July 10, 2023

In Mobile, Alabama, in the 1950s, Mardi Gras parading societies were comprised of Mobile’s prominent families. Every Mardi Gras season, The Mobile Press-Register had a big spread in their society pages with fancy color pictures of the Mardi Gras Queen, King and all of the court including ladies in waiting, knights and pages. But of course, there were no black people in those. There were African American parading societies in Mobile whose Queen, King and courts were pictured in another edition of the newspaper, but their pictures were black and white, not in color and not in the society section. What was the message there?

July 7, 2023

We come into the world as different types of souls. Though there are nine major types of souls, each soul within its kind contains a unique mix of divine qualities. Therefore, there are billions of unique souls. For example, a Two Soul Type (all of whom are Ego Type Eights) is under the broad category of Sacred Compassionate Benevolence. However, each soul under that broad category has a distinctive expression of Compassionate Benevolence. This is true for all souls under each of the nine soul types.

July 5, 2023

When was the happiest and most fulfilling time you have ever spent? As soon as you think about it, beautiful feelings are likely to flood you again. You see, hear, smell and taste that memorable time. It could have been only an hour, a day, a month or a complete season of your life. Yet it was golden.

July 3, 2023

In spiritual reflection, we sit in stillness, turn things over in our minds and ponder them in our hearts. Then particular things come to mind. Some of these things come to mind because our soul is unsettled about them. So our soul contemplates the situation in search of a place of peace.

A place of peace is not necessarily being in a state of having reached a definitive answer. Instead, it is a settled attitude concerning a situation that had disturbed us. For example…

June 30, 2023

Reflection is a time for looking at something or looking back at something and thinking about it. We may reflect on anything - a person, event, work of art, an occurrence, book, lecture, concert, play, sports event, historical event, a fantasy, a physical sensation, an encounter, concept, an emotional reaction, a movie or anything we humans can experience. We reflect upon the subject because of the positive feelings it evokes or the negative feelings it brings. Sometimes we reflect because we are curious about the experience and want to think more about it.

June 28, 2023

Fun is a form of play. We must play because, like love, play is a part of the human experience. Animals, even reptiles, play and of course, children play. Every adult was once a child who played. As children, we discover our bodies, mental capacities and emotions. It was fun to find out about ourselves because exploring any new territory is fun. Our very nature includes the inherent need for play and fun.

June 28, 2023

For the soul, true immortality is not achieved by building monuments or by over-idealizing the lost person. The soul does not even seek to attain immortality because the soul IS already an immortal spirit. From its depths, the soul knows the lost one is alive in the spiritual realm. Therefore, the soul spiritually communes with the lost one and holds them in their heart. But these consolations do not do away with the soul's grief.

The soul is in a body and lives in two realms: earth and heaven. So, it weeps in the agony of grief. But the soul doesn't weep for the same reasons as does the unhealthy ego.

June 26, 2023

In the Spirituality of the Enneagram, our quest is to return to our soul and eventually reunite with the Divine Source. But the soul has many challenges along the way, the most difficult of which is loss and grief. The ego has its way of dealing with grief as well.

We resolve our hunger when we finally get what we long for: food. But we resolve grief very differently.

June 26, 2023

The soul has fun when it seeks what it yearns for. For example, it seeks closeness with God in any way possible and has fun when doing it. It’s called soul fun, which is one of the fruits of the spirit: JOY.

But sadly, the unhealthy ego blocks the soul’s quest for union with God because it thinks it has better ways to make us whole. It wants us to have complete mastery over our life story. It tricks us into believing that real fun is the enjoyment of our false selves. But this is not reality. We do not have control over anything and are not our false selves.

June 23, 2023

The mind can get tangled like a thick jungle or it can be as tranquil as a still lake. Our state of mind depends on continual readjustment of our mental activity if we want clarity and balance. Our minds perceive, judge and categorize everything and everyone all day. Then we take action according to its assessments. The problem is that the mind gets tangled and thick with its ego's wishes - its story, fears and desires that distort the mind's purity and clarity. Then we cannot readily trust our tangled mind’s opinions.

