Have you tried to take a hiatus from your digital device? It is not easy. But well worth trying, if only to give you an experiential understanding of the costs of digital dependency. When we disengage from our phones and tablets and screens of all kinds, we experience the world in a different and enlivened way. We can be more present. And along with this shift in perception comes discovery—actually re-discovery—of our myriad capabilities for awareness, not only in and of our immediate environment, but in our connections to the expanded world, inner and outer, as well. It is quite … [Read more...]
We Are All One
As we celebrate this season of holiday blessings, gratitude, and cheer, I want to share a story with you. For several months now I have been thinking about the distressing circumstances in which we find ourselves in the world today. I have been contemplating our situation and, ever hopeful, looking for understanding and reasons for encouragement. Notwithstanding the constant barrage of media and the fear mongers, I am encouraged! As I was leaving the gym last week, my attention was drawn to a woman standing with her back to me, in conversation with another. I did not know her, indeed … [Read more...]
Alert and Available
How often do you worry about the future? Or feel stuck or drawn back by something or someone in the past that you can’t seem to get past? Human mind and emotion have a persistent way of distracting us from the present. We struggle with the business of being human--that is, surviving physically and emotionally--and we think far too much about it, often engendering fear. This is our nature and our habit, and it is reinforced relentlessly by our cultures (including family, work, and community cultures) and by the realities of survival. We are shaped by our pasts, by our attachments and … [Read more...]
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
As we arrive at this time of endings and new beginnings, I have been in deep contemplation, seeking to understand what is going on in the world around us, and wondering about our human station, as we mourn twenty young children, and six of their teachers, from Newtown, Connecticut. Blessings upon them, their parents, their teachers, families and friends, and all of us. They have served well, reminding us in unbearable sacrifice of themselves, of the truth and what matters, and moving us to take action now and do what we need to do, to be our best selves, in the fullness of the best that is … [Read more...]