[A] discovery of psychology is that the emotions are asymmetric, with the negative more powerful and long lasting than the positive. Schopenhauer also understood this: ‘the weakness of wellbeing and happiness, in contrast to the strength of pain’. The positive emotions are capricious day-trippers, but the negative emotions are imperialists – determined to invade, overwhelm, … Continue reading Asymmetric emotions →

Suddenly everything comes together. I know why I am here. I know the purpose of human life. There are moments when we – and I – manipulate, destroy, create, cure. But our true place in all this is so simple. To notice. To appreciate. That's all.Dyckman, Garvin & Liebert, The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed, p.86 Other … Continue reading Simply to see →

Meditate as much while on this journey as if you were shut up in a hermitage or in your cell, for wherever we are, wherever we go, we carry our cell with us; brother [sister] body is our cell, and the soul is the hermit who dwells in it, there to pray to the Lord … Continue reading Brother Body →

Be not anxious! Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of all anxiety. If our hearts are set on them, our reward is an anxiety whose burden is intolerable… When we seek for security … Continue reading Adding to the Anxiety →