I’m back

I’m back.

What brought me back was to delete a bunch of old posts where I had mentioned or wrote book reviews supporting some people who have done some really shitty things.

Once that clean up is done, then I’m back to writing and podcasting.

DHARMAGE PODCAST – EPISODE 4: Scott Edelstein

I was honored to host Scott Edelstein on the show recently. He has a new book out titled The User’s Guide to Spiritual Teachers (you can find my review via this link) and well, let’s just say if you judge a podcast by the amount of times the host says the word ‘interesting’ – well it’s an award winning episode!

I had a few of those BOOM “mind-blown” instances which can only come from chatting with someone who is able to help draw out some deeper thinking. You may hear my gears churning throughout this discussion. 

This discussion covers a lot of ground and from the exasperated sound of my voice in the intro, you can see that the topic of finding a suitable spiritual teacher is very timely. 

The podcast offers up quite a few stories and scenarios from Scott and really is a great example of a dharma dummy having their mind opened up IN REAL TIME! I’m happy to be able to have someone on the show who is writing to the nuances involved with spiritual communities and their leaders.

Hope you enjoy the episode – and my confession about believing  a certain Canadian pop starlet to be an extremely powerful teacher. 

Resisting writing by reading ALL THE THINGS!

Yeah. I’ve fallen back into that tradition where this blog turns into a book review repository. I think I’m in a big state of escapism where the words of others are much more soothing / exciting/ enchanting/ worthy/ interesting etc etc etc than the ones I can come up with. Or maybe I’m just lazy.

Occasionally I have these moments where I’m hit with inspiration. I wake up with a segment of a poem that I want to write. Before bed, I have a strong visual from my childhood home mingle with the perfect description for it and then I fall asleep. I have numerous little scraps of paper floating around with half-formed phrases, single words and pen scratches that in time will be rendered meaningless. 

All I can do is roll with it. I send compassion to what those little words might have grown up to become if only they had a nurturing parent to tend for them and help them grow into big strong stories. I send myself compassion for doing my best. As someone who writes for a living, I am both passionate about wordsmithing as well as just damm tired. 

I thank you for writing for me dear authors of books, poems, zines, tweets, posts, newspapers, newsletters, textbooks and journal articles. I’m not jealous of you. I’m grateful for your ability to create.