In case you were taken by the idea of the Law of Attraction, and thought you could keep yourself from suffering or dying of cancer by keeping your thoughts pure----here's what happened to the writer who popularized this concept: http://www.squidoo.com/death-of-abraham-hicks-esther-and-jerry-hicks-creation.

I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
It is remarkably contagious -
So kiss me.
-Hafiz, mystic sufi poet from the 1300's

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

Just finished reading The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong. Though I enjoyed the entire book, the last chapter was my favorite. It is in this chapter that she summarizes her newfound understanding of religion and culture, and explains how her study of theology in preparation to write A History of God was in part a spiritual practice, which then transformed her. Prior to that chapter she weaves her life story into modern world history, leaving me feeling more educated, if still alarmed, about what is happening.
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