If I had my druthers, I think I would have made cats and dogs more like people and made people more like the other animals.
Yes, as God, I would have changed the Book of Genesis and created the dog first, and then, taking a rib from the first one, I would have created his loving mate and good friend, the cat. Continue reading
I had my recurring dream again last night. For several years, I have gone to work at the daily newspaper, dreaming that the deadline for submitting copy was just minutes away and I had typed nothing about my story for the day.  Continue reading
“The First Dude!”
Well, what do you think?  Continue reading
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“I didn’t mean to hurt you“ I said.” I just thought you needed to know, that’s all.”
The girl whose nickname was Peaches said nothing as we sat on the floor of her vestibule. I saw her eyes water up a little and I wanted to cry myself.
It should be as simple as that! If the federal government has reasonable suspicion to place you on a terrorist “No Fly List,” you should also be barred from buying guns.
No ands, ifs, or buts.  Continue reading
Simply cut back like the sandlot football running back you played as a kid while scampering on a field in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park.
You can’t go “cold turkey” on a lifestyle you’ve been living for more than 30 years. But you can choose to limit the amount of news you take in on a daily or even an hourly basis.  Continue reading
I typed this over and over again, hoping that one day I’d learn the fine skill of typing as I sat in a class with all girls. Young women, I should say. I was the only male in the Delaware County Community College course of study, and I never once felt out of place or unusual.
I wanted to be a journalist, you see. So, I figured I had to learn the fine art of typing to file my stories. Continue reading
I love Coca-Cola. It has been my favorite drink since I don’t remember when. I guess it all started with the small green bottles that you had to use an honest-to-goodness bottle opener to crack open. Continue reading
Korea awaits me next week as I travel more than a thousand miles to find myself and discover reasons why I am still here on planet earth.
Yes, I’m joining a group from Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago that will fly to Seoul, South Korea, to take part in the centennial celebration of the WON Buddhism by its master on April 28th, 1916. Continue reading
In recent days I received a visit from Kyrgyzstan at this site called Contoveros.
Kyrgyzstan is a small Asian country that revolted in 1910 against the Russian government and then was taken over by the former USSR until reacquiring its independence in 1999.
It’s a pain in the hip, the shoulder and the lower part of my back, to tell you the truth.
I recently learned that I have arthritis. It’s killing me. Continue reading
I heard a banjo strum as I fed the birds outside near the plum tree in my yard this morning. Banjo? Strumming? Where could that have come from, I wondered?
Continue readingI went within and felt nothing this morning. I knew this day would come, but I thought I would put it off until the day I’d die. Yes, I thought I’d have enough juice within to tell my story until I took that last breath.
But Life fooled me. It hit me upside the head, showing me, you can’t take anything for granted. All things are subject to change. All phenomena are transitory, all are impermanent. The only permanence that exists is Love I believe that energizes us and the world we all live in. Continue reading
If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and remove all of the hate in our land. It would take away the hurt all felt throughout the ages of man from the beginning of time, when Cain killed his brother, and when a stupid Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a lousy bowl of soup.  Continue reading
One doesn’t have to go on a diet to lose the excess weight of a lifetime of living. All you need do is to lighten your mind, get rid of burdens carried from childhood when the trauma of difficulties and missteps caused you to stumble and lose faith in your God-given direction.
“Lighten up,” is what someone told me once, and that is exactly what I have tried to do after experiencing Holotropic Breath Work and listening to the new “Weight Loss” meditation offered by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra today. My struggle has ended, and from now on, I will be in harmony with me, myself, and I.
Those words in German jumped off the page from a brochure I couldn’t read, but by the end of a presentation in Freiburg, Germany, I got a better handle on who does the healing.
I do! And you do!  Continue reading
When will I ever learn to trust the Universe?
When will I develop enough faith to believe things happen for my well-being? And when can I truly trust my instincts and live more peacefully in tune with what the Cosmos is manifesting just for me ? Continue reading
I think I’m going “Cat Shit.” You probably heard of someone going “Bat Shit.” But I’m here to tell you that I’ve gone “Cat Shit” and this is the reason why:
My son’s cat, Daniel, has developed some ESP skills. Extraordinary Sensing People skills.  Continue reading
I experienced something scientists have labeled “Post-Traumatic Growth” twice in my life and some forty years apart. Both led to major changes in my life and a new look at life like I never had imagined it to be. Continue reading
Mental illness scares the shit out of me. The very term conjures up images of some crazed guy with wild, straggly hair and a demon-like smile of malevolence. Steven King kind of comes to mind when I think of someone who might be a little touched in the head. A Stephen King character, that is. Not Stephen King.  Continue reading
Have you ever met someone who tells you what you and he or she had done so many years earlier when you hung out that time, but you don’t remember? This happened to me recently at a neighborhood reunion.
Try as I might, I couldn’t remember what the hell they were talking about. Worse yet, I couldn’t place them in my memory back or through the retrieval process. Who is this person, I asked myself while smiling and laughing hard at the retelling of a story they seem to have gotten so much out of.  Continue reading
No matter where I go, Philadelphia will always go with me. I’ve taken the old neighborhood to combat in Vietnam as well as to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I let it shine in the courthouses of Philadelphia and the one and only house of pleasure I visited in Panama.
Yeah, I’m from Brewerytown, an old German-based section of Philadelphia that families of beer-makers settled in a small enclave of the City of Brotherly Love. Brewerytown is near the Philadelphia Zoo on Girard Avenue and not too far from the Eastern State Penitentiary, where Al Capone once lived in a section called Fairmount.  Continue reading
Who am I? What do I believe? And can I name a few of my beliefs?
Let me name a few things I believe about myself. They’re in no particular order.  Continue reading
Much of what I know about War was what I learned while playing as a kid. You know, using a stick or a broken branch from a tree, I’d pretend it was a rifle to shoot the bad guys who were out to get me and the rest of the good guys in my old neighborhood. 
When I write, I try to tap into the child within. I try to “feel” something that I can share with another, be it humorous, educational or shocking.
I have stories to tell from my past that brought me to this point, and I think they may help others to feel what I feel and to take action, even if that action is simply to refrain from acting or even thinking.
Continue readingI believe that I have become a “Spiritual Soldier of Fortune” and would travel anywhere my heart beckons me to learn, to pray, and to find answers about the Universe.
