I’ve been attending a series of lectures at the Hammer Museum in Westwood California around Carl Jung’s Red Book. The lectures are actually dialogues between an interesting person (e.g. actor, writer, artist, scholar, religious leader, etc) and a Jungian analyst or scholar around The Red Book and the process of inward investigation of mind (what the Red Book represents). All the events have been over-subscribed, standing room only, and a huge success. In the Q and A period following each Dialogue, a common question emerges “Why Now?”

The other night I attended one of the Red Book Dialogues at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California. The Dialogues are a series of discussions between a celebrity (that night was Helen Hunt) and a psychoanalyst or Jungian scholar (that night was James Hillman) around The Red Book, Carl Jung’s personal journey into the mind. The Red Book is on display at the Hammer Museum through May.

No doubt we all time travel. Our minds constantly wander to the future or cruise to the past. I started studying mindfulness meditation when I discovered how often I wasn’t really ‘present’ in my day to day activities.

I ventured down a road of discovery when only one trail was available. Genetics research at the turn of the 20th century was like the early days of the gold rush, a maddening crowd with simple picks chopping away at the genome. But little did we know the magnitude of her complexity, honed by millions of years of creation. One hundred thousand genes became 30,000. The rule ‘one gene, one protein’ became obsolete. The stability of gene expression is now but a figment of imagination. Epigenomics* moves in – like a new kid on the block – all eyes turn toward her.

The birthday cake, potato chips, and cookie bag were on the grocery conveyor belt with a half-gallon of milk to look normal. Did the cashier suspect that the food was just for me or was my facade of a birthday party a good enough cover? The birthday napkins probably did the trick.

My mother was a lovely woman
I wish I knew her better.

I never like the word ’spirituality’ because it seemed New Age or tied to concepts of God in organized religion. However, having returned from my first trip to India, I find it best describes the culture I experienced there.

I began writing for Huffpo several years ago. It was a turning point for my own self-expression as I had previously written only empirically-based scientific papers. Since then, I’ve found writing (Huffpost, books, journaling, etc.) to be a powerful method of personal reflection, growth, and creativity. As I pondered why, this is what I discovered:

In the aftermath of the holidays and a refrigerator full to the brim with leftovers, I remember a disturbing fact: 1 billion people in the world are hungry while we in America discard – throw away – 40 percent of our food a day (I heard that the estimate is about 1200 calories per person per day). Do the math. If we – 325 million strong – stopped wasting food – we could feed perhaps 130 million people with what we already discard!