If we look closely enough, we can see the entire universe in a bumblebee.

I attended megachurch and loved it. This is an AI-generated image of a pretend one.

If you don’t know, now you know that’s the cover of The Notorious B.I.G.’s classic first single, Juicy.

We’re the same, you and I. We’re all made of the same stuff.

We are love and light.

Lower-minded problem-solving can be clever, but it’s never intelligent because it always produces outcomes that elevate the ego over the greater good. When the lower mind drives how we engage with the world, our behavior resembles that of apes and other beasts.

My dad is a master storyteller in the grand African American tradition. Like me, he’s descended from folk who birthed a spoken-word culture from the most adverse conditions imaginable. Today, the culture is arguably the most artistically vibrant the world has ever known.

There’s always something to be grateful for. We can practice gratitude by focusing on the Now, and visualizing something we’re grateful for. Tune in to the warm, tingling feeling in the heart space and solar plexus. Now, visualize something wonderful you’ve only dared to imagine in a dream, and tune in to the electric feeling in your future self’s heart when your dream comes true.

I have a friend I was on the outs with over a thing.

Aldi’s is not my favorite chain supermarket. I’m glad it sells reasonably priced stuff, but several suboptimal features coalesce into a shopping experience I don’t love.

I don’t know anything. As Socrates defers, “All I know is that I know nothing.”

Sometimes, I fool myself into thinking that I know things. Fortunately, there are plenty of wise ones in my life who speak their truth in love to me and are down to pipe up to help me remember what I don’t know.

I’ve been a huge pro sports fan since I was a lower case j, and my hometown teams captured my attention and held it. 

“If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything—as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form, all of it.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

We should resist the impulse to suppress heavy negativity. Instead, continue noticing heavy negativity—without judging it—and intensely focus on how it makes the body feel, especially in the lower abdomen. Calling the type of negativity we’re experiencing by its name, such as anger, despair, or jealousy, deepens our awareness of it. This process can be painful. Smiling, resting the tongue on the roof of the mouth, and gentle sacral breathing help us ride the waves of emotion. The more we notice negativity without judgment, the more space we create around it, gradually melting it into Presence. 

I loved fairy tales as a little kid and still do as a big one. My favorites are the ones where the hero gets wishes, and they all go horribly wrong. Like King Midas getting the golden touch, and instead of becoming the richest man in the land as he desired, he becomes the poorest when he turns his family and all his homeys into gold.

When we think someone’s behaving like a jerk, no matter how jerky, we should treat them like we would a child who did the wrong thing and didn’t know any better: with love and justice.    

The iconic Saguaro cactus is my favorite plant. Tall, tapered, mighty, majestic, fierce, flowering, phallic, and feminine. It’s got everything you could ever want in a plant (and more!) rolled into one succulent specimen. I hug them sometimes, even though I know I shouldn’t.

I mostly keep it positive, which isn’t hard to do. After all, I’ve been blessed with loads of good fortune, which I appreciate because I’ve also experienced loads of pain.

When someone does a thing we think is wrong, we should remember that we have it in us to do the exact same thing. If we were them, we’d do precisely what they did because that’s what they did. We’re no better than anyone else. 

The higher mind is the gateway to God’s infinite intelligence. When the higher mind guides decision-making, we always do the right thing. 

We create our suffering. When we choose to stay negative, we either (a) think it will help us get what we want; or (b) we’re getting off on playing the victim. Staying negative has no useful purpose and is therefore unintelligent.