Back on the Way

Ever feel anxious? How about lonely? Depressed? Have you been there before? Maybe you’re there now. It may bring a bit of relief to learn that anxiety, loneliness, and depression have been the dark shadow of human consciousness for thousands of years. You’re not the first, and you’re not alone. As human consciousness evolved, theContinue reading “Back on the Way”

Saved From What Isn’t Real

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.” Albert Einstein Imagine that the triangle illustrated above represents and contains all of existence. InsideContinue reading “Saved From What Isn’t Real”

All the Way Through

Treatment for anxiety will be a multi-billion dollar enterprise this year, up from previous years and expected to continue its rise for the foreseeable future. We want the inner peace of a relaxed body and calm mind, but we settle – actually we pay a lot – for feeling a little less anxious, if itContinue reading “All the Way Through”

Life in Balance

Do you know why anxiety and depression are so prevalent in our day? Why more and more drugs are being invented (or repurposed) for their treatment – with an efficacy hardly better than the placebo effect? Why, despite multi-billions of dollars spent each year on research and treatment, and on the side-effects of that treatment,Continue reading “Life in Balance”

The Wheel of Happiness

Let’s play a game. I call it The Wheel of Happiness. The background idea of my game is that the wholeness, integrity, and balance we want in our life is about coordinating our intention across four dimensions. This four-fold typology of human wholeness identifies four distinct dimensions or domains of conscious experience which require aContinue reading “The Wheel of Happiness”

Calling On Your Higher Self

You know that part of you which tends to panic, fall apart, go ballistic, or hide under the bed when things get overwhelming? Be honest, it’s there. We all have it inside us. As children it was more or less our modus operandi whenever life brought us more than we could handle. If we wereContinue reading “Calling On Your Higher Self”

Out of Depression

The most significant accomplishment for any human being is to become fully human. That may sound redundant to some, and like a downgrade to others, but those who are most in touch with the human adventure have long insisted that we are still a long way from the evolutionary ideal of our species. And they’veContinue reading “Out of Depression”

Human Progress

In The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell says that “Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us.” He read the world’s mythologies as “magnified dreams” (ibid) projecting through metaphor and fiction the inner potentialities and evolutionary adventure of the human spirit. Even if the Hero of this journey typically returnsContinue reading “Human Progress”

Practicing Wisdom

In a recent post titled Living By Wisdom I reminded my reader of five principles that humans over many thousands of years have drawn from their experience and clarified, like pure gold from the dross of daily life, into a perennial tradition of deep insights into the nature of reality, authentic self, and genuine community.Continue reading “Practicing Wisdom”

Are You (Truly) Happy?

We’re supposed to be pursuing happiness in this liberal democracy of ours, or at least have the right to pursue it. We don’t have to, if we’d rather not. We also have the right to be unhappy. The choice is finally ours. I think our problem is not that we don’t want to be happy,Continue reading “Are You (Truly) Happy?”