From Grade 1 to Grade 7, I lived in Sept Iles, Quebec. That's a very Franchophone area, hours past Quebec City on the North Shore. As children, some of us, some of the time, called each other names because of our different languages: "tête carrée" (square head), "frog". It would occasionally borde...
Can I find in myself a no-matter-what commitment? Under the worst-case scenario, can I still tap into the well of uncaused, unreasonable happiness? Can I still relate to my fellow humans, and to all of life, with care and love? Can I still, to the fullest extent possible, remain present as a for...
NOTE: Quoted sections in this post are excerpted from What You Have Given Your Mind to Do, by Michael Singer.
Experiment
Say "hello" to yourself three times, not out loud but in your mind. Leave a couple seconds between each one. Can you hear that voice?
Q: Which one is more fundamental to ...
NOTE: This post is based on The Work of Byron Katie and contains excerpts from her freely available Worksheet and The Little Book.
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want...Wanting reality to be di...
Something opens our wings.
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us:
We taste only sacredness.
- RumiNOTE: These notes contain edited excerpts from Edward Espe Brown article in Lion's Roar online.
See cooking as a chore or a waste of time, and you...
This post is largely a set of edited excerpts from the New York Times article 6 Steps to Turn Regret Into Self-Improvement, by Jennifer Taitz. Related content is noted.
What is regret?
Have you ever felt like life would be better if you had taken a different path? If only you had pursued that...
Listening to the Future
Six-year old Jocie wakes her mother up in the middle of the night. She’s scared after they watched a movie about a puppy’s mother who ran away and never came back. Jocie’s mother sees that her daughter is afraid she’ll be left alone, so she promises not to run away and leav...
What is the Wheel of Mindlessness like?
Speedy, dull, Netflix-y, pushy, hurried?
Familiar? Comfortable?
For most of us, the habit of mindlessness is stronger than the habit of mindfulness.
- Joel and Michelle Levey
What is your reaction to noticing that your mind has wandered?
The ins...
The great way is not difficult
if you just don’t pick and choose.
- Sengcan, 6th century Zen teacher
We spend much of our life, maybe almost all of it, picking and choosing from what life presents to us. We approve of this, we want none of that. We push back against this, we strive to get mo...
This week our topic was how the practice of reflection can deepen understanding and unlock insights about ourselves and the world.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. - The Buddha
Aha!
A few years ago, I was walking around...