Richard Harvey

connecting psychotherapy and spiritual growth for human awakening

• About Richard Harvey
• Home

Richard’s Weekly Quotes

The Devotee

05 April 2024

The student of spirituality can wait, learn, practice, try things out, fail and try again, fail and try again. The disciple of spirituality can allow himself or herself to be led repeatedly, following, surrendering, loving, hoping, falling into despair, but returning and returning. But the devotee! The devotee has no time, no motivation, no hope, no wishes, no intention, nothing to attain, not even the exalted goal of enlightenment, for the devotee is absolutely free in every moment.

Devotion

31 January 2024

Devotion is the path of love taken to the nth degree, to the extreme. All things are the Beloved who is a gateway, a doorway into divine love through devotion. Everything begins and ends with love.

Experience

22 December 2023

Experience belongs to the realms of space and time in the relative world: the world of day and night, right and wrong, good and evil. It is the junior school of humanity where people need and judge, criticize and expect, hate and seek, and lie and conceal, because they are basically ashamed of their humanity, because they have not seen through this world of appearances. Because they are bound and unconscious, their experiences in this world are not filled with light.

Real Spirituality

21 November 2023

Real spirituality has absolutely nothing to do with morality, society, and relationships as you may know them, or happiness as you habitually think of it. Peace, fulfillment, satisfaction, or human experience in every way is dwarfed by the genuinely spiritual.

Living Happily is Attainable

07 October 2023

Creating permanent, positive change and living happily in the present moment are attainable goals. Your inner wisdom can be awakened, but only a unique inner journey will lead you to it.

Attaining Fulfillment

19 September 2023

All that arises attains fulfillment beyond itself. That means every thing must die.

The Awareness of Mystery

19 December 2022

We live and die within the matrix of mystery that gives existence to all Being. The awareness of mystery humbles us and opens us to discover ourselves and our relationship to existence.

Truth

13 December 2022

Truth is in a leaf, a sunset, a smile, a word. We have to be in the right place within to appreciate it; the truth doesn’t come and go; it is only the quality of our attention that is inconsistent.

The Self is a Vehicle in Which We Travel

05 December 2022

The self is the vehicle in which we travel and potentially realize ourselves in a single lifetime. Its mystery originates from the same source as the Ultimate Mystery. We are like shards of sunlight appearing through the window, not the Sun itself. We are golden but not gold. Yet we may manifest the golden sunlight beams of healing and enlightenment for we are more than we know.

Fear of Losing Our Freedom

28 November 2022

When we subordinate the sacred to the demands of egotism we struggle to exist, either by denying the truth or by compromising with it. We will not let ourselves go for fear of losing our freedom.

Simplicity Opens Us Up

21 November 2022

Simplicity opens us up to the present, to the singular nature of attention, to what is happening in this moment.

When We Change...

14 November 2022

When we change, we only notice that we have changed after the event: the change itself happens without our knowing.

Healing Our Original Wound

07 November 2022

The healing of our original wound is the single most important event in personal work because it leads to wholeness.

The Mind and The Heart

02 November 2022

The mind is always defeated until it is brought into the service of the heart.

Progress in the World

24 October 2022

Progress in the outer world is achieved through restlessness, striving and activity, but inner ‘progress’ is born out of patience and deepening.

Dropping Concepts

17 October 2022

When we drop concepts, the world becomes unnamable and we are struck by its intense, vivid beauty.

Labelling and Judging

10 October 2022

Labeling, like judging, deadens our experience. We are less afraid of a world that we can label, but our security is bought dearly. The most certain way to drain the mystery out of a thing is to label it.

Always Beginning

03 October 2022

Always beginning – never experts, we are willing to enter each moment with the very minimum of inner baggage until, without distraction, we enter the moment in which our essence shines beyond the murky reflections of thoughts and projected images – where we simply are.

Acquired Knowledge and Intuitive Knowing

12 September 2022

We must distinguish between acquired knowledge and intuitive knowing. Acquired knowledge goes through a process of inner selection whereby we reject it or make it our own, depending on its inner validity, relevance to us. Intuitive knowing is a part of us that has been illuminated though experience or inner exploration. It is part of the unchanging aspect of our deeper selves.

Unchangeable Truth

05 September 2022

Deeply within us, beyond mere appearance, is a marrow of unchangeable truth composed of the unchangeable pure states of wisdom and love.

The Truth is a Mystery

13 June 2022

The truth is a mystery and what can be spoken of only indicates the ultimate reality and is no substitute for it.

Being Attracted by Truth

06 June 2022

It is enough to be attracted by truth; belief is not necessary. As we hold ideas of truth in our hearts either they fade or an inner certainty arises. Truth never coerces, it just visits and stays if we want it to.

Living With the Mystery of Life

23 May 2022

We should not seek to dominate the unconscious, simply because we are afraid of what we don’t know. Far deeper than the translation of unconscious messages into consciousness is the mystery of life that is, and always remains, in the eternal unconscious. We must learn to live and be comfortable with this mystery.

The Contents of the Unconscious

16 May 2022

The contents of the unconscious are always striving towards consciousness.

The Mother of All Things

09 May 2022

The unknown is the matrix of manifestation, what the Tao Te Ching calls, ‘The Mother of all Things.’ It is the very context of life, of existence in all its forms… and formlessness.

Our Deep Desire to Know Who We Truly Are

02 May 2022

We deeply desire to know who we truly are. Our longing to discover ourselves is synonymous with our desire for happiness and our search for love.

Precious Opportunities for Understanding

25 April 2022

When we accept life’s lessons openly and willingly, we discover precious opportunities for understanding through grace and stepping stones to enlightened action.

Every Experience is a Gift

18 April 2022

Every experience is a gift that deepens our understanding and invites our open relationship to what is real.

There Must Be More to Life

11 April 2022

Whether this is your first step in personal growth or you are a seasoned student of inner work, you have felt at some time in your life that, behind the appearances, there must be more to life

Deepening Self-Acceptance

04 April 2022

As we deepen in self-acceptance something extraordinary begins to happen. Our inner acceptance reflects into the outer world and leads to a deepening surrender to how things are.

No Giving or Receiving

28 March 2022

When separation no longer exists there is no giving or receiving.

The Way We Receive

21 March 2022

The way we receive depends on how strongly we are attached to our ego. The looser the hold, the easier it is for us to receive; the tighter the hold, the harder it is for us to receive. It is a kind of immediate karma.

Modern Western Society

14 March 2022

Modern western society does not acknowledge our need for entry points and transitional stages in life, so outward rituals are not passed down to us through wise traditions. Instead, rites of passage arise insistently out of the unconscious mind. They appear in dreams and invite us to live them out in waking life. When we accept their invitation, we are enriched. We pass through a threshold of development by ritualizing the inner images which signify the depth and changes in our inner world

The Ordinary and Extraordinary World

07 March 2022

The ordinary world is also the extraordinary one. We are surrounded by significance, meaning and depth. When we can feel a deep sense of reverence, of wonder, of the miraculous then the extraordinary becomes commonplace. We are steeped in ritual. Each moment can be an opportunity for experiences that deepen and connect us to our inner and outer realities and initiate us into the mysteries of life.

The Stages in a Human Life

28 February 2022

Responding to the stages in a human life with conscious awareness is truly a wonderful gift. Appreciating the miraculous ability we have to witness and reflect on our lives, we can live fully and naturally, openly and authentically. Our lives may become a journey of purification in order that natural wisdom flowers in our hearts.

Living From Our Wholeness

10 January 2022

Living from our wholeness is only possible when we have become self-referring and no longer need to project hidden aspects of ourselves onto other people. When we see that no one stands above us or has responsibility for us, we become our own authority. No longer can we blame others for our shortcomings or our failures and likewise no one else may take the credit for our virtues and successes. Our challenge is to find the courage to stand alone, as we truly are, and face life. This is the psychological condition of true adulthood.

No Upper Age Limit to Self-Enquiry

03 January 2022

There seems to be no upper age-limit to self-enquiry. The results of inner work have little relationship to time. People in their seventies or eighties have a different sense of time to younger people. Each moment is precious to them. Whether it is a gift of biology or the tendency of certain personalities, older people who come to therapy tend to be deeply enquiring and open. They bring a quality of mature respect to the process of healing and discovery.

Kick Starting the Inner Search

27 December 2021

Most of us need to experience a certain level of disenchantment and frustration with life before we are motivated to turn inwards. Disappointment, disillusionment and dissatisfaction are needed to kick-start the inner search.

The Quandary of All Therapists

20 December 2021

The quandary of all therapists is when and how to act – when action is necessary and when to leave matters alone. The client’s innate healing ability and inner knowing is more important than the therapist’s intrusion.

Wise Therapists

13 December 2021

Therapists should never rely on the assumptions of human psychology or limiting models of human conditions. Wise therapists do not meet us primarily as clients, but as fellow human beings who are open and receptive and able to practice deep attentiveness and listening.

Everyone Needs Help

06 December 2021

There is a saying from Eastern wisdom: ‘Only one in ten thousand can awake alone.’ The number, of course, is abstract. It simply means that everyone needs help.

Ego is a Pretender

29 November 2021

Ego is a pretender: it acts boldly when it is not clearly witnessed but when exposed to scrutiny it retires and recoils. It is the shadowy, suspicious and indirect energy behind our self-aggrandizement. In the light of our awareness we see that it possesses no substance.

All Therapy

22 November 2021

All therapy is self-therapy; no one else can do it for you.

Appreciation of the Invisible

15 November 2021

Our appreciation of the in-visible sets us apart from the world of purely material things and events. Mapping the terrain of the inner landscape is a specialist task that does not bow to philosophy and theories, but only to direct experience. We cannot over-emphasize the power of the in-visible. The great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, ‘It is not outside, it is inside; wholly within.’

The Great Challenge of a Human Life

25 October 2021

The great challenge of a human life is to discover all that is within the human heart.

The Creativity of the Inner Life of a Human Being

18 October 2021

No miracles of outward phenomena of color, form, time, space, sound or vision in the outer world can match the awesome potential for creativity in the inner life of a human being.

Aligned with Our True Centre

11 October 2021

When we are aligned with our true centre, being radiates out into action. Action that is transformed by being is effortless because it has no goal beyond the present moment. Like children, we are totally immersed in what we are doing, like sages we find wisdom and heart in all our activities.

The In-Visible World of Children

04 October 2021

Some of us can remember being absorbed in the in-visible world as children. Throughout adolescence and adulthood, we have not completely lost it. We see the in-visible things that others have become cynical about or deny, and consider them precious.

Frozen Areas

27 September 2021

Stored emotions manifest as frozen areas, contraction, tension and stress. Our physical, mental and emotional ‘bodies’ are three aspects of a whole. We connect with the physical body through energy, breath and bodywork; the mental body through sharing, talking and listening, and the emotional body through experiencing our emotions. Our whole body must be affected in all its three aspects for healing to occur.

Our Essence

20 September 2021

At some point in childhood we hide our essence and make an internal pact with ourselves which is crucial for our survival. We learn to please those who we depend on for the basic necessities of life and for our survival. We know instinctively that it is vital that our essence remains intact even if we never show it again.

Childhood Cannot Be Overestimated

14 September 2021

Childhood cannot be overestimated. Our seminal experiences flow in our memory like waves on the sea, forming and reforming, defining the ocean as the ocean defines them, interdependent and interconnected, but momentary and ephemeral. But many of us can not even recall our childhoods. We have obscured our memories of the painful and the intolerable, as well as of the times when we were totally immersed in experience, with layers of forgetfulness. Inevitably we all experienced what the Native American Indian, Chief Seattle called, ‘the end of living, and the beginning of survival’.

The Past and the Present

06 September 2021

The past is simply a projection of the present. We may find useful reference points for the personality through memory, but the solutions to our problems are not in the past, but in the place where healing occurs – the present.

Peace and Understanding

31 August 2021

Peace follows understanding and understanding others comes from the deep understanding of ourselves. While we resist our own darkness, darkness will be projected out into the world.

The Unrealized Qualities of Maleness

23 August 2021

If more men found their way to inner work the wonderful and unrealized qualities of maleness could be developed to full potential. In the contemporary world the profound inner gifts of man are unrecognized and eclipsed by competitiveness and latent insecurity – the drive to achieve.

Overcoming Our Fear of the Unknown

16 August 2021

Overcoming our fear of the unknown to be all we are, to be true to our innermost being is crucial and natural: it connects us with Nature and the rest of existence. If more people woke up to their real selves, the quality of our lives would change. It is both personally and globally vital.

Overcoming Our Fear of the Unknown

09 August 2021

Overcoming our fear of the unknown to be all we are, to be true to our innermost being is crucial and natural: it connects us with Nature and the rest of existence. If more people woke up to their real selves, the quality of our lives would change. It is both personally and globally vital.

How We Conceal Our Authentic Selves

02 August 2021

Men and women have grown away from their true natures. We don’t even know what is natural anymore. Out of touch with our feelings, ignorant of what really motivates us, indecisive, unable to think for ourselves, many of us have become our own worst enemies. Unable to truly love ourselves, unable to befriend ourselves, a long way away from knowing ourselves and unwilling to find ourselves, we bow to the fear of our inner darkness which conceals our authentic selves.

Men Behaving like Children

26 July 2021

Women desire male qualities in their partners and they are dissatisfied and disillusionment with their men behaving like children. The needy, immature and jealous behavior of many men shows how they are stuck in infantile behavior through stilted psychological growth. Boyish men seek to pass off infantilism as acceptable behavior. Many of us – both men and women – have not grown up psychologically, because many issues in our past need to be resolved.

Disempowerment

19 July 2021

Disempowerment has become a disease of epidemic proportions. We have become little people. We are afraid to know or ask for what we truly want or to be who we really are.

Flawed Self Image

12 July 2021

Personal therapy shows us that we are more powerful and more wonderful than we ever imagined. Almost everyone’s self-image is flawed in this respect. We are not little people: we are infinitely more than we hope or fear we can be.

A Massive Act of Disloyalty to the Past

05 July 2021

Therapy is a massive act of disloyalty to the past. Sharing private confidences with a therapist, we may feel that we are betraying our parents, siblings, spouses and friends. But with acknowledgement and support from people who we respect we can succeed in a correspondingly strong act of loyalty to ourselves.

The Smaller Questions

28 June 2021

Our individual lives have infinite potential, but not infinite effect. How many relationships are enough? How much money is enough? How many years of life are enough? Often it is important to ask and answer the smaller questions.

Empowering and Guiding Children to find Freedom Within Themselves

21 June 2021

Libertarian ideals may point to the destination, but they do not necessarily tell us how to get there. Wanting our children to be free cannot be achieved by giving them freedom. Children need to be empowered and guided to find their own freedom within themselves.

Relationships and Growth

14 June 2021

Relationships have the potential to take us to the very edges of our personalities and uncover the hidden aspects of ourselves that we hoped no one would ever see. Relationships insist that we grow, open our hearts and become authentic.

Relationships and Unresolved Issues of Early Childhood

07 June 2021

Love relationships have the power to re-stimulate the unresolved issues of our early childhoods. Since most of us didn’t get all we needed or wanted in our early lives, these same needs and desires arise in our relationships and are often expressed inappropriately.

Listening

31 May 2021

Listening validates, acknowledges, recognizes and assures us that there are others in the world that care enough to be interested in what we have to say, what is important to us and who we truly are. In deep friendship, therapeutic alliance and creating community, listening is one of the most important gifts that we can receive and give.

Separateness

24 May 2021

When you fall into separateness, you fall out of love with the world and you desire to have power ‘over’.

Doing and Being

17 May 2021

Most of us are orientated to doing than to being. Doing naturally proceeds from being, but when this profoundly natural relationship is disrupted we become ungrounded and unable to truly relate to our actions.

Awareness

10 May 2021

Awareness requires our willingness to be with what is happening in the present moment, openly and without judging. It is harder than we may think. We become easily distracted, lose ourselves and our focus, and then return to ourselves, time and time again. But, with practice and good intent, we can become more skillful at it.

Real Knowledge and True Understanding

03 May 2021

Real knowledge and true understanding are potential in us all. Purely intellectual knowledge, unsupported by authentic insight, is merely an acquisition. Like a paper flower, it may look pretty but it doesn’t posses any real beauty.

Psychotherapy as a Means of Contact

26 April 2021

For many people, psychotherapy is the means of contact with a wise elder, a spiritual teacher, a shaman, a seer, a sensitive, or simply a real human being.

Therapists

19 April 2021

A therapist who is not attached to being a therapist is a sign of wisdom and maturity. A therapist who is identified with his role will need clients and will insist unconsciously that the person who comes to see them remains confused and dependent.

