One way to diminish our suffering is to become conscious of when our eyes go looking for something that upsets us. Another way is to be watchful of what our imagination is up to. Just as sponges can soak up dirty water as easily as clean water, our eyes can also take in … [Read more...] about When Eyes Are Blinders of the Soul
Consciousness
How Deeper Insight Relieves Stress
As I sit at my desk writing about stress, I can feel some tension stirring in my body. Outside my home office where I write, construction workers are noisily building a new house. Work will go on next door for a few more months. No doubt I’ll feel the nuisance of the noise at … [Read more...] about How Deeper Insight Relieves Stress
The Common Ingredient in Human Misery
What do binging, hypochondria, and hoarding have in common? On the surface they appear to be unrelated. Yet all three of these behaviors have the same source in our psyche. That source—inner passivity—is an unconscious sense of identity situated in our psyche that determines, … [Read more...] about The Common Ingredient in Human Misery
The Infantile Basis of Our Fears
This post is a revised and expanded version of an earlier story, “How Inner Fear Becomes Our Worst Nightmare.” Some people like digging around in the past---geologists, historians, archeologists, and genealogists---because the past is the foundation of the present and has a … [Read more...] about The Infantile Basis of Our Fears
Cynicism: The Battle Cry of the Wimp
Cynicism is the bravado of the faint-hearted, the strut of the weak-kneed, the battle cry of a feeble voice. This negative mentality, while self-defeating for its practitioners, seems to be gathering like storm clouds in the West. Barack Obama delicately brought this dysfunction … [Read more...] about Cynicism: The Battle Cry of the Wimp