When you were a child you lived in a narrow world comprised almost entirely of your parents, grandparents and perhaps an occasional aunt or uncle. That was about it. For good or ill, this narrow world shaped your existence. It determined your values, behaviors and beliefs. Whether you agreed with your parents or rebelled against them, their worldRead more
The Stages of Life
When Ramanaha Maharshi sought to explain life, he used the analogy of a movie. He described life as happening on a movie screen – fleeting, transient images that were not “real,” but gave the appearance of reality. “Reality,” he maintained, took place somewhere else. I want to expand a bit on Maharshi’s analogy. But instead of a movie,Read more
Disease
If I were to say that emotions play a role in disease, you would agree. If I said that emotions cause disease, some of you would agree. Now, If I said this to your physician, I’d get the equivalent of a blank stare. He wouldn’t deny it outright, but he could not bring himself to accept it either.Read more
Paradigms
Franciscan author Richard Rohr writes of people of various religious beliefs as frequently being in conceptual “boxes” that prevent them from seeing other’s points of view. George Bernard Shaw once described the situation as, “One religion, a thousand variations.” It isn’t just religious people who suffer from the blindness of belief. In various ways we all do. We allRead more
Standing On The Curb
by Ross Bishop There you stand. Things haven’t gone as you had hoped, so you don’t want to turn back, because that just means more of the same. Yet taking that step into the street gives you pause. It means stepping into the traffic where you might get run over. Remaining on the sidewalk is unsatisfactory, but it’sRead more