In society, we are taught from a young age to grow up and be the perfect woman. We are expected to do it all and if we can't do it all, there is something wrong with us.
There are many reason we make wrong decisons, but the major culprit is the tendency to listen to the advice of others instead of using the intuitve decision makers that Mother Nature has provided to all of us.
What is it that stops us from being the best we can be, from giving unreservedly, from caring for others more than ourselves?
Science is remarkably close to offering a full naturalistic explanation of individual religious experiences, everything from certain belief to moral indignation to mystical rapture to spiritual transformation.
When Ehrenreich observes, "It's a mistake to try to turn your anger and resentment and sadness or grief into something else," I'm with her all the way.
Stripped of their cultural heritage by the brutality of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese seem to be in a headlong rush to what they think they want and need--the material excess of the West.
For me, that is true art. The artist becomes a kind of healer/shaman; and we who finally have access to these miraculous pieces, become initiated into worlds which take us places we have never been before.
I believed, along with all the other adults in my life, that my melancholy and sensitivity were part of my "special" make-up, that they were gifts to celebrate, not neuroses to treat.
Can we create the conditions in which we lead grace-full lives? Is it even possible to expect to live gracefully, with the world in so much chaos? My view is that there has never been a better time.
Kabbalah enables the "receiving" of more and more of reality, with more and more depth and sensitivity. Let's see how this works, in each of its three streams.
As more and more people mastered New Age terminology, frivolous concepts entered the marketplace -- becoming the opium of choice for escaping the realities of daily life.
Many of us, myself included, get so obsessed with doing things "right," or at the very least not doing anything that could be perceived as "wrong," we organize much of what we say and do to avoid ever being "wrong."
Losing friends can be particularly difficult for introverts because we don't surround ourselves with people. We prefer a few intimate friends to lots of less-intense friendships.
Our bodies don't lie. In fact, they are obvious truth tellers if you know what to look for. So when we put ourselves into stressful situations, we all revert to our conditioned tendencies.
At loose ends and casting about for some kind of meaning to his life, he breaks away from family and home, and describes his discovery and embrace of Buddhism.
Lies are self-abandonment. They are a place where we avoid showing ourselves exactly as we are, and so ultimately they come from fear.
When I am in the grip of an old pattern I don't experience it as alien to me but rather as exactly how I need to be at that moment. So how do I "set my jailer free" if I don't experience being in jail?
Stepping into jobs and relationships that are not satisfying or being completely paralyzed by ambiguity are common outcomes of not really knowing who you are.
Change has to start within ourselves; we cannot expect the world to change if we do not.
We are the two happy misfits in the family, unconnected by blood or official documents, and connected in our certainty that family is more than either.
All of us yearn to be blessed; all of us need to be held securely in the love left so often unexpressed by our families and friends.
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