Good Therapy

12 April 2021

Good therapy always directs us inward to our own center, never outward to an external center. You don’t have to fit into any of the available holes; your peg is a unique shape.

Committed Intention

05 April 2021

Through the slow drip of committed intention, we learn from our failures and deepen in our practice. It is not a question of how much we offer, but of how deeply we offer it. An enlightened master once told me, ‘My life changed when I made a commitment to meditate for five minutes a day.’ Just five minutes, but he meant it.

Resentment

30 March 2021

Resentment is the raw material that grows negative character.

Nurturing Guilt

22 March 2021

Nurturing guilt is based on the belief that mothers feel that they can never do enough. Women have learnt this particularly from the male-oriented world and professionals who presume the right to pronounce judgment on mothering instincts and skills.

Our Shadow

15 March 2021

Our shadow – that which we dislike in ourselves – yields the problematic issues we explore in inner work. It is both the barrier and the means to self-acceptance and self-love.

Crisis is Not Always Personal

08 March 2021

Crisis is not always personal, it may be spiritual. When it is, the veil between ourselves and others turns out to be surprisingly thin. Sometimes entirely unbidden and with no personal preparation, we are plunged into an awareness of our interconnectedness and experience a spontaneous ‘awakening’.

Personality

01 March 2021

Personality is a thin layer around the soul. It is how we appear, to ourselves and others – not who we are.

Our True Nature

22 February 2021

What I really am, and what you really are, is all and everything. All and everything cannot describe itself, because to do so it would have to separate itself from what it is. What we really are can only be expressed through pure unselfconscious being and this is what is meant by the True Self which is our true nature. The inner journey takes us on a spiral around our True Self. Like the sun, we cannot look directly at it and we cannot get too close to it, but nonetheless it is there and the individual ‘I’ and the eternal ‘I’ would not be here without it. Each complete circle of the spiral brings us closer to the outer edges of our small sense of self. After some turns around the spiral we need journey no more; we have arrived at the border of timeless space and being; we have reached the eternal ‘I’. As the ancient Indian rishis would say, the river has remembered and returned to the ocean.

The Divine Soul and Self

15 February 2021

We can no more separate the developing self from the transcendent one than we can separate the stem from the flower, because each is an integral part of the whole. Not only is our soul divine, but so is our self.

Psycho-Spiritual Development

08 February 2021

Psycho-spiritual development involves a process of unfolding whereby a healthy strong ego may be developed out of attending to the raw material of conditioned upbringing, creating a robust vehicle for our soulful qualities and offered in spiritual surrender as and when we are ready to lessen our attachments to the material world.

Surrender to a Process of Discovery

01 February 2021

When we truly ask ourselves who we really are, we surrender to a process of discovery which ultimately returns us to the source of our being.

Returning to the Source of Our Being

25 January 2021

When we truly ask ourselves who we really are, we surrender to a process of discovery which ultimately returns us to the source of our being.

Deeper Change

19 January 2021

Change may be brought about through an act of will, through effort, but behind that kind of change lies a deeper one in which we sense the flow of change through all things and learn to surrender to it through the deep acceptance of how things are.

The Inner Revolution of the Seventies

13 January 2021

The inner revolution of the 1970s growth movement heralded a noble impulse towards growth and change but its golden promise was never fulfilled. Now it is an almost forgotten path. But for those who it truly touched, life changed irrevocably and, like the useless tree, the spirit lives on. Despite the watering down of therapy, the authentic fire still burns and is, perhaps, wisely hidden. It is still worth looking for, because it burns within us. If we can find that fire, we will discover it offers a blazing path to fulfillment.

The Useless Tree

04 January 2021

An ancient Taoist story tells of the useless tree – a big old tree full of knots and so distorted that a straight plank cannot be made from it, the branches so crooked that they cannot be put to any practical use. The useless tree is ignored while other trees are cut down for their usefulness. But it is precisely because it is useless that it survives and people come to rest in its shade. The useless tree is likened to the Tao – the primordial reality, the source of all things. Genuine self-discovery has become like the useless tree of the Tao – the genuine article which no one has any use for: no one wants it and it is therefore left alone. But we can still rest in its shade.

Therapy

28 December 2020

Today, therapy has once again become almost exclusively associated with mental illness in the popular mind. Therapy now suffers from the very conditions it aspires to heal. The limitations of anxiety, guilt, disempowerment and lack of self worth have rebounded on the instrument of humanity’s liberation from its ills. The healer has become the sufferer.

Being

21 December 2020

Being precedes doing, having, feeling or experiencing; it is the foundation of our individual and collective consciousness, the spark before the flame, the inspiration before the art, the dream before the act of creation. When we have tasted it in its purity, we have an anchor, an irrefutable place of reference which is unfathomably wise, expansive and compassionate. We come, as the ancients have advised us to do repeatedly, to know ourselves.

Self Reflection

14 December 2020

Self reflection is the unique and distinctive aspect of humanness which points the way to living our potential, fulfilling ourselves and being free. Through conscious self-exploration, awareness reflects back on us, like light hitting a mirror, and in dazzling clarity we see ourselves as we truly are, and the world as it truly is.

The Spiritual

07 December 2020

That elusive and controversial aspect of humanness known as the spiritual is best known through a developed sense of being. Being is spirit, or better put, being is how we experience spirit in consciousness. Curiously we are continually fleeing from (while insisting we are running towards) our own happiness which is a symptom of the deeply human life, the spiritual life or the life that is lived consciously out of a sense of being.

Fulfilling Ourselves as Human Beings

30 November 2020

Above all, we must want to fulfil ourselves as human beings – not to assume, not to neglect our appreciation of the miraculous and to feel grateful for our existence. From these and other insights all else will flow and dissolve the inner conflicts that bring us pain and unhappiness.

Our Potential

23 November 2020

It is the potential of every person to grow into a whole human being.

Journeying Within

16 November 2020

Journeying within requires greatness of heart, fearless spirit, a positive attitude, and the sincere intention to be honest with ourselves and open to the unknown.

Listening

09 November 2020

The ability to listen is one of the most precious human treasures. Listening validates, acknowledges, recognizes and assures us that there are others in the world that care enough to stop and be interested in what we have to say, what is important to us and who we are. In deep friendship, therapeutic alliance and creating community, listening is one of the most important gifts that we can receive and give.

Beginning to Quiet the Mind

03 November 2020

Watching, taming, beginning to quiet the mind through meditation and awareness is the cultivation of neutrality in which we can experience emotional states without reacting to them. By ‘refusing to let them take effect’ we transcend fear, anger and negativity.

The Still Centre

26 October 2020

Each of us is at the centre of the universe. On a personal level we live our lives within a spinning-top of movement and activity. We are attracted to the drama and excitement of life and, at the same time, impoverished by our reluctance to centre ourselves. The challenge is to locate and become centered in the still centre of ourselves around which the top is spinning.

Openness

20 October 2020

We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. If we are going to be open to things as they are, rather than imposing our filter on everything, then we must become ignorant of it. Openness has an ignorant quality – I don’t know you and I don’t know red – this is ignorance without a negative connotation, this is ignorance in the sense of I don’t know and I remain open and it’s more real and it’s more wise, skilful, appropriate. We deepen more when we meet the world from the point of view of ‘I don’t know’. So ignore the world, get out of the way and let it in.

The Difficulty of Being Present

12 October 2020

Most of our actions are performed without awareness because we are bound up with the outcome of what we do. Select a simple task at first, for example, sweeping the floor or preparing vegetables for cooking. Instead of projecting yourself ahead, into the future, practice self-awareness. Notice how difficult it can be to stay in the moment and how our attachment to the outcome of our actions results in our not being present.

Beneath the Mask

05 October 2020

Personality is a thin layer around the soul. It is how we appear, to ourselves as well as others, not who we are. The word persona means mask. So each one of us is wearing a mask. But what is beneath our mask? To find out – to know ourselves – is the ultimate goal of personal and spiritual psychotherapy.

The Exploration of our Psyches

28 September 2020

The exploration of our psyches is a serious business; it carries its own laws of engagement and one of them is that our attitude is paramount. When we are sincere, earnest and resolute; willing to let go of all that we ‘know’ about ourselves, then we are bound to succeed. However, when our motivation is tainted with self-aggrandizement, mental or spiritual materialism and desire, we are destined to fail – at least until therapy and inner work has revealed these hidden motivations to us.

Persona

21 September 2020

Personality is a thin layer around the soul. It is how we appear, to ourselves as well as others, not who we are. The word persona means mask. So each one of us is wearing a mask. But what is beneath our mask? To find out – to know ourselves – is the ultimate goal of personal and spiritual psychotherapy.

Listening

14 September 2020

Of the five senses, listening is a particularly receptive one. The experience of opening and receiving through our ears can open our hearts. For many people it is the sound of beautiful, transcendent music that changes their lives forever – often one day in childhood or adolescence. In these stages of life we are particularly susceptible to sound and still strongly connected to our souls through the senses. Music, spoken words, the sounds of nature or the sounds of machines all communicate something to our hearts.

The Still Centre

07 September 2020

Each of us is at the centre of the universe. On a personal level we live our lives within a spinning-top of movement and activity. We are attracted to the drama and excitement of life and, at the same time, impoverished by our reluctance to centre ourselves. The challenge is to locate and become centered in the still centre of ourselves around which the top is spinning.

The Way of Devotion

31 August 2020

Only the Truth-Reality-Divine satisfies the Heart, the Soul, and the Spirit. But you must surrender wholly. Half-surrender, glancing acquaintanceship with spirituality, good intentions, vague cravings, and listless application are not enough. You hear about this a lot. Seekers struggle in their spiritual practice, strive to establish spiritual discipline, desire spiritual attainment, but are reluctant to pay the price. If you are one of them, you should relax. Your ego has engaged in the spiritual process and you will suffer a perpetual stalemate. Nothing will ever happen for you truly spiritually. You will simply suffer under the pretence of being on a spiritual journey. But it’s all nonsense. Your ego has engaged in spirituality, which is a contradiction, rather like saying a bird flies underwater or you can hear the sound of your dinner; it doesn’t make any sense. It is not real. There is only strictly one way out of this predicament and the way is devotion.

How Do You See Me?

24 August 2020

Rather than blame, justify, apportion guilt, appeal to fairness, vengeance, responsibility, criticize, judge, or feel bitter, one thing – and it is the hardest of all – that would help is to ask someone, who is or has been in a close relationship with you: What is it like honestly to be with me? How do they see you, what are your sticking points? How do you make them feel, honestly? The other’s awareness of you will in principle fill in all the gaps. This is such a simple exercise, yet so impractical. It presupposes the other’s awareness, openness, and willingness to reveal and share all they know about you. How rare it is to meet a person who possesses these qualities. Awareness of another person might seem to be easier to achieve than awareness of yourself, but really it is the same. It is just that the other embodies and reflects back to us the shadow, or all we don’t want to know about ourselves.

Projection in Relationships

17 August 2020

We disavow our beauty by being habitually attracted to beautiful partners. We renounce our own aggression when we are in relationship with an angry partner. We reject our creativity and abilities by being in relationship with someone who shines with artistic accomplishment and talent.

Creating Heros and Villains

10 August 2020

While the darkness of unconscious repression, forbidden thoughts and fears, repressed emotions, anger and bitterness remains in the majority of humanity, we will persist in creating heroes and villains. The only way out of the contemporary, amoral, violent and un-sacred world is for us to take up inner work, either psychological, spiritual, or both, to relieve ourselves of our unhappiness.

The Only Thing to Depend On

03 August 2020

Now since Truth is timeless, deathless, and Absolute, you may depend on it absolutely! In fact it is the only thing which we can depend on.

Oneness

27 July 2020

This is the distinguishing, the supreme experience and insight of second stage awakening: all you meet is yourself; the universe and you are the same…

Limitations to Compassion

20 July 2020

People participate in life through different levels of awareness or consciousness and… the collective level of human awareness is currently within the first three levels. Remember, these levels span the animalistic concerns for survival, the biological layers of human experience, like family ties and interdependent relationships, and the further sophistication of relating to oneself and the impulse toward the quest for truth. Within these first three levels, compassion is subject to the limitations of the conditions of those levels.

The Eyes of Love

13 July 2020

Any act of prejudice, bigotry, and judgment is an act of murder. We kill people every day, dismissing them, judging them, serving out disdain and derision. But when the heart opens, we put the sword back in the sheath. The heart tells us to do that, because the heart enables us to see through the eyes of love, acceptance, kindness, and compassion.

Extensions of the Childhood Ego

06 July 2020

In the second stage the lesson is more subtle, but also more pointed. You have now cut through the roots of your ego traits at the source, which is the childhood and early years. Now you have the refinements of the “adult” ego to deal with, but since they are now in a sense rootless, your attachment to them is less strong. Nonetheless, a powerful focus and intensity is required to defeat these attenuated extensions of the childhood ego. You are almost certain to meet the subject of your worst nightmares, the very person in the manifestation you least want to deal with.

The Hundredth Rope

29 June 2020

Here at the void, when you are getting closer to the threshold, there are three things to remember, three encouragements I have for you. First, you must clear away all past forms: memories, attachments, childhood conditioning, family identities, all this. St John of the Cross said if you are tied down by one hundred ropes and ninety-nine are released you are still tied down. This is your opportunity to release the hundredth rope and be free.

The Threshold of Transformation

22 June 2020

What I have come to call the Threshold of Transformation is little understood, less spoken about, and often doubted. The threshold is reached when you come to the end of your personal work. Both psychotherapeutic and spiritual viewpoints will challenge the existence of the threshold. Psychotherapists may question it cynically, because it puts therapists out of business (since their view of growth and development is bounded by ego-expansion). Spiritual teachers and practitioners, because they will consider the crossing of this threshold a spiritual event, which it isn’t. Everybody else, because he or she has no idea what we’re talking about since there are few people who can model the threshold and its fruits for us.

The Transparent Heart

15 June 2020

The transparent heart arises out of the fire of personal healing, when you have dealt with your early life issues of dependency, orality, betrayal, abandonment, punishment, and so on. Only then may you engage in the profound practices that allow you, the human-divine blessing, to act as a clear conduit for Divine love. In the meantime, the petty ego finds excuses and justifications, complains and barters in an attempt to outwit the Divine and add to itself through self-aggrandizement.

Secrets of the Unconscious

09 June 2020

Receiving communications from the unconscious brings with it a great responsibility. If you are hearing someone’s deep unconscious thought, receiving their emotional-energetic forms, what can you do legitimately and morally with it? You may know things that this person does not even know themselves, or at least does not know that they don’t want to know.

Fortuitous Teaching Events

01 June 2020

Sacred attention is marked by an enlightened spontaneity. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is expected, almost anything may happen. Something of the invitation of the two participants’ energy in this, the yielding to surrender, results in wonderful occurrences and fortuitous teaching events. For example, the bird that came to the window between our chairs that was just like the one in my friend’s dream of the night before, the moth that flew into the table light and “told” my client opposite me that the word “moth” in her dream symbolized mother, the woman who I assured was completely safe as she worked on the violation of childhood boundaries, including her father’s habit of storming into her room at night, when the door of the therapy room flew open and an electrician appeared with garish orange uniform and gigantic tool box, the man working on his anger about disturbances when a council worker with a road drill opened up on the pavement outside, so that we couldn’t hear each other talk.

Inner States

18 May 2020

For as inner states, conditions, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and energies are expressed in the outer world, they die…

What is Described and What is Real

11 May 2020

My little daughter asked a question at the dinner table the other day. It was one of those wise questions bathed in innocence that seemed divinely profound and reminiscent of the dictum, “out of the mouths of babes.” She asked, “How was Spain made?” Now this is a profound question, isn’t it? While I was reeling from the ramifications of this insightful enquiry, my wife began a geological account of Spain’s origins. Of course there was the cultural, political, historical, religious, economic, prehistoric, and evolutionary ways of approaching the question too. But all these modes of explanation only seemed to emphasize the fact that no real answer exists. No amount of words necessarily means that what is being described is real.

Letting Go and... not Letting Go

04 May 2020

Letting go means releasing, dropping, freeing yourself. It could refer to anything. But in the aftermath of the humanistic psychotherapy and western spiritual movement it has come to mean that since we are attached to certain phenomena and these attachments limit us, by releasing and letting go of our attachments, we can liberate ourselves from their limiting effects. For example, if you feel jealousy, you suffer, so letting go of jealousy is positive. If you feel vengeful, you suffer, so letting go of vengeance and anger, you feel happier, and so on. Other positive conditional states like contentment, pleasure, and positivity are considered good… and therefore you don’t need to let go of them!

