ET's Biography Eric D. Thomas - Youth Activist, Speaker, Author and Motivator

                                  ET's Biography

Eric D. Thomas - Youth Activist, Speaker, Author and Motivator

Renown speaker, educator, author, activist and minister, Eric Thomas is rising to national prominence by delivering a high energy message that tells youth through first hand experience how to live up to their full potential and greatness and by breaking the cycles of crime, hopelessness and despair that many face daily. Known for his engagingly personal approach, his messages are both dynamic & inspiring. When coupled with his own Cycle-Breaking experience his blunt essays on reality and remarkable ability to reach even the most jaded of minds, has helped thousands of youth nationwide become peak performers academically, spiritually and personally.

Eric has electrified audiences ranging from Fortune 500 companies to urban educators, collegiate athletic programs and inner-city youth development agencies with the message of his own life’s struggles and the principles, insights and strategies he used to overcome them. Eric is no stranger to the ills that plague our communities as he was born in Chicago, IL and raised on the streets of Detroit, MI. His childhood and adolescent years were difficult, and his life struggles and personal identity issues were intensified because like so many, he did not establish a relationship with his biological father until his early thirties.
 At the age of 16, defiant and hardheaded, Eric decided to leave home and drop out of school, choosing to live on the streets of Detroit. By divine intervention at age 17, Eric met a pastor who saw him a young man with tremendous unrealized potential. As a result, their mentoring relationship was born which led Eric to complete his GED and to prepare for college. Determined not to be another statistic, Eric enrolled at Oakwood University where he began reading every thing he could get his hands on. Understanding the struggle of the streets, he realized what his purpose in life was to become, so he reached back to his fellow drug dealers and helped many of them get their GED’s, go to college and incorporate the strategies and self-improvement exercises he learned in order to assist them in developing their own life plans. In so doing, he provided them with a much-needed positive option to the life of crime and illiteracy they then led.

While in college, Eric started Break The Cycle I Dare You, (BTC) a non profit youth development and special event organization that focuses on developing programs for youth who have made bad choices and most often have had family, social, and academic struggles along with the lack of a father figure in their lives. Today BTC has developed and produced many supportive community-based programs and conferences across the country. They provide youth and teachers alike with activities, self-improvement exercises and motivational strategies to help them reach their highest potential in life. Eric now serves as the Chairman of the Organization.

He obtained his Masters degree in 2005 and is currently pursuing his PhD in Education Administration at Michigan State University and serves as Senior Pastor of A Place of Change Ministries, Lansing Michigan. He also serves as a consultant at Michigan State where he has developed The Advantage Program, an undergraduate retention program targeting academically high-risk students of color. In addition to his work with the Advantage at Michigan State, he also serves as a consultant for several collegiate athletic programs across the country. In this role, he provides assistants to student-athletes having academic and social challenges as it relates to successfully transitioning from high-risk schools and communities to a collegiate environment.

Eric’s representation of the merits of higher education, coupled with his knowledge of the pains of the street, inspires young people to break bad habits and reach for new levels of personal and spiritual achievement.
Eric has lived a life of challenges and triumph but has found a way to break the cycle.

Simplify Your Life

Simplify Your Life 
Different people have different ways to spend their lives. As a result, simplifying life would carry a different meaning for each one of us.
I wouldn’t be wrong if I assume that most of us want to spend time with their loved ones, do work that they really like to do, have time for hobbies, spend less time finding important stuff and just be happy. And if we are not able to accomplish most of the above, we need to look at and simplify a few things in our lives.


