... a trip into Wells Gray Park
Over the past while I have been feeling a bit down. My life seems to be on a cusp of change, but I feel that I am spinning my wheels. Do you know what I mean? Have you felt like that? Old patterns are, well, they are getting old.
New vistas are drawing beautiful and powerful images in my mind, but the stress of living in a redundant mental space is wearing on me. I can feel the change but I am caught by habit.
What to do? Well, whenever I am confronted with stasis — whenever I feel stuck in a lifeless rut — I go back to basics. And what can be more basic than nature? Nature has always been my bedrock; it has balance and moves gracefully with change. Nature can stimulate us likewise to regain our own balance, and to accept change with enthusiasm and grace.
And so we went on a trip into the wisdom of nature’s beauty and power. Continue reading →
... is there really a conflict?
Does sexual desire interfere with your ability to love someone unconditionally?
For some reason, the majority of emails I receive are about relationship issues, and the concept of unconditional love. It seems that many people have difficulty loving unconditionally within a sexual relationship. Several readers have recently asked for my thoughts on reconciling the two.
Because of this confluence of concern arriving in my Inbox, I’ve decided to post one of my responses here. Perhaps it can serve as food for thought to others who question the compatibility of unconditional love with sexual relations. So here is an extract from a recent letter, and my response:
This letter (in brief) comes from Brad in New Hampshire. Continue reading →
... early morning musings
This morning I woke up wondering about good and evil. I wondered if goodness exists apart from human perception and religious concepts. I wondered the same about evil. Does evil dwell somewhere in the universe, independent of our judgment and imagination?
We use the words good and evil in pairs. Are we implying that one cannot exist without the other? If so, are we saying that the yin/yang of human perception is an absolute truth; that there is no ultimate goodness or ultimate evil; just an eternal tug-o-war? Continue reading →
... the failure of the school system
Is self education on the rise? Is it necessary for young people to educate themselves outside of the school system?
My Son’s Fiance, just sent me a link to an article her Sister wrote in collaboration with a couple of her journalism classmates. Their story, MakerCulture: Edupunks of the world unite!, is all about the growing trend to self education.
“The word is EduPunk and it sums up the need for educational reform — reform that, to some extent, has already begun.” “What does that mean? It means people are coming up with their own ways of educating themselves. Ways that don’t include conventional tools, but rather new devices”
Self learning, and what I perceive as a failure of the educational system, has been close to my heart since high school. I can honestly say that I largely educated myself. I took the onus upon myself because the school system as it was in my day, could not address my particular areas of interest and aptitude, early enough in the process.
High school for me then, was a boring and unnecessarily long-winded preamble. I got so fed up with it that I quit 3 months prior to graduation. Continue reading →
...I learned as a child
Life is… let me think a minute… alright then, here’s a picture for you: life is a ball of tangled elastic bands with something really special buried deep inside. The lure is to find the hidden treasure.
Life is like that; full of intriguing discoveries. Like those cereal boxes when I was a kid with the baking-soda-powered toy SUBMARINE–FREE INSIDE. It was a hook, and who could resist?
Back to the ball of elastic bands though: when I was a small boy I wondered why golf balls bounced so high. My Dad was a golfer, so I took one of his golf balls and dissected it to find out why. I was exhilarated as I cut through the casing; like I was splitting the atom or something. What would happen? Would it explode in my face? The energy of that ball had to be locked in there somewhere, and I was about to release it.
Continue reading →
