When I owned my school of Tai Chi Chuan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had a lot of energy. People would feel it and even I would be overwhelmed by it, yet I had no wisdom. People thought I was something more than I was because they were entranced with the energy and identified me with it. The energy knew things; …
Living Sādhana….
You can’t think your sādhana. And yet that is exactly what so many people do. They think good thoughts and believe that is sādhana. They wear “pure” clothes and eat “pure” food and act “purely”. They “believe” they are doing everything to succeed in sādhana. They are in fact going about it all wrong because they are approaching practice as …
Seamless….
What you see is what you get. When we are clear, what you see is what you get. There is nothing to hide and nothing to reveal. We are. We no longer hide from ourselves or others. Usually we present our best foot when meeting with people socially, professionally or even in the privacy of our families. This means that …
Belonging….
We are in this together. Who is in it? All of us. Who? All. In order for me to be special I have to be separate. In Truth, I have to be together. When we separate, we believe there are places we do not belong. When we unite, We belong everywhere. “I am uncomfortable here because of them.” “I am …
Conscious Non-resistance….
As a teenager in Boston, I participated in civil rights marches. These marches were silent and orderly, with large numbers of people coming together. Later, at Washington University, there had been protests, but these were more about venting anger than reaching resolution. After being present for some of those demonstrations, I realized what was going on and withdrew. Eventually, there …
Dealing with Conflict….
Conflict Harmony Engagement Complacency/ inertia/passivity Whether we live in community or alone, we all face conflict. It comes in countless different shapes, sizes and styles. And since the world is here to help each of us remove ignorance, we each have conflict in forms designed specifically for our benefit. The root of our word “conflict” is the Latin …
From the Many to the One….
A few years ago in a coffee shop at Cambridge, UK, I had a discussion on the nature of Reality with an Anglican priest. He had earned his doctorate from Oxford and appeared open to thinking outside Christianity. However, he believed that the individual always remains separate from God. For him, union with God was not an option; believing in …
Guarding the Heart….
Guarding the door was the beginning. It led me to guarding the Heart. Baba knew what I wanted, so he used my worldly skills. They turned out to be the perfect metaphor for the practice I was looking for. Throughout my life I had always felt directed to the next level. Dance led me in to Tai Chi Chuan, and …
My Neighbor Elvis….
A beautiful autumn day with shifting light, and the wind speaks of the cold and sleep ahead. The leaves are turning, and caught in the waves traversing the garden. Beautiful and sad, a melancholy settles on the ground as everyone and everything scurries in preparation for what is coming. All this is very familiar. What is new is the disappearance …
Recent Questions….
People have all kinds of ideas about what spiritual practice is and isn’t, and even when they get an explanation they interpret what they hear or read in all sorts of ways, most of which are off the mark. In this blog post, I will be answering some questions that have recently arisen. If you read carefully, you might find …