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This article will be particularly impactful for any of you who place yourselves on the sensitive end of the sensitivity spectrum. I imagine that’s a goodly sum of you as we peeps interested in the spiritual tend to be on the sensitive side.

The story starts years ago when I heard my favorite spiritual teacher, Michael Singer, say something in one of his talks that made my ears prick up. In subsequent talks over the years, Singer said it again. And again. And again.

So why am I just getting around to writing about this now rather than years ago? I should have. Mea culpa.

Well, better late than never, so let’s giddy up to the meat of the matter.

I’ll start by asking: Do you ‘take things personally’ on a regular basis? What do I mean by ‘take things personally’? I think you know but here are a couple of examples to illustrate.

-You’re talking with an acquaintance at a cocktail party when they abruptly bolt from you to talk with someone “more important.” You take it personally.

-Your spouse says you’ve been slacking off on the household upkeep. You take it personally.

-Your surly teenage daughter says the jeans you’re wearing look terrible on you. You take it personally.

Taking these perceived slights personally manifests in different ways for different people but usually includes some kind of physical jolt or pang inside. I feel that jolt in my stomach.

That brings us to the teaching du jour, Singer’s two-word gem of wisdom:

“Nothing’s personal.”

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For most of us, life is a series of ebbing and flowing moods. We’re in a good mood then something happens that puts us in a bad mood or vice-versa.

The point of this piece is to get people to take a fresh look at those cycles and then work on minimizing the bad moods. First, let’s take a look at what causes our bad moods.

Obviously, thousands of factors could come into play. Many are dictated by the lives we lead. A single mom with three kids in diapers will have different mood shapers than an unemployed, twenty-something college grad living rent-free in his parents’ basement.

An Instagram-induced funk

The babysitter calling in sick five minutes before mom is supposed to leave for work throws her day into the toilet pretty quick. For the twenty-something guy it could be seeing an Instagram post of a college buddy of his out celebrating the cool new job he just got…as he sits on the couch bobbing his eyes between Instagram and the World Series of Poker on ESPN.

Second would be moods determined by our general makeup. Some people come out of the womb with a relatively sunny disposition while others, not so much. Everybody else falls somewhere in between. So a flat tire might ruin an entire day for somebody while the sunny type will roll with it like water off a duck’s back.

The random bad mood

Finally, some mornings we roll out of bed and feel great, or lousy, for seemingly no reason at all. It’s random.

This is in keeping with the mood cycling dynamic that seems to be part of most people’s lives. We go up…and down…and all around.

Which frustrates a lot of people, myself included. We do well for a day or two then hit a bad mood patch. Why can’t we just stay in that good mood mode?

Buddhism and impermanence

The Buddhists are all over this one with their concept of impermanence. All that means is that life is constantly changing. Things never stay exactly the same from even one moment to the next. Sometimes that constant change puts us in a good mood while other times it puts us in a bad mood.

Fine, so we all constantly experience ups and downs, for many different reasons. I’m going to focus on how we can shorten, or even stave off, the down moods. I’ll use an example from my life to illustrate.

Gerken family morning mayhem

Mornings at my home are typically chaotic as my wife and I navigate getting our 17, 15 and 9 year old kids out the door to school. Lunches need to be made, breakfasts served, clothes put on, teeth brushed, etc. Sometimes, in the midst of this mayhem, major meltdowns occur.

Like when my daughter has something in mind she wants to wear but can’t find it. As takeoff time inches closer my wife slowly but surely loses it. “Let’s go! It’s 8:25. We have to leave!” “But I can’t find my sweater!” “I don’t care! Wear another sweater!” “No!” “We have to go! It’s not fair to make your sister late.”

Then comes the inevitable barging into my office — “You have to take her. I can’t wait,” followed by the also inevitable SLAMMED door. I then burst out of my office, track down my wayward daughter and get her butt moving. This often ends with my wife and me yelling at each other.

Fiasco completed.

