Emotional principles

In late 2020, Coronavirus mutated into more virulent versions in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. This discovery thrust the science of evolutionary biology into the news. It also provides a timely reminder that evolution is active in all life at all times. Evolution is active in all life at all times. If it’s […]

We’re all familiar with Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, otherwise known as the Law of Action and Reaction: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. This law applies to emotional mechanics just as much as planetary physics. What isn’t so well recognised is what happens when motion is inhibited: what isn’t expressed gets […]

I’ve spent years trying to raise my self-esteem. Meditations, affirmations, incantations—all tried and failed. The reason they failed is simple. Low self-esteem is an indicator of the presence of shame. What is self-esteem? Self-esteem, or self-worth, is a phrase that gets bandied about a lot in personal development, emotional healing and spiritual growth circles. Wikipedia […]

Bringing the unconscious to light is never a random process. Inflexible processes rule our journey. We only identify these processes as we repeatedly experience them. One of the rules is that we uncover issues in sequence from the least to the most buried. This accords with the homeopathic principle known as Hering’s law of cure, […]

Align with your day. It’s a neat little catchphrase, but what does it mean? Aligning with your day is a tool for congruent living. It’s a method for engaging with life as it is, rather than life as we might wish it to be. We live in a highly uncertain world. Coronavirus. Climate change. Political […]

Truth. We all think (or like to think) that we’re seeking it. Yet why isn’t there a single truth that we can all recognise? Surely someone has found ‘the truth’ by now? The reality is that you can never see more than one step ahead of your current perception of the truth. In Zen and […]

Have you ever wondered why some people rave about self-help books, yet others dismiss the same books as useless garbage? Same book, different people: the key factor is the people, not the book. The common denominator of every successful self-directed healing is the acceptance of responsibility. This acceptance can be explicit or implicit, conscious or […]

In the personal healing world, we talk about the ‘healing journey’. What does that mean? We’re on a journey to healing. Yes, obviously—but where’s it taking us? What’s the destination? At this point, words like ‘wholeness’ and ‘wellbeing’ often emerge. These are concepts, not destinations. A destination is a place on a map you can […]

“Get a grip.” “Pull yourself together.” How often have you heard these phrases? More to the point, how often have you barked them at yourself when your world was disintegrating around you? These are useless phrases, the outworn slogans of a dying patriarchy. In Britain, this sentiment is typified by social pressure to ‘keep the […]

In ‘Tight Connection to My Heart’, Bob Dylan sings: “What looks large from a distance / Close up ain’t never that big.” Dylan, one of the greatest philosophers of our age, puts his finger—more accurately, his distinctive rasping vocal—on a key facet of life. We’re in a process that we’re too close to see. No […]