Overcoming a Dysfunctional Litter
You can’t cheat an honest man. — W. C. Fields The huge variation among the modern day descendants of New Thought–collectively known as New Age spirituality–is inevitable, given that New Thought draws from so many different disciplines and philosophies. And given the human tendency to dumb things down, literalize them, and interpret them in the [...]
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are [...]
A few years ago, I heard a great quote by Penn Jillette. I don’t remember it verbatim, but the gist went like this: “Two things are always true. The first is that people always think things are getting worse. The second is that things are always getting better.” I am definitely one of those people [...]
Can you let me go to hell the way I want to? –Wild Bill Hickok, from the HBO series Deadwood I spent last week in Las Vegas, and as usual had a fabulous time playing poker, eating good food, and people watching. Vegas is where people go to be naughty (not me, of course; I [...]
The healthiest people are age-androgynous.–Robert J. Ackerman Age-androgynous. What does this mean, and why is it healthy? Being age-androgynous means that you are able to act and feel any age up to and including your current chronological age. And it is healthy because it indicates that you’re “comfortable in your own skin,” as the 12 [...]
Compromise: a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands.–from Dictionary.com In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.–Ayn Rand First off, this is not an article about politics. But politics offers a great [...]
26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up. (from Sheldon Kopp’s Eschatological Laundry List) One of my earliest posts on this blog, back in November 2007, was The Mark of Mature Thinking. The point of the post is that mature thinking is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously–freedom [...]
A Guide for the Perplexed starts out talking about maps. The first thing to know about maps is that they are, by their nature, incomplete; that is, it is impossible for a map to contain all the information about the territory they are describing. For this reason, it is very important to select good maps [...]
The reason for my sea change concerning religion and spirituality is a little book I recently read called A Guide for the Perplexed, by E. F. Schumacher. It was recommended to me by a reader who had some interesting things to say about this topic (thank you!). It is a small book, barely 140 pages, [...]
My true religion is kindness.–The Dalai Lama Have people gotten ruder, or am I just noticing it more because I’m getting older? I ask myself this question a lot, and not just about rudeness. At the risk of sounding like the old guard, of which I suppose I am rapidly becoming a member, I must [...]