How To Be Alone

The sun burns your skin and you are alone. Turn toward the mountain and you are alone. Turn toward the sea and you are alone. Say, this being alone is me. Watch the seagull fly high in the sky. In that flight, remember the story of a man. Think about fear and courage and making […]

Becoming Mindful of Golden Key Memories

When we are unsure of ourselves, lost or grieving, we can get trapped in past memories. When we allow them to be through mindfulness, we find that buried in a memory is a golden key; a hidden message that can trigger a shift in consciousness for healing. I’d like to share one such memory. It […]

When The Soul Moves

We tend to distrust these feelings and avoid them at all costs because we are scared of being uprooted. We need to lose this fear. Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully Whenever I think of you my soul moves. Not just one, but very few of you and I’m open to more coming. Perhaps you know what […]

Love in The Dark Night of the Soul

“Real love always involves a transgression.” George Bataille It’s always important to start and end with love even when we’re conditioned otherwise. Like, how we deal with this strange heaviness about us. This dark night of the soul. Any experience of darkness needs to be looked at with love or else we might get lost, […]

Coping with Grief and Fear

I lost my husband in November after 25 years of marriage. I’ve joined a bereavement group on line and realize that there are so many people suffering. Grief and fear have always been part of the human experience but now with the virus, we are facing these emotions globally. I’m learning that emotions like grief […]

The Excruciating Present

Even those of us who practice meditation and a contemplative way of life are struggling in this crisis. In this moment of social isolation, we confront ourselves and our immortality. We are slowly realizing that there is no future as we know it, future does not exist. We are faced with the absolute now of […]

Managing Love and Sex While Isolated

In this post, I talk about love and sexual energy with a single woman in quarantine living in Madrid, one of the friendliest cities in the world now raging with the Corona virus. Sexual energy is an essential life force concentrated in two energy centers in our body, the Root Chakra and the Sacral Chakra. […]

Love in the Time of Social Distancing

In this time of social distancing, I’ve started experimenting with erotic writing. Sex is about procreation and love needs to survive. I think love and survival are the two things we are thinking about incessantly. My husband died in November. He was my best friend. Now, months later, the virus has the rest of the […]

If you’re wondering what mindfulness is really about

Mindfulness is really about love. Love and creativity. I know these are foolish, simple words these days, but sometimes it’s that worn out picture book in the library that speaks truth… generation after generation. When we choose the practice of mindfulness coupled with a daily, contemplative discipline like meditation, we are cultivating our capacity to […]

For Working Class, Mindfulness is a Gimmick

When I called my colleague and told him the title of my new book, he told me I had sold out. Sold out? I snapped. I’ve been unemployed for years, while you’re sitting easy in a tenured teacher position. He snickered and told me to calm down. Yesterday, they towed my ten-year-old car away after […]