LivingToBe – When Faith Stops Working

Every so often you will have those thoughts on how “time flies” and feel a little melancholy sadness about the things you had on your to-do list and have had to postpone. Our culture is obsessed with time as we rush from one appointment to another or try to squash as much activity as possible into leisure hours. During this week I did a workshop with participants from diverse establishments rangin...

One of the burning issues of our time is the big gender divide as we transition from centuries of male dominance toward more gender equality. There is a real crisis of mentally unstable boys growing up to be unhealthy men while girls seem to crush it at every level from education to job performance. Just a brief look at some of the statistics reveals some staggering figures. More than nine times a...

Walking the Camino in northwestern Spain and Portugal this year was in many respects very different from previous walks on this ancient pilgrimage path that has been massively impacted by the repercussions of the pandemic. First and foremost the Camino has lost nothing of its magic that has become for hundreds of thousands of modern-day pilgrims, a path of introspection, healing, and transformatio...

All the people you have met throughout your life and the experiences you have had up to this moment in time have made you into the person you are toda y. Yet, there still might be that inner voice whispering that there is more to life than you have been taught or have learned.  Caroline Myss is quoted as saying that “as a vital part of a larger, universal spirit, we each have been put here on...

More than ever during these times we need to practice self-care and self-love. By becoming aware of the divine spark within we become aware of the beauty that is embedded within all things such as in the vibrant images that the poet John Keats saw in the simple contemplation of an ancient Greek urn. It is what inspired the great Dutch painters in the contemplation of everyday objects that led to t...

Groundbreaking research is revealing that a simple thing like how you breathe can be hugely transformational. Healthy breathing techniques embedded in ancient religious practice improve body posture, sleep, general wellbeing, and spiritual growth. In our stressed-out modern lives, we as a species have lost the ability to breathe as nature has designed. When the body is flooded with stress hormones...

We know so little about ourselves and how susceptible the mind is to external manipulation and deception. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung was passionately concerned with the survival of the human race warning with growing concern in the 1920s of the destructive collective forces in neighboring Germany. Prophetically he observed that fascism flourished in an environment where it was becoming ha...

During the past month, it appeared as if all social order was collapsing in my home country, South Africa. I received reels of video footage from friends and family in South Africa revealing horrifying images of carnage and destruction. Thousands of looters were burning and destroying shopping malls and vital infrastructure with a government obviously too weak or incompetent to restore order. But...

A well-known fable tells us that if a frog is put into boiling water it will immediately jump out. But if the water is only gradually heated the frog will not perceive the danger and be boiled to death. The story is a warning of how a creeping normality of crisis situations deludes us into a feeling of false complacency. We fail to act until it is too late. Our daily habits, thoughts, beliefs, and...

Organized religion arguably provides structure, meaning, and community to many people battling with the struggles of life yet during these challenging times we are seeing a proliferation of “false prophets” capturing the minds of individuals with messages of fear and guilt. During my lifetime several good friends got caught in the web of religious sects, surrendering their lives including all thei...

Groundbreaking research on the connective power of human consciousness appears to pave the way on what might one day have a major impact on how we train our minds, beliefs and thoughts. We have a real opportunity to become agents of positive change. Experiments conducted by Roger D. Nelson from Princeton University reveal that our consciousness is able to reach across time and space to commune wit...

My father’s twilight years in a retirement village in South Africa were spent in quiet solitude reading and reminiscing on the lessons of a long life lived. He died last year three months prior to his 90thbirthday. Especially during my teenage years, we had a difficult relationship. I perceived him as weak with our mother making all the decisions pertaining to important family and other matters. I...

There is hardly a topic loaded with such emotion as money, seemingly at the root of all trouble including family fallouts, divorces, and the end of longtime friendships. Dave Ramsey once said that “you must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.” There are numerous life lessons to learn over the issue of money. Self-esteem or the lack of it is closely intertwined...

Humility seems to have lost the battle against pride. Our world of social media has provided the perfect stage for narcissism and self-aggrandizement with the world of illusion taking precedence over what is real and fake. On one of my Camino walks in northwestern Spain I met a pilgrim who told me: “If you don’t walk the Path with humility it will force you into humility.” Walking the Camino is in...

Are you having problems finding your life calling? Well, you are not alone with many people stressing out on finding that one silver arrow pointing to meaning and purpose in life. As a young person, you are in a very different place than later in life. But you are confronted with the major decision on whether to take out a massive student loan to train for a particular career path. Finally, you fo...

We all need a purpose closely aligned with our personal philosophy and value system but can easily lose track of that purpose if we feel overwhelmed by life’s challenges and go into automatic mode. When we let powerful emotions such as anxiety and fear take over we tend to seek gratification in external gods that keep us feeling empty and small. We seek set patterns of predictability, giving us th...

Architecture is an expression of human consciousness. During the early Middle Ages, the external world was aligned with the inner world of consciousness. The concept of a creator of all things was never questioned. Religion was embedded into the concept of church and society that controlled all aspects of life. The word religion has its origins in the Latin “religio”. St. Augustine followed the in...

Paul Will, a retired deep-sea diver, walked the Camino pilgrimage route in northwestern Spain twice in a row with his wife Sally. He describes how he reconnected with what he had lost in his youth.  Paul has a message for those people thinking of walking the Camino one day: "Take the time to do this. It's one of the best things my wife Sally and I have ever done."  He relates the process of how th...

I remember a family friend from my childhood who had spent most of his life working and saving every penny for “a rainy day”. Only months prior to his planned retirement he died in his sleep with the heirs showing little appreciation for what had been saved with such sacrifice. Almost on a daily basis people are telling me about all the things they “will do one day” with the bucket list staying in...

Our distant ancestors once roamed the plains of Africa spending most of their days looking for food in hunting antelope or scouring the earth for berries, roots, and leaves. Food rich in nutrients helped develop our brains to become very innovative so that we could migrate and survive in the harshest of conditions. The way food is produced today is not only destroying the planet's ecosystems but h...

In our age of information overload, a subtle message has been crafted that we are immortal beings. At the root of most fear is the fear of death. We are awakened to this truth when a loved one dies or when confronted with a terminal illness. Most fear is an illusion of the mind. It distorts, perverts, and falsifies the reality of the moment. Fear often breeds anger and anger turns to hate. It is t...

Johnnie Walker has been on an amazing journey, making the transition from a chief executive to a pilgrim. He is today a leading expert on the ancient pilgrimage routes of northwestern Spain, has written several guide books and runs a popular Camino forum on social media. I asked John about his first journey as a pilgrim in 2007 and some of his most memorable experiences with fellow pilgrims. He al...

Rituals and ceremonies like the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh strike a particular chord with millions of people but there is much more to why we are so obsessed with royalty in a modern era where institutions are in crisis and there is a general loss of purpose and meaning. There is a particularly heartfelt scene in the new movie “ Victoria & Abdul” where Queen Victoria laments the death of...

Over the past decade, I have conducted countless workshops in the corporate environment on topics such as "stress resilience" burnout prevention. My own impressions concur with a global Gallup poll that roughly two-third of employees hate their jobs. Clinical burnout, depression, and suicide are only some of the effects of the broken workplace. Many people simply find no meaning or purpose in what...

There have been times in my life where I have wrestled with the question of why an all-powerful God and creator can allow evil, injustice, and cruelty to prevail. How can a God of love and compassion want at the same time suffering? Some beautiful Renaissance paintings depict Jesus bleeding and hanging from the cross with the Pharisees mocking him with the words: “He saved others; himself he canno...