It’s what we do AFTER the explosion that matters

The point of all this is about what happens AFTER the explosion. With frayed nerves and a pounding heart the tendency is to go into shutdown mode. This is where we throw in the towel and essentially say to ourselves,

“Screw it. Screw the world. Screw everybody. I’m going to be in a bad mood now…”

In other words, some triggering event leads us to throw in the towel and board the plane to Bad Mood Island.

The central problem is that giving up like this often results in our bad mood infecting the rest of the day. It’s not a conscious decision where we actually say to ourselves,

“Okay, I’m going to be in a bad mood for the rest of the day.”

But that’s the effect. This has happened to me far too many times and I’ll bet it’s happened to many of you as well.

So what’s the mindful way of tackling these bad mood situations? In the example with my daughter where the whole household has erupted and I’m finally back in my office trying to get to work, what should I do?

The mindful solution

The answer, as it is with all things mindfulness related, is simple. I stop. Close my eyes. Take at least five deep breaths and get centered. I relax as best I can. Then I lean away and observe what I’m feeling, from a place of nonjudgment.

In this example, I’d say to myself:

“I just got all bent out of shape because daughter went nuts over missing her sweater, then wife screamed at me because she was stressed about getting out the door. Okay, so that’s what is. Life goes on.”

The key is how we end this inner monologue. We say,

“I am not going to let this ruin my mood. I’m going to let it go and move on with my day.”

Don’t expect that this inner pep talk is going to make you feel okay right afterward. That’s not the objective.

The objective is to nip a bad mood in the bud.

It is to stop yourself from going down the rabbit hole of stewing about what just happened, which only serves to feed that bad mood the egoic poison it so craves.

If you’re in a bad mood for no identifiable reason, you do the same thing. You may have just woken up and you feel off. So you take some breaths, lean away and observe how you feel. We don’t complain about it or judge it in any way. We simply observe it. Then we say:

“I feel kind of lousy. Not sure why. But that’s what is. Let’s see how things go.”

What we don’t do is wake up, feel lousy, and say:

“I’m in a lousy mood and I feel like crap. Boy this day is gonna suck.”

By the way, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do the myriad things we can do to get ourselves out of a bad mood. By all means, get some exercise, call a friend or do whatever else helps.

The key is NOT punting on your day

The key to this whole idea is that it seems so many of us get in a bad mood, caused by any number of factors, and then we just punt. We throw in the towel and capitulate to a long bout of bad mood-dom. Well, guess what?

It doesn’t have to be that way!

We have a choice. We can choose to punt our day away or we can exert a modicum of mindfulness into the situation to nip the bad mood in the bud.

The best cost-benefit deal of all time

The cost of doing this is minuscule. It’s maybe a minute of calming down, getting centered, letting go and then moving on with your day.

The benefit is that you don’t allow the rest of your day to go down the tubes. And that’s just for the one-time example.

Think of how much it would help our lives to practice this on a regular basis. Let’s say you saved yourself from being in a bad mood two times a week. That’s over 100 bad moods per year you’re averting. For five years. Ten years. Thirty years. That’s a ton of bad vibes not being released into the world.

All for the price of breathing, relaxing and then sticking up for your well-being by refusing to let your mood go south because of whatever just happened.

That’s a great deal for us.

And an even better deal for the world.

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This piece isn’t about guiding your kid through the college admission insanity we’ve all heard about. Enough has been written about that.

What it’s about is three basic life lessons I’ve tried to teach my son, starting roughly two years ago when all the college mania started. Those lessons can help any of you at any stage of life, which is the only reason I’m writing this.

Before getting to those lessons, I need to describe the frenzied college admission process that has infected America’s teens and their parents the past few decades.

What does that look like?

-Kids having anxiety attacks before and during taking the SAT or ACT tests.

-Kids fretting that if they don’t get into their college of choice, or at least a “good” college (whatever that means), their life will be one slow roll to homelessness.

-Parents fretting that if their teen doesn’t get into their college of choice, or at least a “good” college, their kid’s life will be one slow roll to homelessness.

