The Source of Grace
There is a curious paradox in spiritual practice. On the one hand, awakening and progress in consciousness happens through grace, through the hand of the Divine. Awakening isn’t an experience or something a person does …
The Platform for Refinement
One of the key factors missing from a lot of modern spiritual dialog is the role of sattva. Without that progressive shift of energy from tamas (inertia) through rajas (fire of transformation) and into sattva …
Divinity – The Power and The Glory
Before awakening, we engage in self development. This is a person getting to know its strengths and limitations and moving towards self-actualization. Most people are oblivious to their own cosmic nature. After awakening and throughout …
The Great Shadows
While I’ve explored karma in several other posts, I thought it would be useful to take it another step into application. As the saying goes, we come into this life with a suitcase of karma …
Depth of Awakening
The initial awakening of Self Realization is key to what follows. But because it’s a new thing for which we have no experiential reference points, there is a lot of confusion about what it is …
On Spiritual Materialism
I wasn’t going to write on this until I saw a glaring example on-line. As we grow on the spiritual path and clear some of our shadows, what remains becomes more subtle and elusive. We …
Entrenched Habits
Some habits can be very difficult to change. Even if we successfully get around them for a time, they can rear their head again. They can be like a petulant child who always wants its …
Being in the Flow
Recently, I saw a TED talk on Flow by Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He researches happiness and what makes people feel life is worth living He found that work which brings us into a flow state …
Remaining Shadows
I found a quote near the end of Kavitha Chinnaiyan‘s book Shakti Rising à propos, considering the discussion over on The Challenges of Teaching. This closely relates to the development of Sattva. “If we have …
How Many Brains?
In some ways, the whole body can be seen as a “brain” in the sense that the brain is an interface with mind and consciousness. However, there are certain centers that are more focused as …
The Importance of Actual Yoga
In Yoga, the key is settling the mind. Then the Self “behind” the noisy mind can shine through. Yoga Sutra 1 v2-3: Yoga is the complete settling of the activity of the mind. Then the …
Embodiment
There are several factors that influence how we move forward through the stages of development. – Preparation of the vehicle so it’s able to sustain new depth – Purification and refinement to allow higher clarity …