Essence + Spirituality

We need to know about your joy. (And other conversations of fulfillment.)

We need to know about your joy. (And other conversations of fulfillment.)

We need you to tell us your good news. Tell us how deeply in love you are. Tell us how your life is rocking. How free you are these days. Tell us how wonderful your family is. We need you to light up our realities. Don’t shrink from sharing the story of your good fortune. Give us examples of well-loved living. Give us evidence of the rewards of courage, that it pays to hold out, or to go wild, or to burn prayer candles…

The real you is waiting. In here. Not out there.

The real you is waiting. In here. Not out there.

You can’t patch your Soul’s truth together with workshops, and a wardrobe, and identity choices. You’ll likely spend half of your life trying to do just that. Composing. Polishing. Packaging. Facing outward, even though it’s all inward. Eventually, you’ll stop looking out there. In the middle of the noise and the obligations it will dawn on you (maybe right now) that the real you emerges…

Why affirmations can mess you right up (and what to say to yourself instead.)

Why affirmations can mess you right up (and what to say to yourself instead.)

Contrived affirmations take you out of the present. Rather than facing what’s real, we try to plaster over the difficult truths with happy thoughts. This is false optimism and it’s damaging. It undermines our capacity to be with what is, and to access our real strength and spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity includes the capacity to acknowledge our fears while maintaining our confidence and faith…

Soul soup. (Keep this in mind when you’re falling apart.)

Soul soup. (Keep this in mind when you’re falling apart.)

There will be a time, a passage when you don’t really know who you were, or are, or can be. It’s natural, it’s divine, and it’s the chemistry of beautiful, awesome change. This passage can happen in big dramatic swells, as years of not quite knowing what you want to do; or seasons of confusion that aren’t quite depressing, but confusing enough to invite sadness in…

The positivity of pride.

The positivity of pride.

I have never met someone who is living a bold and successful life—and by successful I mean prosperous, kind, and in touch with the meaningfulness of what theyʼre doing — who has apologized for being perfectionistic, mercurial, unrelenting, or whatever their slightly controversial hallmark characteristics are…

A question for cleaning your slate.

A question for cleaning your slate.

This is a big topic. Western self-help spirituality is great at getting us to identify our patterns and ‘isms’. After enough how-to books, workshops and therapy we can honorably say, “I’m neurotic because of my mother,” or “I’m a selfish because I didn’t get enough attention as a kid.” But identifying the source of your crap is only half the journey. The other half is composting it into something radically new…