This quote from the famous Greek of antiquity, Hippocrates, could be the basis for a new Golden Rule for the Road.  Continue reading
I never saw a sniper as a hero. I don’t think many Americans did either. That is, until someone made a movie about one of them that fought for “our side.” Continue reading
The person who had the biggest impact on my life was my second wife, Wendy Wright Contos. She had a 157 IQ, but never once acted as if she was better than me. She easily got angry at injustices and would, on occasion, lash out against the hypocrisy of politicians, while helping the underprivileged and the rights of women in a male-dominated society. Continue reading
A Viet Cong sniper was trying to kill me. Some motherfucker hiding in the trees, the bushes, the triple-canopy jungle had just shot at my platoon. I thought he was shooting randomly, despite the debris from the ground, grassland and other tiny bits of rock that struck me from a bullet’s ricochets.
No, he was aiming at no one but me! It’s taken me more than forty years to figure that out. 
I felt a lot of healing when I read the following quote from the feminine deity: Moor Jani:
“We all have the capacity to heal ourselves as well as facilitate the healing of others. When we get in touch with that infinite place within us where we are Whole, then illness can’t remain in the body. And because we’re all connected, there’s no reason why one person’s state of wellness can’t touch others. Elevating them and triggering their recovery. And when we heal others, we also heal ourselves and our planet.
And like Buddy Holly once said: “That’ll be the day . . . that I die.”
Stress is here to stay, my friend, and all we can do is to accept it and use skillful means to control it.
Meditation is one of those means. I’ve been applying it for some five years now. I get a little better at it every day. I simply “don’t try,” nor “judge.” It ain’t easy. It takes practice.
(See Part One, “Cancer strikes . . .)
The train ride from home to the hospital was one of the longest trips of my life. I just knew I was going to die. I figured that the surgeon could not remove all the cancer during my operation 10 days earlier, and it finally struck me: I am a cancer victim!
That’s the key to a happy life, you know. Learning to serve others selflessly with no expectation of a reward other than the knowledge you are doing unto others something you’d want them to do . . . unto everyone else.
I expected to try to get through the day today without my morning cup of meditation offering from Deepak & Oprah. I figured the 21-day journey had ended yesterday, August 31st. Yet today, the American holiday called “Labor Day,” they gave us a gift — an extra day. And boy, did I need it. Continue reading
I was Jesus’ sidekick.
We hung out when he was about 25 years old, and we spent a lot of time together traveling outside of the Land of Galilee. We had even accompanied one of his cousins (- on his mother’s side) for an extended visit to the Far, Far East, where we met with adventures that could curl up a sandal or two.
I had a dream with a wonderful happy ending just a few minutes ago. It woke me, and I made a cup of coffee, brushed my teeth, and began writing while the memory was still fresh on my mind.
I dreamed about my dog named Willie.
I took off from Planet Earth this morning. It all happened when Deepak Chopra pushed a button inside of me, using the words “transcend” and “Higher Levels of Consciousness. Continue reading
It took several hours for the effects of the Sweat Lodge ceremony to kick in, but when it did, I realized the control I always thought I needed was not in my hands, but in what the Greeks called the Fates; the Christians, God; and the Buddhists, Karma.
A Divine source, referred to by some as the “Force,” the Divine Feminine, the Creator, has dealt a hand to play with our own free will. We get to choose which cards to keep and the ones to discard. By standing pat or by seeking new ones to “change our luck” or to improve our hand, we cast our lot to the future. None of us expects to lose or to face tragedy or a financial crisis. We hope for improvement, to enrich ourselves through our card-playing skills and years of studying the game of life.
In the end, the winner is not necessarily the one who drew the highest hand – a royal straight flush versus a pair of kings and deuces. It is the player that can place the bet, and deal with the loss or win with equanimity, that emerges the victor. There is no win, there is no loss. There is just an awareness of the game and how to view it from a state of grace, the right frame of mind, the right attitude. All disappointments arise and end.
All roller-coaster thrills must end. In understanding that everything that comes into my existence must someday leave, I can live with its impermanent nature more easily. Treat it the same whether it is good or bad, foul or fresh, holy or unholy. The moment of pleasure and the moment of dissatisfaction will pass. Each will arise and reach its crescendo of joy or sadness, and then each will fall, dissipating and returning from whence it came, leaving naught but a memory we can choose to relive or to drop if similar conditions arise to trigger its recall later.
None of this was clear when the sweat poured out of me as 10 men and women crawled on hands and knees into the Sweat Lodge outside of Pottstown, PA. We took part in a ceremony honoring the “Great Spirit,” while offering prayers to the four corners of the earth and beyond. We sweated as the lodge leader spread bits of sage, tobacco, and other herbs onto the red-hot coals, causing an eruption of tiny flames that shot upwards and out of the stones but remained safely in a pit dug earlier to contain a total of some 15 hot, glowing rocks.
Each one had been baked in a much bigger pit built a slight distance outside of the lodge, where a stone-bearer had been heating them over a slow-burning fire for several hours. Two to four rocks were requested for each “sweat,” or prayerful focus in a given direction. We offered three prayers each for the West, the South, and the North.
Then just as the sweat seemed to be unbearable for the likes of me, the number of prayers for the East increased to five, six, seven, eight, and beyond . . . I lowered my head to the floor of the lodge, taking in the cooler air and praying a silent prayer that all the prayers would stop so that I could get the hell out of there!
The prayers did stop, and we offered a blanket thanksgiving for all. I believe, however, that my silent prayer even helped to cleanse and purify me, removing and burning away the hellish traces of lower, base nature.
Hours later, I revolted against a group of Born-Again Christians. All of them were what I called “lily whites.” The men wore handsomely tailored suits, and the women gorgeous dresses with just the right amount of jewelry. All appeared with the greatest tans that money and lots of free time at the beach could offer.
“I don’t belong here,” I cried to my partner in crime, Melanie, a young Hispanic woman whose mother was raised in Colombia and passed on the natural shade of tan we ethnic types have acquired — her from South America, and me from the southern European countries like my father’s Greek homeland. She had left the sweat lodge and agreed to go with me on this next leg of my spiritual journey
“They’re too white for me,” I said, pointing at their pale faces, their blonde heads, and the white hairs of their elderly wise ones. “I haven’t seen one Black,” I added. “We’re their token brown-skinned people.” Eventually, she helped me to overcome my resistance, and we entered the church even though Melanie was still a little wet from swimming in the pool after the sweat and unable to change out of the bra and other underthings that had gotten soaked!
There we were. Two “Recovering” Catholics, walking into the Valley Forge Baptist Church to take in the solo performance of the daughter of dear retired friends I had made while breakfasting at an IKEA restaurant in Conshohocken. They waved to us, and Melanie and I parted the sea of white folks and sat in a pew behind the proud parents. Their daughter played divinely, and despite an apparent ban against applauding in such a refined church of God, the audience cheered her and I whistled as loudly as the most boisterous fan at a Phillies/Mets game.
