When you wake up in the morning, what is the first sensation you feel in your body? What are the first thoughts seeping into your awareness? And when you sit down to meditate or pray, and you allow the silence to settle around you, what kind of voices interrupt the…

My mother raised me, well, all four of her girls, to make our beds, to be prompt for dinner, and to do our homework before we watched TV. She ran a tight ship. While this probably doesn’t sound very remarkable, please consider the setting. My precious (late) mother was the…

Stuff I’m Thinking About Mornings set the tone for the day, no doubt about it. We are either consciously giving ourselves a push in the right direction, or we’re allowing ourselves to be pulled by the tide, getting sucked passively wherever the current takes us. No telling where we’ll end up. I have a…

Concerning meditative prayer, a young friend recently asked the question, what kind of mantra do you use when you’re spinning out into obsessive thinking? Hmmm. Maybe we should start by defining mantra. According to Merriam/Webster, a mantra is “a mystical formula of invocation or incantation,” while the Oxford dictionary adds…

When I was in my thirties, I dreamt a lot. Maybe it was because I was parenting young children, and sleep was often interrupted, giving me an opportunity to catch a glimpse of those in-between twilight moments, the seconds that exist as a transition between the conscious and the unconscious…

And It Doesn’t Have to Be “Good.” — I used to think I was a good dancer. Or a decent dancer. I’m not sure about that self-evaluation, but at least, I used to enjoy dancing, and the reflection I saw of myself in the mirror-of-my-mind. And, if I’m honest, I enjoyed my swaying silhouette in the mirror of…

Reflections posted immediately after the 2016 presidential election — This week, my country elected Donald Trump to our most powerful and respected office. Many of us have been watching to see what the fallout will be, searching news networks, scanning Facebook, and reflecting with friends and family if we feel we can be honest about where we stand. Personally…

and compulsion isn’t your friend — I was having an in-my-mind conversation with a friend who is suffering (as one does when that friend isn’t present), and the “conversation” went something like this… If you experience compulsion, isn’t it still a “program" moment whether it’s substance abuse or something else? …