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. …
Category: Practice
A Process Model of Awakening
Gareth of Endless Possibilities interviewed awake scientist Pierce Salguero. Pierce has proposed a non-stages model of awakening with 4 “threads” that we might think of as styles of experiencing the process. It’s a very inclusive …
Cracked Open
In this conversation, Riyaz Motan, Adyashanti, John Prendergast, and Johnathan Gustin explore the awakening journey with serious illness and facing our mortality. Having been through a round of this myself, along with the premature death …
Practices
In the recent post on Types of Meditation, I discussed three types of practices and said I would adopt the model. I’ve updated that part of the Recommendations page. I thought it would be useful …
Types of Meditation
About 15 years ago, I wrote an article about types of meditation, based on their brain EEG signature. There has been a tendency for scientists, and indeed many people, to see all meditations as equivalent. …
Fulfillment
“Integrated is the expression of knowledge, an assembly is significant in unity, united are their minds while full of desires. For you I make use of the integrated expression of knowledge. By virtue of unitedness …
Embodied Enquiry
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 …
Disidentification vs Disassociation
While studying how to bring new services out, I’ve also been studying the second level of Embodied Processing. This includes Embodied Enquiry, a more somatic and embodied form of inquiry. And this study leads to …
What’s the Point?
Sometimes, we might wonder what’s the point of spiritual practice? Isn’t that all about me? What about all the suffering and drama in the world? How am I going to make any difference? The answer …
Transcend, Then Transcend Transcending
“This is ‘nivartadvam.’ Whatever we experience, transcend it until there is nothing more to transcend. Then transcend that nothingness and be active again. Transcend dynamism, then transcend silence. Then, when silence and dynamism are co-existing, …
Being Present
With spiritual practices, we can develop an ongoing presence, even to the degree of a detached awareness or observer that’s with us all the time. However, habits of the mind and those around us will …
Spiritual vs Healing Practices
Recently, I saw a talk by Ava Irani of Functional Spirituality. While I distinguish healing from awakening techniques, Ava did it much more explicitly. She observed that awakening techniques often also promise healing and vice …