Holding Your Opposite
Which is it—grey or gray? Isn’t it fitting that there isn’t a black and white answer. Turns out they are both acceptable ways to spell my favorite color. Gray is a great color to represent ambiguity and grey is also a great color to represent ambivalence. The fourth principle of awareness: Hold opposites and recognize […]
True Colors
The latest DreamWorks children’s film is Trolls which pits the mean, depressed mono-chromatic Bergens against the fun-loving, exuberant, multi-colored Trolls. The Bergens hold the belief that the only way they can experience happiness is by eating trolls. The Trolls are led by Poppy. She is adorable, she sings, she dances, she is fun and that […]
Sacred Luminosity
On December 21, 1978 an editorial in the New York Times by Anne Roiphe caused a stir in me and many others. Her topic was the celebration of Christmas in her Jewish home, choosing to celebrate it and not celebrate Hanukkah. At the time, Anne was married to a man who was not Jewish but […]
Tree of Awareness
Allen Afterman begins his book Kabbalah and Consciousness by declaring that “as much as Kabbalah is a philosophy it is even more a map of transcendent experience.” There are two important ideas that Afterman touches upon. The first is that Kabbalah is a philosophy. This may come as a surprise to some because Kabbalah emerged […]
A Call to Arms
On election night 2016 those who are good at math were the first to realize that the “path” to being elected President was red and not blue. It became progressively clear that the math would not add up for Hillary Clinton. Even if she would wind up with more overall votes the state Electoral College […]
Ob-Jecting
It started this week with a teacher talking about her student’s objection to her defining a noun as pertaining to a “person, place, thing or idea.” The student, a Buddhist monk trying to learn English, asked: What about animals? Her suggestion that animals are nouns because they are “things” The monk objected to the teacher […]
A Woman Precedent
In her world filled with unicorns, ponies and flying Pegasus a 5 year old girl looked up to ask, “A woman running for President?” Had my daughter lived in Pakistan, India, Israel, Germany of Great Britain, her incredulity would have been tempered by the women who served (and serve) those countries as heads of state. […]
The Spiritual Revolution
Copernicus did not have it all figured out. Neither did Galileo. They had the right instincts but got caught up in circles. Kepler refined it by thinking elliptically but it took Sir Isaac Newton to finalize the heliocentric view of our solar system with the discovery of gravity. Why did it take so long for […]
No Strings Attached
These are not whirling dervishes about to place their hats upon their heads. The caption under this photo reads: “Karen (Berg) charging the Red String of the Kabbalah Centre.” In 2012 the Kabbalah Centre led an Energy Tour to Israel which included a visit to the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem “to connect and charge […]
Olympic Spiritual
Every two years athletes from around the world gather for a ritual called the Olympics. The events, whether winter or summer, are predicated upon sacrifice and culminate in a solemn ceremony of the victorious; the ritual of standing upon a podium to receive an Olympic medal. For the gold medal recipient the ceremony includes the […]