Imagine a person standing with their arms stretched out to both sides. Someone is standing on each side of this person pulling their arms in opposite directions with all their might. This is how most of us live. We’re living in a constant battle between two opposing forces. It’s a state of constant stress — the tension from our mind almost being torn in half. On one side is what we crave,…
I am watching Peaky Blinders these days. I’m not usually one for such violence, but the family likes it and so it’s good bonding time.One line stuck out to me in particular. Uncle Charlie says to his nephew Tommy in regard to avoiding going crazy or committing suicide, “You have to move around or the guilt catches up with you... You have to keep moving or it all catches up…
Happy 4th of July to all who celebrate!Every year, I think about the inner freedom America’s Founding Fathers displayed when they envisioned a new form of government built on the ideals of liberty and equality. They first threw off the shackles of tyranny in their own minds so their creative spirit could imagine a better way forward. The conditions of political freedom were not prerequisites for their flourishing. In fact, it…
Yesterday I was so in the zone writing my next book, The Guidebook to Being Human, that I totally lost track of time and forgot to write the newsletter. But now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.Hope everyone is enjoying mango season. They’re extra sweet this time of year so be sure to get your fill. I sure did.This may surprise you, but peace and happiness is our natural state…
Every cell of your body plays a role,has an intelligence,and they work together to create the illusion of a single individual self. Your cells are conscious. They are aware of their surroundings and react accordingly. They are imbued with universal consciousness. They’re just not so advanced, like us, to be able to falsely believe they are separate from the whole. They do their job, focused, and play their role without the ego’s need for praise…
You are trapped. Not in a physical cage, but in a mental one. Luckily, this is a cage of our own making, and we each possess the key to freedom.The cage is made of our conditioned likes and dislikes. We think they are not conditioned, that they are natural, innate to us. But they are all conditioned, and they can be changed. I used to hate olives and cilantro. They made…
If you pull out your phone to avoid your emotions, you are not ready to pull out your phone. Everything you do on your phone will be neurotic, dependency-based, and ultimately destructive.Imagine you find out your car is in need of repair. It’s starting to make a weird noise. Instead of having a mechanic fix it, you fill up the gas tank with sand. This is what we are doing…
When someone says something you disagree with, can you instead of rejecting it or absorbing it, can you let it pass through you? Can you give it space to be? Can you see it, play with it, and let it go back into the void without blocking or denying or accepting it? This is what it means to be fully open to life.If you’re a human being (and I’m just…
We are an outward-focused species. We believe that fortunate circumstances will make us happy. On vacation, we’re supposed to be happy and the rest of the year is supposed to be a struggle. But what kind of life will we lead when only the extraordinary brings us joy? Whatever we do frequently becomes ordinary, so even the extraordinary will quickly become dull to us.Rather than waiting for an extraordinary vacation to be…
When we don’t know who we are, we can easily begin to see ourselves the way other people see us. But most often, those people don’t even know who they are. So we are seeing ourselves through the eyes of people who have no idea what a human being truly is.We can only know others when we truly know ourselves. We are the gateway to understanding the complex and vast…
If something here helped you feel less alone, would you help me keep it alive?
Even the smallest support matters.
Weekly Writings from the Desk of Todd Perelmuter
