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 …
Category: Psychology
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 …
States of Consciousness redux
aka 7 States of Consciousness, aka Stages of Human Development See Update: Stages of Development in Consciousness Periodically on this blog, I write a reference article for background info on key subjects. I can then …
Conceptual Barriers
I have seen over and over how important right understanding is. Much as we may have cultured our physiology with meditation and other spiritual practices, our beliefs about what awakening or enlightenment is will be …
American Veda
Recently, I’ve been reading a book that’s a fascinating review of the migration of Vedanta and Yoga to the west. The book by Philip Goldberg is called American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to …
Animals Feel and are Aware
While certainly birds and animals experience the world differently than we do, “differences between species are differences in degree rather than kind.” “It might be obvious to everybody in this room that animals have consciousness; …
Time and Culture
Awhile back, I made a documentary on how our metabolic rate affects our perception of the passage of time. How fast our body runs determines how fast we see time passing and how quickly events …
Bliss Departs
I’ve written before about how life IS bliss, that the very flow of life can be experienced subjectively as profound happiness. What the sages describe as sat chit ananda or absolute bliss consciousness is the …
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 …