When you doubt a larger reality and do not take a chance on it, you stay in a world of duality. As you know, this dualistic world is characterized by the following conflict: “If I am unselfish, I must suffer. I do not want to suffer. But if I am selfish, I will be rejected, despised, not loved, left alone. And that is suffering too.” In this strugg

Have you ever thought, my friends, why it is that, after an unflattering or painful recognition —provided you go to its very depth and do not stop halfway —you experience such a dynamic state of harmony and aliveness? It is so only because, at that moment, you have fully utilized what is given to you, the fragment of time at your disposal. When you

We recoil from the notion that this is it—that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we’ll get a shot at. Instead, we mentally fight against the way things are—so that, in the words of the psychotherapist Bruce Tift, “we don’t have to consci

As Carl Jung put it, “Man needs difficulties. They are necessary for health.”

The irony is that most human beings spend their lives avoiding painful situations. Not that we are successful, but we are always trying to avoid pain. We have an unconscious belief that our greatest growth in consciousness and awareness comes through beautiful moments. We may, indeed, make great leaps in consciousness through beautiful moments, but