September 5
September, Thoughts For…
5. Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Viktor E. Frankl
4. Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are. Soren Kierkegaard
3. The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open. Chuck Palahniuk
Although Mr. Palahniuk’s writing borders on the bizarre, I’m relatively sure he is speaking figuratively here. To be happy you also have to feel sadness and be vulnerable at times. To try to cut off one side …
August 31
August, Thoughts for…
31. We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. Anne Frank
This harks back to the suggestion from the Dalai Lama I posted a while ago, about spending 5 minutes a day remembering everyone just wants to be happy. When you meditate on that you can feel the power it holds, the compassion inherent in it.
30. I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Joseph Campbell
29. We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty …
August 26
Anger, Seinfeld, and Existentialism
I often hear people (especially those in the psychology field) state that they perceive sarcasm as anger. There is truth in this, and I cannot deny that when some people use sarcasm it has an angry sentiment embedded in it. But is it true that sarcasm is always anger? I do not believe so, and hope to defend the argument in this paper.
As someone who has had an anger problem in the past, and who currently provides anger management counseling, I have wondered if the masses that report sarcasm is anger are correct. As someone who uses sarcasm frequently enough I am also concerned it is perceived that way when …
August 16
Review: Eat, Pray, Love
Not long ago my girlfriend asked if I would go see Eat, Pray Love with her when it came out. I said I would, knowing the premise of the movie as a result of hearing about the book from so many colleagues and clients. Admittedly I have not read the book, nor do I intend to. I made the mistake recently of saying I perceived it as a woman’s book to a client. (Although this may sound sexist, my defense is: a.) women have actually used those words to describe the book to me, and b.) it is about a woman’s journey through pain to some sort of …
July 31
July, Thoughts for…
31. How often each day, if you were to verbalize your inner reality at that moment, would you have to say, “I Don’t want to be where I am”? What does it feel like when you don’t want to be where you are?
In cases where it is not appropriate to walk out, “I don’t want to be here” is not only useless but dysfunctional. It makes you and others unhappy.
It has been said: Wherever you go there you are. In other words you are here. Always. Is it so hard to accept that? Eckhart Tolle – Stillness Speaks
30. Can you …
July 3
Review: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
During the break between Spring Semester and Summer B, while I wasn’t teaching for the first time in years, I read the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” It’s actually a strange story how I came to read it.
Most of my readers know I rarely read fiction. But this book was a long time in coming. I have been into Zen, to various degrees, for more than 20 years. When I was relative neonate to Zen, having only read one or two books, people would always ask “Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?” I would always answer “no” of course. Then the next time …
June 30
June, Thoughts for the….
29. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. W. Beran Wolfe
This seemed to me to be the best quote I could find to end my little dissertation on …
June 16
Review: Get Him to the Greek and Its Portrayal of Addiction
I took my 16 year old out for his birthday (his actual birthday was a while ago, but with our schedules it was tough to schedule a full night alone with him before now). After dinner and some shopping, we discussed seeing a movie. He wanted to see “Get Him to the Greek.” I had read some pretty poor reviews, but had no problem seeing it. The reviews indicated the movie tried to do too much. They felt it aspired to be a comedy in the “Hangover” style but also tried to squeeze in weightier issues like a substance abuse problem and parent issues.
I had recently read another …
June 11
Review and Response: The God Part of the Brain
I initially picked up this book because the back cover presented it as a theory that explained how we create God and spiritual realms to combat our fear of death. As an existential therapist I found this intriguing. In this regard the book did not disappoint.
The book begins with a brief summary of evolution (what argument that did not denounce the existence of a supreme being would be complete without some sort of recognition of evolution?) I found this short (in relation to the amount of years it took for it to occur) history an adequate review, but a bit lengthy. I suppose I assume that any person willing …
June 9
Your Religion is not Important
A colleague shared this Powerpoint presentation with me of a discussion between a theologian and the Dalai Lama. I thought I would share it with my readers.
Yourreligionisnotimportant