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 …
So Thankful Practice Is Easy….
This spiritual practice is not easy. Going the most direct way up a steep mountain is not easy. How could it be that easy? We are returning Home to who we truly are. I have come far enough to know that there is nowhere else I want to be. With each painful and then liberating dissolution of attachment, I become …
Settling into Unsettled….
From the standpoint of relative reality, everything is unsettled. Even when good things occur, everything is unsettled. The world definitely is unsettled. And the news media and entertainment industry stake everything on keeping everyone unsettled. When there is a crisis, it rises to our attention, then settles down. The truth is, the crisis has not settled; we have grown bored …
Removing a Shell….
The six-year-old girl looked intently at her image in the mirror. She saw an old Chinese man with high cheek bones, grey hair knotted on the top of his head, sharply slanted eyes, and a long thin beard. His expression was serious, his eyes intense. “I’m in the wrong body,” she thought. “How did I get here?” This old Chinese …
Fellow travelers….
The greatest warriors know that fighting is the last resort. Resistance is a form of fighting; it may look benign but can be insidious. When we are committed to our individuality, we will quietly resist anyone or anything that threatens our sense of self. This form of fighting is a disease that can destroy a person’s spiritual journey. “I can’t …
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 …
Walking Bliss….
Lokānanda samādhi sukkam. The Bliss of the world is the Bliss of samādhi. Sahajsamādhi: walking Bliss. This is why I went to Swami Muktananda. Baba had imbibed and lived this understanding, and I wanted to learn and imbibe it from him. Prior to meeting Baba, I had known very powerful energy experiences. I had seen lights and colors, heard sounds, …
Crumbs….
For many years I have used the story of Hansel and Gretel with the breadcrumbs as an example of how we go Home. For us, the breadcrumbs are still there. We can follow them back to who we really are. The last few weeks my work has been focusing on the self-hate we all have. We have seen that our …
Victimhood: the Way of the World….
This is going to be the final blog in this series. I want to address something that is going to be uncomfortable for many readers: attachment to victimhood. This subject can be raw, and it can trip a wire that may bother people who have not faced that attachment in themselves. It is crucial to recognize that I am using …
Drawing Out the Poison….
Hate is so mundane. Last week, I wrote that in order to hate we have to maintain the small self, and in order to maintain the small self we have to hate. Everyone has hate; everyone uses it and everyone is motivated by it. This hate is the first and most important distortion of Love. Everything we do comes from …