InnerSelf.com

This article explores how horses act as spiritual teachers, helping us connect with our authentic selves, recognize emotional cues, and embrace life’s challenges. Discover how working with horses...

The Daily Inspiration is a short message to help set the tone for the day. It is linked to a longer article for additional insights and inspiration.

This weekly astrological overview is based on planetary influences, and offers perspectives and insights to assist you in making the best use of current energies. This column is not intended as...

Standing desks have surged in popularity, but new findings suggest prolonged standing may come with its own health risks. While sitting less is beneficial, simply standing all day isn't the...

In today’s world, family estrangement is more common than ever. Shakespeare’s King Lear provides profound insights into the emotional and ethical complexities of severing family ties—shedding...

Political views influence search ad clicks, with conservatives more likely to click on sponsored links while liberals favor organic content. This research explores the psychology behind "search ad...

Why do ghosts appear fully clothed, often in Victorian or burial attire? This article delves into the mystery behind ghostly clothing, exploring Victorian ideas on morality, identity, and the...

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A person making eye contact with their dog, reflecting a deep emotional and neural connection.

How Gazing at Your Dog Connects Your Brains

Jacqueline Boyd, Nottingham Trent University
Research reveals that eye contact with your dog forms a human-dog brain connection through a phenomenon called neural coupling. This…

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A troubling disconnect between the teachings of Jesus in the four Gospels and modern movements like Christian Nationalism and the Prosperity Gospel, which focus on wealth, power, and exclusion.

Reclaiming the True Message of Jesus

Robert Jennings, InnerSelf.com
How have movements like Christian Nationalism and the Prosperity Gospel deviated from Jesus’ actual teachings? This article explores how…

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I don’t believe we ever “master” the art of learning to communicate effectively. But we do get more skilled at witnessing ourselves and making new choices. One note of caution: Speaking your truth doe...

You already know the Yabbits; they are the voices inside your head, the doubts and the put-downs in your mind. Yabbits are the voices that argue against you. Our Yabbits were originally designed to ke...

As the pressures of our modern world lead us away from fundamental spiritual values such as truth, love, and receptivity into those of deception, fear, and domination, it is extremely important to loo...

The dream we once had has been fulfilled and yet there is a yearning for something more, a knowing deep within that I am more than my career, my house, my car, my relationships, my retirement, my inve...

Over the years, I have come to understand that much of what people identify as love is nothing of the sort. It is codependency, lust, neediness, addiction, and the ego's constant desire for attention....

What helps us to let go is that appearances change so completely. Nature is kind in that way — we can't say we haven't been warned. Most leaves wither and fade before they fall, fulfilling every bit o...

Suicide can be a plea for help, a response to mental illness, or the last gasp of despair. Suicide can also be an impulsive mistake, a planned ending of life, or the ultimate act of rage. Whatever the...

You must be vigilant about maintaining your vibration at a high enough level to enable you to navigate through life more purposefully, authentically, and, most importantly, safely. You will attract wh...

You don't have to like your losses, but the path to healing is through acceptance — a learned skill that comes only from doing. The more you courageously face your losses and accept what is, the more...

For a good marriage, who is the most important person with whom you should be communicating well? If you think it’s your spouse, think again. The most important person to converse with constructively...

What keeps us prisoners of our illusions? Our assumptions—the things we believe are true that really are not. For example, on my way to work during rush hour, a guy in a Lexus speeds by, cuts in front...

Many of you have your crown chakra and third eye open and connected to very high vibrational states and yet the heart remains broken, hurt, or only conditionally opened. It is of utmost importance to...

In order to change any of the beliefs that are holding you back from creating the life you want, it’s important to understand how they were formed and what got you to this point. For many years behavi...

This week we look at how to reclaim our identity. Alan Cohen asks Who Are You Really? and Barbara Berger speaks about Healthy Boundaries. Joe White explains about How to Unlearn Old Patterns and Trans...

This week we look at being at integrity with ourselves and with the world around us... whether by asking ourselves "Is There Separation Between Who You Are At Work and At Home?" or by Diving into Our...

