Month: December 2014

Everyone suffers

A response to a reader on Facebook who was considering with me the nature of suffering: You know, everyone suffers. I frankly had to stop myself from assuming that I had it worse than the person I was next to. We really don't know. I started to practice realizing I don't know what others have suffered. I started realizing that competing for having suffered more than everyone else was a losing battle...especially for me...and yeah, it does lend itself to just having a bad time. We really do have to accept ourselves before others will accept us. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

Ancestral Healing

What Jung calls “participation mystique,” is the deep enmeshment that can happen in intimate relationships when an individual doesn’t do the inner-work to heal their unconscious pain. The wounds get passed through the generations, metastasizing through our relationships and literally shaping our children’s lives. The sickness will stay in the family tree until someone in the outer branches has enough support and awareness to face and move through that ancient grief. … [click on title to read and view more]

Meditate

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at the bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

What do you believe?

People find it quite easy to have beliefs and to hold on to them and to let their whole world be a product of their belief system. They also find it quite easy to attack those who disagree. The harder, more courageous thing, which the hero and the heroine, the warrior, and the mystic do, is continually to look one’s beliefs straight in the face, honestly and clearly, and then step beyond them. That requires a lot of heart and kindness. It requires being able to touch and know completely, to the core, your own experience, without harshness, without making any judgment. … [click on title to read and view more]

Saturday mellow

Avishai Cohen -- beautiful music… [click on title to read and view more]

Feeling broken?

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

If I had remained med compliant…

pharmaceuticals If I had remained med compliant...

If I had remained med compliant...I would still be on a cocktail similar to the one I began to withdraw from 10 years ago now. I’ve withdrawn from:84 mg of Concerta50 mg of Seroquel200 mg of Zoloft400 mg of Lamictal11 mg of Risperdal3 mg of Klonopin (list of other good things)

Both/And Thinking: Bridging Nature and Nurture

yin/yang tree Nature vs nurture, biological vs. psychological: how about both/and rather than either/or

The subject of biological vs. psychological and nature vs. nurture came up in one of my professional email groups. I always think in terms of both/and rather than either/or these days. Here's how I responded to the group: I see all aspects of being human as existing on spectrums of sorts.  All these spectrums interact with each other so that experience is like a kaleidoscope perhaps...endlessly varied from human being to human being and even within the life of a solo human being...no moment is ever repeated...we are new in that way in every instant.

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No escape

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers... Continue Reading →

Waking the Still, Small Voice Within

Learn why the body is such an important tool in spiritual practice, how to cultivate your awareness of the ‘felt sense’ to make important decisions in your life and how the power of your questions can dramatically open new possibilities. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

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