How To Become An Explorer of Your Life
Wonder. Curiosity. Awe. Amazement. As we grow, we often lose these childlike qualities that make life a true gift. If we're lucky, we have our own children, and get to rediscover the newness of the world. But that curiosity can be hard to hold onto. We often get stuck in life. We are told that this is the way things are. We are told not to ask questions. We are limited by fears or voices in our heads that tell us our dreams aren't possible. We forget that solutions exist outside of the multiple choice options we have been given.…
Exercises to Develop Your Attention Muscles
Stephen Levine, author and spiritual teacher, once told me that focused human attention is as powerful as taking a magnifying glass and putting it right above a leaf with the sun shining through it. Even weak winter sun will start a fire on the leaf. In other words, focused human attention is phenomenally powerful. Focused attention is the ability to have your attention and your immediate experience come together. How do you bring these two things together? It begins with curiosity. Curiosity is becoming interested in what is going on right here right now without needing it to be any different…
How to Honor Your Survival System
We all created a finely-crafted survival system to bury or numb our pain when we were young. We had to, as it was absolutely necessary for survival. Life was too scary, and we didn’t have the skills to meet ourselves in our hearts. Our survival system can include compulsions, such as drug and alcohol abuse, shopping, work, sex, the Internet, busyness, self-judgment, and chronic worry. I think about all of those years that I shut down the pain with food, drugs and alcohol. In one year alone, I gained 97 pounds. I would have died of the pain if I…