During his talk at SAND 2019, Adyashanti shared an experience of redemptive love and went on to talk of the transforming power of deeper values of love. An excellent talk. I wrote about a prior talk he gave on this topic. Also, here’s an article that puts it into some larger context, as a stepping stone to universal, and then Divine love. Davidya on YouTube
One of the curious aspects of being human is the sense of free will. This sense varies over a large range, depending on our life experiences and stage of development. But there is always some value of choice. Higher beings live a life in service to the whole and can easily fulfill desires. Choice isn’t prominent then. Animals experience life more instinctively so again, choice isn’t prominent. Humans sit in a range that can vary quite a bit. Some experience little choice and may feel life is fated or even feel trapped. Others celebrate their self-determination or get overwhelmed by … Continue Reading…
All of us come in with natural gifts. Some we’re born with and some arise over time. They’re natural qualities of the framework we’re born with. Our society places an emphasis on things like smarts, perceived beauty, athletic ability, and extroversion. But our gifts can take many forms – even to be a disrupter. They can be physical, emotional, mental, intellectual, intuitive, empathic, or spiritual. Trouble is, our gifts may seem quite ordinary to us. Often we’ll need feedback from others to recognize their value. They’ll be extraordinary for them, like healing, composing music, or physical stamina. If we don’t … Continue Reading…
I originally began this article as a longer piece for a university journal but ran out of time. In the last few years, we’ve seen a major shift in world news. Perception has become truth and news stations debate “alternate facts.” Irrational positions seem to be the norm. Is society coming apart at the seams? Turns out these are just symptoms of a collective purification and a preparation for what’s to come. To understand the deeper movement that’s taking place, we need a little background. Most people experience themselves as separate individuals. This is an effect of an inner construct … Continue Reading…
During 2019, I experimented with text-to-voice and podcasting. The first was a fail. The second was reasonable. But the amount of time it’s taking to record, edit, produce and learn to do better is more than doubling the time it’s taking me to post articles. The resulting subscribers and traffic are small and not growing. My apologies if you’re a listener but I’m going to stop producing podcasts of all articles. I will still post audio versions of some content and may occasionally do other conversational podcasts more typical of the style. It feels I should focus on where it … Continue Reading…
In this clip of an Adyashanti talk, he speaks of the changed perspective of awakened consciousness and how that shift impacts the whole. The latter is a very important point because this is how the many awakened are changing the world. They are raising the degree of consciousness expressed in the world. The tide lifts all boats. This is also causing a lot of unresolved junk to come to the surface to be seen and resolved, creating extra drama on the world stage. I’ll be posting more on this topic soon. There is one point I disagree with. That God … Continue Reading…
This article is a follow-up to What is Mind, exploring the consequences. We know from physics that the world around us does not look the way we perceive it. Our senses pick up a narrow range of certain spectrum only. We don’t see vibrating fields but solid objects. We hear movements in the air as sound. We feel surface tension as solidity. Our senses take in narrow bands of the available spectrum of information. Yet even within those ranges, our senses take in vastly more information than we “notice.” The mind compares everything to past experiences, filtering heavily for hazard, … Continue Reading…
In 2018, 1,000 Jews, Muslims and Christians came together at the Tower of David in Jerusalem to sing, each in their language, a version of Bob Marley’s song “One Love”. Happy Holidays, One Love! On YouTube The original song: On YouTube The Playing for Change version: On YouTube
Fundamentally, consciousness is simply aware. Then it becomes self-aware and interacts with itself, causing the appearance of forms and phenomena to arise. This self-interacting dynamic is true both cosmically and locally. We can say consciousness is nested or in layers. With a transcending practice like effortless meditation, we go beyond the mind and emotions, settling into simple awareness without content, pure consciousness. In its pure form, it is beyond time and space, infinite and eternal. This is usually how people come to know consciousness itself – simply resting in their own nature. And yet, often we only notice a pause … Continue Reading…
In September, Dorothy Rowe, Andrew Hewson and I spoke about Perspectives of Awakening. Andrew and I followed that up with a conversation on the stages of enlightenment. We both enjoyed the conversation so had another one. This time we explored the dismissal of stages, the value of understanding the bigger picture, issues with a masculine / renunciate emphasis, healing, surfacing, right action, integrating after awakening, and talking to the family about the changes. On YouTube
Breath stopping came up on Transcending so I thought it worth breaking the points out into an article. In a transcending meditation practice we quickly settle within. As we settle the mind, the body also settles. Oxygen consumption and other metabolic indicators drop. In a typical session, this can be 30-60%. When we transcend the practice into samadhi (also called turiya or pure consciousness), we may notice a brief period of inner silence or no thoughts along with very deep relaxation. But when we notice, the mind starts to think about it and the metabolism rises some again. Or the … Continue Reading…
The Association for Spiritual Integrity (ASI) is holding a series of peer-to-peer discussions. In August, Craig Holliday and I conversed on spiritual bypassing. That was posted here. The video quality wasn’t great, so I just posted the audio. Later the same month, we had another conversation along the same lines. At last it’s available. We spoke to a wide range of topics around healing, ethics and challenges in spiritual groups, bypassing, and the nature of the current time. The conversations are on spiritual integrity so there is some overlap with the first conversation. But much of it is distinct. For … Continue Reading…
