July 2020

The word nostalgia comes from this nost meaning the “homecoming” and then algia meaning pain, the pain of homecoming, but really meaning the pain of wanting to return home. It started as meaning homesickness, this kind of feeling of pain and just this kind of suffering feeling that comes from being far away from home […]

There’s an idea that I like from the medical field, going back to ancient times with Hippocrates: the idea that a doctor does not actually heal anybody. And that if we talk about a person being a healer, or somebody healing somebody else, that this is really a shorthand. But there’s no actual direct healing

So I’ve been looking at the idea of selfishness versus selflessness. How much do we focus on ourselves, on our slice of the universe, versus looking at the big picture, and working as being part of this connected universe versus working as an individual? And it’s so easy to go full individual, because there’s a

In the last video I looked at sort of a minimum level of “selfishness”, where no matter how giving and universal and selfless that we choose to be, there’s always something a little bit special, it seems, about our little corner of the universe, that leads us to put a little bit of special attention

I’m looking at how to get a good balance between looking out for myself versus looking out for the big picture, the people around me, maybe even the whole universe. Selfishness versus selflessness. How do we find the right balance? Now, some would say that selfishness is entirely bad, and we should be entirely selfless,

We see a big part of every spiritual tradition, all these kind of teachings about wisdom and all this kind of thing, a big factor is this thing that might be called ego. And you know, that’s a very modern kind of psychological term, and there’s so many different words that can be used for

Some days, it feels like trying to stay on a good path, trying to do good things, work towards a better future: it can sometimes become very difficult to stay on this good path when it is so tempting to just give up and do all the bad habits, all the time wasting, just to

When we look at all the possibilities for escapism and entertainment and imagination, worlds of fantasy and adventure and excitement: we seem to have this need for something that feels great, it feels like a big adventure, it feels exciting, it feels wonderful. We just can’t be fully satisfied with something that’s just OK. Now,

One of the biggest clichés in self-development is the power of gratitude. You’ll hear so many different versions about how bringing out this feeling of gratitude, being grateful for everything that you have, no matter how bad your current state is, all the blessings and gifts that you have, and being aware of this and

I’ve been talking about this idea of being “normal” versus being “weird”, you know, fitting in with some kind of sense of what is the way to do things, the normal way, the standard, respectable, good way, versus doing something that just seems off, so you’re like “No, that’s not how you do things. That’s