The other day when a friend asked me how I was I had the disquieting experience of hearing my response. What I heard was a well-worn repetition of a tired story

Random thoughts and dreams from a hot summer season … (Hint: the French have it right.)

First, I want to thank the many kind people who have inquired about my well-being since last month’s column. Here’s the update: I’ve tried everything from shaman to MRI and I’m still in pain, the cause of which remains a mystery; but I did discover that I have three disintegrating joints in my neck, so at least I got something for my trouble.

Being slowed down by loss or pain offers a blessing: it replaces all the details and to-do lists with a centered simplicity.

Cultivating happiness is both simple and difficult. It’s not esoteric, but it is very hard to practice on a daily basis. These simple steps will help.

Dragons are the mythological, metaphorical expression of our innermost fears; the sea they inhabit our unknown future.

The faster our technological speed, the more out of touch we become with these intangible essentials and the more impoverished we are as people and as a culture.

The winter solstice marks both an end and a beginning, a tipping point.  The power, the crisis of this moment, was keenly felt by our ancestors. 

Don’t mess with a brooding hen. There’s work being done.

The following is a cautionary tale about following your inner compass.

We store all sorts of things, tangible and intangible. We hold on to worn-out dreams and old resentments as hard and fast as old LPs and half-used cans of paint.

To resist transformation is to resist life itself. Life is change and movement, it is multiple deaths and rebirths.

“You will never have a quiet world,” George Bernard Shaw said, “until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”

If we box someone up and slap a label on them, then we are not required to challenge our preconceived notions. We stop listening, and we all lose.

We live in a worldwide web far more intricate and powerful than the one built by human technologies: it is a web of Life. Everything affects everything else.

Letting go and allowing, rather than holding fast to a dubious certainty, is the journey to something more. It is the journey that reveals what has been in you all along.

Our lives are being diverted and led away from what is most urgent and important, which is a meaningful relationship with living, breathing, animated life.

What do monkeys, the new year, and spiritual growth have to do with one another? Amazingly, quite a lot.

It’s sad to think that we need guidance in how to grieve, how to be with someone who has gone through a loss when it’s as basic as The Golden Rule: treat others as you would be treated. Simple as that sounds, we don’t do it.

For those of you who are highly sensitive to the beauty and the sorrow of all things … you are a much needed member of this world.