Tag Archives: spiritual awakening
Are you feeling dismayed, stressed, and helpless in the face of the current conflict and uncertainty? During this time when the world is experiencing the growing pains that accompany change, the need for compassion is greater than ever. One of the first things the teachers at the ashram taught us was the importance of the “flowering of the heart.” This is the first step on the spiritual path in order to really progress, they told us. And this applies to…..
The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.” I believe this is because when we are at a place where we think we can’t go on, we are at the point of surrender, where something greater than our own ego can take over. But why do we wait until everything has fallen apart and all our defenses are down before we surrender and allow Nature to…..
“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s future, and we are all mortal.” John F. Kennedy I believe, as humans, we all carry the desire, however hidden it may be, to uplift and care for each other. After all, we’re all in the same boat here on Earth. We are all subject to suffering as well as joy. These days, as we are suddenly…..
The temples we visited in India are infused with centuries of ritual—prayers, mantras, and fire ceremonies–performed by holy people. The power generated through continuous repetition of the rituals was palpable as we entered these sacred spaces. But we don’t have to go anywhere to access the benefit of ritual in our daily lives. Creating a personal altar is one way. Although our home altars have not been blessed by centuries of ceremonies, we can infuse them, on a daily basis,…..
My first semester in college, I signed up for a philosophy class. The professor was short and stocky, had long hair and an attitude of defiance, even anger, which, I guess, was a sign of the times—it was 1968 and colleges were filled with defiant, angry people. I still remember the sound of his cowboy boots as he stomped up the aisle to the chalk board. I was already intimidated. “Who are you?” he wrote, the chalk clicking loudly against…..
Once during a weekly staff meeting at hospice, we were asked what we must let go of when facing death. Mary, one of the other therapists answered, “Well, for starters, we have to drop our idea of who we are.” I don’t know what the other therapists thought of what she said, but her answer resonated with me. I had been attending courses at an ashram in India on my vacations from work, and this was exactly what we were…..
Sitting in the sand one Saturday at Mesa Lane Beach, looking out over the ocean, I reflected on my work at hospice. I thought about how some things—the heartbreaks, the losses, our deepest wounds—can’t always be faced or felt directly. Sometimes we need to get at them sideways through the cracks in our surface lives. But we need to access them one way or another in order to heal and grow. Otherwise, our unfelt pain traps our life energy, our…..
The path to truth, happiness, fulfillment, is not straightforward. Like a children’s scavenger hunt, the final treasure may be located right where we started, but the clues along the way lead us on a circuitous journey that ends where we began. When I worked at hospice, I sometimes brought the parents from my infant loss group to a labyrinth located in a beautiful natural setting in the foothills above town. Its circular path was created with stones, and the large…..
One Sunday morning, Stu and I decided to take the scenic drive from Waimea to Hilo for lunch. As we drove between the two massive mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, I began to feel more alive and awake. “Living on the island sometimes feels like living in another dimension,” I commented. The famous Hawaiian singer, Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwo’ole, who died young, once said the veil between life and death, heaven and earth, is more transparent here in Hawaii. We…..
“Nothing’s gonna change my world…” This line from the John Lennon song, “Across the Universe,” suddenly had new meaning when I was listening to it the other day with a friend who told me it was written after the Beatles met with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and had some spiritual experiences. Experiencing “nothing”–meaning the void, emptiness, silence–is going to change his world. This brings me to the topic for the week–nothing. I saw a video recently of a talk by David…..
