A Poem — Far above the dark and heavy clouds Of hungry thoughts that batter Earth’s surface There is a mountaintop of pure calm, and utter stillness Of coolness of the air and freshness of the spirit Here I breathe and drink in vision Storms below, above are pale and gentle hills Softened unto…

Remembering to laugh and play is a key that protects us from anxiety, depression, and makes life inherently worth living — Laughter As A State Of Being “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” — Friedrich Nietzsche In the face of the absurd suffering in the world, there are two major possible responses. You can be swallowed up by it, and lose…

5 helpful strategies — 1. Use A Timer To Incrementally Increase Your Meditation Spontaneity can be great sometimes. You feel inspired to connect more deeply with your spirit, so you sit down, close your eyes and such, and begin to meditate. And then a few relaxing minutes go by — or wait, it was only twenty seconds? It’s hard to tell with your…

At it’s root, a religion is more like a political group, and spirituality is the experience of an individual. — Religions Are Organizations, Spirituality Is Personal When a group identity is formed around some set of spiritual practices, a religious organization is born. If you thought the personal ego was dangerous, consider the group-ego. Like the personal ego, the group-ego is an idea, a meme, which strives to continue existing and multiply itself, sometimes at the…

That skill is also known as “imagination” — start using it on purpose — Two Examples of Projection Say you’re walking in the park and, out on the grass, you witness someone dancing their heart out. Sweat is flying, they have a massive smile. You think: “Boy, they’re having a good time.” Probably, but how do you know? Maybe they’re faking it, distracting themselves for a minute from…

Right action flows naturally when you hold the conscious intention of generating peace — Spontaneous Cleansing Yesterday, I spent the morning in a funk. I had slept in quite a bit, and my brain immediately jumped to “what a waste of time!” before I could really consciously decide how the day was going to go. This is an old habit of mind for me, that sense…

Stop projecting abundance into the future. Everything you want happens in the present. — The Vicious Matthew Principle “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” — Matthew 25:29, NIV At first glance, this Bible verse seems rather cruel. The speaker here even goes on to say to the have-not…

And a specific one you can start with — What Is A Mantra? A mantra is a word or phrase repeated over and over, either out loud or in the mind. They focus the body and the mind on a single idea, a single energy. This energy then spills over beyond the meditation and influences the rest of your day. The focus of…

The key to creative living — Concepts: Building Blocks Of The Mind When the world taught you language, you received a bank of concepts: the words you use. By training you to think and believe according to the rules of language, the world taught you to see and behave like them. And that’s fine, for smaller concepts. Chairs are for sitting, for…