Reading Archive (Being Supportive)
Living from the Heart
Rick Jarow
When we are envious of somebody, it is because they are mirroring a place in us that does not feel abundant. After all, if you feel abundant, if you are overflowing, the symptom of abundance is that a...
Deep Inquiry: Not for the Faint of Heart
Gangaji
Authentic spiritual inquiry reveals the joy of fresh insights and revelation, just as artistic or scientific inquiry does, but if we cling to the latest insight as a thing we know, that thing grows st...
Dropping That Drug
Anthony de Mello
If we really dropped illusions for what others can give us or deprive us of, we would become alert. The consequence of not doing this is terrifying and inescapable -- we lose our capacity to love. If ...
Loving Your Enemy
Brother David Steindl-Rast
To love our enemies does not mean that we suddenly become their friends. If it is our enemies we are to love, they must remain enemies. Unless you have enemies, you cannot love them. And if you have n...
Habits Of The Heart
Parker Palmer
“Habits of the heart” (a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville) are deeply ingrained ways of seeing, being, and responding to life that involve our minds, our emotions, our self-images, o...
Emptiness And Compassion Go Hand In Hand
Norman Fischer
The word “emptiness” is a fair translation of shunyata, but it has the drawback of sounding negative, even despairing. The Chinese, searching for a word that might translate shunyata...
Who Do We Choose To Be?
Margaret Wheatley
The powerful always defend the status quo because it is the source of their power and privilege. Any change that benefits others would destroy their position. And their position is all they care about...
The Day I Learned The Value of a Smile
Maya Angelou
My paternal grandmother who raised me had a remarkable influence on how I saw the world and how I reckoned my place in it. She was the picture of dignity. She spoke softly and walked slowly, with her ...
A Newly Rich Life With Yourself
Martha Nussbaum
Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer. Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of go...
Love Is Not An Emotion
Barbara Frederickson
Love, defined as micro moments of positivity resonance, may thus be the most generative and consequential of all positive emotions. By virtue of being a single state, distributed across and reverberat...
Death Connects Us To Life
Somik Raha
Growing up with monastic teachings around the impermanence of life, I got the opportunity to apply them when my grandmother passed on, followed by my grandfather in quick succession. I told myself tha...
The Liminal Space
Heather Platt
What do you do when a friend has lost a child and you can’t ease their grief? Or when your partner loses her job and you can’t resolve it for her? Or a client has to make a big decision an...
Two Kinds Of Resistance
Rhonda Fabian
The light begins its slow return to places in the North, and today a new year begins. Some people are saying it is already “too late” – climate chaos, species loss, war, disparity...
Giving Up is Different From Letting Someone Down
Brother David Steindl-Rast
This inner gesture of letting go from moment to moment is what is so terribly difficult for us; and it can be applied to almost any area of experience. We mentioned time, for instance: there is the wh...
The Soul of Money
Lynne Twist
There comes a point where having more than we need becomes a burden. We are overcompensated, overstuffed, swimming in the excess, looking for satisfaction in more or different. We live in a world wher...