It feels like an increasing number of my friends are battling the blues. Having the privilege of being a confidant to many of them, I have had many occasions to reflect on what causes said blues. Reflecting with my friends, we realized that often, they become blue because they dwell on unpleasant things. We know… Read More Living Our Life to the Fullest: Choosing What to Focus our Thoughts On
Ever heard of the expression: “Jack of all trades, master of none”? It is an expression that hits a pretty resonant chord in a world moving at an ever increasing speed. Wanting to read everything, to attend everything, to fight every injustice, to back up every cause, we end up doing nothing, for the simple… Read More Jack of All Trades, No Master of Community-Building
One of the aspects of spiritual development is that of excellence, which is a challenging goal to aspire to. It is of course much easier to strive for spiritual excellence when one is part of an institution that promotes it. Let’s go for an extreme example: being chaste is a lot easier in a nunnery… Read More Striving For Excellence Without Guilt Tripping in a Morally Lax World
Yesterday’s post does not imply that I have not been writing at all. Interestingly enough, I have been writing a lot, in the context of small projects with deadlines and specific content (which of course makes me think of Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant’s fantastic post). So here are links to the six articles I wrote for The… Read More Some Completely Shameless Self Promotion
I just wrote a post about prayer for The Journey West, which should be posted sometime today. In it, I reflected about how our understanding of prayer evolves with time. And it really is incredible how the same prayer, which you have perhaps said a thousand times, suddenly looks completely different – that’s when you… Read More The Light of Truth and The Fire of Denial
I have come a long way when it comes to mantras. At first puzzled by what they were and how they were used, I became curious and starting researching them. As I read and heard about some interesting experiences both strangers and friends had had using mantras as part of their personal spiritual development, the… Read More Mantrafying Ego Management
I love music. I really do. I don’t play any instrument, and I definitely do not sing, but there is always music in my head and, when appropriate, on my laptop. I have so many songs that I purchased a pretty big external hard drive just for my music. I have hours upon hours of… Read More Music as a ladder to man’s nobility
While I had heard of Oprah’s Soul Series webcasts before, I never had taken the time to watch any of them. It mostly has to do with the fact that, when it comes to thought-provoking material, I’m more of a reader (it’s so much easier to pause and ponder while reading I find). But when… Read More ‘For an organized religion, we’re quite disorganized’: Rainn Wilson’s take on the Baha’í Faith, Spirituality and Dwight Scherute on Oprah’s Soul Series
More thoughts about it later, but until then, watch the interview here and check out his website, Soulpancake, here.
The following is part of a wonderful post from last week by fellow blogger Brian Cromer. Whatever your religious beliefs, or even if you don’t have any, this is definitely a post that will give you food for thought, as well as a potential debate starter: do we inspire pop culture, or should pop culture… Read More Setting trends rather than following them: a wonderful plea