Raymond Underberg

Okay, I consciously gave this writing a provocative title. I am not saying that there are no nice people. And don’t get hung up on the gender specific noun guy. What I am really suggesting is that nice is an illusion, like everything else. Nice is a relationship or result or process; it is not […]

To actually find the moon we need to stop looking at the finger, we need to jump off into the dark. We need courage and we need to walk it, not someone else. We have to do it, it cannot be done for us, nor can we simply follow a how-to manual. We need to

Are there opposites or is it an illusion? Much like Einstein’s famous thought experiment about being in an accelerating elevator vs being at rest in a gravitational field. Maybe there is only one thing, one place, and it vibrates or momentarily quantum splits a roughly infinite number of times to appear as reality. Maybe it

How did you make it past the title? Was it curiosity? Are you a masochist? Do you have no self-esteem? Do you actually agree with the claim? Really?   The thesis here is simply a reworking of the idea of that which bothers us in others is really what bothers us about ourselves. Do you

There may be many apparent reasons to hurry. But there are many more powerful reasons to not hurry. And if you find yourself rushing through something or speeding to get somewhere in your car (like I can do all too easily), then you are the person this message is really intended for (mea culpa).  

This is Thanksgiving month. But, why wait a few weeks to celebrate? Everyday is Thanksgiving, or could be at least. I am feeling a little down today for some reason and I haven’t been sleeping well. I am sure those things are related. But I am determined to lift my spirits (and maybe sleep better

The beauty in a single grain of rice can sustain us. I mean this both literally and figuratively as well as serving as a challenge and a defiant brave coming out-of-the-closet proclamation.   The last few days I’ve been in and out of a state of what I will refer to as enlightenment or joy

The other day after finishing my morning meditation, I opened my eyes and experienced my typical few minutes of wonderful disorientation as I moved back into this world from the world of moving towards presence. Those couple minutes are a story for another day. As I transitioned, I could hear Bowie singing “God knows I’m

When I think of all the things in life that I really enjoy, the activities or spaces or conditions that provide deepest joy, they have a surprising thread running through them all. They are those things or times when I am lost in just one thing. What is also fascinating to me is that the

There is reality and then our approximation of it. Maybe there are an infinite number of realities actually, but that is a different talk. The key here is approximation. We make many many assumptions, approximations, short cuts to move through this world. One of the most basic, one that is at the bottom of that