Reading Archives (Author)

Be Nobody

Lama Marut

Consider this: We all know that it is in those moments when we completely lose ourselves — engrossed in a good book or movie, engaged in an all-consuming task or hobby, or immersed in our child&...

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21K reads, 16 comments

So I Believed

Lance Armstrong

"The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender?...

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4K reads

Exploring the Human Heart

Lance Armstrong

I thought I knew what fear was, until I heard the words 'You have cancer'. Real fear came with an unmistakable sensation: it was as though all my blood started flowing in the wrong direction. My pre...

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10K reads, 5 comments

From Wonder into Wonder, Existence Opens

Lao Tzu

What we look for beyond seeing And call the unseen, Listen for beyond hearing And call the unheard, Grasp for beyond reaching And call the witheld, Merge beyond understanding In a oneness Whic...

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25K reads, 5 comments

No Illusions, No Resistances

Lao Tzu

10. Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep it to the original Oneness? Can you let your body become supple as a new born child’s? Can you cleanse your inner vision until you se...

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13K reads, 4 comments

Entertainment Vs. Art

Lariv Athem

In the increasingly information-heavy times in which we live, distractions abound. The word distraction literally points back to a certain losing (dis) of control (traction). We start off with an inte...

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34K reads, 12 comments

Inclining Toward Freedom, Even Through Imperfections

Larry Yang

If we focus only on awakening, we miss most of the spiritual practice. I’m much more interested in how we practice with not awakening, with not being enlightened, because, frankly, those states ...

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16K reads, 5 comments

New Forms Of Religion

Laurence Freeman

However much the great ship of religion may be sinking, we remain spiritual in our needs and aspirations. If we see that religion has a fleet rather than a single battleship, we can see how certain ty...

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9K reads, 15 comments

Who Was That Masked Man Anyway?

Lawrence Kushner

Humility is founded on creatureliness -- I have been created to do something that only I can do, just as you have been created to accomplish something that only you can do. It is founded on the notion...

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6K reads, 8 comments

We're Voting With Our Attention

Leah Pearlman

At the base of the brainstem there is a bundle of neurons called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS acts as a kind of bouncer for the brain. Our senses take in waaaaay too information for ...

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15K reads, 12 comments

Can You Love The One Who...

Leah Pearlman

There’s one in you who’s sweet.  There’s one in you who’s mean. Can you love them both? Can you let them both be seen?   Can you love the one who tries?  A...

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50K reads, 24 comments

Technique is Unimportant

Leigh Hyams

Technique is unimportant. It takes care of itself without any help from you. Just concentrate fearlessly on whatever you and the canvas are saying to each other. Technique comes into existence from y...

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20K reads, 5 comments

How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Leonard Mlodinow

I remember, as a teenager, watching the yellow flame of the Sabbath candles dancing randomly above the white paraffin cylinders that fueled them. I was too young to think candlelight romantic, but sti...

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19K reads, 20 comments

Live Without Regrets

Les Kaye

Modern society divides life into various phases. We have childhood, youth, middle age, and old age. Our tendency is to celebrate youth and regret old age. We regret the so-called passing of youth b...

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4K reads

Leave No Trace

Les Kaye

"Zen master Dogen said that when birds fly in the sky, they leave no trace. And when fish swim in the water, they leave no trace. With this metaphor, Dogen encourages us to understand how to express s...

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7K reads

Catching Bubbles

Les Kaye

Imagine a child trying to catch a soap bubble. After playing with bubbles for a short time, the child learns their nature. He understands that they are insubstantial and gives up trying to catch t...

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4K reads

The Myth of Progress

Les Kaye

If we find ourselves discouraged by lack of spiritual progress, after several weeks, months, even years, we do not need to be concerned that our practice is somehow not working. Actually, when we beco...

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11K reads, 12 comments

Being Successful and Peaceful

Les Kaye

The incentive to be successful is one of the most powerful gifts of humanity, energizing our creativity and inspiring us to engage our activity for the benefit of others. Yet there is a paradox with...

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4K reads

Pablo Neruda's Greatest Lesson from Childhood

Lewis Hyde

Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, u...

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144K reads, 23 comments

Thinking Beyond the "Box" of Our Judgments

Linda Ellinor and Glenna Gerard

It is difficult, if not impossible, to be genuinely curious about someone’s opinion and try to reach some deeper understanding of what the person is thinking when you’ve already judged it stupid o...

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4K reads

What Eugene Taught Me

Linda Lantieri

When I first met Eugene, he had been a peer mediator for several years in his South Bronx high school.  Once, when he was asked by his teacher to think about a goal he had for himself in the futu...

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13K reads, 12 comments

Monet Refuses The Operation

Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes  around the streetlights in Paris  and what I see is an aberration  caused by old age, an affliction.  I tell you it has taken me ...

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21K reads, 8 comments

Give Your Story As An Offering

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Wait till you feel your own story like a dream, like a possibility, and then give it to the earth as an offering. Give your own story to the earth as an offering, full of meaning, full of possibilitie...

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10K reads, 8 comments

The Extraordinary In The Ordinary

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Our acceptance of the ordinary is part of our spiritual maturity and capacity to be of service. It also helps us to avoid the trap of inflation, which can easily catch us when we glimpse a world beyon...

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12K reads, 13 comments

Meaning And The Song Of The Soul

Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee

Meaning is what calls from the depths of the soul. It is the song that sings us into life. Whether we have a meaningful life depends upon whether we can hear this song, this primal music of the sac...

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23K reads, 12 comments

In The Living Present

LongFellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal...

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4K reads

Humility

Lorenz Sell

The dictionary definition of humility is “a modest or low view of one’s own importance.”  This always gave me a sense that humility was somehow related to the estimation of my c...

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9K reads, 11 comments

Sacred Mess Of Nature

Lucy Grace

A seed eventually blooms into the most beautiful flower. But first it must break down, crack open, travel through mud without any guarantees and give over to instinct and the will of existence. It doe...

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9K reads, 15 comments

Pandemic

Lynn Ungar

What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath -- the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world dif...

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36K reads, 25 comments

Taking a Stand

Lynne Twist

Over two thousand years ago, the mathematician Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and I’ll move the world.” Taking a stand is a way of living and being that draws on a place ...

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61K reads, 12 comments

Harder I Work, The More I Love

Lynne Twist

Burnout is being disconnected from Source. I don’t think it’s as related as we'd like to think, to working too long or too hard or eating pizza and Coke instead of veggies and water. A...

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19K reads, 6 comments

Sufficiency is Not Abundance

Lynne Twist

We can learn to invest the resources that flow through our lives in a new future for all of us. We can direct those resources, whether they are like a rushing torrent coming through our lives or a sma...

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34K reads, 21 comments

Money is a Lot Like Water

Lynne Twist

We’ve allowed this culture of money to shut down our heart, close off access to our soul, and drive us such that we behave in ways that undermine and erode the very center and core of our most h...

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44K reads, 34 comments

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...

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13K reads, 13 comments

The Surprising Truth of Sufficiency

Lynne Twist

We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t m...

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74K reads, 83 comments