Seeking is Entirely Egoistic

27 April 2020

In my explanation of the human condition, seeking is applicable in the psychological stage that is in the first and the beginning of the second stages of awakening. However, it has no place whatsoever in the later stages of the second stage of awakening and the third stage. Advanced spiritual teachings tell us that seeking must be dropped altogether and this is right, but only when applied to the prepared spiritual student or inner traveler. The preparation itself requires allowing all the egoistic tendencies, and particularly seeking, to arise and be played out, to grow and be absorbed in the futility of the ego tendencies over time. This is an essential part of the spiritual preparation that is involved in the aspirant's provision for authentic spiritual practice and sacred life. But seeking has to be transcended because it is of mind. Thought is the instrument of the ego in the first stage of awakening, so seeking is entirely egoistic. Whatever goal you are seeking, your ego is caught up in it for its own self-satisfaction and aggrandizement.

A Reality Beyond Life and Death

22 April 2020

Actually my experiences were many. My first spiritual teacher leading a young boy mindfully, tenderly, and incredibly gently around the flower-bordered walkways of a beautiful park; the gasho and aware eyes of a guru as he took in and communicated wordlessly to his devotees; the sacred stillness that was so powerful that it precluded anticipation at the beginning of endless personal growth groups with my therapist and others; the sight of an aware devotee mindfully preparing food; a Zen monk softly padding to the altar in his stockinged feet at the closing ceremony in the zendo. All these blessed, precious visions of great peace and stillness, profound in their inner contentment, resounding with truth, and bright with veracity, reflected a reality beyond life and death.

Spiritual Wisdom and Sacred Culture

13 April 2020

Only a human society rooted in real spiritual wisdom and insight can create a sacred culture, where people behave with mutual respect, belonging, and compassion, a global society with love and devotion as a practical, viable basis for action, responsibility… and relationship.

Commitment to Spiritual Discipline

06 April 2020

At some point you commit yourself to a single spiritual discipline – and let it be the one that is directed by your heart, because the quality of your relationship to that path is the most important and crucial issue about it. Whether it is better than others is irrelevant; whether it is the path of your heart is the only consideration.

The Intuition of Eternity

31 March 2020

An important moment comes in the life of a spiritual seeker when, like Buddha, you see that all is suffering. Most people do not understand this. Most people are living foolishly, because they are living exclusively within the changing circumstances of life and they have no intuition of eternity. But a higher faculty of awareness and mind can propel you into a different space and time continuum, where you experience – not just understand or have insight into – the truth that there is one single instance, a concertinaed moment in time and that moment is in a quantum dimensional shift. Suddenly, instantly, you are in every moment of your life simultaneously. Everywhere everything is going on. This is such a shock to the usual points of reference in your life that you are unable to handle it. Most reject it after only seconds, to establish themselves back in the world as they know it. But the world as they know it is not the real world. This is the world of illusion and our so-called relationship or separation out of identification and division is really the arising of conflict or survival or lower chakra, dog-eat-dog concerns.

The Price of Liberation is Yourself

23 March 2020

Spiritual practice is not merely challenging or hard, it is appallingly confronting of everything in you that you hold dear and in time, if you see it through, if you are genuine and serious, it brings you to liberation, transcendence, and divinity. Through a serious commitment to spiritual practice you yourself are forfeit, you yourself are not an object of aggrandizement anymore. The price of the liberation and the transcendence is yourself, because the belief in yourself as a separate entity is healed in you. Through sincere spiritual practice, the sense of identity or ego-self goes full circle. You are no longer separate from existence, you are merely a drop of water temporarily separated from the flowing river, suspended for a moment in midair before it falls back into the raging torrent and dissolves into the river on its way to the sea.

Spiritual Practice with Chocolate Sprinkles

16 March 2020

Spiritual practice has been embraced and saccharine-covered with cream and chocolate sprinkles today. People speak of beauty and peace and love as if these were the signs of an authentic deep spiritual practice. As anyone who has seriously engaged with spiritual practice will know it is nothing like that. It is a sacrificial fire, a burning ground, a burial site where you walk over the bones of your old self, your deeply held beliefs, and fantasies of certainty and security and watch as they rot into the earth and you cry and you rage and call out for mercy, sympathy, anything… as the pain of selfhood and attachments appears to cling to you like an old skin being slowly peeled off you by the Divine.

The Difference between The Beauty and The Truth

09 March 2020

Today many people think they are interested in the spiritual, but they are not. They are interested in caring or sentiment or beautiful ideas or the romance of sadhana or spiritual practice or an idealized thought of enlightenment. There is nothing as insidious and damaging to spirituality than a false image of spirituality that obscures the authentic reality. The Walt Disney version, the Deepak Chopra version, the Oprah Winfrey version…. false prophets and inauthentic teachers abound, because the difference between the beauty, the art and the reality, the truth is indistinguishable to most people.

Making Us More

02 March 2020

Any specialization within healing and teaching of human development needs to be less short-sighted and instead deeply aware of the apparently endless capacity that human beings possess for deepening in courage, love, wisdom, and compassion. No longer is it about making us better; it is about making us more.

An Age of Love and Divine Radiance

24 February 2020

What I offer is not for everyone. It is likely that within my lifetime it will remain the gift of the few, but I maintain that whether in my words or someone else’s, something of what we will discuss in this book [Your Divine Opportunity] will be the way in which humankind and the whole of existence over time emerges out of a natural cycle from the present times of darkness, into another magnificent age of love and divine radiance.

Fear as Reaction

17 February 2020

We possess fear as if it were a fact of life, whereas it is really a reaction to life. If we can be responsive to life rather than reactive, then the heart can bloom, expand, and flower. Our heart is taken captive by fear, because the heart hardens and weakens under its self-contraction, and this is actually what characterizes the state of collective humanity in the modern era.

Today

10 February 2020

Today we have smooth speaking spiritual teachers and celebrities, devoid of wisdom, deceiving their adherents; material wealth in the hands of the greedy few; parents and political leaders having no knowledge of how to care compassionately in an often loveless world, and the diminishing desire for authenticity and soulful existence, obfuscated by the boulder of materialism, achievement, and egoistic pursuits.

A Psychological Foundation for Spiritual Endeavor

03 February 2020

When you cannot genuinely feel and be present in your life, when you are unable to engage with the world through your soul senses, and when you cannot maintain a suitable tension in your psycho-physical organism to adapt appropriately to the present conditions of life, you are ungrounded. Your psychological foundation is thus too weak to sustain genuine spiritual endeavor.

The Psycho-Spiritual Endeavour

27 January 2020

You cannot possibly know what is best for you. There are so many different beings inside you it can be impossible to tell how far you are even being consistent. You have to surrender, you have to let go, and you have to allow to get anywhere in the psycho-spiritual endeavour.

You and I are One

20 January 2020

You and I are one. You are one with everything else. There are no separate things and no separation, only temporary arising forms of Consciousness.

The Innate Condition of a Human Being

14 January 2020

The great wisdom and sanity of sitting still in grace and contentment, without seeking, represents and expresses the innate condition of a human being, the ultimate demonstration of insight and understanding.

Fear Becomes a Friend

06 January 2020

To the committed inner seeker fear becomes a friend, even an ally. Always demonstrating where we restrict our growth, fear leads us on. This is the dual nature of fear

To Be Present

30 December 2019

To be present, spontaneous and open, wholly in each moment and participating totally in life, is to be fully alive. The flower doesn't know what it will become when it is a seed, a tiny shoot, or a stem. There is no certainty, only existence, relationship and experience. When we commit ourselves to life and its unfolding, we are sure to be in the process of becoming ourselves.

Nothing Matters

23 December 2019

One of the deepest spiritual truths, and one of the most challenging and liberating, is that nothing matters. Nothing matters because everything is Love and we fulfil that by allowing love through us. Nothing matters is the reflection of everything matters: you cannot have one without the other. There is no creator and no creation, just dancing with Life without judgement, in pure awareness.

The Flow of Truth, Compassion and Oneness

16 December 2019

All life is sacred and it is only the clinging to the small separate self that distances us from anybody, or anything, else. Sometimes the unexpected occurs and, if we can leave the self on the sidelines, truth, compassion and oneness with all life simply flow within us.

Love the Whole World

09 December 2019

If you have a preference and if you live within the limitation of that preference and do not aspire beyond it, then you are in that place where, ‘I see the world as I am.’ Yet your true heart is not going to be satisfied with anything less than everything, until you ask yourself, ‘How can I love whatever is before me?’ How do you get to the place where you could really love the whole world, love everything, love Life in all of its forms? Love offers everything and withholds nothing.

Clinging to the World of Duality

02 December 2019

You cannot realize your wholeness while clinging to the world of duality, where everything has an opposite. This creates imbalance and you veer off the spiritual path. Clinging shows itself in your greed, your lust, your intellectual views, your material attainment, your need to be special – the list is endless.

"Trying to be Good"

25 November 2019

'Trying' to be good contains a contradiction. We do not have to try to be what we already are. We put a lot of work into our façades and most of us have very well constructed ones. Consider how much of your energy goes into supporting your image and making an impression on other people. Consider why you spend so much energy trying to bolster your sense of worth, pleasing others, and maintaining your habit of outward orientation.

The Spiritual Adult II

18 November 2019

As we pass through the stages of spiritual life – from child to adult, from adult to Self-realization – there are particular needs. For the child, the needs are emotional and physical nourishment, containment and safety, intimacy and acknowledgement, and, most of all, love. For the adult, the needs are empowerment and ability, the maturation of emotional and physical needs, expansion and will, and, most of all, living a unique life fully. For the spiritual adult, the needs are courage, wisdom, love, and compassion.

The Spiritual Adult I

11 November 2019

Psychological growth provides the foundation for spiritual development. Personal flaws are magnified, not transcended, on the spiritual journey. The child grows into an adult, but it is by no means inevitable that an adult will grow into a spiritual seeker. Becoming a spiritual adult requires putting down the things of our childhood, meeting new challenges and making new choices.

Wholeness and Freedom

04 November 2019

All endings are beginnings. All life is a returning, a meeting, a resolving and a going on. In our returning is our completion, in our completion is our wholeness, in our wholeness is our freedom.

Returning to the Source

28 October 2019

When we reach the stage of returning to the Source, we discover our bliss. We sit in being-ness and experience the ecstasy of existence. The response is devotion and it arises out of gratitude, compassion and love – the flowering of our humanness.

Forgiveness

21 October 2019

A single act of forgiveness causes a transformation of consciousness. When we falsely forgive, either to make ourselves feel better or to manipulate the other, resentment still flourishes and waits for the next offence. To forgive is to let go of the hard crust of resentment and victim-mentality, which protects and sustains the small self.

Desire

14 October 2019

There are two ways to work with the deep urges of desire in the small self. Either, we settle down to penetrate deeply to the root and sever it there, or, we follow the urges with awareness, until we have seen through the illusion of separation that they represent. We are then free to follow desire without the taint of illusion.

Seeing Things as they are

07 October 2019

We have to free ourselves from our illusory perception of the world. To see things as they really are, we have to transcend the opposites and resist our chronic tendency to criticize and judge.

The Eyes of Love

30 September 2019

When we stop selecting – dividing the lovable from the unlovable – we are faced with the whole of ourselves to love. When we love ourselves totally, we see the world through the eyes of love: we see things as they are.

Life is a Teacher

23 September 2019

Life is our great teacher. Our teacher may be inner or outer, playful or profound, apparent or hidden. Learn to recognize life’s lessons – a book, a smile, a sunset, a friend, an enemy, a saucepan, a rock, an ant – anything can teach us at any time; so be watchful!

Nowhere to Stand

16 September 2019

The insecurity of life is that there truly is nowhere to stand. But our conditioning requires us to be something, be somebody, stand somewhere, have an opinion, hold a position, to define and be defined. Nevertheless, our position is not who we truly are – it is only how we defend ourselves – and it brings us misery, limitation and loss.

Limitation of the Personal View

09 September 2019

When we stand somewhere, we are identified with a personal view to which we are attached. We are convinced that how we see it is how it is. But that is not true. How you see it is how it appears to you and how I see it is how it appears to me. We are each of us describing a part of the whole.

Enlightenment is Ordinary Life

02 September 2019

Enlightenment is ordinary life and if you hold your centre and deepen into the Self – if it has not happened to you already – one day you will be handing over a cheque at the bank and you will look into the bank clerk’s eyes and see God behind the security glass.

How Should this be Lived?

26 August 2019

As we attempt to realize Truth, we should reach down deeply into our being and connect with a living sense of what spiritual concepts represent and what they are trying to express. The question we should always keep in our awareness is, ‘How should this be lived?’

Connect Fully with Life

19 August 2019

To forget words and make life our own through spontaneity, is to connect fully with life. This is a total relationship to life with nothing held back; a life without words, concepts, models and beliefs, a life of integration without the veil of interpretation.

Stillness, Silence and Receptivity

12 August 2019

But spiritual truth is more than thought or word, feeling or experience, intellect or intuition, sensation or substance. The deepest teaching comes out of deep stillness, silence and receptivity – all characteristics of our true nature.

The Call to Ritual

05 August 2019

As we deepen in spiritual practices, it is most important that we honour our deepest impulses to perform ritual. The call to ritual is an invitation to participate in and celebrate the gifts of Life. All things are sacred. In ritual we recognize this sacredness and develop a reverence for life.

Spiritual Success

29 July 2019

Always remember that you are more important than any of your achievements and that it is a characteristic of the spiritual to challenge your attachment to your accomplishments. When the small self starts to glorify itself in the light of spiritual success, you should be cautious!

Give Yourself Time

23 July 2019

We need quiet time to centre ourselves, to attune and to focus our awareness. Love yourself enough to give yourself this time. After a while, you will be able to maintain your centre and focus in the world, without getting caught up in the whirlwind of interaction.

Beyond All Limitations

15 July 2019

Always be aware of the limitations of your spiritual practice. Whenever a spiritual method assumes the existence of limitations, you are limited by the method. The true spiritual path is beyond all limitations. The Self is already here. There is nothing to seek.

The Roots of Desire

08 July 2019

What is it that causes us to believe that something outside us will fulfil us in our inner life? What assumptions about incompleteness or inner lack support our attraction towards external things for gratification? What would satisfy us? How could we ever be satisfied?

Embracing Life

01 July 2019

This is the wisest way to handle anything that is pushing us off balance: be in the middle of it and let it reveal itself. Usually it turns out to be something other than it appears. When we embrace life we invite transformation; when we shed light we dissolve shadows – this is the way to wholeness.

The Narrow Parts between the Pairs of Opposite

24 June 2019

The spiritual journey is not a way of conflict; it is the way through conflict. It is participatory and inclusive, not adversarial and exclusive. The path that we must follow is the narrow path between the pairs of opposites. We do not need to do battle with the powers of darkness. Instead we should illuminate, with heart-felt kindness, those dark areas of ourselves.

Lead Your Own Life

17 June 2019

All things are eternal, nothing is born and nothing dies, and you must get on with the unfolding of your life. The small self is not separate from the Higher Self, since everything is divine. The small self flowers into realization in the Higher Self, so you should strengthen your resolve and make the singular decision to lead your own life.

Looking at Your Life from Another Perspective

03 June 2019

Instead of seeing your life from the point of view of your pleasure or self-importance, turn it around and ask, ‘How can the universe be fulfilled through this life? How do I manifest the Divine?’

Your Life is Important and Unique

28 May 2019

When we look with envy at somebody else’s life and wish it were our own, or when we abandon our life for some reason, what part of us considers ourselves so unimportant? Who within us is it that says the universe does not require this life to be led? What right do we have to disregard ourselves like this? Your life is as important as a field of grass; it is as important as the wind blowing, or as a bird flying; it is important and unique!

Your Life is The Path

20 May 2019

Your spiritual practice, your love of God, and the means to your full potential are perpetually present in the circumstances of your life. The key is your heart’s direction; the key is love. Sometimes the way is so obvious we cannot see it. That you must lead your own life is a truth that so often evades us – it is perhaps too obvious. You do not need to search for a path when the life you are leading is already the path. You can attain the Divine only by following your individual destiny. Your life is the path.

The Dark Night of the Soul

13 May 2019

The dark night of the soul is a way of initiation, a process through which we surrender, deepen and cleanse the soul. It is the meeting with the Divine that calls for the relinquishing of the small, separate self. It is a ceremony through which we die to all our illusions and enter into Life.

Being Totally Human

06 May 2019

Our unique worth as human beings is that we are the link between good and evil, spirit and soul, earth and heaven. What it means to be totally human is realising the potential to bring together the human and the Divine.

The Place You Never Left

29 April 2019

The deep truth is that you never left your centre and this makes the spiritual journey unique; the spiritual journey is the return to the place you never left. True centredness takes us beyond loneliness to the realisation that we are not separate, and that we have been unified in consciousness all along. The journey is not from here to there, but from here to here. You are the Axis Mundi – the centre of the world.