A wonderful choir next offered every one the Sound of Angels. That was followed by a group of teens who had recently attended a church-sponsored camp in North Carolina who explained to the thousands of congregational members how Christ had entered into their lives and changed them forever. Each boy reminded me of a miniature “preacher-in-training” with the fervor of zealot for God, while the girls talked of the gentler side of a divine forgiveness, unconditional love, and spiritual camaraderie. Then Satan raised his ugly head.
No, Lucifer made no appearance, although one of the adult preachers brought up his name while chastising the youth for listening to the foulest of foul music provided in the world today. He asked for money to develop Christian music as an alternative to evil sounds my generation had been warned against when Ed Sullivan chose not to show Elvis Presley’s lower parts on national television and “race songs” — those performed by Black artists and Doo Wop groups years ago got banned in Boston.
I couldn’t wait to escape, bid farewell to the lovely white-haired couple who invited us, and put a distance between them and my sinful self. It was while I was drinking water in my car and reflecting on the day’s events that divine insight struck me like the proverbial bolt of lightning.
God and the Divine Spirit of the Cosmos are the same one we all talk about, but we use different languages to praise and worship. He or she is the clear light, the Buddha Nature existing in all that we can tap into when we want to live a life that Jesus lived, or that Mohammed said was possible if we but give up our will and let a more powerful Will control the major part of our lives. Yes, we still have free choice, free will.
But we know where our internal moral compass is directing us to go. It tells us what is good or bad at the moment and that all we need do is seek the stillness and silence where a “Shekinah” — what the Hebrew language calls the “Feminine Side of God” — dwells. She is always available to guide us. Seek her out, this great spirit, this energy, this Great Vibration, and give up all resistance.
You’ll find out you can do it with no sweat, and with no loss of anything God hadn’t planned for your personal purpose in life.
I am a shapeshifter. I’ve developed the ability over the past five years to shift from one form to another by simply manipulating my mind to do the bidding of my higher self. 
You see, there are two of “me” inside of this shell of a body. There’s the “me” created by my ego, also known as “my mind,” and there’s also the “non-me,” the one that surfaces when the mind is gone. It is this entity, one that is pure consciousness, that takes over when the mind stops all of its thought processes.
The true spirit or energy mass that’s within me is always there, always in the present. I can’t connect to it when that part of “me” is dominant. I fail to be aware of the energy, the spirit’s existence. By halting and stopping my thoughts, however, the consciousness “arises” and takes over. Forms of all shapes and sizes come into focus. A flower, a tree . . . the wind on my face . . . the smell of garlic . . . the softness of a woman’s hand across my brow.
If consciousness did not exist in the present, none of these forms would exist either. Think about it! If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Well, we know you have two parts to such an auditory phenomenon. If there is no one to hear sound, then you cannot have sound. If your consciousness is not present, then you cannot have . . . well, fill in the blank.
And, if your consciousness is always being placed on hold by the mind that always wants to think up reasons, excuses and answers to something for the future or from the past, then the forms that exist in front of our eyes, within the earshot of our hearing, the taste of the mouth, the smell of the nose, the touch of a hand, then how can we say they truly exist? Yes, a flower will appear to our senses, but our thoughts will not include its beauty, its texture, its “poetic-ness,” so to speak.
Fear, anxiety, and depression cannot exist in the present without the support, nay, perhaps the “leading role” played by the mind. Just think. You stop thinking, and you stop the worry, the confusion, the lack of wholesome goodness inside of you. Without your mind insisting that you continually think of something, that thing will eventually disappear, diminish, or slide off the radar screen.
All you need to do is place your awareness like a laser beam onto one of your five senses. Focus as if your life depended on it. Life in the present moment does depend on you living in the present, sans thoughts of any kind, sans the emotions that go with the thoughts, whether we like them or not. Thoughts trap us, entice us to cling to them, to always be grasping for their contents, their so-called can’t-live-without-them ideas, concepts, and a whatnot or two.
So, I shape shift. I will my inner being to focus on my breath, my five senses, and to stay fixed there for as long as it takes for the mind to quiet down, come to rest, and hibernate. The present opens to me like a flower. I “shape” the moment like the observer shaping reality in a particle/wave shape-shifting quantum physics laboratory experiment.
Now, I am more in the moment than I have ever been, with thoughts of the moment, which, incidentally, never really existed.
You can’t “think” of the moment, the present. You lose it as soon as you call forth the idea. By the time it is “formed,” time has passed you by. The present has long gone. You’re someplace other than that present moment when your mind thought it could pin the present down to the now. Now is gone from the mind’s eye, as soon as the mind starts to eye it through the thought process.
It’s the “thought-less process” you need to be in and recognize the present. You have to “feel” it, experience it, live it. You’ll love it more and more as you return to it.
Just think about it. Now, stop. Be it. Be in the now right now.
What can I teach you, Little One? What will I impart to you that you can carry with you when you feel the need to touch the Source you crave so much?
You have chosen to come closer to your spirit. It resides within, but your thoughts of this world prevent you from seeing the larger world inside. Now I must take your hand and walk you to the table, sit you down, and “show” you how to show yourself the easiest way to Nirvana.
Eat! 
Sit quietly, close your eyes, and chew each bite over and over again. Eat while guiding your thoughts to the food you’re processing inside the instrument God created for us to truly nourish ourselves. Bite the food ever so gently and chew it.
Chew for the farmer that planted the seeds in the ground that helped the rainwater seep into it, and the sun to open it to the atmosphere above, where day after day it grew more and more until removed from its home by loving hands that gathered it for market.
Chew for the driver that delivered the food to a processor who cleaned, shaped, and bundled the food to prepare it for display on supermarket shelves for customers like your mother to pick and choose while planning to feed you at our dinner table.
Chew and then chew again for what the nutrients each bite will offer.
Now for the fun part: chew for the taste of it. Yes, chew with all of your teeth, including those near the back of the mouth that see less work when one hastily runs through the daily task of eating. When you chew this way, taste buds that have not awoken in many years suddenly awake, surprising you with how rich and downright delicious the food substance can be. It’s like discovering a treasure hidden right beneath your nose!
Eating meditation is this game. Gaining wisdom and inside knowledge is the aim. But you can’t do this alone. Be constantly aware of the other tool given to us to practice our journey with the breath.
I’m asking you to walk and chew gum at the same time, got it? Actually, you should breathe and chew each morsel simultaneously, “sensing” or “feeling” the food and the air. Be cognizant of each. Focus on nothing but them until you can widen your scope of awareness to include other parts of your body, the parts that tense up without us even thinking about it.
