It's one of the world's oldest pieces of advice, if you can call it that: know thyself. Yet despite its longevity and embrace by virtually every philosophical and spiritual heavyweight of the past 2,500 years, few of us across time and place have made it a focus in our efforts to improve our lives, reduce [...]

For as long as self-aware humans have occupied this planet, they've been busy attempting to understand and improve themselves. In this post, we'll look at vision quests, which actually lends itself to other aspects of personal development, including meditation, mindfulness, silence, and self-inquiry. Although there is evidence vision quests have been practiced for thousands of [...]

Genuine, lasting happiness is an internal state of being. Finding it outside oneself is a fool's errand (and, unfortunately, what a majority of humans practice). This was the verdict of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose observations of people's struggles during and after World War II led him to a lifelong study of what, exactly, happiness is [...]

Ask the typical individual to describe meditation and they'll likely picture robed monks seated lotus-style in a shroud of incense smoke. Or, Lululemon-clad influencers gazing across a picturesque landscape next to their infinity pool. Or, a hall full of New Age types uniformly chanting 'ohm.' Any of these could be accurate. But if your understanding [...]

The French polymath, Blaise Pascal, said all of humankind's problems were tied to one behavioral deficit: our inability to sit quietly in a room doing nothing . What about you? How often on a given day or week do you sit in silence? If you're like most, your answer is rarely if ever. And that, [...]

Most of us are so busy living our lives - often feeling as if we can barely keep our heads above water - that there is little if any time left for contemplating what matters most: ourselves. Which is a tragedy, really, because there is a growing body of research demonstrating that self-awareness - and [...]

'It's all about consciousness.' A line from a favorite long-dead teacher that beautifully sums up the entirety of existence. I can attest to the truth of that statement. Or, more precisely, consciousness can attest to it. Consciousness writes this blog and consciousness 'reads' it. And the consciousness that reads it is either in a state [...]

It is said that as our journey inward intensifies, that which we seek - God, Truth, etc. - goes ahead of us 'straighten the crooked places.' Part of that process is to remove relationships that distract from that journey. Not so long ago that loneliness would have disturbed me. It would have become a matter [...]

In a desolate parking garage. In a lonely office chair. In a desert canyon. On a moldy mattress in the Amazon. In bed one lazy morning. Just some of the places where the whispered urgings of the soul delivered a subtle but undeniable Truth. We mistakenly label these moments coincidences, synchronicities, epiphanies, kismet. But like [...]

If we're fortunate during this thing we call life, something nudges us enough to suggest we're asleep. Not asleep in the way we're accustomed to thinking about it, but asleep in the sense that we're moving through this life utterly oblivious to what is really going on. Usually the source of this nudge is suffering, [...]