1. Figure Out What’s Really Important
Figuring out what’s really important to you, what makes you happy and what are the goals for your life is the first step towards the simplification you aim to achieve.
It’s only when you know what’s really important, you can prioritize your tasks accordingly and get things done without being stressed.
2. Analyze Your Current Routine
Spend a day analyzing how you have been spending your days. What is your daily routine like? Has it helped with your work? Has it helped your health? Are you able to take time out for family and friends? Have you been prioritizing tasks according to what’s really important? Is the routine designed accordingly?
If any of these are out of whack, it’s time to change the routine.
3. Simplify Household Tasks
Most people don’t realize that household chores, if not done productively, could easily take up a significant chunk of your time. It’s important to simplify them.
What are the chores you do every day? Which of them have to be done every day? How do you organize your household in a way that it eliminates many chores? These are some questions you need to answer.
4. Get Rid of Things You Don’t Use
Take a look at that old bookshelf that has piles of books gathering dust. You never read any of them twice. Heck, you didn’t even read some of them once! Don’t you think you are better off distributing them to someone who could benefit from reading them?
The same can be applied to your DVDs, CDs, gadgets et al. Either sell them or give them away. Simplify.
5. Don’t Buy Things You Might Not Use
The reason you had that enormous collection of books or DVDs in the first place was because you bought them thinking they’d be of great help. Turns out you were wrong.
So, from now on, only buy things you are likely to use — and use often. When it comes to books and movies (unless you are a voracious reader or a movie buff) you can borrow or rent them instead of buying each new thing that comes out.
6. De-clutter and Organize Your Home & Workplace
Yes, de-clutter. De-clutter your desk, de-clutter your desktop, de-clutter your workspace. Just get started on cleaning up the mess that’s surrounding you.
Make things look clean and simple around you. This is an important step in simplifying your life.
7. Go Paperless
If you look around you, most of the clutter is constituted by paper in one or form or another. So going paperless not only makes your work easier and saves you time, it also significantly reduces workspace clutter.
I understand that a few tasks need paper. But try to use latest tools and software as much as possible to get things done.
8. Delegate and Get Help
No matter how organized you are — and how easily you can get things done — if your work grows, you are bound to get overwhelmed if you are doing it all alone. And that’s not just for your work, but for everything else in your life.
Delegating tasks to others who can do it better than you, collaborating with friends in various aspects of life, seeking help from someone who knows it better…all this helps to keep you sane and carry on with life without getting stressed and frustrated.
9. Disconnect Often
Last, and probably the most important step in simplifying your life – disconnect often. Disconnect from what? From anything that has you connected all day. It could be the internet for one, a cellphone for another. For someone, it might be a musical instrument which he just can’t stop playing for hours.

Take a few hours off every week, and a day or two off every month from what you do every day. Stay disconnected…stay abandoned. Spend time with yourself, with something you like to do but can’t find time for, with someone you love but don’t have time for, with nature. Take time out and thank the universe for the life and the opportunities you’ve got.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I AM Spirituality Ep. 0003 - The Body Mind Spirit Model

Ever wonder what the terms Body Mind Spirit really means? Here's the roadmap that explains it all!

Transforming Illness into Enlightenment

 The  Power To Choose
 Illness into Enlightenment
by Eckhart Tolle

Surrender is inner acceptance of what is without any reservations. We are talking about your life — this instant — not the conditions or circumstances of your life, not what I call your life situation.

Illness is part of your life situation. As such, it has a past and a future. Past and future form an uninterrupted continuum, unless the redeeming power of the Now is activated through your conscious presence. As you know, underneath the various conditions that make up your life situation, which exists in time, there is something deeper, more essential: your Life, your very Being in the timeless Now.

As there are no problems in the Now, there is no illness either. The belief in a label that someone attaches to your condition keeps the condition in place, empowers it, and makes a seemingly solid reality out of a temporary imbalance. It gives it not only reality and solidity but also continuity in time that it did not have before.

By focusing on this instant and refraining from labeling it mentally, illness is reduced to one or several of these factors: physical pain, weakness, discomfort, or disability. That is what you surrender to — now. You do not surrender to the idea of "illness."

Allow the suffering to force you into the present moment, into a state of intense conscious presence. Use it for enlightenment.

Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection.

Illness is not the problem. You are the problem — as long as the egoic mind is in control.

When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance.

If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything "bad" that happens in your life — use it for enlightenment.

Withdraw time from the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let it force you into intense present-moment awareness — and see what happens.

Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.

Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what I have just said? Then that is a clear sign that the illness has become part of your sense of self and that you are now protecting your identity — as well as protecting the illness.

The condition that is labeled "illness" has nothing to do with who you truly are.

Whenever any kind of disaster strikes, or something goes seriously "wrong" — illness, disability, loss of home or fortune or of a socially defined identity, breakup of a close relationship, death or suffering of a loved one, or your own impending death — know that there is another side to it, that you are just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender.

I do not mean to say that you will become happy in such a situation. You will not. But fear and pain will become transmuted into an inner peace and serenity that come from a very deep place — from the
unmanifested itself. It is "the peace of God, which passes all understanding." Compared to that, happiness is quite a shallow thing.

With this radiant peace comes the realization — not on the level of mind but within the depth of your Being — that you are indestructible, immortal. This is not a belief. It is absolute certainty that needs no external evidence or proof from some secondary source.

Transforming Suffering into Peace

The  Power To Choose
Suffering into Peace
by Eckhart Tolle

In certain extreme situations, it may still be impossible for you to accept the Now. But you always get a second chance at surrender.

Your first chance is to surrender each moment to the reality of that moment. Knowing that what is cannot be undone — because it already is — you say yes to what is or accept what isn't.

Then you do what you have to do, whatever the situation requires.

If you abide in this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering, no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of nonresistance, a state of grace and lightness, free of struggle.

Whenever you are unable to do that, whenever you miss that chance — either because you are not generating enough conscious presence to prevent some habitual and unconscious resistance pattern from arising, or because the condition is so extreme as to be absolutely unacceptable to you — then you are creating some form of pain, some form of suffering.