Just because something has "always" been done a certain way doesn't mean that it is necessarily the best way. Some things can be improved and others need to be changed outright. This week we look at B...

I always had a feeling inside that there was something more to life. In a sense I had a great life—two wonderful kids, a husband, a successful business, a house—but even with all the trappings of what...

As we go through our experience of life, we encounter challenges as well as blessings. An important realization is that if we feel powerless, it is because we have given our power away. As much as tha...

Every word in every language is nothing more than an agreement. If I say, “I adore my cat,” you understand what I have said only because we agree on the meaning of the sounds. What we may not agree on...

We've been busy all week with "fine-tuning" the new website... It's been a major overhaul and there are an immense number of details that needed to be attended to. Yet, through it all, we've also been...

Despite what Madison Avenue would like us to believe, that vacation to the Riviera, that Chrysler PT Cruiser, that anti-aging cream is not the secret to happiness. There's only one thing that unlocks...

A dragon by the name of Chevron, breathing a fire fueled by C itizens United and $3.1 million in cash, succumbed to the people of the tiny city of Richmond, California last November when similar right...

Sometimes we might feel like our life is a tangled mess... that our emotions are all tangled up and we don't see the way out. This is the journey we travel this week with our featured articles: the jo...

Looking at the picture with this week's newsletter, the lyrics of an Elvis Presley song come to mind: "...caught in a trap, I can't walk out...". And the chorus goes on to say: "We can't go on togethe...

For most of my childhood, one of my favorite sayings was “It’s not fair!” As an adult, I continued to believe life should go the way I wanted it to go. When I couldn’t control the external world, I tr...

Two points emerge from our troubles during this stage. The first is the incorrect belief that our happiness and the success of the relationship are determined by what our partner says and does. As I’v...

As we approach the end of 2014 (yes, already!), we can take stock of where we are (and also of where we are headed). Our authors (see articles in the newsletter) can help give you a new perspective on...

To examine a person’s difficulties is to enter into the psychological atmosphere of his or her family. We are marked by their characteristics, but also by their insane ideas, their negative feelings,...

What many people don’t realize is that in the journey of life we can head in only two directions: toward well-being and away from it. Your emotions indicate where you are going. If you are feeling bad...

I’ve heard it many a time, and you probably have too. It’s supposedly the trump card to any argument on addressing climate change globally: “Yeah, but what’s the point? Isn’t China building a new coal...

To master a desire does not mean to suspend that desire so that it is not felt any more, but to change the course of the force that is active in that desire, so that something of value may be accompli...

Many indigenous peoples, and those comfortable with the idea of other dimensions, already have a sense of their interconnectedness with the cosmos. However, those who have a more limited belief system...

Your Emotional Self is a source of magical possibilities. It needs loving attention; when it receives that it flowers, releasing a childlike perfume of warmth and playfulness. What follows are five wa...

The phenomenon of fear is surely one of the most impressive proofs of the mind’s power to convince us of the reality of its contents. If a person could reduce all possible episodes of fear down to tho...

Awareness is the beginning of healing. It is the transformation of consciousness from feeling victimized and separate to remembering that we are always connected with a higher purpose and a greater ob...

Couples can resolve virtually any problem by conducting marriage meetings. The meetings foster a spirit of goodwill and acceptance, a live-and-let-live, respectful attitude that allows partners to be...

You stumble along thinking you don't know the way, and then one day you realize you're in the middle of it. I'd always thought that a path was a means to an end. A course of study, a tour of duty. The...

Almost any culture from which we originated had traditions or rites of passage that symbolized the changing individual and strengthened his status in the family and community. What's required now is t...

Is relationship therapy really needed? Why can't most of us just wing it and hope that everything turns out okay? After all, many people find that perfect partner and enjoy a satisfying, healthy relat...

Attention, as with awareness, can be understood as a relationship. It is the relationship between the one who is aware, or the "awarer" (whom we know as "me" or "I"), and the object of awareness. When...

The impact we can have on the world we share, if we choose to be kind in every circumstance or even in an occasional situation, simply can’t be overestimated. The shift in how life would feel to every...

