Dopamine—as I wrote yesterday, it’s the neurotransmitter fuels our pleasure-seeking and plays a part in instigating, motivating, and rewarding desire. It’s the life of the party. But does dopamine play a part in our modern social media obsession?
Read MoreThis week, I’m building on last week’s Waking theme. If you missed it, go back and read from the beginning. Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from my forthcoming book, which builds on yesterday’s piece “The Ways we Cope: Sex and Chocolate and Alcohol (Oh My!).”
Read MoreConsider the objects of our desires: sex, chocolate, alcohol, shopping, work, food, even narcotics. Ask yourself, Why do you turn to them in times of stress? What do they have in common? As I asked last week, what do they do for you?
Read MoreIn a 1995 edition of “The Orange County Register,” a professor at McMasters University in Ontario described famed physicist Albert Einstein’s approach to solving an apocalyptic hypothetical: “When Einstein was asked how he would save the world in one hour, he said he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it….”
Read MoreKnow thyself—it’s necessary to live a waking life. For the last few days, we’ve seen how knowing our values, gifts, and the things that bring us joy lead us to the light. This kind of knowing, though, is only one half of the equation. Our shadows—they offer a fuller, more complex view of the self.
Read MoreI’ve continued my exploration of the timeless maxim on the temple of Delphi—Know Thyself, and yesterday, I turned back to the first three “Know Thyself” lists I asked you to create. (Those lists: your values, your skills, and the things that bring you joy.) But knowing yourself, formulating these lists—what’s the point?
Read MoreI spoke with a world-class photographer yesterday, a good man with a good eye and a better heart. Society is like a camera, he said, and these days, our lens is fixed on the negative, the shadow, the pain. He offered the obvious example—the political vitriol of the day. He mentioned the angry undercurrent of the 24-hour news cycle.
Read More“Know thyself”—it’s a Greek maxim, one which was inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. It’s a maxim that appears with regularity in books written by modern-day self-help gurus, executive coaches, and counselors. It’s used with such regularity that some might consider it cliche…
Read MoreI confess, I’m not exempt from this sort of tapping out. When stress, pain, or anxiety comes calling, do I turn to prayer, meditation, and the like, or am I prone to turn to other coping mechanisms? As much as I’d like to claim the spiritual actualization of a mindful guru, I must admit the truth: I still use other means to numb myself when the stress, pain, anger, and anxiety fires up every nerve.
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As I shared yesterday, I used booze to tap out, to anesthetize me to the pain of my own doubt. When the pain came, I drank. But breaking the bottle didn’t wake me forever. In fact, there are days I’m still prone to use pleasure to avoid pain. Even in these years some would call “sober,” when the stresses and pains of life come calling, I’m prone to chase appetites that lull me to sleep. (Remember our Snow White example?) What are those appetites:
Sex (as much as the confines of holy matrimony will allow);
Chocolate, cereal, or cinnamon rolls (the holy trinity of comfort foods);
Book buying (fiction, nonfiction, history, vampire romance, whatever);
The work, work, work (or perhaps it’s money, money, money).
We all have our own hierarchy of desires, the material, actions, or habits we tend to use in times of stress. And like booze, these materials, actions, and habits (the “Stuff of Earth”) as songwriter Rich Mullins once called them) are not evil in and of themselves. The Stuff of Earth has a specific purpose, one I discuss in The Book of Waking Up.
Today, ask yourself a few waking questions:
What materials, actions, and habits have I turned into a vice?
What Stuff of Earth do I use to avoid stress or pain?
What is that underlying pain?
My next book, The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life* is available for pre-order NOW. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) Pre-orders are vital to the success of a book, so please do not wait. Order today. And if you do, let me know via email. I’ll send you a sample along with the 3-part video series that gave rise to this book!
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