to remain optimistic in the face of what appears to be an endless stream of worldwide calamities and crises—unless one is clued in to the big picture. For the good news is that when ...
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Where in God’s Name Did We Go Wrong?
by Jean-Claude Koven When people ask me if I am religious, I tell them I love God far too much to be religious. “Oh, then you must believe in God?” they inevitably ask. “Of course not,” I reply with a smile, “does a fish believe in water?” For me, God is all there is. What’s to believe? Although the world’s major religions all agree that God (however they define the term) is omnipresent, it seems ...
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by Jean-Claude Koven How can I, love, and you, three of the most misunderstood words in human language, be linked together to form our most sublime sentence? Like a Linus blanket we refuse to relinquish, this seemingly simple phrase comforts us from cradle to grave. Since long before grunts gave way to words, its message has been expressed by mothers to infants, children to their best friends, people to their pets, lovers to each other, ...
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By Jean-Claude Gerard Koven If a genie suddenly popped out of a bottle and offered to answer to any question that has been troubling you, what would you ask? That was pretty much the situation posed to thousands of metaphysically oriented people recently when they were given the opportunity to solicit the aid of higher consciousness. Not surprisingly, the majority of the questions concerned personal predicaments. Here's a fairly representative example: "I have been on ...
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