Spirituality for Living

The next emotion of failure is aggression. Yet aggression is even more villainized in peoples minds than frustration is, and ignores huge parts of how the human mind works. It’s seen as more dramatic than frustration, but it is just another part of what is a very natural aspect of how we function.
Aggression doesn’t mean [...]

If you’re proud of defying tradition, fine. Then if you don’t measure up, hell, you can defy your own tradition and go again. Don’t let the tradition rule you, you rule it. The old rites of passage were for dealing with what scared us, because honestly we are living things and whether we like it [...]

Is there ever a time not to trust? When you have to ask if you should trust, then distrust the distrust.
In my area there is terrible violence with gangs. I don’t want to be paranoid. Trust they will act on what they say.  Distrust doesn’t serve. Really distrust is the force that keeps us stuck [...]

Just learning to be ok with change can challenge some of us. This is true, it can be a challenge. But there is an old Arabic curse, “May your every wish be immediately fulfilled”.
In all of your struggling to resist change, what if you said nothing can change? You just don’t like change, so from [...]

Stoicism did have ’enlightened’ Stoics.  The goal of a Stoic was to become a Sage. A Sage was someone who sees reality clearly, and is troubled by nothing.  He is thus empowered to impart this knowledge to others, as well as always being able to take the right action.  They did in a sense have monks who engaged [...]

Conflict is not an easy thing to understand. If one can recognize that it is a matter of opinion, and that it isn’t necessary to agree. Most of the ways you get “wronged” are in fact not about you or your well being at all.
I love a good debate. I have learned it is ok to [...]

Iconoclasm is a very old spiritual and philosophical paradox. On the one hand it differs from atheism in that it does not deny the reality of truth or God, but it challenges codification of these ideas. It is on its face an opposition to any representation of the divine images, and on another it’s a [...]

Most people keep frustration at a distance in their awareness. They just try to deny the feeling and function anyway. Anyone care to tell me how well this works?

It builds. Yes, because the state is very real and sort of like fragmentation on a hard drive it can have a cumulative effect.
Not well at all [...]

In our spiritual darkness class, I like to encourage people to speak freely, but it is not a venue for bashing on anyone or criticizing how they deal with things. I will try to offer only constructive advice and will try to keep it relevant/asked for. Unlike many other spiritual groups, we do not discourage discussion [...]