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After a certain point, I don’t need any more me.  It’s one thing to care deeply about enhancing my relationship with myself, it’s another thing to disappear down the rabbit hole of my own mythology.  That’s why it’s so delightful to ground myself in the material world. It forces me to express fascination with something other than my own worries. It tests me to overcome my antisocial tendencies, get…

In the recovery world, addicts learn that healing is a byproduct of learning to embrace their own history.  That’s the beautiful thing about the past. We don’t have to let go of it, we only have to own it. To change our relationship with it. To look back at an outdated version of ourselves with a forgiving heart and accept that we were merely acting on what we believed…

Each of us must know when to use our voice, and know when to use our silence.  Because on one hand, silence can be a profound relief. A place of peace where we don’t have to perform or be anyone or do anything. And in a noisy, crowded, over stimulated world, that almost sounds like a luxury good. An act of useful employment.  That’s why I accept what comes…

Woody was once asked if he ever read stories about himself in the tabloids.  To which he responded, never, ever, ever.  In his younger years, perhaps, but the filmmaker said that now he scrupulously avoids any self preoccupation. His true enjoyment comes from project itself. And when it’s over, when he’s made his movie, he moves on. He never looks at the film again or reads anything about it. …

Inhibition hurts me faster than anything.  It’s the bait that can kill my spirit of right action.  And so, any time I sit down to work and a sense of hopelessness threatens to overwhelm me, I remind myself that movement is my mainstay. That as soon as I start doing what I can from where I am, taking small steps that allow me keep my equilibrium, the weight will…

It’s tempting to lay wide awake, waiting for the other shoe to fall, expecting our abundance to prove itself temporary and a lie.  Because from an evolutionary perspective, there’s this anxious part of ourselves that believes if we’re not worrying, we’re being irresponsible.  If we’re not feeling the pinch of panic at least some of the time, we’re growing complacent and setting ourselves up for risk and putting ourselves in…

When difficult emotions come pouring in, we’re told that we have three options to cope with the threat of danger.  Fight, flight or freeze.  We can fight, which might mean crying, punching, grinding our teeth or other expressions of anger.  We can flight, which might mean restless leg movement, darting eyes or physically running away.  We can freeze, which might mean holding our breath, feeling an overwhelming sense of…

I once read an interview with a comedian that forever changed the way I think about addiction.  Russell explained that drugs and alcohol were not his problem, reality was his problem. Drugs and alcohol were his solution.  That crucial distinction helped clarify my understanding around dependence in my own life. Because there isn’t a thing in this world we can’t turn into heroin.  Any process that helps us relieve intolerable realities can become an…

Julia writes in her book about prosperity and abundance: Gratitude makes us conscious that life is made of thousands of small variables, and that many of those variables are already good. And it is by counting our blessings that we begin to be able to see them, and it is by seeing them that we begin to fathom the possibility that the universe could actually intend for there to…

Faith, we’re told, is an unclassified cognitive illness disguised as a moral virtue.  It’s not a reliable guide to reality and it taints and removes our curiosity about the world.  Fair enough. In fact, when viewed through the fundamentalist lens, I would agree. Faith isn’t all that useful.  Then again, it all depends on how you understand the term.  Cameron’s book on weathering the storms in our spiritual lives makes the…