Fire season is here again. Years ago, during the Camp Fire, I packed the car, yelled to the kids to get in, and begged my husband to leave with us while propane tanks exploded in the distance. For two weeks, we didn’t know if our home was gone. A year later, my husband died of cancer. Lately, I’ve been thinking about impermanence. Not philosophically. Directly. The body changes. Homes disappear. Forms wear out. Life moves whether we are ready or not. Yesterday, my body hurt.

The words we use are very important. We forget sometimes that words are vessels encasing energy. Not long ago, I gave a psychic reading to a friend of mine. During the reading, she received a beautiful visit from loved ones on the Other Side. The message was simple, direct, and deeply compassionate: Let go of your self-image. This beautiful woman’s eyes filled with tears. Our culture gives a thumbs up to certain appearances: thin, shapely, athletic, youthful, fashionable, pol

My late aunt came through with a message recently: “Leave nature alone.” She came through while I was standing in my kitchen reaching for cleaner to spray a trail of ants marching across my counter toward a tiny drop of spilled honey left behind from the lemon and honey drink I had made the night before. And believe me, my first thought was not, “Oh, a spiritual message from my beloved aunt.” It was more along the lines of: “Get out of my kitchen, you pests!” But interestingl

Over the years, I have filled journals with tarot spreads, handwritten reflections, spiritual study notes, dreams, synchronized events, snippets of conversations, and the occasional insight scribbled down before I forgot it five minutes later. Some of it emerged while studying texts like the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, A Course in Miracles, or A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. Other insights arrived through much more ordinary experiences: grief, work, illness, surgery recovery,

There is something amusing about the phrase, “be spiritual.” Whenever I hear it, I get a buoyant feeling and suddenly want to sit with friendly people over a cup of coffee. Strange, perhaps, considering how spirituality is so often portrayed as serious, detached, and elevated above ordinary life. Yet, in my experience, the deeper one moves into alignment, the more natural life becomes — not less. In the early stages of spiritual practice, alignment takes effort. One learns to

There comes a time in life when we need to take stock. I don’t mean simply going through the pantry or inventorying the refrigerator. I mean, looking honestly at all the parts of one’s life and asking: What is the common thread? What holds it all together? Is it money? Love? Greed? Lust? The will to survive? In ordinary life, we can easily become lost in fragmented pieces. One piece at a time can feel overwhelming. Multiple pieces can feel like an avalanche. How do we make se