October 2, 2023

You cannot always judge a book by its cover. Our false self covers our authentic self. The false self is the ego, which got the job of protecting us at the end of our soul child era when we were told we were not OK, not good and had to be someone other than our essence.

September 29, 2023

What would be the title of the book about your soul? The book would be about your innermost being and would not have to be read by anyone except you … and God. This manuscript would tell of the most rudimentary spiritual bones of your existence. It would describe the beauty of all your spiritual qualities … those known to you and those you have yet to discover.

September 27, 2023

Can we manage or control what others think of us? The short answer is no. But we can manage and control our responses to them, whatever their opinions.

September 25, 2023

Many feel that they accept God’s forgiveness and others’ forgiveness, but they can’t forgive themselves. When we can’t forgive ourselves, it’s like we can’t totally accept God’s forgiveness either. If we still hold our failings against ourselves and punish ourselves for our mistakes, we are filled with guilt and shame. So the question is: How do I forgive myself?

September 22, 2023

Occasionally, I think about growing up in the Deep South with my brother Trevor, who is two and a half years younger than me. Among the memories are our trips to the local grocery store. Our mother allowed us a candy bar, or a moon pie and a soft drink. When he was just three or four, my little brother routinely asked me to unwrap his candy bar or moon pie. His tiny fingers had not yet mastered the fine motor coordination it took to unwrap a candy bar.

September 20, 2023

George Fountain Cox was born in 1930, the son of poor sharecropper parents in Clinton, South Carolina. He told the story many times of being able to see the ground between the floorboards of their little wooden house.

September 18, 2023

Marion Christian Bolton was born in the late 1920s and was married to her husband Scott for sixty-six years until her death. She and Scott had fourteen children, all of whom were raised in church because Reverend Scott Bolton was a pastor, a stirring preacher and a big personality.

September 15, 2023

Marion Christian Bolton was born in the late 1920s and was married to her husband Scott for sixty-six years until her death. She and Eric Smith owned the little red house that Lark and I rented from 1978-1979 when we lived in Concord, Massachusetts. Eric, an older gentleman, was also our next-door neighbor who became a dear friend. Always dressed in a coat and bow tie, he was the epitome of a Victorian New England gentleman. He delighted in each soul he met and treated everyone with great dignity.

September 13, 2023

Everyone is a brilliant star in their own right. After all, we are each an expression of the Divine. Yet there are specific people in each of our lives who are very remarkable to us.

September 11, 2023

Why do people want to know the future? Many of us are fearful of uncertainty, so we feel the more we know of the future, the more we can control it. There are a lot of folks who find ways to look into the future. In many cases, this is their ego’s irrational attempt to control the mysteries of life itself.

September 8, 2023

Though things can seem grim when we project into the future, there is hope if we look closer.

Drew Gilpin Faust, born in 1947, wrote to President Eisenhower after she discovered, to her disbelief, that black children were not allowed in her Virginia public school. Drew wrote to President Eisenhower, “Dear Mr. President, I am nine years old and white, but I have many feelings about segregation.”

September 6, 2023

The present is the only time we really have to live. Living in the past or the future takes us out of the present.

When we think about the future, some of us may think that we are not living in the present. But if we are fully aware as we think about the future, those thoughts are brought into the present. We only lose awareness of the present when we live in the future or the past.

September 4, 2023

A method exists by which we can know our essence without asking others. We can ask ourselves. Yes, in the beautiful self-inquiry exercise, we can uncover and discover many qualities of our soul. To know our essence, we can ask ourselves a series of three questions like the following:

September 1, 2023

Have you ever said or heard the words, "Oh my God!?" These words signal we have had a shock. In the enneagram, the concept of shock, otherwise known as “shock point”, is very important. A shock point rattles our current perception of reality. If we deal with the shock point healthily, we inevitably come to a higher level of consciousness and can understand the causes of the shock.

August 30, 2023

Essence is the intrinsic quality of something. As individual humans, our essence is made up of the indispensable attributes of our innermost being, our soul. Our essence is that which remains after we peel away the layers of the false self. Our essence is our true nature.

August 28, 2023

Dickson Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama had a pageant every year when I was a student there in the Nineteen Fifties. All the classes presented their own show. It was my first-grade year, and my class was to do the Bunny Hop. We practiced the show for weeks. We stood in a long line holding the waist of the "rabbit" before us while hopping to the music.

August 25, 2023

In all our years, Lark and I had never been inside a gambling casino. One day while driving back from the beach, we decided to see what $20.00 would do in the Wind Creek Casino, right off the highway. On the sidewalk to the building, we ran into a middle-aged couple who were leaving the casino. "Hey, does this sidewalk take us to the front doors?" we asked.

August 23, 2023

One of the first odd things that happened to me was when I was four. I was walking in the grassy common area of our apartment complex. I suppose my parents were somewhere nearby, but I had struck off by myself down the sidewalk that wrapped around the common area.