Non-dualism
How To Stop Thinking
Why would one want to stop thinking? The question comes up when either a student of a meditation practice, spiritual path, or psychological understanding is told the value of stopping thinking, or it begins to dawn on one the importance of thought and thinking in one’s life and in one’s outlook and happiness. You begin…
Read MoreIs Being an Embodied Being a Fall from Grace?
I was cleaning the living room windows this morning, and noticed I could never get them perfect. They always had some kind of streaks or fog when the sunlight hit them, no matter how much I wiped them. It occurred to me the windows were metaphors of the limits of expression of clarity and the…
Read MoreOn Beyond Two Sides of Existence
The picture we are seeing here—knowing it’s just a picture (a map)—is of two sides of existence: one, the appearance, the phenomenal, the apparent material world, the mortal dream, Body, Mind, and World (BMW) which arise simultaneously to play Maya, or spacetime and matter; and two, “outside” of this world as it were, the spiritual,…
Read MoreWhy Spiritual Teachings Can Seem Self-Contradictory (and Why it’s Not a Problem)
“We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen.” D.T. Suzuki In philosophies that delve into issues of consciousness, try and point to consciousness, including spiritual and mystical writings…
Read MoreBeginning and Advanced Meditation: Meditating on Meditation
Now, I’m a nobody (not a famous teacher, and don’t want to teach at all: writing is my “teaching”), but this is how I see the “game board” of meditation: We could say there are roughly three stages of meditation, three squares on the field of “spiritual progress” (it’s just a map, and they can…
Read MoreWhat Is Maya? What is Real?
POEM What is Maya? Maya is a word. A word is a sound. Sound is Maya. The real question is: what is not Maya? When I know what is deathless and without sound, I will know what Maya is. Every thing. Therefore even Maya is Maya. ESSAY What is Maya? What is illusion and…
Read MoreWhy No One Can Give You Enlightenment
The following are some notes regarding how one must “go the final mile” oneself, and no teacher or guru can hand you liberation on a platter. Enjoy. “A Master is a fully-realized Being. A Guru (or Sat Guru) is a Master who has chosen to help others find their Freedom. God, Guru and Self are…
Read MoreTrue Meditation: A Quiet Mind Versus A Silent Mind
A Quiet Mind versus a Silent Mind is a key discernment with vast implications. What you are about to read is about my actual experience, and derives from insights I had, not theory or concepts. While is uses some of the concepts you may have heard or will hear in spiritual talks or literature as…
Read MoreHow Can I Have an Experience of Non-Duality?
Q: I understand there’s no world “out there” that it’s all “inside” but how can I have an experience of this? My conditioning from this Western culture is so strong that my experience of the world, the way I assume it is, is that it is outside, over there, surrounding me. A: It would require…
Read MoreWho Becomes Enlightened?
I’ll sometimes hear or read comments like, “he’s an enlightened master”, or there is a story around some sage’s enlightenment, or a teacher or life coach states they become enlightened at some age, or there is an obvious assumption among student hanging around a teacher that they are enlightened. Or, more importantly someone is gunning…
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