The Round Year

<p>Those born with exceptional traits often remain unaware of them until adulthood, as we tend to take our own mental and physical capabilities for granted and assume everyone else is the same.</p><p>What is a gift? It...

<p>Intent is not precise, nor is it linear, it loosely aims for the direction you plan while bringing about many echoes, counterpoints, and unintended results.</p><p>Their effects continue long after the flame of their...

<p>Maintaining control over your mind when the latter is challenged in the battle of influences, inducements and restrictions we call daily life is a critical survival skill.</p><p>People fight to win this battle...

<p>Where are you right now?</p><p>You may think you are at home, tending to mundane activities, but part of you is still at work, unable to let go of the problem you’re trying to solve, at the beach, dreaming of that...

<p>Understanding is a tough mistress who makes you deserve her favor: it demands focus, effort, humility, time and patience.</p><p>Whether gained through years of painstaking trial and error or learned from other...

<p>We call them omens, signs, kismet, synchronicities, and they simultaneously hearten and distress us, because they dismantle our illusion reality is random.</p><p>We call it God’s will and surrender to it, or fate...

<p>Remember the old maps with boundaries beyond which anything could happen? They always said here be dragons, even in the middle of the ocean.</p><p>When we try to think past the limits of our understanding, we always...

<p>Life works in probabilities. Everything is a gradient of maybe between yes and no. Since nothing is impossible, and nothing is absolute, life plans only make sense in broad strokes, and obsessing over their specific...

<p>What is a ritual? Any activity which carries or can carry symbolic meaning.</p><p>Rituals appeal to our desire for recognizable patterns, our need to place ourselves into a familiar frame of reference that connects...

<p>The inability to share ineffable experiences is a limitation of our human condition, which makes us feel helpless and sublime at the same time. These moments are by definition impossible to put into words, but their...

<p>The round year is an ideal that got lost in our modern experience of time, but which is so deeply embedded in old spiritual systems, it often goes unquestioned.</p><p>It is a simple concept, really. We don’t live...

<p>People picture their memory as a large body of water in which they’re immersed, one which challenges their sense of control, as they struggle to swim against its currents, or allows them the enjoyment of floating...

<p>Whose thoughts run your head? That is a strange question. We take for granted we are the ones who think our thoughts, when in fact they are only in part our production, if at all. This article is a perfect example of...

<p>There are truly powerful forces at work in our universe, forces so awe-inspiring our minds can’t comprehend them: giant black holes of near infinite gravity, invisible waves that propagate through vast expanses at...

<p>Once upon a time, emotions were the key to our survival. They are fast, much faster than thoughts, and can assess a situation at lightning speed, before our rational analysis, before our senses even; they are a lost...