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Please Pass the Enlightenment? – Thoughts on a More “Spiritual” Thanksgiving

In my opinion, Thanksgiving is the most spiritual of holidays in America. For those of you who bristle at the word “spiritual,” I hope you will see that the term doesn’t at all have to include God, church, or past-life regressions. Thanksgiving is pregnant with spirituality, and if we don’t allow it to be bastardized […]

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favorites growth

“Nobody Gives a Shit” and the Sublime Aloneness

I’m in a very interesting place right now, one which has been fraught with struggle as well as blessed with perfection and liberation. What I’ve seen lately is that the more grounded and still I become, the easier it is for me to just “be” with others and listen to them. I’m finding that when […]

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favorites spirituality

The iPod Method for Spiritual Enlightenment

Many of us seek some form of enlightenment, a release from the mind, so that there can remain a simple capacity to just “be.” So off we run to workshops, travel to ashrams in India, chant on mountaintops in Tibet, sit on our meditation cushions, go to church, read spiritual texts, and even fall to […]

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favorites Jewish life ukraine

Farewell Ukrainya

Farewell Ukraine. On a plane on my way from Kiev towards a stop in London on my way back to the States. There was something special about Ukraine for me. Funny, though, I think I might be willing to say that about any place where I spend an extended period of time. I think one […]

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favorites Jewish poems & stories ukraine

Babi Yar – Light from Darkness

This morning I went to the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, where a large massacre of Jews took place in September of 1941. I wasn’t quite sure why I was going, but I went anyway, open to whatever I might find. What I found profoundly surprised me. I found Beauty. The ravine is a lovely […]

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family favorites Jewish ukraine

Ancestral Grief

Once again ancestral grief rears it’s pain again through me. If you’ll recall from a recent post about bringing some of my mother’s ashes to rest with her first husband Joe at a military graveyard in France, I discovered then how much grief I can carry for something that I have not personally suffered, but […]

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favorites spirituality

Saying Yes to Our Experience

So I’m back onto the “Just Say Yes” exploration here again which began on my India trip. While there, I took my father’s parting advice to “just say ‘yes.” The point of which, I believe, was to be open to whatever magic might be served up while traveling. I found it to be a wonderful […]

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favorites growth india

Turning One’s Eyes Toward Suffering

I just realized something this morning. In preparing for my first dharma talk which I’ll be giving at Kumeido in Little River this afternoon, and I was thinking about my travels in India, I was thinking about the eye contact I would try to have with people while there, especially the people asking for money […]