I bet you dollars to donuts that if you take a survey of yourself now, you’d feel some tenseness in the body, particularly in the shoulders. Go there. Focus your mind there, not once, but often during the eating process. I don’t know why, but we tense up a lot. Even when there appears to be no earthly reason to “be on guard,” we stay as coiled as a metal spring waiting to force a jack-in-the-box to pop out to warn us of danger, a threat, or possibly some other leftover primordial reflex action.
Calm down. Calm down the body just as you’re calming down the mind by focusing on the where, the how, and the why of the food in your mouth. You fooled yourself into not thinking wayward thoughts while chewing again and again.
Time to swallow and feel the passageway the food now travels. (Check on those shoulders and loosen them again!)
Practice this technique when you are alone, Little One. Practice it with like-minded persons who understand that the way to one’s heart can be through his or her stomach. Love and compassion arise when you choose to make food for thought.
The thought of going to prison never bothered me. I’d survive and flourish behind bars, where I’d have more than enough time to reflect and write which I have found is my true love in life.
No, I could kill without worrying about the consequences. It would be my first offense. I am certified as a Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I don’t see any judge or jury putting me to death for the crime.
All of this went through my mind when I was waiting at the train platform, and a rather tall, white guy walked in front of me. I was standing near the tracks. I was close enough and in line with others standing on either side of me that I never thought someone could make their way between me and the tracks. But the man did. He walked around me. He stood directly in front of me. No one else stood that close. I recall thinking how totally inappropriate and rude his actions were.
I know how to kill, having been trained in the infantry and as a parachutist who learned not to care about pain. I got used to it, and bared up under it so many times, it became almost second nature to welcome it during a new and challenging task. Like murder.
No, I don’t know any Kung Fu or any martial arts. But I could break the man’s neck from behind. And, if that failed, I would wrestle him to the ground and die before letting him get up as I smashed his head again and again on the platform, caring not a whit about the mess I’d make. I’m strong. More importantly, I’m strong-willed.
He deserved to die, I rationalized and actually saw myself as a champion of the underdogs who play by the rules on train platforms. You have to honor another person’s space. You can’t stand too close to another person until or unless you see the train pulling up, and everyone tightens up the ranks, bunching together to stand at the spot you believe the train steps will come to a halt.
Why break such a rule? Why place yourself in front of someone else just because you’re taller than them are? Or younger? Or slicker? Someone like me may just kill you and use the opportunity to leave behind a staid and predictable life that’s losing whatever meaning it once may have had.
My action could be considered justifiable in a weird sort of way. No, not in a legal sense, but in a Karmic sense, if you know what I mean. I’d create some negative karma but prevent others from getting such negativity in their thoughts and desires to kill as much as I wanted to kill him. I saved them and the rest of all sentient beings a large and cumulative amount of negative karma, that I could be considered a saint in some religions.
I bring this up now only because I asked the Universe to correct my old way of life. Certain actions occurred in response to my wishes.
But instead of acting, I became a “watcher.” I was no longer the actor, but someone above myself looking down on my speech, my thoughts, my relations with others and events that became ripened by different causes and conditions.
No, I killed no one. But I entered a state of mind where I saw a different reality. A reality that has always been there but was blocked by my mind. My mind kept me busy with one thought after another: a fear here, an anxiety there. It jumped from an emotional thought from my past to a future where nothing, but catastrophes existed. And then my mind would race, with me having no control of it.
I feel better now. I control my mind even in the most disastrous moments of life. Who’s to say they’re disastrous? Not me. Not anymore. I’ve gained the equanimity to treat the glorious and the profane the same way. As an observer. Not a slave to emotional and useless thoughts. Just an observer of the thoughts.
Try it.
What is a monk to do when he is lonely? When he is blue?
When you reach that low point where you feel you are the loneliest person in the world, who or what do you turn to for relieve? 
I’m so scared because I don’t know what to do, nor who to turn to. Flashes of insights, intuition, and a “knowing” that borders on the Psychic have arisen in me and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.  Continue reading
When I was a child, I’d feel sorry for anyone who appeared less fortunate than myself. That would include the white-haired elderly who was stooped over with age, as well as the infirm, a word I didn’t learn the meaning of until I was much older myself. 
It’s hard to describe this feeling; saying you feel “sorry” sounds like “pity,” but it’s not; at least, not in my case. When seeing a person with an obvious disfigurement, walking with crutches, or being pushed in a wheelchair, an overwhelming feeling of concern would well up inside me. I’d wish I could ease their pain, even if they had no pain; I wanted to help them get over their discomfort somehow.
This feeling came from within. There was something innate about it. I knew it was the right thing to feel when I saw the suffering of others. No one could have taught me this. Oh, my parents shared the Golden Rule with me and my brothers. They told us to be kind to other people and to animals.
But you couldn’t teach me to “feel” what I now realize was “compassion” and “empathy.” It came naturally to me. I believe it comes naturally for all children; that it’s part of our basic good nature to “feel sorry” for others. All of us at some point wanted to help others and ease their pain, even if it was just by offering a smile, saying hello, or asking with loving-kindness, “Can I help you?”
I’d get so much out of helping someone else. I’d feel good inside, a quiet, happy, silent type of joy. I’d never expect anything in return, and I’d feel I was doing exactly what the nuns at Catholic school would later advise me was what the Almighty One wanted all of us to do: to care for each other, particularly the down-and-out.
And then one day, someone older than me said I was a fool to feel this way; that I shouldn’t give to someone begging on the street because he’d just “drink it up.” Another person who I thought was wise said that the unfortunate “got what they deserved,” and that their illnesses or maladies probably were their own fault because of the way “they” lived — never explaining what was meant by “they.” You’d understand that it was that person’s way of putting down another because of his race, religion, sexual preference, or orientation.
I’d be a sucker to care for them, “smarter” adults would tell me, and the child inside would ask how something that made me feel so good could be so bad. You can’t get ahead in life, achieve your goals, or make lots of money by offering loving kindness and compassion to others who are suffering, they said. “Grow up,” they all told me.
And I did, quashing these feelings, and challenging the world with a determination to compete, to get ahead, and to succeed no matter what the cost. I’d get awards; see my name and achievements engraved on wall plaques in halls of higher learning and in business. And I’d make a comfortable living, providing for a future where there’d be few concerns or worries.
Something was missing, however, and it wasn’t until I connected with the child inside did, I realized I had been missing it during my adult life. Giving freely to others was and is “life.” Sharing with those with little or nothing provides me with all that I could ever want. Putting another’s needs above my own offers me a joy that I’ve missed since silently cherishing it while much younger.