It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not so — your resistance is.

Now here is your second chance at surrender: If you cannot accept what is outside, then accept what is inside. If you cannot accept the external condition, accept the internal condition.

This means: Do not resist the pain. Allow it to be there. Surrender to the grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without labeling it mentally. Embrace it.

Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep suffering into deep peace. This is your crucifixion. Let it become your resurrection and ascension.

When your pain is deep, all talk of surrender will probably seem futile and meaningless anyway. When your pain is deep, you will likely have a strong urge to escape from it rather than surrender to it. You don't want to feel what you feel. What could be more normal? But there is no escape, no way out.

There are many pseudo escapes — work, drink, drugs, anger, projection, suppression, and so on —  but they don't free you from the pain. Suffering does not diminish in intensity when you make it unconscious. When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally.

If they are unconscious, they may even feel compelled to attack or hurt you in some way, or you may hurt them in an unconscious projection of your pain. You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.

When there is no way out, there is still always a way through. So don't turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. Feel it — don't think about it! Express it if necessary, but don't create a script in your mind around it. Give all your attention to the feeling, not to the person, event, or situation that seems to have caused it.

Don't let the mind use the pain to create a victim identity for yourself out of it. Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others your story will keep you stuck in suffering.

Since it is impossible to get away from the feeling, the only possibility of change is to move into it; otherwise, nothing will shift.

So give your complete attention to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be intensely alert.

At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes, observe it but don't act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is.

Stay alert, stay present — present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.

At this stage, you don't need to be concerned with surrender anymore. It has happened already. How? Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention, you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence.

No hidden pocket of resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive.

The acceptance of suffering is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize that there is no death — and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego dies.

Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating?

Do you want an easy death? Would you rather die without pain, without agony? Then die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as "you."

The Way of the Cross —Enlightenment Through Suffering

The Power to Choose  
Enlightenment Through Suffering



by Eckhart tolle


The way of the cross is the old way to enlightenment, and until recently it was the only way. But don't dismiss it or underestimate its efficacy. It still works.

The way of the cross is a complete reversal. It means that the worst thing in your life, your cross, turns into the best thing that ever happened to you, by forcing you into surrender, into "death," forcing you to become as nothing, to become as God — because God, too, is no-thing.

Enlightenment through suffering — the way of the cross — means to be forced into the kingdom of heaven kicking and screaming. You finally surrender because you can't stand the pain anymore, but the pain could go on for a long time until this happens.

Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life. It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is. You then don't need pain anymore.

How much more time do you think you will need before you are able to say, "I will create no more pain, no more suffering?" How much more pain do you need before you can make that choice?

If you think that you need more time, you will get more time — and more pain. Time and pain are inseparable.


The Power to Choose
Choice implies consciousness — a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present.

Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. This means that you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind.

Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.

Similarly, if you are one of the many people who have an issue with their parents, if you still harbor resentment about something they did or did not do, then you still believe that they had a choice — that they could have acted differently. It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? None. You are not even there. The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional. It is a form of insanity.

Almost everyone is suffering from this illness in varying degrees. The moment you realize this, there can be no more resentment. How can you resent someone's illness? The only appropriate response is compassion.

If you are run by your mind, although you have no choice you will still suffer the consequences of your unconsciousness, and you will create further suffering. You will bear the burden of fear, conflict, problems, and pain. The suffering thus created will eventually force you out of your unconscious state.

You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are.

When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.

Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of resistance — surrender — is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending to be "you," the false god. All judgment and all negativity dissolve.

The realm of Being, which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up.

Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace.

And within that peace, there is great joy.

And within that joy, there is love.

And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.

Manifesting Your Desires

I could make it very easy from the start and say that you are already manifesting your desires everyday, but you just don't realize it. Most people are unconscious creators. They go about their daily lives not knowing that the thoughts they are thinking have an impact on their outside world. The Law Of Attraction, probably the most important law governing creation states that all forms of matter and energy are attracted to that which is of like vibration. What this means is that the thoughts we hold in our minds begin to attract similar thoughts and become larger masses of thoughts we call thought forms.

So what are the implications of this for you? Stated simply, you get what you focus on. "But I'm always thinking about money and i never have any," you say. And that is because you never stay focused on the abundance in your life, but are always looking at the lack of what you do have. So that is what you attract into your life. If you could stay focused on one thing and imagined the excitement you would feel if you already had it, it would show up in your life in a relatively short time.

The world you see is only a mirror of all the thoughts you have inside of you. Change your thoughts and you change the perception of your world. Quantum physics teaches us that nothing exists independently of your perception of it. In actuality you get to choose what you see. That is why several people observing the same thing each have different opinions as to what really happened.

