Welcome to my blog and thank you for connecting! I invite you to join me on a voyage into the heart of life starting from right where we are—here and now in our everyday lives. Just like in my book, Simply Sacred, I’ll continue to share stories, questions, insights, and contemplations from my life as a spiritual seeker in India, a hospice counselor, a psychotherapist, and an ordinary human being navigating this wild ride we’re all on.
I think we are all feeling the effects of the conflicts and crises swirling around us in our world today. At the same time, many of us are sensing an urgency to find a way to be part of the solution rather than being sucked into the turmoil. It is obvious the old paradigm isn’t working. We are shifting into a new way of being that requires remaining centered in our essential nature, living more fully in the present moment, and more completely embodying the intrinsic wholeness we sense at a deeper level of our being. I wrote Simply Sacred and I’m writing this blog to share experiences from my journey, to provide inspiration, knowledge, encouragement, and companionship for those who feel called to explore more deeply who we are and why we are here. I invite you to share your comments at the end of the blog posts.
Some background: Years ago, I became aware of an inner awakening that has continued to unfold in my life. Like most of our life paths, mine has followed many unpredictable twists and turns. Based on my interest in the human equation and wanting to help alleviate suffering (including my own), I studied psychology and became a psychotherapist—which has been my lifelong career. I had to search elsewhere though to find answers to the questions that psychology couldn’t address. Although psychology has come a long way in recent years, it still deals with the mind rather than consciousness.
At one point, I began working as a hospice counselor. My clients’ experiences facing death, as well as my own losses, invited me to confront my own mortality. This led me to travel to India in search of answers to the deeper mysteries of life and death. While visiting sacred sites and studying with spiritual teachers there, I was exposed to the profound wisdom of the East. I was fortunate to meet a spiritual mentor, who translated some of the knowledge and practices of India for my Western ears. Our penetrating discussions over the years have helped dissolve many misconceptions and naïve notions about spiritual awakening and have opened up vast and rich dimensions of existence—always keeping me grounded in my ordinary, everyday life.
My real questioning of life began back in high school. It was 1965 and I was feeling the stirring of an awakening that was in the air at the time. I just knew that there had to be more to life than our material existence. The Protestant church, where my parents dutifully took my sisters and me every Sunday, didn’t come close to adequately answering questions like: Who are we? Why are we here? How did we get here? And what about the problem of suffering and death?
Ever curious about the deeper mysteries of life, I decided to do my term paper in English that year on a topic that led me to delve into some of the existential questions I was asking. Working on that paper was exciting as I began to discover some of the philosophers and spiritual teachers who wrote about the nature of reality and questioned our basic assumptions about life. (Back then, it wasn’t so easy to access spiritual wisdom, and Eastern knowledge and practices hadn’t yet permeated mainstream Western culture). In my early twenties, I began to have some spontaneous spiritual awakening experiences that drew me further into my spiritual quest—an inquiry that has continued to mature and deepen over the years.
In this blog, I look forward to exploring with you some fundamental questions about life that will deepen our inner journeys and lead to greater wholeness, fulfillment and contentment. When we transform, the world transforms.
