tat tvam asi – om shantih shantih shantih…
“It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.” -Oprah Winfrey

This was the writer’s almanac poem of the day on Tuesday of last week. I liked the imagery: stars and barns and city lights – all in one poem:
Flying at Night
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that [...]

How often are we grateful for all of ourselves? All of the magic that is us and our exquisite, unique experience in this lifetime?
I’m not known for my modesty – and can generally follow a compliment with “yeah, I know! isn’t that rad?!” – but that’s not to say that there’s a shallow aire of [...]

The gift of your presence is the best gift you can give anyone. Why not light it up and rock the hell out of it? Are you living the fullness of yourself or holding back something that we’ve all been waiting for? Let it out to play – don’t wait another precious minute. The world needs [...]

Each winter solstice is a deep time of gratitude for me. For as long as I can remember, my holiday notes were letters of thanks crafted from what I felt in my heart at the time. Here is one of them from the turn of the last century:
Words often fall short of expressing the gratitude which [...]

Perhaps this is the epitome of vajra-like clarity, from Hakuin’s Four Ways of Knowing:
“When you see something, shine through it; when you hear, shine through what you are hearing; shine through the five skandhas; shine through the six fields of sense perception—in front, behind, left and right, through seven calamities and eight disasters, become one [...]

A postcard from last fall, and a message for those in the Return of Saturn:
As I remained horzontal under layers of poofy down and heavy wool, I thought about what I learned from the icy rings of Saturn to share with a dear friend who’s found that great planet in his orbit recently. I was [...]