A friend of mine says that when she wakes up anxious or depressed, she takes a walk and says “good morning” to everyone she meets along...

I recently read a story about a woman who used to bully her Alexa device. It started with the woman teasing Alexa when it made a mistake;...

One commonly-used phrase in healing circles is “holding space for pain.” On the one hand, it’s pretty literal: we all need safe people to...

The other day I posted a video of my song, “If You’re Lucky Your Heart Will Break.” It’s about the way that pain can be an important...

In the early 2010s, a series of scientific studies proved that people would rather feel pain than be bored. In one experiment,...

I recently saw a documentary about a beach in Ghana where a huge percentage of the world’s clothing washes up each year. In the film, a...

I recently saw a video of ICE agents throwing a woman against a wall, zip-tying her, and then releasing her when they realized they had...

One of my insecurities is feeling sometimes like I don’t have enough style. As a musician, for example, I can be confident in the content...

Ajaan Chah’s student once got into a fight with another monk. Walking away, he came upon Ajaan Chah, who gave him a big smile. Right...

In Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, a young man murders an old lady. He initially feels justified in his action. She’s going to...

The biggest party I ever threw was twenty years ago in Cairo. It wasn’t supposed to be big: I only invited about six people, some of whom...

Chögyam Trungpa used to warn about waiting for “the dream come true.” All of us, in our own ways, are waiting for life to conform to some...

The Buddha said that every evening, when you see the sun set, you should remind yourself that this might be the last sunset you ever see....

There’s a Hasidic story about a rabbi who asks his students, “How can you tell the exact line between night and day?” “Is it the moment...

The other day, I was walking down the street when I saw an old man lying on the pavement, blood streaming down his face. People were...

In 2015, I kept having dreams in which my grandmother told me to go to the Greek island of Patmos. I decided to make a pilgrimage there...

New Age spirituality talks a lot about the power of intention. But people often have a very lazy definition of what intention is. “It’s...

There’s a Persian expression, kolah gozashtan, which means to play a trick on someone, but it literally means to “put a hat on” them. The...

There’s an Ethiopian story about a woman who could not get her stepson to like her. She went to a medicine man, who told her to prepare a...

If I had to sum up my current newsfeed with a headline, it would be: “EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW.” Political analysts say we’re living...