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 our minds, to let go of our blind loyalties to people, ideas, views, and positions as we go along, and keep doing it. We need…
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. There’s grief over losing one’s power, and one’s familiar identity. There’s so much loss in awakening. When it dawns that there’s nothing we can keep,…
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 to take our essence and modify and package it so we can sell it to each other. It’s not so easy to share our gifts…
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 videos, yagyas, and the darshan of sages I met, even in certain places such as Arunachala. The energy was there, call it what you will;…
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 consciousness naturally results in the discovery of our formless nature. When we settle in to the direct observation of our essential subjectivity we find…
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 the mind and into the non-conceptual being can be violently resisted. But for the sake of our peace and freedom we must learn to let…
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 might be the case. This was my reply… In terms of why most people don’t really want awakening/liberation, I’d say that this freedom requires (and…
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 things like systemic injustice, racism, sexism, etc. And so their anger and agitation is justified. Maybe so. As a generation Millennials (and Gen-Z) are not…
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? Getting into a technical analysis of the structure of consciousness and the nature of awakening becomes an exercise of intellect, and therefore true enough on…
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 of mind required for the apprehension of silence. But this emptiness is full, this fullness is empty. All around me I see fullness, I see…