So how can you help? Does that query daunt you? Does it fill you with dread at the dramatic actions required in a world falling apart to impact, in even the most minor way, the love-starved world in which we live. Take heart. Here’s a story (another true one) I love to tell my clients,… Continue Reading Love In Action: Conclusion to What is Love
Giving the Gift of Honesty, by Guest Writer Nancy Weaver
Nancy Weaver is a wonderful craftsperson currently living in Texas, and is an explorer of inner and outer worlds. I hope this insightful commentary from her gives you the same inspiration it did, me. Today I am giving myself the gift of honesty. Not that brutal judging interaction we sometimes call honesty. But unconditional love… Continue Reading Giving the Gift of Honesty, by Guest Writer Nancy Weaver
Giving Your Love, Life: The Role of Service in Making Love Real
How can I help? Ram Dass and Paul Gorman wrote a book entitled that, in 1987, with the subtitle, “Stories and Reflections on Service.” Service may not be an appealing word, but as this book, countless volunteers and innumerable true friends assert, service at its core is love in action. For the previous month, and… Continue Reading Giving Your Love, Life: The Role of Service in Making Love Real
Trauma: Help In Understanding
Imagine, if you will, standing on the very top of the highest peak of a great mountain. All around you, the most magnificent view. Yet, you find yourself only able to look down, in all directions, the precarious slope, falling away in all directions to certain death. Wouldn’t you become rigid with terror, afraid to… Continue Reading Trauma: Help In Understanding
Attachment (Pt 2): A Bridge Just Far Enough
So here’s a story, and it’s a true one, the very best kind. It’s about monkeys, baby monkeys no less, adorable and playful…and very intelligent. This makes them a good study for human babies. In the fifties, a study was done using these monkeys. First, the scientists rigged a chicken-wire “mother” with feeding apparatus. The… Continue Reading Attachment (Pt 2): A Bridge Just Far Enough
Attachment (Pt 1): Essential to Love
Attachment. If you’re Buddhist, you know this is a baaad thing. The source of all suffering, in fact. If you’re a traditional psychotherapist, or a rabid reader of self-help books, you might identify this as the driver for codependence. Also, very baaad. And if you subscribe to the American ideal of individualism, you avoid it… Continue Reading Attachment (Pt 1): Essential to Love
Valentine’s Day: Love and Sacrifice
It’s Valentine’s Day, and either you’re going on a date, staying in with your beloved (?), bemoaning the lack thereof, or oblivious. Because Valentine’s Day is for lovers, right? Wrong! Well, at least not always. Until the 14th century and Goeffrey Chaucer, it celebrated a multitude of saints and the value of sacrifice. In the… Continue Reading Valentine’s Day: Love and Sacrifice
What Defines Love, Even As It Defines Us?
Love. No emotion is as all-encompassing or as ill-defined as love. During this month, I’m going to ask for your help, in fact I would love for you to help me define love. Not only romantic love, the pink-and-red hearts-and-flowers that Valentine’s Day has become, but family love, the love of friends, and what happens… Continue Reading What Defines Love, Even As It Defines Us?
Love & Connection: An Effort to Define the Undefinable
Love. No emotion is as all-encompassing or as ill-defined as love. Not only romantic love, the pink-and-red hearts-and-flowers that Valentine’s Day has become, but family love, the love of friends, and what happens to us holistically when we’re not getting enough…of love. Let’s pause for a second. I’m going to ask you right now to,… Continue Reading Love & Connection: An Effort to Define the Undefinable
“A Little Compassion Here”: Addiction as Illness
I was going to write about relationships this month, about the value of connection, with family, friends, lovers, and ultimately the world. It’s a subject that I cherish, and work with on a daily basis. And I will get to that… but first, I must address a subject that has come up recently in the… Continue Reading “A Little Compassion Here”: Addiction as Illness