Refined Brahman
Writing about Brahman in an intelligible way is a little fraught. It’s so beyond most peoples frame of reference that words can be entirely misleading. How do you describe something that is nothing, that is …
Category: Waking
Healing Everything – Part 3 of 3
< Part 2 – Prep – More Specific Issues Much of the above helps us improve the general tone of our lives but some knots or blocks are more pernicious. After our practice, we step …
Healing Everything – Part 2 of 3
< Part 1 – Intro – Preparation As long as a lot of this is unconscious, we’re not going to understand the mechanics and so can’t act directly on them. We’ll just continue to react …
Healing Everything – Part 1 of 3
Part 1 – Intro Everything can be healed, if we know the actual cause and understand it’s mechanics. However, that cause may be masked under layers of other unresolved debris making it very difficult to …
Kundalini is Not Causal
In articles here I’ve discussed the role of kundalini Shakti in the awakening process. However, it’s important to understand that kundalini does not cause an awakening. An awakening takes place when Self recognizes itself through …
Layers of Observing
When we speak of awakening as the Self waking up to Itself by observing itself in this apparent form, it may be useful to unpack what this is to reduce some confusion. Some experiences can …
What is Ignorance?
Back on the End of Suffering, I quoted the Yoga Sutra on ignorance. 2v5: Ignorance is perceiving the non-eternal as eternal, the impure as pure, suffering as happiness, and the non-Self as the Self. The …
Fullness or Emptiness
In the literature, you hear descriptions by sages of the emptiness of existence or the fullness of being. These seem contradictory but actually describe the same thing, typically at different stages of depth and clarity. …
Ahimsa – Non-Violence
Ahimsa is one of the 5 Yamas or observances, the first limb of Yoga. It means non-injury or non-violence. Other Yamas include non-theft and truthfulness, so they’re sometimes confused with ethics. For example, I was …
A Perfect Teacher
A discussion came up about a controversial teacher recently. I’ve written about teachers before. It’s worth making a few more comments on the subject. One thing you may run into is the Indian habit of …
The Stages of Witnessing
There’s a point I’ve touched on here before but it’s worth mentioning again. There are a number of nuances in the Gradations of Awakening that can vary from person to person. One of them is …
Brahma and Brahman
One thing that long puzzled me in Sanskrit terminology is the similarity between the words Brahma and Brahman. Some use the words almost interchangeably yet their definitions are quite distinct. Brahma is the creator in …