“If you can’t love everybody today, at least try not to hurt anybody.” Unknown   The first step in learning to act with love is to make a vow of no harm—of others or ourselves. This means abstaining from all addictions and getting into total recovery. It also means eliminating toxic people, places, and things from our lives. We choose to engage with life-promoting forces rather than life-destroying forces. The practice of no harm is all about managing destructive emotions. Al

Far too many of us grow into adulthood with a pervasive feeling of emptiness, borne of a lack of self-love. This may be due to physical and emotional neglect while growing up, or other childhood traumas. If we grow up emotionally or physically alone, with no close attachments to people who see us, understand us, value us, and respond helpfully to our distress, we may develop a pervasive sense of empty “Aloneness.” It is a feeling of alienation, of emotional disconnection with

We cannot decide to feel love or compassion. Nor can we decide to forgive. Authentic love, compassion, and forgiveness are not an act, they are an experience. You cannot consciously will the virtues of love, compassion, and forgiveness. They arise from beyond us and flow through us. All we can do is cultivate the conditions for love, compassion and forgiveness to arise. We do this by looking deeply, in silence and stillness, into the exact nature of the flaws and suffering of

In the United States, we live a society seduced by materialism in the pursuit of pleasure and comfort. Some of us also buy status items in order to enhance our self worth. We live in a world where preoccupation with self-gratification risks isolating us from each other, leaving us vulnerable to neglect of those with whom we share our lives. For too many, life has become about money, possessions, comfort, and pleasure. As the saying goes, “he who dies with the most toys wins.”

Growth, fulfillment, and happiness require a daily spiritual practice, along with taking care of ourselves and loving others. Unfortunately, while our culture encourages daily exercise for the body, it does not always encourage daily exercise for the spirit. With some exceptions, we are all spiritual beings, whether we are religious or are atheists. Most of us have experienced wonder, mystery, beauty, oneness, unity, and a sense of being part of something much greater than ou

The purpose of life is to both savor and nurture life. We nurture life through loving, since our loving acts enhance the wellbeing of others either directly, such as when we prepare a meal for our family, or indirectly, as when our work serves a benefit to our community. Yet loving skillfully and effectively can be challenging. It is a practice we hopefully improve upon throughout our lives. One timeless guideline for loving others that exists in all cultures and religions is

The Universe is organized chaos, thriving on ordered randomness. Randomness allows for the diversification and survival of life, but it also can be a destroyer of life, as when we find ourselves in the path of a stray bullet, or an earthquake causes a building to collapse on us if we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the whole, however, ordered randomness has allowed for the emergence and flourishing of Life on this planet, providing a net benefit to Life, albeit a

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world… as in being able to remake ourselves.” – Mahatma Gandhi “Recovery is a verb. It is work. It is a process of uncovering the truth that life is uncontrollable but we can still manage our lives.” – Shapiro Addiction can destroy us. Sadly, it does destroy many of us. Yet recovery promises the hope of a transformation of an affliction into a blessing. As Jean Church said,  “You can come out of the