IMAGINATION AND FEAR
We have this powerful imagination and it’s mostly used for envisioning futures, and that allows us to plan, coordinate, cooperate. But when we believe our imagined scenarios to be reality …
CONSCIENCE
Conscience is a strange thing, it’s intuitive, it’s felt. When we’re in tune with it it’s bliss even though its dictates might be difficult to follow. But when we’re not …
THE LIMITS OF WORDS
Use your words, they say. But recently I saw a sunset that was so sublime words couldn’t even get near it. The subtlety of colour and form of the endlessly …
THINKING ALLOWED
We are opaque to ourselves. We don’t know why we do the things we do, what our deep motivations are. We just act first and explain or excuse later. It’s …
THE SANITY OF SURRENDER
It’s the now that counts. It’s the present-moment that is most ‘real’. The rest is memory and imagination, which both have tremendous value of course. But THIS IS IT, this …
HOLDING TWO TRUTHS
Lately I see a big part of the spiritual scene is about a kind of ‘radical humanness’. And I’m all about owning and including our embodied nature and not denying …
TRAUMA AND RELEASE
Among other things, spiritual awakening is the trigger for radical release, the popped cork that frees up the suppressed energetics held in place by the egoic self. So post-awakening there …
OUR ESSENTIAL UNITY
There’s not a lot of Unity in the Bible, not on the surface anyway; you have to really go looking for it, and even then. But the Kabbalah is a …
WHAT REMAINS
Do I have an overarching thesis? Yes. It’s that our nature is Divine consciousness and our forgetfulness of that reality makes us suffer. Now ‘Divine’ is a very particular word …
MYSTIC UNION
My sense is that at the very least Jesus was an exemplar to what it is to live in truth, to live in complete loyalty to the dictates of one’s …
DEALING WITH THE DEVIL
It’s worth remembering that when we deal with the Devil he honours his side of the bargain and we do actually get what we wanted, or so the stories tell. …
LOVE OVER LAW
Is our conscience merely conditioning or is it a hotline to our divinity? Do we follow where it leads? Do we trust it? Is it our lack of trust that …
WHAT’S THE STORY?
I’ve been thinking about narratives and how they help us make sense of the world, stories that approximate a description of what’s going on essentially. For me it’s a spiritual …
LET IT BE
The tagline on my website says ‘exploring present-moment awareness’ which sounds okay on the face of it, but the truth is I’m not exploring at all; I’m observing, witnessing. I’m …
FORGIVE IT ALL
Awakening is an ongoing unfoldment of potentials and nothing in particular is guaranteed to stop or go away, even though some things might. It’s the ongoing acceptance, patience, and forgiveness …
MEETING REALITY
Enlightenment, liberation, awakening is all about reality. It’s about recognising what and how reality is, and when we do, resistance to it falls away. It’s about not expecting reality to …
SIMPLE
The spiritual path is pretty simple really. It hinges on the fact that resting as awareness invariably feels better than being caught up in the mind. So once you discover …
TRUST
Trust Trust God Trust the Absolute Trust Life Trust consciousness Trust yourself Whether it’s Him or Her or It or I It doesn’t matter how we conceive of the Transcendent …
SOME THOUGHTS ON POLITICS THIS XMAS
While faith has a political dimension Partisan politics is deeply divisive The faithful of whatever stripe Should cleanse their hearts of such division Individually we must include the ‘other’ Warts …
CAN THERE BE SUFFERING WITHOUT A SUFFERER?
Nothing to see, nothing to do. Just what is. I, I, I,.. there is no separate I. When you remove the voice that says that you do, or that you …
LIVING WITH CHANGE
We have be willing to stand behind our truth as we see it, to defend, to justify, to explain. But also just as importantly we need to learn to change …
THE AWAKENED HEART IS A BROKEN HEART
There’s grief in awakening. Grief at the loss of autonomy, grief at the loss of purpose and meaning. Grief at the loss of knowing and certainty, however deluded they were. …
PART & PARCEL
Sometimes I think this is a twisted culture where it’s so hard to be who and what we are and to express ourselves naturally with our community. Instead we’re trained …
ON SPIRITUAL TRANSMISSION
One field of consciousness appearing as everything. As a seeker I was always sensitive to spiritual ‘presence’. I noticed it in groups of TM meditators, watching Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on …
WHERE ‘IN’ BECOMES ‘AS’
What are we but a self-knowing energetic field of consciousness?And what is the nature of energy if not a quality of consciousness? Self-examining our nature, that is, exploring consciousness with …
BEFORE THINKING – I AM, YOU ARE
Our trouble starts when we privilege thinking over direct experience. When this becomes an ingrained habit of relating to the world and ourselves even the suggestion to drop out of …
WHY NOT CHOOSE FREEDOM?
