Are you in a rut? Are you going through life limiting your contacts to the same narrow group of people each day? Are you restricting your activities to the same routine you followed yesterday and all the yesterdays before that? Maybe it’s time to try a different approach. The definition of being in a rut is getting stuck in “a habit or a pattern of behavior that has become dull and unproductive.” And while changing that habit or behavior can... Read more
During his storied life, the religious scholar Huston Smith studied and then practiced virtually all of the world’s religions. But in a tale he tells in his autobiography Tales of Wonder, Zen may have been the most difficult to grasp. Smith studied for a grueling week at a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan, where during day-and-night meditation sessions, he had to try and decipher koans like “Does a dog have Buddha-nature.” Koans are meant to demonstrate how our normal ways... Read more
In the March, 2017, edition of the AARP Bulletin (yes, I’m a proud card-carrying member of the AARP), there’s an article titled “50 Great Ways to Live Longer”. The list includes obvious activities like getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep a night, staying hydrated and eating your veggies, as well as more surprising actions like taking vitamin D regularly and drinking three to five cups of coffee a day. What interested me most though were 5 activities that... Read more
Have you heard the new podcast “Missing Richard Simmons”? It’s the most popular podcast in the U.S. and my family and I are hooked. It tells the story of how the legendary fitness guru mysteriously dropped out of sight three years ago and investigates what might have happened to him. The podcast also tells the story of Simmons’ life—and when you hear it, you can’t help but admire him. For over 40 years, Simmons was single-handedly responsible for bringing fitness... Read more
Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion. – Rumi I recently published Thaddeus Squirrel, a Spiritual Fable, and within the book is a story within the story. It’s about a wall. Walls are powerful symbols, sometimes in a literal sense. Years ago, U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously asked that the wall that separated two countries be torn down. Our current president wants to build a big wall to separate us from our... Read more
What are we supposed to accomplish during this lifetime? It goes without saying that we need to love and support our families in every way possible, but that’s just the baseline. Once we have that box checked, what’s next? I would argue that the next most important thing we can do has nothing to do with getting ahead in business or achieving a self-centered personal goal. It has to do with spreading love to those around us, outside of our... Read more
Kabbalah is the ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible. It has been said it can take decades to study and truly comprehend Kabbalah’s lessons. Fortunately, I found a short cut. The author and religious scholar Daniel C. Matt studied Kabbalah for decades and condensed his knowledge into an easy-to-read book titled The Essential Kabbalah. Matt points out that the word kabbalah means “receiving” or “that which has been received.” And while it refers to knowledge being received through... Read more
How do you see life? Do you look at it as a series of struggles to overcome? Or do you view life with wonder and focus on the small and big moments that bring you joy and passion and love. It’s funny how our frame of mind shapes our world, how when we expect bad things to happen they often do, and how when we expect things to turn out for the best we are often right. The old saying... Read more
Did you read my last story about the hidden nature of God? I wrote about how it can sometimes seem that God is MIA—and how sages from Socrates to Meister Eckhart have told us the best way to find God is to look within ourselves. Nowhere is this message stronger than in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Of all the Gnostic texts, Thomas has the most credibility with religious scholars. Many believe it predates the four gospels in the Bible... Read more
Every now and then, we can have the feeling that God is missing in action. We feel the presence of God one day, usually when things are going well, and by the next day, the Divine has seemingly departed the premises, leaving us to our own devices. This feeling even struck the saintly Mother Teresa who for years felt not the presence of God in her life, but the absence. In her words “as for me, the silence and the... Read more
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