Greetings Reader, Did I ever tell you that I used to be a soda pop salesman? It’s true. Back in 1981, I got a job as a sales rep for a very small company with a tiny office in lower Manhattan. Their flagship product was the first all-natural soda pop to hit the health food market. My job was to sell soda pop to independent grocery stores around the city and health food stores around the country. There were only five people working out of that office. Of those five, I was the only man. I was...

Hi Reader, One of the central ideas in the Yoga Sutras is that the root cause of suffering is ignorance of the true nature of the self. According to the Sutras, our true nature is one of eternally joyful existence. What's keeping us from seeing ourselves that way? The Sutras tell us that there are five obstacles, the first and foremost of which is ignorance. When we’re trapped in a state of ignorance, we can’t see our own true nature. What we can see is our material minds and bodies, which...

Greetings Reader, My body has officially arrived at the threshold of old age. It’s a good thing I’m not my body. Don’t get me wrong: I feel fine, physically and mentally. But facts are facts: the time I have left in this body won't be nearly as long as the time I’ve already spent in it. Well, sort of. The body I’m in now isn’t the same one I was in just a few years ago. To say nothing of the one I was in 50 years ago. None of us actually stays in the same body for very long. Human bodies are...