As the popular saying goes, "The only constant in life is change."  It is easy to see how that saying relates to the divine flow of life. Obviously, as you pursue your goals and dreams in life, you must be willing to "row with the flow" and continually adjust to any unexpected changes in the course of the current.

But did you realize that even when you do reach your chosen destinations in life, change is something that you may still have to cope with?

I end most of my workshops by telling a story about a dear friend of mine who followed the divine flow to the job of her dreams.  But guess what?  After a few years, things changed . . . and that job no longer exits.

Similarly, I have often written about the wonderful house in Arizona that Carol and I were divinely guided to rent. And yet, after three years, things changed . . . and Carol and I just moved into a different house a few blocks away.

As I see it, there are two main reasons why things we have miraculously manifested in our lives don't seem to last: Read the rest of this entry »

As I very slowly make my way up in the Twitter numbers game (shamefully through no effort of my own), I can't help but wonder the significance of this popular Short Message Service (SMS) toward the progress of our virtual culture.

There are the obvious, but perhaps unanswerable, questions that are worthy of asking about Twitter, such as:

• Can you, most of the time, say what you really want, or say anything meaningful, in 140 characters or less?
• How can one person read tweets from hundreds of Twitterers, let alone hundreds of thousands?
• Or why would somebody want to follow a Twitterer who sends on average 50 tweets per hour…every hour? Read the rest of this entry »

This is a reprint of an article from 2007.

This morning I went from reading about the dark history of America's Thanksgiving, to seeing beautiful Thanksgiving sentiments on an e-card that my brother sent me. The contrast between the two meanings of the holiday was striking.

There are several versions of the origins of Thanksgiving in America, including celebrating the small pox decimation of the Wampanoag Indians who were described as barbarians, or holding a victory celebration of the Pequot massacre in 1637, or to Pilgrims and the Wampanoag sharing their harvest together in 1621.
Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Ford dreamed of making plastic cars out of soy. Now Dow, DuPont and other chemical giants are also dreaming of a 'green' future. But, as Jim Thomas argues, bioplastic is not the eco-solution it's cracked up to be.

The future of plastic was always gleaming white. Monsanto's plastic 'house of the future' that once stood at the heart of Disneyworld's Epcot Center and the futuristic Space Hilton hotel in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey both featured shiny white doors, walls, ceilings and furniture. To designers of the mid-1960s hard, white, unbreakable plastic, like the white heat of the technology revolution, must have represented a pristine future moulded in the name of modernism. As Mr McGuire memorably whispered to Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film, The Graduate: 'There's a great future in plastics. Think about it.'

Forty years later, its reputation tarnished and its 'house of the future' dismantled, the plastics industry is struggling to resurrect the image of plastic as the noble 'material of the future'. This time we are told that plastics will be soft, degradable and blend in with nature. They're called bioplastics and the industry has a new colour in mind: green. Read the rest of this entry »

I'm sure you're well aware that you rarely—if ever—get anywhere in life completely on your own.  Usually, reaching your chosen destinations in life requires the participation, cooperation, and support of others. This is especially true when you are in a very close relationship with another person—a spouse, a partner, or a family member, for example.

When your choices immediately and directly affect someone else, it may feel as if you and that other person are literally "in the same boat"—that you are both in the same "Relation Ship," so to speak.  That's when rowing your boat in harmony with each other becomes of paramount importance.

The question is, how do you both "row with the flow" when the two of you do not immediately agree on a goal, or do not agree on the next right step for reaching a goal? That particular question is one that I often get asked. And here is my answer: Read the rest of this entry »

An increasingly common surgical procedure for repairing spinal fractures might not be all it's cracked up to be–in fact, the surgery had the same effect on patient's pain as a placebo, two studies report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The technique, called vertebroplasty, involves injecting medical cement into a fractured spine bone to strengthen it. More than 38,000 such procedures are done in the United States every year and the number has been [increasing] rapidly, nearly doubling from 2001 to 2005 [Reuters]. But the new studies showed that the procedure alleviated pain about the same amount as a placebo "surgery," in which the physicians tapped on the spine and piped in the smell of cement to make groggy volunteer subjects believe they were receiving the real thing.

