Who Doesn’t Want Love….

RohiniLove, Reflections, Uncategorized

Who doesn’t want love? I ask that question a lot. Can someone answer that question for me? When people say yes, they want love, I then tell them how to get it: be with your experience, let whatever comes up from your experience come up, and function appropriately on the physical plane. That is where everything breaks down. No one …

Tools To Still….

RohiniPracticing, Reflections, Uncategorized

No matter what the tradition, the goal of spiritual practice remains the same. It follows that every spiritual tradition draws from the same essential tools for practice. Teachers within a given lineage expand and refine its toolkit as time goes on. Below is a list of some tools from the kit I was given by Baba. If practiced appropriately, with …

Avian Samadhi….

RohiniReflections, Stories and Occasions, Uncategorized

The winter was brutally cold. Weeks on end below zero degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chill minus 20 to 30. Even when the sun came out, it was bitter cold and dangerous to go outside. Our acre garden spent the winter covered in snow. No hellebores blooming through February for us. A couple of years ago we began feeding the birds …

Settling into Unsettled….

RohiniPracticing, Reflections, Uncategorized

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 …

My Neighbor Elvis….

RohiniReflections, Stories and Occasions, Uncategorized

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 …

Baba’s Work….

RohiniPower and Hate, Reflections, Uncategorized

One of the greatest misconceptions about spiritual practice is that it is selfish. Unfortunately, the world is full of pseudo-spiritual “paths” that really are nothing but self-indulgence. Real practice is the opposite. When we actually do it, the world changes on a deep and subtle level. It’s hard to fathom this. Few people want to grasp that by turning inward …

Recovering Our Agency….

RohiniPracticing, Reflections, Uncategorized

“The world is a mess. We are a mess. This is just the way it is. There is nothing we can do. It hurts, but there is nothing that can be done”. All of these are normal statements and concerns expressed everywhere, by all sorts of people. Yet for most of us, “concern” will be as far as we go. …

Approaching the World….

RohiniPracticing, Reflections, Uncategorized

No matter who we are, there are only four possible ways we can engage with the world: reacting, resonating, responding, and empathizing. Where we choose to land on this spectrum of action determines our degree of agency, and therefore our humanity. If I were to write nothing more than reactions to life, I would be showing you that I was …

The Lovers and the Righteous….

RohiniLove, Reflections, Uncategorized

We all want peace. We all say that, and yet our actions show a different desire. Vengeance, retaliation, revenge—what a great dance. The dance of hate. I have more in common with my brothers and sisters of the Muslim faith who love than I do with my brothers and sisters of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist faiths who hate. …