When we struggle against the inevitable, or strive to alter the unavoidable timing of Mercury, we oppose the tao of existence. Therefore, understanding the principles of transiting Mercury retrograde...

What if you don't happen to have a Mr. or Ms. Right in the picture at the moment? Never fear! There are things to do. Knowing who you, yourself, are is the very first step to seeing what an equal part...

Sexual liberation has hardly made a dent in our understanding of sexuality during pregnancy. Most of us are unclear even about the basics: Is it really all right to be sexually active? How active? For...

The complexity of today's parenting makes it important to develop some basic principles to guide parents and emphasize the foundational concepts that can help parents raise happy, achieving children....

We all have places in our homes and our hearts where we hide the stuff we don’t want other people to see. Everyone does this yet we believe that we are the only ones with clutter to hide. We all carry...

The first practice of living in the fifth dimension, which is a permanent state of peace, bliss, love, and joy, is to do as you would be done by. Constantly think how others feel and would like to be...

Most “training” of children depends on a willful, specific employment of anxiety inducement. This consciously perpetrated crime is “guilting,” an activity with which we are all involved throughout our...

I’ll be the first to agree that there is something different about the people typically diagnosed with ADHD. However, if the symptoms can be better explained by something else, and if that different e...

I invited my son to close his eyes and feel the river of energy running between us. “Can you feel it?” I asked him. “Yes!” was his enthusiastic response. I told him to sense into this connection whene...

Perhaps the Indigo children are the continuing expression of DNA, a new generation of humans. Perhaps they are born with the understanding that there is no separation between humanity and nature, and...

Divorce is an individual problem. It cannot be generalized. In some cases, divorce is not the solution, no more so than marriage is the solution for a lonely man. Divorce takes place first in the mind...

The prostitute archetype is connected to your fears around survival. It helps you learn lessons in relation to your integrity and inner strength. It asks questions such as, Are you willing to sell you...

It has been two and half years since I helped save a stranger's life. It was wintertime and holiday season in New Jersey. In a beautiful holiday specialty market, in the midst of a bustling crowd, som...

After 9/11, I was writing (and publishing online) inspirational messages that focused on peace... Now twelve years later, we stand at the precipice of who knows what, and peace still eludes the planet...

Most of us are more or less aware of invisible energy fields. We feel it most when someone walks up to meet us. There comes a certain point at which, as he gets closer in physical proximity, you begin...

As Thomas Edison once said, "The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." Often Edison kids with ADHD — an umbrella term that includes attention deficit disorder (ADD) — quit...

Love is what creates life, maintains life, and nurtures life. It is the magnet that holds the cosmos in place and the glue that makes relationships last. Without love, there is no life. Therefore, we...

Joy enters my heart each time I see the world from a higher perspective than before. I can see more clearly through the eyes of my greater self. I know that finding joy is possible even in the most ex...

By reflecting upon the nature of our own thoughts, inclinations, perceptions, desires, and actions, we can fairly accurately identify which chakras are dominant within us. We can also determine ways w...

There are those who think karma is about blame and punishment. This sounds like old-time religion to me -- the methods and fear-based strategies designed to control simple minds and simple hearts. Kar...

The best information I've ever heard on the topic of grieving and what happens when we don't do it comes from a retired cop turned public speaker and therapist for police officers, Bobby Smith, PhD. B...

School was never designed to replace parents, but that is what has happened. In the past, whether the parents were farmers or shopkeepers, their children were with them throughout the workday which ga...

Take out your journal and write the names of two women you admire. Women who for you embody the word "god­dess." For me, this first list might include Michelle Obama and Helen Mirren. If you're...

The best thing we can do is offer our children a good and protected childhood that simultaneously prepares them for the future they will live in. That means we have to change how we parent...

Why is joy so important? Because to inspire people to bring about change — to work to create a culture of caring — we need the strongest, most motivating emotion there is, and joy is the ultimate expe...

We can upgrade all kinds of old patterns and situations in a much shorter time than it took to create them. Before we can do that, however, we have to let go of the notion that healing takes a long ti...

