Like truthfulness, Brahmacharya is another “go all the way” yama.  In other words, restrain from settling for anything less than wonder, awe, and the sacred.  And restrain from anything that keeps you from this place.  It is easy to grab our work, sweets, a good movie or romance novel, or get lost in the web. […]

Non-stealing is restraining from taking what doesn’t belong to us, what we don’t need, what is more than our share, and what depletes the future.  It is restraining from doing others work for them, rescuing them, fixing them, and worrying about them.  It is restraining from making ourselves smaller or bigger than we are, or

I am intrigued that the restraint here is a restraint to stop at anything short of the full truth. This is a significant leap from the tendency to land in a partial truth and be satisfied.  If we begin in the internal landscape, it becomes clear that there are three of us that live here.

We are afraid of outer attack, but the real brutal attacks come from within.  Where do we find more violence than what we do to ourselves in the hidden corners of our mind where abusive thoughts run on automatic replay?  We are caught up in a cultural myth of self-lack that is keeping us in

To understand surrender, we turn to the gurus, sages, and mystics of all traditions. They all radiate a joy, compassion, childlike wonder, and unfailing trust.  They seem to accomplish more for the world than seems humanly possible.  And they unabashedly display a constant love affair with the divine.  They almost seem like a different species

I was in the Minneapolis airport with a short layover.  Rushing to get to my next gate to catch my flight, I made a quick stop in the women’s bathroom.  As I entered, I saw four men standing there.  Stunned and confused, I wondered what these men were doing in the women’s restroom. It took

We are becoming a soft culture.  When life seems a little challenging, it is easy to escape, and the escape routes are numerous.  Food, alcohol, stores, television, and internet are among the variety of ways we can pamper ourselves.  When we continually take these easy escape routes, we lose access to our capacity to endure.

Contentment is the basis of happiness and peace.  Yet we live in a culture whose economy thrives on keeping us in discontent.  Think of the constant bombardment that comes at us with the sole purpose of alluring us into discontent.  We get pulled out of ourselves longing for what we don’t have.  And where the