Do It For Them

It is really common for people to do things ostensibly for the people they love. Parents stay in difficult, unloving marriages in order to provide stable homes for their children. Couples stay together because they assume their children don’t know the marriage is dead or unhealthy or abusive and are better off in a two…

Masking the Overcoming

From Break Through: Why We Cant Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger “In the Greek legend, Daedalus constructs two magnificent pairs of wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son, Icarus. As father and son fly through the air together, a plowman and a shepherd below…

Overly General

Often when I see spiritual quotes or well-meaning messages such as “Success comes to those who don’t quit” I can’t help but think about lemmings and cliffs. I guess it depends on how you define success. Or that one about how God has a plan for us and everything that happens to us is part…

Comfortable with Discomfort

It’s human nature to be uncomfortable with discomfort.  It’s a signal that something is wrong and that it needs to get fixed.  The question is how to fix it.  Most people are terrible at figuring out how to fix emotional things.  We don’t have a good relationship with our emotions in the first place, we’re…

Everyone’s a Healer, Right?

Some of the common wisdom floating around out there that has dubious value is the notion that absolutely everyone is a healer for someone else. So the notion of being a healer transforms from a career with ethics, morals, best practices, and specialized skills into something casual and almost without meaning. It is well-meaning, I…

The Right Teacher/Community

The myth floating around the spiritual community is that when the student is ready a teacher will come. That teacher will be carrying the magical map to “Enlightenment,” all the supplies necessary for the student to identify and follow their path, and the key to a community who is everything their family has never been…

Avoidance in Holy Drag

An introduction to Spiritual Bypassing by Robert Masters “Spiritual bypassing, a term first coined by psychologist John Welwood in 1984, is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs.  It is much more common than we might think and, in fact, is so pervasive…

The Equinox Unfolds

I know the weather is wonky for everyone.  It’s too dry, it’s too wet, we’re all living in the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears except we haven’t found anything that’s “just right” yet. *sigh*  However, the world keeps spinning regardless of our desires and just today, just as it was officially Spring for…

Female Sins

“Oh, Hell. I’m a fan of all seven.” – Malcolm Reynolds Serenity What if the sins enumerated in the Bible weren’t universal, but instead were formulated to describe a masculine perspective?  If so then they would describe the negative aspects of men, not necessarily of women.  I’ve found this concept fascinating for decades because it…

Beware the Tar Baby

Most of the time what is necessary to get things done is to roll up your sleeves, dig in and start doing. It may not be fun or even pleasant, but the sooner it’s started the sooner it’s done and you can get on to other things. In these cases the balancing act is to…