“The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.” –Richard Bach
I recently learned that the transformation of the caterpillar to a butterflyisn’t just about the effort of spinning their cocoon. Once inside, the caterpillar literally liquefies in its metamorphosis to its adult form as...
Sally Kempton author of “Meditation for the Love of It” and “Awakening the Shakti” talks about the power of letting go.
Visit TheOpeningDoor.org to listen to the full interview Saturday.
I wrote this piece years ago, and it still feels like the truth to me.
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Here’s the thing to know about love. Sometimes it feels great, like a sunny day in the Northwest after 26 days of rain; but sometimes it feels like the early stages of flu- unsettled, achy, and a loss of appetite. Okay, well maybe not as bad as the flu, but love lives can be irritating, like an insect bite that keeps...
It’s hard to believe, but this weekend the New York Timesconfirmed the news: More work time does not equal more productivity. In fact, taking regular naps, breaking up work time into shorter intervals and recharging your body and brain with real getaways is the long studied answer to increased productivity. This conclusion flies in the face of all of our beliefs about the hard work we have long...
“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” -William James
Most people would probably agree that if all they needed to remember about giving and receiving love, they learned in kindergarten, they might also add the caveat that most of what they need to forget is what they learned in high school. I have noticed in my dealings with...
When we feel broken inside, everything around us seems broken, too. The sense of being not enough- good enough, capable enough, kind enough, or loving enough, pervades every interaction. Judgments and storylines that uphold them are easy to grab onto, easier still to invent. In a ridiculous attempt to heal we chase the story like an animal chasing its own tail. We spin out of control the harder we...
“Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.” -The Dalai Lama XIV
It is an odd and painful irony that often just as things are really coming together successfully in life, we often lose touch with the love that had inspired us to get there. We expect just the opposite. In our longings for whatever we aspire to, we believe wholeheartedly that achieving our dreams and...
I am trying to learn how to stop feeling my children’s feelings. Today at the end of a challenging basketball game, which our side lost, I was working vigilantly to bear witness to my daughter’s frustration without feeling it. When I mentioned that I was trying to stop feeling my daughter’s feelings to another mother, she said: “Good luck- let me know how that works for you…” I am not alone in...
“One day a monk spoke bitterly to the Buddha. All he wanted to talk about was the unbearable sorrows of the world. The Buddha remained silent while the monk talked, then a faint smile appeared on his face. He pointed to the ground below his feet and said,“On this earth I have attained awakening.” -Buddhist Mondo
It is easy to become bitter by the weight of so much unresolved sorrow in life. I...
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
As I read the caption “disgraced” under Lance Armstrong’s photo documenting the interview of him finally...
Today I had the privilege of teaching a class called Achieving Social Justice Through Positivity Consciousness at our local high school’s Respect Day where a group of local community and spiritual leaders offer workshops. I was invited because of the Positive Change Club. The principle wasn’t sure about the link between positivity consciousness and social justice, so I reconfigured the workshop to...
My stomach was so upset last night it wouldn’t rest. So it went with the rest of me. Food feels like a foreign substance, and even my beloved juice doesn’t quite taste right. Now it is time to learn what my belly has been grumbling and burping about for so long. Why is it that we learn to live with our discomfort so well that it takes a near emergency to get us to pay attention?
I know this-...
