“You’ve been quiet on the Internet recently. I miss your blog posts, which have provided me with a unique reality check and worthy directions to explore in my ongoing pursuit of personal betterment. I have been returning to some of your articles and videos online. Even though I’ve read or watched them before, I’m always…

“The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.” – Oscar Wilde “There seems to be a renewed interest these days in themes around the idea of expanding consciousness. You’ve included in this blog links to…

“You have given me some stepping stones that feel solid. Real. Methodical. Most importantly to me – Authentic. I guess the hardest part might be to keep ‘enthusiasm’ as you say, to not become too cynical or complacent. As I see it, complacency leads to a kind of soul death. “When you watch or read…

“Hello. I’m 21 and new to the personal development world. I’ve been checking out websites and not finding what I expected and hoped for. Between the incessant flashing ads, manipulative money-making schemes, and the same be mindful and joyful, here’s how to get everything you want bullshit, it feels like swimming in a shark tank….

“In my work with professional women, I’ve seen that happiness continually escapes them because, first, they don’t understand exactly what will make them happy. They just don’t know themselves well at all.” – Kathy Caprino, Senior Contributor to Forbes Magazine “I sometimes still get confused about my real priorities (maybe it is a lack of…

“We all can find glimpses into being pulled along by momentum from past experiences that may have temporarily demanded greater urgency from us—a highly-valued project with much at stake, an emergency that required immediate and complete attention, an opportunity with only seconds to seize it. Unquestioned purpose instantaneously replaced lesser issues and concerns, creating freedom…

“Since this summer, I keep coming back to soak in this far-reaching post (‘To Set Free’) and all of the multiverses, implications and doorways embedded within it. These realms have been part of quite a constant moving meditation this year. The exploration of this subject is both so expansive and microscopic that admittedly it’s been…

“If your view of the world is one in which profit maximisation is the king of virtues, and all things shall be held to the standard of shareholder value, then of course your artistic, imaginative, aesthetic and emotional expressions will be woefully impoverished.” – James Bridle Expanding on a theme that’s been running through these…

“If we look at moments in life when we have sensed the malleability of reality with more open possibilities than we had perceived before, they all include an unusually vibrant sensation of thankfulness. This functions retroactively, too, in how we see or hold events from our past. The genuine sensation of simple thankfulness underneath specifics,…

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” ~ Michelangelo “I find it really interesting how Fred Luskin turns forgiveness into something simple that we can all work on. “1. Becoming more grateful, which is (for me) an idea that we always should have in mind. “2. Manage the…

“The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life’s wisdom. In the salmon’s leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves ‘in our element,’ immersed in the river of life.” ~ Lynn Culbreath Noel “Yet, it’s implication and potential has also forced me to step…

“You mentioned in the comment section of a recent post that ‘I’d argue that what is often missing is not a belief in science as much as a belief in art. That is, we don’t lean into art as a means to internal or external resolution (of issues, anxiety, discontent, burnout, whatever).’ This stood out…

“A chapter in Jung’s book (Modern Man in Search of a Soul) mentions physical and psychic transformations that usually come up between the ages of 35 and 40. After this age, if I understand well, he says that people are exposed to bigger changes than before that they meet with already diminished perceptive capacities resulted…

“When a man can say of his states and actions, ‘As I am, so I act,’ he can be at one with himself… and he can accept responsibility for himself even though he struggles against it.” “…for when we come to believe that we are the mask we wear, we will have sacrificed all the…

“The subject of compassion has been a significant conversation in events over the years. Reading the chapters on compassion in your last book, ‘In the Midst of Things,’ has given me a deeper appreciation for how complex the subject is. Recently, I’ve been wrestling with understanding the differences between sympathy, empathy and compassion. I realize…

After some months of work, the new version of my blog is fully updated and running, with some new additions, links and images. This new format allows for (and encourages!) comments, including for all posts that go back to 2014. And it’s a more welcoming interface for newcomers particularly. (Please note that I am no…