Offering love to others is a good way to receive love back, but only if it’s done with nothing expected in return.
The child inside me had the right feelings all along, I realized. Now that I know this again, let me make it right for all the years I missed not helping you.
May I Help you, Please?
It would be My Pleasure.
Thank you.
(A recent study found that the pupils of infants’ eyes widened when they saw someone in need—a sign of concern—but their pupils would shrink when they could help that person—or when they saw someone else help, suggesting that they felt better. (Babies as young as four or five months will try to help their mothers pick up something dropped on the floor.) They seem to care primarily for the other person and not themselves. It was calming to see the person’s suffering being alleviated, whether or not they were the ones who did it.}
On February 5th, 2012, a friend who calls herself, the Frugal Xpat, commented:
I didn’t respond to the comment until now, but I want to share how everyone could enjoy this exercise the Frugal Expat spoke of in Daily Meditation Desperately Needed. As she describes her life’s quest, she is on “An expat’s journey in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.” Continue reading
Dealing with the Vietnam War becomes a little easier each time I write about it. I “desensitize” myself. I now see my actions as separate from the emotions I felt while a young soldier, as well as the feelings of guilt many veterans like me, imposed on ourselves while readjusting to civilian life. It’s helpful when a high school student asks questions and you try to be honest and direct.
Continue reading
Shifting into cruise control, I let myself glide through many of life’s activities nowadays. I relax, take several deep breaths, and seek a place inside where there are no thoughts, no worries, and no frets.
I’ve already done all the heavy lifting. I planned the contours of my day, knowing when I could go on autopilot and when I needed to let the left hemisphere of my brain take over. You know, when I need to calculate, navigate, and/or investigate, I turn to the so-called “thinking” process. But I don’t let thoughts interrupt my breakfast while I eat.
I awake with no problem and shave, shower, and dress myself, making only minor decisions in these efforts, particularly choosing which clothes to put on. Who needs to think while running water, flossing teeth, or flushing a toilet?
After getting into the car and driving to my preplanned destination of work or play, I need not think of the future or the past, but just the moment in front of me. This is my time, not someone else’s time, who would use it as unwisely as I used to by daydreaming, recalling past events, or projecting a thousand possibilities of things that could happen in the future that I had absolutely no control over.
A soft calm spreads throughout my body. Stiff and sore parts start to loosen up and relax. I have no need or wish to be anywhere but where I am at the moment.
I seek this plane of awareness when I read intently or listen deeply. When I’m in this “zone,” I retain more from a book or article, and hear not only spoken words from a speaker, but more of the meaning someone is trying to say without words.
When I free myself of the noisy thoughts and outside interferences, I become more present for the environment I’ve chosen to focus on, be it reading or writing, laughing or crying, or simply standing or sitting while I wait to engage in my next series of “actions.” I am more “there” than ever before because I purposely “let go” of all that has little if anything to do with the “now.”
I focus better on the job, finding more clarity on what’s needed and what’s superfluous. There’s a great word for you, superfluous. How much of what we do, say, and think is just that? Superfluous. How easy life could be if we eliminated more and more of the unnecessary add-ons that we thought so important at one time, but discovered never added one iota to our overall well-being.
Breathing in, I am at home with myself. Breathing out, I am at home with you and all the love, compassion, and sense of equanimity that the best families could ever offer.
I send affection to motorists cut off by a speeding car that winds in and out of lanes. I feel for the driver who was never told by the operator of a car in front that that operator was going to turn, despite what appears to be working lights that turn on and off when you press the turn signal lever up or down.
My heart goes out to you who have observed the speed limit, inching no more than seven miles an hour over a 55-mph limit when someone in a pickup truck rides your tail even though the driver can simply pull into the open right lane and pass your car on the left.
I used to curse out those I believed were inconsiderate drivers. You know the aggressive types that always seemed to have more important business to attend to than you did. Too often, I’d let anger push me to the extreme, and I’d speed up to show ’em what a speedster they had met on the road. It was road rage, pure and simple. The more I focused on how I’d been insulted, the more the rage would become inflamed, causing me to see red and not care about the defensive driving skills I swore I would practice just a few minutes earlier when I was feeling more level-headed.
Then it dawned on me. I could feel compassion for the so-called reckless driver. I know what it is like to be in such a hurry. I’ve been there. I’d feel the world would come to an end should I miss an appointment, be late for a job, or fail in the impression I wanted to make by arriving early enough to greet someone.
I always had a reason to speed. There were so many important things I had to do, to finish, to check off that “to-do” list to feel my life was worthwhile, that I was accomplished, that I am accomplishing . . . something.
I try to understand how the person traveling in the car trapped himself or herself by his or her own expectations, the desires and attachments to concepts and ideas that were no more real than the make-believe “deadline” they have imposed on themselves. No, there has never been a line that we needed to reach to prevent someone from falling down dead.
We’ve created this illusion. We’ve invested much of our lives into reaching certain milestones, destinations, and goals. That is all well and good, until we enslave ourselves to becoming totally “outcome-focused.” How you get there doesn’t matter, just as long as you carry out that task wherever it might be. Too often, it doesn’t matter who we hurt or cut off on the road we have traveled.
The process itself, I have learned, is just as important as, if not more important than, crossing the finish line. We spend the greatest part of our lives in some sort of “process” to get something.
We are squandering away that time if we focus on nothing but the ending. Why not learn to enjoy the road while we’re riding? Enjoy the lay of the land, the smooth macadam where the tires roll on following a bumpy part of the highway. Breathe in the air, the scented smell of that green-tree air-freshener of mint or the dark brown one that smells like brand new leather seats.
Sip from your cup of hot coffee or cool water. Listen to music or the beautiful sounds of silence that help you to still the mind so that you can live through your senses now, not at the end of the road. It is in the moment that you can find true compassion. Seek it inside, and, if you’re lucky, you can pick it up as a hitch-hiker on a road less traveled.
I’ve done what I have done and everyone can be satisfied with my efforts, including — and most importantly — me. Continue reading
While Neil Armstrong was taking a giant leap for all mankind, I had taken a small step toward adulthood one month after the moon landing, and I had no one to thank for it except my brother, who encouraged me to aim for the stars in becoming an Officer and a Gentleman in the Army of the United States of America.
I had weathered the worst six months of my life – worse even than my later combat duty in the Vietnam War – as I underwent the rigorous training in Officers’ Candidate School. We ran everywhere we went, and when we couldn’t run anymore, we’d run in place, waiting in line for chow outside the mess hall, or to use the latrine.
