Our awareness of the presence of spirit in our lives is governed by five laws of spiritual consciousness. As we become able to comprehend and align ourselves with them, we gain access to the treasures they guard.

Last week on a long airplane ride I was riveted to a Glamour article that exposed the results of a poll from more than 1,800 women revealing what they thought about women of various weights.

Accepting our bodies -- and meaning it -- is harder than it seems. I don't want to live my life always five or 10 or 30 pounds away from being okay with myself.

Tenderness is a great teacher -- coming to it in our culture is grace and wisdom. The tenderness of allowance and the allowance of tenderness starts with the way one is with oneself.

Not many of my friends know I ever used to be an athlete. I forget myself, until a pedicurist notices my hammertoes or I have a dream about striding down the homestretch after a race, feeling that last surge of power.

Only you know what path you need to take toward healing, and whether you accomplish this using every one of the five stages, shunning books about grief or never missing a session of your bereavement group, the key will consistently be to listen to yourself.

We can gain vital information about ourselves and what we believe about the world when we look honestly at our anger. But when we react unconsciously, repress our anger or get caught up in it, it becomes counterproductive and negatively affects our health and relationships.

Take a chance and try finding some good even in most situations by just switching the order of events you're retelling to a "bad news, good news" mode. Maybe life won't seem quite as difficult when you frame things that way.

Anger can be an effective expression of passion for justice and fairness, for basic rightness, for what is appropriate and humane. But anger can also be like a single match that can burn an entire forest, causing tremendous damage and hurt, wars, greed and self-deception.