Exoteric and esoteric are two terms I rarely if ever use. They basically split everything into external and internal. While in the UK recently, I met up with a dear friend from the ashram. He said that Baba taught both exoteric and esoteric practice, and that most people went to the ashram for exoteric practice, thinking and believing it was …
What We Do Here….
Spiritual practice is not nice, sweet, or soft. Spiritual practice is not easy. Spiritual practice will turn your world upside down for the better. Spiritual practice requires rigor, vigilance and non-attachment. Spiritual practice requires humor. Spiritual practice demands surrender and redirection to what is Real. This steep path requires courage. There are three levels of spiritual practice. Each level is …
Being a Free Actor….
When people come to my classes or see me privately, we usually use situations or people in their lives to show how to apply the practice in the world. Though this is truly an internal practice, it has to be used and applied to inform all of our life. So after a class people leave the laboratory and hopefully implement …
The Pursuit of Friction….
Friction is the force that resists an object’s movement across a surface. In practical terms, it slows down an object’s movement. Though it sounds like something we don’t want, without friction we don’t have traction; without friction we cannot move forward. And if we avoid friction in one place, we will unwittingly be moving into it somewhere else. If we …
Accept, Let Go and Redirect….
We have to accept what we bring to the table in our lives. We have to accept that we love the vibrations we perpetuate. We have to accept that we misdirect our attention. We have to accept that we remain addicted to the vibrations that make up our “love machine”, and hold on to them for dear life. Attention is …
Spiritual Practice Ruins Your Life….
Approaching spiritual practice, most people get excited and jump into the process that is sure to bring them to enlightenment. If they have stumbled into actual practice, however, it will not take long before they realize their life is ruined. If their life is not ruined, then they have not begun to practice. My whole life was turned upside down …
The Love Machine Part Two….
How we resolve the love machine: The love machine only keeps running because we fuel and maintain it. We even make sure to fix it when it breaks down. Any time the machine breaks down, we are given an opening, a wonderful opportunity—but we don’t take advantage of it; we don’t recognize the experience of actual love, and we reject …
The Love Machine Part One….
It’s all about recreating our childhood vibration, which we call love. We call it love (or safety, comfort, normalcy, etc.) because it is how the small self gets attention, and therefore power. For the small self, power is the surrogate for love. Intellectually we hate the vibration and look for “solutions”, but emotionally we crave it and keep looking to …
Facing the Deeps….
Why does the New Age thrive in the United States? The willingness to put in hard work seems to be leaving American culture. In recent years we have come to value pleasure and positivity, accomplished with little to no effort. We “deserve”. Equality now means that everyone has the same level of input no matter what. Expertise has been relegated …
Talking, Doing, Being….
Idealists are idealized, and there is little people will say against them. We tend not to argue with them; most of the time they are right. Other names for idealists are visionaries, idea people, intellectuals, and talkers. Many of these people believe talking and sharing ideas are at a higher level than doing, and think their job is done when …