20, 2019 I wanted to watch the sunrise on the summer solstice from Stonehenge, ancient druid temple, aligned to the solstice, keeper of mysterious magic yet unknown to us. A picture of Stonehenge had been my desktop screensaver more than 15 years ago, and walking amongst these stones had been a long cherished dream of mine. So when I realized that I could be there on this special day when they allow people to enter the circle and hold and touch the stones, I was overjoyed. But it doesn’t help when ten thousand other people have the same idea. I walked into a loud party, and people were celebrating the stones quite literally by being stoned. Or drunk. I felt so disap... posted on Jun 21 2022 (3,172 reads)

expression of Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese aesthetic concept of admiring that which is worn-in, imperfect, altered by time. If we can praise what is flawed and tattered and half-done, we can praise so many things.” “We live in a culture that is a very hungry culture because so many of the things that our souls crave are not what we are feeding ourselves,” she says. “What am I hungry for? Moving toward beautiful, complex, meaningful imagery. Trying to feed myself images that are meaningful. The erotic – expression of craving, wanting. Are we wanting the body or something else inside of or beyond that?” Laméris was born to a Dutch father a... posted on Nov 29 2022 (2,896 reads)

under a hat of the cobbled surface of a licorice spog. To top it off, a wood louse seemed to be sucking part of the crimson jelly into its mouth. I read the caption: it was a “slime mold,” photographed by Barry Webb, in the south of Buckinghamshire, UK—not far from where I live. Slime mold? I’d heard vaguely of slimes that had been used for experiments in labs to solve mazes, but this bright berry-like structure was new to me. I searched online and found a gallery of images Barry had taken of other species. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Iridescent rainbow orbs bursting into tangerine spun sugar. Pearly spheres of goo. Sorbet corn dogs leaning into one an... posted on Feb 5 2023 (3,838 reads)

engage in creative thinking every day, whether they realize it or not. Ekaterina Chizhevskaya/iStock via Getty Images Lily Zhu, Washington State University Do you think that creativity is an innate gift? Think again. Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult – that the ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces only some talented individuals and not most others. The media often portrays creatives as those with quirky personalities and unique talent. Researchers have also identified numerous personality traits that are associated with creativity, such as openness to new experiences, ideas and perspectives. Together, they ... posted on Feb 7 2023 (3,363 reads)

they inhabited the Anchorage landscape. Now they were among his favorite wild neighbors and he eagerly anticipated their reemergence every spring. The more he learned about wood frogs, the more miraculous their northern lives seemed. Given all that, and his still-growing curiosity about other life forms, well yeah, it seemed likely dragonflies would have a greater presence in his life. Besides the basic information it provided about their lives, Dragonflies of Alaska presented some dazzling images of the state’s various species (all of the individuals “posed” in resting positions after being caught and cooled). Perhaps best of all, the guidebook helped the man identify ... posted on Apr 6 2023 (5,291 reads)

I was cleaning out my dresser, I found a small red, blue, and green hand-woven pouch, with a silver zipper on top. Ms. Macias, an English teacher I had in my Senior year of high school had given it to me fifteen years before I ever visited Guatemala, the country in which it was made. I remember sitting near Ms. Macias’ desk every day to the right side of the classroom, near my best friend Tia. We would both bombard her with questions about life and all that is important to a teenager. She would willingly engage in many conversations with us. One day she took out this little woven bag from her desk, walked over to my desk and asked if I liked it. I told her it was beautiful. ... posted on Dec 22 2014 (22,783 reads)

remember driving to the foot of the mountain shortly after dawn and coming to a curve in the road where there was a good view of it, massive, majestic, magnificent. “We’re going to climb THAT?” I thought, “Lord save us.” But there was the parking lot, full, the big sign and the path into the woods. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people climbed it every year. Sort of a Twentieth Century pilgrimage, backpacker-style, a test of strength and nerve in a place where the world can only be admired. There wasn’t much to speak of below timberline. There as the path, well-trod, the tunnel of trees, there were flowers and birds, and people pleasant, greeting us, qu... posted on Jun 19 2023 (2,909 reads)

seem to be building dams intended to light up Las Vegas. I want to propose that everything human beings have intentionally made, every modification to our “natural habitat”, was born first in imagination. For better and worse.  The human imagination may be our greatest unacknowledged and underutilized innate capacity.   But in our era of ever-present media, our innate capacities for imagination may be suppressed by the constant bombardment of ready-made images from advertising, entertainment, news media, and political points of view. We are living amidst the greatest colonization of imagination ever known. In her poem “Rant,” Diane di Pri... posted on Jul 1 2023 (2,409 reads)

is not a beautiful cat. There is something about the way he looks at you that will set you on edge and it will take you a long time to get over this feeling. The edges of his ears are jagged, a little bit frayed. Old cat ears. He has scratches on his nose. He always has something sticking to his whiskers and there is nothing you can do about that. He would rather have cat litter stuck to his face than let you near him with a tissue.  Idly is not exactly dirty but he is by no means clean. His paws are a mess, suspicious dark substances cake the spaces beneath his claws. When he yawns, his breath is hot and terrible. He drools constantly. One day, a single yellow tooth falls o... posted on Jul 19 2023 (5,321 reads)

We are lifting up from the bottom, not kind of top-down super power. So Kristen is on, but before we segue over to live questions from the listeners and the viewers, I am wondering if we might play just maybe two minutes of the video for sacred healing. Just to take people more into a visual and direct experience of your ten-year journey in healing and exploring these questions. Also, I know some people are calling in, the music will transport you into a state that is kind of beyond images and, it is, Alyssa's beautiful voice, that is on the video so thank you. Lisa: And it's Karen playing the piano. Music plays Humble yourself in the eyes of the mother, You gott... posted on Aug 28 2023 (3,547 reads)

