As many of us move through the second half of life, we begin to experience our own mortality in the form of health difficulties from unexpected diagnoses and/or deterioration of our own bodies. Even the most vibrant healthy person will eventually be too weak to take care of themselves, and will rely on others to meet their most basic of needs. How we prepare for this depends on our own attitude towards death. And for many of us, Stephen and Ondrea Levine helped us explore our own attitudes towards death. They were leaders in the field of working with the dying and brought their experiences to teaching about conscious relationship between couples. They went far beyond the normal psychological terrain and moved into the spiritual plane of what it meant to be in relationship. Stephen Levine is also well known for his 'soft belly' meditations.
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Tags: Community, Compassion

As we move full throttle into the holiday season, we come face to face with our own consumptive behavior. What a time for self-reflection and examining our own relationship with how we seek external happiness through what we buy. To see the bigger picture, I strongly recommend a brilliant video call The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard produced by Free Range Studios.



This 20 minute video helps usunderstand the impact of our consumption on the world and how we became a consumer society. Victor Lebow, and economist of the '50s, said it all in the following quote:

"Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
                                                  - Victor Lebow, 1955

Tags: Consumerism