of sanctuary—and of sacred places—in the context of our lives and creative pursuits? We recognize certain locations on earth, and even within our own spheres of activity, as special and consider them sacred by virtue of a resonance that suggests a living intelligence. We often long for contact with these places that have the capacity to help us return to ourselves. We may be attracted to the locations of our childhood; or cities where there is an enormous reservoir of human nature and activity, such as New York, London, Benares, and Tokyo; or places where energy is impregnated in the land itself, regions of power and grace, such as Mount Fuji, Canyon de Chelly, Mauna Kea... posted on Oct 5 2017 (9,791 reads)

It almost is ingrained in their personality as they come into the world. Is that the case? “If you’re a curious person, then you ought to also be curious about curiosity itself.” Livio: Of course. Most psychological traits, and curiosity is no exception, have a genetic component to them. The fact that some people are much more curious than others largely has to do with their genetics. But, as in all cases, genetics is never the whole story. In the same way as nature versus nurture question, the two of them play a role. You can enhance curiosity by doing certain things, by asking questions, by encouraging people to be curious about things. Or you can suppre... posted on Sep 25 2017 (12,462 reads)

My body shares in an expanded cycle that I call growth and decay. The air I breathe contains water molecules that have cycled on the earth for millennia. What then of my mind? What of that sense of self that I carry of someone inside my body who is me, and is not the deer munching on broccoli florets at the bottom of the garden? Is this sense of identity an illusion? Is everything cycling in a ceaseless flow of change? These questions carry a memory of teachings that speak of the illusory nature of existence. Constant change, they remind us, is the condition. Something exists in any given moment, but the form is not permanent; it is ceaselessly changing. The broccoli of yesterday&rsquo... posted on Dec 18 2017 (10,501 reads)

start is for you to describe to our listeners what it means to you to live from a place of surrender. Michael Singer (MS): Very good. Like with most spiritual topics, they get very deep, but let's see how simple we can keep it. If we pay attention, we will realize that every moment around us, there is a world that we did not create that's been there for 13.8 billion years, and there's trillions of cells in your body that are doing what they're supposed to do, and all of nature, everything. You wake up and you realize, "I'm not doing any of this. I didn't make my body. I didn't make my mind think. I don't make my heart beat. I don't make my br... posted on Dec 22 2017 (48,424 reads)

remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-coloured chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wantin... posted on Aug 12 2018 (10,627 reads)

wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of... posted on Mar 19 2018 (11,200 reads)

is not an individual property, but is a property of an entire web of relationships. It is a community practice. This is the profound lesson we need to learn from nature. The way to sustain life is to build and nurture community. A sustainable human community interacts with other communities — human and nonhuman — in ways that enable them to live and develop according to their natures. Sustainability does not mean that things do not change. It is a dynamic process of coevolution rather than a static state. Because of the close connection between sustainability and community, basic principles of ecology can also be understood as principles of community. In part... posted on Feb 28 2018 (10,804 reads)

early thirties, when I got married and let go of my independence, I let in the beauty of interdependence. Not having charged for my labor for more than fifteen years, I learned that in letting go of price-tags, I let in -- the priceless. Surrender isn't a sacrifice of the known, but rather a celebration of the infinite. Sooner or later, you see the futility of fitting the glorious spectrum of our human experience into a neat little algorithm. Then, you no longer try to scheme deals with nature. When the ego moves from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat, you not only enjoy the ride but become aware of the vast conspiracy of the universe to drop us at the doorsteps of greate... posted on Jun 11 2018 (15,612 reads)

bittersweet, largehearted meditation on the existential art of befriending our finitude as she faces her own terminal illness: We don’t live in Newton’s clockwork universe anymore — we live in a banana peel universe, and we won’t ever be able to know everything, or control everything, or predict everything. […] If you’re anti-death — which to me translates as anti-life, which to me translates as anti-nature — it also translates to me as anti-woman, because women have long been identified with nature. My source on this is Hannah Arendt — the German philosopher who wrote a book... posted on Jun 10 2018 (10,549 reads)

the present highly publicized debates about the nature and the existence of God, both sides tend to treat God as a purely external entity said to be accessible only by faith—faith, in this case, defined merely as belief unsupported by evidence or logic. Entirely missing from these debates is the idea of God as a conscious force within the human psyche which is accessible through deep self-examination. A study of the psychological disciplines at the heart of all the great spiritual traditions of the world shows us, however, that the process of precisely guided self-examination brings about a knowledge that is as rigorous and as supported by evidence as anything science has to offer. ... posted on Aug 2 2018 (14,038 reads)

in every piece of garbage left on city streets. This oneness is life—life no longer experienced solely through the fragmented vision of the ego, through the distortions of our culture, but known within the heart, felt in the soul. This oneness is the heartbeat of life. It is for each of us to live and celebrate this oneness, to participate in its beauty and wonder. And through our awareness, and actions born of this awareness, we can help to reconnect our world with its original nature. There are many ways to experience and participate in this living oneness. But if I have learned anything after half a century of spiritual practice, it is the power of love. Love comes in s... posted on Nov 7 2018 (9,226 reads)

