Category: Spiritual Practice
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?
Spiritual practice aims to refine and deepen our understanding of these questions because our intent shapes how we perceive spiritual change. We can carry these questions throughout our lives.
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 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 precious and painful. We cannot change most of life, but we can learn to connect with it gracefully.
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Bipolar Depression: How to Bring Peace and Unity to Our Soul
Many people experience periods in their lives when they just feel down and out. These moods tend to depart pretty quickly and without much (if any) recurrence. This is not the case for those who live with bipolar depression (also known as BD and, formerly, manic depression). For those with BD, daily life is often…
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Delusional Disorder: When Living the Dream Becomes a Nightmare
What comes to the mind of everyone thinking of someone who is delusional? Do we think of someone who has hallucinations or believes that they are the incarnation of a religious deity? While there are certainly cases out there in which individuals experience these symptoms, delusional disorder (DD) is far more different and complex than…
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Suicide Hotline: Psychological Treatment or Just Chit-Chat?
Anyone who is an avid Facebook user has probably seen contacts copy and paste posts with suicide hotline numbers, urging people to call if they experience suicidal thoughts. How many wondered who might be on the other end of a suicide hotline and how qualified they might be to help? What happens when you call?…
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Clearing the Must-Have List of Hoarding Disorder
For most of us, watching an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive is the closest we will ever get to actually witnessing the results of Hoarding Disorder. Hoarding Disorder goes beyond simply having a little bit too much clutter. Actually, it manifests in the form of massive and unsafe amounts of clutter as well as in…
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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: How to Defeat Your Own Bully
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a complex mental disorder that most of us have at least heard referenced in conversations or in popular culture. Those who have seen the USA crime-comedy show Monk got a glimpse into the intrusive thought patterns that tend to characterize behaviors of agoraphobic and germaphobic OCD. The truth is, OCD’s…
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Panic Disorder: Giving a Reason to Fear
Have you ever experienced a sudden surge of panic that left you fearing another attack of that magnitude? Those who have Panic Disorder (PD) are sometimes unaware that they actually have this disorder. Some even hear from doctors and loved ones that there is nothing wrong with them or that they are simply hypochondriacs. The truth…
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The Avoidant Personality Disorder and How It Can Be Helped
The avoidant personality disorder is a general avoidance of social interaction for fear of negative outcomes. It occurs in 0.5% – 1% of the general population. It can co-occur with anxiety disorders. Around 10% – 50% of people with panic disorder accompanied by agoraphobia will have avoidant personality disorder. Also, 20% – 40% of those…
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What Is Problem Solving Therapy and Who Can It Help
Stressful events are part of everyday life. For some, coping with the negative effects of these events can be difficult, whether stressors are considered large (such as the death of a loved one) or small (like making a mistake at work). Stressors can create or exacerbate psychological and physical health problems. Problem solving therapy can…
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The Meaning Behind Recurring Dreams: Why Do Dreams Keep Coming Back?
You are running on an empty street and you know someone is after you, though you can’t quite make out who this person is. Your heart is racing and every nerve in your body is tense with anticipation. You know you are seconds away from someone tapping you on the shoulder. And then you wake…
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Dreaming into the Darkness, Spiritual and Psychological Use of Dreams
Dreams “wake us up” to something within. They wake us up to a larger capacity for feeling and understanding our life and relationships. Gradually, we learn the language, customs and nature of dreams and dreaming. This is a way of approaching the great mystery of our inner life and how to evolve. “It’s just a…
