such a ridiculous idea, [laughs] but very, very alluring. [music: “Spring Rain” by Auditory Canvas] Tippett:I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being, today with journalist Oliver Burkeman. [music: “Spring Rain” by Auditory Canvas] You also, at regular intervals in the writing, you will stop and say, This is a relief. It’s a relief to know that there will be neglected, missed opportunities, that there will be losses, that it is in the nature of vitality that there is loss. And part of this time management mentality that we have is that somehow you can salvage it all, that you can somehow make it all possible and not have to sacrifi... posted on Jan 31 2022 (5,528 reads)

with yoga or soothed with meditation. In this case, “instead of asking, How can I stop feeling so anxious?, we should be asking, What is my anxiety telling me?” she writes. “Anxiety is not what’s wrong with you—it is your mind and body fiercely alerting you to the fact that something else is wrong.” For example, this kind of deeper anxiety may stem from being in the wrong relationship, feeling disconnected from other people or from nature, or even living in a world marred by injustice.  Again, her solutions are not revolutionary: practicing gratitude to see more good in the world, connecting authentically with others, al... posted on Apr 7 2022 (9,042 reads)

is also a quality linked to the cultivation of hope in her work as a researcher and public educator on the climate crisis. Confronted with the often-overwhelming data of despair that depicts the current ecological situation, we face an imperative to acknowledge the bleak outlook while at the same time letting go of the inevitability that this be our future--in order to imagine a different one. Imagination is the key to finding hope and shifting the narrative of an us vs. them approach to nature (and to humanity) to an interconnected, interdependent reality, says Zoë. Just as Zoë practices surrender when standing before a blank canvas, there is an invitation for humanity to p... posted on May 24 2022 (3,200 reads)

surprise at being alive, at the miraculousness of the mundanity of it all: Red sadness is the secret one. Red sadness never appears sad, it appears as Nijinsky bolting across the stage in mid-air, it appears in flashes of passion, anger, fear, inspiration, and courage, in dark unsellable visions; it is an upside-down penny concealed beneath a tea cozy, the even-tempered and steady-minded are not exempt from it, and a curator once attached this tag to it: Because of the fragile nature of the pouch no attempt has been made to extract the note. […] Green sadness is sadness dressed for graduation, it is the sadness of June, of shiny toasters as they come out of the... posted on Aug 21 2022 (6,129 reads)

too upset at this point.” OJS: Yes. TS: “I’m off the rails really.” OJS: Yes. TS: Help me, Oren. OJS: Help me, help me. Well, life’s hard, isn’t it? I think one of the things about this training is having compassion for ourselves and recognizing we’re all doing the best we can. And I certainly can offer a few tips and tools, but ultimately it’s going to be imperfect and that’s the nature of being human. And instead of holding ourselves to some unrealistic standard and beating ourself up because I didn’t do what Oren said to do in the book or something, just, “OK, I&... posted on Sep 21 2022 (3,589 reads)

probably don’t. It’s important to develop ethical criteria, but then to be prepared to use them in accordance with what we know. HR: What is the difference between your theory and others? Why do you think yours is better? MN: The Nonhuman Rights Project does a lot of litigation on behalf of animals, using what I call the “so-like-us” approach—which judges animals by an alleged likeness to human beings, using the old traditional idea of a ladder of nature with us securely at the top. It’s a religious idea, which means we’re closer to God and the others straggle behind. Steven Wise uses this approach because he thinks he’ll b... posted on Jan 18 2023 (2,715 reads)

to impede the kind of decent relationships children need and our democracy needs. The problem is not merely that we do not attend enough in schools to children’s social, emotional, and intellectual needs but, what is worse, we neglect these needs in ways that are disastrous for the future of a democratic culture. This isn’t a trend that started yesterday; it emerged about a hundred years ago, but it is not yet so old that we cannot hope to change it. It is not engraved in human nature; in fact, it goes against human nature. My argument is that a democratic culture rests, not on any specific and unique juridical arrangements but first and foremost on a special form of interre... posted on Feb 13 2023 (2,666 reads)

a blade of grass? Will that silence our bird? Absolutely not, nothing will. For he is born to sing. I want to convey to you something special about jamming with another species, but I don’t know if jamming is the best word. Does that suggest something frivolous to you? Musicking? Playing along with? Finding common ground? Interspecies music, of course, is music that no one species could make on its own. And the whole, if it works, should be greater than the sum of its parts, just as nature is greater than any one species in its midst. We all have our place, and no species is an island. We enhance ourselves by paying more attention to the rest of life. One song or many: what is... posted on Feb 21 2023 (2,773 reads)

Douglas-Klotz. For a longer excerpt and more information, please see: www.revelationsofthearamaicjesus.com Why consider Jesus’ sayings in this language, much less use them in prayer or meditation? Language determines our way viewing the world. Languages have different words for the same thing, but also unique words that cannot be put into words in another language. In ancient languages, these unique expressions were all about the way people perceived their relationships to nature, other human beings, and Reality itself (a reality often translated “God”). Aramaic offers a way of looking at life as an interrelated whole, not simply at spiritual or religious... posted on Mar 22 2023 (3,898 reads)

