“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it…
In Alice Hoffman’s novel, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Ezekiel Cohen is ten years old when his father decides to end his life by jumping off a dock into wintry waters. His father is saved by dockworkers, but Ezekiel is left with crippling guilt that he didn’t jump in to save him (even though he couldn’t…
I once told my mentor and therapist, Andrew Feldmar, that my wife “needed” more from me. He stopped me there and said, “babies need, adults desire”. At the time, the significance of this didn’t register. I thought he was splitting hairs. I forget when the coin dropped, but when it did it delivered the goods. (Thinking…
There are those who question a human being’s capacity to transcend their past conditioning. What you see is what you get – for a lifetime! In a previous life I would have railed against this philosophy. I was into “evolutionary spirituality”. Limits? Transcend them. Old, unhelpful patterns? Just tap into the creativity of the universe…
In Part 1 I reflected on Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha, as a journey about the challenge of becoming an individual. Only by realizing our individuality—what it is to be a self connected to but distinct from the collective—do we become fully human, and make our unique contribution to humanity and the evolution of our species. Our…