-Parents spinning up other parents about everything from which schools junior is applying to, to which schools junior got into to what junior’s GPA is and what his tests scores are and...yada, yada, yada, in the inestimable words of Jerry Seinfeld.

Pardon my French, but it is, and has been for many years now, an unmitigated shit show. As the youngest of six, I witnessed it time after time with my eleven nieces and nephews, all several years older than my kids.

I promised myself that I’d at least try to make my kids’ experience a healthier one. And now that my oldest child’s admissions journey is over, he committed to the University of Washington last week, I think I succeeded. Here’s how.

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First, an apology. I’ve written over 500 articles on all manner of spiritual topics but have yet to tackle arguably the most important concept of all.

What is this super-important concept? It can be described in one word, which I’ll get to.

Before doing so, we need to summarize the path to liberation, as taught by my favorite teacher, Michael Singer. There are several ways to express the path to liberation; this is just the one that makes the most sense to me.

Our natural state is clear and present

The starting point of any expression of the path is this: We’re already there! That high state of being is our natural state.

So what the heck happened? If this wondrous state exists within us, why are we all so uptight and “off” so much of the time?

It’s because starting in our youngest years, we had experiences that we either really liked, so we clung to them and want them to repeat, or really didn’t like, so we resisted them. In both of those scenarios, we held onto those experiences.

That manifests inside as energy. Stuck energy, unfortunately.

How stuck energy runs our lives

Why unfortunately? Because that stuck energy, which collectively comprises the ego, runs and ruins our lives. How?

Let’s take a difficult experience. Let’s say you were madly in love with your first girlfriend in college. She’s all you thought about, day and night. Month after month.

Then one day, out of nowhere, she dumps you. You’re in shock. But the next day it gets exponentially worse. You find out through the grapevine that she’s been cheating on you for most of your relationship.

Your world is shattered. Unsurprisingly, this experience leaves you with oodles of that stuck energy I mentioned above.

Never trusting women again

And how does that stuck energy run and ruin your life for years thereafter? You find it nearly impossible to trust any woman in a relationship. You want to, but that energy down below is simply too strong and won’t allow it.

So that’s why we’re all some level of crazy. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there’s something we can do about it. Something very few people do because they don’t even know what the problem is in the first place!

And that something we can do is let go. Which is a pretty big deal, right? Why, you might ask?

The logic of it all

Think of the logical progression. The natural state we start off with is liberated. Enlightened. Then we have myriad experiences that we hold on to that manifest as stuck energy that runs and ruins our lives.

Well, what happens if we let go of that energy? In the inimitable words of the great singer Maxine Nightingale,

“We’re gonna get right back to where we started from…”

And where we started from is precisely where we want to be. Clear. Present. Our consciousness able to experience life as it was meant to: Not distracted by our minds.

How to let go

How do we let go of stuck energy, AKA emotional, egoic baggage? When that baggage is poked or stirred, Michael Singer teaches us first, what not to do, which is either suppress it (“Oh, he didn’t mean to hurt me when he slapped me in the face for the third time this week.”) or express it by grabbing a butcher’s knife and trying to stab your wrong-doer.

What we need to do is relax, lean away from the feeling and do our best to simply observe it.

Some of you may be thinking right now,

“He’s written about the letting go thing many times. I don’t get what’s new here.”

What’s new is this concept I mentioned at the outset that I should have written about years ago. Why is this concept so vital to the spiritual path?

Because it explains what actually happens when we let go.

What is that concept? In a word…

Transmutation.

Ding, ding, ding. There it is.

What it is transmutation? To change something’s nature or condition into something else.

What we’re interested in is the transmutation of energy, specifically the emotional energy/Samskaras we’ve held onto. Here’s how my AI pal describes that:

“Transmuting energy is the conscious process of changing one emotional or energetic state into another, often transforming negative emotions like anger or anxiety into positive, constructive, or higher-vibrational outcomes.”

So when a low-vibrational emotion like anger is stoked inside us, what Singer is saying is that merely sitting with it, observing it and not suppressing or expressing it, allows that energy to transmute from low to high-vibration.

