Meeting The Need
In healing work, I’ve talked about 2 arenas. There is the reactivity, the unresolved energy or emotion, the vasana. Then there is the pattern or impression, the samskara underlying the reactivity. And then, underneath that …
Category: Mind
Self-Worth
Part of our sense of identity is a measure of self-worth. This develops when we’re young from feedback we get from others and our own certainty about self. Often, feedback is an attempt to control …
Sleeping Elephants
Meditation instruction uses the analogy of sleeping elephants. The elephants are unresolved stress & trauma. When you meditate, you tiptoe through a field of sleeping elephants and reach a deep state. Sometimes, an elephant wakes …
On Anger
As in the Shame article prior, anger is a natural and important emotion. It stirs us to action and helps us set and affirm our boundaries, like a healthy No. It’s linked to our personal …
On Shame
Shame, as an energy, relates to the root chakra. This is why it can feel existential and dense. Shame is a natural response that helps us moderate behaviour, like acting out or venting on others. …
Where Are The Emotions?
When people describe emotions, some put them deeper than the mind. Like saying spirit, emotions, mind, body. And some put them shallower, like saying spirit, mind, emotions, body. I refer to the “energy” or emotional …
Remembering
We all enjoy the benefits of “personal” memory. We remember things by their emotional importance. Everything else is forgotten. For example, we forget what we had for breakfast yesterday, but remember our first kiss. Memory …
Core Spiritual Practices
In the West, we live in a very mind-oriented culture. A practice like an effortless mantra meditation is excellent for balancing that experience. It uses the mind to go beyond it, into our deeper nature. …
Self or No-Self
We’ve all been through shifts in developmental stages, be it from toddler to school-aged or perhaps into Unity. Stage shifts can be significant milestones as our sense of who we are changes, and with it, …
Our Natural Self
What is the Natural Self? First, let’s explore the words. Natural: a state of being relaxed, with no resistance to the present moment. We discover we are the present. Self: our sense of who we …
What is Happiness?
If you ask the average person about happiness, they may describe excitement or thrills. Perhaps they know satisfaction from accomplishment. But this is only a glimmer of happiness. Short, passing experiences. Often, we have a …
On Compassion
We were exploring compassion in a class recently. Like mindfulness, many people have ideas about compassion and what it looks like. But often this is cognitive; compassion as a concept. Many spiritual approaches dismiss the …