way of living. This was a developmental step too, because we're letting go of who we think we are. It's a natural developmental step to create an image of ourself and to differentiate and individuate to feel ourself as a unique human being. It's a very healthy developmental step. But, there is another step to go, which is not to deny that level, but to recognize that there is actually a deeper truth as to who we are and to begin to question our stories and our images and our ordinary egoic identity. And as that happens, attention is less fixated in the prefrontal cortex. There is a natural shifting of attention and dropping of attention down into the depth ... posted on Dec 23 2019 (9,063 reads)

never know when your kind words may be just what someone needs. In the summer of 2016, I attended a ServiceSpace Retreat. I was new to the group, writing for Kindful Kids and then Daily Good. I was eager to meet in person the people I had come to love virtually. On Community Night, I was invited to share a bit about my experience at the retreat. I told a story I had heard of an African tribe that, when a woman was pregnant, learned the song of the unborn baby, and then sang that song to the child as they faced various milestones, hurdles, and challenges, calling the child back to who they really were if they strayed. The ServiceSpace community feels like that to me, a place where you are... posted on Jan 30 2020 (4,407 reads)

we’ve sort of come up against the wall and maybe the best thing that we can say about ourselves at this point is we’re reaching the end of that delusion. Tippett:Right. And there’s something very striking also in looking at kind of the sweep of where your thinking has taken you, where your studies have taken you that — you know, I mean, at the one and the same time, there’s a new association and a new sense of the relevance and the present resonance of these images of Genesis and these meanings of it. And also this prophetic message, also in the sense of needing to wake people up, right, being a voice of — judgment is a hard word; it’s not eve... posted on Apr 20 2020 (6,809 reads)

May of 2019, Rabbi Dr. Ariel Burger sat down with educator and writer Parker J. Palmer for an unscripted conversation. What emerged was a wide-ranging contemplative dialogue on suffering, healing, and joy. Parker is the author of “Five Habits to Heal the Heart of Democracy”, The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, On the Brink of Everything, and seven other life-changing books. Ariel is the author of “Teaching and Learning from the Heart in Troubled Times” and Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom. Ariel Burger: Parker, thank you for making the time to have this conversation. Parker Palmer: Th... posted on Jun 9 2020 (7,961 reads)

our relationships become. So-called relationship becomes simple relating. The noun transforms into a verb – an apparent thing opens up into an alive process. If I no longer take myself as an object, I also cannot make you into one. Nor can I create what is happening between us into something. We may call it friendship but it is really a dynamic mystery, a lively, unfolding, open-ended process of listening, sharing, and discovery. When we are no longer protecting our images and exchanging news reports over a wall, a completely new level of intimacy unfolds. Yes, I may be called your partner, friend, parent,  child, sister or brother, but if I know that I am n... posted on Jul 4 2020 (6,669 reads)

seems like our society is at a low point in terms of how we talk about challenging, controversial topics within our political discourse and even our spiritual reflections. I believe the only way through this polarization is a re-appreciation for silence. Silence has a life of its own. It is not just that which is around words and underneath images and events. It is a being in itself to which we can relate and become intimately familiar. Philosophically, we would say being is that foundational quality which precedes all other attributes. Silence is at the very foundation of all reality—naked being, if you will. Pure being is that out of which all else comes and to which all th... posted on Aug 5 2020 (7,429 reads)

Jewish mom, she slowly but determinedly adopts the whole group. One day, Radha asks me if she can bring the quilt into the prison. I tell her I think we can arrange for that. She smiles, as if secretly knowing that something is about to happen. When I walk Radha into San Quentin that day, she hugs tight her precious quilt, smiling even more broadly. When the quilt is unfurled in the classroom, Radha explains the significance of each square. The men listen intently and nod their heads as the images from the 21 patches are explained. At the end, the quilt is carefully folded and Radha asks if it can be passed around the room for everyone to touch. She explains, “Quilts are made for t... posted on Sep 7 2020 (5,623 reads)

forces at work. To have a concept of the unique gift that each of us brings to this world: your calling, or soul purpose, if you like. Stories can help us tap right into that place. There is an ancient Sufi idea that was expressed by French philosopher Henri Corbin that between the physical world of our senses and the mental world of the intellect lay a third world, which he translated as the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal world. Corbin said the Sufis believed that stories, metaphors, images, and archetypal characters had actual independent existence in that third world. So stories—the images, or archetypal characters, or plots, or symbols and metaphors—are, quite simpl... posted on Oct 17 2020 (8,168 reads)

Writer Amritha Mandagondi had a chance to sit down and interview Elizabeth Buechele, the Founder of SmileProject. Here's her inspiring interview on how Elizabeth has found happiness every single day, for the past 3,307 days.) They say life happens to those who pause and listen. Listen intently to that voice that’s calling out the boundless possibilities from within. Our friend in New York, Elizabeth Buechele from the age of 17 has set out on a journey to find the true meaning of happiness. There was no mentor or guide reaching out to help her define what qualifies as “happiness” and what doesn’t. She may continue to be on her quest bu... posted on Feb 2 2021 (6,236 reads)

past. To meditate on grief, let yourself sit, alone or with a comforting friend. Take the time to create an atmosphere of support. When you are ready, begin by sensing your breath. Feel your breathing in the area of your chest. This can help you become present to what is within you. Take one hand and hold it gently on your heart as if you were holding a vulnerable human being. You are. As you continue to breathe, bring to mind the loss or pain you are grieving. Let the story, the images, the feelings comes naturally. Hold them gently. Take your time. Let the feelings come layer by layer, a little at a time. Keep breathing softly, compassionately. Let whatever feelings are t... posted on Feb 20 2021 (14,837 reads)

and suddenly I could be enveloped by a palpable sense of profound meaning and mystery, a palpable sense of a thinning veil between the ordinary “me” and an enfolding and very lively psychic field populated by wilder or mysterious Others. It is a strange and wonderful revelation to burst into a mystical view while reading the visionary evocations of other people. In another version of unexpected enlivenment that I can’t explain but only honor, I’ve noticed that films, images, or written texts that illustrate the intelligence and beauty of fungi or mycelium will blow open my dusty windows of perception almost without ffail. *** In our time of change and uncert... posted on Mar 14 2021 (5,201 reads)

