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 it can be redirected or transformed to better express the core impulse. All the prayers and mantras and chants are well and good but the…
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 free of its influence. I sympathised with his POV but pointed out that we aren’t actually bound by it, and it’s enough to recognise one’s…
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 is the difference between prescription and description in spiritual teachings The seeker hears prescription Because it can only understand what it hears in terms of…
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 it Is it You can’t turn anywhere Touch anything Hear anything Feel, taste Without it being it There’s nothing that isn’t it And there’s nothing…
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 + seclude ourselves, inside our toy boxes and tool sheds and coffins stone + wood from the earth but sawn + measured built to contain our…
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 matters Perhaps What matters Is that we suffer Or that suffering is Can be What do we do with that? What can we do? More…
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 In me Like my bones And my blood And my breath All in me As if my body Were the universe itself And my breath…
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 the end there’s nothing we can do We either come to the edge and let go or we don’t Rather, it will happen or it…
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 feel the vulnerability all the way through Open yourself to it all, all the storms and weather of emotions and feelings rising in your being…
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 awake You don’t know what’s coming The bleeding edge Face first into the ocean spray of existence The sharp breeze Wake up! The hum of…