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...]
Politics, Truth and Compassion
Are you as worn out from this election season as I am? I am beyond weary from fending off the incoming—all kinds of energetic approaches vying for my mental, psychic and emotional attention, ranging from snail mail, email, print and TV ads, the endless coverage by the media of each side’s daily talking points and the innumerable partisan surrogates appearing on behalf of each agenda, and, most difficult of all to bear, the relentless sniping and small hearted negative attacks that appear to be acceptable terms of engagement in politics. We are all being subjected to energetic fields replete … [Read more...]
The Light Shines Through Many Windows
I got to thinking recently about belief systems after listening to a radio interview with writer and director Kenneth Lonergan (about his film Margaret, now out in an extended DVD version). What caught my attention was his description of himself as a “committed atheist,” and more particularly his explanation of why. In his view, all religions are creations, stories, myths, that are constructed as a way of trying to understand something that is not comprehensible. In other words, we create belief systems to help us wrap our minds around things we can not understand. Things like why are we … [Read more...]
Indiana Jones, Winston Churchill, Coincidence and Synchronicity
What are coincidences? How do they happen? Why do they happen? What do they mean? Coincidence, as commonly defined, is when two or more events happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection. But this definition only considers events that are causally related. Synchronicity, a term coined by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung in the 1920s, recognizes that concurrent events may be connected by meaning, rather than cause. Synchronicity is when two or more events that appear not be connected, and are unlikely to occur together by chance, in fact do occur together in a way … [Read more...]