Our commercial culture screams at us to go, go, go and buy, buy, buy as the way to happiness, but just as too many sweets will make us sick, too much stuff and a packed schedule leave us stressed, anxious, and unable to appreciate the abundance that we have.
We all desire happiness, and yet happiness seems to be just beyond our reach. However many 'how to be happy' books might appear, human beings are still largely beset by the same problems as their ancestors. The poor seek wealth, the sick yearn to be healthy, those suffering from domestic strife...
The main ways we understand and mark the occasion seem to be rather similar across the world. It’s about time with community, family, food-sharing, gift-giving and overall merry festivities.
The year 2020 has been no stranger to suffering. In the midst of a global pandemic, widespread financial hardship and violence arising from systemic racism, empathy for others’ suffering has been pushed to the front and center in U.S. society.
From our morning routines to our cultural and religious traditions, the COVID-19 pandemic has intensely highlighted our need for rituals.
On Dec. 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will cross paths in the night’s sky and for a brief moment, they will appear to shine together as one body. While planetary conjunctions like this are not everyday events, they also are not particularly rare.
When winter cold settles in across the U.S., the alleged “War on Christmas” heats up. In recent years, department store greeters and Starbucks cups have sparked furor by wishing customers “happy holidays.”
Every Christmas, a relatively small town in the Palestinian West Bank comes center stage: Bethlehem. Jesus, according to some biblical sources, was born in this town some two millennia ago.
It seems like "not having enough time" is a recurring theme... We spend our waking hours doing things on our list of "things to do" and not having (or taking) the time to do the things that would nurture our spirit and that would please us best.
Grieving is not something done to us, but rather something we do. Thus, grief demands a response from us, one other than resignation. An active process specifies choices and presumes change. More than anything, the process of grief is about transformation.
Each year, as many as 10 million people travel to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, in what is believed to be the largest Catholic pilgrimage in the Americas.
In the long-overdue discussions taking place over the legacy of slavery and racism in the United States, few appear to be addressing the relationship between religion and racism.
What is meditation? Seems like it should be an easy question, but it's like asking what is love. There are so many aspects of it, so many perspectives on it, and so many ways to experience it that meditation doesn't lend itself to being reduced to one quick answer. The best I can do is this: Meditation means ways of making the mind understand itself.
- By Tur?ya
Enlightenment does not mean everything in our lives works out. It doesn’t mean all money problems and relationship issues and health challenges suddenly disappear. What it does mean is the human drama does not block the unreasonable joy which is the play of existence.
"I am here for you. Remember, I love you always." Jackie awoke from her dream with a start. However, she could only manage to recall the last few sentences of his long message to her, but how powerful that voice felt! She wrote down as much as she could recall...
Compassion is not a thought or a sentimental feeling, but is rather a movement of the heart. Compassion is born out of lovingkindness. But we may get distracted, we forget, we get caught up in something else, or we confuse another feeling for the state of compassion.
In one memorable CNN clip, a woman insisted she would not catch the virus because she was “covered in Jesus’ blood”. Some argued that their religion conferred them immunity from COVID-19.
- By Cate Montana
“The gods have used religion to their advantage, keeping you at each other’s throats for far too long. Which is why I wanted to come back and have this discussion.” He leaned back. “Any questions?”
We may think that doing God's Will is contrary to our individual will. We might think He wants us to do something that we don't really want to do or wouldn't like doing. Maybe He wills us to change everything in our life as we know it and become selfless like a Mother Teresa. Or even worse, we could be afraid of God's Will.
Death is the great mystery of life. That is one of the reasons why the stories of those who have undergone a near-death experience (NDE) have captivated millions of people. We are curious about the afterlife, but more so, we want to know what it feels like to die.
There is much you can do to prepare yourself for the great adventure of death. But it is well to remember that you are alive, and as such, you are meant to live. Avoid the tendency to become preoccupied or obsessed with death. Keep death in perspective with other major life events.
- By Tur?ya
In our society we have confused liking with loving. We are taught when we really, really like something, we say we love it. Which means if I don’t like something, then there’s no way I can love it. This use of language distorts and limits our view, trapping us in the fallacy of love being equated to pleasure.
- By Bert Gambini
Mindfulness may not help people from “sweating the small stuff,” according to new research. The findings, which measured the cardiovascular responses of 1,001 participants during stressful performance tasks, run contrary to previous research ...