From Anger to Clarity: Transforming Frustrations into Effective Actions This past week offered many in our country a true opportunity for reflection. The atmosphere felt ripe with heightened emotions. Limiting my interactions in this atmosphere felt like a smart move. The temptation to blame anyone, everyone, someone for my internal sense of rumbling emotions felt overwhelming at times. And, so I slept. I meditated. I listened to music. Fuming internally is no fun. I actually woke in the middle of the night to the smell of burning embers. It took me a minute to realize it was my own emotional stew pot simmering on a low boil. Experience offered me the comfort of knowing that this too shall pass. We have all heard the expression anger begets anger. Which leads…
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Toward Recovery
Well, here we are, the day after – time to lick our wounds, hug our neighbors and get a move on. I, for one, just put on my cowboy boots. So, here’s my question: How do we begin to move beyond the divisive politics, language and hurt so evident in our beloved country? While the standard view of reality is that events influence how we feel, the truth is, how we feel creates reality. This simple yet profound idea is the core basis of an articulated spirituality. Identity politics misses this truth in a BIG way. It is not just the angry white man — it is also the anxiety fueled elite, the cynical millennials, the frustrated yogi’s, the victimized, the lonely, the sad, the bullied, the egotists, etc. who…
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Sit, Meditate, Vote
I have been seeing quite a few posts about meditating for peace lately. Several of them encourage meditating this weekend with the hopes of influencing a positive outcome for our national elections. Frankly, I think it is a good idea. Neurology has confirmed that the individual human brain is actually hard wired to influence other people within our social circle. In fact, there is a body of scientific evidence that personal thoughts have an infectious nature. Karl Mannheim, the father of the sociology of knowledge, wrote about his sense of this phenomenon in his famous book, Ideology and Utopia. It was his belief that the social emergence of collective thoughts are a reproduction of feelings, understandings and perceptions of individuals living together in society. The ultimate chicken and egg…
