Lean Forward into the Unknown
To make art, to teach a class, to play the stock market or raise a family, you have to lean forward into the unknown. You have to use not knowing to your advantage. To the ego, this always appears as threatening, for its role in life is to call the …
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In the Spirit of Play
Let’s play. Don’t try to master this life or make yourself perfect. Just play along. For our practice is not about getting it right. If you approach your practice by trying to do it all correctly, you betray the spirit of play behind all creation. For in the mythology of …
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Opening to the New
My resolution this New Year is to stay open to the always new. Each day, each breath, each thought is a new arrival and the art of living is to remain receptive in both heart and mind. Each morning, when I wake up, I sit in silence and ready myself …
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This Longest Night
On this long night of Winter Solstice, take time to stir the embers of your heart. Each of us has traveled a long way on this earth, spinning and rotating to this farthest point away from the sun. Now is the time to begin your return. You need only feed …
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Sometimes it Takes a Whopping Silence
As I sit this morning an uncommon silence settles over me, like a six inch blanket of snow at midnight. I have just emerged from a week long Zen meditation retreat here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I joined 40 others in sitting zazen, facing the wall. The idea behind …
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Be Benevolent
Here in December, as we approach the holiday season, it is the time to amp up care and concern for others. The spirit of benevolence lies right at the heart of any humane, non-secular practice. Whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Muslim, being benevolent and extending basic kindness toward others is …
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Sleep is the Ultimate Yoga
Here at year’s end it is time to enter a big sleep known as the yoga nidra. Through this practice, we dissolve the many holding patterns that have accumulated over the course of the year and come to a place of deep rest. Sleep, we could say, is one of …
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Give Thanks
For too many days now you have been straying far and wide, rushing out to meet the needs of the world. Time now to come home, to sit by the hearth of your own inner calling and feel into all that you hold inside— the ache, the sorrow, the ambivalence, …
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Remember, Remember, Remember
Once I spoke the language of flowers, Once I understood each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of starlings, And shared a conversation with a housefly in my bed. Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets, and joined the crying …
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The Staggering Genius of the Old Reptilian Brain
In our practice we move like salamanders, tadpoles and lizards. We become amphibious creatures, sometimes gill-breathing and aquatic, at other times terrestrial lung-breathers. We stay close to the ground, move slowly, and sense vibration. For long stretches of time, we stay perfectly still, sensing the world through our skin, tongue …
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