If you want to manifest your desires there are a few steps you need to follow. Number one in importance is knowing what you really want. The more definitive you can be, the easier it will be to reach your goal. Number two in importance is the more enthused, excited and emotionally charged you are about something, the faster you will see it show up in your life. Next, you have to allow it to come into your life. What i mean by this is not to expect it to come in a certain way, the when, where or how. Just let it flow into your life. And lastly, you should have a feeling of gratitude, or thankfulness in advance, to be grateful before and for the thing that you want.

Inspiration And Purpose

 











By teaching love, that very same love guided me to my purpose.
By Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

When you are inspired by a great purpose, everything will begin to work for you. Inspiration comes from moving back in-spirit and connecting to the seven faces of intention. When you feel inspired, what appeared to be risky becomes a path you feel compelled to follow. The risks are gone because you are following your bliss, which is the truth within you. This is really love working in harmony with your intention. Essentially, if you do not feel love, you do not feel the truth, and your truth is all wrapped up in your connection to Spirit. This is why inspiration is such an important part of the fulfillment of your intention to live a life on purpose.

When I left the work that no longer inspired me, every single detail that I had worried about was almost magically taken care of for me. I had spent several months working for a large corporation where I was offered a salary three times higher than I had been paid as a teacher, but I was not in-spirit. That prodding inner knowing said, “Do what you are here to do,” and teaching counseling became my manifested daily purpose.

And public speaking was not a risk; it was something I had to do because I knew that I could not feel happy with myself if I did not follow my heart. The universe handled the details, because I was feeling love for what I was doing, and consequently, I was living my truth. By teaching love, that very same love guided me to my purpose, and the financial remuneration flowed to me with that same energy of love. I couldn’t see how it worked out, but I followed an inner knowing and never regretted it.

You may think it is too risky to give up a salary, a pension, job security, or familiar surroundings because of a dim night-light in your mind that draws you to see why it is turned on. I suggest that there are no risks at all if you pay attention to that light, which is your knowing. Combine your strong knowing with the faith that Spirit will provide, and you acknowledge the power of intention at work. Your trust in this inner knowing is all you need. I call it faith, not faith in an external being to provide you with purpose, but faith in the call you are hearing from the center of your being. You are a divine, infinite creation making the choice to be on purpose and to be connected to the power of intention. It all revolves around your being harmoniously connected to your Source. Faith eliminates the risk when you choose to trust that inner knowing about your purpose and become a channel for the power of intention.

Relating To Others, Practice "Understanding"

Two significant keys in relating, communicating, and understanding others are developing compassion for yourself and empathy for others.  Understand that all of us are flawed in some way, and all of us are destined to make mistakes.  The more risks you take, the more innovative you are, and the more you strive to improve the world or your life, the more mistakes you’re likely to make along the way.

 Try to read between the lines when it comes to others, but also know yourself.  The better you understand yourself and what makes you tick, the better you will understand others.  Many times the very idiosyncrasies you seem to criticize in others may be found in you.  Someone once said, "Beware when you point a finger at someone, because three fingers are always pointing back at you."  Before you criticize others, catch yourself.

  We all grow up in different environments, with different influences and experiences that shape our opinions and views of life.  In essence, you could say that we all come from different "worlds." Due to these differing views, we have our own individual opinions regarding the things in life that are important to us and the things that aren't.  In spite of our differing views and opinions, it's important to realize that what constitutes a "good" human being can not necessarily be judged by the external things one sees about them.  For example, just because a teenager may have a pierced eyebrow, pierced nose, pierced lip, and tattoos covering his or her body, doesn't mean he or she is a bad person. We must be careful not to prejudge a person's goodness based on how we think goodness should be packaged.  That's where understanding comes in.  We cannot judge someone until we first try to understand the "world" he or she comes from.

 My daughter, now a teenager, is forming her own opinions and establishing relationships.  I find that, initially, my advice falls on deaf ears.  So I have to remember how it was when I was a teenager.  At this stage in my parenthood, patience is a necessity.  Part of being patient is just being quiet and listening.  She may tell me things that shock me, but I just listen.  The world I grew up in and the world she is growing up in are both very different.  She is faced with situations at her young age that I did not have to encounter when I was her age.  However, to merely get angry that the world has changed and that she is confronted with these situations will not help my daughter.  I must try to relate to the world she is living in and offer wisdom, guidance, and sound advice to help her face the challenges that will come her way.

  Perhaps there is someone in your life that you find hard to relate to.  You just don't “get” him or her—the person’s actions or viewpoints.  Take some time to just sit still and think about that person.  What may his or her "world" be like?  What is the person’s background?  Where did he or she come from?  Perhaps they are dealing with insecurities, family issues, or other personal issues.  Think of ways that you can talk to the person or find out about him or her and begin to develop an understanding.  You may never fully understand some people, but endeavor to mentally walk in their shoes as they do.  You don't have to agree with them, but try to understand them and be sympathetic to their plight.
By: John Alston