He asked, “How does it taste?” “It is very salty,” said the apprentice. After that, they took a walk heading toward a lake.

Underneath all we are taught, there is a voice that calls to us beyond what is reasonable, and in listening to that flicker of spirit, we often find deep healing. This is the voice of embodiment calling us to live our lives like sheet music played, and it often speaks to us briefly in moments of deep crisis. Sometimes it is so faint, we mistake its whisper for wind through leaves. But taking it into the heart of our pain, it can often open the paralysis of our lives. This b

“My grandmother told me, “never hide your green hair – they can see it anyway.” Angeles Arrien From the agonies of kindergarten, when we first were teased or made fun of in the midst of all of our innocence, we have all struggled in one way or another with hiding what is obvious about us. No one plans this. It is not a conspiracy, but rather an inevitable and hurtful passage from knowing only ourselves to knowing the world. The tragedy is the many of us never talk about it,

“We could never have guessed, we were already blessed, where we are….” James Taylor This reminds me of a woman who found a folded sponge all dried and compressed, and tucked inside the hardened fold was a message she’d been seeking. She carried the hardened sponge to the sea and, up to her waist in the deep, she watched it unfold and come to life in the water. Magically, the secret of life became visible in the bubbles being released from the sponge, and to her amazement, a

“The coming to consciousness is not a discovery of some new thing; it is a long and painful return to that which has alway been.” Helen Luke Each person is born with an unencumbered spot – free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists ca

Lead us from the unreal to the real.” Hindu Invocation It was a snowy night, and Robert was recalling the time two springs ago when he was determined to paint the family room. Up early, he was out the door, to the hardware store gathering the gallons of red, the wooden mixing sticks, the drop cloths, and the one-time brushes that always harden, no matter what you soak them in. He mixed the paint outside and waddled to the door with a gallon in each hand, the drop cloth under

Of all things that exist, we breathe and wake and turn it into song. There is a Buddhist precept that asks us to be mindful of how rare it is to find ourselves in human form on Earth. It is really a beautiful view of life that offers us the chance to feel enormous appreciation for the fact that we are here as individual spirits filled with consciousness, drinking water and chopping wood. It asks us to look about at the ant and the antelope, at the worm and the butterfly, at