and negative value. One of the challenges is to really know when that's happening—like, "Oh, you're better because you're more rational and I'm more emotional and therefore, I'm a little bit less stable or something." We have to kind of start to look at the differences and see if we can find both the strength and the weakness of both sides. What's the upside of being rational? What's the downside? What's the upside of your more emotional nature and what's the downside? Otherwise, the difference conversation can very quickly move into a good and bad conversation. TS: Now, Diane. I just have one final question for you because in ... posted on Oct 29 2017 (15,136 reads)

by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart April 29, 2017 Girl Sweeping. William McGregor Paxton, 1912. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts In the busyness of our contemporary life we are drawn into ceaseless activity that often separates us from the deeper dimension of our self. With our smart phones and computer screens we often remain caught on the surface of our lives, amidst the noise and chatter that continually distract us, that stop us from being rooted in our true nature. Unaware, we are drowned deeper and deeper in a culture of soulless materialism. At this time I find it more and more important to have outer activities that can connect us to what is more n... posted on Nov 25 2017 (25,515 reads)

the PA is home to two permanent members, Dan and Margaret, as well as two long-term visitors, Thomas and Maggie. Thousands of other visitors have come and gone over the years. A few have settled on adjacent homesteads, while others left to start far-flung urban permaculture centers. All are contributing to a more beautiful and just world, as they feel uniquely called to do. Ethan and Sarah have given away tens of thousands of trees and plants over the years—they are still in awe of nature’s abundance, the way life regenerates and propagates through time, a key difference between a tractor and a draft-horse—but perhaps more significantly, they’ve seeded the worl... posted on Oct 12 2017 (11,232 reads)

question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing—the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom. So long as I have not seen the nature and movement of the mind, there is little sense in believing that I could be free of it. I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. This is a fact. It is not the thoughts ­themselves that enslave me but my ­attachment to them. In order to ... posted on Dec 24 2017 (10,352 reads)

to extend this to oneself as well (“May I be free from mental suffering” etc). Variations are encouraged (“May he/she be free to develop the beauty of his/her mind.”) This practice, when in play, cannot co-exist with fear. 5. Inhabit Larger Fields of Time We are relating to time today in a way that is surely unique in human history. The growth economy and nano-technologies require decisions made at lightning speed for short-term goals, cutting us off from nature’s rhythms and from the past and future as well. Both the legacy of our ancestors and the needs of our descendants become less and less real to us. This relation to time is not innate. ... posted on Jan 29 2018 (48,327 reads)

That’s why I was drawn to him. It's a major reason why so many people were turned on by Lax the contemplative, and this going back into his college years. Professors at Columbia like Mark Van Doren and Jacques Barzun had good things to say about Bob. Even when he was younger, his own sister had a dream of him being an important person at some point in life.      He spoke with a rare singularity that, as you said, pointed to the "cosmic fountain," to the nature of what life is about, and which the Hindus also point to. In the Upanishads, there’s a phrase, “in our consciousness, in between our thoughts”—it’s that living pr... posted on Nov 17 2017 (14,304 reads)

and ball games, and when picking your children up from school. Mindfulness does not mean accepting each moment as perfect or even desirable; yet our photos, posts, and status updates can paint an image of our lives untarnished. Before you go to engage online, see who you can engage with in your present surroundings. Before you update your status, think about the message you’re trying to convey, and the present pain or discomfort you might be trying to avoid. Before you try to capture nature’s beauty on a 5-inch screen, rely on your 5 senses. Pause to take it all in, and let that be enough. Sources Mindful Tech, by Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, Tricycle: The Buddhist Revie... posted on Oct 11 2017 (13,502 reads)

and recall the words of many guides: Be regular, meditate daily, even if it’s just for a short time. It bears much more fruit than long periods now and then. I don’t want you to think that my early adult tendencies are entirely transformed. They turn up in many places, although it is in the garden that clear success is evident. While writing, I have yet to master the ‘short bits at a time’ skill. On larger writing projects I look for large blocks of time, but the nature of my life is that large blocks of time are difficult to create. I’m beginning to question whether it is my concept about needing these large blocks of time that will have to be revised. ... posted on Dec 2 2017 (11,069 reads)

is glór, voice of the river, say, voice of the wind that shakes the barley in gort, a cornfield. And gort is the Irish name for the letter: field full of guh-grain, granary of G-ness. H by David Hockney “H is for Homosexual” for Martin Amis, who relays a heartbreaking childhood memory of awakening to his difference, then writes: I wish I understood homosexuality. I wish I could intuit more about it — the attraction to like, not to other. Is it nature or nurture, a predisposition, is it written in the DNA? When I think about it in relation to myself … its isolation and disquiet become something lifelong. In my mind I call homosexualit... posted on Dec 16 2017 (7,024 reads)

question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing—the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom. So long as I have not seen the nature and movement of the mind, there is little sense in believing that I could be free of it. I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. This is a fact. It is not the thoughts ­themselves that enslave me but my ­attachment to them. In order to under... posted on Dec 20 2017 (7,888 reads)

