Mark Nepo: The Half Life of Angels, by Tami Simon
follows is the syndicated transcript of an Insights at the Edge podcast from SoundsTrue, with Tami Simon and Mark Nepo. You can listen to the audio version of the conversation here. Tami Simon: In this episode of Insights at the Edge, we have with us a beloved poet, storyteller, spiritual teacher, and friend, Mark Nepo. Let me tell you a little bit about Mark. He’s been called—you ready for this? — one of the finest spiritual guides of our time, and I think it’s true. In his 30s, Mark was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma, a struggle which helped to form his philosophy of “experiencing life fully while staying in relationship to an unknowab... posted on Jul 16 2023 (3,852 reads)

Bone, Breath & Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, by Don Hanlon Johnson
century has witnessed an incomprehensible savaging of flesh.  Its global and local wars, genocides, politically directed torture and famine, terrorist attacks, the selling of children and women into prostitution, and personal wanton violence to family members and street victims would be more than enough evidence for a non-terrestrial to condemn us for criminal disregard for the muscle fibers, fluids, and neural networks within which we live.  An alien visitor might not notice, however, that these painfully tangible wounds to the body politic are symptomatic manifestations of highly abstract ideas that rapidly gained a disproportionate amount of physical power.  While viol... posted on Sep 17 2023 (2,432 reads)

Relational Neuroscience & Art: A Love Story, by Mary Kay Neumann
from online blog for the Global Association of Interpersonal Neurobiology Studies (mindGAINS), August 2020   “There is so much other work that love has to do in the world….I hang out with a lot of climate activists, and there’s this profound love they have for the natural world, for the future, for justice, and that really shapes their lives and gives them tremendous meaning. And it benefits all of us that they have this, and that this motivates them because they’re acting on behalf of all of us. And we should call that love.” -Rebecca Solnit (2020) “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace&... posted on Sep 26 2023 (3,297 reads)

The Art of Paying Attention, by Wendy McNaughton
right, I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm going to say that every single one of us in this room made drawings when we were little. Yes? Yes? OK. And maybe around the age of like, four or five or something like that, you might have been drawing, and a grown-up came over and looked over your shoulder and said, "What's that?" And you said, "It's a face." And they said, "That's not really what a face looks like. This is what a face looks like." And they proceeded to draw this. Circle, two almonds for some eyes, this upside-down seven situation we have here,&... posted on Oct 21 2023 (5,377 reads)

Kintsugi: The Golden Joinery of Love, by Sue Cochrane
Sue Cochrane's website is a button that says "Click Here for Unconditional Love"- it leads to a selection of writings that offer exactly that. It isn't just the words of Sue's stories that touch the reader, but the wordless energy behind them. Sue Cochrane survived a traumatic childhood to become a pioneering family court judge. Throughout her career she strived to put the heart back into the body of the law. Her first stark cancer diagnosis came when her three adopted sons were little more than babies. In the eighteen years that followed, Sue lived and loved through a series of profoundly serious diagnoses, including Stage IV breast cancer, and a brain tumor that wa... posted on Oct 31 2023 (54,384 reads)

Telling is Listening, by Maria Popova
act of communication is an act of tremendous courage in which we give ourselves over to two parallel possibilities: the possibility of planting into another mind a seed sprouted in ours and watching it blossom into a breathtaking flower of mutual understanding; and the possibility of being wholly misunderstood, reduced to a withering weed. Candor and clarity go a long way in fertilizing the soil, but in the end there is always a degree of unpredictability in the climate of communication — even the warmest intention can be met with frost. Yet something impels us to hold these possibilities in both hands and go on surrendering to the beauty and terror of conversation, that ancient ... posted on Nov 13 2023 (3,137 reads)

How to Reboot After Disappointment at Work, by Julien C. Mirivel and Julie Allison
can bounce back better from a disappointment if we pay more attention to our internal dialogue. All of us have experienced disappointment, sadness, and setbacks at work. A few years ago, Julien served as an academic leader at a regional university for three years. He gave his full heart and soul to the role. He was on a mission to do good. At the same time, the university was undergoing a budget crisis that culminated with the global pandemic. The university had no choice but to restructure, and, when it did, Julien lost his role and returned to the faculty.  In the crucible of organizational change, Julie hit a crossroads after dedicating 15 years to building an impactful organiz... posted on Apr 3 2024 (4,027 reads)

Conversation with Peacemaking Mystic, Orland Bishop, by Berry Liberman
in New York at the age of 15 from Guyana, Orland Bishop studied medicine as a young man, enamoured of science and its mysteries. Conscious from a young age of the different layers of awareness and the construction of the ego, his life quickly steered towards spiritual inquiry and practice. Today, Orland is many things: as founder of Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation, he engages in peace work with Los Angeles gangs and he also works with social healing, youth initiation projects and research into esoteric and indigenous cosmologies. Orland cautions that the modern world is one of winners and losers. This is problematic, he says, because “Even if you win, you feel alone in t... posted on Apr 30 2024 (2,227 reads)

