Saying, “Yes,” opens your horizon as well as your heart. “Yes,” is an attitude of courage and openness. “Yes,” is trusting that, by risking yourself and opening to life, amazing things will happen.

One of the more obvious and trying aspects of this pandemic we’re floundering in is all the things we can’t do. This horrid little virus has spurred limitations the likes of which most of us have never seen.

There's a country song with the catchy little phrase: "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Those words have (annoyingly) stuck with me because, well, I haven't done very much at all for the first time in a long time. This is not good.

It’s been two months since my last communication and I feel compelled to catch up. A lot has happened, the first and most significant of which affected all of us here on the West Coast. No, I’m not talking about the demoralizing implosion of the San Francisco Giants and the subsequent, equally depressing success of the Dodgers

The good thing about getting sick of yourself, of hitting a wall, is that it prevents further movement in that dead-end direction. It stops you. It also hurts, just to make the point very plain.

When last we met I was bravely preparing to leave my familiar,  warm, cozy Hobbit hole and making bold statements about how one must have a goodbye in order to have a new hello and how it was high time that I found some new stimulation. Big talk, that.

You don’t have to be introspective or make any changes in order to feel better; there is an alternative. In my twenty-some years of practice and study, I have learned some valuable techniques for handling difficulties without delving into the depths.

A couple of years ago, I came across an idea that completely changed the way I view human evolution. What it said was basically this: that all spiritual growth and unfoldment comes from letting go. This simple little sentence was, for me, revelatory.

What do monkeys, the new year, and spiritual growth have to do with one another? Amazingly, quite a lot.