to heart and work on. Then it happens, of course, that you are busy meditating at work and then go home and discover that you haven't really walked your talk, as completely as you ought to have. Aren't there some things that you could do better in your relationships with other people? And the answer is, yes absolutely, and I continue to work on that, even today. Mish: First, it seems like some thrive on confrontation and some shun it -- wondering where does one’s basic nature determine how you handle conflict? Second, do you feel that there is a direct correlation between one's aversion to conflict and the number of wounded places within? Ken: Beautiful! In... posted on Nov 27 2017 (14,660 reads)

shows that dreaming is not just a byproduct of sleep, but serves its own important functions in our well-being. We often hear stories of people who’ve learned from their dreams or been inspired by them. Think of Paul McCartney’s story of how his hit song “Yesterday” came to him in a dream or of Mendeleev’s dream-inspired construction of the periodic table of elements. But, while many of us may feel that our dreams have special meaning or a useful purpose, science has been more skeptical of that claim. Instead of being harbingers of creativity or some kind of message from our unconscious, some scientists have considered dreaming... posted on Apr 22 2018 (17,163 reads)

to everyone in the circle. We want everyone’s best interest to rise and for us to come up with a plan to attend to those interests. SR: Restorative Justice is posited as an alternative to our criminal justice system. Can you talk about our current model and why it needs remedying? SB: Our current criminal legal system—and I call it our criminal legal system, and not the criminal justice system because I don’t think it produces justice—is adversarial in nature. Any other government-operated process that produces a 75% failure rate would never be tolerated. But the fact is that over 75% of people who have been incarcerated return to our prisons. It&rs... posted on Mar 5 2018 (18,506 reads)

and frame of mind, we can manage our time effectively and make room for everything that’s important, we mentally free ourselves of the burden of having to make difficult decisions: to work out, or to have coffee with a friend; to read our children a bedtime story, or to catch up on the day’s emails; to walk the dog an extra block, or to turn home. The order and time-tables we impose upon everything from our inboxes to our leisure time disguise dilemmas of a far more pressing nature: which paths will we pursue, what relationships will we prioritize, what causes will we abandon over the course of our undeniably short lives? Ironically, the highly sought-after peace o... posted on Dec 26 2017 (20,953 reads)

truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is,”Kurt Vonnegut observed in discussing Hamlet during his influential lecture on the shapes of stories. “The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad,” Alan Watts wrote a generation earlier in his sobering case for learning not to think in terms of gain or loss. And yet most of us spend swaths of our days worrying about the prospect of events we judge to be negative, potential losses driven by what we perceiv... posted on Mar 18 2018 (19,357 reads)

that acknowledges them as valuable, they are best able to interact, negotiate, compromise and simply feel good about themselves and others. This graciousness can be a cornerstone to thoughtful effective parenting. An Antidote to Oblivion Gratitude involves letting yourself accept the gifts that come to you, both material and immaterial. Most of us feel it would be rude to refuse a material gift offered by a friend. Yet we often fail to notice the countless gifts offered to us by nature or good health or delightful experiences. It seems to me, that failing to notice is rather like refusing a gift. In both cases, we distance ourselves and miss out on full enjoyment. Grateful li... posted on Jul 1 2018 (17,218 reads)

I used to sleep outdoors on the ground. As daylight faded, the entire edge of the galaxy appeared, a great arc of stars burning from horizon to horizon across the night. Looking up, I would feel my everyday human smallness begin to dissolve into that immensity. Under the depths of the cosmos, questions rose in my mind: Who are my mother and my father, my sister and my brother? Who are my ancestors? The presence of the stars felt like an imperative demand: consider, now, the true nature of your belonging. Reflect deeply upon your source and origin, and know that each one is the child of more than humankind. Certain animals have shared with me this sense of expanded belongin... posted on Mar 25 2018 (16,695 reads)

added something to that. I got this line into the movie, actually. He added to that. He said, "Dan, the difference between is you practice gymnastics." He said, "I practice everything." What did that mean? That sounds strange. What did he mean he practices everything? Normally, we do the laundry, we do our homework, we do the dishes. We do things all the time but how many of us practice the dishes? Practice the laundry—folding it for example? Practice doing our signature? Practice walking, practice breathing? The moment we're practicing something with the idea of improving it, we become more absorbed in that. What if I had practiced taking off my sweatsh... posted on Jul 13 2018 (13,656 reads)

surprise, fear, and disgust. But a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that there are at least 27 different but interlocking emotions. For the study, the researchers—including GGSC faculty director Dacher Keltner—asked more than 850 participants to watch over 2,000 video clips. The five-second clips included births and proposals, deaths and natural disasters, silly slips and risky stunts, spiders and wondrous nature, sexual acts and awkward handshakes. In response to the clips, participants either wrote freely about the emotions they felt, rated how much they felt 34 different feelings, or rated their f... posted on Jun 21 2018 (18,877 reads)

are their lives like outside of work? How complex is the private life they deal with daily? Or look at human history. Over and over it testifies to the indomitable human spirit rising up against all forms of oppression. No matter how terrible the oppression, humans find ways to assert themselves. No system of laws or rules can hold us in constraint; no set of directions can tell us exactly how to proceed. We will always bring ourselves into the picture, we will always add our unique signature to the situation. Whether leaders call us innovative or rebellious depends on their comprehension of what's going on. The inalienable freedom to create one's life shows up in othe... posted on Apr 11 2018 (13,970 reads)