Category: personal growth and spirituality
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Butterfly Effect
Butterfly Effect, paper collage, 2021 This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 5/22/21 I buried a dead butterfly yesterday. I’d picked her up along the side of the road when I was out walking the night before. She could no longer fly, and I knew death was probably imminent. So I scooped…
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Beyond Suffering
I felt compelled to write this post because of a conversation I had yesterday with fellow blogger, Gabriela. In responding to issues I raised in a recent post on religion and personality, she asked me how I felt about the notion that “life is suffering,” especially as it relates to the central meaning I ascribe…
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Afternoon Tea
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 1/31/20 An afternoon with a lazy, cool attitude. Listening to Steely Dan and sipping herbal tea. Been reflecting on my journey through various stages of The Used Life and coming to view them more and more as a series of returns. That is, I began…
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On Being Alone
For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed being alone. Maybe it’s because I was an only child. Or perhaps it’s a matter of disposition. Or both. Whenever anyone asks me if I miss having a sibling, even now, I think, What a ridiculous question! A sibling would have inevitably interrupted my much-cherished…
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On Being a Late Bloomer
We all know those people. Those people who have the rest of us convinced the world was tailor-made to help them succeed. Who seem to flow from life phase to life phase with little difficulty. And who always seem to be moving up. Those folks who seem to have figured it all out by the…
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On the Art of Rejuvenation
When left to my own devices, I am a simple creature. I am quiet and can (and often prefer to, when afforded the opportunity) go for a full day or more without any human contact. I like dimly lit, uncluttered, serene spaces. Small rooms give me comfort. I like to immerse myself in nature, in…
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On the Art of Innocence
When considering what it means to experience a second naïveté, my thoughts generally center on the mechanics of seeing. That is, what it means to see with fresh eyes: to be privy to the kind of penetrating and revelatory perception that is capable of discerning the magical in the everyday. A kind of unitive, playful,…
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On the Art of Wildness
The more I contemplate issues of purpose and meaning—and have contemplated them historically, as finding meaning was the quest that brought this blog into being—the more I seem to move definitively toward purposelessness. That is, the more I begin to understand that it’s the need for such a quest that’s the problem. And that struggling…
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New Endings
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 3/13/19 Feeling as though I’ve reached a turning point in my thinking. As if all this talk of being, becoming, actualizing one’s inherent potential, or instinctual personality, is really just tantamount to a kind of intuitive living. That really living intuitively—“from the gut,” as Carl…
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Iris
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 2/13/19 Got thinking about the importance of ritual, but through a different lens now. Returned briefly to Maslow’s Religion, Values, and Peak Experiences, always a gloriously eye-opening read for me. Some brief insights worth sharing. I feel as if a haze has been removed from…
The Used Life 