Expectations and Experience
Expectations can have a strong effect on our experience of life. If we have heavier feelings about life, we’ll tend to have lower or darker expectations. Because what we put our attention on grows stronger, …
Category: Practice
Culturing the Feelings
In another forum, I made the following comment as some of the “enlightenment fundamentalists” were categorically discounting energy work. I think it worth noting an observation. In India, they have historically had a profound devotional …
Question Affirmations
During Nancy’s workshop, she made an interesting suggestion. She suggested you frame affirmations as a question, placing the future in the present. For example, “What will I need to accomplish X?” The question assumes it …
Gratitude for Self
I’ve spoken here a lot about the importance of gratitude. Being thankful for what’s in our lives helps culture an openness and allowing. It also helps enable support. But there’s a deeper aspect of gratitude …
Conscious Stories
Life doesn’t always make sense. When it doesn’t, our mind naturally tries to fill in the gaps, to explain why. The problem comes when we start to believe these stories. Nancy observes that they then …
Empty is OK
Nancy’s talk brought up a key point: People often fear what they don’t understand. In our culture, we’re taught to fear empty space. Children often have an experience of that expansive openness. But when not …
Meeting What You Need
I’ve spoken here a number of times about the importance of allowing, of letting ‘what is’ be there, of letting emotions arise and complete. When we resist the flow of energy, we don’t see what …
Presence
One of the key qualities of spiritual progress can be a growing sense of presence, of being in the moment rather than in the mind. The mind alone brings us anxiety about the future or …
Karma is the Blind Spot
In articles here, I’ve occasionally mentioned that karma comes with a blind spot. This causes us to walk into circumstances we otherwise wouldn’t and do things we may later regret. We may even ask ourselves …
Prayer of Gratitude
In the past, I’ve written several articles on the subject of prayer. In Deep Prayer I discussed the difference between the Petitionary prayer of asking for something and an Intercessionary prayer of surrender; the prayer …
The Samadhis of Patanjali
Awhile back, I wrote an article on the samadhis listed in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali*. At the time, I explored definitions from several translations. The result however was less than clear. Let’s try again. …
Facing Emotional Trauma
Most of us had some major challenges to face during childhood. Parents unable to express tenderness, violence, abandonment, discounting, the list goes on and on. But it’s interesting to note how different children in the …