When an animal, for instance, experiences physical discomfort, there is no suffering, no pain — because there is no story that something should be different than it is. There is simply the experience of the physical discomfort. Humans, on the other hand, are another matter…

Fear and shadows, restless gallows,

your head is on the block.

Freedom within will only open

to that One who knocks….

I realized quickly that life had placed a unique opportunity before me. So I sat with my new raccoon friend, watching as life’s grip slowly loosened him from her tentacled clutches…

Whoever erected this gate evidently wanted nobody to walk through it, and she knew right then at her first sighting of it that she had to, that she must, find a way in — to discover what was surely a great secret waiting on the other side…

A hollow bone

An empty soul

Between the stories lie….