I want to talk about sadness today. Many of us are in the sad boat, it seems.  We’re bummed. This bummed-ness feels similar to how I felt after 9/11.  It’s helplessness, hopelessness.The BP oil spill has got me in a state of hopelessness.
I was thinking, Okay, okay, BP is going to clean this up. Obama will take care of this. Okay, we’ll be okay. They’ll get out the Dawn dish soap and clean the birds.
And then I heard that this sort of thing happens in the Niger Delta every year.  …

Today, I am going to try to be more conscious about the path of compassion.

My sweetheart this morning asked me, What is the opposite of compassion?

I said, without thinking, Separation, distance, turning away.

He said, hmm.

He said it in a way that meant he was going to need to ponder it longer.

So, compassion is connection. It’s feeling what others feel. It’s living in context to others around us according to their truest self and their truest need.

The alarm went off this morning at 6:30. I turned it off.
I heard a voice say, Sit Zazen. The voice was excited. The divine had something to tell me.

Sitting Zazen is a form of meditation, where you sit on the floor and clear your mind. You try to think about nothing. You try not to think at all. When I sit Zazen, sometimes, great insight comes. Sometimes not. Sometimes I just relax into my present being.

I didn’t get up right away. I know how lucky I am to get to hear the voices of the divine directly.

I’m also a creature of habit, and lying in bed after the alarm goes off is my habit.

The voice didn’t wait.

So, bears have been showing up in my thread of consciousness.
My friend Ming was talking about bears. I was having trouble with my kidneys and she told me that bears shut down their kidneys when they hibernate and then turn them back on, in the spring.
And then this novel I was reading had a bear in it (who was a killer).
And then my friend Lilly brought me bear root (Osho root, powerful stuff)
and then Ming did a reiki session on me last night and a big brown bear was there. When …

Buying Christmas presents for teenage boys is hard. I don’t go in for the shoot-em-up games, and now that music is mostly digital, I can’t dig through their records to find out what they are listening to.
Records…I just said Records.
Luckily, I’ve been blessed with kids who like to create and who are thoughtful and sometimes contemplative.
This year, besides the zombie t-shirt and the board games, there will be vintage glass floats under the tree.
Glass Fishing Floats

From the 1840′s on, fishermen used glass floats to hold up their nets.
Sometimes a …

The Purpose of the Dark is to Understand It
When things break. When hurt happens. This dark that we experience is to know ourselves better. And from this knowledge, it’s to reach out with compassion and empathy to those also experiencing the darkness.
I’m thinking here of The Christmas Carol, and how Scrooge is separate, and then is shown the myriad experiences of others.
The dark is saying “Come closer, so that you may know me better.”
This learning sucks. IT SUCKS! IT SUCKS! IT SUCKS!
It does not feel good to sit with nothing. …

Sometimes, when working to heal a client, I come across a block that is very hard to budge.
This is what happens-
I’m directed to a chakra by Creator.
I see a problem.
It could look like thorns cutting into the heart chakra, or a dull dormant grey space where the root chakra should be, where I would expect to see vibrant red.
And I will ask “What is wrong here?”
The energetic body of the person will say, “I am ashamed.” or “I am unlovable.” or “Everything I do turns to shit.”
It will be a …

People ask this question A LOT.
“I talk to the angels, but I don’t hear anything back. How do I know they are even listening?”
This question can also be construed as
“How come you’re hearing them and I’m not?”
This is going to sound harsh…for a lot of folks, they really don’t want to hear their angels.
Because what if they get bad news?
Bad News Sucks!
So, most of us, most of the time, have our fingers in our ears, and we’re saying, “La La La La La La La!”
Unstick Those Fingers
And say, “Angel …

If God is unfathomably deep, and all-knowing and all-powerful and everywhere at once, and the ultimate leader in multitasking, does he really need angels?
No.  He doesn’t. He doesn’t need angels.
I know. I know. It’s a shocking thing to say.
Remember, we are all itty bits of God, that God has imbued with free will.
We are the Toddlers that God has set loose in the great mall of life.  We’re kicking in doors and knocking down tables and making messes of things.
And God loves that, because we are learning and because God …