Spiritual

Our feelings towards our brothers or sisters aren't truly about anybody or anything against us. Ultimately, our experience of loving our enemies reveals how we are with loving ourselves.

An Experiential Calorie is a unit of awareness, a unit of conscious presence, a unit of meaning. The job of an Experiential Calorie is to enrich your Mind. Take a moment to count the latter.

Some years ago, I chose to take a vow of poverty and focus my life on being of service. I gave up my material concerns as I had known them. I no longer owned anything.

I fall prey to obligation, guilt, or the fear of appearing cheap or thoughtless. None of that is assuaged when I offer up potpourri. The cultural pressure to buy is deeply ingrained.

Check a good novel out of the library, turn off the phone and curl up with it. There's nothing wrong with disappearing into fiction for a while. Stay with fiction, though.

Turn the bright light of curiosity on it, and learn from it. When you become curious about your anger, you become conscious of it. You can't help it, really.

Problem is the idea of religion is simply a tautology signifying nothing. Why do we have religion? Because people have spiritual needs. How do we know they have spiritual needs? Because they have religion.

Even yogis have their moments: We scream at our kids. We tell a fib here or there. We might choose to indulge in a trashy magazine rather than rereading the Bhagavad Gita.

That we'll be "greeted by loved ones" at death has become conventional wisdom, so for those who define family as people we wouldn't choose to hang with, heaven will require a significant attitude adjustment.

Is legislation the answer to ending anorexia in the fashion world? Europe has begun to recoil from an industry that sees "hunger to succeed" as literal.