Still Centre

22 April 2019

Deep inside you is your still centre. The outer world spirals and spins, expands and contracts around this centre. You are the centre of the universe and everything revolves around you… All worldly action takes place around this still centre. But the centre itself is devoid of action, drama, or passion. Your centre is unity, while the outer world is multiplicity.

The Subjective State of Passion

15 April 2019

Passion is a powerful force for realisation when it can be released from objects of desire. Sometimes we can have an experience that liberates us from our normal constraints so that we experience passion as a subjective state, not as the driving hunger behind the desire for an outer object or another person. A moment can be all it takes to release us.

Divine Longing

08 April 2019

Our deep desire to return to our original nature, to realise the true Self, is known as divine longing. Divine longing is our spiritual motivation, and inherent in it is our deepest sense of belonging.

Hijacking the Spiritual

01 April 2019

The spirit does shine through you as you deepen into the Higher Self; but any attempts to hijack the qualities of the spirit for ego ends – whether subtle or overt – is thwarted. The Self is All. It can never be defeated, contained or transcended. Our small self may attempt to outdo the spiritual in futile acts of self-aggrandisement but it never succeeds.

The Generous Heart

25 March 2019

A generous heart is a reflection of the abundance of the universe. Receiving should be a gracious and humble act, because in true receiving there is also giving. True giving is a complete act with no investment in the outcome.

Inner Marriage

18 March 2019

The inner marriage is the celebration of our wholeness. It signifies the transcendence of the opposites, the reconciling of male and female within, and the integration of our spiritual nature in our consciousness.

The Opportunity of Relationships

11 March 2019

Personal relationships are a precious opportunity for spiritual growth and expansion. The unity of two consciousnesses can enable each partner to transcend their small selves because the love that we feel for another human being connects us to divine love.

Enlightened Action

04 March 2019

The expansive mind deepens into the essence of the teaching, which is always aimed at enlightenment. Inner wisdom informs enlightened action; enlightened action is acting without attachment.

Being Truly We We Are

25 February 2019

Most often our models of power are based on some form of domination. We desire to have power ‘over’ other people, but personal power is not power ‘over’ others. It is being truly who we are.

Wisdom and Knowledge

18 February 2019

Wisdom differs from knowledge: knowledge is acquired, whereas wisdom is inherent. Knowledge is of no use whatsoever on the spiritual path. It has no spiritual importance in itself; it is simply an acquisition. Wisdom, on the other hand, is our greatest treasure and an inner gift you discover in your Eternal Heart. Do not make the mistake of asking your wisdom for guidance and then ignoring it. Always respond to it, feel grateful for it and honour it.

Living Your Own Life

11 February 2019

To live your own life you need to live from your innermost core. Truth surrounds you and flows within you; truth is always here, waiting to be found. 

True Intimacy

04 February 2019

The deep human yearning for true intimacy must first be fulfilled within one-self. We can only be as intimate with another as we can be with ourselves and by deepening in self-intimacy, we make it possible to invite the intimacy of another. The distance between ourselves and another is always the unfinished business we have with ourselves.

Synchronicity

28 January 2019

As we ally ourselves with unity and surrender - the process of awakening to the Divine - we increasingly notice the oneness of all things. Nothing should be assumed to be meaningless or insignificant, because everything is connected and divine.

Dancing with Life

21 January 2019

You must 'dance' with life, but if your cheek is too tightly up against life, you might be out of relationship with it altogether. Too close or too far - either disturbs the delicate boundary, which enables true meeting. Withdraw when you need to, meet when you need to - let your relationship with life be like the rhythmic beat of your heart.

Being Fully Alive

14 January 2019

To be present, spontaneous and open, wholly in each moment and participating totally in life, is to be fully alive. The flower doesn't know what it will become when it is a seed, a tiny shoot, or a stem. There is no certainty, only existence, relationship and experience. When we commit ourselves to life and its unfolding, we are sure to be in the process of becoming ourselves.

Consciousness

07 January 2019

Reality is Unity, Oneness. All is Consciousness alone… there is nothing more, nothing else and nothing that stands aside, next to and other than; nothing that withstands or conflicts with Consciousness. Consciousness is another word for God.

The True Nature of a Human Being

31 December 2018

There are no words to describe the true nature of a human being. Ultimately it is wordless. It is in the silence between the words, in the space between the breaths, in the mystery that pervades all things. It is the source of all arising forms, the play of consciousness. It is the inner emptiness, the matrix of creativity, restlessness and peace, which fills your core, which inhabits your soul, which waters your spirit, which gives rise to this miracle of life.

Life as a Blessing

10 December 2018

Live your life as a blessing, not just as a thought of a blessing, but feeling in you blessed, fortunate, divinely lit, rich with beauty and wisdom and peace.

Intimations of The Truth.

03 December 2018

My spiritual teachers, the spiritual teachings I have encountered and have been drawn to, are intimations of the truth, holes on the rice paper screen of delusion. When you see through the veils—these many and varied ways to liberation and realization—you can see that these are merely the means. Do not worship the road, neither worship the finger that points, nor the hand that beckons.

The More You Give the More You Receive

26 November 2018

Now it is a fact of the genuinely spiritual, as opposed to soulful, worldly, materialistic practice that the less you have, the more you have; the more you give, the more you receive. This is the deeper meaning of Jesus of Nazareth’s saying, “For everyone who has more will be given more, and for he who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”

The Soul

19 November 2018

The soul inside every person is the means to experience, to reach to the earth, to savor life, to experience sublime identification through our true nature in time, if we tread the path of wholeness to the end.

Learning to Receive Gifts

12 November 2018

Learn to receive other’s gifts. Be very present in your receiving. Don’t be quick to think how you should respond. Simply be in the moment, and receive the gift. Accept the gift and accept the other gracefully, respectfully, honorably, and with reverence. Feel the quality of the giver and the gift.

The Mystery of Life

05 November 2018

The mystery of life—when you encounter it truly, in your whole body, mind, soul, and spirit, not merely as a thought, not in discussion, abstractly or intellectually, when you truly behold existence and its mystery, you respond with enormous gratitude.

Freedom

29 October 2018

Freedom is seen only in love, through love, and absolute freedom only through devotion, which is overflowing love… and surrender to the Divine.

Surrender to The Self

22 October 2018

Live in the world, but do not get lost in it or consumed by it. You are divine—that is your reality. No effort is required—simply realization. You realize your divinity when you surrender to the Self. The Self is always within, always perfect in your heart, both faceless and beyond appearance and, simultaneously, all faces and all appearances. You have adopted a brilliant disguise—it is your “me-ness,” your small self, and this must be surrendered to the unconscious forces of the Divine for transformation.

Your Absolute Being

15 October 2018

Withdraw inside and realize that you are emptiness, you are heart and whole, awareness, consciousness—the full state of being in which forms arise and fall, are born and die, swell and diminish. Everything does this: emotions, conditions, good and bad fortune, your daily disposition. But what remains constant amid all of this, in its very center, that enables you to see and be aware of these changing conditions? This is the absolute being that you really are.

Being Bound

08 October 2018

The human condition is one of being bound. But the trick, the really crucial matter, is to detect precisely what you are bound to and what you are not bound to.

The Cost of the Ego

01 October 2018

The ego, or false self, seeks to reinforce and preserve itself at any cost. And that cost is your life essence, your core reality, bliss, and joy. The price is your life, yet unconsciously you suffer, without understanding that it is you yourself who enslaves you to the pattern of suffering.

Real Spirituality

24 September 2018

Real spirituality has absolutely nothing to do with morality, society, and relationships as you may know them, or happiness as you habitually think of it. Peace, fulfillment, satisfaction, or human experience in every way is dwarfed by the genuinely spiritual.

Listening

17 September 2018

The ability to listen is one of the most precious human treasures. Listening validates, acknowledges, recognizes and assures us that there are others in the world that care enough to stop and be interested in what we have to say, what is important to us and who we are. In deep friendship, therapeutic alliance and creating community, listening is one of the most important gifts that we can receive and give.

Work on the Personality

10 September 2018

Work on the personality is commonly thought to be what therapy is all about. But personal work is only a part of inner exploration. Beyond personal change, lie the challenges of authentic transformation and real consciousness.

Penetrating into the Depths

03 September 2018

Are we dabblers in life, mere dilettantes, never really penetrating into the depths? Or are we beings of great depth, unfathomable mystery and awesome ability? Are we inconsequential or are we wonderful – expendable microcosms without any lasting worth or shards of the divine?

Overcoming the Ego

27 August 2018

You cannot overcome the ego before you have shed the fiction of yourself. You are not ready to let go until you have identified yourself as Consciousness and tasted freedom and real happiness.

Forgiving Too Soon

20 August 2018

Much has been written and taught about forgiveness—and rightly so, since it is so crucial in individual and collective healing. However the emphasis on forgiving has resulted in many trying to forgive too soon and let go of anger and blame before they are ready.

The Life of Transformation

13 August 2018

The life of transformation is the bridge between the personal and the spiritual—but it is also more. Living authentically empowers us to respond from our center, because we are able to draw on the wisdom of the absolute, as well as on our personal insights and understanding.

The Greatest of Life's Gifts

30 July 2018

The greatest of life’s gifts lies hidden in what we most reject and want to change about ourselves. But it doesn’t need to be any different; only our attitude toward it needs to change.

Awareness Practice

23 July 2018

Awareness practice is at the very heart of inner work, and it is the foundation of true wisdom. Closely related is the profound practice of listening.

Working with Duality

16 July 2018

When we discuss spiritual practice we may say, “I have come this far” and “I’ve really got to work on this.” We use a path-journey metaphor. But it is not only a compromise; it is also incorrect. It puts us into an erroneous place where we are working with duality, which must be transcended.

Disempowerment

09 July 2018

Disempowerment has become a disease of epidemic proportions. We have become little people who are scared of our own light. We are afraid to know or ask for what we really want or to be who we truly are... Today, we have replaced the old authority figures with the faceless and impersonal forces of commerce, advertising, and global communications.

Living in The Present

02 July 2018

Whenever we miss the moment, get “caught” by our thoughts, distracted from our awareness, lose our center; every time our minds go before us and we are caught up in the results of our actions, we are lost again. When we throw the imaginary destination ahead of us, life ceases, because we are no longer living in the present.

Death

25 June 2018

Life and death comprise a single process. The moment of death is any moment. There are only moments before death and moments after death. So where is death? Death does not exist. It is merely the dark mirror, the empty screen on which we may project our fears. All that scares or attracts us about death is really about life.

Nuggets of Illumination

18 June 2018

As we deepen in awareness and acceptance, something extraordinary happens. Our inner acceptance reflects into the outer world and leads to a deepening surrender to how things are. We begin to learn profound lessons from life when things go well or when things go badly. Happy or sad, well or sick, succeeding or failing, we find our experience contains a nugget of illumination. Everything helps us to learn.

Listening to Another Person

11 June 2018

We need to be listened to and heard with openness; not criticized or judged. The hardest aspect of listening to another person is to listen and really hear, to receive and experience, to be aware and accept the complexities of tone, feeling, and content … and not “do” anything, not problem-solve, not act in any way.

The Truth

04 June 2018

The Truth is so simple that even when we are presented with it in its starkest form we are unable to grasp it. We are a single drop briefly separated from the ocean, and simultaneously we are the ocean masquerading momentarily as the drop.

Relationships

28 May 2018

Relationships compel us to face ourselves and offer us the chance to resolve the unfinished business of childhood, because they reopen our issues around dependence, nurture, and care.

Awareness

07 May 2018

Awareness, like compassion and transcendence, is a practice until it takes us over. Meditation, consciousness, and awareness express our nature, the nature of what it means to be truly human, so fully, so completely that in time we capitulate to its naturalness… and awareness becomes ourselves. It becomes what or who we are.

Inner-work Practice

30 April 2018

Two practices underpin inner-work practice. The first, awareness, is by far the most important principle to grasp. The second, listening, applies to interpersonal dialogue as much as listening to yourself.

Experiences of Transcendence

16 April 2018

Experiences of transcendence give us the certainty that we are, in some way, eternal. We “touch” something everlasting that is beyond belief or reason. Even if we bury the memory deeply, we know with absolute conviction that we are more than the small self of our ordinary experience.

Returning to the Great Flow

02 April 2018

We must go to where the life is, to where the joyous music is playing. Existence offers no certainty or security, but letting go, being flexible, surrendering, we return to the great flow at the border of timeless space and being: the river has remembered and returned to the ocean.

The Journey

27 March 2018

The journey is simply a metaphor; there can be no journey to where we are already—so nothing can be attained. So is there any reason for spiritual practice at all? Only enjoyment: enjoyment in the simple aspects of life and participation in their arising … and living life, for nothing other than its own sake.

Inner Work and the Inner Journey

19 March 2018

Personal inner work is only a part of inner exploration and the inner journey. Beyond personal change lie the challenges of authentic transformation and spiritual consciousness.

Awakenting to Our Essential Self

12 March 2018

Awakening to our essential self is the most profound core pursuit for those of us who take deep responsibility for the gift of life.

How Much Ego Does One Need?

05 March 2018

When the Zen roshi Shunryu Suzuki was asked, “How much ego do you need?” he replied, “Just enough so that you don’t step out in front of a bus.”

True Understanding

19 February 2018

True understanding is not intellectual but direct appreciation that is felt in every pore and cell. It is so momentous that we must respond to it lightly. Enlightening understanding should always be received lightly. It is not burdensome; it implies no duty or responsibility—we are, and have always been, utterly free.

Dispelling Delusion

12 February 2018

Our freedom lies in the fulfillment and transcendence of our individuality. As individuals we can never arrive here. We have to do more than re-center ourselves in the whole; we are the whole and our contribution is essential. Each individual is a part of the total, a note in the symphony, a syllable in the overall message. Understanding this deeply is the dispelling of delusion.

Healing the Original Wound

05 February 2018

The healing of our original wound is the single most important event in personal work, because it leads directly to personal wholeness. We are deeply divided because there is a fundamental separation, an inner fault line, within us. While this fundamental division exists the original wound remains, and we suffer the pain of internal conflict.

The Prison of the Ego

29 January 2018

As our ego lightens its hold on us, our sense of limitation and confinement lessens. We see the door of our psychic prison, walk out through it, and release ourselves into a life of great potential where pleasure and work are not separate, where we can have what we really want, where ego is no longer a tyrant, and where we can respond to life.

The Paradox

01 January 2018

To become as natural as we are, we suffer and struggle with inner conflicts, confusion, and resistance, when our awakening is as natural as fresh air, as a gentle breeze, as the waves crashing on the seashore, as the majestic movement of the planets through the vast cosmos.

Self Reflection

26 December 2017

Self-reflection is the unique and distinctive aspect of humanness that provides us with the means to live our potential, fulfill ourselves, and be free. Through conscious self-exploration, awareness reflects back on us, like light hitting a mirror, and in dazzling clarity we see ourselves as we truly are, and the world as it truly is.

Waiting...

18 December 2017

We want to change, but change is beyond our personal will. We cannot force change, but we can create the conditions for change to enter our lives, through openness, surrender, and grace. Change is all around us, always happening; we are in a sea of it. All we need do is create the right conditions and wait.

Letting Go...

11 December 2017

Our courage and commitment to begin a spiritual practice must be matched by our willingness to drop it … when the time is right. Holding on or clinging to a practice is always an expression of fear and resistance. Non-attachment—neither attachment, nor unattachment— means letting go whenever we are asked to by our inner self.

Healthy Boundaries

27 November 2017

Central to healthy boundaries is that you know yourself, know who you are, know your truth, and remain consistently loyal toward it. Boundaries should be strong but not permanently fixed; firm, gentle, but flexible. By remaining fluid and yet relating through healthy boundaries, we open, learn to change, and develop in our relationship to others.

Helping Others

20 November 2017

As we receive help in our spiritual practice, so we are able to give help to others. It is not a question of gaining qualifications or learning skills, but of drawing out the authentic wisdom that is deep within us all.

Learning from Everything

13 November 2017

As we deepen in awareness and acceptance, something extraordinary happens. Our inner acceptance reflects into the outer world and leads to a deepening surrender to how things are. We begin to learn profound lessons from life when things go well or when things go badly. Happy or sad, well or sick, succeeding or failing, we find our experience contains a nugget of illumination. Everything helps us to learn.

The Unknown Present

07 November 2017

Through character and life patterns we are so oriented to the past that we don’t notice the present. Our resistance is clear. To sustain ourselves in the illusion of selfhood we cling to the past and the future, knowing that were we to lose our grip we would slip into the unknown, the spontaneous present, the eternal moment. The unknown present is effortless and unpredictable.

