Simple truth
Live by simple truths. Be who you are…if you need clarification, ask those who know and love you to describe you. Live pursuing meaning rather cheap thrills. Joy accompanies meaning. Be with good people… we all rug off on one another. Live close to nature– in how you eat and time you spend. Natural light, beauty and awe renew and replenish body, mind and soul. Nurture relationships–with people as well as animals, a place, and, if you are intentionally on a spiritual journey, with dreams and the unseen. You will be answered when you reach out but it takes time. Know...
Read Morecheap thrills
Cheap thrills do not boost happiness in the long run. Cheap thrills tend to have a hangover affect. For most people the candy bar, extraneous shopping and other hedonistic temporary pleasures, although fine in moderation, can drain us rather enhance our joy. True Joy arises from a life lived with care… care for others, for ourselves, for the world. Joy arises from a life lived in time with our values. What do you value. What is your purpose here? Answer these questions and you are one the way towards greater meaning, less cheapening and more...
Read MoreMeaning leads to fullfillment
One of my favorite documentaries from PBS is Happy. I recommend it. This is not as simple as it may sound. There are themes that emerge. Money doesn’t do it, although minimal food and shelter allow people to be less distracted by trying to survive. Status, education and good looks dont do it either. Rather, values, soulfullness and connection, intrinsic rewards are the seeds of happiness.No one is happy all the time. We live within cycles of loss and gain and fallow times. But the foundation of a fulfilling life is meaning. The happiest people in the world cross-culturally are those...
Read MoreDive into solitude and dark
There’s not enough darkness in our lives. Not enough space for quiet, silence gestation, contemplation, or the digesting of suffering. We have frequently come to think of darkness as a place of evil or misery but another kind of darkness is full of potential, of mystery and the unknown. This sacred darkness is a place of incubation like the great universe surrounding us. Darkness is a place of creation. Inevitably, darkness reveals its other kind of light. It’s taken so long, many years but now I know the way of the underworld, the wonders of the ways of dark illumination. I have seen...
Read MoreResponsibilities gifts
The Coast Salish people had a class system based on response- ability. There were strict protocols for community life. My native friends ancestral line is from the high class people, from chiefs and medicine people. In so many ways, his cultural traditions are upside down when compared to ours. So much focus is on relationship and we-ness over individualism. I think in western culture an overemphasis on individualism has led to numerous Dis-eases. We can all benefit to turning our attention to nurturing relationships, not in a fearful codependent way but with empathy. The ability to respond...
Read MoreRenewal
Ahhh spring is here. What kind of renewal do we need in our lives? Do we need to resurrect any part of ourselves, any relationship, any experience? In this time of amazing growth, beauty and increasing light, can we take some moments to be grateful for the wisdom of nature. We get so caught up in the human world but studies show that awe and beauty, that turning our attention to the wider world gets us out of our heads and makes us happier. Can we remember to renew gratitude and wonder, the kind we embraced as children again? Can we resurrect our innocence....
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