From as early as I could remember, my parents, my teachers, my community, were all training me, grooming me for a job. The particular job didn’t really matter so much, but it had to be something white collar, managerial/officey. In the upper middle class Jewish community I grew-up in, doctors, lawyers, accountants were first choices, but, being the do-gooder I was, my gig as a nonprofit fundraiser was perfectly acceptable. The main point is, in my community, in my mind,…

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Flashlight: I lost my friggin flashlight. Again. Sooo annoyed. I put it outside in the sun to charge at the retreat center. Someone must have moved it. Or maybe I just forgot it somewhere. I go questing, find it on a table, ‘sweet my flashlight found!’ Darkness comes and I am prepared, I turn on my flashlight, but no light. Its broken, or it didn’t charge. Now I need to borrow a light…Ugh, fucking flashlight! But wait…when l put that…

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In my life, I have moved around a lot. In the last 15 years I have lived in New Orleans, New York, Nashville, Atlanta, Houston and San Francisco. Six cities, 8 houses, you would think I would be a pro by now, that moving would be easy for someone like me. But the truth is, each move is torture. So much anxiety, such a deep sense of loss. When my husband started considering a job in Chicago, I started the…

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I had an old friend, we’ll call her Ebony, come to visit. Ebony and I were dear friends in college and beyond, but we had drifted apart for 2-3 years before, out of the blue, she called to arrange a visit. I was so happy to see my friend when she arrived and even happier to see that she was happy and thriving in a way I had never seen before. Ebony, though an amazing person and great friend, had…

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After sharing the prior two contemplations with Mae Yo, I asked the following 3 questions for clarification. Mae Yo’s answers are in green below: Question Part 1) From my contemplation it seems that sometimes karmic debt is something we create through feelings and interpretations of our own actions. Sometimes however it seems to be initiated by others. Is this correct and if so then whats the balance–how do I reconcile these two ideas? consequences? Yes, karma works in both ways….

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I was starting to feel like, “oh, I totally get this karma thing”, It’s something I create through my thoughts (you can read the last blog post). Then, Mae Yo comes out with a Youtube Q and A — Karmic Creditor — and I feel like “oh shit, I am totally karma screwed”. The video was about the power our karmic creditors can have over us and it made me realize I better contemplate a bit more on how karma…

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I was reading a short story that got me thinking about Karma. The extra short version goes something like this… A woman was sitting on a train trying to read, when a man came, sat down next to her and started talking. She was busy, not interested in a conversation, and politely found a way to excuse herself. The story ends with this man committing suicide by jumping off the train and the woman ravished by guilt that she may…

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Karma is one of those Bhuddisty topics that’s big, huge. Understanding it fully is equivalent to understanding the whole kit-n-kaboodle of how this world works, how we came to be born, the cycle we are stuck in and how to bring about its cessation. In other words, my details are pretty sketchy ;). Arguably it was way too big a topic for me at the time in my practice I began to consider it (the next entry dates back to…

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We’ll begin this entry with a little civics lesson about the San Francisco jury selection process. Basically, everyone eligible to serve on a jury can be called on once a year. If summoned, you don’t necessarily need to go to court, you get place on stand-by. Each day you call in and see if you were selected to serve on the jury pool, if not, you simply need to call in the next day. If you make it a whole…

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Note from the present day: This story was one of my early contemplations on the slights and discomforts I face in my everyday life. The slights and discomforts I invite on in, in exchange for those sweet, snowy, moments I desire. As suffering goes, these little blips are barely perceptible and so easily forgotten. But it is actually their normality,  their pervasiveness, that make them such compelling evidence of the trade offs, the sufferings for enjoyments, I chose. Because the…

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On the tail of so much travel —  India, Hawaii —  it’s wasn’t terribly surprising that my To Do list was insanely long. Doctors visits and  taxes to pay and calls to make, oh my. What did strike me as odd though was the feeling in my heart as I looked at the list, it might as well have said “lions and tigers and bears oh my.” I sat at my desk, carefully writing out each to do, creating sublists…

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As a great lover of all things lovely, I couldn’t resist going to my local museum for a special butterfly exhibit when it came to town. Part of the exhibit featured glass cases where cocoons were carefully pinned at the tip so that the butterflies inside could hatch and then fly away. One butterfly however wasn’t so lucky, its cocoon had been pinned too far down and its wing had been caught. I watched the butterfly struggle to free itself,…

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In my Buckle-up Buddhisty period, I strengthened the foundations of my practice by building a scaffold to support my future contemplations. I took specifically Buddhist ideas and applied my experiences to understanding them. Thanks to this effort, I got a glimpse of the the inner workings, the systems, my own mind uses to keep me deluded (Alana’s 2s and 3s) and stuck suffering (Where my Mind Visits HW series) and the process the Buddha outlined to set myself free (the…

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