The solar energy analogy

Here’s an analogy given me by my brilliant friend Dr. Dan Fisher, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University.

[A personal aside having nothing to do with this article about what a good guy he is/was: We took a class together in my major, history. He took it pass/fail and I took it regular graded. He told me he got a C (passing). I ended up with a B-. Ten years later he told me he’d actually gotten an A! He didn’t have the heart to tell me then. Twenty years after we graduated, he was an usher in my wedding. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.]

Here’s Dan’s analogy. Think of solar energy. It consists of dangerous, electromagnetic radiation emanating from the sun. That energy enters your rooftop solar panel made of photovoltaic cells which transmute that energy into electricity which then allows you to play Mozart throughout your home.

The long and the short of it is that this letting go thing I’ve written about all these years is about transmuting negative, stuck energy into higher-vibration, positive energy.

Can I prove this scientifically? Others probably could, but I hated chemistry and never even took physics.

The bottom line for me is that a) it makes sense, and b) this concept has, in some form or other, been taught for thousands of years in Eastern spiritual traditions. That’s good enough for me.

What’s in it for you

As always, though, we have to pose the question: Why should this matter to you?

I’ll answer that by relating why it matters to me. And why Mickey’s talk about transmutation pricked up my ears.

The basic thrust of these teachings is that we accumulate stuck energies/Samskaras throughout our lives and unless we let them go, our lives will always be a struggle. That being the case, letting go is the most important, salutary endeavor we humans can pursue.

But here’s the thing: Letting go has always seemed amorphous and fuzzy to me. So anything I come across that helps explain that invaluable process in more concrete terms is of paramount importance to me.

Transmutation helps me clarify what is actually happening when I let go of emotional baggage which I think, and hope, will improve my ability to do so.

I hope that makes sense.

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Artists come in all shapes and sizes. They paint, sculpt, etch, draw, write, dance, act, sing, play the guitar and so on.

According to Eckhart Tolle, the ones that create sublime work have something in common. He puts it like this:

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.”

My 17 years as a Hollywood screenwriter confirmed Eckhart’s assertion. The best stuff I wrote came when I quieted down and just listened.

Writing dialogue in Hollywood

This was especially true when writing dialogue. I wouldn’t think to myself, “Okay, now what would she say?” I’d just sit in my chair, close my eyes, envision the character and then wait to hear what they said.

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Two weeks ago I wrote about why judging others is all bad, no good.

Today, I’m writing about judging’s first cousin: Comparing.

Now I know only a few reading this can relate to comparing yourselves to others and that the vast majority of you have never done so, but please bear with me…

THAT WAS A JOKE!

We all compare

Of the eight billion human beings on Earth, I’ll bet 99.9 percent have done the comparing thing. It’s endemic to our species. In fact, it’s so pervasive that we all think it’s okay so we don’t even think about it.

Well, it’s not okay. It’s injurious to our mental health and overall well-being. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we can do something about it, which I’ll get to.

But first, let’s clarify what comparing ourselves to others looks like. See if these ring a bell.

- Your college roommate has made a ton of money on Wall Street the past thirty years, has a nice apartment on the Upper West Side and a house in the Hamptons. But he’s divorced and has an awful family life.

You have been a high school math teacher since you graduated and have precious little in the bank. BUT…You have a great marriage and two happy teenage kids. You win!

- One of the moms at your kids’ school has a perfect body, is stunningly beautiful and drives a Toyota Minivan. Your looks compared to hers? Not even close. But you have better jewelry and drive a Mercedes SUV, which softens the looks differential.

I will now turn, reluctantly, to MY rich history of playing the comparing game. The three worlds I have immersed myself in – tennis, politics and Hollywood writing – all stirred up a hornet’s nest of comparing.

Princeton but not pro

Take tennis. I played extensively throughout my childhood and then varsity for four years at Princeton where I rose to number two on the team. Not bad, right? Wrong.

A guy I beat when we were 12, rose to number one in America in both the 14 and 16 and under divisions. I didn’t even qualify to play in the nationals! He went on to USC where he won the NCAA individual doubles title and reached a world high ranking of number 21 in doubles. So compared to him, I’m a bum!

