Are you a sinner? No. Is your proxy a sinner? Yes. Being truly normal is being truly human. We are made in God’s image, and we should act it. Stop thinking of God as a selfish being. We believe that, since we are made in God’s image and we are selfish, then God is, too. But to act as God …
Guest Blog by Johannes Wagner: Three Weeks at Rohini’s….
I knew many things about Rohini’s house long before I arrived – voices, faces, stories, certain parts of rooms. To be honest, I expected it to be more austere or in another way strictly ruled, which very nicely displayed a misunderstanding of mine. As it turned out, the only disappointing thing was seeing how small I had made myself internally. …
True Normal….
There is a difference between conventional and normal. Most people, when they hear the word “conventional”, tend to think in terms of other people and see particular situations, groups, cultures, or religions. The word “normal” tends to encompass a larger, vaguer area, and people tend to think of it as applying universally. Many times we conflate the two words, and …
Guest Blog by Ian Ralby: The Choice To Practice….
At the conclusion of the course on “A Spiritual Survival Kit” (see here), I asked for the chance to guest blog in order to share some reflections. Having grown up with my mother as both my mom and my teacher, I have witnessed her teaching and her students’ development from a fairly unique vantage point. I vividly remember when she …
Shakti and Wisdom….
Everybody loves energy. It is everywhere, and manifests in countless ways. Without energy, there is no life. In my tradition, the term for energy is shakti; the shakti is God’s power of manifestation. Spiritual energy is latent, asleep, in each of us. And the term for that spiritual energy is kundalinī-shakti. In order to return home to who we really …
Imagination Isn’t Practice….
Sit in the room and be realized. Do not offend anyone or make anyone uncomfortable. Then leave and resume your ordinary habits. Is this what you think sādhana is? Around Baba, there were people who did just sit around and then go home. Their discomfort came from their fellow ashramites, so their interactions and relationships looked very much like the …
My Apparently Useless Gift….
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 …