Aging: The End of Retirement
[Exploring Life] To retire means to withdraw, retreat, or remove oneself from a particular circumstance in order to engage in something different. The traditional view of retirement is that it brings one period of life to a close while simultaneously ushering in a new beginning in some other mode of life. The origins of retirement [...]
Spiritual Endeavour: Dark Night of the Soul – 4
[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 [...]
Creative Resilience: The Elements of Creativity
[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 [...]
Creative Resilience: The Art of Authenticity
[Exploring Life] We live in an age of instantaneous global communication. We also live in an age of mass somniloquence. Each of us secretly desires the intimacy and art of a deeper more compelling conversation that authentically explores the alluring mystery of being alive. When we engage in authentic conversation we explore and exchange our [...]
Spiritual Endeavour: Learning to Trust the Flow of Ancient Rhythm
[Exploring Life] We are immersed in a culture that confuses education with learning. More precisely, we ritually submit ourselves to courses that have been prepared by someone else and trust that the instructional delivery these courses will inspire learning. In a bizarre twist, we sometimes incorrectly think of education as being synonymous with learning. Learning [...]
Spiritual Endeavor: Dark Night of the Soul – 1
[Exploring Life] On a Dark Night… Darkness means an absence or deficiency of light. From a spiritual perspective, darkness creates an intuitive space in which the fragility of our beliefs about the meaning and purpose of our lives becomes uncomfortably apparent. To enter into a spiritual darkness is to begin an excruciating journey into of [...]
Emotional Terrain: Grief – Exploring Absence
[Exploring Life] In the Time Magazine article New Ways to Think About Grief Ruth Davis Konigsberg explores some common misconceptions of grief. She proposes that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are in fact not stages. Kubler-Ross was focused on identifying the stages of grief each of [...]