Tag: meaning
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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Logotherapy, an Approach to Suffering
The principals of Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy came out of his personal experience and observations during his time in German concentration camps during the holocaust. We need to listen to the insights that come out of such unimaginable physical and emotional pain. Wisdom that addresses the helplessness and emptiness that many feel today. Frankl’s principles were…
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The Meaning of Group Culture
We are born into a family, a community, a country and the larger group of humans inhabiting the earth. We begin with a given set of groups, each with all of their particular cultural values. The need for kinship is such a powerful force of nature that finding our way with various group cultures can…
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Suicidal Ideation and Ego Death
Suicidal ideations are ideas, ideas about killing oneself that are mixed with overwhelming emotional pain. I have talked with many people over the years concerning suicide and found it was an opportunity to examine the unexamined. In our conversations we looked at where these ideas were coming from and how they were mixed up with…
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Mindfulness and The Order of Interbeing/Tien Hien
Many people long for a spiritual practice that makes sense and is not woo woo or dogmatic. I find that many people have been very disappointed or hurt by conventional religious organizations, but yet want something to put their energy into that has meaning. Generally speaking Buddhism is not a religion but a way of…
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Anger Management, Going a Little Deeper
I would like to go a little farther with this very good explanation of anger management that was written by: Jeanne Segal, Ph.D., and Melinda Smith, M.A. http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anger_management_control_tips_techniques.htm Please read this first to get a broader picture. Segal and Smith wrote that anger is often a cover-up for other feelings. “In order to get your…
