change therapy

this is a guest post by one of my twitter friends, the barking unicorn.
“the only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well,” said alfred adler, a colleague of sigmund freud.
“most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves,” said robert [...]

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recently, i have had numerous little conversation bits on twitter about meaning and meaning making. rather than expound on my ideas here, i’d like to invite you to reflect on the questions below and/or the words of others who have thought about the topic. maybe you’ll come up with your own questions. [...]

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it’s january 15, and time to serve up this month’s buddhist carnival, a selection of posts from the buddhasphere.  here is this month’s poem:
a first kensho
when things abruptly shift
like part of the body misaligned by a sharp move
when the house goes, or the he or she,
any room at once gets a new look
and old familiar [...]

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a while ago evan asked the question how do we talk about our spiritual experience? we had a little discussion about that here.
what still remains to be done, however, is for me to actually tell you about my spiritual experiences. let me offer up two stories, and then perhaps you will contribute one of [...]

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these days i really seem to enjoy to quote from books.  here’s one i have talked about before: the priority of love: christian charity and social justice, by timothy p. jackson.  let me give you some quotes.
jackson puts the christian virtue of charity in close context of agape.  according to the stanford dictionary of [...]

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marshall rosenberg, the man known for his work in nonviolent communication, appears in the section off the cushion and into life in be the change: how meditation can transform you and the world). he works a lot in prisons.
the people there have done some stuff that i really do not like, like sexually molesting [...]

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each person can use the mantra, ‘i am loving awareness.’ just repeat this and become loving awareness. then we share that loving awareness with all others.
ram dass
“just repeat this and become …” – these words by one of my favourite writers sound so simple. and they are.  (btw, it’s another quote from [...]

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today, please visit marie at coming out of the trees.    about her blog she says
i’m passing along a collection of excerpts from my personal and therapy journals to whomever needs to read them. i’m sharing my story so that those of you who are on a similar journey can know that you aren’t the only [...]

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in november, i told you about a book i was reading, be the change: how meditation can transform you and the world by ed and deb shapiro.  in the next few days, i’d like to present you with a few more excerpts from it.  the last part of the book, entitled “transforming us transforms the [...]

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the other day i received the book be the change: how meditation can transform you and the world from the great people at FSB associates, who occasionally send me books to review. usually i spend quite a bit of time reading the book and writing a review but since i’m busy with NaNoWriMo this [...]

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middle of the month: it’s buddhist carnival time! being all busy with NaNoWriMo, this is a quickie version – a little taste from the blogosphere, a buddhist smorgasbrod:
a zen tale from secret forest
the disciple threw stones in the water all day long. the next day, the master told him:
—do throw a stone in the water.
—why, [...]

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here’s an excerpt from the novel i’m writing for national novel writing month (NaNoWriMo).  it’s raw and unedited, just the way i wrote it.  19,391 words and counting …
“next thing i can recall is a bed, the softest, most comfortable bed i’ve ever slept in. there were blankets all over, so soft and so [...]

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why not hold our blunders, failures and defects up to the light? yes! like they are gifts. god (the universe / allah / buddha nature) will take them as gifts and transform them. there is beauty in them, in strange ways, but there is beauty.
i am reminded that sometimes the word “fault” is used to [...]

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a while ago we talked about the lack of scripts for talking about mental illness (at least in “polite society”), and before that we had a conversation about how uncomfortable it can be to engage in peaceful communication.  and now evan took up the topic the other day and asked how can we talk about [...]

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in a guest post at alison’s blog writing mental illness, i discuss the idea of scriptio divina, or spiritual writing. here is a little excerpt:
i don’t think it’s possible to truly connect with ourselves and with the divine (whatever you want to call it; from the traditional christian god to the new age universe [...]

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