The Outcome of Inner Work

30 October 2017

The outcome of inner work is not that we become perfect, but that we wholly accept who we are. Loose ends remain, but as time goes on, they become less important as the journey of transformation reveals new and deeper challenges.

Grasping the Simple Truth

23 October 2017

The Truth is so simple that even when we are presented with it in its starkest form we are unable to grasp it. We are a single drop briefly separated from the ocean, and simultaneously we are the ocean masquerading momentarily as the drop. Just as we, as individual selves, have been concealing our divinity, our divinity has been hiding in our individual selves.

Our Truth

16 October 2017

Over time we will see that our truth lies not in who we think we are, but rather in the transcendence of the thought that we are anyone at all. In the silence of “I,” we experience the birth and death of the universe, and as the universe is All, so am I.

Practicing Forgiveness

09 October 2017

A single act of genuine forgiveness carries tremendous power. To forgive once truly is to forgive all. Practicing forgiveness frees us from repeating experiences of pain and outrage, sorrow and grief, and empowers us to live freely, joyfully, and spontaneously in the world.

Practicing Inner Work

02 October 2017

Practicing inner work has taught us to experience the riches of life again, through honoring our breath, treasuring our bodies, and seeing Nature with fresh, innocent eyes. We appreciate our abilities, talents, virtues, relationships, and abundance.

Searching for The Spiritual

25 September 2017

Searching for the spiritual, we eventually discover that the divine has always been within.

Love

18 September 2017

We believe that we need love, from others, from outside ourselves. We believe we are lacking in love, loved too much, spoiled for love, competing for love, in and out of love. But how different life becomes when we understand that we are love and that the flow of love from the deep source of our own heart is unlimited.

The Rhythm of Inner Work

11 September 2017

The inner journey has its own special rhythm. Our ability to sense and respond to this rhythm prescribes the quality and depth with which our process unfolds.

Centering Ourselves in the Heart

04 September 2017

To change our attitude to ourselves and our lives, we must center ourselves in the heart. By shifting our center from the mind to the heart, we stabilize in unconscious change. Instead of focusing on what we would most like to change, we become aware of our attitude toward it. Instead of mentally distancing ourselves from the hated object, we invite the hated thing in and, by getting to know it, we grow to accept and love it. Nothing can withstand the power of the heart.

Non Attachment

28 August 2017

Authentic spiritual practice refers us back to ourselves. Gurus, teachings, methods, and systems are simply devices. We need not dwell on the road once we have reached our destination. Regardless of which spiritual teaching and method you choose from the many that are available,the most important point is non-attachment. In the end, you must let go completely.

Striving towards Enlightenment

07 August 2017

It is both personally and globally vital that we foster an authentic love for creation, a deep empathy with existence, a strong attitude of tolerance and cooperation toward the outside world, and that we strive toward enlightenment as our life’s goal.

Spiritual Questions

31 July 2017

Spiritual questions are like Zen koans—they arise in every moment. One way out of confusion or lack of focus is to ask, “What is my spiritual question?” The question is always present, so to hear it we must also be present. Our spiritual questions change as we live through the answers. Our lives are the answers to our questions.

Clinging to Impermanence

24 July 2017

Everything is in a process of change. The aesthetic, the pleasurable, the adorable, and the attractive will dissolve and vanish, leaving us only with impressions of their deliciousness, our memories of enjoyment, as well as the pain of their ineluctable absence. Clinging to impermanence leads to sorrow.

Love

17 July 2017

Opening to the abundance of love returns us to our real Selves and the essence of it is giving, rather than acquiring. Love is the deep morality of existence. It needs no acquisition; it is all-pervading and it is what we are: we do not ask for love, we give it.

Receiving Life's Gifts

10 July 2017

Whatever gifts life offers us, we are unable to receive them when we are not present.

Re-Owning Parts of Ourselves

03 July 2017

When we re-own the part of ourselves we have pushed away, we find that what we denied, hated, and tried to separate from—labeling it “myself,” “illness,” or “nuisance”—is precisely what we need to complete us.

Duality or Connectedness?

26 June 2017

If we think we are separate from what happens to us, we see life as a duality because there is always a subject (me) and an object (what happens to me). Alternatively, if we think of ourselves as part of life, then we see unity and connectedness between “me” and events.

Resilience

19 June 2017

As children we may have to put up with a lot, from insensitivity to brutality. But we are amazingly resilient, and we possess a profound spiritual understanding and a deep connection beyond the limits of our individuality.

Leading a Spiritual Life

12 June 2017

Through inner strength, unselfish modesty, kindness to ourself, and clarity, we become conscious of the difficulties we face, allow ourselves to make mistakes, and act responsibly with sincerity and truth to embrace all we are. We should not settle for less than everything—the transformation of the human heart and the courage to demand and bear the responsibility of leading a spiritual life in the world.

Penetrating Confusion

05 June 2017

Sometimes we are confused about our inner states or our outer behavior, and we feel helpless to do anything about them. Practicing awareness is usually all we need do to penetrate the confusion and reach clarity. For inner clarity all that is required is the attention of the heart.

Awareness

29 May 2017

Awareness is the vital practice and beating heart of inner work. Awareness brings our alertness and attention to everything, connects us to our real nature, and in time provides the vehicle through which we witness the process of transforming reality. In the beginning it is expressed in our ability to be present and observe.

The Power of the Heart

22 May 2017

To change our attitude to ourselves and our lives, we must center ourselves in the heart. By shifting our center from the mind to the heart, we stabilize in unconscious change. Instead of focusing on what we would most like to change, we become aware of our attitude toward it. Instead of mentally distancing ourselves from the hated object, we invite the hated thing in and, by getting to know it, we grow to accept and love it. Nothing can withstand the power of the heart.

Impermanence

08 May 2017

Clinging to impermanence leads to sorrow. Old age and death are the mantles over the manifest and changeable events in a human life. Seeking fulfillment in outward phenomena is futile, since our desire for fullness ultimately leads to an ending.

Relationships

01 May 2017

An intimate relationship—partnership or marriage—is one of the most potent catalysts for wholeness and authenticity there is. Relationships can also be the most deathly and least life-enhancing environment for the human spirit. It all depends on honest and open communication, deepening and growing in intimacy, and the courage and willingness to venture into unknown territory together.

Our Flawed Self Image

24 April 2017

Inner work shows us that we are more powerful and more wonderful than we ever imagined. Almost everyone’s self-image is flawed in this respect. We are not little people: we are infinitely more than we hope or fear we can be. When we are able to embrace all we are, our dreams turn out to be closer than we had realized.

The Ego

17 April 2017

While we need an ego as a vehicle for our individual life, we must shed our attachment to it in order to become who we really are. The ego is to our inner world as our body is to the outer—merely a vehicle. The price of identifying with ego is high: conceit, pretense, false pride, and self-importance are all ego tendencies that cause suffering. Ego plays the superior/inferior game of “I am better than you” or “You are better than me.” Ego uses thought to dissect experience and juggles with our center so that we remain separate and alone.

Wanting to Change

10 April 2017

We want to change, but change is beyond our personal will. We cannot force change, but we can create the conditions for change to enter our lives, through openness, surrender, and grace. Change is all around us, always happening; we are in a sea of it. All we need do is create the right conditions and wait.

Inner Chatter

03 April 2017

We define ourselves in constant mental chatter. This inner dialogue maintains us in illusory experiences and constant background anxiety. When we quiet the mind, we experience the great vividness, simplicity, and beauty of life.

Do It Your Own Way

27 March 2017

Inner work may be done on your own, with a friend, or in a group. No precedent has been set to dictate how you should go about it; for everybody it is different, because everybody’s personal journey is unique—as unique as fingerprints, as unique as each of the billions of pebbles on the beach. So don’t let anyone fool you, you should and must do it your way.

Returning to Ourselves

20 March 2017

The inner journey returns us to ourselves, to our original sense of being. We lose ourselves in our attachments to actions, achievements, and outer relationships; we “do” so much physically and mentally that the doer gets lost in the doing and we lose touch with our being.

Go Where Life Is

13 March 2017

Whatever gifts life offers us, we are unable to receive them when we are not present. We must go to where the life is, to where the joyous music is playing. Existence offers no certainty or security, but letting go, being flexible, surrendering, we return to the great flow at the border of timeless space and being: the river has remembered and returned to the ocean.

Becoming Ourselves

06 March 2017

As we explore the legacy of our fathers and mothers, we can see that we must go past them to become ourselves. Understanding and supporting this may be the greatest gift that a parent can give to a child.

Ego

27 February 2017

Ego is an activity of our small self that enables us to be in the world. Ego negotiates between desire and conscience and enables us to be introspective and self-aware. Consequently, ego occupies an ambiguous place in our inner world. The difficulty lies not so much in having an ego, but in attaching ourselves so strongly to the ego and its pursuits that we cannot see the difference between what the ego is doing and who we are.

Personal Empowerment

20 February 2017

Each of us is a unique being with an amazing potential for selfknowledge and deep wisdom. Yet out of attachment to the conditions of our early life, many of us develop a self-image that is inconsequential or damaged, and we become disempowered.

Connecting through the Heart

13 February 2017

Connecting through the heart, we sense that the human and the Divine are really one and that this unity is present in us. When we allow growth to unfold, our personal exploration naturally leads us to this core state of unity and authenticity.

Automatic and Habitual Behaviour

06 February 2017

When we are unaware, our behavior is automatic and habitual. Instead of stopping and reflecting, we become fixed, consistent, and imprisoned by the character we have created. We are attached to a mass of personal habits that support our creation. We imprison ourselves in these limitations and call it suffering.

Refining Our Seeing

30 January 2017

'Seeing life as-it-is' is rather like asking a fish to be aware of water. But when we practice awareness of ourselves, we gradually refine our seeing so that we witness ourselves and others objectively and clearly. In time, we cultivate respect over assumptions, so everything is fresh and new, and in a process of becoming. Like a beginner practicing, like a traveler arriving, we witness the magic of the manifestation in all its vivid beauty.

The Dawn of a New Clarity

23 January 2017

As we reveal our stories to ourselves and others, a new clarity dawns inside us and with it comes a new freedom. As we become familiar with our personal narrative, we see how we cling to it out of fear. We notice things we hadn’t seen before and understand more. We have to work backward to make a new sense of the world. We see how we have masked our feelings of futility through compulsive “doing” and avoided life in all its spontaneous, uncertain creations.

Personal Stories

16 January 2017

On the inner journey we are the adventurer, the explorer, the voyager to inner realms, the traveler who finds joy and fulfillment in discovering the new, moving on, never staying still—a spirit in movement, in search of the spontaneous, and open to whatever comes. But inevitably, experience calcifies into the record of memory, legend, and personal mythology that creates a personal story.

Life Events

09 January 2017

Some life events challenge the limitations of our character and make us look deeper into how we see ourselves and others. Such life events may even take us to the very edge of our resistance to change. They reveal the power of habit and fixedness and directly challenge our ego control and personal narrative.

Attachment to Personality

03 January 2017

We become attached to our personalities. But personality is the creation of thought and experience—the way we make sense of events, our response to conditions, a defense between us and life. In the same way as we sense something constant beneath our changing roles, we recognize the reality of being behind our character and personality. Our small sense of self is expressed through character and personality. For the small self is not the intrinsic creation we believe it to be, but a delusion, merely a costume we wear.

Character

19 December 2016

Character is an inner defense system we create in response to our earliest life experiences. Although it exists primarily in the psyche, it is articulated in our physical structure, facial expressions, and body movements. These demonstrations of character are the nexus of our persona or mask—known collectively as the personality...What we like about ourselves is retained in consciousness; what we don’t like about ourselves is relegated to the unconscious. Our choice is based on lovability and approval, as demonstrated by our parents, teachers, and society.

The Journey from the Shadow to the Flower

12 December 2016

In his poem “Oxbow,” Federico Garcia Lorca describes childhood as a journey from the shadow to the flower—from the disowned defensive self to the essential self. The promise casts the shadow that conceals the flower. The darkness of early experience conceals our greatest riches and the flower of our authentic being. To regain our whole self, we have to possess a strong desire to return to that darkness and liberate ourselves by searching deeply beneath our character and personality.

Healing in the Present

05 December 2016

“Being with” an issue means to reveal and explore it, to own and accept it without judging. The past is simply a projection of the present. We may find useful reference points for the personality through memory, but the solutions to our problems are not in the past, but in the only place where healing can occur—the present. The present is where we live life responsively and vibrantly, without reference to memory or anticipation, beyond the defenses of our character.

The Sense of "Me"

28 November 2016

The sense of “me” is the creation of our child’s mind. We become a subject of our own creation by spinning a web of personal stories. In adult life we continue to spin this tale of self and, like gossip, the more we repeat it, the more it sticks. The defining collection of our individual characteristics and foibles, accruing personal anecdotes, habitual behavior, and emotional patterns are bundled together to create an illusion of substance. We posture as “a somebody".

Knowing Ourselves

21 November 2016

When we ask to know ourselves, we have to find out how we have become other than who we really are. What mental and emotional constrictions do we perform to limit ourselves to “me”? What has made us give up so much for so little? How do we do it and how do we sustain it? Who or what do we do it for?

The Process of Awareness

14 November 2016

Awareness may be thought of as a threefold process of opening, experiencing, and learning. First, we open to everything, without being selective and with a deepening willingness to be present with an inner emptiness. To do this, we have to overcome our resistance and the mind chattering that constantly distracts us. Second, we experience by feeling an increasing sense of presence, releasing our judgments and being in the moment, and not trying to change things. Third, through being with things as they are, we learn from what arises in the present moment. Truth and wisdom are constantly manifesting, ever-present and inviting us to learn.

Attention of the Heart

07 November 2016

Attention of the heart underpins the practice of inner awareness because the heart embraces everything as a unity, while the mind divides and separates, criticizes and judges.

Inner Clarity

31 October 2016

Sometimes we are confused about our inner states or our outer behavior, and we feel helpless to do anything about them. Practicing awareness is usually all we need do to penetrate the confusion and reach clarity. For inner clarity all that is required is the attention of the heart.

Unconscious Preconceptions

24 October 2016

Being aware of others is usually easier than being aware of ourselves. Our activities and thoughts are pervaded by an inner atmosphere. We carry unconscious attitudes that preside over our interactions with the outside world and are revealed in expectations and assumptions. In inner work we may uncover these background assumptions through exploring our unconscious preconceptions.

Retrieving our Awareness

17 October 2016

How do we retrieve our awareness and stop distracting ourselves? First, we ask ourselves where our awareness is focused now habitually, routinely. Notice that mentally, emotionally, and physically we express our concerns and manifest our values in what we do and how we are. We can see what is important to us and what we value simply by observing how we spend our time and what we do with it. What we do, think, and feel reveals our present practice of attention.

Controlling and Suppressing

10 October 2016

We drive the traumas and the suffering of our lives down into the unconscious in our efforts to “survive.” Denial, repression, emotional numbness, unresponsiveness, inhibition, and over-intellectualizing feelings are all ways in which our wounded selves attempt to control and suppress uncomfortable or painful emotions.

A Sense of Presence

03 October 2016

Awareness stems from a sense of presence. When we are aware, we are present, awake; we are in ourselves and “turned on.” But many of us have learned to “turn off.” We have fallen asleep, and lost our vibrancy, our sense of wonder, and our thirst for life. We have become fully automatic, jerking along in our stilted conditioning. Nothing short of a great shock, a tremendous effort, or a peak experience will dislodge us from our state of comfortable numbness.

Inner Work Can Be Lonely

26 September 2016

Inner work is essentially a solo flight, and it can sometimes be lonely. You are the one who must congratulate yourself when you do good work, and you are the one who must be mindful when you are practicing avoidance or denial. Above all, make your inner-work practice a pleasurable and rewarding experience that you will want to develop with enthusiasm and return to with passion.

Crisis

19 September 2016

Crisis is not always personal; it may be spiritual. When it is, the veil between ourselves and others turns out to be surprisingly thin. Sometimes entirely unbidden and with no personal preparation, we are plunged into an awareness of our interconnectedness and experience a spontaneous “awakening.”

The Unique Journey

12 September 2016

Everybody’s personal journey is unique—as unique as fingerprints, as unique as each of the billions of pebbles on the beach. So don’t let anyone fool you, you should and must do it your way.

Deep Dissatisfaction

05 September 2016

When deep dissatisfaction falls upon us, we are faced with a choice. Either we make a conscious decision to go in, or we try to find a way out as soon as we can, at any price. Our friends may try to “help” by cheering us up or advising us to “snap out of it.” But without uncovering the cause of our dissatisfaction, it may continue or return. Snapping out of it usually means that we snap back into it soon afterward. By turning inward to meet our dissatisfaction and explore our inner world, we deepen in our experience, usually with surprising results.

