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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Inquiry is a practice from non-dual teachings, a practice of self-discovery. It’s used to question our minds‘ habits about reality. For example, we can observe that our thoughts are experiences and are therefore content. They’re …
Some time ago, Rick Archer, Adyashanti, and Susanne Marie had a conversation I wrote about as it had some interesting distinctions in the experience of self and identity. Recently, Susanne, John Rogers, and I had …