understand this sense of separation it is necessary to go deeper, back in our Western consciousness to when early Christianity persecuted the pagan and Earth-based religions, cut down their sacred groves, and slowly began the process whereby the Earth became no longer something sacred, in a way unthinkable to an indigenous person. We are the inheritors of this culture that banished the relationship to the sacred from the Earth. Much of our Western civilization has now forgotten the sacred nature of the Earth, and we are unaware of how this forgetfulness crucially affects our relationship to the environment. If the Earth is just a resource then there is no real responsibility. We can us... posted on Nov 22 2018 (6,577 reads)

a mental and spiritual firewall—a kind of imaginal control program that society and its institutions propagate and that we all, more or less, internalize in our socialization. Operating as a transpersonal energetic entity or ‘field,’ this firewall blocks out all information and experiences that don’t correspond to the dualistic, materialistic, mechanistic worldview that it reinforces, thereby making it difficult for us to consciously experience the living world, both in nature and within ourselves. Its method of hardwiring us into a mindset of separation and fear often prevents us from entering into genuine connection with life and so discovering our true agency in t... posted on Dec 30 2018 (8,241 reads)

following is a review of  Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey of Innovation and Environmental Stewardship by John Todd, published by North Atlantic Books (January 2019) Water is the ultimate systems challenge.  It is a unique resource that underpins all drivers of growth – be it agricultural production, energy generation, industry or manufacturing. It also connects these sectors into a broader economic system that must balance social development and environmental interests. World Economic Forum Global Water Initiative Not quite three-quarters of the way through Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey of Innovation and Environmental... posted on Mar 12 2019 (6,351 reads)

encounter with a sand painting that helped me learn how to doctor patients I knew I would lose. At the time, I was in the middle of my yearlong fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine, seeing patients at a county hospital in San Jose. I’d immersed myself in learning how to treat patients living with serious illnesses: end-stage heart failure, widespread cancer and devastating strokes. I’d learned how to help families anticipate what dying looks like. It had become second nature to talk openly with patients about the severity of their diseases, and to ask them how we might work together to maximize joy, meaning and comfort in their waning lives. I hoped that project... posted on Jun 14 2019 (11,251 reads)

– that of the space and energy – rather than individuals, there is no thing that needs to be observed. All awareness can be involved with the movement of energy through space, organized and contained by the form. The result is soft fluid power enjoying the beauty and purity of the form. This kind of feeling is not only beautiful and fluid, it is difficult to resist or counter which makes it effective from a martial perspective. There is a lovely word in physics to describe the nature of a laser beam. The light is said to be “coherent.” Ordinary lenses may focus light, but a laser creates an alignment and unity of character that goes beyond that. By allowing the ... posted on Jul 18 2019 (9,617 reads)

interesting. BW: Yes, it's definitely not academic research, and I mean, I've been called a nurse, and a doctor, and a researcher, and all those things, but that's not the case, and I've been honest about that from the start. It was based on my own experience. I've had a lot of people in palliative care write to me over the years and said, "That is so spot on with what I've found with my patients as well." So perhaps it had to be that personal nature for people to resonate with it so much. Also, I'm not sure the actual dying people would have been as vulnerable and safe to be vulnerable had they been academic questions and researcher... posted on Aug 12 2019 (13,620 reads)

was late in the night when the loud clucking of chickens woke up a neighbourhood of the Bochagaon village in Kaziranga, Assam. Swiftly, the adults gathered near the pen and saw a large snake devouring a hen. Lanterns and sticks in hand, the villagers surrounded the snake keeping a safe distance. In any other circumstances, the frightened villagers would have killed the outnumbered reptile, but this time, they called ‘the man who speaks nature’. “Ten years ago, the villagers would have lynched the snake without a second thought, and I can’t completely blame them. However, there’s a growing awareness about the importance of each element in the wilderness and... posted on Sep 21 2019 (5,161 reads)

we don’t even need to say that. It’s just scan your bar code and get to the point. But what if the “point” was to relate more deeply? How do you start to move away from these singular transactions to much more multidimensional relationships? NC: That’s such a shift in my thinking about how we change systems. It’s actually in cultivating the values and the relationships first. And from that the system emerges. Which is true of life. I mean if we look at nature that’s how it works as well. It’s not like nature maps out a system for its various parts and then behaves accordingly. NM: If we build on the farming metaphor, we can&rsquo... posted on Nov 19 2019 (8,066 reads)

will strive to do it just right. Similarly, the campaigner will distinguish what really needs to be done to stop the logging project, and what might instead gratify his crusader’s ego, martyr complex, or self-righteousness. He will not forget what he serves. It is nonsense to say of an indigenous culture, “The reason they have lived sustainably on the land for five thousand years has nothing to do with their superstitious ceremonies. It is because they are astute observers of nature who think seven generations in the future.” Their reverence for and attention to the subtle needs of a place is part and parcel of their ceremonial approach to life. The mindset that call... posted on Apr 25 2020 (8,689 reads)