I was the second-youngest in a company of some 200 recruits – carrying a minimum rank of Specialist Five (E-5) – who learned tactics and survival skills and how to endure under the harshest conditions while developing leadership qualities. The youngest ones were targeted for even more physical and psychological drills because of our age.
The company commander once ordered me to do some 400 situps in a sleeping bag, relenting only after he got tired of counting, and I tore parts of my butt apart from sliding it back and forth against the ground so much. I’m surprised I didn’t tear a hole through the bag, but instead of forcing me out of the program, it encouraged me not to quit and to take whatever he was willing to dish out. At age 20, with nothing but a high school diploma, I earned the respect of several with college and graduate degrees who might have changed their minds about my leading troops.
Those of us who made it filed out of the auditorium at Fort Benning, Ga., having been addressed by some old, weathered colonel who appeared to be in his 70s and was still jumping out of airplanes – his latest count reaching more than 600 jumps! He looked a little crazy, “gung-ho crazy,” if you know what I mean. His eyes seemed permanently fixed wide open; he was jumpy and alert to the smallest sound or movement nearby. I would compare the hyperawareness and sensitivity I’d get from post-traumatic stress years later to his demeanor and makeup.
But on this day, August 22, 1969, my oldest brother had prepared a ceremony to take place outside the doors of the graduation hall. Dressed in his regular working uniform as an E-6 (Staff Sergeant), he carefully removed two metal bars from a cardboard box. We called them “butter bars,” the yellow metal bars symbolizing the rank of Second Lieutenant, the lowest rank in the Army’s officer corps.
So many things went through my mind as I stood at attention, looking straight ahead, hoping my dress-uniform hat was affixed properly. I didn’t want to be out of order in any way, shape, or form at this time in my life.
My oldest brother, six years my senior, was about to pin the bars on my shoulder, officially welcoming me to a world where I would become an officer and a gentleman. I did not know then what the designation by an Act of Congress would actually mean. That would come later in Vietnam, when I’d see mortar fire hit and wound half a squad I was leading; when a Viet Cong sniper would shoot and kill Lt. Vic Ellinger, one of only three lieutenants in our combat infantry company; or as two soldiers under another lieutenant’s command would forget where they had placed their claymore mine trip-wire and walk into it, killing themselves.
That was all in the future, along with the PTSD that would raise its ugly head some 25 years after the war. It wouldn’t be all bad, particularly right after being discharged, when this young veteran would use a sense of failure to achieve success in academics, getting degrees in journalism and history before finding his other life’s calling years later as a public defender trial lawyer after obtaining a Juris Doctor Degree.
I knew none of this as my brother George S. Contos fastened the metal bars to my uniform jacket, stepped back, and brought his right hand briskly to his forehead, saluting the superior officer that I had become.
Nothing in my life could compare to that shining moment.
A tattoo can readily identify someone, and sometimes one can become the key to the guilt or innocence of a man facing the wrath of a woman he may have wronged.
A tattoo figured prominently in the last case I tried as a public defender in Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was to be my final court battle. Post-traumatic stress (PTSD) had taken its toll on me, and I thought two weeks of treatment at an inpatient veterans’ clinic would cure the rage and anger that had led to three near-brawls in the courtroom. Turns out I needed the full 10-week course and a complete resignation from 20 years of stress as a trial attorney.
The Philadelphia District Attorney had charged my client with robbery as well as harassment and stalking in a case we were to try before a judge hearing the facts without a jury. The police report said he had repeatedly called his ex-girlfriend at her place of work and eventually stole a cell phone from her.
I wanted him to plead guilty when I got the charges lowered to just misdemeanors. In addition, he would have had to pay for the phone. He refused the offer, demanding to go to trial and get a chance to walk out of court free with only probation.
Violent, ugly visions popped into my head. I saw myself pushing my client’s head through the flat-white-colored wall in the tiny conference room cut out of a section of the courtroom. I yelled at him and asked whom he thought the judge would believe, him or the articulate girl who would have all the sympathy in the world when she told her story as outlined in her statement to the police?
I told him that a misdemeanor conviction would not keep him from getting a job. Most employers ask only if you’ve been convicted of a felony, the more serious offense. “Hell,” I said, “you could tell them the truth if you pleaded guilty to a minor offense to get away from an ex-girlfriend who was out for revenge for breaking up with her.”
“That’s exactly what happened, Mister Contos,” he said. “And I won’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do.”
The trial went as I expected. The young, attractive African America woman was not only sympathetic, she spoke with a ring of truth while testifying. She said he had constantly called her house and her place of work. Despite her pleas with him to stop, he’d increased the calls and even threatened to confront her at work, she said, if he couldn’t get his way.
However, her story started to unravel under cross-examination. She produced no evidence to support her allegation. There were no phone records, no recordings of a castoff or angry ex-lover, no other witnesses.
It turned out that the defendant did confront her at work, and that he did take the cell phone from her. But she said it was his cell phone that he had given to her when their relationship was healthy and loving.
I knew we had raised reasonable doubt when I asked a question my client requested, I pose when whispering to me at the defense table, and she was just about to step down from the witness stand.
“Yes, I do have a tattoo,” she answered. “Yes, it’s his name,” she added, nodding in the direction of the man she accused.
My client testified persuasively that she was the real “stalker” after he broke off the relationship. I introduced “good character” evidence, which, in and of itself, could raise a reasonable doubt for a not-guilty verdict, and the judge acquitted him of all charges, explaining that he could not decide who was telling the truth and that, therefore, by law, he must find in favor of the defendant.
The tatoo provided the basis for some other truth to be analyzed.
One of the most wonderful moments of my life occurred without my knowing it. Had I the presence of mind to be more present for things that mattered, I might not have missed it. Recalling what this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence must have been like, however, is the second-best way I know of memorializing it. Continue reading
I remembered how to fly this morning. The first thing I needed for liftoff, I recalled, was good, solid grounding. Everything must be secured and brought to a complete stand-still before I could ever dream of taking off into the air. Continue reading
I didn’t want to go back to Omega Institute this year. Each time I travelled to this land of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, I’d get high from the holistic experience. But then I’d change into an Ichabod Crane feeling chased by the Headless Horseman, who’d tell true-life stories that caused so much pain I couldn’t hold it inside. Continue reading
After serving in the Vietnam War I turned my back on anything having to do with the military, and so I was totally surprised years later when, requesting my medals, I got one that I still don’t believe I earned. Continue reading
Cleaning a pot can be very meaningful, particularly if you block out all thoughts and concentrate on nothing but you and the instrument that has helped provide you with so much nourishment. Continue reading
Death entered my life recently and I’ve felt so alive with its presence. Continue reading
When I heard the song “Still in Saigon” the other day, I could have sworn a Vietnam veteran had written about his flashbacks and a need to process what was unprocessed as a young man.
