What do you think about all day? If it is mostly about you, then you may suffer from self-centeredness. People consider self-centeredness to be a negative character trait. If you are self-centered, the first thing to do is to not beat yourself up about it. If you do, your shame will just give you another reason for negative self-preoccupation. Instead, see your self-centeredness as a symptom of an underlying angst-the felt sense that you are somehow insufficient or unsafe. An

Joy is our true nature. You need only watch children playing in the park to see our joyful essence expressed. We all have the capacity to experience peace and joy. But joy is not something to be pursued, for if you attempt to pursue joy, it will evade your grasp. Like happiness, joy is something to be accessed, not pursued. How do we access the joy of life? How do we realize joy in the midst of what often seems mundane or difficult? The answer is that we realize joy through i

Rumi said, “The breeze at dawn has no secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” Spiritual growth occurs through intentional spiritual practices. These practices enable a process greater than you to transform you. You do not necessarily grow because of your practice, but neither do you grow unless you practice. This can be difficult to grasp, for we live in a culture of doing rather than a culture of allowing. Through your growth, fear gradually fades as you experience bei

In trauma and addiction, intentional love practices and the practice of stillness are aimed at healing our habit of being. Our habit of being stems from our overall sense of ourselves before words. It is our experience of consciousness before thought. In our still Awareness, we can sense our basic attitudes towards Life. There are two principles of being that underlie health. They are reverence and respect. If we have suffered neglect or trauma, our habit of being can be dama

Healing from addiction, trauma and the suffering of life entails coming into the fullness of love. While it is in our truest nature to love, realizing our true nature requires intentional practice. Each of us has a default way of being that can be either disregarding of Life or even downright destructive. We make automatic, unconscious choices to be humane, inhumane, or neutral towards ourselves, towards others and towards all of Life. The good news is that we all have choice

We have no idea how immersed we are in our busy monkey minds until we stop for a moment to just pay attention to this moment—to this one, eternal moment, called the Now. If we pay very close attention, for example, to our breath, we experience beneath our breath the stillness of the Now. If, through meditation, we can sustain our attention to just this present, still, empty moment, we experience a separation of still Awareness from the incessant stream of thoughts our brains

It is crucial to both love and be loved. We need each other to get by. Loving and being loved fulfills our deepest human need and allows us to stay on track while navigating the challenges of living. We all need love, support, understanding, affirmation, validation, and help. Civilization would not exist were it not for the intricate matrix of an incomprehensible number of interdependencies based on loving and being loved. Loving and being loved requires some key relational s

Healing from trauma, addiction and other psychiatric illnesses is largely about healing the experience of Bare Reality. This is an experience before thought. It is the experience of existence, Pure Awareness, or Bare Consciousness, when the mind is still and silent. Many experience a sense of a connection to a loving life force. If we are spiritually vital, have a healthy brain, and are happy, bare existence is joyful. The Now is Good. There is a sense of wonder and awe at th

Some people are just plain mean, because they’re just plain mean. They lack the neural capacity for compassion and kindness. These people are sociopaths. We can only feel sadness for them. For they will never know the joy of true love. Then we can forgive them, For they didn’t choose their genes or their upbringing. Yet still hold them accountable,and protect ourselves from their attempts to harm us. For most, however, meanness comes from pain. Trauma begets meanness. We hurt