Crises, Defeats and Failure

08 August 2016

To view crises, defeats, and failures as opportunities for change is a wise gift of the soul. Life is composed of negative and positive experiences ranging from the delightful to the excruciating. We never know when our lives will change in such a way that we will never be the same again. To live as if our lives will never change is foolish; to live as if our lives are in a constant process of change is wise.

The Path to Inner Work

01 August 2016

Everyone’s path to inner work is unique, but broadly speaking there are two ways—curiosity and desperation, the way of the dilettante and the way of despair. The desperate seeker comes out of crisis; the curious seeker comes out of dissatisfaction. Both represent some shattering of our picture of how things are, some form of disenchantment, disappointment, or disillusionment. The difference is in how we come to inner work: dissatisfaction is like distant rumbling thunder; crisis is like a bolt of lightning.

The Return to Ourselves

25 July 2016

The inner journey returns us to ourselves, to our original sense of being. We lose ourselves in our attachments to actions, achievements, and outer relationships; we “do” so much physically and mentally that the doer gets lost in the doing and we lose touch with our being.

Personality and the Soul

18 July 2016

In inner work we explore our personality in all its aspects until the chinks—those little gaps between the tightly packed content of personality and personal drama—appear, and light enters into the darkness through the crack in the fabric of our façades. Personality is a thin layer around the soul. It is how we appear, to ourselves and others—not who we are.

Inner Work as Metamorphosis

11 July 2016

On one level, inner work is an examination of the instability of life: how things manifest and dissolve in a seemingly endless state of fluctuation. Our emotions create endless scenarios of desire, of pleasure and pain. On another level, inner work is like polishing coal until it turns into a diamond—a metamorphosis of substances that were always within.

Unexpressed Feelings

04 July 2016

Unexpressed feelings create a psychic cage around our spirit. We are unable to release ourselves until we have cried, raged, felt pain and sadness. Releasing negative emotions allows feeling to flow within us and takes us to deeper levels of experience and fulfillment. When we integrate these experiences in the psyche, we can begin to live with newfound freedom and expansion, as if a great weight has been lifted off of us.

One of the Deep Lessons of Inner Work

27 June 2016

Most of us come to inner work wanting to add to ourselves—to make things better, to be happier or more fulfilled. We would rather be happy than discover what has made us unhappy...One of the deep lessons of inner work is that we have to lessen ourselves to find ourselves.

The Inner Journey Spirals

20 June 2016

The inner journey spirals around our true Self. Each turn of the spiral brings us closer to it. In time we arrive at the border of timeless space and being. Then we need journey no more, because we have become one with ourself; we have awakened. As the ancient Indian rishis would say, the river has remembered and returned to the ocean.

Lessening and Relinquishing

13 June 2016

One of the deep lessons of inner work is that we have to lessen ourselves to find ourselves. We have to relinquish all that is false in us to reveal our real Self.

Thinking We Know Ourselves

06 June 2016

As our inner journey continues, we pass through the layers of appearance to subconscious layers of deception and avoidance. We think we know ourselves, but we are hidden beneath defenses and resistance. We may imagine that we are open to self-discovery, while we are really in a fog of conflicts, apologies, justifications, and unconscious urges. When challenged, we may not know who we are.

Discovering the Ghosts and Dark Shapes

30 May 2016

Often we are trapped in reaction to our early life circumstances—our family, how we were treated, who we have become. We may suffer from guilt, shame, negative judgements, and self-criticism, which result in pain, frustration, denial, and withdrawal. We practice inner work to discover the ghosts and dark shapes in our unconscious, to feel our forbidden needs and desires, our deep fears, and the awe-inspiring rage and sadness of our existence.

A Terrific Wrestling Match

23 May 2016

A terrific wrestling match goes on between the self that deeply desires to heal and change and the self that wishes to be healed but unchanged. But successful self-exploration heals through inner changes that require our surrender to loss: the release of attachment and the shedding of emotional patterns.

Looking for Completion

16 May 2016

The idea of completing ourselves drives us unconsciously in everything we do. Those of us who make the commitment to inner work are looking for completion, too. Something gives us the courage to take up self-reflection and attempt to know ourselves intimately and discover who we really are. Some of us have an implicit trust that the way will be revealed; others of us come with openness and faith, or a deep response to the urge to grow. Each of us has suffered a crack in the fabric that protects us from the world.

How Things Are

25 April 2016

How things are is tricky to experience. We habitually bring our prejudices and assumptions to bear on direct experience and cease to be aware. The goal of self-discovery is to become aware of who we are and to truly experience the world as it is. We get there through exploring our inner world.

A Deeper Transformation

18 April 2016

Everyone who looks within wants, consciously or unconsciously, to change. Change may be brought about by effort, through an act of will, but that kind of change is relatively superficial because it reverts when the will weakens. A deeper transformation comes about when we tap into the change that flows through all of existence and learn to surrender to it through the deep acceptance of how things are.

Wisdom and Illumination in Modern Times

11 April 2016

Enlightenment and the spiritual are not confined by form, as much as we tend to dress them in certain clothes to give the appearance of holiness and serenity. Who says that we cannot be neurotic and spiritual at the same time? One is a symptom of our humanness, the other of our divinity.

Beyond Our Normal Limitations

04 April 2016

In times of trauma—depression, anxiety, sorrow, confusion, and despair—our personalities are not enough. We are challenged to go beyond our normal limitations. We are forced to look inward, to journey to a deeper reality. Those of us who do not experience trauma or crisis, but nonetheless want to grow, may also choose to journey inward.

The Unprecedented Ordeal of Unwinding Character

28 March 2016

Spiritual attainment has been presented directly and simplistically in the past. The great profundity of such a simple statement as be as you are, for example, still carries weight. But today ego forces are so complex and powerful, and human beings are so extraordinarily conflicted and multilayered, that we are required to persist in an ordeal of unwinding character that has no precedent in human history.

Inner Work

21 March 2016

No one can do your inner work but you. It is arguably the most important, necessary, and indispensable activity of your life. Through inner work you can awaken and discover yourself, your life purpose, and your path to Self-realization.

The Flowering of a Human Life

14 March 2016

The flowering of a human life leads to untold wonders and joys too intense and precious to describe.

Establishing a Spiritual Life

07 March 2016

Establishing a spiritual life in the world today is fraught with difficulties. But spiritual life has always thrived on difficult circumstances and tests.

Your Essential Self

29 February 2016

Spiritual inner work is now a crucial activity for the modern world. Your Essential Self clearly connects personality and ego to true nature and enlightenment. It acts as a map for the inner journey and guides you through the stages of the process for inner work, discovering authenticity, and Self-realization.

The Inner Void

22 February 2016

Human beings mostly live at a fraction of their full potential. Try as we might, money, relationships, possessions, and prestige cannot fill the inner void. Potential and fulfillment, like satisfaction and joy, must be authentic and real. In fact, they must be inner.

Awakening to Your Essential Self

15 February 2016

Awakening to your essential self is an idea that has been around since human history began. It can be found in most or all religious and spiritual traditions, as well as modern New Age thinking. Simply put, it’s the idea that human birth is a paradoxical experience. On the one hand we grow, mature, and adapt to become part of the human world; on the other, through the indoctrination of conditioning, we forget where we have come from and who or what we really are. So being born is awakening into this world, but falling asleep to a deeper reality.

The Three Primary Energy Centres

08 February 2016

The human organism tends to be partial. It engages in one of three basic levels—head, heart, and pelvis—mind, heart, and will. The mind or spiritual vision or higher intuitive faculty yield understanding, insight, breakthrough, and acceptance. The heart allows you to merge and unify and become one with the teachings of truth from where love, compassion, and authenticity flow. And the will, which is extremely important to you at this time, causes you to act, make your move, and bring your commitment to discipline, based on understanding.

The Awakening of the Heart Nature

01 February 2016

The life of the heart is a rupture, a shattering of illusion, and an initiation into truth. This characterizes the life of the heart, the mind of non-discrimination, of total forgiveness, and loving acceptance, the flowering of self-nature and the surrender of compassion and authenticity—the awakening of the heart-nature.

The True Self

25 January 2016

To remember the true Self you must forget the “I.” This transcendental experience is the dawning of truth, but it can transport you to the reality that no separation exists. There are truly no individuals.

To Truly Live

18 January 2016

To live—to truly live—there is really only one fear to overcome. Only one fear because it is the one which comprises all the others. That is the fear of death. Within this mighty fear is our denial of life, our avoidance of life, our lack of courage in life, and ultimately our fear of life.

The Scapegoat

11 January 2016

Despite our sophistication, modern humanity is primitive in its projections. The scapegoat bears our adulation, our ecstasy, and our joy, then our disappointment, our disillusionment, and finally our blaming, or escape from blaming and responsibility, in its inevitable sacrifice and destruction, which symbolically vindicates us through its demise. So, we still want to blame, seek revenge, and release our self-hate onto someone and sometimes anyone will do.

Developing Our Spiritual Understanding

04 January 2016

We desperately need to understand spiritual, transcendental, egocentric points of view, and divine reality and extend our understanding to deeper teachings, progressive practices, and sacred cultural change that reflect profound truths and allow people to follow spiritual practices that are not merely rooted in ancient thought and metaphysics because we are too lazy or uninspired to develop our spiritual understanding.

The Ground of Being

28 December 2015

The ancient rishis taught that the ground of being preceded the arising of all separate, separative, apparent phenomena. This means that in meditation and other consciousness practices we may potentially return to a blessed contentment of profound inner peace when we begin at this pivotal experience and understand this ancient teaching.

Practicing Awareness

21 December 2015

As we practice awareness we fail repeatedly while the judging mind exerts its enormous power. However we are quietly challenging judgment and so we develop our acceptance of circumstances just as they are, which opens the way to accepting life and seeing the world just as it is and in time to embracing reality itself.

Spectacular Discoveries

14 December 2015

The inner journey begins with the practice of awareness, as we regard the world and ourselves anew. This new awareness leads us to spectacular discoveries.

The Call

07 December 2015

For some of us there is dissatisfaction with ordinary life, with consensus existence. We see through it, because it does not satisfy us. This may seem like a disadvantage in the conventional world but in the inner world it is the herald, the beckoning, or what is often referred to as “the call.” The call may be a gnawing dissatisfaction or an extreme crisis or a mixture of both.

The Hope for Humanity

30 November 2015

Inner work is the hope for humanity. If it becomes a universal pursuit, the value of self-knowledge will be understood to be without substitute. The work of inner ecology, balance, insight, and clarity will light the way to environmental, global, international, sociological, psychological and of course spiritual balance through tolerance, co-operation and peace.

The Spiritual Teacher is Yourself

23 November 2015

The spiritual teacher is yourself or as it has traditionally been put he is the mirror in which you see yourself as you are, as you would like to be, human and divine, possibility and actuality, imperfections and perfections, relative and absolute, in all your great complexity. Nothing is spared you as you look into this mirror, particularly your ambivalence. Your self-importance reflexes with your lack of self-worth as your self-inflation reflects your self-perceived insignificance.

Our Essential Nature

16 November 2015

Human beings are essentially spiritual in nature. Our mental, physical, emotional, energetic forms are given life by the spirit. We create, and inhabit our world through our consciousness.

The Real World

09 November 2015

This is the start of every inner journey—the intuition that there is something more. It is the beginning of motivation, of transcendence, and it plants the seeds of faith. We reach out to clouds, call to rainbows, and speak with the creatures of the sea. We give ourselves up to the waves, fly in the wind, and are borne on the warm air currents. We leave a world of our own creation and take birth in the Real world, the world of love and truth, compassion and wisdom, peace and eternity.

Living the Human Life

02 November 2015

We can live the human life, the fully human life, the one in which we allow the divine to manifest through our humanness—not in spite of our humanness—and live within the contradictions and paradoxes that bring us to the very edge of experience, the precipice of the sensible world, the reality and expression of eternity in the field of space and time, as Gandhiji spoke for and taught and lived.

Self Obsession

19 October 2015

Ironically your greatest spiritual asset is what appears to be your greatest obstacle: your obsession with yourself. Today we live in the age of individualism... Obsessed as we are with ourselves, addicted as we are to our own self-importance, self-indulgence, and self-aggrandizement, we have the means, the power, and the strength in our possession... If we can only harness the power of obsession and addiction, and redirect it toward the Divine in no time at all we would be free!

Your Spiritual Commitment

12 October 2015

Your spiritual practice, your sacred life should not be a preference, a fetish, an anachronistic attachment to a romanticized cult figure or a fixation on some beliefs, merely a “spiritual” extension of your ego. Your spiritual-sacred practice should be teeming with life, vibrancy, health, energetic and enthusiastic, living and breathing. There are, like all things, ways to get there and ways to foul up, procrastinate, stall and backslide.

Divine Commitment

05 October 2015

You may be a student, you may be a disciple, you may be a spiritual teacher, or you may be a devotee. Your fulfillment lies in the knowledge that what you are is yourself. Your divine commitment is the spiritual expression of yourself in this incarnation.

The Devotee

28 September 2015

The devotee is not bound, for she has used the bindings to free herself, to liberate herself from suffering, to rise above it, through awareness, love, devotion, and finally surrender to the presence of the Divine in this life, in the everyday life. So everything is a meditation, a celebration, a dedication, a consecration to God, to Love, to Divinity. For the devotee, there's nothing else, because everything is God, Love, Divine.

Student? Disciple? Devotee?

21 September 2015

The student of spirituality can wait, learn, practice, try things out, fail and try again, fail and try again. The disciple of spirituality can allow himself or herself to be led repeatedly, following, surrendering, loving, hoping, falling into despair, but returning and returning. But the devotee! The devotee has no time, no motivation, no hope, no wishes, no intention, nothing to attain, not even the exalted goal of enlightenment, for the devotee is absolutely free in every moment.

Eternity in Time

14 September 2015

Your life is but an instant, a moment, a fleck of dust already blowing away, a momentary shard of light, a droplet temporarily separated from the waterfall to which it is returning. When we were young, we thought we had all the time in the world. When we “grew up,” we still wished we had all the time in the world. As we get older, we forget that we ever thought it, as we confront the end of time and the beginning of eternity. But eternity is in each moment, if we only understand which way to turn, which way to be led, and how to live.

Bound to Make Life Sacred

07 September 2015

We are bound to life in order to make it sacred. We have an obligation to make life sacred, to accept the yoke, to go through it again and again, until we have achieved sacred union with the divine... and in that lies your absolute freedom, your liberation and Self-realization, your union with Reality itself.

Practicing Spirituality

31 August 2015

It is not enough to have spiritual tendencies; you must apply yourself, make life decisions, adhere to your inner commitment, persist, practice—above all practice spiritually.

Being Bound and Unconscious

24 August 2015

Experience belongs to the realms of space and time in the relative world: the world of day and night, right and wrong, good and evil. It is the junior school of humanity where people need and judge, criticize and expect, hate and seek, and lie and conceal, because they are basically ashamed of their humanity, because they have not seen through this world of appearances. Because they are bound and unconscious, their experiences in this world are not filled with light.

Devotion

17 August 2015

Devotion is the path of love taken to the nth degree, to the extreme. All things are the Beloved who is a gateway, a doorway into divine love through devotion. Everything begins and ends with love.

Absolute Freedom

10 August 2015

There is a freedom that is absolute: a freedom that is unassailable, that is inarguable, that pertains to no opposite whatsoever, a freedom that is your natural right, your birthright, the natural state of a full and whole, developed and natural human being. This freedom cannot be taken away, cannot be removed, adapted, tainted, or touched by anyone else and it is yours for the taking

Unconscious Manipulation

03 August 2015

Although it is commonplace to the point of being ubiquitous, meeting another and manipulating and dominating him or her with your (usually unconscious) behavior is an idea that we have a lot of resistance to until we look and see it all clearly.

Freedom

27 July 2015

Today in the modern world we have freedom. But do we? Are people free? If they are not, how come they are not? What does it mean to be truly free? Freedom itself seems to be elusive. In fact we are hardy free at all. In even the simplest, most straightforward of ways we are less than free, completely un-free, and totally unconscious of it.

The Price of the Ego

20 July 2015

The ego, or false self, seeks to reinforce and preserve itself at any cost. And that cost is your life essence, your core reality, bliss, and joy. The price is your life, yet unconsciously you suffer, without understanding that it is you yourself who enslaves you to the pattern of suffering.

A Modern Human Dilemma

13 July 2015

In our self-contraction—which is another term for our ego, or false self—we are doomed inevitably to suffer from a self-inflicted restlessness.

