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Making Meaning From Misery

Making Meaning From Misery

The world is crying out in pain! People are suffering! Yet, for most of us, life goes on unchanged. Suffering is inevitable, but sometimes it pushes us to the limits of our tolerance. We can’t fully wrap our minds around the brutality of the middle east, the mass killing in Maine, or the destruction of Lahaina without feeling the primal scream of outrage welling up from within. Surely God didn’t intend suffering to be such a huge part of the human condition. In a world of such beauty and possibility, it is heart-breaking that we would be subjected to waves of unspeakable suffering.

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Deep In The Grooves

Deep In The Grooves

During a Rolling Stone interview, Shania Twain conveyed a beautiful metaphor to encapsulate the period of time in our life when our personal world is amiss and we must encounter ourselves on a deeper level than ordinary awareness allows. She said, “Once I made it, it was, ‘Wow, I don’t have to worry about running out of gas until I get my next 20 bucks’, but that challenging part of life is still deep in the grooves.”

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The Emotional Twisties

The Emotional Twisties

The “twisties” is a term popularized during the Tokyo Olympics when Simone Biles pulled out of her best events because she lost her sense of balance in mid-air. After years of competing at the highest level, her rhythm was suddenly off, and she couldn’t connect her body and mind to complete skills she had mastered long ago. What followed was a wave of self-doubt, confusion, and a loss of confidence. Every time she failed to land a routine, that disconnect compounded, further eroding her self-confidence and eventually forcing her to the sidelines.

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Magic in the New Year

Magic in the New Year

Lately I’ve been thinking, where did the magic go? The thought became increasingly intrusive, spurred on by the crappy news cycle we’ve been listening to for the past two years. To help process this thought I began freewriting, which led me to recollect Herman Hesse’s book, Magister Ludi, a book of parallel lives and spiritual insight published in 1943. Following my recall of Hesse, I promptly Googled “Herman Hesse quotes” and on the first page of my search were the words, “in all beginnings lies a magic force”. That was interesting, magic occurs by just doing it. Nike had it right.

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The Fauci Dilemma

The Fauci Dilemma

My neighbor won’t wear a mask. My other neighbor won’t talk to him. If they were on an airplane together, there would be a brawl. This is what it has come to. Welcome to America.

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Post-Traumatic Growth During COVID-19

Post-Traumatic Growth During COVID-19

We’ve all heard of PTSD, but not many people are familiar with post-traumatic growth. Developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) suggests that people who endure severe psychological struggle following adversity can often see unexpected growth afterward in the form of appreciation, family bonding, reprioritization, new possibilities and spiritual enhancement. Continue Reading

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What Do You Want?

What Do You Want?

In season three of Ozark, Marty Byrde is kidnapped by a Mexican drug lord, Omar Navarro, his partner in a money-laundering scheme. Navarro doesn’t trust Marty and holds him in dimly lit cell until he can prove his trustworthiness. In several scenes Navarro asks Marty what he wants, all the while torturing him if his answers aren’t truthful enough. Of course, Marty wants to see his wife and kids again. He wants to live. But, he’s a money launderer. He loves the challenge. He loves the money. He’s in it because he is it. Finally, after taking beatings for many false answers, Marty says he wants two things; to launder money only when he says it’s safe and to turn an FBI agent who can then guarantee immunity should he get caught. This satisfies Navarro and Marty is released. You can’t watch those scenes without asking yourself the same question, what do I want? The answer has to pass the Navarro test. It must be fundamentally honest.

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Welcome to MaybeLand

Welcome to MaybeLand

When my son was little he would drive me crazy repeatedly asking “why?” It was a good way for him to learn but the never-ending game of infinite regression got old, and by the end of the day I wanted to smack him. I didn’t. My restraint paid off, and now he’s an Emergency Room doctor in Los Angeles who has created a successful path in life by never being afraid to ask “why?” Our roles have recently reversed, as I am now the one repeatedly asking him “why?” especially in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. His answer is generally the same, “maybe.” No matter how many times I ask, his answer doesn’t change because there is no certainty in MaybeLand.

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Take A Breath…

Take A Breath…

The entire world is focused on coronavirus right now, but this virus isn’t the only thing that’s contagious, so is the anxiety associated with it. As the coronavirus spreads and dominates the news cycle, you’ll probably notice yourself getting more and more anxious every time you turn on the TV. That’s because the news is contagious. You may also experience greater anxiety when you talk to anxious friends. That’s because other people’s anxiety is contagious. When your kids are anxious, you will undoubtedly feel more anxiety too. Clearly, our children’s anxiety is contagious. But most of all, anxiety is an emotion that looks to confirm itself, and when it does, it only propagates further and stronger. In other words, your own anxiety is contagious!

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Your Spirit is Bigger than That!

Your Spirit is Bigger than That!

If you’ve ever taken ayahuasca, dropped some acid, smoked peyote or ingested a few magic mushrooms, then you know the feeling of the ego shrinking away as the mind dissolves into a mystical union of oneness. These transcendent experiences send us to a dimension of love and gratitude where we don’t want or desire anything. Sometimes we can see just how petty we really are and at other times we become lost in a phantasmagoria of mystery and illusions. Specifically, ayahuasca and peyote ceremonies, ritualistic in nature, have seen a rapid increase over the past ten years as more and more people attempt to break out of the ties that bind us. At the end of the trip, however, we’re left with the knowledge that our spirit is bigger than the life we lead. We vow to live a more conscious and loving life but the vow is often transitory even though the experience remains firmly intact within us.

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