Articles by José Stevens

In February I traveled to Peru to help support a woman’s leadership conference held in Lima. Each year this conference is held in a different country of South or Central America.

Two of my favorite teachers and mentors are Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus of Nazareth, masters whose insight and clarity are extraordinarily valuable and even critical for self-awakening.

My husband Aaron and I were driving up to Denver on our way to a family wedding. We were chatting about this and that and listening to music, and I was behind the wheel. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw a large bird, obvious road kill, on the shoulder.

The election is over and not only the nation, but the world has spoken. Yes the world! For this election went way beyond the people of the United States. People everywhere voted, not necessarily with official ballots, but with their hearts and minds.

If you read my recent article (click here to read) you became familiar with the various candidates for president and vice president and how they are symbols for the public’s projections, both positive and negative. Let’s take these ideas a step further here.

Have you ever been speaking to someone and listened incredulously as they told you something that revealed how seriously they were deluding themselves? Perhaps it is a parent whose child is in a lot of trouble abusing drugs or has severe learning disabilities and you hear them talking glowingly about how their child is going to go to Harvard.

The cool reddish brown water swirled all around me as I looked up at a peerless blue sky, white billowy storm clouds rising in the heat of the Amazon basin all around.

Stubbornness is one of the two main dragons or obstacles for 2008 (along with self-destructiveness) and therefore it is good to understand how it operates in our current times. Stubbornness is both personal and global and influences almost everything, being a favorite strategy of the false personality to maintain control.

Must we get old and decrepit? Is getting old and grey honorable or is it just a drag? Is youth all its cracked up to be? Where are we headed?

Just about everything in our experience has positive poles and negative poles, something that determines whether those experiences are enjoyable, satisfying, and joyful or painful and disconnecting. Positive and negative poles impact roles, goals, attitudes, modes, centers, levels of perception, needs, and values.