When Is It Time to Stop Trying to Fix Ourselves?
Are you a self-help junkie? Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table detailing the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be. And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were. Our conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even […]
Meditation: Coming Home to Your Heart
This is a meditation to help you remember where home is. You are always here, in your heart, closer than a breath away. Your heart is always awaiting your presence, awaiting your attention, awaiting you. Know that your refuge is always available to and inside you. Come home to you.
When You’re In Relationship With a Blamer
There is no better time for growing than the holiday season. And not just growing in the belly, but in the heart and mind as well. Family interactions, particularly those that go on over a period of consecutive days, offer profound opportunities for self-awareness, learning, and evolution. Our greatest challenges are our greatest teachers, and they often […]
Who’s In Charge, Computers or Humans?
Something remarkable happened yesterday, not remarkable good but remarkable crazy. I was riding in one of the new group taxis that have taken over New York City, and we were traveling from midtown West to midtown East. I was the next to be dropped off and there were umpteen routes that we could take to […]
When Someone We Love Believes Something We Hate
A dear friend believes something that I think is absurd — unimaginable in fact. That he could think what he thinks is not just absurd and unimaginable to me, but also distasteful, and profoundly difficult to respect. Complicating the matter in this case is that what he believes is something that I “should” do, that […]
How to Live in the Real World (Minus One Troubling Word)
Of all the words that exist in our language, “should” may be the one that creates the most suffering. Every aspect of our life is affected and infiltrated by it: I “should” be, he/she “should” be, my life “should” be, this moment “should” be… Sometimes we utter our “shoulds” out loud, sometimes we think them consciously, […]
Are Your Spiritual “Shoulds” Sabotaging Your Spiritual Life?
A person on a spiritual path should not get angry, and certainly not furious. This was high on my list of spiritual “shoulds.” The problem was that I was on what I thought of as a spiritual path (and had been for a long time) and I still got angry and furious and still, sometimes even acted […]
Spiritual Beings On a Human Journey: How to Remember Our Stardust
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Most of us have heard these words from the French philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. And for most of us, there is something about this idea that resonates at a very primordial level. Something in us knows, deep […]
Dropping Your “Me” Story: How to Stop Taking Your Life So Personally
Kate’s previous evening had culminated in a post-midnight event of Moo goo gai pan. When she arrived at my office the next morning, she was not only full of chicken and mushrooms, but even more full of remorse and self-loathing. She was swimming in a cocktail of emotions, which included shame, frustration, disappointment, disgust, sadness […]
When “Helping” Becomes Enabling: Breaking the Cycle of Dependency
Like most people, my journey to the land of enabling was fueled by the kindest intentions. I was trying to help a friend, which then grew into trying to save that friend. But after years of “helping” and “saving,” I was the one going under, and it was myself that I needed to save. As […]