Flower Mandalas Project

(Faking it till you make it and the cure for hypochondria) If you’re old enough, you might remember the iconic Memorex television commercials from the 1970s in which jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald shatters a wine glass with her voice. Then, the playback of a recording of Fitzgerald on Memorex tape shatters another. The announcer asks: “Is it live or is it Memorex?” More on Memorex in a moment. But first, a brief trip… Continue Reading →

A few months ago, I took a business bootcamp course from Mirasee, an organization that helps build and scale businesses using a combination of audience-building strategies and online courses. The intention of the course designer and company founder, Danny Iny, was to teach participants how to jump start a business. I’m not sure, yet, whether the course will help me do that, but it’s already made a difference in how I approach problems… Continue Reading →

Last week, I happened upon a Facebook video that gave me pause. Until a few years ago, I'd always eaten meat. I love a good hamburger, a steak, turkey breast, salmon, grilled chicken. And I'd always been aware that I was indirectly killing a sentient creature. But, I thought, I'm also an animal, and other animals eat animals. I could hunt for my food if I had to. In April, 2014, a rogue… Continue Reading →

Creative activities—and the creative approach to life that often accompanies them—can help us better withstand the huffing and puffing of life's Big Bad Wolf. Creative activities are rewarding outlets for self-expression. They give us a sense of accomplishment, often have a centering effect, and they’re usually fun to do. But besides these obvious benefits, creative activities can also enhance how we approach our lives. When we work creatively, we dive deep into ourselves.… Continue Reading →

Ground on which we can only be saved from destruction by fighting without delay is desperate ground. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War Stress is one of the most insidious challenges to building resilience. It can be a constant strain on our natural balancing mechanism, gradually wearing down its efficacy and slowing its response time. Basic ways to reduce stress that therapists often recommend include changing your emotional relationship to the stressor… Continue Reading →

A Story Within a Story or The Story of a Story Eugene K. Garber's Eroica Trilogy is a sustained exploration of the powerful impulse to tell stories and the impediments all storytellers face—an exploration that climaxes in The House of Nordquist, a fascinating blend of detective story, gothic novel, epistolary tale, and social critique. Gene briefly comments on one of the novel's central issues below: In The House of Nordquist Alice, misfortunate wife of… Continue Reading →

I recently flew from Boston to the West Coast to see my oldest and closest friend. I don't fly often, but when I do, I try to get a a window seat. Yes, there's less legroom, and yes, I have to step over people if I want to use the restroom, but there's no other way to get the view from 30K, and the view from 30K is important to me. On this… Continue Reading →

Something Different This Way Comes   Transformations Press (i.e., David) is extraordinarily pleased to announce the resurrection of two iconoclastic novels by Eugene K. Garber, as well as the imminent birth of his latest novel, The House of Nordquist. Gene was my mentor in fiction writing when I was a graduate student in the early '90s. We've maintained a friendship ever since. With his first two Eroica books now out of print and the… Continue Reading →

NOTE: This post is adapted from my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World. I’m posting it here because it’s the key to staying balanced when the road gets rocky.   To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War To stay sane in an insane world, we need more than new tools and techniques. We also have to keep doing… Continue Reading →

In the film The Wizard of Oz, after a tornado has lifted her house into the air and set it down again, Dorothy steps outside to survey the damage. As she observes the rolling hills, the fantastic buildings, the yellow brick road, the munchkins, she begins to realize that something has changed. She tells her little dog, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. We must be over the rainbow!” As a child, watching this… Continue Reading →

This post is a reprise of one of the most popular posts from last year. It’s about how to take care of yourself when you’re too pressed for time for normal self-care. It’s one of many self-care practices in my new book The Art of Balance: Staying Sane in an Insane World, which will be on sale for a “Countdown Deal” for four days, starting Friday.  In the summer of 1979, after two… Continue Reading →

In the late ’50s, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg observed that as we mature, we progress through three basic levels of moral development. At the pre-conventional levels, our sense of what’s fair and just is self-centered; we are concerned mainly with satisfying our own needs and avoiding punishment. Most of us move on to the conventional levels, where our sense of justice is based mainly on societal expectations; we make moral decisions based on rules,… Continue Reading →

NOTE : This is a guest post by Kenneth Ring , PhD. Dr. Ring is an internationally recognized authority on near-death experiences. His writings on this phenomenon include five books and nearly 100 articles about near-death experiences. He is the co-founder of the  International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS)  and is the founding editor of the  Journal of Near-Death Studies . Dr. Ring’s book Heading Toward Omega , the Journal of Near-Death Studies , and IANDS were all very important to me following my own NDE in 1993, and I’m honored to have him as a guest. Waiting to Die © 2017, Kenneth Ring The bright realization that must come before death will be worth all the boredom of living. – Ned Rorem What’s it like, waiting to die? Of course, it’s different for everyone. I can only say what it’s like for me. On the whole, it’s rather boring. Don’t get me wrong. I still have many pleasures in life and – knock on silicon – I’m lucky not to be suffering from ...