In my last post I said that that when it came down to it most people didn’t actually want to wake up. Someone asked for my thoughts on why that …
PROBLEMS
Sometimes it seems there’s a whole generation of people who are perpetually triggered and always tense. They live in a state of constant reactivity. They’ll often report the reasons are …
TO DO OR NOT TO DO
Awakened mind is the impersonal sentience and not the contents of awareness. Even the sense ‘I am’ is known by this awareness. But who can say how this thing works? …
FULLNESS
Is nondual spirituality nihilistic? Desirelessness, powerlessness, emptiness. Sacrifice, surrender, formlessness. Are these more fundamental than, say: fullness, all-possibilities, bountifulness, unboundedness, bliss? It’s all well and good focusing on the qualities …
MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES
When the awakened view dawns it becomes apparent that everything we experience points to it, and always did. It’s the recognition that each moment is a Dharma Gate, the opportunity …
LOVE
Many of our words and concepts, we think we know what they mean, when often our understanding hangs short of the great depths of being that we miss. Our recognition …
A THOUGHT FOR EASTER
Good Friday What must die? All forms, identities. What is Risen? Life itself, triumphant. Because there is no death, ultimately. Life Eternal is enduring by definition. Today is the sacrifice, …
THE CALLING OF THE SOUL
How much of our time do we spend bracing ourselves against the possibility of someone else’s reactivity? When we fear to break a rule or make a mistake, how often …
ON THE BELIEF IN FREEWILL AND DOERSHIP
Do you believe it because you see the evidence of it and also find no evidence of it’s opposite? Or do you reject non-doership because you don’t wish to accept …
SOME THOUGHTS ON SUFFERING
At the heart of matter of being human is the problem of suffering. What are we to do with it, how do we contend with it? If suffering cannot be …
THE WAY
I’ll show you the Way But will you follow? The Way is no way The Way is silence and surrender The Way is no effort The Way is ‘stop!’ The …
AWAKENING AND CREATIVITY
Spiritual awakening is a bit like the creative process, because when you engage in meditation or introspection or inquiry, if you’re motivated by money or acquisition or anything like that …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #8
The ego constricts around a more-or-less fixed mode of being. So when the ego is transcended and the constrictions are released, then the manifest being reorients to a more natural, …
THE IMPULSE TO SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
The impulse to spiritual practice is the impulse to awaken so even if practice is wrong or poor or difficult or ineffectual it’s never misguided, and in the worst cases …
NOT ME AND NOT YOU?
