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 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 05/04/2011
[Exploring Life] Closure means to find a resolution to a significant event in a person’s life. With respect to the loss of a loved one, closure ultimately means to find contentment and gratitude as the final and most significant outcome of death. This is the twelfth and final entry I will dedicate to the series [...]
Posted in 5. EXPERIENCE | Tagged aging, death, dying, emotions, fear, gratitude, grief, healing, impermanence, inevitables, journey, loss, memory, point-of-no-return, presence, regret, sadness, spirituality, suffering, threshold, transience |
By Brian Alger on 04/19/2011
[Exploring Life] Grief possesses great agility. It emerges subtlety yet its presence is potent. Grief, I am beginning to understand, cannot be equated to more distinct states of being such as the quality of sadness that results from loss. The dimensions of grief are far more extensive in nature. Loss and absence are, of course, [...]
Posted in 2. MIND | Tagged confinement, dying, emotions, gratitude, grief, healing, impermanence, inevitables, journey, loss, memory, nature, point-of-no-return, presence, regret, sadness, soul, spirituality, suffering, threshold, transience |
By Brian Alger on 04/15/2011
[Exploring Life] Ecopsychology embraces the essential task of healing our relationship with the Earth and with life itself. Ecology is at its core the study of interconnectedness, the exploration of relationships, and the synthesis of belonging. Psychology is the study of the workings of the human mind and how we think, feel, and behave. Ecopsychology [...]
Posted in 4. ENVIRONMENT | Tagged balance, belonging, capacity, connectedness, healing, impermanence, inevitables, integrity, interaction, journey, landscape, loss, mental degradation, mind, presence, psyche, relationship, resilience, sanity, soul, spirituality, stress, suffering, transience |