In the West, we place our cemeteries away from our everyday lives, as if there were an impermeable barrier separating life and death. We pretend that death will go away if we just ignore it. We know t...

Everything we do is a habit, in one form or another -- how we think, how we talk, how we react to criticism, which type of snack we instinctively reach for. Even when faced with a circumstance for the...

Older cultures did not have the kinds of adolescent problems we are now experiencing. However, they did have to deal with typical adolescent dynamics. Even in ancient times and primitive cultures, par...

They say that the most voracious anti-smoking person was probably once a heavy smoker. I (Karen) was at a party and a guy next to me pointed out three people scurrying onto the patio to have a cigaret...

My life was spinning out of control. I hated myself. I hated life. I hated people. My life was going nowhere. My childhood thoughts — I'm stupid, I'm not good enough, I'm not loved, and it's wrong to...

Our beliefs about love no longer match up with what's going on in the world, and they are contradicted when our relationships end. I call these out-of-date notions the obsolete mythologies of love.

Those of you reading this are part of a great spiritual movement, sometimes known as the "Great Shift." While your personal mission is to know yourself, your global mission is to help birth a New Worl...

We need to awaken a crucial understanding at this time of evolution... What we need to become aware of is that the choices many of us have made on Planet Earth are not resounding with the highest trut...

The statement that time heals all wounds is such a cliché that even the mention of time as a healer may seem either irrelevant or insulting. Neverthe­less, it is patently true that time is a miracle h...

Once upon a time many thousands of years ago, the Devil Himself was sitting in his boiling hot corporate headquarters in Hell, looking at his mission statement. It read: "To make as many people as pos...

Meet somebody, fall in love, get married. That’s how it goes, right? Then what? We hear of astronomical divorce rates, couple therapy, and extramarital affairs, but we also hear of the picture-perfect...

Though relationships can provide a lot of pleasure and reward, they can also deliver their share of hurt, pain, and misunderstanding. Whether intentionally or not, others may let you down. Learning ho...

What does ADHD have to do with toxins? Well, there have been a number of theories and studies done on the effects of environmental toxins influencing the increase in ADHD in individuals, most notably...

Our first experience with touch is our mother's loving caress in our home. Within our family we learn how, when and where to touch. Yet natural touch among family members is an often neglected means o...

To become a VIP member of Club Shouldsville, you must constantly suffer from the belief that one "should" and "should not" say and do certain things in relationships. And since reality almost never li...

Giving yourself permission to let go of what doesn’t serve you is very powerful. You will become highly energized. People who have done clutter busting on their own have told me about how they were en...

I encourage you to realize that the most powerful thing you can do in every moment is to choose joy. Make the shift into joy your greatest priority. When you choose joy, your joy is a flint that creat...

Mediation is appropriate in cases of miscommunication or misunderstandings, to clear up hurt feelings and hurtful interactions. Mediation implies that we can find a win-win solution, that no one is ei...

How can we tell if our intimate relationships are based on need or something deeper? Here I share some common indicators of codependency and other behaviors that erode goodwill and harmony in relation...

"Until Death Do Us Part"... How much do these words have to do with the reality of life in the 21st century and with modern-day relationships? Let's compare the reality of women and men today with th...

Ending a relationship is so painful and makes us feel so awful — bad, hopeless, inadequate, desperate, lost, lone­ly, and worthless — that most of us are afraid we won't live through it. We feel bad a...

When I left yet another 'good job' to go and live on the island, confusion reigned. 'Why would she do that? Where is she going to this time?' And through all of this I was just thinking with excitemen...

Most of us find it difficult to change things. If you look at ordinary life and ordinary people, you will discover that they also find it very difficult to change things. Some people haven’t changed s...

We all have intense desires that we experience as needs. I know that I have very real needs that go beyond basic survival. And I know that getting these needs met has a higher priority than getting my...

I recently painted a deck on my house. I enjoy painting, a meditation in being present that doesn’t require much thought but lots of attention. Your hands may get dirty but your mind will stay clean....

Complain­ing draws attention away from all the good things that unfold. It's as if complaint puts a mask over our sight: too busy identifying what is wrong, all the things that are right march on by....

