There's a bright light of awareness that shines through each of us and guides us home, and we're never separated from this luminous awareness, any more than waves are separated from the ocean.

At 93, my father is failing. He's in between worlds, close to both life and death. We've slipped into a time of presence more than conversation. At times, he surfaces like an old whale, offering bits of this world and the next. This poem comes from that precious time.

This week, my brother's heart attack was a reminder to me to continue to nurture my relationship to my heart, to be consciously aware of the importance of listening to what my heart has to say to me.

Beyond family or the culture and religion of our birth, life will lead us to discover the lineage we are a part of, the circle of kindred spirits that nourish our soul.

It's worth considering how we might define wisdom for ourselves. What does this look like in the context of our day-to-day life, how do we experience it and how do we know when we are and when we're not connected to our wisdom?

Have you ever felt like all of your body conversations are just flooded with other people's opinions? Like what diet you should be on, what cleanse worked for them, when to stop eating at night and what your waist size should be?

Sitting on a bench in Central Park in New York City, I was watching an ancient oak whose roots were woven into massive stones. It wasn't long till I began to reflect on how those stones let the roots in and how the roots found their way into all that stone.

While I truly believe that the choices we make and even the thoughts we think all matter greatly and affect the outcome of our existence, I also believe there is also another force at work and our role is actually more of a co-creator in our own lives.

When you are able to see the big picture and realize what is actually going on, you will quietly and calmly become the master of your own life. Your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors will carefully calibrate themselves with clarity, peace, understanding, and truth in order to define a happy life.

A show of hands, please. What do you believe in? What are your values? What do you believe is at the heart of human nature? What kind of world do you want to live in?

As our self-support emerges and we begin to love ourselves as we are, we find comfort and peace in just that. We end up longing less and less for the extraordinary, and we find more and more happiness in the ordinary.

I believe that the ultimate gamble with the greatest potential gain in life is to trust yourself and that in so doing, you gain a level of freedom, authenticity, and peace that is unreachable any other way.

This week's poem explores the cloudlike veils that come between us and our direct living of life. Sometimes, we have to part the veil with our mind. Sometimes, we have to let the wind of our heart blow it open. Sometimes, we need the love of others to part the veil for us.

Before making any major choice in life, I gift myself with time to sit and contemplate. I bring myself into a meditative state and bring myself into the stillness of the silence.

The danger of opting for the storyline over a more complex and present truth is this: When we make up stories, we create an alternate reality. Rather than looking at our situation straight in the eye, we look at it from behind a protective lens.

Over a lifetime, we are humbly changed by things we often don't notice along the way. We're often connected to other life we're not aware of. This piece bears witness to such connections.

Instead of traveling to some remote part of the world, we seek a remote part of the self. We seek a quiet mind, inner peace. People of all religions and no religion are making a pilgrimage into silence. They are making a silent retreat.

Sometimes, in the midst of working through frustrations, it's possible to glimpse the truth that, though I'm frustrated, not everything is frustrating. Sometimes, in the midst of sadness, it's possible to glimpse that, though I'm sad, not everything is sad.

So I'm writing a new book. I haven't completely given up on the first book. After all, I have a number of people who are counting on me to write that book. But for now, my focus has to be on where my heart and soul are taking me.

There was a time when freedom was a danger to me -- or perhaps my perception of freedom was the true danger.

Simplicity, solitude, and silence are common themes to the explorers of life's questions and the discoverers of life's answers. Our willingness to settle into some days of simplicity, living without plans, just being, opens a path.

This was the reality of the situation. This was the truth of the here and now. I couldn't be with him out there on the dance floor, so I had to reframe the situation and enjoy the experience in a completely different way.

For all the dreams we dream and things we work toward, we sometimes stumble into a moment when what waits inside our dream somehow comes true. This poem speaks to such a moment.

One aim of meditation is to develop inner strength through attention to practice. Practice is to observe and to take the opportunity to transform knowledge into an experience that helps us in our daily life.

I do believe there's someone for everyone, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized while love is not transactional, it sometimes can turn ugly and into hatred when you do not create the boundaries necessary for you to love yourself.