Equal Rights and Justice for All Reflections on Promoting General Welfare vs Personal Advantage​​ A recent Pew survey found that nearly 70% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of their country. Gallup says only about half of Americans are “extremely proud” or “very proud” to be American, a 25-year low. A recent NPR/Marist poll released on July 1, 2026 found that eight of ten of Americans say the U.S. has moved from founding principles. In our view, these viewpoin

By Linda Sechrist Have you ever had a moment when you looked in the mirror and wondered, “How can the image staring back be me?” I have. I thought about that one moment for days, even months, and I still return to it. I believe it stayed with me because it caused my mind to stop thinking, creating a gap that allowed me to pause and feel it so deeply. It resonated, striking a chord with my feelings in that instant. Nothing like it had ever occurred to me before. I’d never had

By Carol Roberts, MD One of the most important philosophers I have encountered in my life is a skinny boy named Bob Dylan. Recently I came upon a quote from him, now a skinny older man. Here’s what he is saying now: “The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything but the world moves without

By Douglas Bonar Disclosure Day Movie – My Thoughts I’m writing this musing soon after watching Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed movie, Disclosure Day. I believe you (dear readers) are aware of the premise of the movie, the hype, and most likely, the growing media buzz about our relationship with extraterrestrials. I invite you now to look within, not outwardly to the movie or the media. I invite you to explore feelings related to an expansion of human consciousness and an und

Reflections By Linda Sechrist Over the past few months, I’ve revisited numerous articles that I’ve written for Natural Awakenings, a healthy lifestyle magazine. Yes, over the last 22 years, I saved all 264 issues, finally getting around to looking back on a little more than a quarter of a century of my life—at last throwing out the clutter. It’s been a sort of life review. What I’ve been most grateful for in the process is that it required me to reflect on the lessons I learn

By Douglas Bonar I’m pondering two paths. One involves transcendence and enlightenment, and the other involves awakening and transformation. Certainly, there are overlaps and congruence. And as certain, there are other paths. Paths to what? Paths to the conscious evolution of the human species and “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” The dominant human worldview based on separation is clearly outmoded and not working. An updated worldview is emerging

by Douglas Bonar Chaordic Age I borrow the term chaordic from Dee Hock (1929–2022) the founder and CEO of the Visa credit card association. He wrote The Birth of the Chaordic Age in 1990, and its expanded edition One From Many in 2005. The term chaordic is the blend of chaos and order. Hock introduced the word in 1993 during a speech where he described systems that are simultaneously chaotic and ordered, self‑organizing, adaptive, and decentralized. He coined the word becaus

by Mark Pitstick, MA, DC Mark Pitstick The goals of the wonderful organization Groking Wholeness overlap those of my outreaches so I am honored to write this article. My journey of awakening really took off at age 19 when I worked part-time as a respiratory therapist during my pre-med studies. Being with many suffering and dying adults and children brought me to my existential knees. I resolved to find sensible and, whenever possible, evidence-based answers to life's bigge

By Eli Kolp and Gary Uremovich Eli: Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. Gary: Thank you, Eli, for such a short but startling conversation starter! Gary: I have to respond to what you said! I sense that life is a spiritual complicated journey of confusion, confession, and, finally, confirmation. I appreciate how your saying reflects something true about the human condition, but it does not yet reach deeply enough.

How to access and enjoy good stuff and times in life! An early admission. The title isn’t accurate as it primarily relates to the yin aspect, as I’ll clarify. However, it really is catchy, don’t you think?! And, I believe, pertinent. Oh, and the subtitle isn’t really accurate either. It would better read “How to access and enjoy good stuff and times in life while concurrently living in harmony with the earth and its inhabitants,” but that would be too long a subtitle. So

By Douglas Bonar Keep this poem in mind as you journey into this written offering. I’ll come back to it later. When I heard the learn'd Astronomer Walt Whitman 1810 - 1892 When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tir

Feeling and experiencing LIFE Stream of Life Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941] The same stream of LIFE that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same LIFE that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same LIFE that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are

by Rev. Jon Scott, First Unity Spiritual Campus, St. Petersburg, FL -Why So Many People Feel Like the World Is Shifting Beneath Their Feet- Something strange is happening right now, and most people feel it before they can explain it. It shows up as tension in conversations. As sudden certainty in places that used to allow nuance. As a quiet sense that the old maps no longer match the terrain. Some call it political. Others call it cultural. From a psychological and spiritual

By Carol Roberts, MD We all - individually and collectively - need to push a restart button today. Fortunately, the heavens are setting one up. You may not believe in astrology, but bear with me a moment. People used to use astrology to guide their lives, so maybe, just maybe, there is something there for us. The planets in the astrological realm are the archetypes that were the Greek gods, each representing a personality type and a vibrational frequency that applies directly

By Bob Staretz Throughout our lives we grow, we learn, we experience, and we age. If you really think about it, aging is a profound experience that intersects deeply with the big questions of human existence: “Who am I”? “Why am I here”? “What is my purpose”? “What happens when I die”? I am now in my senior years, and as I have aged, my understanding of these questions and answers to them has continuously evolved over my lifetime. This evolution was shaped by my accumulated l

"When Someone Like You" from the Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde By Linda Sechrist More than thirty-five years ago, I was sitting in my car in front of my condo in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Just as I was about to turn the ignition and step out, a song came on the radio. From the very first note and lyric, it cast its spell over me. I couldn’t move. I looked up through the windshield and saw the full moon burning through wisps of cloud, heightening the moment as if the sky itsel

By Martha Ginsberg - guest author Have you ever paused during a quiet moment and wondered how you ended up with the family you were born into? Not with resentment or blame, but simple curiosity—imagining how life might have unfolded if your parents had been different. It’s a harmless question, more of a mental exploration than a judgment. I’ve asked myself that question countless times throughout my life. As children, we naturally look up to our parents. We believe they love

Excerpted from an essay originally written by Dr. Edgar Mitchell & Bob Staretz Throughout the ages great spiritual teachers from all traditions have spoken of reality being a limitless, transcendent and holistic consciousness. Partly as a result of the legacy of the French philosopher Descartes in the 16th century and the separations of the domains of religious and scientific thought and inquiry, the spiritual view of reality has all but been ignored by modern science until v

Michelangelo's Message to Mankind By Carol Roberts, MD The heart is more than a muscle, more than a pump. The heart is the center of the human energy field. It connects the lower three energy centers (the earth chakras) with the upper three ( the human and Divine chakras). Energy from the earth which is rising, connects with the downward flown from above. Imagine the point of contact between the body of Adam and the outstretched finger of God in Michelangelo’s famous Sistine

For generations, poets have sung of love as the animating force of human life, while scientists have tended to treat it as a subjective feeling - beautiful, perhaps, but biologically incidental. Yet the boundaries between poetry and science are dissolving. Increasingly, research across medicine, psychology, evolutionary biology, and systems theory is converging with the insights of mystics and artists: love is not merely an emotion. It is a fundamental condition for human flo