Little did I know that the writer never set foot in Southeast Asia, let alone serve in the military. That got me wondering about the performing arts and how someone who never experienced war could capture its long-term effects on those who faced combat. Continue reading
There’s something in it that resonates with me. In my private moments, I try my best to connect with it, but once I start to analyze it, it vanishes. Continue reading
I get such a high while exercising that I can’t imagine why I haven’t done this more often in life. Continue reading
A black and blue mark developed on my chest, and I didn’t notice it until a fellow swimmer pointed it out while I was in a pool at the gym. The mark is a full inch in diameter, and I would gladly take on a half-dozen more for the immense benefit the initial bruising provided me.
Acupuncture eased and minimized my acute pain from a nagging groin pull. Continue reading
There is a tradition in Eastern philosophies where you’re taught to view each person and other sentient being as if he, she – or it is your mother. I never knew how nurturing this could be until I allowed the child in me to reciprocate and bask in the most secure and loving place. Continue reading
If I were prosecuting George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, I would charge him with murder and conspiracy to obstruct justice, adding several named officers of the Sanford. Fla., police department – as well as the state attorney – as co-conspirators.  Continue reading
Saying you’re sorry can be downright scary.
Particularly, if you’re not sure if the other party will accept your mea culpa even though it’s from the bottom of your heart.  Continue reading
I never knew the hot water I’d get in at a local gym until I waded into a hot tub and saw one of the gym staffers assault a fellow bather when he paid more attention to the person he was speaking to via headphones than the operations manager, who yanked at his headset, telling him to “Get the Hell Out“. Continue reading
After chanting a non-English mantra for some time, I finally learned its definition and discovered a gem of wisdom while contemplating its meaning. Meditating will never be the same, and I want to share with others a little of the enlightenment it’s provided me.
Reality shifted on me the other day, and it helped me realize that I have more control than my “resifted” thoughts allowed me to see. Now, with a “time-control outlook,” I can try to change my world for the better.  Continue reading
But only those who nurture it can fully appreciate its magical transformation.
I liken it to a mineral or rock that resides within, undisturbed by the daily thoughts and busy lives of quiet desperation. It can be uncovered only when one stills the mind and releases preconceived notions of what creation is all about.  Continue reading
We should accept Rush Limbaugh’s apology for calling a woman a slut only if he agrees to take and pass a course on female reproduction. Then, and only then, can we be assured that someone other than locker-room juveniles has finally taught him the real facts about the birds and the bees. Continue reading
I don’t understand all the fuss that Catholic universities and hospitals are raising over providing health care for women that includes mandatory birth control provisions. Why not let “Practicing Catholics” follow the teachings of their church to “opt out” for the coverage, while permitting non-Catholics what doctors and women’s groups say is a health benefit?  Continue reading
Well, if you trace the history of something called corporate “personhood,” you can blame this inglorious recognition on an unelected clerk writing a summary of a court decision that never actually decided this issue.  Continue reading
Actively seek out someone in your church, synagogue or temple and befriend him so that what happened in Philadelphia last week never happens again.  Continue reading
The damn branch broke my concentration. I had not planned for an overhanging tree limb to block the pathway, walking three-quarters of a mile from my home to the train station, with my head facing my feet the entire time. But I was ordered by an eye doctor to lean my head all the way toward the ground for 50 out of 60 minutes of each hour for seven straight days.  Continue reading
It’s time for my disappearing act to begin. I close my eyes, wave an imaginary magic wand, and slowly begin to vanish from existence here. All thoughts and fears come to an end as I find protection beneath a cloak of invisibility, safe from the savages outside and the demons within.  Continue reading
I was seething when I saw my former US senator decry Blacks receiving food stamps from the government. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told an Iowa audience this week that he would tackle this “race problem” if elected president, thus echoing the sentiments of his old congressional colleague, Newt Gingrich, who suggested poor students in city schools clean the bathrooms for their more affluent ones, rather than grow up to be pimps or prostitutes.  Continue reading
With these three words, the defendant buried himself, and no matter what I did to rehabilitate a self-defense claim before the jury, we were sunk. It showed that no matter what one plans, sometimes something can, and always will, go wrong.  Continue reading
Ever wonder what life was like for ancestors living fifty, a hundred or even 200 years ago?
How would you like to read a journal of some great, great, great-aunt forced to raise a family alone after her soldier husband had been killed in the Civil War? Like to see your great-grandfather dressed in Irish kilts speaking to you from the old country, or view a relative wearing a straw hat toasting you from America’s Roaring 20s? 
Well, I’d like to tell my offspring what life was really like at the end of the 20th Century and this new millennium as we kick off the Year 2012. We have the technology to share our thoughts and our knowledge if we simply take advantage of it.
You should be honest about difficulties you faced and how you learned to overcome them. Talk about the failures for them to truly appreciate the successes. Pull no punches, but don’t scare the hell out of their need toward risk-taking.
What I’m suggesting is journal writing with a twist. Why not tell your story in a webcast? Write about a subject you feel strongly about and video tape it (“Webcam” it!) Turn on the camera, look into its lens, and announce your intent to shake hands across time. Tell them what angers you about the world today, with the focus on making a buck at any cost.
Give them an earful of how the religions we grew up with failed us until finding spirituality inside and not in someone else’s building. Speak of how you still get a chill when hearing the national anthem played on baseball’s opening day.
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And smile as you discuss your first job, say, at age 15 working as a messenger boy traveling from one downtown business to another, walking instead of riding the bus to save a 20-cent token. Tell how you couldn’t cut it as a door-to-door sales rep of some product or other when discharged from the military and willing to work at anything to help pay your way through community college.
It’s all of whom we really are, and they can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Webcast yourself! Sit in front of a fireplace or a row of books and practice your presentation before making it. Entice a family member to ask your questions to get you started but
Now all I have to do is comb my hair, get comfortable, and find the confidence to practice what I preach. If I do, I’ll see you on U-tube or some other place in the not-too-distant future.
I can think of many ways to stop a bad habit without having to suffer a stroke that goes untreated for years and years.  Continue reading
How’d you like to go back in time and correct mistakes made in the past? No, you couldn’t go back to the moment before you were conceived, or any other time in your far distant past. Go back to more recent moments – say in the past year or two — when you believed you knew so much about life and how to live it without doing harm to others.  Continue reading
It hits like a poison arrow causing me to drop what I’m doing and focus on the pain it inflicts.
