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 […]
How to Make Every Day Feel Sacred: Cultivating the Profound Inside the Mundane
I recently returned from a remarkable and different kind of weekend. It was a weekend infused with poetry, ritual, music, beauty and kindness. Three days dedicated to bringing meaning to the surface of life, up from the hidden depths where it normally lives. We listened to the exquisite words of the poet David Whyte, resonated with stories of love, friendship, […]
Why We Hold Grudges and How to Let Them Go: It’s Not About the Person Who Wronged You, It’s About Who You Want to Be
Karen, 65, is very angry at her ex-boyfriend. It seems he asked her best friend out on a date, a few days after breaking up with Karen. He was her boyfriend in high school. Paul, 45, can’t forgive his sister, because, as he sees it, she treated him like he didn’t matter when they were children. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Your Truest Friend Resides Within Your Own Heart
As we age it seems that fighting with friends becomes less necessary or even possible. There are fewer matters worth fighting about and even fewer worth risking the friendship over. That said, I recently had a real fight with a dear friend. The fight arose because my friend had decided that I had done something […]
Overcoming Your Fear of Feelings
I recently attended a panel discussion on the topic of happiness. Early on in the dialogue, one of the panelists addressed what he considered the mistaken way that most people think about happiness, namely, as a state that is free from pain or difficulty. He explained that we need to view happiness as a state […]
How to Look Out for Yourself
There are times in life when things fall apart, when we lose something deeply important, something that made us feel connected, grounded or safe. Sometimes a lot of things fall apart at the same time. There are times in life, for everyone, when it feels like all our safety nets get cut, and we are […]
Has Your Ego Slipped Inside Your Witness?
Orange was the new black. Now mindfulness has trumped orange and is indeed, the newest black. Talk in social media is that everyone is practicing it, “doing” mindfulness, becoming spiritual. Sounds good! Becoming aware and conscious of what is happening in the present moment, both inside and outside our body, is a powerful and life […]