Love is what creates life, maintains life, and nurtures life. It is the magnet that holds the cosmos in place and the glue that makes relationships last. Without love, there is no life. Therefore, we seek love everywhere. Because love is the motivating factor on this planet, let us now use...
Independence allows us to choose our lives, live them however we want, decide who we marry, what kind of work we do, if we want to have children, and the religion or spiritual path we follow. Independence gives us freedom of choice. We can easily forget an equally important thing … dependence...
Joy enters my heart each time I see the world from a higher perspective than before. I can see more clearly through the eyes of my greater self. I know that finding joy is possible even in the most extreme circumstances...
For most of my adult life I’ve been asking questions of young people, “What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you see yourself ever becoming a parent?” The usual “I want to be a fireman [or a nurse] and have four kids” abruptly changed in the eighties. From then on, the answers I received came from a decided knowingness about things future...
We all instinctively understand the basic functions of feminine and masculine energies, but we may not realize that they both exist in each person. Women have become the symbols of female energy; men of male energy. As we cannot live in the world without the full range of masculine and feminine energies...
Our old ideas of parenting usually involve trying to follow some behavior standard to be a "good parent." As you learn to trust yourself and be yourself spontaneously, you may find yourself violating many of your old rules about what a good parent does...
Nurturing is not to be confused with smothering. Nurturing helps a child blossom, while smothering leads to behavioral problems. When a parent suffocates a child, the parent's objective is to control...
There are those who think karma is about blame and punishment. This sounds like old-time religion to me -- the methods and fear-based strategies designed to control simple minds and simple hearts. Karma is not like that...
While they say that "love is blind", one should not enter blindly into marriage or any committed relationship. Here are a few of the questions to consider before marriage (and even for current married relationships)...
No one gets through childhood without some degree of wounding. If we stay blind to these wounds, they have a way of unconsciously ruling us. Our inner child is the full complement of childhood feelings, needs and...
- By Alan Cohen
We can become so used to dysfunctional relationships that when we are finally presented with a healthy one, it seems foreign. Yet what is normal is often not natural. Our natural state is soul fulfillment, reflected through rewarding relationships. Anything else...
In many marriages, women grow resentful of their husbands when they are expected to work, clean, care for the children, shop, cook, do laundry, and then make love. Mothers feel the burden of expectation from their spouses to juggle too many commitments...
School was never designed to replace parents, but that is what has happened. In the past, whether the parents were farmers or shopkeepers, their children were with them throughout the workday which gave children a very real...
- By Jamie Rose
Take out your journal and write the names of two women you admire. Women who for you embody the word "goddess." For me, this first list might include Michelle Obama and Helen Mirren. If you're...
- By Sharon Astyk
The best thing we can do is offer our children a good and protected childhood that simultaneously prepares them for the future they will live in. That means we have to change how we parent...
Women as well as men often receive strong indoctrination against showing love. It’s too often viewed as a sign of weakness. I have to admit, I fell into this category when I was eighteen and newly in relationship with Joyce...
We need to acknowledge our mutual human suffering. While it is, of course, natural for human beings to talk and communicate with one another, unless we have a good excuse or reason to do so we seem to maintain our typical everyday stranger status with the entire general public surrounding us.
Do you ever wonder if you’re too much for those you love? Do you ever worry that you will burden them? Do you ever feel that your loved ones already have enough on their plate to be concerned about your upsets?
When I was twenty-seven, a woman friend became frustrated with how much love and attention I was giving my husband. I was making my relationship with him my top priority, even over career and friends. She saw my devotion as old fashioned and “unliberated.”
- By Staff
Certain rights in life are taken for granted. And in most countries, that includes maternity leave. But not in the USA, apparently. There are four countries in the world that do not offer government-mandated maternity leave, and the USA is one of them. That is an honor (NOT!) that we could do without.
- By Alan Cohen
The funny thing about love is that the more you try to organize it, the less like love it becomes. As spiritual master Meher Baba noted, "Love and coercion can never go together. Love has to spring spontaneously from within...."
Older cultures did not have the kinds of adolescent problems we are now experiencing. However, they did have to deal with typical adolescent dynamics. Even in ancient times and primitive cultures, parents wrestled with their adolescents’ moods, desires, and rebelliousness....
Can men and women really understand each other? Sometimes it seems like the wall between the sexes is impenetrable. At my annual men’s retreat last month, the difficulty understanding women became a central theme. One after another of the men shared his challenges with his female partner...