How about Washington politics? Don’t get me started. I began as a legislative assistant to a congressman. Not bad, right? Wrong…when compared to others my age who worked for more powerful congressmen. Then I became a lobbyist and made good money…But others made a heckuva lot more.

The Hollywood comparing game

My last stop was Hollywood, Shangri-La for masters of the comparing game. I got a job on season four of The West Wing and was part of the writing staff that won the Emmy for Best Drama Series that year. Pretty nifty, huh?

Not compared to those on the staff who got asked back for season five (I didn’t) who made more money than I did and got a big career boost.

Compare, compare, compare.

I’ll never forget what my dad, a former Fortune 500 CEO, used to tell me:

“Don’t worry about what everybody else in the office is doing. Just focus on doing your best and you’ll be fine.”

Another hugely powerful expression of this concept comes from Tom Brady, the greatest football player of all time, who said:

“I Never Once in My Life Ever Said I Wanted to Be the Best of All Time. Ever. I Wanted to Be the Best I Could Be, Period…It Didn’t Matter What the Other Guys Were Doing. It Mattered What I Was Doing.”

So hugely important! Focus on what YOU are doing. Why? Because it’s the only thing you can control.

Drop the comparing and improve at everything

When we place 100 percent of our focus on what WE’RE doing, and not comparing or competing or wasting energy worrying about everybody else, guess what?

We become the best we can be. In anything. Football, golf, piano, computer coding, car sales…everything.

The bottom line is that there’s always going to be someone with more tennis titles, more power, more money, more Substack subscribers, a better body, better car, smarter kids, and on down the line.

If we don’t compare, then what do we do?

The obvious question is: If I don’t compare myself to others doing what I’m doing, how will I know how I’m doing? You won’t. There’s no need to know how you’re doing.

Just place all of your focus on getting the most out of you. Who gives a shit what everyone else is doing?

Comparing ourselves to others is a monumental energy suck. It’s all bad, no good.

Two approaches to curb comparing

Fine. So we’ve established what comparing looks like and that it is not healthy for us. Is there a more concrete approach to dealing with this other than just telling ourselves not to do it?

Yes. I’ve narrowed it down to two approaches: Direct and indirect. We need to do both at the same time.

The chief ingredient in the direct approach is, as usual, committing to becoming aware when we compare ourselves to others. After becoming aware that we’re comparing, take a few seconds and relax…and let it go.

The indirect approach is far more important and beneficial. What it involves is asking ourselves, Why am I comparing myself to others in the first place?

Secure people don’t compare

If we felt secure in our own skin, we wouldn’t care whether someone had a better job, a better car or a better butt.

And no big surprise, the reason we’re insecure and compare can be laid at the feet of those pesky egos of ours. It’s all those impressions we’ve stored in our lower selves over our lifetime that manifest in things like comparing, judging, jealousy and all the rest.

So the indirect approach involves the gradual weakening of the ego by letting go of all those impressions. Once we do that, there’ll be no need to compare ourselves to anybody or anything.

The takeaway

The comparing dragon can’t be slayed in a day. Or a month. We’ve been comparing our entire lives so patience will be needed if we are to eliminate it.

The key? Vigilance. We have to be vigilant about becoming aware when we’re comparing.

And we won’t become vigilant and commit to the work unless and until we realize and acknowledge that there is only downside and no upside to comparing.

If nothing else, I hope this article has convinced you of that.

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Letting go is the be-all, end-all of spiritual growth. For those of you counting, that’s the 3,478^th time I’ve written that. I hope you’ll agree that something so important bears repeating…a lot.

What I mean by letting go is releasing all of the emotional baggage we’ve accumulated and held onto over the course of our lives.

Why is that so consequential? Because if we don’t let it go, that baggage just sits there and runs, and ruins, our lives. Not even thousands of hours of meditation will change that.

You might be wondering why ‘letting go’ doesn’t appear in the title. That this article is supposed to be about dealing with becoming upset.

