What's Happening Now
Really Listening
An advice columnist talks about how she learned to really listen, more empathy and silence, less advice and "I can match that!" stories. (Posted again due to highly relevant content!)
Let Me Have This!
Why allowing feel-good, inaccurate posting leads to loss of trust and the inability to hear uncomfortable information.
Do As I Do, Not As I Say
Remember "do as I say, not as I do?" Well, it just doesn't work. How being honest with kids helps them develop honesty, and sharing mistakes helps them grow and learn.
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Live Forever? Or Really Live Now?
This article looks at ways cutting edge people are trying to extend their lives. As I've postulated before, is that what we want, or to be really alive, right now, in this moment?
Keep Your Brain Working!
Learning at any age is like exercise for the brain.
What Gets Me Smiling
Regeneration
An incredibly powerful, and short, video about regeneration to manage water and carbon, taking the lead from the Earth as the foremost expert on how to do it.
Drone Photos
How does the world look from a drone's eye view?
Processed Foods: The Next Addiction?
How the processed food industry has profits and not health at its core.
Native American Medicine
Along the lines of "food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food" (attributed to Hippocrates), Native Americans knew how to heal with everyday herbs and foods.
Saturn's Rings
See how they shine!
Teachers, Teachers, Teachers
Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle explains Buddhist principles clearly, and offers present day interpretations of many spiritual texts. From The Power of Now, "Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you."
Alan Watts
A 1960s, self-proclaimed "spiritual entertainer," Alan Watts uses engaging and provocative analogies to describe Zen Buddhism. From Become What You Are, "You may believe you are out of Harmony with Life and its Eternal Now but you can not be. For you are Life and you exist Now … so become what you are.”
Reverend Jaganath Carrera
For an up-to-date and inclusive translation of Patanjali's Yoga Surtras, refer to Reverend Jaganath's Inside the Yoga Sutras. With another translation on the way, he offers, "The goal of Yoga is not to obtain something that is lacking. It is the realization of an already present reality. Yoga practice does not bring about Self Realization directly - Yoga removes the obstacles that obstruct its experience."
Sri Nisargaddata Maharaj
A chain-smoking gnani (self-realized) Guru from the 1960s, Maharaj encouraged practitioners to dive deep into the question, who am I? From published conversations with him in a book entitled, I Am That, "When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known, and yet, you recognize it at once as your own nature."
Abraham Hicks
As the inspiration for The Secret, the teachings of Abraham resonate regardless of the source. Far more than manifesting things, these teachings are Zen at the core - we choose our own experience A favorite quote, "Do not look for love of self, look for Love that is Self." We are, as Abraham says, liquid love; that is our True Nature and loving is our natural state of being,
Other Teachers and/or Spiritually Informed Books
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
- Epictetus, The Art of Living
- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You
- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
- Vernon Kitabu Turner, Soul Sword: The way and mind of a Zen warrior
- Nischala Joy Devi, The Secret Power of Yoga
- Eknath Easwaran, translation of, The Dhammapada
- Cheri Huber, There Is Nothing Wrong With You
- Amit Goswami, Ph.D., The Self-Aware Universe
- Any and all poems by Hafiz or Rumi