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There comes a moment—perhaps at forty, or fifty, or beyond—when a woman looks at the path behind her and sees the footprints of everyone she has carried. Children, partners, aging parents, colleagues, friends. The echo of countless responsibilities. She sees meals cooked, appointments kept, crises navigated, the invisible labor of love and duty stretched like a long, winding road. But where, she wonders, are the markers of herself?
Confidence is not a monolith. It moves in different ways through different arenas of life. Here are the four major pillars where confidence plays a vital role—and how to strengthen them.
The quest for clarity presses upon us like an urgent drumbeat. If only we could be certain—of what is true, of what is good, of what we want. . . If clarity has a shape, it is a crossroads. There are four great signposts—questions that haunt our days and nights, that shape the map of our knowing. . .
Some forms of courage leave no footprints in the ash, no ripples on the water. They are the quiet, invisible forces that shape a life from the inside out. . .
Is there a way to escape when all seems lost? This is what a dream told me.
Last night and this morning I have been doing calligraphic meditations on the Zhun hexagram, CHALLENGING BEGINNINGS from the I Ching. In times like this when so much seems to be ending abruptly, it is good to remember that every ending heralds a new beginning . . . even when it is not yet visible.
What does it mean to Follow Your Bliss? Is it a relinquishing of worldly ambition? A turning away from daily life towards something more esoteric? Or is it a subtle shift of perspective?
So much of the time we are dying to be in control of what happens to us, when we would do better to let go of that vanity. When I am feeling stuck in the doldrums I think back to that moment and am reminded of the power of simply saying Yes! to life. ..
This is one of the curious ways that the religious impulse follows us into secular society - In front of the computer screen most of us are brought to our knees - worshipping at the altar of Techne.
The most enduring and important insight of this “riding the wave” experience was the deep sense of having been truly and fully alive – being neither in the remembering past nor the hopeful future, but in the immediacy of the present, I knew myself to be alive, to be unique, and to be joined to the great surge of Life itself…
The serendipity of an unexpected meeting; a book falling open to just the right page; a missed train that allowed you to finish a conversation with radical results . . . any event or series of events that gives you the feeling that an invisible hand is helping to play this round in the game of life may be a sign of serendipity.
Jean Erdman Campbell, wife of the famed mythologist, Joseph Campbell, and a famous dancer- choreographer in her own right, passed away at age 104 on May 4th of 2020. Although she is now eclipsed by her more-famous husband, for the greater part of their marriage it was Jean who was the famous personality. Hopefully, her own enormous contributions to the world of dance and theater will come to the fore again as we remember a century of glorious creativity…
My belief is that the soul - another word for the psyche or the totality of the self - communicates most readily and most frequently through the nightly journey into the realm of dreams. It is no wonder that Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious or that Jung spent intense hours unfolding and amplifying the meaning in his own and clients’ dreams. It is because dreams are so valuable for receiving messages from the soul that I encourage all my clients to keep dream journals.
I have a sense that the American worker in the pandemic and The Great Resignation are linked in the same way that a frog is linked to the proverbial pot of slowly boiled water: There does come a tipping point when the frog notices the heat and reacts by leaping out of the pot. The pandemic gave us the chance to lift our heads long enough from the desk to notice we were uncomfortably warm at work… and we’ve jumped… and we’re still hopping!
I suggest we need look no further for a diagnosis of our current mental and emotional predicament than this environment in which we are flailing and failing to flourish in a flood of information: a digital data deluge!
I believe in love at first sight:
I once bought a book for its cover. . .
I was trying to think of how to explain the loss of the so-called "feminine values" - all that is YIN as opposed to YANG in our current times. It feels like an important exercise - like protecting an endangered species…
How many of us have turned away from the great American past time of “real life monopoly?” How many millions of us have snuck away from the table where the winners are taking away houses and building more hotels and sending other players to jail, never to pass go, never to collect another paycheck. We resigned from that game and we’re outside in the twilight of the American dream…
Isn't it curious that there is one relationship – that with our family of origin – which it's considered a failure if we do not eventually move out and leave them. While another relationship - marriage - is considered a failure if we do move out and leave them.
The peace of great prairies be for you.Listen among windplayers in cornfields,The wind learning over its oldest music... (from Harvest Poems - Carl Sandburg)
The Peace of Great Cities – A Response to Sandburg
The poet was correct in saying "the child is father of the man." Our childhood drama sets the stage for the dramas that will be enacted by our future self. The scripts we create and the characters we conjure up later in life are all in service to the psychological puzzles left over from childhood.
The Joseph Campbell Foundation proclaimed its mission boldly at its inception back in 1990 with the intriguing phrase: “a not-for-profit organization seeking to formulate a mythopoetic response to contemporary literalism and cultural retrenchment.” This deliciously difficult phrase holds what is, in many ways, the clue to what Campbell’s work is all about.
Before we get up on our high horses, it is a good idea to recognize efforts to demonize “others” as another opportunity for spotting "the shadow" of our own, all too recent, excesses of puritan zeal and religious violence…
The images of the sun, the moon, the planets moving in their spheres-the very idea that we are part of a celestial dance that progresses in this serene, dignified fashion eon after eon with great predictability-every planet moving through its great elliptical phases ~ All of these energies impacting our little planet and we, as little, human receptors of these vast energies…
Dream Image: I am climbing down a ladder that is just metal rings bolted into the side of a steep stone wall. It seems to be some kind of chamber, or maybe the cavern left over after mineral excavation. It's enormous, silent and eerie…
I've been thinking about the many different ways that we show our love, concern, affection, interest, passion and care for the other beings in our experience. The diversity of relationships that we engage in every day mandates that there be a diversity of forms with which to express our relatedness - and finding the right form to fit, perfectly, the kind of relationship we have with each person, plant or pet is one of the arts demanding of human beings.
In conversation together we have articulated the existential truth that even among couples with long and happy marriages, we can really only be to each other as “ships passing in the night.”
Since I know better, why can't I live better?
We are justified in returning to this troubling question again and again – it is certainly at the heart of ethics - and the core of my teaching thus far has been to acquaint students with the discrepancies between what we say we value, by our language, and what we demonstrably value by our actions, both as individuals and as a nation…