Eliezer Sobel

My elementary school friends, Melvin Limbaugh and Charley Hannity were always such blowhards. They had an opinion about everything. And they always agreed about everything, which I could never quite understand. For example, Mel always insisted that Jif peanut butter, hands down, was far superior to Skippy. And Charley would...

Writers learn early on that there are actually many people out there, incomprehensible as it may seem, who simply do not enjoy reading our work. (We probably wouldn't be very close friends with these Neanderthals, if we met them.) We try not to take it personally, but most of us...

Things I did to prepare to be the guest teacher at a writing class:

Dug up old handouts from the desk drawer in my studio out back where I haven't set foot in months. I look around, notice how disgusting the studio is, the floor covered with dead stinkbugs, and...

A Hollywood agent called me about 10 years ago, after reading the first chapter of my novel, Minyan, which had been in the works for 10 years before that. "I LOVED Chapter One!!" she shrieked. This could be VERY BIG. You know I'm someone who works on BIG movie projects...

It was 1997. I was visiting the Neem Karoli Baba ashram in Vrindaban, India, when I learned that my old friend and spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, had had a major, possibly life-threatening stroke. How strange to hear such news in that particular place, which took me over 20 years to...

I don't usually get headaches. So when I woke up at 4 a.m. for the third consecutive day with a splitting pain in the back of my skull, I drew the logical conclusion: terminal brain tumor. The next obvious step in my thinking was to start my "bucket list," (all...

When Thoreau was on his deathbed, his aunt asked him if he had made his peace with God, and he responded, "I was not aware that we had quarreled." Someone else once (I don't recall the source) said, "The most salient characteristic of an enlightened being is not what one...

Portions of the following adapted from my memoir, "The 99th Monkey."

I received some really disturbing news a few days ago. But first the back story:

Thirty years ago I was a teacher at a rather unique alternative high school in East Orange, N.J. Located in two adjacent...

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Time is on...

Some years ago I was having dinner with my girlfriend, Liz; among other items on my plate was a heaping mound of mashed potatoes. When Liz noticed I had finished eating all of my potatoes, she instantly ladled another scoop onto my plate, without asking. She had done this before,...

"We're looking at how to push users into passive-consumption mode, a lean-back experience." -Jamie Davidson, YouTube product manager, reported in the Sunday Times Business section, May 30, 2010.

The article explained YouTube's envy of television, saying that "Although the average user spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube, that's tiny...

First the good news: as Woody Allen so succinctly reminded us the other day in an interview from Cannes, when commenting on aging, "I find it a lousy deal. There's no advantage in getting older. I'm 74 now. You don't get smarter, you don't get wiser, you don't get more...

It could be argued that Wikipedia is not the most scholarly or accurate resource for medical information. On the other hand, I am not a physician or a psychologist, so please cut me some slack.

From Wikipedia: "The patient is given an inert pill, told that it may improve...

Dr. Laura would disapprove, of that I'm certain. Most likely Dr. Phil would yell at me too. Thankfully, my personal life is not completely dictated by media-based psychology standards, or I'd wind up on Oprah taking the fall for men in mid-life crisis everywhere.

It began innocently. A group of...

There is a blank space at the top of everyone's personal Facebook page that asks the question, "What's on Your Mind?" It's called a "Status Update." People report, often daily, everything from the completely mundane: "Planning to cut my nails later today, God willing," to the deeply personal: "Third round...

Noted spiritual teacher Ram Dass, a former Harvard professor of psychology and early spokesperson for the possible spiritual benefits of using LSD and other psychedelic drugs, tells the following story: He was approached by a professional, scientific group, and asked to comment on various photos, presumably related to drug use....

There was an episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm in which Larry felt it necessary to discontinue therapy as a result of running into his therapist on the beach and seeing him wearing a thong bikini. Not quite as dramatic, last summer my wife and I pulled into the...

With so many creativity experts and corporate wizards constantly pushing everyone to "think outside the box," I want to caution you against throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's something to be said for keeping your thoughts comfortably confined right within the walls of whichever box you habitually...

It's 1976, and I'm speaking to Karen, my partner at the time, bemoaning my lack of commitment to anything. All of my close friends over the years, up to and including my wife, Shari, will attest to the fact that I am a habitual bemoaner. (Be·moan: "To express grief or...

I finally figured out why I'm not enlightened. Over 30 years ago, when I had just made the proverbial first step on a "journey of a thousand miles" I heard the following well-known tale: A man approaches a Zen Master and asks to be shown the path to enlightenment. The...