Answer: By definition, if something is upsetting you, it’s poking your baggage…and that baggage needs to be tossed out of the airplane, AKA let go.

That being the case, I’m always on the lookout for eloquent, impactful descriptions of this letting go process. My favorite might be one I recently heard Michael Singer talk about.

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We do it so much. And we don’t even realize it.

Do what?

Judge people. Off and on, all day. Every day.

What do I mean by judging?

Let’s say you meet someone at a dinner party. On the way home you and your spouse dish:

“I liked her, but I’m not sure. Part of me thinks she’s really cool, but part of me thinks she could be a huge bitch.”

“Yeah. She’s got a Prada purse and if those earrings are real, they’re worth thousands. But I did like the fact that she meditates.”

“But did you see how much cleavage she was showing? My god. I’ll bet she meditates in the nude!”

“Ha, ha!”

At which point you high-five each other then turn your dish/kibbitz/gossip/judging session to the woman’s husband. And off you go on your next judge-a-thon.

We all judge

We all do it. Constantly sizing people up.

She’s smart. He’s dumb.

He’s fat so he’s probably lazy. She’s beautiful so I’ll bet she’s a conceited jerk…or just an idiot…or both.

And I know. It can be fun to dish. Many people connect over their dishing.

But the point of this article is this: Judging does all harm and no good…TO THE JUDGER. Sure, it does no good for the people you’re judging, either, but I’m not even concerned with that.

As I’ve written many times, the purpose of my writing is to help you feel better and have more peace inside. Yes, that often results in becoming a better, more virtuous human being, but that is ancillary to my primary objective.

Bottom line: I’m not writing this to judge your judging. I’m writing it because YOU will feel better the less you judge.

I have one solid, admittedly anecdotal, data point on this from which I can extract vital information: Me.

I’ve been meditating regularly and working hard on my spiritual growth for several years now, but before that I was as judgmental as the next person.

Judgment in Hollywood

For several years I was a writer in Hollywood for shows like The West Wing and many others. Those jobs require sitting in a conference room most of the day dealing with roughly ten other writers.

It’s a judgmentalist’s dream.

Writer A is funny but tries too hard. Writer B is an arrogant a-hole who sucks up to the boss and treats everyone else like crap. Writer C has no talent; how the heck did he even get hired?

Yuck. It’s a monumental energy suck.

What happens when we stop judging

I can honestly say that one of the top benefits I’ve reaped from my years of spiritual work has been the vast reduction in how much I judge others.

How would I describe that benefit? Is it some loose, amorphous, intangible, ineffable, spiritual “thing?”

No, it’s tangible and practical. The benefit is that I feel lighter inside. Judging stuffs our insides with gobs of negative baggage. If you stop doing it, I guarantee you’ll feel lighter and better inside.

Why we judge

Before we get to how we can cut down on it, it’s critical that we ask, why does everybody judge so much? And I mean everybody.

It’s mostly because we need to feed our egoic, insecure selves that crave the need to feel superior to others. If we’re being honest, would any of us judge others constantly if we felt completely secure in our own skin? No.

But there’s another less obvious but equally impactful reason that we judge: Because we’ve been doing it for as long as we can remember. In other words, we do it simply because it’s a habit.

And the good news there is that if we get into a habit of doing something, we can work to kick that habit.

How to stop

Which leads to the next question: What can we do to curb our judging?

First, we need to become aware of how injurious judging is. Then we have to decide that we want to kick the habit.

Once we’ve done that, we set an intention to become aware when we’re judging. This is key. It’s all about becoming aware.

Then comes a critical step, taken from the playbook of the great Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart’s view is that every being on earth as it some level of conscious development. Tolle and the Dalai Lama are way farther along the path of conscious awakening than most of us, yours truly included.

Some people’s level of consciousness is low. Like that guy at the office who’s married but hits on every woman at work. Or the dad at the little league baseball game who’s constantly yelling at the umpire. You get the drift.

