Dear Meli, I have been a spiritual seeker for over forty years. I meditate daily and I try to be a good person in the world. My job for many years was in the non-profit arena, working with kids. Near the end of my time of working directly with kids (I eventually transferred to a supervisory […]

View the post > How Can I Let Go of My Past Mistake?

Dear Meli, I have been part of a meditation group for a long time. One of the members is an old friend. For a while now, my friend has been wanting more and more of my time. I love my friend, but he tends to be really negative and I feel drained after hanging with […]

View the post > Can I Break Up With My Friend?

Dear Meli, I have been a spiritual seeker for over 4 decades. When I first discovered spirituality, I was very much striving for enlightenment. I read books about other people who had “woken up” spiritually, and I wanted the same thing. Then, over time, I released that goal. I heard other spiritual seekers and teachers […]

View the post > Is Enlightenment an Achievable Goal?

When you think about name calling, you probably think about taunts, jeers, and other generally-not-nice verbal utterances. But lately, I’ve been using name calling in another way. An uplifting way. It goes like this. I’m in the checkout line at the grocery store. The clerk at the register is someone I’ve never met before. But […]

View the post > The Upside of Name Calling

Dear Meli, About a year ago, I was asked to be a part of a new business in my town. At first, things were amazing. My two partners and I were really jazzed about setting up something innovative and new. Their business philosophy seemed to align with everything I stand for and believe in, spiritually and […]

View the post > Does Law of Attraction Mean You Don’t Need to Do Anything But Visualize?

You probably think you already know the crucial difference between guilt and shame. And you do know one difference. A major difference. Guilt says, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “I am a mistake.” Shame also says, “I am bad and wrong and don’t deserve to live.” Yeah. Shame really knows how to party. Indeed, […]

View the post > The Crucial Difference Between Guilt and Shame

Back when I was in psychology grad school, we were taught that when a couple is having the same fight again and again – over how to load the dishwasher properly, for example – the fight was merely a decoy. A cover for something deeper. As a therapist, it was our job to uncover the […]

View the post > How to Solve a Perpetual Couple’s Fight

No, I’m not going to talk about lying to myself about my sexuality. Or my gender expression. I’ve covered those before. This lie has to do with something much Bigger. Though, at the time, I thought I was the biggest thing around. My family rarely went to church, so it was easy to sidestep the […]

View the post > My Teenage Lie and the Truth I Denied

Dear Meli, I was in a spiritual community for about 10 years. For a lot of this time, I lived on site with our spiritual leader. I was married when I was in the community, and my husband and I lived there together. And now the tricky part. Our spiritual leader was a proponent of […]

View the post > How Do I Move On From Guru Abuse?

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. But sometimes? Sometimes necessity is a mother. If you know what I mean. And I think you do. Let’s go back to 2012, shall we? 2012 was the last year of the Mayan calendar. A lot of folks thought the world was going to end in […]

View the post > Necessity Is a Mother