"It is no longer the time to be better, it is the time to be otherwise." -- Satprem

For thousands of years humanity has been conquerors. We never thought about opening our borders to entire nations, sharing resources, and grouping together as larger bodies of nations. We built fortresses, great...

In a previous blog post I discussed how we could develop our self-vigilance and become more mindful of our external impacts -- and those niggling moments of negativity. In this final blog on the theme of "breaking the spell," I wish to discuss the simple technique...

To "break the spell" of our many layers of social conditioning is not as difficult as it sounds. The first step is one of awareness, that is, to acknowledge within ourselves that our personas are part social-construct put together from a whole range of external impacts that we...

To break the spell of our multilayered social conditioning requires that a whole new system of perception is brought into being. It calls for mental, emotional, and energetic reserves of concentration that can replace a person's old conditioning with terms of reference that are more positive and useful. Revitalizing these...

For many people modern life can be said to have become an unbalanced distraction; or rather, the reality of our daily lives is a constant "attention distracter." We suffer not from an attention deficit but from "attention overload." This often then results in endless instances of misplaced attention. Too many...

Sincerity -- with others and with oneself -- is one of the few tools we have for gaining our personal freedom.

The value of sincerity is of great importance, now more than ever, as we are surrounded by tales, stories, and gossip, selling us such things as immediate ascension, new...

For many of us, 2012 has felt like it's been a continued test of endurance as aspects of our lives undergo change and challenge. Ever since the financial markets crashed in September 2008, the globalized world of international media has been telling us that we are all in crisis. The...

Human life upon this planet, it seems, is about to undergo a period of transition that will test our capacity to re-adapt and re-emerge on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves -- what type of "revolutions" are we set to face on this "small planet" of...

There is an old folktale that tells of the wise fool who arrives at the door of the king's castle asking for entry. He is immediately told by the guard that the king's decree is for anyone who tells a lie to be hanged. Then, upon asking for his destination,...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...
... Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
(Rudyard Kipling -- "If")

The above lines -- taken from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" -- serve to remind us...

Nearly every person on the planet today subscribes to the belief that their needs will only be met if they endlessly participate in the present economic system. This economic system requires us to value our efforts against all others' efforts and has collectively resulted in the greatest devaluation of all...

There is a famous story that tells of a great emperor who once called the greatest artists of his time together to create the ultimate throne room. He prepared two rooms, divided by a curtain. On one side sat the greatest artisans of China while on the other sat the...

The world is awash with grand announcements of spiritual rebirth, armageddon scenarios, and self-help commercialism that are forming a global skin that circumscribes our entire mental world. Political theorist Benjamin Barber has noted that the commercialism behind the global takeover of the mental sphere amounts to a kind...

"If you never change your mind, why have one?" -- Edward de Bono

There is a story that is told about a wandering stranger who once stopped a king in the street. Furious, the king shouted, "How dare you, a man of little worth, interrupt the progress of your sovereign?"...

There is a famous 13th-century Persian poem that tells the story of an old woman whom upon encountering an eagle on her windowsill captures it, for she has never seen an eagle before. The old woman looks at the strange bird and finally says "What a funny-looking pigeon!" She then...

These days many of us feel as if we are drowning in information. Is our world not awash in a new fabric of communications, most of it digital? Google Chairman Eric Schmidt famously said by 2010-11 the human race was generating as much information every two days than...

In a recent essay -- "2012-2020: Where Mythologies Clash" -- I wrote of how the decade ahead will be a testing time as it marks the peak clash between two mythologies. Or, rather, two defining eras. I wrote of how the "old" system, which is still incumbent, reflects...

The decade ahead will be a testing time as it marks the peak clash between two mythologies -- or rather, two defining eras. The outgoing mythological era is the one which has largely defined the recent century and a half of unprecedented growth and technological advancement and discovery. The model...

As a civilization we are in the throes of living out an "endgame." No, not the endgame of our species or any similar dire situation, but the endgame of an era. For many of us living in the developed nations, we are witnessing the endgame of the Second Industrial Revolution....

The world we live in now is changing rapidly. The normal state of affairs is not the static and stationary that we sometimes view our lives to be, but of flux and flow. The sayings of Heraclitus remind us of this process: "Nothing endures but change," "There is nothing permanent...