Someone did something I didn’t like. I asked him not to do it. He did it anyway. What now? Anger, frustration, accusation? What then? The emotions pass through. Though they can be accessed again and again if I dwell on the details of the argument, bringing them back over and over to life by reliving the past, the words, the perceived hurts. I can make myself into the victim anytime. When there is a disturbance in life the urge is to run away or to fix. I feel annoyed, so I wa

“Come into agreement with your life, so that you are not turning away from yourself in any way.” ~Adyashanti from his book The End of Your World We human beings are so often running away from ourselves, and yet what a ridiculous idea when we try to picture it, like a cartoon man trying to escape his shadow. There he is, relieved, standing for a brief moment at high noon at the height of summer on a blue sky day, wiping sweat from his brow. “Phew,” the thought bubble from his

“Do work for the work’s own sake.” ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj This weekend I and my husband Jeff (you can read about what we do here ) performed a kid’s concert to benefit our friends, Melanie and Dennis. They are farmers on Sunbeam Farm who suffered over $19,000 in damages during Colorado’s flooding this fall. Their entire 2013 fall harvest had to be sent to the landfill. The food was potentially contaminated by the flood waters and could not even be composted. To get ready

When you desire and fear and identify yourself with your feelings, you create sorrow and bondage. When you create with love and wisdom and remain unattached to your creations, the result is harmony.” ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That Learning not to identify with my feelings was one of the strangest things I eve tried. At first it seemed all wrong. I’d grown up with the idea that my feelings were very important, that they told me the truth about what was happening in m

There is no need to resist being fully alive in this world. I have a distinct memory from childhood. There is an argument, between my parents, between me and my parents, our whole family gets involved, yelling, gesticulating. We three children are old enough to talk back, but not old enough to get in a car and drive away. My brother whines. My sister starts to cry. I yell. And then it passes. Our weekend day continues. We are home together in our house. Dad goes back to vacuu

“You are never going to get it all together.” ~Pema Chodron, American-Buddhist nun This is one of my favorite teachings from Pema Chodron, every few months I stumble back onto it. Each time I find my way back I realize, “Ah, I’ve started trying again.” I’ve started believing in the possibility of getting it all together, getting it all done, getting my life in order, tying up all the lose ends of the moment, being “on top” of my email, workload, household chores, even my emot

I began to experiment with this is in my life by paying attention to small details of my day. If I was making the bed, a task I enjoy immensely if I pay attention when I do it, a thought might come through that said “hurry up, you’ll be late.” If I listened to that thought, or followed that thought, then all of a sudden I wasn’t just making the bed and enjoying the feel of the fabrics on my hand, or the morning light shining through the window, I was anxiously making the bed,

The path of the warrior is to find that beam of guiding light that cuts through everything else rattling around in my mind– the voices of doubt, worry, fear and clinging that try to guide my body’s every move. “Sit still long enough to let that light shine through,” I tell myself this morning. “Follow your heart,” I told my roommate last night. She is making a life decision about job and income, I laughed out loud after the words exited my lips. “That sounds so cheesy,” I sai