Reading Archive (Humility)
Serving Is Different From Helping And Fixing
In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might...
Helping, Fixing, Serving
Service is not the same as helping. Helping is based on inequality, it's not a relationship between equals. When you help, you use your...
His Own Eulogy
Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life's final common...
Eulogy Versus Resume Virtues
About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good....
The Act of Giving is the True Gift
In an ancient Indian epic, Arjuna, a famed warrior questions his divine charioteer, Krishna, about the noblest giver in the land....
Believers in Small Graces
There are those who search God in the quiet places -- no churches, no public displays of piety, no dramatic or flamboyant rituals. They...
The Way of the Water
We have glamorized the way of the warrior for millennia. We have identified it as the supreme test and example of courage, strength,...
Deep Inquiry: Not for the Faint of Heart
Authentic spiritual inquiry reveals the joy of fresh insights and revelation, just as artistic or scientific inquiry does, but if we...
Seven Stages Of The Ego
The first stage is the Depraved Ego (Nafs), the most primitive and common state of being, when the soul is entrapped in worldly pursuits....
Our Situation on Earth
Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing...
The Power Paradox
Life is made up of patterns. And one pattern kept appearing in scientific studies I've conducted over the past twenty years. It's...
Working With Soil, Attending To Soul
A garden tends to get inside us. If we go there to accomplish something or to get something, the garden soon becomes a burden. With...
Sincerely Enthusiastic
I wanted to laugh more, I wanted to show more loving-kindness, and I also wanted to be more enthusiastic. I knew that it wasn't nice...
Somehow I'm Always Held
In my short time on this planet, I have known great sorrow, plunged into the depths of oceanic despair, been thrown so deeply into my...
To Separate and Unify
The destruction or healing of the world hinges on which way this thought unfolds. Whether we pull things apart or put things together...
A Servant Leader
To progress, society doesn't need 'leaders' anymore. This doesn't mean that we won't have great men amidst us. I think...
Selfless Climbing versus Ego Climbing
Phaedrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the...
The Pleasure of Serving
All of nature is a yearning for service: The cloud serves, and the wind, and the furrow. Where there is a tree to plant, you be the...
True Splendor of Science
The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know...
Small Wonder
Barry Lopez writes that if we hope to succeed in the endeavor of protecting natures other than our own, "it will require that we...