I am blown away. Four days ago I felt the urge to go outside and try grounding myself, barefooted in the natural hills around my temporary home. I knew I would be leaving this place at the end of the month after four years of growth and experiences here. I stepped out the door and carefully pranced across the gravel driveway, until I could comfortably walk on the grass at its border. The connection began slowly, a bit disharmonious at first as the initial spot I chose was prickly and pointed, rocky and full of sticks, uncomfortable for my unweathered feet. I moved to a place of softer grass an ..read more

The little things that make up the cycles of our lives make so much impact, but go mostly unwitnessed by our conscious minds. We are intimately familiar with the cycles of our lives, whether we realize it or not. The water cycle, the moon phases, sunrise and sunset. Each day of our lives represents a single cycle. There are parts of that cycle that will almost always be the same. Wake Up, Eat, Sleep. This basic three part cycle is present in all of our lives, and thankfully only takes up about 10-12 hours of our day. This means that our uniqueness comes from the other 12 hours remaining in th ..read more

Much of what I have written in the last couple weeks has been focused on the Buddhist beliefs I’ve found in books like Why Buddhism is True, by Robert Wright. However, my student’s mind was recently invigorated by my innate urge to study all religions. I was brought to read a bookmarked post on the U.S. Catholic blog where Christine Paintner discusses the knowledge that can be received from incorporating the four elements in Christianity through prayer.  Naturally this ideology echoes loudly within me, not only because of my affinity toward the four elements, but also because of my studio ..read more

This week I’ve been reading The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings: Transforming Suffering into Peace and Liberation, by Thich Nhat Hanh. Early in I came across the presentation of The Four Nutriments identified by the Buddha. These are Food, Sense Impression, Volition, and Consciousness. I found this immediately interesting from an elemental perspective as they lend themselves well to elemental classification. Food as earth, Sense Impressions as air, Volition as water, and Consciousness, as always, fire.  The Idea presented is that humans can bring ourselves suffering or happiness based on ..read more

I recently finished a fantastic read of The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide on Personal Freedom, by Don Miguel Ruiz. This book presented an ancient Toltec perspective on our lives and how the hidden “agreements” we make with ourselves and others have a huge impact on the world and reality we see around us. I strongly encourage everyone to read it as it is only 140 Pages and very well written. Without giving too much of the book away, I wanted to discuss each of The Four agreements in relation to our elemental philosophy. It is probably because I spend a lot of time contemplating the elemen ..read more

The former post on Duality touches on emotion a bit, in fact using the word twenty-one times. However the focus of that post is to highlight the duality of all things using our emotions as the observed duality.  What I want to talk about in this article is how we can better understand ourselves through our own experience of emotions, and what that understanding can do for us. I have said to my family, my friends, and even strangers that I believe emotions are not inherently part of us even though they may feel like extensions of us. More clearly I believe that emotions, although coming f ..read more

Meditation is exercise. Just like our bodies need to exercise to some degree to process the calories and nutrients we intake every day, we also have to do this with the other four “bodies” of well-being. This article specifically will focus on Mental Exercise and what that means for our intellectual well-being. Our mental “body”, or intellectual well-being is something that is often lumped into many other concepts. The basis we will be working from though, is that our mental body is where our thoughts and ideas happen. The emotionless aspects of thoughts as they pop into your head. A thought ..read more

We as humans appear simple in our needs at first glance. Food, Water, Shelter. It doesn’t get much harder? But those are not the traits of our needs that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, and while it is increasingly important for us to remember that we are animals biologically, we also have to discover what it is that sets us apart from the rest of the animals. When we do this we can further understand our purpose in this experience.  To do this humans find our outlets of conscious artistic expression. This is the part of us that feels fulfilled when we create something or ..read more

Money is worthless, but the less we, this, believe, the more we endure suffering, The less we can perceive. Money is worth less Than the time, for it, you spend and if you forget this your happiness will end. You see, our lives are fleeting Miniscule,  and when we pause to breathe the world embraces each of us, and brings our pain some ease.  But money doesn’t want this not for you, or me. It only wants results. Production driven greed. To trade away our lives for this, no bigger sin could be. We were gifted existence, not to sell for currency. I dare you, take it back, your life fro ..read more