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The Value of Solitude
Written By: Susanne Sims When my father passed away at the age of 99, my mother confided in me that after 73 years of marriage, she was not sure how to cope with living alone. Indeed, many of us might wonder the same thing if we’ve never spent more than a few days on our own. After all, we are social beings drawn instinctively to one another and our need to be together is primal. Some of our earliest experiences of being alone may have even involved punishment. If we misbehaved as children, we were told to take a time out, or go to our room. My cousins were disciplined…
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If I Can Bend a Spoon With My Mind, What’s Next?
By: Sanderson Sims In the 1970s, I attended a seminar in Honolulu entitled “The Mind Can Do Anything” sponsored by two students obtaining their doctoral degrees. One of the seminar presenters was Uri Geller who was famous for bending metal with his mind. Uri encouraged the audience to bring malfunctioning watches and clocks to the auditorium. He then asked everyone to agree to say to these malfunctioning watches and clocks: “Work!” When he gave the command, this was to be done with all the conviction they could muster. Uri then repeated the exercise a second time, and for those whose clocks and watches had begun to work, he requested…
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LIGHTEN UP!
By: Sanderson Sims This week I was wrestling with an emotional problem. I thought I was on the short end of the stick and my ego voice was telling me all of the reasons I was right. I debated it in my mind, gave it a rest and debated some more. You know the drill. Finally, I simply asked for the right solution. So what happened? My head gave way to my heart and I got the message that I should “Lighten Up.” I realized that I did not have to be right in order to be happy. It seemed that letting the issue go gave me a lot…
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The Lesson of the Avocado
Written by: Susanne Sims The other day I was having lunch with a friend at one of my favorite restaurants. We were dining outdoors under the shade of a beautiful green avocado tree. I had just placed my order for a grilled veggie sandwich on rye and was eagerly awaiting the savory meal when suddenly I experienced a sharp and painful blow on the top of my head. The impact was so jarring, it knocked my teeth together. “Woa!” I exclaimed. “What was that?” Rattled, I took a moment to assess my condition, then stood up and looked around. There on the lawn was the torpedo that had just…
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The Prayer Pot
It has been said that meditation is listening to God, while prayer is talking. Years ago I found a small gold colored pot in a thrift store. It spoke to me. As it turned out, it was a sugar bowl. There seemed to be something quite magical and charming about it. It felt as if I had discovered an Aladdin’s lamp in which my wishes, dreams and hopes could be placed. When I got home, I decided to repurpose this little sugar bowl and turn it into a prayer pot. Thus, I began writing my hopes and prayers on small bits of paper and tucking them inside the golden vessel. …
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Finding Peace With Being Alone
Written By: Susanne Sims Have you ever watched your mind to see where it goes and what it latches onto? This can be both daunting and liberating. It was Valentine’s Day and my sweetheart and I were once again thousands of miles apart. “I should be sad,” I told myself. “All the world is celebrating love today, yet I’m alone.” Following that, another thought arose: “But I’m happy.” It was truly miraculous that I was not feeling depressed or sad. Even when trying to convince myself that I should be feeling down, I just could not summon such feelings. Was I beginning to go numb, or was…
- Explorations in Consciousness, Latest News/Trends, Living Life as a Question, Mindfullness/Meditation
How to End Polarizing Political Arguments
By: Sanderson Sims I remember growing up watching the American public affairs show “Firing Line” with conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. He would invite those of opposing points of view to be on the show, and they would both lay out in civil terms their points of view and the logic behind them. There would be disagreements but they were good natured. Emotion had not eclipsed reason. You, the viewer, would be able to see both sides of an issue, realizing that opposing points of view each have elements of truth. In today’s privately owned electronic media environment, much depends on creating an emotional hook, thereby drawing viewers into an…
- Explorations in Consciousness, Journeys, Latest News/Trends, Metaphysical Musings, Mindfullness/Meditation
How My Refrigerator Taught Me to Be Mindful
Perhaps you’ve watched the popular Netflix series Grace and Frankie staring Jane Fonda as Grace, and Lily Tomlin as Frankie. In one scene, Frankie is in her kitchen doing battle with her refrigerator. She has just closed the refrigerator door but forgotten the butter, so she attempts to open it again. Using all of her strength, she finds that she cannot open the door because the refrigerator has a vacuum seal so tight, even Godzilla could not open it. Frustrated, Frankie forces herself to count from one to ten, until the prerequisite time has passed and the seal is released. It’s a comical scene and perhaps one that many of…
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A Century of Wisdom – Paramahansa Yogananda
“By the practice of meditation, you will find that you are carrying within your heart a portable paradise” – Yogananda From time to time great avatars incarnate on Earth to assist humanity in our spiritual awakening. Such a master was Paramhansa Yogananda, one of the most influential teachers of the 20th Century. This year marks the 100th anniversary of his arrival in the West. Born in Gorakhpur, India on January 5, 1893 to a Bengali Hindu family, he was first known as Mukunda. By the age of 17 he had found his own beloved teacher and guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, under whose tutelage he would train and study for ten…
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Small Changes Can Produce Profound Results
While in college I took a course in contemporary interpretation of modern western religions. We were required to read a particular book in which the author struggled to reconcile the concept of a loving or just God with injustices in this world, such as the Holocaust, suffering or natural disasters. The author’s viewpoint was that one simply had to “have faith” in such circumstances. I struggled with that answer feeling like there had to be a better explanation. Later in life I was introduced to the Eastern idea of karma, a sort of cosmic physics of balance in which actions committed today would find an equal or opposite reaction…
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An Optimist and a Prepper Find Common Ground
Two weeks ago I ran into my neighbor Bill, someone with whom I’d never had much contact. He reached out to me and said he was not doing well, admitting that he was lonely, worried, and needed someone to talk to — even if it was just for an hour. How nice that he could be so honest and vulnerable. This would never have happened pre-Covid! I agreed to meet Bill outside in the building’s garden courtyard and made some fruit salad and iced tea to share. For the next hour we got to know one other. Bill was agitated and immediately began to unload. From the news sources he…
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A Simple Thing to Do
Sometimes the simplest things in life can make life much more satisfying. Many years ago I met a very interesting person who said that each day he made a point to do at least one nice thing for somebody — often a person he didn’t even know. He explained that the logic was quite simple: what you put out there comes back to you. Solely from a physics point of view, most of us are familiar with Newton’s third law of motion which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The size of the force on the first object equals the size of force on…
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An Optimist and a Prepper Find Common Ground