So when somebody does something that infuriates or bothers you and you feel your judgment muscles revving up to attack, stop. Then say to yourself,

“This person is at his/her level of consciousness at this point in their life. I don’t like how they’re acting, but I wish them well in their journey.”

It’s not about condescending

This isn’t meant to be an act of condescension. You’re not saying,

“Oh, you poor soul that is inferior to me as a human being, I wish you well.”

It’s not about who’s better or worse. That’s what Michael Singer calls ‘spiritual ego.’

Also, you’re not lying to yourself or denying the reality of who that person is at this point. The dad yelling at the umpire is, objectively speaking, a jerk. You’re just saying,

“Hey, that’s where he is right now in his development. Maybe his dad yelled at the umpires when he was a kid.”

It also doesn’t mean you need to try and befriend him and see if he wants to grab lunch after the game. If you want to help people like that, great.

The takeaway

The point of this exercise is getting you to stop ginning up a bunch of negative energy about other people. Because that energy stays with YOU. That’s the baggage judgment creates that YOU carry around.

So do yourself, and the world, a favor and cut down on the judging.

It will make you feel lighter.

Guaranteed.

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I think it’s safe to say that most people who lean toward the spiritual are on the upper end of the sensitivity scale. Why?

Try this on for size. Sensitivity often leads to emotional pain which leads to suffering which leads to seeking relief from suffering which leads to looking to the spiritual for answers.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Good sensitivity

Healthy sensitivity is great. It allows us to go deeper in relationships, romantic and otherwise, and experience a richer life than, as Paul Simon famously sang, a rock that feels no pain, and an island that never cries.

Then of course there’s unhealthy sensitivity. That’s the kind where our emotions run us…often into the ground.

One way this unhealthy sensitivity manifests can be expressed in a phrase all of you are familiar with: People pleaser.

You know any of those? Might you be one?

These are people who go out of their way to make sure everybody is doing okay. How so?

- A guy asks you out on a date and suggests the hot new steakhouse in town. You tell him that sounds great…even though you’re a vegetarian.

- You have a cocktail party at your house and dart all over the place, sick to your stomach thinking that somebody may not be having the time of their life.

- You bite your tongue, yet again, at the latest lousy remark lobbed your way by your mother-in-law, knowing that creating a fuss might upset your spouse.

These are all examples of the people pleaser in action.

Self-abandonment

And what can we call this behavior? Abandoning oneself.

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Most of what I do is clarify spiritual concepts in a way that regular people like us can understand them. After all, what good is any of this stuff if it flies right over our heads?

I’m excited about today’s clarification. Why? Because it’s about truly understanding how great things can be in our lives. Here’s how.

It start…

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One thing I’ve found in my fifteen years of studying all things spiritual is that the simple is always the most profound. Things like—

-Follow your breathing.

-Relax and then respond.

-The key to happiness is not wanting a lot.

All of these things are so simple and if we devote ourselves to practicing them, contentment is ours.

Powerful wisdom is simple but difficult to practice

The problem? Simple doesn’t mean easy. Our minds are so powerful and busy that they make doing all three of those things difficult for even the most equanimous among us.

C’est la vie.

Why do I bring up this simplicity idea? Because today’s teaching is also uber simple and uber profound.

Tinkering with a few words

All it is is playing with a couple of words. Here’s how it works.

Most people, when they feel down in the dumps about something, will say to themselves,

“I’m sad.”

A brilliant, yet simple, teaching from Michael Singer suggests saying instead,

“I’m feeling sadness.”

What’s the big deal, you might ask? Just add a word?

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Here we go again, gang. Time for another exploration of that pesky voice in our head that refuses to shut up.

If you’re wondering why I write about this topic, it’s because understanding it is essential for our overall well-being and advancement on the spiritual path. Why? Because that voice, and our succumbing to …

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Here goes another in a long line of articles about using life experiences to goose our growth. This one comes from a few days ago when I came to a four way stop sign intersection right near my home.

I put on my blinker to turn left. A car coming the other way got there a second or two before me and drove through the intersection.

I then proceeded to start my left turn but stopped when I saw that the car behind the last one started going through the intersection. That car had clearly gotten there well after I did but barreled through anyway.