1924 Postcard Photograph of Giuseppe Benincasa, taken in Canada A genealogy search can yield many things and go down many paths, but at its core, it is a story waiting to be told and a person to tell it. My grandfather, Giuseppe Benincasa’s story began 10 years ago, when my cousin Helen Salfi Gorday gave me a charred book of Italian love poems. She said that it belonged to our grandfather and that I should have it. The book is, “Postuma” by Lorenzo Stecchetti, an author who didn't exist, yet became a leader  of the Veristi Literary movement in Italy after it was published in 1877.  The Veristi were the anti-Romantic, Bohemian new reali... posted on May 16 2021 (4,736 reads)

increases our capability for receiving and trusting the messages that come from soul.  When a person excavates the ego out from everything the ego thought it needed, that person is left with who he is meant to be.      LOWERWORLD      When awareness turns towards the soul, a rich imaginal realm5 of inborn archetypal figures opens up, enabling soul encounter6 - a glimpse of your deep purpose.  Imaginal/archetypal figures can show up as visual images, but also as a felt sense of purpose, where the body lights up with and aligns to our sense of purpose.  Here in the lowerworld, awareness isn’t concerned with unbounded non-dual awa... posted on Jul 2 2021 (7,427 reads)

fulfillment of needs happens by pouring the feeling into the bucket – for instance, love. When it’s only half full, something else takes over, and the feeling of love cannot reach its full development when anger and fear, for example, take over. The body simultaneously builds up a physical strain which is part of the negative emotion, and this strain blocks the experience of love more and more. Problem with stress is that we judge our actual circumstances by comparison. We have images from the past, and we look at our actual situation, and our brain (subconscious) make rough comparisons with the old images and then it starts to detect stress and the physical body will change... posted on Oct 12 2021 (3,320 reads)

[of the test subjects], 100-percent score, they were—within a quarter of an hour, they had complete control. So no eight hours of agony, going up in inflammation, and fever, and this, and that. It just was not there. They took over their natural innate capability to control deeper systems within us. Those systems, they have gotten lost. And now, we brought them back within our awareness. I use the science to show it. The breathing is what you see, also on the website, you see it—images, people, motion pictures on how they did it in the hospital. There is no speculation about it. But whole industries, they want to have us on the pills and medicine, and the food industry is sh*... posted on Nov 2 2021 (3,387 reads)

our mortality helps us let go of busyness and focus on what’s most important to us in order to live a happier, more meaningful life. The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly finite. If you’re lucky and you live to 80, you will have lived about four thousand weeks. This truth, which most of us ignore most of the time, is something to wrestle with if we want to spend our limited time on this earth well. Given that, it follows that time management, broadly defined, should be everyone’s chief concern. Yet the modern discipline of time management (or productivity) is depressingly narrow-minded, focused on devising the perfect morning routine or trying... posted on Dec 12 2021 (14,129 reads)

energy, martial and spiritual arts, I have personally experienced and observed many of the spiritual blind alleys and subtle dangers that are associated with complex systems of Qi training and hierarchical structures of spiritual development. The obvious risks include identification with a set of formal teachings, lineages, systems, or even the identity of belonging to an elite professional organization. The less obvious, more subtle dangers involve identification with a set of goals, or images of spiritual attainment, no matter how refined or ideal they may be. The result of either is that the seeker assumes a new self-image; an elevated or spiritual ego emerges, an identity framed w... posted on Nov 9 2021 (4,808 reads)

hooks poses for a portrait on Dec. 16, 1996, in New York City. PHOTO BY KARJEAN LEVINE/GETTY IMAGES I have known radicals and revolutionaries who love “the people” but whose everyday lives are replete with contradictions. The late bell hooks was by no means perfect, but she was impressively consistent. She took seriously the notion that a revolution had to center love and was as much about transforming ourselves as it was about transforming the world.  I met hooks when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the late 1980s and early ’90s. I have many memories of her, but a Chicago activist now in her 60s shared with me a story that... posted on Jan 25 2022 (4,345 reads)

five kids. When we have a family reunion, we all tell stories about our own childhood. And everybody always listens to everybody else’s stories; says, “Did you grow up in the same family as I did?” Tippett:[laughs] Right, there are five versions of every story. van der Kolk:Right, right, there’s all these very, very different versions, and they barely ever overlap. So people create their own realities, in a way. What is so extraordinary about trauma is that these images or sounds or physical sensations don’t change over time. So people who have been molested as kids continue to see the wallpaper of the room in which they were molested. Or when they exami... posted on Feb 10 2022 (7,626 reads)

research studies and in real life, placebos have a powerful healing effect on the body and mind The concept of placebos – which are sometimes called “sugar pills” – has been around since the 1800s. Wladimir Bulgar/Science Photo Library via Getty Images Did you ever feel your own shoulders relax when you saw a friend receive a shoulder massage? For those of you who said “yes,” congratulations, your brain is using its power to create a “placebo effect.” For those who said “no,” you’re not alone, but thankfully, the brain is trainable. Since the 1800s, the word placebo has been used to refer to a fake treatme... posted on Feb 12 2022 (5,410 reads)