Anthony Tshering
A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing

I read a wonderful piece in Tricycle magazine today about what a spiritual life looks like. The timing for me to read it was perfect. It’s something I’ve been trying to make sense of recently.

We are very much a doing world. Even the language of therapy is often about doing. Everyone seems to come in and say to me, “I need to work on myself,” or “I need to work on my relationships.” The sentiment is understandable. We are a self-improvement culture. Our lives are viewed linearly, our lives a constant striving for self-improvement with a beginning, middle, and end. There is much usefulness in seeing the world this way. It is goal-orientated and results-focused first and foremost. It has helped create the world around us, including the computer I type on now or the smartphone I use to answer my emails and check social media. A lot of us internalize this productive voice and hear it in the daily chatter of our thinking self and assume this is who we are.

A Guide To Spirituality: Being versus Doing
Meaning, Spirituality
Anthony Tshering
Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and ...

“Do you pray?” I once asked a patient.

“No, I’ve never been able to for some reason” she paused. “Do you?”

“No,” I said. “Because I don’t know if anyone is listening.”

It has always struck me as inconceivable that someone is listening to prayer. How can people be sure of some divine force in their lives? Even such Christian luminaries such as Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa experienced their doubts about God. I am no different. God does not speak to me in tongues or voices. All I hear are silent ellipses where I sense holiness in the mundane, the awe-inspiring in the ordinary. God has always seemed like an inelegant, hollow solution to the problem of meaning and death.

Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality
Anthony Tshering
Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy: The ...

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy- Louis C.K.

“To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.” 
― Ernest Becker

A few years ago, a patient of mine wondered out loud why he was unhappy. After all he was a successful lawyer, involved in a loving relationship with a partner, lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Brooklyn and had a group of close friends whom he saw socially. So what was wrong? "Something just doesn't feel right. I have the gnawing feeling that something should be different," he said. 

Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy: The First Step Toward Emotional Change

Meaning

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Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality

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Reflections on God, Death, Meaning and Spirituality

“Do you pray?” I once asked a patient.

“No, I’ve never been able to for some reason” she paused. “Do you?”

“No,” I said. “Because I don’t know if anyone is listening.”

It has always struck me as inconceivable that someone is listening to prayer. How can people be sure of some divine force in their lives? Even such Christian luminaries such as Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa experienced their doubts about God. I am no different. God does not speak to me in tongues or voices. All I hear are silent ellipses where I sense holiness in the mundane, the awe-inspiring in the ordinary. God has always seemed like an inelegant, hollow solution to the problem of meaning and death.

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Coming To Terms With Being An Introvert: A Journey From Shame To Acceptance

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Coming To Terms With Being An Introvert: A Journey From Shame To Acceptance

I didn’t realize this until recently but my childhood was more painful than I thought. Not because it was particularly traumatic-- it was not. I had two loving, flawed parents, who loved me the best they could and allowed me to search out my path in the world with lots of support and kindness. No, my childhood was painful because I wasn’t my younger brother.

My brother was an extrovert. But not just your run-of-the-mill extrovert. He was a life-of-the-party, makes-everyone-laugh extrovert. My brother was just magnetic from a young age. People were drawn to him and loved him. He always had a lot of friends. Girls seemed to swarm to him in a way they never did for me. He was always the center of attention.

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Existential Dread: The Struggle And Search For Meaning

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Existential Dread: The Struggle And Search For Meaning

A friend of mine is really struggling with anxiety. It's not your typical anxiety. It's a deep existential anxiety. This person no longer sees the point of living. 

"What's the point? I know people who work at restaurants and have been doing that for years. They hate it," they told me recently. " But it's what works for them. Imagine doing that for the next 40 years. And then dying... you die. What is that for? What did it mean? Nothing, right?"

The truth is I largely agree with this as I told my friend. But it is a pessimistic viewpoint. Life might be meaningless in the grand sense. And yes, most of us do not get to control how we spend our time. And there's just an endless list of injustice in the world from climate change to vast inequality to the American prison system. But it is not the only thing.