Sides Now”, I certainly appreciated the diverse emotional moods of different formations, some light and fluffy while others dark and stormy. Some clouds evoked a sense of letting go while others appeared to be bottling up strong emotions inside. It wasn’t until after we returned home to Maryland that I appreciated the irony of focusing my heavy camera on airy mountain clouds while trudging along those steep trails to our purely self-imposed destination. As I viewed the images that I had made, I thought back to those hikes and wondered, were the clouds gently bemused by my continuous striving against gravity as I scrambled over and around the rocks that impeded my fo... posted on May 9 2024 (352 reads)

are worth solving.” Age-diverse workplace friendships can also strengthen work performance by building social capital and defusing generational conflict. Connecting with older colleagues can reduce ageism. Research suggests that frequent intergenerational contact can reduce age biases. “The more contact young people have with older adults, the less anxious they are about their own aging, and the less ageist they are,” notes one study. Some research finds that positive images of people on television and in the movies, media, and advertising can do the same. Both types of contact—the real-life ones and the ones we absorb through media—can shift stereotype... posted on Jun 18 2024 (2,049 reads)

that my whole life, lived and as yet unlived, was spread out for examination, that my life was being read like a book, weighed like a stone in the palm of a hand. I saw that everything counted—or, everything real, every tear, all our suffering. That I didn’t “believe” in any of this—that I was too cool, too skeptical, too educated to be dazzled by experiences that were clearly, had to be, subjective, that I would never resort to hackneyed religious metaphors, and images like weighing and reading—that also didn’t count. My opinions about what I believed or didn’t believe, what I was capable of or not capable of, were just smoke to be brushed a... posted on Jul 3 2024 (3,801 reads)

has offered much hope to the world throughout history. The birthplace of the Buddha himself, it has since been a place of global pilgrimage for people from all walks of life, searching for inner peace and enlightenment. However, despite a promising history, within its own borders civil conflict has been rife. The country suffers from severe poverty and economic insecurity, and has clearly been in need of a breath of fresh air, a breeze of hope, and a path towards prosperity for some time. Cue Sushil Koirala who describes himself as one of the world's biggest dreamers says he is driven by daring ambitions and a deep passion to create a more just and peaceful society, not only for ... posted on Apr 23 2011 (8,605 reads)

many, cheap flights overseas are a guilty pleasure. Aircraft currently produce 4% of Europe’s CO2 emissions and recent research by Jeff Gazzard, of the Aviation Environment Federation, has found that aircraft emissions have up to 2.7 times more impact on the air than ground emissions due to the delicate nature of the upper atmosphere. SCOTLAND - When planes were grounded across Europe last spring, due to the ash cloud from Iceland’s volcanic eruption, people were looking for alternative routes home over land and sea. During this period, Tom and Lorraine McMillan witnessed a 700% increase in visits to their website. Although visitor levels normalised after the cloud passed,... posted on May 29 2011 (7,255 reads)

interview of Jacob Needleman with Steve Heilig: Listen (mp3):     (Click the play button above to start the audio recording.)   Jacob Needleman is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and the author of many books, including The American Soul, The Wisdom of Love, Time and the Soul, The Heart of Philosophy, Lost Christianity, and Money and The Meaning of Life. In addition to his teaching and writing, he serves as a consultant in the fields of psychology, educat... posted on Apr 28 2011 (12,514 reads)

2008, an interviewer admitted to Alfie Kohn that she considers herself a competitive person. “As long as you acknowledge that’s a problem to be solved; it’s not a good thing about us,” he responded. “People say to me, ‘Oh I’m really a competitive person,’ not realizing that it’s as if they’re saying, ‘I have a drinking problem.” Competition, which Kohn defines as any situation where one person can succeed only when others fail, seems to be something of a state religion in the United States. But Kohn is convinced that we’ve all bought into dangerous myths about the value of competition in our personal lives, wor... posted on Sep 23 2011 (18,403 reads)

a kid, patience was not my thing. In fifth grade, when Mr. Gardner asked a question, my hand would often shoot up in enthusiasm. After giving me a few opportunities, he would try to give other students a chance. My hand, though, would remain in the air, and after some time, I'd impatiently start waving it around; at some point, that move got dubbed, "The Viral." Then, there was the time I enrolled in drumming classes. I was excited to jam, but all we were allowed to do in the first class was practice one beat over and over again. I never went back. I would've done terribly in the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. In this classic study, researchers gave children a choice bet... posted on Jul 25 2011 (40,241 reads)

billion bits of information. In an average lifetime, this is what the human brain is capable of processing; according to the famous psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "It is out of this total that everything in our life must come -- every thought, memory, feeling or action. It seems like a huge amount, but in reality it does not go that far." With any limited resource, the fact that it's in short supply can quickly create a feeling of scarcity. But it can also snap us back to attention and foster wise use. In what "Time Magazine" dubbed as one of the best commencement speeches ever, the late author, David Foster Wallace, went as far as to say that honin... posted on Aug 22 2011 (24,234 reads)

Senge - Founding Chairperson - Society for Organizational Learning Dr. Peter M. Senge is the founding chairperson of SoL and a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Senge is the author of The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. He has lectured extensively throughout the world, translating the abstract ideas of systems theory into tools for better understanding of economic and organizational change. He has worked with leaders in business, education, health care and government. The Journal of Business Strategy (September/October 1999) named Dr. Senge as one of the 24 people who had the greatest influence on bus... posted on Aug 28 2011 (11,732 reads)