The winter was brutally cold. Weeks on end below zero degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chill minus 20 to 30. Even when the sun came out, it was bitter cold and dangerous to go outside. Our acre garden spent the winter covered in snow. No hellebores blooming through February for us. A couple of years ago we began feeding the birds …
Becoming Human….
Are you a sinner? No. Is your proxy a sinner? Yes. Being truly normal is being truly human. We are made in God’s image, and we should act it. Stop thinking of God as a selfish being. We believe that, since we are made in God’s image and we are selfish, then God is, too. But to act as God …
My Apparently Useless Gift….
When I owned my school of Tai Chi Chuan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had a lot of energy. People would feel it and even I would be overwhelmed by it, yet I had no wisdom. People thought I was something more than I was because they were entranced with the energy and identified me with it. The energy knew things; …
Seamless….
What you see is what you get. When we are clear, what you see is what you get. There is nothing to hide and nothing to reveal. We are. We no longer hide from ourselves or others. Usually we present our best foot when meeting with people socially, professionally or even in the privacy of our families. This means that …
Conscious Non-resistance….
As a teenager in Boston, I participated in civil rights marches. These marches were silent and orderly, with large numbers of people coming together. Later, at Washington University, there had been protests, but these were more about venting anger than reaching resolution. After being present for some of those demonstrations, I realized what was going on and withdrew. Eventually, there …
Fellow travelers….
The greatest warriors know that fighting is the last resort. Resistance is a form of fighting; it may look benign but can be insidious. When we are committed to our individuality, we will quietly resist anyone or anything that threatens our sense of self. This form of fighting is a disease that can destroy a person’s spiritual journey. “I can’t …
Baba’s Work….
One of the greatest misconceptions about spiritual practice is that it is selfish. Unfortunately, the world is full of pseudo-spiritual “paths” that really are nothing but self-indulgence. Real practice is the opposite. When we actually do it, the world changes on a deep and subtle level. It’s hard to fathom this. Few people want to grasp that by turning inward …
Recovering Our Agency….
“The world is a mess. We are a mess. This is just the way it is. There is nothing we can do. It hurts, but there is nothing that can be done”. All of these are normal statements and concerns expressed everywhere, by all sorts of people. Yet for most of us, “concern” will be as far as we go. …
Approaching the World….
No matter who we are, there are only four possible ways we can engage with the world: reacting, resonating, responding, and empathizing. Where we choose to land on this spectrum of action determines our degree of agency, and therefore our humanity. If I were to write nothing more than reactions to life, I would be showing you that I was …
Crumbs….
For many years I have used the story of Hansel and Gretel with the breadcrumbs as an example of how we go Home. For us, the breadcrumbs are still there. We can follow them back to who we really are. The last few weeks my work has been focusing on the self-hate we all have. We have seen that our …