Barbara's Blog & Essays from VisionEmrys
Faith in a Feather
I’ve been thinking of Dumbo lately. It began a few days ago, when I was suddenly struck by an old childhood image of the baby elephant with big ears. Once I had that picture in my head I just couldn’t shake it. Images of Dumbo kept haunting me. I saw him sitting pitifully alone within [...]
[Click to Continue →]Emotions, Drama and You
In any discussion about emotions, it’s important to recognize the distinction between human emotion and emotional drama. Let’s face it; the two have been fatally linked throughout most of human history. The body is a factory for emotions. It’s one of the many things the body does to maintain health and equilibrium. Emotion is the [...]
[Click to Continue →]Neighborhood Brats
Think back on the childhood friends who liked to steer you into trouble. Maybe you avoided kids like that, or maybe you were one of them. In everyone’s childhood, there was always at least one kid who recruited others in silly, reckless pursuits. It’s doubtful he would do dangerous things alone, but with friends it’s [...]
[Click to Continue →]Global Soul
In the course of a dinner with two friends not long ago, I was struck by a spiritually motivated conversation about the virtues of ‘giving up.’ Both men seemed to agree that surrender was a good thing from all points of view. They discussed the surrender of precious beliefs, old habits and personal identity as [...]
[Click to Continue →]The Rules of the Game
From the earliest days of our domestication we have learned to follow the rules of the human dream. Obeying the command of adolescent rebellion, we occasionally defied those rules and got hurt in the process. Maybe the lesson we learned over time was that it wasn’t worth the trouble and the pain to question authority. [...]
[Click to Continue →]Just Beyond Fear
As much as I would love my students to share their personal revelations as a way of teaching themselves, it happens less and less often. For students of this Toltec teaching, sharing their revelations with a community of like minds may not be considered an exciting thing to do anymore. We are each immersed in [...]
[Click to Continue →]Curiosity
I am curious. I have a feeling we were all born to be curious, but we lose our curiosity when it looks like we’ve accumulated all the knowledge we will ever really need. That usually happens within our first four years of life. I still have a little curiosity left, I guess, but it has [...]
[Click to Continue →]Resolution
Early in January a few years ago, someone asked me if I’d made any New Year’s resolutions. It had been a long time since I’d heard that kind of question, so I suppose I didn’t hear the unspoken invitation to look back on my past and to judge myself. I answered quickly and cheerfully. ‘No, [...]
[Click to Continue →]The Nativity
The Nativity As with all stories that arise from the wellspring of human imagination, the Nativity tells the story of us. We are storytellers, of course, but we are also the Only Story we know how to tell. From fairy tale to sacred scripture, from gossip to timeless mythology, we have always been describing ourselves. [...]
[Click to Continue →]The Hero You Are
The Hero You Are If I asked you to sit down with me and make up a fairy tale, using your imagination to create a colorful and compelling story, you and I would have so much fun. You would have fun in the act of creating; I would have fun just listening and allowing myself [...]
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