Nina Amir's Thoughts on Human Potential, Personal Growth and Practical Spirituality
When recently have you experienced pure joy? I had to ask myself this very question as I watched a recent episode of Oprah Winfrey’s new Lifeclass. Leave it to Oprah to get me thinking. In this Lifeclass she showed several episodes of the Oprah Show when people experienced “joy rising,” including one I wrote about [...]
I woke today at 5 a.m. in California worrying. “I should get up and check the news,” I thought. “I should be sure everything is okay in New York.” Both my children are in New York. But I don’t like to focus on the negative.I try not to worry (although I’m a worrier and was [...]
I’m heading home for Thanksgiving…to my mother’s home. We have a family reunion each year during this holiday. It’s not always the most joyous time nor is it always a time when I feel tremendously thankful for my family. I have a family that can be difficult to get along with–and that’s putting it mildly. [...]
Everyone has a mother…or had a mother. We are all born into this world from a mother, but some of us may be orphans, adults whose mother’s have died, or estranged from our mother. Even those of us in these situations can celebrate Mother’s Day. We need only think outside the box a bit. One [...]
Many spiritual traditions contain a practice of blessing food prior to eating it. Christians, for example, say grace before a meal. This prayer more often than not thanks God for the food they are about to eat. Jews say a blessing over a particular type of food–one for bread, one for wine, one for cookies [...]
I think of myself as a pretty grateful person. Most of the people I know consider me someone fairly focused upon gratitude. So, imagine my dismay when a friend called me onto the carpet for being…well…ungrateful. Ack! I was horrified. How could that be, I wondered? It seemed that I hadn’t said I was grateful [...]
I thought we should have a post Thanksgiving Day gratitude post to continue the energy of thanksgiving a bit longer. So, here are three little “gifts” to help you keep feeling grateful a bit longer. I recently read something interesting. In Hebrew, the word for “turkey” is “hodu” and is etymologically related to the word [...]
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. While most of North America finds reason to feel grateful on this day, everyone the whole world over can work on having an attitude of gratitude on this day…as well as every day. So much of having an attitude of gratitude involves simply training ourselves to feel gratitude and to see [...]
Today I’m feeling grumpy and depressed. I’m angry, too. These are not emotions I usually like to dwell in, and I don’t recommend that others do so either. They don’t lend themselves to helping us consciously create what we want in our lives. In fact deliberate creation becomes difficult when we get stuck in negative [...]
In my last post I talked about the Sukkot rituals of both building a sukkah and shaking the lulav, and then I promised I’d explain how and why anyone-Jew and non-Jew alike-might want to consider taking on these Sukkot rituals. Today, I’d like to make good on that promise. You don’t have to be Jewish [...]
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