Inner Worlds, by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
of us lives in many different worlds. There’s the world of work, the world of our family, and our inner worlds. These worlds inside are the ones we’re most responsible for, because no one else can take care of them. So we have to learn how to make them nourishing. If they’re starved, if all we can talk to ourselves about is how miserable we are, how impoverished we are, how much we’re in danger, it spills out to our other worlds as well. So even though as we’re meditating we’re focusing inside, it’s not a selfish activity. When you learn how to develop a nourishing inner world here, you’re nourishing not only yourself in this world, but al... posted on Apr 8 2024 (3,202 reads)

Be-The-Change Corporations, by Jay Coen Gilbert
morning everyone. I want to start by paraphrasing something that Rohit said, "If you want to see us at our worst, go talk to our families." I wanted to start by acknowledging my wife Randi, who is responsible for me being here, not just by creating the space to allow me to do my work and care for our family, and having been the primary caregiver for our kids. She also carried the financial burden - when we started our first company, she was the only one of the three of us (who started the company) that actually had income. And so, to the extent that we had food on the table, it was because she was employed.While that business grew incredibly rapidly and was quite successful, there was... posted on Apr 16 2024 (1,936 reads)

How To Avoid Reaching A Boiling Point, by Robert Glazer
article was originally published on Friday Forward.My family used to live in a neighborhood where six different homes had backyards that abutted each other. Our yards joined together like a big open field, with no fences. Though the property boundaries had no physical markers, they were clearly understood by all. This was most apparent when people mowed their lawns. We never had any issue with these close quarters until a new family moved into a nearby house. This was not part of this group of homes with the shared backyard space; their house was adjacent, and their yard was separated from ours by a small, wooded area and a fence. We met these neighbors for the first time as they walk... posted on Apr 19 2024 (2,924 reads)

Luminous Darkness and Holding My Thumb, by Lucy Grace
was asked to share one story from my life when I could remember my heart really expanding. And as I looked over the course of my life, I couldn't find one thing that stood out. What I saw was, what many of you will know actually, which is deep suffering and how light is so intimately connected with the dark. It's luminous darkness. It's a deep light. And the way that our suffering breaks us open so that we may be able to receive that light. And it's not owned, right? It's not our light. It's not my light. It is the light of existence. And it's able to come through us I think, when we meet our suffering. And so I did -- I had a huge amount of suffering in my time, and, at the risk of soundi... posted on Apr 26 2024 (3,596 reads)

The Elephant Moves and We Begin to Understand the Whole, by Richard Brooks and Shisir Khanal
Note: Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, a legendary leader known as "the Gandhi of Sri Lanka," passed away last month on April 16, 2024. This article, originally published in 2009, offers a glimpse of the timeless values through which the movement that flowed through him has served millions.] In its 50 years of existence, the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement has been described as the largest nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Sri Lanka, with all the connotations such a label implies. It is also known, incompletely, as a Buddhist grassroots development program, a peace movement, a microfinance scheme, a social service and early childhood education network, and as a combination of bottom-up emp... posted on Jun 21 2024 (1,525 reads)

From Snow to Water, by Xue Devand
Introduction: Amazing grace might be the best way to describe our next friend. She's a loving mother, and a graduate of MIT. She studied Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Management Science. She had a successful career at Goldman Sachs. She's a two-time entrepreneur, whose company was listed as one of 50 most innovative companies in the world. A near-death experience, 8 years ago, changed the arc of her life. Showed us how soul force comes about, sometimes in the most unexpected ways, and turns into a blessing. She's now the co-founder of The Space Between, a venture capital fund guiding, mentoring and stewarding, massive wealth holders, inspiring them to shift their consci... posted on May 11 2024 (2,900 reads)

Four Steps to Help People Feel Listened To, by Julia Minson
18-year-old daughter announces she’s in love, dropping out of college and moving to Argentina. Your yoga-teaching brother refuses to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and is confident that fresh air is the best medicine. Your boss is hiring another white man for a leadership team already made up entirely of white men. At home, at work and in civic spaces, it’s not uncommon to have conversations that make you question the intelligence and benevolence of your fellow human beings. A natural reaction is to put forth the strongest argument for your own – clearly superior – perspective in the hope that logic and evidence will win the day. When that argument fails to have t... posted on Jun 26 2024 (3,806 reads)

A Look at the Rise of Nature Prescriptions, by Misty Pratt
wind is light today, taking a lazy brush over the teal surface of the lake. I step one foot into the water, then the other foot, bracing myself for impact. I put my arms over my head and dive, surfacing beyond the buoy line of the sandy beach. The waves are bigger the deeper I go, and occasionally I get a smack in the face and a mouthful of refreshing lake tang. Soon I’m in the center of the lake, alone with the water striders, which scoot away from me on their long and spindly legs as my hands cut through the surface of the water. My breathing settles and my thoughts fall away as I focus on the movement of my legs and arms, propelling me forward. The sun strains to break through... posted on Jul 12 2024 (1,944 reads)