Holding Back The River of Love
At any moment, on any day of your life, love is flowing through you like a river. It’s as automatic as breathing, and just like you may sometimes hold your breath without realizing it, it’s likely you hold back that flow of love without knowing you’re doing it.
I Feel Younger Today Than I Ever Have
Fifty years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I remember going for a hike in the hills above U.C. Berkeley. The trails up into those hills are very steep, so I was surprised when I met an old man on the trail (he was about the age I am now). He had a sense of sheer aliveness that I wasn’t used to seeing in people his age. We got to talking, and I still remember the conversation.
Why Are We Always Seeking and Resisting?
Two activities take up huge pieces of our lives, and both of them can easily fly under the radar of our conscious attention. The activities are seeking and resisting. Any time you dislike or resent what you’re doing, or the experience you’re having, you’re in resistance. And the strangest thing of all is what you’re resisting: life itself, life as it is.
Does Your View of Life Support You?
Enormous parts of our lives go completely unexamined. For instance, have you ever given any thought to whether your view of life supports you? And if you’ve ever stopped to wonder about this, how would you even know if life were supporting your worldview?
The Unforeseen Gifts of a Total Eclipse
A week ago, a childhood dream was fulfilled when I was wrapped in the immersive experience of a total eclipse. I read about eclipses when I was about seven, so that means I waited sixty-five years to see it. It was everything it possibly could have been, but the real gift of the day turned out to have nothing to do with the eclipse itself.
How to Give Yourself a Break
Giving yourself a break always sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?
Why, then, are we so infinitely creative in finding ways to postpone it?
To be clear, what I’m talking about is being a little easier on ourselves than most of us tend to be. It occurs to me part of our genius for putting this off has to do with the notion that we’re just not quite ready to do it yet. Unfortunately, this feeling of not being ready can go on almost indefinitely.
If I’m Enjoying My Life, Something Must Be Wrong
“If I’m Enjoying My Life, Something Must Be Wrong.” I was trying to get to the bottom of what a client was telling me when they gave me a hand and said that line. They’d been explaining the feeling they lived in most of the time, one that suggested a peaceful feeling was an unknown occurrence in their life.
Is a High Level of Accomplishment Compatible with Peace and Well-Being?
Does it make sense to believe that we have to choose between either a high level of accomplishment, or peace and well-being? On a societal level, we’ve been encouraged to think that’s the case.
Miracle at the Hardware Store
One of the strangely dependable qualities of miracles is that they appear when we’re least expecting them. This is a story of a miracle that happened to me last week at the hardware store. That particular store is enormous and was completely deserted when I arrived late one day. I wandered around looking for someone […]
Everything You Do is an Act of Creation
Have you noticed how people tend to describe themselves as either “a creative person,” or “not a creative person?” The ones who believe they’re creative tend to be people whose reason for being is to create art, music, writing, or some tangible creative product. Those of us who have no specific output of creative “product” […]