Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life

http://www.youtube.com/v/nTLW-3Z_Kts&hl=en_US&fs=1

Read Full Post »

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

Matthew Fox’s book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine” is Fox’s attempt to assist men in opening their minds to a deeper understanding of the healthy masculine and to inspire them to “pursue their higher calling to reinvent the world.”

I thought I’d offer a few quotes from this book as food for thought.

“In America boys commit 86% of all adolescent suicides.”

“Global warming is also a global warning: a warning that we are not doing well as a species and as a planet. One out of four mammal species is dying out, and where are our leaders? Where are the elders? Where are the men?”

“…boys get shamed for their vulnerability at a very young age, right around Kindergarten, and that’s the time at which they really learn to hold off from expressing their feelings and experience.” (Mark Micolson)

“Many men are abused at work, some in their bodies, others in their souls.”

“There’s a difference between being a soldier and being a warrior…” If the warrior is distinct from the soldier, then there must be distinct ways by which the warrior develops his or her strength. If the warrior is the mystic in action, then let us try the following four steps on for size…

One: THE VIA POSITIVA
The Via Positiva is the way of celebrating life… This is the way of reverence, respect, and gratitude…

Two: THE VIA NEGATIVA
This way goes into the darkness, the wounds, the pain, and also the silence and solitude of existence to find what we have to learn there. It is a way of letting go and letting be, of emptying and being emptied, of moving beyond judgment and beyond control, of sinking and learning to breathe, to sit, to be still… It is the way of grieving. Without grief we cannot move on to the next stage, which is one of giving birth….

THREE: THE VIA CREATIVA
Having fallen in love with life often (via positiva) and having been emptied and learned to let go and let be numerous times (via negativa) the spiritual warrior is ready to give birth. Creativity is the weapon… of the true spiritual warrior… every warrior is an artist…

FOUR: THE VIA TRANSFORMATIVA
…Does the work I am doing pass the justice test? Does it benefit the poor and not just the powerful? Does it fill gaps between haves and have-nots or make the chasm deeper? Does it contribute to healing and empowerment of the powerless or does it merely reestablish the privileges of the few and the expense of the many?…”

Read Full Post »

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

Matthew Fox’s book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine” is Fox’s attempt to assist men in opening their minds to a deeper understanding of the healthy masculine and to inspire them to “pursue their higher calling to reinvent the world.”

I thought I’d offer a few quotes from this book as food for thought.

“In America boys commit 86% of all adolescent suicides.”

“Global warming is also a global warning: a warning that we are not doing well as a species and as a planet. One out of four mammal species is dying out, and where are our leaders? Where are the elders? Where are the men?”

“…boys get shamed for their vulnerability at a very young age, right around Kindergarten, and that’s the time at which they really learn to hold off from expressing their feelings and experience.” (Mark Micolson)

“Many men are abused at work, some in their bodies, others in their souls.”

“There’s a difference between being a soldier and being a warrior…” If the warrior is distinct from the soldier, then there must be distinct ways by which the warrior develops his or her strength. If the warrior is the mystic in action, then let us try the following four steps on for size…

One: THE VIA POSITIVA
The Via Positiva is the way of celebrating life… This is the way of reverence, respect, and gratitude…

Two: THE VIA NEGATIVA
This way goes into the darkness, the wounds, the pain, and also the silence and solitude of existence to find what we have to learn there. It is a way of letting go and letting be, of emptying and being emptied, of moving beyond judgment and beyond control, of sinking and learning to breathe, to sit, to be still… It is the way of grieving. Without grief we cannot move on to the next stage, which is one of giving birth….

THREE: THE VIA CREATIVA
Having fallen in love with life often (via positiva) and having been emptied and learned to let go and let be numerous times (via negativa) the spiritual warrior is ready to give birth. Creativity is the weapon… of the true spiritual warrior… every warrior is an artist…

FOUR: THE VIA TRANSFORMATIVA
…Does the work I am doing pass the justice test? Does it benefit the poor and not just the powerful? Does it fill gaps between haves and have-nots or make the chasm deeper? Does it contribute to healing and empowerment of the powerless or does it merely reestablish the privileges of the few and the expense of the many?…”

Read Full Post »

MPBN just made available online the program they produced that was based on my book, BirthQuake. http://video.mpbn.net/video/1474772898/
They did such a wonderful job sharing stories of transformative life events that attest to how our pain can so often create pathways to possibility.
You can watch it here

Read Full Post »

MPBN just made available online the program they produced that was based on my book, BirthQuake. http://video.mpbn.net/video/1474772898/
They did such a wonderful job sharing stories of transformative life events that attest to how our pain can so often create pathways to possibility.
You can watch it here

Read Full Post »

I was awake at dawn this morning, an all too rare event.  I was awed by what occurs each and every morning, an ordinary miracle, and I thought about David Whyte’s poem “What to Remember When Waking” from   House of Belonging  and I thought I would share it with you here…

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

There’s so much waiting for me and for you and so I invite you to go now to greet it….

Read Full Post »

I was awake at dawn this morning, an all too rare event.  I was awed by what occurs each and every morning, an ordinary miracle, and I thought about David Whyte’s poem “What to Remember When Waking” from   House of Belonging  and I thought I would share it with you here…

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

There’s so much waiting for me and for you and so I invite you to go now to greet it….

Read Full Post »

Gretchen Rubin, author of bestselling  The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun has learned a whole lot about happiness and has inspired people across the country to take the happiness challenge.  Perhaps she will inspire you…

Watch the Happiness Challenge Week One here.

Read Full Post »

Gretchen Rubin, author of bestselling  The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun has learned a whole lot about happiness and has inspired people across the country to take the happiness challenge.  Perhaps she will inspire you…

http://www.youtube.com/v/qNL34_oGWp4&hl=en_US&fs=1&

Watch the Happiness Challenge Week One here.

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZPK6hkuHsM4&hl=en_US&fs=1&

Read Full Post »

Most American adults all too often feel rushed and over extended. We’re running late, out of time, in a hurry, busy, busy, busy. Psychotherapist, teacher, author, and Buddhist, Tara Brach, points out that the chinese word for busyness also means “heart- killilng” and stresses the importance of learning to pause and bring attention to what’s happening inside of us.

Brach shares in an interview with Ken Aldelman that “We need to reconnect with the life of our bodies, to feel our hearts. That’s the sacred pause. At any time, we can take a few breaths, relax, pay attention. Most people keep speeding up to drown out their anxiety. They stay lost in thought, dissociated from the body. Being brave enough to pause entails feeling that anxiety in our bodies. But we also find some space of presence and kindness underneath it.”

Brach describes how we can experience the sacred pause in the above video. It’s well worth the eight minutes it takes to watch it, no matter how busy you are…

Read Full Post »