Life is difficult. Even in the best of circumstances, before a pandemic shut down much of the world, the pressures were great. Sometimes the demands were so great, my friends and I would switch into warrior mode. Like Navy Seals, we plotted and planned and pictured, mentally rehearsing the operations to be executed, how toContinue reading “PAUSE AS PRACTICE”
Tag Archives: Liberation
A Day With Ram Dass
“My guru told me ‘Be like Gandhi,’” Ram Dass told me once during an interview. “Gandhi said, ‘My life is my message.’” The words came haltingly, short phrases followed by long pauses. The former Dr. Richard Alpert, the once eloquent spiritual seeker and psychedelic rebel, sat in a wheelchair, hunting for words, often coming upContinue reading “A Day With Ram Dass”
Be Like Scrooge
This path of awakening is a process. The truth we seek is not a concept or philosophical formula. It is a felt experience of living, of consciously joining our experience, whether it is grief or laziness or anger, feeling it and seeing it from the inside. The truth begins to appear in those moments whenContinue reading “Be Like Scrooge”
Angry Ghosts
One night when my mother was a little girl growing up in the panhandle of western Nebraska, she was driving with her father when she saw, far off in the plains, a cross burning in the middle of a circle of Klu Klux Klansmen. The sight filled her with terror. Her parents came from DenmarkContinue reading “Angry Ghosts”
Holy Week
This is Holy Week in the Christian calendar. It is also Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating liberation from captivity. When we allow ourselves to sit down and be still, turning the attention to sensation and feeling, we escape from the captivity of our thinking. And this is Easter weekend, beginning with Good Friday. When we allowContinue reading “Holy Week”
The Power in Obstacles
Last week, a group of us talked about what happens when we face obstacles and difficult situations. We agreed that no one escapes such things, and that often what happens is inside is fear, which has a powerful undertow. Signs at ocean beaches warn swimmers not to try to fight their way out of aContinue reading “The Power in Obstacles”
Tracy Cochran 