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 …
The Ease of Spiritual Practice….
Working to redirect to the true center is not easy; sometimes it can be extremely difficult. Somewhere in popular discourse, “ease” became a word that sat next to “spirituality”. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, the question needs to be “easy” for whom? If “spirituality” is a lifestyle driven by concepts and ideals, then “our small …
Redirecting Our Resolutions.…
As we approach the New Year our tendency is to look forward with hopeful, positive thoughts. We smooth out the past and move into the future with a smile and a raised glass. The world will be better, we will do better, we will care and love more. And every year we approach this time with this same ritual. There …
The False Idol of Self-esteem….
Being strong-willed is not being willful, and freedom is not getting to do whatever you want. Our first lessons in these realities come from our first caregivers. These people demonstrate and reflect for us how to live. They both model and teach. Good leadership is like good parenting. Both embody and encourage behavior that is healthy for everyone involved. This …
The Buck Stops Here….
There is a hidden joke in the title of this blog. I approach the protection of my garden in very much the way Baba taught me to handle security in the Ganeshpuri Ashram. In Ganeshpuri there were walls with broken glass on the top. Intruders came in through the drainpipes or the front gates. After we put screens over the …
Accepting Our Own Evil….
From the standpoint of worldly existence, my vocation looks rather difficult to understand and even boring. My job is to guide people Home. My vocation is to be Home. Home is the Heart, where we meet God. In order to go there, we have to leave all our attachments behind. Among other things, we have to go through all our …
The Meaning of Stewardship….
In church, I used to hear the word “stewardship” thrown around: “We need to be good stewards”. For most people, that did and does mean “give money”. The real sense of stewardship is to take responsibility for the care of something. So if we are stewards of something, then it is our job to make sure all is right with …