Spirituality can be summoned as a substitute for trauma work. When this happens we develop a spiritual ego, little more than another defence against suffering what is ours to suffer. It’s a little harder to spot because it can present as calm, equanimous, wise, unflappable, smart, compassionate, etc. On the other hand, when we run…
While I was writing a chapter for my forthcoming book, Bone on Bone: A Clergyman Leaves the Church, Finds Psychedelics and Get His Life Back, it came to me that a human being’s core addiction is to the traumatized self. Trauma, along with our early childhood patterns of compensating for these failures of love give…
The Lakota chants are a summons to the warrior within. I am being recruited to walk the path of integrity, humility, and compassion. The medicine that is ayahuasca tea first brought me to my knees revealing the posturing of a false self, constructed to survive repeated failures of love in my early years. Now, in…
Breaking Bad. View it on Netflix, if you’ve got the stomach for it that is. Warning. The violence can be graphic, and the content is disturbing. Yet, I can’t remember another television series I found as compelling. As in, I couldn’t stop watching it. I was late to the series. I had heard the buzz, (it won…
I remember the moment I felt blessedly ordinary. It was such a relief. In that moment I realized that I’d been carrying around an unconscious assumption that I was just slightly above others, floating just above the messy world. But when my deep, unobstructed breathing kicked in, I thought to myself, “I’m just an ordinary person,…