I was recently sitting at a makeshift outdoor bar with picnic tables assembled in a parking lot. At a table not too far from mine were an older man and a middle-aged woman. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I did notice the man listening carefully to his friend, often in silence for three or…

The discomfort of waiting you describe is a member of the Paradox family. Waiting is not hesitating or wasting time. In the story Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, the hero mentions that he can do only three things well; waiting is one of these. It is obvious in how he engages the waiting that it is…

“With the COVID-19 pandemic causing increasing restrictions and isolation, including long-term lockdowns, I’m really struggling to find ways out of depression and a deepening sense of malaise. I’m doing my best to keep up with my exercise program, but do you have other ideas that might help during these dramatically oppressive times?” It’s a good…

“During these times of intensified anxiety and social unrest, why don’t you write more about your views on issues of national and international importance? You have a reputation for being a voice of reason, and I’d like to know how you stand on some of the larger controversies we’re facing these days, such as the…

A few persons have reminded me that it is exactly five years ago that the last Retreat in the South of France took place. That was an extended moment of remarkable harmony and interpersonal cultivation in a community of people from all over the world: from different cultures, generations, faiths, beliefs, and lifestyles. A real…

The importance of cooperation to keep balance during delicate times…

One of the themes I’ve consistently tried to incorporate into my work over the years is integration. The idea is simple yet its application is complex, especially when we look at the often outward-spiraling, separate, and often conflictual motivations and ambitions of the various schools of thought and organizations that make up this world we…

Pico Iyer on the secret of immersive travel The celebrated writer reflects on how this once-in-a-lifetime experiment of global stillness can teach us to see the world with new eyes. “It’s a relationship that has come to haunt me more and more over 46 years of travel: my capacity to be stirred is in direct…

A subject that seems appropriate these days… Image: Altamira cave painting, Spain, circa 16,500 – 12,000 BC

My appreciative thanks to everyone who responded to my last blog post. It’s encouraging to hear the perceptive insights and considerate voices of colleagues and friends. Here are portions of a few: “My original intention was to express my thanks for the seminar last month, but I first want to thank you for your recent…

“Thank you for your last post on the blog. I thought it was a beautiful idea and Christmas present. In resonance with your comments, one of my great satisfactions of 2019 was to have finally managed to read Camus’ ‘The Rebel’ entirely, a book that I kept with me since I was 18, and which…

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to…

History is full of exceptional people finding their way to their greatest contributions during unusually anguished chapters of their lives. We see this especially in the arts, where unprecedented depths and intensity of creative expression often seem to have been opened through great personal turmoil. In various spiritual traditions as well, transcendent insights are often arrived…

Oliver Sacks: The Healing Power of Gardens “All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated, engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The importance of these physiological…

In our tradition of exploring foreign words and concepts, this collection of unique Japanese words was assembled by Mari Fujimoto, a linguist and professor. In my view, all of these highlight and expand on variations of equanimity. There can be surprising benefits in looking through other cultures and traditions toward our daily lives, changing perspectives…

In recently reading an excellent passage from Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, I was reminded that the foundational wisdom that makes up current forms of personal growth and development used to be conveyed in more subtly imaginative ways. Where there are now multi-step programs, bullet-point lists with brassy keywords…

In response to requests over recent years, below are two short videos showing fundamental movement sequences I use for my own overall wellbeing maintenance and within classes, seminars and retreats I lead. The specific exercises are a mélange drawn from multiple disciplines, including Oriental martial arts, yoga, classical dance, modern Western physical training programs and…

“I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their…

  “I finally had time to really dive into your presentation of Kendrick and his work, the videos, the articles. His frankness, simplicity, humility — that’s high end stuff. Makes me think of a pearl or gem that gets so sanded down by the elements around it that it just becomes pure, all artifices worn…

