facing the darkness
I dreamt the other night that I held in my hand a bright true blue light. At the center was a globe of white surrounded by a thin rim of gold- yellow. The light trembled and radiated in my hand. I felt its healing force and in that force was an inexhaustible, vital, irrepressible joy. We cannot bring light into the darkness unless we approach the darkness and look at it. We cannot escape our own darkness or the darkness in the world. Facing and transforming our darkness with light brings growth, liberation and, yes, joy. Our growth and our hope is to bring the light to the darkness. I mean...
Read MoreBeyond the superficial
Seems like fate now. My first work was with older adults. And I trained as a hospice volunteer in my early twenties. Later, I was hired as a mental health counselor working with elders. Initially when I started visiting people in nursing homes I was depressed. Nursing homes are a sad facsimile of home. These institutions dressed up as shabby homes are rife with tragedy, decline, loneliness, fading beauty and gathering weakness. It was a lot to carry in my heart. Still, in some cases these places hid the hidden gems of compassion and community. I like, most of us, was brainwashed by this...
Read MoreAlleviating loneliness
We live in an era of loneliness. Suicides have gone up 30% over the last 30 years. Why is this? Studies suggest we have overemphasized self-reliance and underrecognized our need to connect, to bond which is primary to every living being. Let us remember the richness we are a part of. How do alleviate loneliness? In part, the solution lies in a change in our way of thinking about the fundamentals of life. We are profoundly interconnected with one another as well as with the earth. We are not merely self-serving aggressive beings out for ourselves as the patriarchal brand of the sciences...
Read MoreGrief
Grief is a miserable experience but it is also bittersweet because it attests to the depth of our bonds and our love. When the unexpected happens we are suddenly shaken from our everyday routine, from what seems normal. We are shaken whether an event is a loss, a lost friend, a death, the end of a dream. We realize how little is out in our control. Major change is a dizzying feeling as if we are spinning in a whirlpool going down and down turning around trying to find our way in wild and crazy waters. Grief is as sharp as a stab by a sword. It is so visceral. Loss is felt in our bodies,...
Read MoreMoving toward joys
I wake up in the morning and sometimes I’m drawn in by my curiosity to watch the news. This actually is not such a good idea, so often I have the discipline to quickly turn the TV off and avoid the latest fascinating horror. Instead I go outside, even in the rain, and look at the sky and feed the birds. It’s much better for our nervous systems for our sense of connection in the world to take time to be and to use our senses to connect with our environment, to renew us and fill us up. Connection and our senses move us towards joy. I recommend the book by Charles Eisenstein The...
Read Morereclaiming all of our Being, left and right
Let’s claim or reclaim all of who we are. For thousands of years we lived closer to a way of life that revolved around relationship and being. There is a fascinating book and corresponding Tedtalk called My stroke of insight by Jill Bolte-Taylor. Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor is a neurophysiologist, an expert on the brain. She describes her catastrophic stroke that occurred in the left hemisphere of her brain. Although it’s an oversimplification, in general, the two hemispheres of our brain have distinctly different capabilities which she describes as “personalities”. Within us is...
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