So when our mind unwittingly becomes a jungle of thoughts, eventually it's normal to live in the jungle. The only way back to peace and clarity is through the regulation of our thoughts.

June 23, 2023

There is something fun I’ve done every day for the last forty-five years: play with kids. And though at times it has been very demanding and sometimes heart-breaking, it has been pure fun for the most part. Lately, I have been reflecting on why my work with children is so much fun compared to my work with adults. And the reason is that having fun is most children’s favorite state of consciousness, which is also my favorite state.

June 21, 2023

Only our heart knows if we have successfully won over a private struggle or if it’s beaten us again. Only our heart tells us if we love ourselves and others or if self-centered habits have taken over. Only our heart knows the sincerity of the forgiveness we extend or if it was merely “the right thing to say.” Though what others think of us is important, their judgments of us are incomplete compared to our self-judgments. Others’ judgments do not have all the information to base their verdicts on, but our self-judgments have more information than anyone else.

June 19, 2023

Our egos rely on our Passions to cope with our perceived deficiencies. But as we progress in consciousness, we realize we no longer need our Passions; indeed, they bar our advancement.

Asrama is a system of stages of life elucidated in Hindu texts of the ancient and medieval eras. The first half of life has two stages. First is the stage of learning the ropes, called the student stage. In the second stage, we establish our ego identity and satisfy the temporal needs of our lives. This is called the householder stage.

But in the second half of life, things shift.

June 16, 2023

We know we are making spiritual progress when we reach the point that we see through the ego’s tricks.

We watch TV commercials featuring sleek models in beautiful clothes, perfect bodies and knock-em-dead smiles. There is possibly a castle in the background and the wind blows through her long thick hair. We might think, “What a beautiful person, on top of the world. She has it all.“ Then the male model joins her with an open shirt, shiny abs and wind-swept hair. He invites the lady into his Maserati, and off they speed on the winding roads of Monte Carlo. And we say to ourselves, “Oh my gosh, the perfect life!”

The ego is terrific at creating illusions and being taken in by illusions.

But when we are conscious, we see through false perfection.

June 16, 2023

When we think about our dilemmas, we feel anxious and our bodies naturally tighten. Whether they are recent occurrences or long-standing ones, our dilemmas can haunt us all day and awaken us in the middle of the night. We spend precious hours ruminating about these seemingly unsolvable situations.

Fortunately, there is a beautiful way we CAN approach seemingly unsolvable problems.

June 14, 2023

Being attuned to nature beckons our souls. For example, the sunset soothes, delights and inspires us. But when we look deeper into that sunset, or into anything in nature, it may offer us a teaching.

For example, Brad and Leah were watching the sunset on the coast.

June 14, 2023

"These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." (Thomas Paine)

In his writings, Thomas Paine (1737-1809), like most people including Thomas Jefferson, used the word "man" instead of "human." The culture was caught in patriarchy, and that state of consciousness would not be chipped away until the women's suffrage movement and the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. But this Reflection focuses on Thomas Paine's reference to tried (challenged) souls.

June 12, 2023

According to the Vedas, the fourth and final desire of the soul is moksha, the desire for absolute freedom from the burdens of all our limitations. Moksha is the craving for essential liberty which, in Enneagram terminology, it is called Holy Freedom. To become free is to return to the original state of our soul before the ego took over. Our original soul was our identity before the fall. Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism include the fall in their theologies. Before the fall, we were free from any trap, pride, fixation or passion.

When souls fell from heaven, they forgot their original identities and manufactured their own identity called the ego and its persona (personality). Our ego retained the memory of having experienced complete freedom but because the ego is a mental structure only, it could not reproduce the genuine freedom of our souls.