May 30, 2025

From time to time, we find ourselves in changing circumstances that can completely throw us off. But in the spiritual life, we make changes so that we learn and even benefit from these situations. The changes we make are forms of adaptation to the emotional and/or physical environment. And as we know, adaptation is a vital tool for survival.

May 29, 2025

Dear God, 

Your presence never fails me. In the stillness of the morning, I enter my depths, and you are here— first in the sensation of warmth and then in the awareness that you are everything. You come from inside, outward. You are already in me and have been from the beginning. 

May 28, 2025

Someone I once knew said he likes coffee because it makes him feel creative. How could coffee make us more creative? Studies show that caffeine can remove barriers to creativity by improving concentration, enhancing focus, and increasing the ability to think divergently. But there are other ways we can remove obstacles to creativity. 

May 27, 2025

Sometimes, we hit a mental, emotional, or physical wall. But if we tap into the creative energy available, we push through the walls to unexplored territory. By enlarging our scope and perspective, our heart, body, and mind capacities increase, and we are no longer slammed. 

May 26, 2025

Many people associate creativity with femininity. Portions of our society reinforce women for being creative and discourage men from saying they are creative. Many people who identify as male, seem culturally groomed to say things like, “I leave all the decorating to my wife.” And “I wouldn’t know how to begin to paint or draw.” However, a person who identifies as female is generally encouraged by our culture, to be creative. But creativity is not owned by any one gender.

May 25, 2025

Tapping into the creative flow is easier than we think. But it takes a willingness to stop our ego’s thinking and planning and to “shush” our inner critic. And one of the best ways to do this is to doodle. We can enter the creative flow with a simple pencil and paper. We begin with the blank sheet and, with our hands, make any mark without thinking about it. This one mark sparks us to add another and then another until we are drawing. The doodles don’t have to make sense, and we do not critique whatever comes from our hands and lands on the sheet. The drawing can be shapeless or symmetrical; it can resemble a person, nature, a cartoon, or anything unrecognizable. 

May 24, 2025

As you know, writer's block is an impasse when no new ideas flow from the writer’s mind into their pens or keyboards. One writer described writer’s block this way: “Writing is like swimming in a large lake of ideas and concepts, stories, themes and metaphors. I swim in the natural flow of thoughts. In this state, I can’t write the words fast enough before they escape me. But sometimes, the flow stops, and I am at the bottom of an arid and parched lake bed. At times like these, I can’t write a thing.”

May 23, 2025

As we know, creativity is much more than artistic expression. The word "create" originated with the Latin verb "creo," which has roots in the ancient Sanskrit word "Kriti,” which means "to produce," "generate," or "make." So, creativity is a phenomenon in all areas of existence. Creativity is the capacity to originate ideas, work, or solutions through atypical thinking and doing processes. These generate new thoughts and concepts that are ultimately expressed. The ways they are expressed and applied are infinite. Now we reflect on the question: “What is the source of creativity?”

May 22, 2025

A juncture is when two or more things come together. The word is frequently used to describe a critical point when a decision must be made. This is a type of node.

May 21, 2025

From childhood, I recall the Christmas story in the Bible as it was read in church, school, and home. It was usually read from the King James Version, and a line stood out to me. It was the passage in Luke 2:6 about Mary’s giving birth to Jesus— the words that caught my attention were, “And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.” 

May 20, 2025

In the spiritual life, we sometimes reach points of confusion and cannot determine our next step. The Chinese book I Ching, a 2000-year-old “book of changes,” is used for spiritual discernment. Psychologist and philosopher Carl Jung consulted the I Ching at times of uncertainty and wrote the foreword to one of its Western publications.  

May 19, 2025

Life’s nodes are frequently turning points. We all have them, and they come in different forms. We may reach an awareness that we can never “unknow” and that changes everything. Perhaps our thoughts and ideas mature about something and we must take a different approach. Possibly, reality dawns on us unexpectedly, and we change our life direction. Maybe we reach a point of exasperation and stop pursuing something we thought we’d never give up. Perhaps we come to terms with a relationship and are now hopeful when, before, we felt hopeless. 

May 18, 2025

One of the first nodes we come upon in our spiritual development is in late childhood. We are four, five, or six, realizing we can no longer be our innocent selves. We are chided for being too honest or shut down for being ourselves. Maybe we were not ashamed of our bodies and ran around unclothed. Then our caretakers may have rushed us into our bedrooms and made us get dressed. Perhaps we told the truth and said, “The emperor has no clothes!” But we were out of line for saying that and reprimanded. In any event, our secure holding environment no longer held us. We learned we could no longer trust our natural selves, and to be wary of the world we thought would uphold us. 

May 17, 2025

When you reach adolescence, you come to a biological and psychological milestone, or node. Adolescence is a time of storm and stress when we must find our identity apart from the rest of our family. We might not yet know who we are, but we know we are different from our brothers, sisters, and family. Our task in adolescence is to determine the way we will move in the world.

May 16, 2025

Some of us spent a lot of years checking off the boxes. We let obligations dictate what we did. But now we want our values to dictate what we look forward to. We want our lives to be made of experiences we cherish. And we hope that our life purpose is interwoven with everything we do. 

May 15, 2025

Amalgamating our ego and soul is a process of spiritual alchemy. For so long, the soul has been “under a crust” and rarely takes the lead. But when it does take the lead, it overwhelmingly commands the situation. Our souls often arise and even take charge during times of great sadness and great happiness—in loss, in birth, in endings, and in new beginnings. They arise in benchmark occasions like weddings, graduations, and anniversaries. Then, they return under the crust. 

May 14, 2025

An officer pulled over a car for speeding. He walked to the car window and asked the man for his driver’s license. The officer asked the man, “Do you realize that you were doing 60 in a 35-mile-an-hour zone and that there is a school right here? Why were you going so fast?” The man replied, “I am swamped and late for a vital meeting downtown.” The officer said, “Sir, you could have killed somebody or yourself while speeding to your meeting.” The man replied, “Do you know who I am?” The officer replied,” I see your name on your license.” And the man said, “No, I mean, do you know who I am in this town?” 

May 13, 2025

“To thine own self be true” is a line from Act 1, scene 3, of the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. In the play, the king’s chief minister, Polonius, gives his son, Laertes a speech with those now-famous words. It is a father’s blessing and advice as Laertes leaves for university. “To thine own self be true “is one of the most quoted lines in Shakespeare’s works.