Life

In Part I of this series, I wrote our mind’s creation of memories is unreliable since it has a hidden agenda.  In Part II I’ll offer reasons why we should trust memories only a little more than we do a...

I was asked if I thought individuals can block memories of traumatic events, and if not, could certain triggers cause these events to resurface. Although the question was about PTSD, I realized it had...

Knowing what destructive thoughts are is one thing. Knowing how to stop them is another. In Part I of this three-part series, I maintained one form of our insane thoughts is the creation of  “what if”...

Sometimes answers to questions come from the strangest places. For example; who would think to look at films to identify the purpose of our insane and destructive thoughts? In Part I of this three-part...

How many days has it been since you replayed a scene in your mind where you said hurtful, revealing or politically incorrect words you wish could have been taken back? Possibly you were diligent in your speech...

In Part I of Family Conflict, I presented the idea conflicts often involve looking at the present through our history. In Part II I wrote that “universal” or “enduring” truths are myths-especially when...

In Part I of Family Conflict I presented the idea conflicts often involve looking at the present through our history. There is an amazing similarity in the type of conflicts created by a health crisis and...

Passover was a dreaded holiday for me as a teenager growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was a time when my uncle, who thought of himself as a "lay Rabbi," rose at the head of the table and straightened...

THOUGHT OF THE DAY. Each day’s new violence makes people want to retreat into a 1950’s bomb shelter, or buy a home in a gated and guarded community, or hide in a shack in a remote part of the woods. Of...

THOUGHT OF THE DAY.  "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," is the title of John Lennon's 1970's hit single. The phrase, credited to Reverend Ike, a famous black radio evangelist in the 1970's, should be the...

11/07/14-I love my psychologist friends and have great respect for what they do, but too many overestimate the malleability of the mind. Until you DO something, everything is theory. When I counsel...

11/04/14  A few days ago I was running alone of a backroad in North Carolina hoping this wouldn’t be a repeat of the scene in the movie “Easy Rider,” were two country boys shoot Peter Fonda off his...

06/13/14  I think everyone has a limited ability to function well. As we age, that threshold becomes lower. Imagine this ability is a 10” pie. The more pieces taken out, the less there is for you. What...

06/11/14  I’ve just spent a week in North Carolina and was floored by the openness of the people I met. A simple question I asked a baker became a warm animated conversation about making sourdough bread and...

We move in a world created by our history and often pretend the past and present aren’t connected. A partner becomes annoyed at what we do or say, and we can’t accept the notion that their annoyance is our...

Most of us believe the world should be viewed as we see it. And when there is a discrepancy between the right way—ours—and the wrong way, we are, in the words of Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca,...

When I gave a workshop on change at a well-known retreat center, one participant told me that this was the tenth week-long workshop he attended in the past five years. “Why so many?” I...

This article was originally published in Saltwater Fly Fishing, December, 1999 Almost every trip now is a fishing trip. Whether it is a professional conference in Anaheim or a visit to see my son at his...

When Christians in the Middle Ages extolled the virtue of holy missions and heard that Crusaders killed innocent Muslims, they cried out "It's not our fault." When Brigadier-General Reginald...

In the 19th century, the hermit Patrul Rinpoche wrote, Be like a cow. Eat, defecate, and sleep. Everything else is none of your business. After almost 200 years, this easily understood philosophy of life has...