We are social and spiritual beings.
Much of the complaints during the pandemic’s restrictions focused on one overused quote by Aristotle: “We are social animals.”
Of course, if you look at the Greek text from Aristotle, you’ll notice the word πολιτικός translates as “political.” So the actual quote is, “[M]an is by nature a political animal.”
However, I don’t intend to discount the valid work of social psychologists and anthropologists. We learn and grow from our interactions with one another.
If we live in big cities, we’re used to being around others. We crave social interaction. We love sharing our ideas and stories with others.
When…
We can look to Mary Magdalene.
In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb of Jesus after the Sabbath. Although her beloved teacher had been crucified two days earlier, she remained faithful beyond the grave.
When she saw that the stone was moved away from the tomb, she told Peter and John, who would notice the tomb was empty. While Peter and John returned home, Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb.
Where else would she go? Her life had been significantly transformed, so she knew she couldn’t return “home.”
She did what many of us don’t like to do — she waited. It…
Reading spiritual texts mindfully can slow down our thoughts.
With a barrage of noise coming at us at any moment, it’s hard to slam on the brakes from our lives and enter into a blissful state of mind. Our minds will continue to ruminate even if our bodies are still.
As a remedy, we can incorporate inspirational texts into our daily routine to redirect our thoughts. This allows us to experience connection with the many sages who have preceded us.
Christian monastics engaged in the practice of Lectio Divina, which is Latin for “divine reading,” to enter into a contemplative…
If you believe that a certain therapy will work, it just might.
Mary’s fear of the water was so debilitating that she considered it tortuous to bathe herself. She worked with her psychotherapist, Dr. Roger Callahan, for several months, achieving marginal success when she could sit in the shallow end of a pool. She still couldn’t look at the water without getting severe headaches and nightmares. She would also get a sick stomach at the thought of water.
Callahan had taken a course on acupuncture and learned that the meridian associated with the stomach ran underneath the eye. He wondered if tapping into that meridian would alleviate her stomach pain. …
Our memory grows stronger when we train our attention.
How often have you wondered whether or not you’ve done something? For myself, I often have to remember if I gave my dog his medication.
When we’re thinking about things beyond what’s in front of us, we pay less attention to what we’re currently doing. Where there’s less attention, there’s less stored in our memory.
This also occurs when we move through life too fast with too much information. When we’re more concerned with getting things done, we sometimes miss steps in the process. We pay less attention to the steps because our minds are thinking about the future result.
…
It’s better for you than checking your phone.
If you do a simple search for yoga on Instagram, you’ll probably see beautiful bodies in beautiful locations doing yoga poses that are inaccessible to most people. They’ll even write things like, “I used to think yoga was about achieving fancy poses,” while posting a picture of them in a fancy pose.
Yoga is not that complicated. In fact, yoga really isn’t about a pose at all. The physical postures of yoga are meant to prepare your body for meditation.
The practice of yoga is about unifying the body and mind. Yesterday I watched a young woman in a yoga…
Before we discover what is true, we must know what is false.
The words “Know Thyself” are inscribed at Apollo’s Temple at Delphi as a call for self-understanding. We often arrive at this call at a critical point in our lives — usually a painful one.
We might seek the help of books, talks, and workshops to figure out why things happen to us or why we do what we do. Oftentimes, we’re called to discover something that might have eluded us — the “Authentic Self.”
What, exactly, is the “Authentic Self,” and why do we need to find it? Is it the key to happiness? Will it solve our problems? …
Reach down deep for something beyond yourself.
Dutch cyclist Mathieu van der Poel gritted his teeth as he scaled the Mur-de-Bretagne for the first lap. It would award him an eight-second time bonus for his effort, but that wasn’t enough.
He was riding hard with the top cyclists during the second and final lap until he reached down deep. He would break away from the group a second time and drive up the steep pitch to the finish. He looked up to the sky and pointed as he crossed the finish line in tears.
He was on a mission, and he was awarded the yellow jersey for…
You see a disease that knows no color or socioeconomic status.
When your father has dementia, you’re forced to put things into perspective. You no longer care about the petty concerns of society. You just want your father’s mind to come back.
You gag when you see media that give false promises. You want to spit every time someone touts a “be positive” mindset. You know that won’t cure dementia.
You know dementia can’t be cured by any “Law of Attraction.” You just want to scratch the eyes out of people who don’t live in this reality.
You roll your eyes when you see headlines like, “3 Ways to Be Happy…
Inner silence can bridge divides.
In a world that tells us that we need to be heard, we need to be right, or we need to belong, there is a different world deep beneath.
This world needs no identity. This world doesn’t cling to an ideology that might be obsolete in 100 years. This world leaves behind all attachments to the ego.
This is the world of inner silence. It’s not a world beyond sound. It’s a space beyond the noise. It’s the void before an utterance. It is the muse that inspires words of peace.
When I “try” to think of something deep or…
