It takes some discipline but I’ve discovered the home-brewed serenity possible in simply watching one’s thoughts vs. identifying with them. This is one of those recommended steps en route to awakening but is easily overlooked. Thoughts arise and disappear in an continuous flow, like rain striking a sandy beach. We have little control over these [...]

There is nothing like a spiritual crash to teach a person the meaning of the word “humility.” Indeed, I think it safe to say that a man or woman cannot reach rock bottom unless the basic concept of humility has been forgotten (or never learned in the first place). A few years ago, when I [...]

Three years ago today I lost the most lucrative job I’d ever known and hours later similarly lost the girlfriend of six years I imagined I’d one day marry. For months leading up to that day my world had been crumbling, courtesy a long and growing admixture of anxieties, outright phobias, and physical ailments. So [...]

For reasons not entirely clear to me, I’ve got an unusually large number of friends suffering from a variety of crises. One in particular is having a tough go of it with a wife who suddenly announces her desire for a divorce (she is also carrying on a secret relationship on the side via a [...]

Last night my wife and I watched “The Last Days,” a 1998 documentary about the final months of the Holocaust, when the Nazis were bullrushing Jews out of Hungary and into the gas chambers just as fast as they could (the Germans knew the war was lost but Hitler was hellbent on exterminating as many [...]