Real Spirituality

06 July 2015

Real spirituality has absolutely nothing to do with morality, society, and relationships as you may know them, or happiness as you habitually think of it. Peace, fulfillment, satisfaction, or human experience in every way is dwarfed by the genuinely spiritual.

The Predicament of the Modern Era

29 June 2015

At the very heart of my work is a spiritual way that addresses the predicament of the modern era. This predicament, as I see it, is rather similar to the idea of the kaliyuga. This is a term from Hindu cosmology that denotes the darkening of the light, the time of least spirituality, morality, and transcendence. By facing the ego which has been highly developed and become extremely complex as the symbol of self-identification, separation, and division in the inner individual life and the outer collective world, we can prepare the ground for the revolution of individual and collective consciousness.

A Unique Inner Journey

22 June 2015

Creating permanent positive change and living happily in the present moment are attainable goals. Your inner wisdom can be awakened, but only a unique inner journey will lead you to it.

Love Relationships

15 June 2015

Alongside inner work, therapy and meditation, primary love relationships are the most powerful tool for awakening there is.

Dark Times

08 June 2015

Not knowing ourselves, not knowing the other, unaware of the world about us, we do not experience Reality. In these dark times humanity is essentially ignorant, unaware, and unconscious.

Where Infinity Meets Time and Space

01 June 2015

Paradox and contradiction are omens of the spiritual realms; they appear on the border where infinity meets time and space.

Each Moment

25 May 2015

Each moment of your life can be an opportunity, an invitation to expand, to grow, enlighten, and transcend the world of appearances, to offer your humanness up to the Divine.

Discover, Fulfill, Empower

18 May 2015

Discover the path of self-understanding, growth, and healing. Fulfill your divine potential. Empower yourself to live with authenticity and compassion.

Awakening

11 May 2015

Awakening to your essential self is an idea that has been around since human history began. It can be found in most or all religious and spiritual traditions, as well as modern New Age thinking. It is the idea that human birth is a paradox. On the one hand we grow, mature, and adapt to the human world. On the other hand, through the indoctrination of conditioning, we forget where we have come from and who or what we really are. So being born is waking into this world, but falling asleep to a deeper reality.

Spiritual or Human?

04 May 2015

Many speak of spirituality as a confection, love as sentiment, and deeply human and emotional states are confused with the spiritual and the transcendent. The difference is as heaven and earth.

Spiritual Search

27 April 2015

To rise to the challenges of the first three seven-year cycles of life brings you to a spiritual gate; the beginning of the prelude to the subtle energy conditions that enables and empowers the spiritual search.

Heart Mind

20 April 2015

The spiritual mind, the heart-mind, feels the world, opens to the world, lives gratefully in the great Mystery, and knows that you cannot truly explain or know anything at all.

Heart Service

13 April 2015

Until it is brought into the service of the heart, the mind is always defeated.

Inconsistent Attention

06 April 2015

Truth doesn’t come and go; it is only the quality of our attention that is inconsistent.

Fantasy

30 March 2015

When “Reality” does not give us what we desire, we create a fantasy to meet our inner needs.

Passing by Truth

23 March 2015

To pass by the Truth, rather than inhabit Reality in which Truth resides, is an unnecessary deprivation.

Liberation

16 March 2015

The end of awareness is liberation.

Find Yourself

09 March 2015

One of the deep lessons of inner work is that we have to lessen ourselves to find ourselves.

That

02 March 2015

Reality is Unity, Oneness. All is Consciousness alone and you are That.

Dying

23 February 2015

All that arises attains fulfillment beyond itself. That means every thing must die.

Divinely-lit

16 February 2015

Live your life as a blessing, not just as a thought of a blessing, but a feeling, a certainty, in you that you are blessed. Then you will feel fortunate. Then you will be divinely-lit.

Time and Eternity

09 February 2015

Do not look for time in eternity, look for eternity in time.

True Nature and Eternity

02 February 2015

Learn to recognize and exhibit your true nature without compromise or watering down. Learn to sink into eternity in time.

The Travail to Wholeness

26 January 2015

We are not here to satisfy our small selves, we are here to heal the world of its ills, its pain, its suffering. Then through a process of birth, through the ordeal of wholeness, a new era of abundance will be born.

Open to the Sacred

19 January 2015

In this present era of cheapening, materialism, of violation and disregard for the truly spiritual, more than ever before, we need to open our ears and hearts to the sacred.

A Real Meeting

12 January 2015

Everyone needs someone in their life whom they can trust enough to open up to and reveal themselves… and be received, acknowledged, recognized, and validated: a real meeting beyond fear.

Repetition

29 December 2014

Immaturity means the repetition of automatically performing unconscious patterns from the past.

Radical Disturbance

15 December 2014

True spiritual teaching is a physical, emotional and mental revolution, an upheaval, an earthquake, a radical disturbance to the complacent organization of our small sense of self.

A Shock

08 December 2014

Spiritual awakening results from a shock which disturbs our usual points of reference.

Fading Tears

01 December 2014

Through all our human gropings to understand, learning to fail, learning to succeed, finally we see it’s all tears fading and drying on the face of God.

Pause

24 November 2014

Let us pause for a moment… breathe… and be grateful.

Spiritual Cage

17 November 2014

Like lies, unexpressed feelings create a psychic cage around the spirit.

Universal Essence

10 November 2014

In time these words will lapse into the great silence. All that we say and do and speak will echo faintly, resound, and merge with the universal essence from which it came.

The Space Between

03 November 2014

Everything appears out of the matrix of emptiness, out of the space between the in and the out breaths.

Enlightenment

27 October 2014

No one has ever become enlightened yet all is enlightenment.

No Seeking Necessary

20 October 2014

There is a crossing to make… but you seek for the way to the other side when there’s really no seeking necessary… the means are before you, before your very eyes. Just get in the boat!

What I Know and What I Don't

13 October 2014

What I have learnt is always complemented by my unknowing. What I know is cradled in the expansive matrix of what I do not know.

One Consciousness

06 October 2014

All beings participate in the One Consciousness.

Halt Seeking

29 September 2014

Practicing awareness, seeing "what is", is a powerful experience that halts seeking.

Growing Acceptance

15 September 2014

Out of stillness awareness will arise and acceptance will grow.

The Answer to the Question of Death

08 September 2014

My life is the answer to the question of death. I sought the undying, the eternal in many shapes and forms. My emphasis was on the seeker and the search. My life used to take me further away from the deathless.

Romantic Myth

01 September 2014

We are struggling to transcend a romantic myth that is about two thousand years old and anachronistic. We must either transcend this myth or transform it. I would prefer an entirely new mythology to guide humanity in the times ahead. These times will either be extraordinarily dark or they will be the sign that we are emerging at last from the end of the Kaliyuga. These end times—the Kaliyuga—are crucial because depending on which way humanity goes, what decisions are made collectively, and what values are followed, almost anything can happen.

Truth or Lies?

25 August 2014

Our lives hinge on a single choice. Be loyal to the lie or be loyal to the truth. Once you have made your decision the choice is self-perpetuating. This means that lies lead to falsehoods lead to more lies and eventually you feel and become lost. Truth leads to deeper truth and wisdom and empowerment and skill in life and eventually you become clear. Which will you choose?

Authentic Tones of Love

18 August 2014

When the process of opening the heart, learning to feel and love again, becoming vulnerable and relating in intimacy is genuinely happening, the first emotions to “spill out” are negative ones. Anger, hate, resentment, frustration, hurt, pain, bitterness are all the toxic elements that need to be released from the heart before it is possible to feel the deeper, subtler, more authentic tones of love.

Whole-Body Listening

11 August 2014

Listen to the world from an inner place of stillness. Center yourself in the heart and trust that your mental understanding will be balanced by your feeling. Listen with your whole body, not just the mind. Sitting or standing relaxed and loose, allow your body to move or sway sometimes and respond physically and spontaneously, both inwardly and outwardly. Let your body respond emotionally and energetically.

Heaven and Earth

04 August 2014

Our heads are in the heavens; our feet are on the ground. We are creatures of roots and wings.

Sublime Identification

28 July 2014

The soul inside every person is the means to experience, to reach to the earth, to savor life, to experience sublime identification through our true nature in time, if we tread the path of wholeness to the end.

Global Crisis

21 July 2014

Inner work must become common-place, routine, and universal among people, rather than merely the concern of a relative few. Evolving human consciousness must become the prevailing focus for humanity if we are to avert the impending spiritual, ecological, heart-breakingly human, and global crisis of the 21st century.

Today

14 July 2014

Today human beings have grown away from their true nature, from their essential selves. Inner work is needed to bring us back to ourselves, to the naturalness that has been lost, to our inner wisdom, and to our true purpose.

Creating Conditions for Change

07 July 2014

We cannot force change any more than we make a flower grow or change another person’s mind for them, but we can create the conditions for change to enter our lives, through openness, surrender and grace.

Blessed Contentment

30 June 2014

In meditation and other consciousness practices we may potentially return to the blessed contentment of profound inner peace.

Burning in the Crucible

23 June 2014

The most beneficial act you can offer to the most vulnerable is the powerful act of entering the crucible of awakening and burning within it.

True Healing

16 June 2014

When we realize our interconnectedness with all beings and with all of life, we see that healing—true healing—compels us to care, without prejudice.

The Hope

09 June 2014

Inner work is the hope for humanity.

The Spiritual Teacher is Yourself

02 June 2014

The spiritual teacher is yourself or as it has traditionally been put he or she is the mirror in which you see yourself as you are, as you would like to be, human and divine, possibility and actuality, imperfections and perfections, relative and absolute, in all your great complexity… and simplicity.

The End of Hope

26 May 2014

The seeker waits in despair, disillusionment, and emptiness, without expectation, without anything to hold onto, with nothing. He cries out in silence, into a non-receptive space… and the sound merely echoes back at him. Some of you have been here. You will recognize this place, this endlessness, this emptiness, this waste land at the end of hope. It is here that the spiritual teacher appears.

The Real World

19 May 2014

Every inner journey starts with the intuition that there is something more, that the world you are in is not the real world.

Fully Human Life

12 May 2014

Can we live the human life, the fully human life, the one in which we allow the divine to manifest through our humanness?

The Power of Obsession

05 May 2014

This age of the individual is far from straightforward. Obsessed as we are with ourselves, addicted as we are to our own self-importance, self-indulgence, and self-aggrandizement, we have the means, the power, and the strength in our possession. These are contained in our obsession and addiction to ourself. If we can only harness the power of obsession and addiction, and redirect it toward the Divine.

The Age of Individualism

28 April 2014

Ironically your greatest spiritual asset is what appears to be your greatest obstacle: your obsession with yourself. Today we live in the age of individualism.

Spiritual Vision

22 April 2014

Maintain a spiritual vision that is authentic, deep and doesn’t bow to populism or over-concern to make spirituality palatable, that retains its integrity, genuineness, and mystery, that can genuinely lead to personal freedom and spiritual liberation.

Spiritual Devotion

14 April 2014

Spiritual devotion is spontaneous and unexpected. Probably the nearest thing to it in worldly life is falling in love.

Immaturity

07 April 2014

Immaturity is repetition, the automatic performance of unconscious emotional-behavioral patterns sourced from early life.

Maturity

31 March 2014

The very first step in maturity is ascending to the heart.

The Three Stages of Awakening: a Revolutionary New Paradigm

24 March 2014

In first-stage awakening we transcend dependency and conditioned fears through resolving our childhood and adolescent dilemmas. In second-stage awakening we face an individual and collective challenge, as we rise into the heart and learn how to truly love. We address the experience of otherness, of separation, identity, and division which is inherent in the life of the mind, the distinctive western approach to existence that has become almost global today. The second stage of awakening is the realization that no separation truly exists. In the third stage of awakening the task is to deepen awareness and transform remaining personal concerns into devotion and continuous spiritual practice by surrender and spontaneity, selflessness and compassion.

Weeping for the Divine

17 March 2014

The words appear out of the matrix of emptiness, out of the space between the in and the out breaths. In time these words will lapse into the great silence of mouna and all that we say and do and speak here will be a fading part of the universe. Like sand grains or notes of music, like autumn leaves or snowflakes, they will have been and then they will not have been. Let us pause for a moment. Are they merely human foibles, human failings, human gropings to understand? Or are they perhaps, fading, drying on the face now tears—the tears we shed weeping for the Divine?

Opening our Hearts to the Sacred

10 March 2014

In this present era of cheapening, materialism, of violation and disregard for the truly spiritual, more than ever before, we need to open our ears and hearts to the sacred.

Many Speak of...

03 March 2014

Many speak of spirituality as a confection, love as sentiment, and deeply human and emotional states are confused with the spiritual and the transcendent.

Stuck

24 February 2014

Modern humanity is stuck in the unresolved issues of early years.

"Reality"

17 February 2014

“Reality” has not given us what we desire, so, resourceful as ever, we have created an outward fantasy to meet our inner needs.

A Spiritual Gate

10 February 2014

To go through and rise to the challenges of the first three seven-year cycles of life brings you to a spiritual gate; the beginning of the prelude to the subtle energy conditions that enables and empowers the spiritual search.

Healing and Listening

03 February 2014

Between us is a great sacrificial fire as we engage in a ritual which is as old as human communication, as old as life itself.

The First Seven Years of Life

27 January 2014

Identity is key in the first seven years of life, as are the formative experiences of dependency, rejection, betrayal, and punishment through which we model our identity.

The Beginning of Freedom

20 January 2014

The end of attention is the beginning of freedom itself.

Consciousness

13 January 2014

This fundamental truth should be understood by all serious spiritual seekers: Reality is Unity, Oneness. All is Consciousness alone…

Your Divinity

06 January 2014

What right do we have to withhold our divinity from existence?

The Divine Human

30 December 2013

Let us dedicate our inner work practice to a theme that draws Christian, pagan, and ancient religions, east and west, north and south, together into one all-consuming tremendous message—the ecumenical communication, the message that was ignored, though delivered so brightly by Swami Vivekananda 100 years ago in the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. That theme is the practice of devotion to a God man, a divine human who could offer salvation to humankind and to the world; a child, a human born from a mortal woman who realized his or her divine nature and manifests Truth.

Father Christmas, God and Daddy

23 December 2013

Father Christmas and God the Father are merely extrapolated images of Daddy, our biological father, who is himself the mythological figure of our childhood.

Fulfillment

16 December 2013

Whether it is the flower, or music, the seed, the wave or the river all things reach their fulfillment beyond themselves.

Becoming Wise

09 December 2013

There is no such thing as becoming wise through knowledge, because knowledge is not inherently wise. It is inherently information only.

No Words

02 December 2013

There are no words to describe the true nature of a human being.

Realize Yourself

25 November 2013

You are capable of self-reflection through the practice of awareness and by means of awareness you may realize yourself.

Divinely Lit

18 November 2013

Live your life as a blessing, not just as a thought of a blessing, but feeling in you blessed, fortunate, divinely lit.

The Spirituality Game

11 November 2013

Spirituality is not some game of trying to find the “right” way and then applying it indiscriminately to everyone.

No More Need

04 November 2013

When you have arrived you have no more need of the road.

Simply Unnecessary

28 October 2013

To pass by the truth, rather than inhabit reality seems to me to be a travesty, a tragedy, an unnecessary deprivation.

Touch the Mystery

21 October 2013

Through the soul we are in touch with irrational forces of great depth and mystery.

What is the Soul?

14 October 2013

The soul inside every person is the means to experience, to reach to the earth, to savor life, to experience sublime identification through our true nature in time, if we tread the path of wholeness to the end.

Knowledge and Wisdom

07 October 2013

Spirituality is less a matter of knowledge, more a matter of wisdom, and knowledge is not wisdom.

The Border

30 September 2013

Paradox is the border where infinity meets time and space.

Each Moment

23 September 2013

Each moment of your life can be an opportunity, an invitation to expand, to grow, enlighten, and transcend the world of appearances, to offer your humanness up to the Divine.

Choice

16 September 2013

Begin by appreciating the gate, the life you have been given, and the opportunity it presents you with, and ask profoundly: now what would I like to do with this?

Generous

10 September 2013

You must be generous enough to receive generously, because receiving, as well as giving, is a generous act.

Receiving

03 September 2013

Learn to receive other’s gifts. Be very present in your receiving. Don’t be quick to think how you should respond. Simply be in the moment, and receive the gift.

Love in Action

19 August 2013

Awareness is love in action and the highest form of love is devotion.

Uninteresting Mind

12 August 2013

The mind tries to interest you in the same old small number of themes and narratives, the same old worries, fears, and hates.