1837–1861 (public library), he writes: Why should I speak to my friends? for how rarely is it that I am I; and are they, then, they? We will meet, then, far away. Several months later, just before the Christmas holidays with their cruel magnifying lens of loneliness for the lonely, he rues his inability to connect openheartedly: My difficulties with my friends are such as no frankness will settle. There is no precept in the New Testament that will assist me. My nature, it may be, is secret. Others can confess and explain; I cannot. Thoreau finds himself pocked with self-doubt about his ability to connect, his sense of isolation at times swelling into pu... posted on Mar 27 2023 (5,914 reads)

crux of each essay are ever-evolving questions. And though they lack clear answers, they are nevertheless necessary for better understanding our relationship with the natural world and ourselves. Imbler highlights the modes of survival that are some of the most radical ways of living: the use of stealth, camouflage and, occasionally, long gelatinous chain links to navigate the dangers of the deep. “Reading a creature through its camouflage seems a misguided attempt to understand its true nature, its whole self,” Imbler concludes. Imbler’s essays exemplify the future of science and marine biology writing. As a mixed-race, queer writer, Imbler interrogates the boundaries ... posted on Mar 30 2023 (1,927 reads)

And just for a bit of bonus content for any bakers who may be tuning in today, Chelan came across this recipe of Amari’s late last night that calls for nine-thirds cup of maple syrup, nine hundred 48ths cup of whipped topping—this is super sweet—eight 4ths cup of chocolate chips, and then finally one-third cup of butter—b-u-d-r. But anyway, back to Chelan. In her poetry and in life, Chelan continually invites the fumbling, suffering parts of ourselves and our divine nature to meet for tea in the heart, to have a great laugh in the belly, and share a big hug. So it is with a big virtual hug that I am pleased to welcome Chelan. Welcome, Chelan! Chelan Harkin:&nb... posted on Apr 1 2023 (5,125 reads)

value-systems… in all types and kinds of human beings. The pursuit of frantic leisure… is perhaps one of the most dissipating qualities of the technical cultures. The individual on whom leisure has been imposed in massive doses, and who has little capacity to deal with it, then searches for distractions that will fill this vacuum… A great deal of the distress and psychic conflict that we see clinically… is the result of a warped and erroneous expectancy of human nature and existence. It is the omnipresent fallacy of our age that all life should be fun and that all time should be made available to enjoy this fun. The result is apathy, discontent and pseudo-neu... posted on Apr 20 2023 (5,229 reads)

and initiations. Initiations marked the seasons of our lives and linked together the soul and the body, made its transitions sacred. And when the corn was planted and then harvested with ritual, with prayer, we wove together the seen and unseen worlds. This is the land our ancestors walked, with a wisdom and knowing still held by Indigenous Peoples.  Now we have to find again the threads that can connect the moments of our lives to the patterns that surround us. Living in the midst of nature it is easier, as looking out of my window I can see the wetlands being filled by the flow of the tide from the bay. My day is marked by the rise and fall of the water, and the months pass with ... posted on May 2 2023 (3,611 reads)

are in fact no ‘parts’ as such, but that they are an artefact of a certain way of looking at the world.” Art by the Brothers Hilts from A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader. Punctuating his ambitious 3,000-page effort to braid neuropsychology (the way our brains shape our impression of reality), epistemology (the way we come to know anything at all), and metaphysics (our yearning to wrest meaning from fundamental truth as we try to discern the nature of the universe) is an ongoing inquiry into our way of looking at the world — the lens of consciousness we call attention. He writes: The world we know cannot be wholly mind-independ... posted on May 23 2023 (3,670 reads)

you may well be entering environments where there is little or no time and space for that kind of careful internal discernment and calibration. And the hard reality is that you may not even notice it. Because the thing about being off by an inch is that we most often don’t feel the misalignment until it is too late to make a quick course correction. It’s not like a situation of being a fish out of water, where we immediately jump up and realize we are not being true to our nature. It’s more like being the frog in water that is slowly heating up. We can end up being burned alive, without realizing it. That has certainly been my experience working in the big,... posted on May 30 2023 (8,835 reads)

inquiry for our own capacities to care for those who are in need of our attention? And so part of our focus in this ritual is the attention to aspects of society that we have marginalized, and we say we’ve pathologized to be the ones that we need to shut away. And this is the ritual about welcoming, reintegration, and guiding and walking with people towards their sacred truths, and finding out what are the needs along the way? We are not saying we know everything. We know the nature of ritual is to look at the needs and see where it could be met, and there are different levels of competencies that we could support a person to find the way of ritualizing their life, which m... posted on Jul 3 2023 (2,256 reads)

and I think that’s a wonderful question and I think it really pertains to all of us. I just happen to experience it through the trail of all my writings, but I remember there was a rabbi, Jonathan Omer-Man, and I’ll never forget his definition of integrity was “to stay true to a voice inside that doesn’t change, though the life that carries it will.” So I think there is an abiding voice within us, whatever we call that — soul, atman, dharma nature, whatever we call that. Of course, the life that carries it does change. So a key moment when I started to understand the evolution of self was after my cancer journey. Because before my can... posted on Jul 16 2023 (4,106 reads)

the distracting information that we hold true… Tippett: Yeah. Rubin: …that’s stopping us. Tippett: I want to kind of come to some of the very concrete and available practices that you offer, just to have a practice of awareness towards that state you’re talking about which somewhere you say the, it’s about learning “to learn and be fascinated and surprised on a continual basis.” And of course meditation. But also, a day walking in nature. I don’t know, you’ve talked about before you go to sleep “noticing the feelings of your heartbeat and the movement of your blood.” And you said, “The purpose of s... posted on Nov 30 -0001 (60 reads)

can work for those of us prone to rumination. Practice mindful awareness Creating a little separation from your spinning thoughts can help transform them into something more manageable. By becoming an observer of your present experience using mindfulness techniques, you can learn to let go a bit of the past and future (where thoughts reign supreme) and stay more grounded in the moment, accepting “what is.” Practicing mindfulness has the added benefit of revealing the transient nature of your thoughts, helping to defang them somewhat and make it easier to let them go. There are many mindfulness practices that might help with this. For example, a simple breath meditation, wh... posted on Jun 13 2024 (3,751 reads)