The V-Word

Loving acts change us only when we are able to witness and receive them. In contrast, when we don't actively perceive and accept the loving intentions of those around us, they lose their potency quickly and can even lead to conflict. It is more common than not for people to miss loving acts completely because their powerful filters of what they expect love to look and feel like dismiss loving acts completely.

There is something magical and unique about the felt experience of gratitude.  I have come to believe that  it is as close as we get in our daily lives to an ecstatic connection to the divine. Experiencing the goodness surrounding us viscerally with the practice of feeling gratitude awakens and opens our heart, while simultaneously creating the lightness of joy.

For many years, in fact for most of...

“If you wish for light, be ready to receive light.”  -Rumi

Years ago, when I had just begun this journey of creating the life I had longed for, a teacher gave me this affirmation, which I have been holding ever since- “I am a joyful, grateful, excellent receiver.” At the beginning, I remember how awkward the words felt in my throat, how foreign the idea of being an active receiver was to me....

“Self trust is the first secret of success.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trusting what you know is the bedrock of befriending yourself.  Choosing the beliefs that ground you to your life is everything. Today, on my 53^rd birthday, as I consider what I know for sure…

“All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it.”  -Epicurus

I am not sure why I started with the most difficult of all affirmations to begin my book, and surely I am among many who read the words: “I love myself,” but can’t quite feel them.

 

About a month ago I got an interesting homework assignment from an energetic counselor that I work with. She asked me to make a set of 100 affirmation cards and to not only read them, but actually feel them every day. I had learned before that real change comes from what we fully experience as real. I spent days researching daily affirmations and then another day choosing and compiling the 100 that resonated most deeply.

Give it away. I remember reading one time that one of my favorite highly evolved spiritual teachers gave away anything that she had grown too attached to. I am not at that level in my own development, although I am turning a corner about understanding what things are worth. The truth is that the more you possess, the more time and energy it takes to maintain. And then at the end of a life of...

“After people are clothed and fed, then they think about sex.”  -Confucius 479 BC

What does sexual wellbeing mean to you? This is the question that the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) selected for its focus on the 2^nd annual World Sexual Health Day this week on September 4^th. More than 30 countries took part by creating events to recognize the need to articulate and understand the...

One of my all time favorite quotes by the Buddha is:"You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection. " And yet,this is often the most challenging part of our development, coming to believe in our own lovability.