I Am and I Do
When we first meet someone, our gender, race, and age range are usually obvious. To that we add 2 pieces of information – our name and our occupation. For many people, these bits of information …
Category: Mind
The End of Karma
One idea you run into periodically is that karma has an end. That the enlightenment process causes you to stop producing new karma, roasts the seeds of your backlog, and then you wind down the …
Liberating the Person
While awakening is about liberation, it is liberation FROM the person. It is loosing our identification with being an individual ‘me’ that things happen to. Both before the shift and for awhile afterwards, there can …
Clarity and Release
Clarity and release are the 2 key aspects of spiritual growth. The first helps us move forward, the second clears the obstacles to that. Release brings clarity, clarity brings release. Traditionally, the “way” is divided …
The Tales of Our Past
As I touched on in The Subconscious, the residues of our long past’s incomplete experiences leave latent impressions and desires. We experience subconscious impulses from our unknown past that over-ride our normal sense. While these …
Unloading Concepts
Those who read this site will find a LOT of concepts. Also lots of Sanskrit terms and Vedic references that have a specific meaning that may not be what you’ve seen elsewhere. The key to …
The Subconscious
Here and there, I’ve contemplated what makes things subconscious. If everything we experience arises in consciousness, what does it mean for something to be “subconscious”? I was reminded of this recently by a talk on …
Sannyasa
Shankara was a well know revivalist who brought Vedanta back to the fore and reestablished a monastic tradition in India. But then the pendulum continued to swing and it came to be understood that withdrawal …
Qualifying to Understand Vedanta
Vedanta means “End of the Veda” or the end of knowledge. It relates to the Unity through Brahman stages of development. As this places it several stages ahead of the average person, it is not …
What is Veda?
You may think of Veda as the records of an ancient culture of the Indus valley that spread east across the Ganges plain and the rest of modern India. You may think of the Veda …
Passing Shadows
Recently, the subject of being shadowed, veiled or overshadowed has come up a few times. We all have places we avoid going that will become more conscious. This is a wonderful opportunity to heal and …
The What and How of Subtle Perception
I thought it would be useful to clarify the nature of subtle perception. First, what we experience is created in layers as part of the process of experience itself. The very act of experience gives …