Growing up, there was a part of me that wanted to be what others thought I should be, and another distinct part of me that did not. I’m sure people had some idea of what they wanted me to be (we all have expectations). Inevitably, I would shake off those expectations and pressures and do something else. All of us have that intractable energy inside us to some degree. It’s the life energy. It’s growth.
A good parent wants to see their child fly, even though the child is going to fly some ...
Your nervous system is perfect. It has been honed over many years to keep you safe and to help you interact with others in meaningful ways. You may think you are overly sensitive at times, but there is no such thing as being too sensitive (or too emotional). You just need to understand the task: to utilize your nervous system’s powerful precision to respond to all the stimuli you encounter in the world. You deserve the chance to figure out how you feel about everything, how everything that has ...
When you were a child, your first thought when you woke up in the morning was not about productivity – all the things you had to get done in the day. You woke up everyday with something interesting you wanted to work on – something beautiful in mind to create. When you were your most creative self, it was as if “time” and “days” didn’t exist. You were literally inside the drawing or the song or the Lego building with which you had, at the time, ...
The world can make you hard. Over time, as you consistently brace yourself against what threatens you, the rigidity calcifies in your muscles. The world is harsh and demanding, but you have also been harsh and demanding toward yourself. You have constructed a set of rules (knowingly or not), against which you are always measuring yourself (and others). That has only served to close you off to the world around and protect you from landing and lodging yourself in the world as your most authentic ...
Given a long enough timeline, you can do anything. The work must happen on the inside, which means you must slow down. That is what all this inner work is aimed at doing: giving you control over your internal experience. Meditation, then, is not just an end in itself (trying to rid yourself of thoughts). It is a practice that is fundamental to redeeming everything that has come from outside you and has become your inner experience. Once you ...
So much of our consternation and anxiety come about because we are oriented against the way life is. When you’re oriented toward always being right, it hurts real bad to be wrong. When you are oriented toward being perfect, you get defensive when it is insinuated you are not. And when you are oriented toward projecting a certain image to the world, you brace yourself against anything less being portrayed. All this fighting against the natural way of things creates anxiety. We spend a lot of ...
It’s not that I don’t believe in God. It’s that I don’t believe in your God – the one you have made in your image and that seeks to protect and preserve only the people you can tolerate, excluding the people who are not like you and do not believe like you do. God is not who you think God is. And God is not who your religion says God is. If that were so, then God would be small and containable inside your finite brain. God is not who I think God is, either. God is bigger than that.
We ...