True Samyama
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is a short but potent text that describes Yoga or union. It also contains dozens of formulas to get specific results, like knowing past lives, getting great strength, or flying …
Category: Mind
Choice and Surrender
There is a curious dance in the progression of life between choice and letting go. A key feature of early childhood is separation from mother and establishing a sense of personal self. As we approach …
The Bliss of Sleep
When we settle into bed, we all enjoy at least 2 states of consciousness: sleeping and dreaming. If we have a history of samadhi (yoga) in meditation, that creeps into our sleep time too, with …
Acceptance is Without Blame
There is a common idea in spiritual circles that enlightenment is “the solution” and it will make all our problems go away. This isn’t necessarily even taught or conscious. It is the mind’s tendency to …
Awakening After-Effects
An interesting article recently appeared in Psychology Today on “The After-Effects of Awakening.” Nice to see it being researched and discussed in mainstream literature. However, the outline still lacks the context of post-personal development. The …
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 …
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 …