Several years ago I watched a Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on extreme success and extreme failure. She made the point that both positions catapult you out of your normal range of emotion and so both are hard to process. Both feel surreal because they aren’t everyday occurrences. Her point is resonating with me because [...]
life
My spiritual teacher uses the word “beatitude” a lot because that is his wish for everyone, that we all experience felicity of the highest kind, or consummate bliss. That got me thinking about bliss, what it means to be blissful, and how that squares with, well, life. For instance, on New Year’s Day, my [...]
This weekend a friend told me his friends are getting into cryptocurrency so they can make a lot of money. My response was, “So they can do what? Retire early and satisfy every pleasure they have? Or build a rocket ship into space while there are people literally starving to death?” I mean, I [...]
In my 20s, I was enthralled by the Law of Attraction. During that time, the movie The Secret came out, which popularized the subject. I found the narrative so compelling – your mind is powerful, like attracts like, etc. Hearing story after story of people who were able to walk again after a doctor told [...]
Last week I wrote about the perspective Bhutan has taken in this pandemic that everyone is a part of one big family and how that’s played out in terms of the country’s policies. Here in the U.S., the more prevalent perspective is one of rugged individualism and separateness. Instead of viewing all of us as [...]
I’m resharing this post from September 2019 because once again, I find myself in a hallway, metaphorically speaking. That also means the audio clip below is from that time period. Enjoy. A close friend of mine used an analogy the other day that’s stuck with me. She said her higher power has closed a door [...]
It’s a three-day weekend here in the U.S. and it has me contemplating another three-day weekend from 2013. It was Labor Day and I had just moved into a new place, a cottage. I was excited at the prospect of not sharing any walls or ceilings with a neighbor and looked forward to much-needed [...]
I spoke with a friend this week and she said she’s confused by events that start off miraculously and then wind up being a dumpster fire. Is the event still a miracle in that case? Good question. It brings to mind a story I heard about a Chinese farmer who used a stallion to till [...]
It’s been a crazy whirlwind of a week and the only thing that comes to mind is this post I wrote nearly two years ago in January 2017. I’m sharing it again now. I asked a friend the other day how he maintains hope and faith when the whole world seems to have gone mad, [...]
Life and death have been on my mind lately because two people in my community have died in the past three weeks. I notice in myself and others a tendency to ward off death as much as possible. We do what we can to prolong life because we fear death. Not only death in [...]
