Dreams, especially nightmares, can be loaded with haunting! Exactly...you did read the right words, just as I wrote them. Nightmares have lots and lots of juicy psychic stuff for insight, enlightenment, and soulful growth in the form of haunting. Thing is, we're so often afraid to listen to it, to the haunting. To listen to inner disturbance as it comes out in nightmares means facing the ghosts that always bear tidings of one sort or another.



Halloween and All…

On suffering

I did it once.

Went through the dark night of the soul in a little row boat

And didn’t sink.

So I did it once.

Then again and again

I have been called to attend to separation

Suffer the stark, dark gritty agony of loneliness –

And realize

There is no cure for being human

I am almost sixty now

My hair is silver and gray

My eyes betray my years

As do the fine lines…

Creativity happens when we make unusual connections…making what is familiar “strange.” We presume that certain things automatically go together—boat, duck, and water, for example. When we put unusual things together, we are in “creative” terrain. (As a silly example, ham sandwich and hair jell don’t go together…it’s a creative combination.)

When we put two paradoxical words like ham sandwich and hair jell together, the tension between the two creates a third space. Pairing two…

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. –John Muir (Scottish-born American naturalist 1838-1914)

The impulse to go out, get out, hit the road, take a vacation, nearly always holds within its volitional energy the urge to re-create or re-vision one’s life. We think of these common, even mundane responses to life’s regularity, schedule and regimen as almost a mechanical release valve, and although it…

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. –John Muir (Scottish-born American naturalist 1838-1914)

The impulse to go out, get out, hit the road, take a vacation, nearly always holds within its volitional energy the urge to re-create or re-vision one’s life. We think of these common, even mundane responses to life’s regularity, schedule and regimen as almost a mechanical release valve, and although it…

On life

Opening and closing

Systole and diastole

How lucky we are!

We do not have to command our heart to beat

or control the expansion or contraction

Lungs fill, lungs empty

Organs, physical and spiritual together

We live without effort.

If only that were true when the heart is pierced by pain

Or our bellies drop with fear

When the throat parches

And the tongue sticks to the roof…

In this morning's newspaper I read an article about how anxiety increases perceived pain for those diagnosed with chronic pain conditions or those suffering from acute physical pain. In other words, the research stated that anxiety makes body pain worse. Anxiety also increases emotional and spiritual distress. When we're uptight everything goes out of whack. We're seeing through a magnifying lens of grotesque proportions. The soul has become sick.

"We…

In this morning's newspaper I read an article about how anxiety increases perceived pain for those diagnosed with chronic pain conditions or those suffering from acute physical pain. In other words, the research stated that anxiety makes body pain worse. Anxiety also increases emotional and spiritual distress. When we're uptight everything goes out of whack. We're seeing through a magnifying lens of grotesque proportions. The soul has become sick.

"We all got a push for the…

http://madnessatthegates.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/barrys-blog-72-the-greatest-generation/

This is the people’s memorial. Our veterans should be above politics. – Sarah Palin

Protests

Now that you’ve had your chuckle, I’d like to unpack a recent event. This October, the Congressional impasse forced national parks and…

I'm quoting from an email from Michael Eigen Ph.D., author of The Psychoanalytic Mystic. As I was having morning coffee and doing first of the day reading, it so struck me that I wanted to post it word for word. It's a source of inspiration from old masters in depth psychology and spirituality! 

It's one thing to talk about dreams, it's quite another to actually take them to heart and follow their inspiration. With a new book out, I've been listening to them; but, really taking them to heart has been a challenge. Outside voices from the book industry have said do this or do that. Dreams come and offer guidance in gentle whispers.

Gentle whispers from dreams mean that there is genuine inspiration coming our way. We don't have to have nightmares…

Photo by Kevin McElheran

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in…” ~ from the song “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

In the blog post titled “Follow…