FELIPE A. JAIN, MD

The locust tree after a long winter

Makes new leaves and flourishes them in the air on outstretched arms

It does so though it has no control over how the wind

Blows its branches and flutters its leaves

Whether the sun shines on them

Whether clouds fill the sky

Or if the rain comes

Perform your chosen actions, Jain!

Do not worry about the changing winds

Stretch your arms into the breeze

I bow to the sunrise,

to the wonderful play of light,

to the wispy and languorous clouds. 

To the pastel pink scraped across the sky. 

I bow to the trees, whose branches black in the dawn

Fan and extend thousands of fingers into the sky. 

I breathe. 

This body breathes, rather. 

I laugh.

The ego is...

an incredible and intricate survival system.

Nothing more complex has ever emerged in the past 4 billion years of life on this planet. It is what gives you a sense of personhood, enables you to respond to threats, set goals and accomplish them. Yet with that ego can also come a sense of importance and sensitivity to not reaching those very goals or living the

life you dream.

When I found bliss -- an expansive and joyful awareness --...

I am extremely excited to share that my new research study was published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, a top 5 international psychology journal. It studies a population that has high levels of chronic stress: people who care for family members with dementia. Dementia is a chronic and progressive illness with no cure that robs the person of memory and normal behavior. Family caregivers - whom we also refer to as care partners - provide support and aid for their relative that...

How do you counter “existential angst”?  A direct way is to focus on your connection to everything.  You can’t see this connection with your eyes.  You must infer it based on scientific reasoning and remember it repeatedly. 

If you only focus on your own thoughts and feelings inside your body/head, you cannot reach beyond them.  You will be trapped inside a cycle of self-reinforcing drama. 

Einstein said that our sense of separateness from other things is due to an “optical delusion of our consciousness”.  What this means...