Emotional eating is misunderstood and often unnecessarily demonized. However, emotional eating -- that is, eating to feel good, often termed "compulsive eating" -- isn't the problem. It's emotional overeating and mindless emotional eating that can be both psychologically and physically unhealthy. Emotional eating works as a coping strategy and stress...

There are two ways to look at yourself and reality: a) dualistically -- as either perfect or imperfect, or b) nondualistically -- as neither perfect nor imperfect. You have a choice of psychological software: seeing the world as a discrepancy between "what is" and "what should be," or seeing the...

The question of "What am I?" may lead to self-objectification or to self-liberation. Which path would you take? How would you answer it? By saying something along the lines of "I am this" or "I am that" or "I am such and such"? I hope not.

Understand the self-limiting meaning...

Some thoughts prompted by the divisive (i.e. dualistic, dichotomous, all-or-nothing) rhetoric and the Chinese visit...

The real threat to America (as I see it through my limited mind-lens) is not an economical one or a geopolitical one but a psychological one, not from outside but from within.

America is undergoing...

So, I am flipping through the January 2011 issue of Automobile (why is it, by the way, that the magazine industry is always a month ahead of us when in reality even today's paper is already yesterday's news?) -- so, with the glossy on my lap, I find myself in...

Consider:

"What is distinguishable is not necessarily separable." (1)

Just because you see an eddy in a stream it doesn't mean that an eddy is separate from the stream.

"The imaginary line separating objectivity and subjectivity, reality and illusion, facts and theory, is literally imaginable." (2)

Just because you can...

"Both the French paleontologist-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Russian atheist Vladimir Vernadsky agreed that Earth is developing a global mind. The layer of thought in the shape of a sphere they called the noosphere, from Greek noos, mind. The aggregate net of throbbing life, from flashing fireflies to...

Over the last several years I have been reading a lot of Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan (the former, Lynn, is the ex of Carl Sagan and the mother of the latter). This mother-son writing duo - to my estimation - is one of the key think-tanks on this planet...

Most weeks I pick up two or three random books (from a local store that sells used books). Some of them I read cover to cover, others - I skim. I find this routine of mine to be an essential part of my mind's hygiene. Random informational inputs challenge and...

Who are the Hadza?

Location: northern Tanzania; "About a thousand Hadza live in their traditional homeland, a broad plain encompassing shallow, salty Lake Eyasi... Genetic testing indicates that they represent one of the primary roots of the human family tree - perhaps more than 100,000 years old."

Language: "not closely...

Reality-check yourself with the following questions:

- How many realities are there right now? One, two, none?
- Is there just what is or is there something else there (on top of what is, in addition to what is)?
- In this moment right now, is there...

Any mind is a hostage to its habits. Perfectionistic mind - even more so. Perfectionist's mind is a high security prison guarded by guilt-tripping shoulds. Thomas Hurka, in a philosophical analysis of the idea of perfectionism, observes: "The perfectionist ideal is a moral ideal <...>: it is an ideal people...

Eating changes both body and mind, the total of who we are. What we eat and how much we eat changes who we are physiologically. Why we eat and how we eat changes who we are psychologically.

Mindlessness is Blindness
When we eat mindlessly, the body expands (to the...

Arlington Avenue is a winding, 9% grade-steep street that snakes up the Southside hills of Pittsburgh. It is popular with local cyclists and happens to run right above my house on the slopes. It offers one of many amazing overlooks of the city but without the glitz of some of...

One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. (Alexander Pope)

Goodness and being are really the same. Everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

The word "perfect" takes its origin from...

There are two ways to look at yourself and reality: a) dualistically--as either perfect or imperfect, or b) non-dualistically--as neither perfect nor imperfect. So, there is your choice of psychological software: seeing the world as a discrepancy between what is and what should be or seeing the world as it...

The picture of the universe shifts from tongue to tongue. (Stuart Chase)

Consider a soap bubble on a sunny day: what color is it? It depends, right? On what? On the angle of view.

Certainty is an impasse. Reality is rarely (if ever!) either "this" or "that." Dichotomous (i.e. dualistic,...

Perfectionism isn't cheap. In fact, it is existentially unaffordable. Here's a review of these costs and of the possible ways of cutting them, with the help of an existential self-rehab.

Perfectionism is a Psychological Liability

Flett and Hewitt (2002) write: "perfectionists are more likely than nonperfectionists to experience various kinds...

It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Somewhere on a continuum between normality and pathology there is a point at which an otherwise culturally normal behavior acquires a problematic degree.

In other words, there is a point at which the...

As I clinically see it there are 4 types of perfectionism:

- Neurotic Perfectionism
- Narcissistic Perfectionism
- Principled (Puritanical) Perfectionism
- Hyper-Attentive (Compensatory) Perfectionism

The first three of these are essentially "software" problems. The solution to "software-type" perfectionism is "re-programming." The Hyper-Attentive...