I was sitting outside a café with a friend some time ago, and we were talking about ‘consensus reality’ as he put it. He was wishing that he could be …
HUMILITY
True humility comes when you run out of strategies and realise that you’re powerless Surrender comes as a result of this It’s something that happens not something ‘you’ do This …
GETTING IT
The dichotomy dissolves Of subject and object Spiritual knowledge goes Spiritual persona goes Just this Whatever is happening Is it Doubt Is it Mental discussions About how this can’t be …
I, NATURE
we are natural forms organic creatures more like trees and thickets than the straight, chiselled lines we’ve come to measure ourselves against it’s easy to forget and to distance + …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #7
What magic comes from Silence? All of it Can’t you see it all comes from Nothing? I’m a voice crying out from the wilderness “It doesn’t matter!” None of it …
JUST A POEM
I don’t really notice much Outside Because everything that happens Happens in me Of me The flowers bloom In me The wind blows In me The hills roll and rise …
FEAR
The process (of awakening) requires us to face the most profound fear of our own annihilation or destitution To face that fear and continue is the challenge of awakening In …
FEEL
Just feel the feelings Don’t deny them, don’t indulge them, just allow them to be Feel the fear, feel the anger, feel the grief, let it all come Let yourself …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #6
This is new It’s all new Memory serves up similar visions That give the impression That you’ve seen it before That you know this But it’s all fresh So stay …
WILLINGNESS
If you’re serious about self-discovery, if you’re serious about the truth, then you have to be willing to give up everything you think you know. You have to be willing …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #5
Nothing exists in isolation So many conditions that we take for granted For any single thing to occur The existence of a universe is required And everything that ever was …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #4
Drop it all Leave it all alone And if you’re still having trouble It means you’ve picked it up again Simple? Yes it is Do I need to elaborate? After …
ON NONDUAL UNDERSTANDING
It’s often the case that nondual understanding in the dualistic mind is the product of ‘secondary mind’, the logical, analytical mind, and not a wisdom emanation from Pure Mind. True …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #3
If we stop giving the mind attentional objects then it will tend to settle into its own non-conceptual, silent nature. It’s simply a case of remaining in an open and …
SO WHAT’S ON MY MIND?
I’ve been concerned with identity politics and PC culture lately. I don’t quite know why, maybe it’s that I’m seeing in the outside world, in groups, the same kind of …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #2
Is there evidence for the existence of an outside/objective world separate and independent from the awareness in which it appears? We can see that the awareness itself is malleable to …
UNTITLED THOUGHTS #1
If we saw the world at different scales we’d have quite a different experience and conception of reality. If we saw it at the atomic scale there’d be a lot …
READY, STEADY, WAKE!?
To awaken you have to be ready. But there’s nothing you can do to make yourself ready, because you’re not doing anything, because the you you think you are doesn’t …
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?
What is Enlightenment, Moksha, Buddhahood, Liberation? It’s the obliteration of the Ten Fetters, the complete dissolution of the occluding mental densities that give rise to avidya. It’s the destruction of …
EMPTY YOUR CUP
Beginner’s Mind is very helpful in Self-inquiry. What that means is you let go of all of your concepts, all of your learning, everything you think you know – just …
QUESTIONS
What is This? Who am I? What am I? What kind of answers am I looking for? What could satisfy? Questions are beautiful, more illuminating than answers. Questions stop the …
THE PERSONAL PATH
The seemingly simple task of describing a path from ‘a’ to ‘be’ unravels the very notions that uphold the conditioned view. It’s impossible to find a starting point, there’s no …
THE GREAT HAPPENING
Your life is not your responsibility, you’re not doing it, you’re not ‘living’ your life, if anything life is living you. It’s important to recognize this. The burden of activity …
KEEP QUIET
That we believe ourselves to be a person is completely taken for granted. We don’t even think to look into this, to question its veracity. We’ve been conditioned to stop …
TRUST
Trust, rest, all is well. You are home, always. This is it, believe it or not. Hope is for fools. Running, chasing, holding, grasping, needing, wanting. This is it, be …
THE CAVE WHERE THE DRAGON SLEEPS
Have a practice. Take time out each and every day to sit in the cave of your interior and wait and watch. This is where the dragons are and this …
YOU ARE WHAT YOU SEEK
Why do we practice, why do we seek? Is it to attain or achieve some conceptual goal we call Enlightenment? Or is it to recognise that in every moment of …
SEEING BEYOND LIMITATIONS
The problem of human suffering is the problem of misapprehension. Our ideas about the nature of the world are at odds with the reality of it. The key mistake is …
NOTHING
There’s nothing to do Nothing to think Nothing to drop Nothing to see Nothing to follow There’s no plan No strategy There’s nothing to believe Nothing to hold on to …
YOU ARE NEVER LOST
My only aim is to help you recognise yourself as boundless, ever-present awareness right here and now, and to recognise your essential wholeness and completeness. Your true nature is easeful, …
FROM AWAKENING TO FREEDOM
The recognition of our nature as non-conceptual awareness — spiritual awakening — is relatively simple. But the consequences of this recognition typically have challenging implications for our human-ness, conditioned as it is around the …