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 01/15/2012
[Exploring Life] Absence is an emotional state of awareness in which we feel a deep sense of loss; the death of a loved one or friend invokes the deepest sense of loss. The feeling of absence originates in the poignant contrast between the presence of someone or something and the impossibility of ever being able [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged aging, confinement, death, emotions, fear, fulfilment, gratitude, grief, impermanence, inevitables, journey, learning, loss, point-of-no-return, presence, spirituality, teach, threshold, transience, unity |
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 11/04/2011
[Exploring Life] November mornings somehow inspire reflection. It’s strange to wake-up while it is still dark and this seems to be something that I never quite adjust to. Our natural internal rhythms somehow feel more forced as the amount of available light during the day decreases during the fall and winter months. On this November [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged aging, attention, death, disease, dying, fear, fulfilment, gratitude, impermanence, inevitables, life, mystery, presence, regret |
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 |