This five minute video is the first part of a fascinating skype conversation between Elizabeth Namgyel and Erric. Elizabeth describes compassion as a radical expansion of self. Then she gives some tips about how we can begin to cultivate this expanded sense of self.

Not long ago, I fell in love with a beautiful woman. Gently, we became a bit closer. She rejected me, right at the moment, when I was SURE that we had just opened up for each other, and I thought I could FEEL the love she also had for me. At first, my mind reacted with complete disbelieve. It told me that this must be some kind of error. Something within her must have closed down, she might be just not able to face the love and affection for her. When the rejection was confirmed, it really hurt. I was left with the pain of feeling cut off something really precious. And I couldn’t escape facing some of my deep-rooted believes around love and relationship. Which turned out to be a great opportunity for development.

One of the most common questions that come up for beginning meditators is something like: “although I want to establish a regular daily meditation practice, I start out great at first but then after a while it fades away. What can I do?”

Actually, it isn’t all that hard to establish a lifelong habit of meditation, but it does take a little time to build it up.

By following these five easy steps, our meditation practice will gradually become an effortless habit. Guaranteed!

There’s a standard American joke that goes, “A man walks into a bar…” and proceeds to have a short story ending with a punch-line. To get this post started right, I’ll finish the joke:

Last week for me was a whirl-wind of emotions. I was getting ready for a conference, and at the same time had to deal with a co-author on a paper who kept wanting to change things (which involved me doing a lot more work in time that I simply did not have). In short, it was a great chance to work with my emotions. And today was the travel day to the conference, with the lovely surprise that someone decided to jump in front of the train, such that all trains were out of commission and I had to find another route to Berlin. Yet, surprisingly, after not dealing with the previous issues very elegantly, this last little bit of train delays did not disturb me majorly. At every road block (e.g., a bus driver driving very slowly although all passengers had a connection to catch on the other end) somehow there was a voice in me that said something about that all these feelings and emotions were just that: thoughts and emotions (and not atom bombs!).