“It’s pulling with the experience of going through change and accepting change; that’s the hardest thing for man, accepting change… That can draw a thin line, you know, between you having your sanity and you losing it. And this is how artists deteriorate, if you don’t catch yourself… “When we don’t have respect for ourselves,…

“In your last workshop you kept pushing the idea of boundaries, particularly self-created boundaries of ignorance and prejudice, and how to get beyond them. Your literal and figurative example of the Great Green Wall was enlightening, not only as imaginative representation but as a significant objective event in the world we live in but had…

During a recent weekend workshop attended by a full crowd of very intelligent, for the most part successful, well-educated individuals from many places around the world, I paused at a point early on to ask if anyone had heard of the Great Green Wall. To my amazement, no one in the room raised their hand. The…

Here’s a little write-up I prepared for my last workshop that we picked through in detail on Sunday and which seemed to make sense to everyone at the time (although I was also accused of being too abstract). So, perhaps this will help to recall with some clarity what we shared. In reading it again…

“Nothing is more common than to mistake the sign for the thing itself; nor is any practice more frequent than that of endeavoring to acquire the exterior mark, without once thinking to labor after the interior grace”. ~ Hannah More This is a small gesture toward celebrating the young women who go out of their…

I’d like to take a moment at the beginning of this New Year to appreciatively acknowledge my colleagues and friends who have taken the risk of staying on course with their grander sensibility of life through this past year. I’m not talking of those who implement a modicum of calculated risk as a necessary collateral…

We do not need more information, not even insight, but a new determination to sidestep rampant consumption of miscellanea, seize upon one or two intuitive illuminations and make something from them. As I see this, that’s about turning the focus away from consumption, whether that be information or anything else, and begin to draw out…

“It is up to us to devise our own rituals. I feel that ritual rises from the earth. If we slow down and listen to the land we are on, we will know what to do. Our rituals must speak to the particular ways we’ve been shaped, or misshaped, by our culture. “One of the…

By easing away from the mania that pulls on us, recalling and reconnecting with our essential spirit and callings, we regenerate our core inspiration and faith in Life and our place within it…with a purposeful eye toward facilitating evolution toward ‘More capable human beings,’ meaning grander, freer, more authentic and meaningfully effective. How do we…

“Your reflections on presence ran through many of the conversations during your last workshop and is also a continuing theme in your written works and elsewhere. Could you condense your views on this into an easily understandable, everyday definition? What’s necessary to become more present in every moment?” My personal sense of presence that I…

It is important to understand that the experience of joy and grace, as well as contentment and salvation, is not arrived at by the elimination of conflict, but through one’s precision of movement within it. Mastery of anything is, more than anything else, the transformation of work into play.

By not being fooled or dispersed by the conflict, remaining unprovoked, the force you accumulate naturally works at the foundation of the associated events. Conflict Resolution Techniques to consider: Painting by John Everett Millais

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense…

Why Do We Experience Awe? “What the science of awe suggests is that opportunities for awe surround us, and their benefits are profound.” “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.” “My colleague Jonathan Haidt and I have argued that awe is elicited especially by nature,…

Anna Deavere Smith on Discipline by Maria Popova “What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.” “Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility — both of…

“I’m just discovering your work through your website, which is a refreshingly elegant, articulate and original integration of so much, with this strangely encouraging stream of sincerity running through. You’ve got an enormous, volatile mass of ideas and flashlights pointing in various directions. Part of me isn’t quite sure what to make of it all,…

Recent discoveries in developmental psychology and other behavioral disciplines have shown that babies are born with a “first draft” of a moral mind. Among others, brain scientist, Gary Marcus, has described this moral understanding as “already defined and organized before experience.” Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, describes this first draft of the moral mind as consisting…

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” ~ Albert Einstein (Thank you, Shahar)

Welcome to my new blog, which I hope will provide compelling insights and experiences into human potential, and personal and communal development, through a wide variety of resources and angles of perception. Here’s some metaphorical imagery that was my inspiration in conceiving this blog along with my loyal friends and colleagues who’ve been so instrumental…