Choosing to be peaceful over needing to be right is a big challenge. But it's one you must tackle if you want your life and your relationships to change. You have to give up the need to be "right." Gi...

A teenager facing a parent's illness may go off in all kinds of different directions, and that's okay — that's normal. A parent's grave illness brings demands that most teens don't even begin to know...

You need to be 100% genuine with yourself. If being completely connected and honest with the way you feel about everything sounds stressful to you, then I’m sorry. Sweeping things under the rug is not...

In her wonderful book, The Wealthy Spirit , Chellie Campbell describes how, when she was a girl, her mother taught her to play “The Glad Game.” “The Glad Game” is another name for a Gratitude List and...

There do appear to be two astrological configurations which argue that December 21st, 2012 will be a nexus point or at least the beginning of a significant transition for humanity. The chart indicates...

Since we’re all energetically intertwined, loving yourself and disarming your self-judgments benefits everyone else, too. There’s a Buddhist principle that says we all would love one another fully and...

Daily dedication and a willingness to heal our past will automatically move us forward on the spiral path of transformation. When we let go of old, outworn patterns that no longer serve us, we can ene...

The Family of One is gaining momentum every day even though we may not hear anything about it in the mainstream media. The Family of One. Think about it. And when you do, doesn't it resonate?

For years, I looked at myself through the prism of trying to “fix” myself. It was subtle, out of sight, like a current underneath the smooth surface of a river, but it was altering the flow of my life...

As I look forward, I (like the Maya and the Hopi long before me) feel change in the air. We all want to know what will happen in 2012, and the truth is that what will happen is already happening. The...

Gratitude or appreciation is an intentional focus on the positive, on what you already perceive as good. When you appreciate someone, you are focusing on her source-like qualities. Anything else that...

The idea that we create our own reality — that is, the concept of the mirror universe — often seems to ring true, but it also raises some troubling questions. Sometimes it’s easy to see this principle...

Rather than comparing ourselves to others or competing against others, author Keith Johnson suggests " Focus on becoming your personal best. Compete with yourself by becoming your best; then compare a...

Beliefs, dogma, theologies — all the costumes of religion — vary dramatically through time and place. But the call to know love as the ground of our being, and to honor our gift of life through the wa...

by Eldon Taylor. Uncovering our biases is an important step in discovering ourselves. Evaluating the words we choose, what they mean, what they imply, and how we use them is an exercise in self-awaren...

by Deborah King. Often, our most important beliefs are unconscious. Over 90 percent of those that we currently hold we took on as kids from our parents or caregivers, school, and culture. These views...

by Celeste B. Longacre. Fairy tales are wonderful stories for young children. They give us a sense of place and a great deal of hopefulness for the future. Of course, someday my Prince (or Princess) w...

by Alan Cohen. My eight-year-old neighbor Mark keeps me on my toes. Mark asks lots of questions, which I am sometimes tempted to dismiss as childish. But when I think about them, I usually discover a...

Making a loaf of Sabbath bread on Friday morning was my grandmother's favorite teaching tool. As she kneaded the dough, she said, "This is what the world does to you sometimes. It stretches you, and p...

Respect yourself, respect your children as other spiritual beings, and expect respect from them in turn. While watching other children speak to their parents disrespectfully, my children said to me, "...

Children diagnosed with severe behavioral problems are blamed for their bad conduct. Yet parents have taught their children to act inappropriately. Not knowing the appropriate way to get praised, a ch...

Because privacy is important to all of us, we operate by the following principles: InnerSelf Publications will explicitly ask when they need information that personally identifies you or allows InnerS...

InnerSelf Authors

a young woman with two horses

What Horses Can Teach Us About Life

Suzanne E. Court
This article explores how horses act as spiritual teachers, helping us connect with our authentic selves, recognize emotional cues, and…
young girl squatting down to the earth and holding a plant

InnerSelf Magazine: October 28, 2024

InnerSelf Staff
Some days it's cloudy and it rains, and other days the sun shines. And so it is with our life. We can dwell on the "bad weather" we are…