By Brian Alger on 01/20/2012
[Exploring Life] It is strange to contemplate aging. The process of getting older often seems so gradual as to be imperceptible. The idea of getting older can create a sense of discomfort since the very mention of it requires us to come into closer proximity with the reality of our own impermanence. We have an [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged aging, attention, awareness, death, disease, dying, emotions, fear, gratitude, grief, impermanence, inevitables, journey, loss, memory, presence, regret, sadness, spirituality, transience, well-being |
By Brian Alger on 12/14/2011
[Exploring Life] A dark night of the soul is an invitation to our own renaissance. The curse of seemingly inescapable psychological and spiritual burdens is a threshold that immerses us in a dark unrelenting entanglement with our own spiritual-renewal. It is deep within the midst of our most intense struggles in life that we are [...]
Posted in 3. SPIRIT | Tagged attention, awareness, darkness, emotions, fear, gratitude, grief, healing, impermanence, improvisation, inevitables, journey, loss, mental degradation, nature, point-of-no-return, presence, soul, spirituality, suffering, threshold, transience |
By Brian Alger on 10/21/2011
[Exploring Life] When we are sabotaged we are in some manner undermined, injured, attacked, or vandalized. Sabotage retrieves imagery of warfare in which one side secretly attempts to destroy or disable critical facilities, structures, or positions of the enemy. The essence of sabotage lies within opposition and hostility directed toward a perceived threat to our [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged aging, attention, authenticity, awareness, concentration, connectedness, death, dying, ecopsychology, fear, gratitude, imagination, inevitables, magic, mindfulness, mindlessness, mortality, natural, nature, sabotage, soul, unlived-life |
By Brian Alger on 10/14/2011
We find ourselves today in the midst of an economic storm born in the shadowy underworld of corporate greed, want, superficiality, and narcissism that threatens the sustainability of our immediate lifestyle. And we stand together in the midst of an approaching environmental tsunami in which our attempts to own and commoditize the natural world will [...]
Posted in 3. SPIRIT | Tagged awareness, balance, confusion, emotions, equanimity, fear, gratitude, impermanence, inevitables, nature, spirituality, suffering |
By Brian Alger on 09/23/2011
[Exploring Life] When we receive an education we are placed into a system of prerequisites that have been determined by an amorphous agency. By definition, education is an experience that is predetermined, imposed, rigidly structured, and bound to a self-reinforcing system of evaluation. The essence of the education system originates in automation, mechanization, generalization, and [...]
Posted in 3. SPIRIT | Tagged anxiety, apprehension, assimilation, assumptions, attention, awareness, belief, belonging, comprehension, conditioning, creativity, culture, darkness, depression, education, fear, gratitude, inevitables, knowledge, learning, medium, mental discipline, point-of-no-return, prerequisite, presence, regret, sacred, self-reliance, soul, spiritual response, spirituality, stress, threshold, transience |
By Brian Alger on 09/16/2011
[Exploring Life] Breathing Into Discernment: The first article in this series explored the importance of developing breath awareness as a means to explore the intuitive and deeply integrative realm of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that flow throughout the confluence of our everyday lives. Breathing affects everything in our experience, and our first task is to [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged attention, awareness, balance, breathing, confluence, death, discernment, dying, emotions, fear, gratitude, grief, healing, impermanence, inevitables, intuition, journey, loss, memory, point-of-no-return, regret, sadness, soul, spirituality, stress, suffering, threshold, transience, well-being |
By Brian Alger on 09/09/2011
[Exploring Life] The essential purpose of creativity is the provision of security and sanctuary from the confluence of situations and circumstances that circumambulate our presence in this world. That is, our creative capacities are most effectively used to nurture, cultivate, and care for ourselves, the people around us, and the earth itself. Creative resilience is [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged aging, attention, authenticity, awareness, belief, belonging, conditioning, creativity, culture, death, earth, fear, gratitude, healing, identity, imagination, impermanence, inevitables, love, nature, presence, resilience, sanctuary, security, solitude, soul, spirituality, suffering, survival, threshold, unlived-life |