Before I started my training as a therapist, I took a short course in community mediation. Most of my mediation experience was as a volunteer in small claims court. We mediators helped conflicting parties try to reach a mutually satisfying agreement rather than simply letting a judge adjudicate the case. Small claims court is all about settling financial arguments, and money was always the identified issue in the cases we handled. But in mediation, a strange thing happened: almost always, it turned out that what the aggrieved party most needed was a sincere apology and a way to remedy their grievance. When the apology came (and it often did), the agreement quickly followed. The change in demeanor from start to finish could be dramatic: I remember one case where two women – a homeowner and a landscaping contractor – began in bitter conflict but walked out with their arms around each other, sharing tears. Something similar happens in couples counseling. Couples often come to therapy a...

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. – Francis Bacon Solitude, my refuge as a boy, felt like imprisonment for much of my later life. From my last year in high school and through my 20s, I struggled ceaselessly to avoid it. I structured my life to reinforce connection. I hitch-hiked across the United States and Canada to force myself to ask strangers for rides and places to stay. I lived with roommates so that I was seldom really alone. I made arrangements to meet friends for meals and a movie even when I could afford neither and was living mainly on brown rice and omelets. I found work as a reporter to force myself to interview strangers, and as a teacher to push myself out of solitude and into connection with my students. E. M. Forster’s “Only connect!” became my motto, and without frequent connection, particularly intimate connection, I often collapsed into despondency. Solitude became a necessary evil. The time I spent writing, although absorbing,...

I was 20 when I first encountered Baba Ram Dass’s square, purple-covered Be Here Now , the book that launched many of my generation on an Eastern-inspired journey. I was walking though the student center of the University at Buffalo when I ran into a high school friend sitting on the floor outside the bookstore, guitar at his side, leafing through it. He handed it to me. Be? Here? Now? More than 40 years later, I’m still asking what that means. One of my most important teachers is Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk whose simple exposition of Buddhist principles has been life-changing for thousands of people worldwide. Like Ram Dass, his most compelling observation is that we are already who we are, already in the only moment actually available to us. “The past is gone, the future is not yet here,” he says, “and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.” It seems so simple; yet being here now is not easy for most of us. We are inund...

Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. – Georgia O’Keeffe In August, 2003, I attended a five-day, mostly silent retreat with Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (and 900 others). I thought of it as “Buddhist boot camp.” We awoke at 5:30 a.m., exercised with Thich Nhat Hanh or one of his monks or nuns, and spent the day meditating, listening to dharma talks, participating in discussions of Buddhist thought, and in general immersing ourselves in Buddhist practice. At that time the older brother I never had, my close friend Robert, was in a bad way. Like me, he had nearly died about ten years before, and like me had struggled with his infirmities. For a long time, he did well, but in recent months he’d fallen into a deep depression. I was also battling depression at that time and it strained my limited emotional resources to be with Robert. In the best of times, our relationship was 70% Rob...

Thanks for your thoughts on The Art of Balance title earlier this fall. The book is moving through its early pre-release stages. I’m busily getting feedback, making revisions, building a new website for Transformations Press, and investigating ways to network. But before I can get much further, I need a good cover! 1. The Scene: You’re feeling stressed and you’re scrolling through books on stress relief in the hope of finding a solution to your woes. You come upon one of these four book covers:   2. The Survey : Click here   to tell me, in this one-question survey , which cover you’d be most likely to click (and, optionally, why you were drawn to that particular one). Your opinions on the survey (and any additional thoughts) will be helpful in shaping the future of this book. 3. The Giveaway: While you’re waiting for The Art of Balance to relieve that stress, take a look at these free books and courses . For Black Friday , I’ve teamed up with several other a...

  For the last several years, I’ve found myself attracted to the dead leaves I see on the ground as I walk, particularly those in late fall and winter. I’ve taken thousands of pictures of them. A friend’s mentioning to me the concept of wabi-sabi helped me understand why.     For the last several years, I’ve found myself attracted to the dead leaves I see on the ground as I walk, particularly those in late fall and winter. I’ve taken thousands of pictures of them. A friend’s mentioning to me the concept of wabi-sabi helped me understand why. Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese term for finding the beauty in imperfection, and accepting the cycle of birth, growth, aging, death, and decay. I’m 66. It’s about time.     The Buddhist teacher and writer Thich Nhat Hanh talks about this cycle when he speaks of seeing the garbage in the flowers and the flowers in the garbage. “When we look at garbage,” he writes, “we also see the non-garbage elements: we see the flower th...

  My first experience of time as a continuum occurred when I was about ten years old. Before that, I think time was invisible to me. I was riding my bike past Johnny Sybulski’s house and I stopped, suddenly, for no particular reason. I looked at the simple brick facade, the white trim, the unkempt bushes, and I became aware of myself looking. I thought, “This is just one second in my life, and I’ll never remember it again.” But that moment is one of my more vivid memories from childhood. It marked the beginning of my sense of myself as mortal. Both of my grandfathers had died that year. In each case I had seen them nearing death in the hospital some weeks before and had seen their dead bodies in the funeral home. Perhaps that’s why I noticed that moment, or perhaps ten is when most boys begin to understand time and death; I don’t know. What I do know is that from that point on, time had a kind of linearity it had not had before, and this linearity soon became part of my backg...