We are all wired to occasionally feel superior (my earliest memory of such folly reaches back to the first grade). The really important question, therefore, is not, “how could I feel that?” but rather, “What am I going to do with that which I feel?” Let’s blend compassion with the Buddha’s three marks of reality: . . . 1) How could _____... feel stressful? 2) All being’s _____... may I soothe! 3) How could _____... never last? 4) How could _____... NOT be me? . . . The FIRST

Weepiness and over-sensitivity could be a trauma response; which, peer reviewed studies have demonstrated, is exacerbated by the presence of systemic inflammation. This is why it is crucial that you use the FREE PCRM database to find an MD who practices psychiatry, informed by latest studies concerning whole food veganism; for no diet has been proven as effective at reversing systemic inflammation. . . . Jot down the following four contemplations: 1) How could this… feel stre

Anger, like a flame-thrower, flows from our most primal, survival drives. We repress it or indulge it, at our peril. However we can harness its raw energy. The next time you’re angry recite or chant this quatrain three times: . . “How could stressors give us the precious opportunity to bring dependence into compassion’s path and change into the path of letting-go?” . . You could perform the four contemplations that follow, four times each, silently reciting the first half of

Turmoil can sneak into our meditation and steal our peace. What are we to do about it? Purveyors of cognitive behavioral therapy (formerly known as a variation of the rational emotive approach) are enthusiastic to use deliberate action and self-talk to modify that which could seem a bit destructive. Could there be a downside? Why do so many who begin CBT presenting with anxiety eventually develop DEPRESSIVE anxiety disorder? There are some who suspect that the effort of battl

Turmoil could be stressful, and have many sources such as: chronic fatigue syndrome, pain issues, sleep issues, anxiety, ADHD, DPDR and other disassociation disorders. Sadly there are many people who (with the best of intentions) give terrible advice such as the teaching to actively focus upon one’s breath to the exclusion of all else. Not only could that undermine mindfulness (passive, vulnerable, visceral, and random) but it could exacerbate stress and thus intensify all th

Language does not easily lend itself to describing the neurodivergent experience, for it was composed by neurotypicals, for neurotypicals. And yet, there are some contemplations that could lend themselves to the profound complexity of an autistic brain. Especially if those ruminations are rhetorical and based upon assumptions: therapeutic and empowering. Despite the state of one’s neocortex (Gordian-like in its tangles) all of us with lumbar, thoracic, and cervical spinal cor

Nature hates a vacuum, and our minds detest a mystery. So when we feel anxiety or annoyance yet are unable to find an object to identify as its trigger we turn to the twins of imagination and recollection and fabricate an excuse to feel what we feel like a magician conjuring doves out of thin air. All this occurs in our subconscious for we are not foolish enough to deliberately torment ourselves with villains fictional and fantastic. What, then, are we to do? Are we hungry, t

Yes, it could be a bit of a balancing act. When evil acts are perpetrated against our friends we could lament, and rage, and become too disgusted, too nauseated to eat. However in the Buddha’s first discourse we read of the flaws of not just confusion, and greed, but aversion as well. What, then, are we to do? In a word: love. We are to love the victim, we are to love the villain, we are to love everyone. But how do we do that? We begin by understanding that love is less of a