Researchers found that 36 volunteers who received sham surgery did just as well as 35 who got the real operation. A separate test, of 131 people at 11 medical centers, … also found that sham surgery produced a comparable degree of pain reduction and movement [Reuters]. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I suggested that you refrain from acting hastily whenever someone encourages you to "push through" a problem—to "force your way forward," so to speak.  Although the accomplishment of a goal or dream may require a great deal of patience on your part, the divine flow will never ask you to "force" anything. Nor, usually, will it require you to endure extreme conditions of any kind. Generally speaking, the path of the flow is always one of grace and ease, even when it takes an unexpected turn.

Like most weeks, I received a lot of nice responses to my message. But this time, I noticed that most of the readers who wrote to me had gotten more out of my message than was actually spelled out in "black and white."  They read between the lines, and saw the bigger message that was implied.

Today, I want to go ahead and say what was left unsaid. And that is simply this:  No matter what anyone encourages you to do, and no matter how much you respect their advice, opinions, or suggestions, it is up to you to decide what is best for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Lane Taylor's exceptional article (Being in the Flow is "No Sweat") reminded me of a specific chapter in the classic book, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. John (Fire) Lame Deer was a Lakota Sioux holy man who lived between 1900 – 1976, and his book depicts the rich history and culture of the Lakota people, as well as an autobiographical account of his remarkable life.

In his book, Lame Deer spoke of the old traditional tale of the inipi, or sweat bath — what we currently call the sweat lodge. The ancient purification ceremony in the inipi was the first sacred rite of the Lakotans and many times is used as the opening ceremony for many other traditional Lakotan rites.

Every part of the bringing together of materials for the construction of the inipi has a deep and holy significance for those holding the ceremony — from the selection of the willow branches to form the frame, the type of wood for the fire, the choice of rocks and the importance of their initial location and then their placement within the inipi, to the direction of the opening of the structure. For the sun-dance sweat lodge, the best blankets from the village were always chosen to cover the frame. Read the rest of this entry »

With the exception of the beautiful autumn weather we usually have in the Denver area, I don't look forward to this time of year since I have four massive deciduous trees rooted next to my house. And this year for the first time I neglected my yard work for too long, and by the beginning of November I had a pile of leaves so deep you could hide the Queen Mary in it.

After an overwhelming workload, a nasty storm that delivered two feet of snow, and family illnesses, last week I started giving some serious thought to finally hiring someone to do the pickup and removal. However, I didn't even know how to start searching for somebody, and many of the leaves were still wet from the melted snow.

Two days later my doorbell rang. When I opened the door, a sweet-looking, meticulous, and very polite teenage boy was standing at my door. "My friends and I are going around the neighborhood asking people if they'd like to have their leaves raked up," he said. At that moment I didn't even give any thought to the fact he ignored my "No Solicitations" sign on my door. Read the rest of this entry »

Uncovered frame of sweat lodge, Sioux Village; created/published between 1896-1905

Since it has been all over the national news lately, most of you are probably aware of the tragedy that recently occurred here in Sedona during a sweat lodge ceremony. During this event, two people died, about twenty others became seriously ill, and a third person died later from her injuries. (For more information about sweat lodges, click here.)

Usually, a sweat lodge is reasonably safe, because the person in charge of this sacred ritual continually monitors the well-being of the participants, and allows anyone to leave the lodge if they are experiencing severe, physical discomfort. Although the leader of this particular sweat lodge did not physically restrain anyone from leaving, one survivor of the ordeal claims that those who did attempt to leave—or complained about their distress—were encouraged to "push through it."  In other words, it sounds like the lodge leader encouraged them to endure their discomfort, to persevere, and to literally "sweat it out."  The results of that attitude proved disastrous. Read the rest of this entry »