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I’m as guilty of this as anyone: living by self-imposed rules. Life is absolutely full of freedom, but we constrain ourselves by a thousand little personal traditions and requirements. We make ourselves jump through hoops which nobody else even cares about. Part of becoming a more effective, enlightened person, is the [...]

Time is…
…A river. We navigate it in our boats, having some minor ability to resist the currents but ultimately bound ever forward by the waves. Perhaps the river leads to a tranquil sea, or perhaps a violent waterfall– we’ll never know ’til we reach the end. One of the features of the [...]

A Buddhist Koan is a short tale used to nudge people closer toward Zen enlightenment. Since I really appreciate and love these witty little verses, I decided I’d share some of my favorites here. At first, I thought I’d garnish them with some detailed commentary and analysis. Then I realized, the verses [...]

Life seems to slip past, and the only real control we have is when we seize the moment and focus on the very present. All the pivotal, radical changes we make in our lives come in such times of present-moment lucidity. When we ask that very special someone that very special question, time [...]

There is a great schism dividing the personal-development movement. On the one hand there are gurus like Anthony Robbins who take a more mentalist approach, advocating all sorts of thought-based techniques like positive affirmations. On the other, there are people like Eckhart Tolle who tell us we should minimize our thoughts as much as possible, [...]

It has been said that our entire lives are just preparation for the few brief moments that really matter. Aside from those precious fleeting moments, the rest is autopilot. Days slip through our fingers like grains of sand while we act out scripts. Nor are these the scripts of an exciting play; it would be [...]

One of the authors who influenced me very greatly was Eckhart Tolle, writer of the sensational hit, The Power Of Now. In this book, Tolle dishes out insight and wisdom in such heaping quantities, it’ll shatter your reality. One thing in particular which really makes a lot of sense is his notion of The Pain [...]

How open are you? How many people really know the real you? Do your closest friends know the real you? Do you have a romantic interest who knows you deep inside? What about your family? Imagine if you had a slavemaster who forced you to go out and find friends for him. This taskmaster might [...]

I normally don’t swear these days, but when I’m fatigued or in my head, it starts coming out. I noticed this the other evening, when I was pretty tired and my mind was pretty occupied, and I was chatting with some people while waiting for my turn to speak at a meeting. Swear words started [...]

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You know how it feels when everything’s going your way, when you’re “in the zone” or “in state”? A friend and I have been sharing an ongoing dialog about how to feel that all the time. The web is full of exercises for getting in state. Like pumping your fist and shouting “YES!” or [...]