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The Turbulent Secrets to Soul Renewal

Some of my favorite writers are fond of housework as a kind of counterbalance to spiritual attainment. Jack Kornfield, writing about enlightenment, says, “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” And Zen teacher John Tarrant (see this month’s book recommendation below) advises his readers, “When something wonderful comes our way, it is good to do the dishes.”

I thought about this today as I listened to my washing machine run in one room, the dishwasher in another. I’m lucky enough to have machines for both tasks, but however you clean clothes and silverware, the process involves common elements: soaking, sudsiness, turbulence, rinsing, [...]

Lame Animal Totem: Gophers

Gophers are dirt-brown rodents with tiny eyes who hoard food in their large, fur-lined cheek pouches, bite aggressively when threatened, and use their hairy tails to feel around when they walk backward through their subterranean tunnels. In other words, they’re just like your Aunt Helga. (Remember Helga? She used to come over a lot when you were little, before she went to prison. She taught you to chew tobacco.)

If, like Helga, you have the Gopher as your totem animal, you like to undermine others and back out of commitments at the last minute, by the hair of your tail. [...]

Loving Your Inner Pup

The other day I heard something that hit me like a wrecking ball. Along the coast of California, thousands of baby sea lions are dying. The herring their mothers live on have disappeared, so the mothers had no choice but to leave their babies to starve.

Not long after hearing this, I had the extreme good fortune of speaking with Byron Katie, who I believe to be a fully enlightened being, and whose work has literally kept me alive (check her out on YouTube if you don’t know about her yet).

“I use the tools you teach, Katie,” I told her. [...]

Landing in Love: Falling into Intimacy Without Resistance

Psychologists tell us we’re born afraid of just two things. The first is loud noises. Do you recall the second? Most people guess “abandonment” or “starvation,” but neonatal dread was simpler than that: It was the fear of falling. Today we all have a much richer array of consternations, but I’ll bet falling is still on your list. Why give up the prudent concern that brought your whole genetic line into the world clutching anything your tiny fists could grab? Fear of falling is your birthright!

Perhaps that’s why most of us, at least some of the time (and some [...]

The Last Temptation of…You

A friend of mine called recently to say, “I’ve been offered a job I don’t want. The money, power, and prestige are huge. I’m not sure I have the guts to say ‘No.’”

If I’d had to, I would’ve shot him in the foot right then—anything to keep him from selling his happiness so cheaply.

Fortunately, my friend prevailed. He rejected all that power and money, knowing it would turn him into King Midas, surrounded by gold, yet lacking the warmth, tenderness, and joy that are his real life’s purpose.

I know many people who are having similar experiences. As they get [...]

How to Know You’re on the Right Spiritual Path

Photo: In Truth by LunaMom58 | CC BY 2.0

My religion is called Do-Be-Do-Be Do, pronounced “doo-bee-doo-bee doh.” The final “doh” (Japanese for “the Way”) is more properly written like this: Do-Be-Do-Be means “the Way of Do-Be-Do-Be.” According to the religion’s only member—me—it aims to balance the active “doing” of Western religions with the serene “being” of Eastern religions.

This name is meant to sound silly, because along with Reinhold Niebuhr, I believe that “laughter is the beginning of prayer.” But when it comes to religion, I can be as serious as typhoid. Born into an intensely religious tradition I would [...]

Martha’s blog

The Turbulent Secrets to Soul Renewal

Lame Animal Totem: Gophers

Loving Your Inner Pup

Landing in Love: Falling into Intimacy Without Resistance

The Last Temptation of…You

How to Know You’re on the Right Spiritual Path

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