The hermit living off of the land or the priestess tending to a holy fire in a temple know that to labor is to worship. Their work is intimately tied to their connection with themselves and something greater than themselves: their human and more-than-human community. The hermit and the priestess don’t have a spiritual moment in the morning and then become absorbed by meaningless work for the rest of their days - their spirituality is the work, and the work is spiritual.
Read MoreIn earth-based spirituality and astrology, eclipses are considered portals. Things are one way, and then they’re not. You are in one world, and then you awaken to find yourself in another. They’re excellent times to shed patterns that keep us stuck in meaningless patterns of suffering.
I went into this eclipse knowing that I wanted to work with it intentionally, and when I awoke at 5:00am that morning, I walked outside under the moon and begged to be free of the self-hatred that had so bitterly worn me down.
Read MoreWhen I was a senior in college, my world came crashing down. Over the course of one panic-attack filled weekend, I had what those in the Christian community call "a crisis of faith." For seven years after that weekend, I rejected anything that felt remotely spiritual. I couldn't walk into a church without feeling a knot in my stomach, I felt angry anytime someone used the word "God," and I thought Richard Dawkins was the shit.
Read MoreHave you ever had something come up in your life that feels eerily similar to an issue you've dealt with in the past?
A while ago, I entered into a business partnership that was all wrong, and while my intuition was sending me alarm signals the entire way, I chose to ignore them. Sure enough, the partnership had to end, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.
Something came up recently within a completely different context, but it had the same icky texture. Since our brains like to find commonalities and make sense of new experiences, my brain immediately declared, "This situation is just like that other one was, which means it's horrible and you need to get out!"
Read MoreMost of us have an aversion to the unknown. We're uncomfortable with whatever's unplanned, mysterious, or hidden. A lot of us were raised to believe that things should be known - that if we don't know something already, we need to learn it, measure it, shed light on it, etc. There's an air of desperation behind this belief, and it can drive us to create a false sense of knowing and control through excessive planning and worry.
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