Where does it come from? Is it shot from a bow of some unseen foe hoping to do me harm? Or does it arise from within when certain buttons are pushed, like a crazy bone reacting once a physician’s tool strikes that right (or wrong) spot?
My anger springs up almost immediately, spreading pellets out from a shotgun blast over a wide area, striking everything in its path, including the object of my ire as well as ones I never intended to harm.
The anger doesn’t dissipate once it explodes.
It simmers at a low boil, awaiting the opportunity to burn and scold anything or anyone my impatience forces me to look unkindly on and consider spraying upon. It pains and marks me as I hold it obscenely close trying to figure out where it came from, who or what caused it, and why I so easily fall prey to it whenever it erupts inside.
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Remove the arrow before the poison spreads and engulfs whatever goodness remains in you. It can destroy whatever love and compassion you tried to generate in life when cool-headed and away from less stressful situations.
Don’t try to analyze, categorize or editorialize the grave danger it poses. Don’t believe you can control it. You cannot “befriend” it.
It’s too strong and it will demand control of and over you every time.
Sure, you may have needed to use it to right a wrong, to defend with all of your might against some evil, to even kill so that an innocent could justifiably go on living.
But you must give it up! Use it sparingly, if at all, and release it as you learn the long, slow practice of patience.
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This could be first step in understanding that this poison will always be there, that there is a cause for its painful existence; and that help is available to forestall its deadly mission once you learn to walk a path you always knew you’d need to follow to truly awake.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) can be treated and understood without having to face the slings and arrows of war day in and day out.
(Let me deal with the type of arrow that brought down a brave warrior like the Greek Achilles!
I can think of no worse place to be than in a church, a temple, or a synagogue when an unbidden and involuntary giggle would invade my psyche and take control of me. A “giggle” is too mild a word: uncontrollable laughter would rise to the level of guffaws and downright knee-slappers, right at the most somber parts of a religious service. Continue reading
I didn’t know how much I needed a “fix” until my head slumped on my chest and I “awoke” to a restful, calm, and peaceful world I had been away from for what seemed a lifetime. I felt.
But please don’t judge me. Don’t look upon me as weak or needy. I have tried so hard to be the strong, silent type who could weather any storm alone: self-reliant and dependent on no one except myself to get through the most difficult of life’s situations. Yet, each time I overcame what felt like one disaster after another, I knew deep inside I could not succeed on my own. I needed help from a Source I’d subconsciously tapped into to get me through each ordeal.
I now admit I couldn’t have done it without getting high while no one was looking. I’ve become addicted. In recent days, months, and years, I needed more and more of what I call the “elixir of life.” I’d crave the equanimity it would offer me as a serotonin chemical would enter into my bloodstream, my consciousness, my very essence.
I don’t care what others might say about my habit anymore. I need a crutch to get through my day, and I’m only realizing now how much I struggle when I fail to take a hit. The earlier in the day, I can get it, the better. I need that something extra to assure me all is well, that all will be well, no matter what failings, shortcomings, or simple ignorance I bring to daily life.
I am dependent on this “Source” to take me away from my worries, my concerns, my feelings of, I don’t know, call it an emptiness of sorts that so hard to describe, let alone, understand.
When the need calls to me, I look for a place where I can be alone. I get into a comfortable posture, a familiar one that offers a tingling sensation of anticipation. I am going to escape, I tell myself, as I settle into a chair or on a pillow, exposing my vulnerability to forces outside and inside myself.
I open one hand to the heavens above, ready to accept whatever peace may soon come my way. My other hand rests downward, touching the solid earth that grounds me. The arm and exposed hand facing skyward await the blissful infusion the drug will eventually provide.
My mind is racing like steaming locomotion, a runaway train minus a conductor at the controls. I can’t truly let go and open myself while my thoughts are zigzagging from one place to another. The thoughts fly from the past to the future. (They never seem to come to rest in the present!) Each carries unwanted baggage. I can’t rid myself of these thoughts. They come unbidden, unneeded. They impede my plans to escape the battlefield I’m maneuvering through.
Stop swinging at unseen opponents, hoping a knockout punch will somehow save you, Michael J. Give in, take the fix. Admit that you can no longer live without it.
Acquiesce to the Power Greater than Yourself. Feel warmth slowly spread through your body, easing the tightness in your neck and your shoulders, the parts so tense and coiled they feel like a jack-in-the-box ready to spring out. You need only breathe and allow the source to seep into you, to wash over you, to elevate your mind and your spirit.
Newton Le Roy Gingrich is a big-headed, brain-bloated bully who is best understood if you picture what kind of kid he might have been and remember why you disliked him and his sophomoric antics while growing up. Continue reading
I’ll take them in all shapes and sizes, the old and the young, the rich and the poor.
If it wasn’t for women, I — and a lot of guys I know — wouldn’t even be here! Continue reading
Indulgences are some things I never thought I’d think about once I finished with my Catholic upbringing and moved onto Eastern Studies and the spiritual advice from the Kabbalah. But there I was reading how someone could limit their time in purgatory by performing certain acts and saying prayers.  Continue reading
The answer is: because I have to. I need the therapy to look deep inside to provide me. I’m not talking about surface writing. You know, the kind a reporter might type when covering some disaster, a meeting, or a political event that might include both. I write only after communing with some sort of truth that bubbles up from within.  Continue reading
No matter how hard I try, I can never count to 20 before an unbidden thought arises from inside of me. I get to three or four while meditating, and images pop up on an internal screen, capturing my attention. I dare not try this counting method until my body and mind are both well-settled and I can “Let go.” Continue reading
“Oh my God,” I said as the ad in “Lucky Magazine” finally registered. “Oh my God,’ echoed the 62-year-old woman seated next to me after showing her the promotion to “taste” the “additive” and “natural” flavor of American Spirit Tobacco.
Getting over my shock of seeing such an ad in print, I looked closer at the magazine. Continue reading
I want to give “thanks” today, but don’t want to offer it the Norman-Rockwell, “fake-it-‘til-you-make-it” way of the holidays. Instead, I want to share how grateful I am for such taken-for-granted “gifts” that I am only beginning to realize most of us have been given. Continue reading
It snowed along the East Coast of the United States today (October 29, 2011), making it the first time in more than 30 years the white stuff appeared this early outside my Conshohocken, PA, window.
I remember the last time because it was so life-changing, and I wonder if today’s gift from above will have the same effect on me and my world.  Continue reading
Contoveros 