Category: Psychology and Relationships
These are very personal questions: What is spiritual to you? When and where do you feel spiritual? How do these spiritual feelings get blocked or expanded?
We can carry these questions throughout our lives. Spiritual practice aims to refine and deepen our understanding of them.
I will focus on three specific spiritual practices: psychological relationships, meditation, and psychedelic plant medicines, including cannabis.
Spiritual practice is about psychological relationships because if our spiritual practice doesn’t improve our relationships with others, what’s the point?
The practice of psychological relationships with others and with one’s inner life is a personal experience with spiritual meaning. This involves experiences of vulnerability, hurt, and confusion that teach us the depth of human love and kindness.
Spiritual practice is not only personal but also universal and objective. We need to look at our minds as they are, our human instincts as they are, and our relationship with the natural world. We are born, go through all the developmental stages, and then die. Life is both precious and painful. We cannot change most of life, but we can learn to connect with it gracefully, little by little.
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How to Care for a Blended Family, 5 Areas of Focus
Blending families is a courageous act of love and intelligence because at some point the kids need the next chapter to begin and so do Mom and Dad. There are 5 areas that need attention for the transition to go easier. Every family has their specific dynamics that can be worked with as long as…
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Histrionic Personality Disorder in Popular Media – Scarlett O’Hara
Histrionic personality disorder has been romanticized and unrealistically portrayed in the media for far too long. What should be seen as a pattern of (many times) unhealthy inner experiences and behaviors is instead portrayed as exciting, motivating, and empowering. But the truth is, histrionic disorder leads to distress and can affect one’s social and professional…
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How to Love One’s Self and Working with the Fear of Loving
The act of loving one’s self feels right. It makes sense. It is simple, “love your self”. And, it is very complicated because there are parts of ourselves that we resist acknowledging, let alone loving. Loving one’s self is a continual process of uncovering smarter and kinder ways of relating to our self, to others…
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Not My Circus Not My Monkeys – How to Not Overstep Bounds
“Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” is a polish proverb that roughly translates to “not my circus not my monkeys” in English. It refers to staying away from problems that are not our own and do not affect us. It promotes a behavior and attitude that is healthy for our state of mind and social…
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Growing a Marriage: Deepening the Emotional Conversation, part 2
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi In this article we will look at how to work with the negativity that arises within us through conversations with our partner in marriage. In the previous post, part…
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Art Therapy: How Can the Beautiful Ease Mental Disorder?
Reestablishing basic mental order through beauty is something art therapy prides itself in as a discipline. No matter how insecure and clouded a person’s mental health may be, art can help stabilize receptors, calm sensory perceptions, and induce deep thoughts about the self and the world around it. The unconscious is a dense shrubbery where…
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How to Grow a Marriage: Deepening the Emotional Conversation, part 1
If there is one thing a couple can do to grow a richer marriage it would be to deepen the emotional conversations. It takes some simple learning, a little courage and a hell of a lot of curiosity. The art of emotional conversation and the art of making love are very similar. The end…
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Gender Stereotypes and the Contradiction in the Minds of Trump Voters
Gender stereotypes are older than human civilization itself, and they don’t seem to see an end soon. But politics was among the few fields that seemed to be free of such ideas. No presidential candidate in the last decades dared to address gender stereotyping in the way Donald Trump boldly did. A surefire way to commit…
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Arya Stark and Game of Thrones; The Father/Daughter Relationship;
Arya Stark is a character with a warm heart and a calculated revenge. She symbolizes for us an emotional tension that all people experience in varying degrees. It is the tension between anger and longing. We can have longing for love, security, comfort, peace, or enlightenment. Arya longs for her father and all that encompasses.…
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Exposure Therapy: Dealing with Social Anxiety and People
What is exposure therapy? In a world where the accent falls on being connected, staying upbeat, making new friends, and socializing even when you’re not outside, some people may struggle to deal with even the slightest step out of their comfort zone. Phobias and chronic anxieties aren’t conditions to go away lightly. Fortunately, though, behavioral…