I’m sure this has happened to all of us in our driving careers.

A righteous car crash

But it occurred to me: What if I had just continued in my left turn and resolved that I was going to keep going no matter what? In which case the other car would either stop and let me through or we’d crash.

I’d clearly gotten to the intersection first. And if we crashed? Well, I would be in the right and they would be in the wrong…

And I’d have a smashed up car.

What the heck does anything of this have to do with you? How in the heck could this anecdote possibly be helpful?

Here’s how.

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Most of my articles zoom in on a specific aspect of the spiritual journey, often drawing on teachings from the likes of Ram Dass, Neem Karoli Baba, Michael Singer, Eckhart Tolle, et al. They’re meant to be pointers to nudge you forward.

It occurred to me that it would be useful to try zooming out, for a change; that is…

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I wrote an article last year about Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass’s guru, and his teaching that we are all one (here’s the link). He’d often say to his devotees, usually apropos of nothing, “sub ek,” which in Hindi means “all one.”

But he said something else, too. It was a direct and simple teaching on what his devotees’ main…

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Most of you have heard people say, “Boy, that really sticks in my craw.” If you haven’t, it means that something bothers or annoys somebody…a lot.

Those who have heard it before probably, like me, have no idea what the literal meaning of something getting stuck in your craw is. Well, now you do.

What’s a craw?

Craw is an old-fashioned word for the crop of a bird — the organ in its neck containing grit that grinds up hard food. If something like a very hard nut or an over-large bone lodges in the crop and the grinding system can’t cope with it, it causes the bird great discomfort and often causes death, either because the crop swells and chokes the bird or because the bird starves.

So, metaphorically, we can say that certain actions or situations “stick in our craw” when we can’t bring ourselves to get past them. They get “stuck” in us, causing psychic discomfort.

Why am I writing about this? Because it presents a golden opportunity for spiritual and emotional growth.

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[Note: I will add the voiceover version of this article on Monday.]

Let’s face it, most of the time we feel we have as much control over our lives as a pinball being flicked around a pinball machine. Bing, bing, bing. Click, click. Off we go again, the vicissitudes of life constantly interrupting any sense of sustained cen…

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Yes, this article is about boredom. No, it will not be boring.

The idea came to me the other day after reading this quote from Jon Kabat Zinn, one of the pioneers of meditation and mindfulness in America:

“When you pay attention to boredom, it gets unbelievably interesting.”

I’m not so much interested in the ‘interesting’ aspect of boredom as much as I am the very nature of it and what that state has to offer us mere mortal Earthlings.

What is boredom? It’s when we find ourselves with nothing to do. When this happens, it drives most people crazy. We get anxious. Jumpy. Moody.

Why? Because our normally distracted minds have nothing to do. Nothing to do but…

Deal with ourselves. And most humans will do anything to avoid that.

A Harvard boredom experiment

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Being in the moment. Living in the moment. Being present. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Heck yes it is. Why? Because the present moment is the only place where life actually occurs.

The past doesn’t exist. It never has. The future doesn’t exist and never has.

The only thing that exists is now.

The world’s main problem

The chi…

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[Note: The voice over for this article will appear on Friday, December 5.]

People travel many paths in life. Those paths tend to differ based on the continent/country we live in.

In the poorer parts of the world — Africa, South America, South Asia and the Middle East — eking out a life of subsistence is, unfortunately, as good as it gets for many.

Here in America, it’s mostly about achieving some kind of financial and career success so we can enjoy the finer things in life (good food, car, house, etc.) and some level of notoriety.

I’ve written extensively about the fact that pursuing the finer things and notoriety spring from our egos and as such can never lead to lasting contentment.

A life path that works

What’s a path that does work? And by work, I mean a path that leads us to inner peace and a feeling of being at one with the universe/God or whatever your belief system is.

There are various ways of expressing what that path is. This one by Eckhart Tolle might be the best and most eloquent I’ve come across:

“The secret of life is to die before you die — and find that there is no death.”

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