Transformation

05 August 2013

You have adopted a brilliant disguise—it is your “me-ness,” your small self, and this must be surrendered to the unconscious forces of the Divine for transformation.

Your Life

29 July 2013

Everyone has a capacity, a potential, a depth of expansion to fulfill in this life.

How to Live

22 July 2013

Eternity is in each moment, if we only understand which way to turn, which way to be led, and how to live.

One with Reality

15 July 2013

We are bound to life in order to become enlightened and in that lies your absolute freedom, your liberation and Self-realization, your union with Reality itself.

Necessity of Practice

08 July 2013

It is not enough to have spiritual tendencies; you must apply yourself, make life decisions, adhere to your inner commitment, persist, practice—above all practice spiritually.

Absolute Freedom

01 July 2013

Absolute freedom is within. It cannot be taken away.

What We Love

24 June 2013

We always attend to that which we love.

You Must Be Brave

17 June 2013

You must be brave if you want to be free, because it takes great courage to be free, liberated, and not require anyone’s approval.

A Revolution in Consciousness

10 June 2013

By facing the ego which has been highly developed and become extremely complex as the symbol of self-identification, separation, and division in the inner individual life and the outer collective world, we can prepare the ground for the revolution of individual and collective consciousness.

Inner Method

03 June 2013

The sequence is this – openness, surrender and grace.

Conditions for Change

27 May 2013

We cannot force change, but we can create the conditions for change to enter our lives, through openness, surrender and grace.

The Two Fears

20 May 2013

Our lives lurch between two poles of insecurity: the fear of not getting what we want and the fear of getting what we want.

Desire

13 May 2013

Desire maintains a deceitful dynamic. It is like a train on an endless track that refuels without losing momentum or stopping and never reaches its destination.

How You Receive

06 May 2013

The way we receive depends on how strongly we are attached to our ego. The looser the hold, the easier it is for us to receive; the tighter the hold, the harder it is for us to receive.

A Great Threshold

29 April 2013

You stand on a great threshold, a gulf is between you and the truth, there can be no escape, you can only return to yourself and to the source of your being-ness, soul, and spirit.

No Object to Love

22 April 2013

Love can have no object other than itself. Just as love simply is, we want to be loved for simply being and nothing else will satisfy us.

Heart and Being

15 April 2013

Inner transformation establishes us in a new center of being and heart.

Richest Gift

08 April 2013

Whatever we like least about our self conceals our richest gift.

Enter the Slipstream

01 April 2013

When we shed our historical conditioning and enter into the slipstream of the eternal, personal transformation is inevitable.

Awareness, Transformation, Realization

25 March 2013

The order of awakening is awareness, transformation, realization. Today we are having a hard time meeting the first of these—awareness. Because it seems increasingly hard in a relatively superficial, increasingly amoral, fickle and speed-driven culture to recognize, honor or even value such things as these.

The Transformed Human

18 March 2013

Compassion is the source of all action in the transformed human being.

Inner Sacredness

11 March 2013

The sacred life must return to our world now and sacredness begins inside. 

The Spirit Behind

04 March 2013

Truth?… only say it and you commit murder. But the spirit behind the word… that can never die. It is the same with human beings.

Find that you are Everything

25 February 2013

To find yourself, start today, begin now! Breathe and wait, be gentle with yourself, do not hurry, you have all the time in the world. Fall outside of time and meet existence in eternity, then you find that you are everything. Lack was merely your way of avoiding the truth and the truth sets you free.

Walk the Path of Love

18 February 2013

Perhaps a day will come when you meet someone who also participates in life, rather than lack. When you meet they appear as yourself and you can walk the path of love together.

Dependency and Love

11 February 2013

Dependency and love are mutually exclusive. In our society today one of the signs of madness is that we think we can want, need and be dependent on someone we love, that we can fill our lack, our inner sense of deficiency, with someone else who themself feels inwardly deficient. You cannot do it because it cannot be done. No one – wives, husbands, lovers, children – can fill your inner emptiness; neither money, status, material belongings or distractions of any kind. In fact it is these distractions – including seeking what you need in the other – that compound the problem!

Life is Good

04 February 2013

We know in our wisdom that life is somehow fundamentally good. And it is; even the worst events turn out to reveal some beauty of soul and spirit in both individual and collective humanity.

Be with the Unknown

28 January 2013

Cultivate an inner attitude of acceptance so that you meet events in openness, receptivity and an underlying wisdom which receives the mystery of life. Expand your ability to be with the unknown, with uncertainty, to not have to prescribe and anticipate life events constantly.

Compassion in Action

21 January 2013

A community of human souls intent on attaining inner freedom, practicing compassion and responding to spiritual and divine longing is an appropriate and direct response to the demands of the present time. Be proud of your inner work in whatever discipline or practice you have adopted or practice it, be tolerant of other’s beliefs, cooperate with others rather than stand alone in your egoity and, above all, practice compassion in action to all, without discrimination.

Knowledge and Wisdom

14 January 2013

Wisdom comes from experience; knowledge comes from thinking.

Loving Relationships and the Divine

07 January 2013

If you are fortunate enough to have a loving relationship and a life companion alongside you, you look with the eyes of the Divine upon him or her and you celebrate your partner, along with all the other gifts of this divine world. Passing through the spiritual and transcendent realms of truth and reality, you turn your face to God, to the Divine, together.

The Grace of a Life Well-lived

31 December 2012

Accept the grace of old age, the wisdom of life experience and the generosity of existence, as a being who gives back and serves in teaching the young (increasingly everybody else!) through loving acceptance, compassion and empathy, through generosity and demonstrating the power of grace—the grace of a life well-lived and a life that continues to flourish and unfold intelligently with feeling, engagement and loving kindness, a life that naturally and beautifully has led to a deepening spiritual threshold... to truly communicate, I don't think that spirituality should be any different to cooking or medicine or politics. Within these spheres of endeavor, if you are as confused as people seem to be in the spiritual sphere, we would be speaking nonsense with devastating consequences.

The Responsibility of Forgiveness

24 December 2012

Forgiveness comes about in its own time. Please make a place for it in your inner garden. Prepare the ground, welcome it when it arrives and be ready for the great responsibility it brings.

Releasing Our Potential

17 December 2012

The inner journey liberates, fulfills, and releases our potential into the world. Denial and repression of our shadow and inner darkness result in outward projections of prejudice and evil into the world.

The Heart Can See

10 December 2012

What is unconscious or invisible to the eye is the fact that most of us are spending all of our time holding up the structure of the ego, without realizing that the heart can see exactly what is happening.

People Caring

03 December 2012

People used to talk to each other and perhaps they were effective, because people used to simply care about each other. What if professionalization, which is only a phenomenon of the last one to two hundred years, has taken that away from people?

World Transformation

26 November 2012

If we human beings were to look seriously inside, as a collective act, and make a sincere commitment to a new intention to live harmoniously, intelligently and joyfully together the world would be transformed. But first we must understand the relationship between the inner and outer worlds.

Only One Way

19 November 2012

Inner work corresponds with outer life in amplifying and reflecting the fact that one way is right, while a multitude of wrong ways exist. Is it any wonder that so many are lost and seeking guidance?

Your Eternal Nature

12 November 2012

We are living in a time of profound transformation, but transformation does not occur in time. Spiritual transformation does not occur in time. We transform in eternity out of our eternal nature. No explanation for this exists, because the time-bound mind is created from our thinking mind and the mind of thought is enslaved to the past, memory of past hurts, experiences, fixedness, divisiveness and separation. Our liberation is predicated on our transformation, which is never conscious, but always emerging from that borderline of conscious and unconscious, inner and outer, human and spiritual worlds.

Radical Insight

05 November 2012

Self-awareness is the principle tool of psychological inquiry. To be free of the limitations of personality and character we must rise to the challenge of being human, to be all we are and all we can be. It is a process of radical insight.

Spiritual Information

29 October 2012

Today we have a Tower of Babel situation; just look around at the vast array of spiritual teachers, religious traditions, new and ancient spiritual philosophies which are sometimes confused, vague or obtuse, but always confusing. If we are to truly communicate, I don't think that spirituality should be any different to cooking or medicine or politics. Within these spheres of endeavor, if you are as confused as people seem to be in the spiritual sphere, we would be speaking nonsense with devastating consequences.

Sexuality, Hysteria and Devotion

22 October 2012

Sexuality should be neither repressed, nor encouraged as a substitute for spirituality. Relating and real relationship without separation and divisiveness is the basis for effective and authentic spiritual life, not relationships in themselves – sexual, emotional, dependent or otherwise. The sexual axis and devotional-hysterical response to another person is the result of over-intensity of the heart, or the fourth chakra response, when it is out of balance with the rest of the bodily energy system. Through leading a balanced life in support of serious spiritual practices and discipline, and right breath practice, this, like other relative experiences, can be “seen through” by the serious spiritual student. In fact all experiences, phenomena, relationships and material body-emotional based life can be “seen through” while living an intelligent spiritual practice.

Misguidance of the Ego

15 October 2012

The absurd claim that spiritual enlightenment grows from your individual personality is the misguidance of your ego’s resistance to its own demise.

Engage Profoundly Spiritually

08 October 2012

We have to learn; we have to study, we must be released from our ignorance through allowing our minds to expand, our hearts to open…and if none of these activities work write poetry, paint pictures, make music or dance! If you engage with them profoundly, spiritually, that will be enough!

Un-born, Un-happening, and Un-dying!

01 October 2012

In witnessing, meditation, or authentic awareness you discover that you are a reflection of consciousness in individual form...YOU! When you reside and stabilize in awareness, much the same as you were previously centered in change, so caught up changing, changing, changing that you are dizzy from it, you at last see the obvious: everything in this world is not only changing; it is dying before your eyes. But You are not, as awareness you are Un-born, Un-happening, and Un-dying!

Gifts of Love

24 September 2012

To live humbly and simply without assumptions or expectations is the spiritual key to happiness. When we can truly do this (and all you have to do is stop doing what you are doing now to inhibit this!) blessings and treasures shower upon us, our lives and our relationship in gifts of love.

Division

17 September 2012

Separating ourselves from others creates division.

Forgiving

10 September 2012

Not forgiving hurts you the most.

Form and Consciousness

03 September 2012

Consciousness does not end with the death of form.

The Deep Sadness of Creation

27 August 2012

In inner work, sooner or later, you move through the last resistances, shed the last attachments to personality, lose the last struggles and fights and, when the dust has settled, you laugh long and hard. But just before that moment you may experience the deep sadness of creation.

The Path of Relationship

20 August 2012

Love relationships require self-loyalty, relinquishing power and embracing suffering. Early conditioning and formative relationships define us in reactive relationships. All our relationships with others will refer us back to this need until we are ready to do the work of giving acceptance, forgiveness and compassion to ourselves. Where does the path of relationship lead?

The Final Stages of Live

13 August 2012

Just as we grew out of our childhood toys in earlier life, in our later middle years, if we are open to it, lose interest in the exciting and enticing rewards of adulthood. We open the inner eye, listen with inner ears, touch ourselves deep within. For this is the call to the final stages of a lifetime.

Seeing Things As They Are

06 August 2012

When we can see things as they are, we have let go of our judgments and our models. As we free the world from our prejudices, we ourselves are liberated. Life is beyond separation. We can notice how we need the world to conform to our models, witness the tourniquet of our belief systems, and the stranglehold of our models.

The Ego-Based Realm

30 July 2012

This ego-based realm is the shadow land, the domain of terrifying, attractive chimeras, the world of grey shapes and indistinct forms passing endlessly away...into the fog.

The Individual and The Spiritual

23 July 2012

The spiritually inclined person or student of life who is interested in the full manifestation of human potential must take into account very seriously that self-discovery, personal therapy or the fulfillment of the individual self must be the overriding concern, practice and endeavor that precede the spiritual, single-focused effort. Otherwise spirituality must be considered solely in egocentric terms and you cannot conceive the absolute in relative terms anymore than you can light a fire underwater or fly on the ground.

Transcending Character

16 July 2012

The personal impression of character, personality and ego must be transcended if we are to progress spiritually.

Hidden in Full View

09 July 2012

Isn’t it remarkable that, rather than not speaking of spirituality and enlightenment, people speak of it all the time. Isn’t the best way to hide something to display it openly?

Self-Awareness

02 July 2012

The last person to be let in to the theater of self is you. After all you never paid to watch.

Self-Responsibility

25 June 2012

"I am sorry" is the corollary of "It's your fault" and neither is true.

Inner Wisdom

18 June 2012

What do you want to know that you don’t know already?

Ultimately Alone

11 June 2012

So I would say that you are ultimately alone. Therapy may well address issues of loneliness, but you cannot take away aloneness.

The Spiritual Life

04 June 2012

Do not settle for less than everything – the transformation of the human heart and the courage to demand and bear the responsibility of leading a spiritual life in the world.

Freedom

28 May 2012

It is only when I become free of myself that I am free to be myself.

Source

21 May 2012

We have created depression in our lives because we no longer feel connected to our source.

The Lake

14 May 2012

When the lake of reflection stills, I AM appears.

Love Another

07 May 2012

As I love another so will I be able to love myself.

Non-Separation

30 April 2012

When you are born you begin the journey into separation and division. Through each person's own inner work and awareness practice a sense of the wisdom of enlightened non-separation arises.

Death of Form

23 April 2012

Consciousness does not end with the death of form.

Heal

16 April 2012

What we have suffered demands the attention of an open heart and making our hearts available to another’s suffering brings healing to ourselves and the other.

Personality

09 April 2012

Personality is a thin layer around the soul. It is how we appear, to ourselves as well as others, not who we are.

Spiritual Practice

02 April 2012

Spiritual practice should be enjoyable; we should want to practice and love to do so. Practice is done for its own sake, never for the attainment of a goal. For spiritual practice simply reflects who we really are.

No Journey

26 March 2012

The spiritual journey is not a journey at all. There cannot be a journey to where we already are.

All is Our Real Nature

19 March 2012

The goal of spiritual practice is like no other goal and the destination of the spiritual journey is like no other destination. Spiritual practice is not the way to our real nature; it is our real nature.

Suffering

12 March 2012

A person who is empty enough can empathize with us, resonate with us: someone who has enough inner space to receive us can bear the presence of suffering alongside us.

Creating Worlds

05 March 2012

You are creating your world and I am creating my world. We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.

Suffering Is a Gift

27 February 2012

Human suffering can turn into divine teaching. So we get gifted people working with people who are suffering, usually because they themselves have had those experiences, or some related experiences, which cause empathy and compassion to arise in them.

Mind

20 February 2012

Remember, only the mind can make you mad. We need to be out of mind sometimes.

Centering

13 February 2012

Each of us is at the centre of the universe. On a personal level we live our lives within a spinning-top of movement and activity. We are attracted to the drama and excitement of life and, at the same time, impoverished by our reluctance to centre ourselves. The challenge is to locate and become centered in the still centre of ourselves around which the top is spinning.

Experience

06 February 2012

The essence of real experience is spontaneity and surrender.

Free

29 January 2012

Enlightening understanding should always be received lightly. It is not burdensome, it implies no duty or responsibility - we are, and have always been, utterly free.

The Journey

23 January 2012

We need not dwell on the road once we have reached our destination.

Consciousness

16 January 2012

When we look within what we find is not separation, but simply consciousness manifesting as presence.

Present

09 January 2012

The future and the past do not really exist; they are merely projections of the present.

Experience

02 January 2012

To enter fully into the present we must go beyond reason and belief to direct experience unhindered by thought.

Divine Self

26 December 2011

Just as we, as individual, small separate selves have been concealing our divinity; our divinity has been concealing itself in our small separate selves.

Awakening

19 December 2011

Spiritual awakening results from a shock which disturbs our normal points of reference. True spiritual teaching is a physical, emotional and mental revolution, an upheaval, an earthquake, a radical disturbance to the complacent organization of our small sense of self.

True Nature

12 December 2011

Our true nature is unspoken because it is unspeakable, unwritten because it is un-writeable; we can only say what it is not.

Inner Work and Spiritual Practice

05 December 2011

Inner work and therapy are for those of us who want to know, who want to feel and understand, who are unwilling to settle for the shallowness and avoidance of a superficial purely material, conventional life. Spiritual practice is for those of us who have had, or who seek, an experience of ‘otherness’, for whom such experiences are our most precious and who know, or suspect, that there is something other than the world of changing appearances.

Living Life

28 November 2011

One miracle we can all aspire to remains elusive because it is so obvious. It is the miracle of living a life and it challenges us to be authentic and act from the center of our beings.

Separation

21 November 2011

Although we masquerade as separate beings, when we need to separate, we find it hard to say goodbye.

False Self

14 November 2011

We have built the fiction of our small sense of self on the formative events of a cosmic moment.

Psycho-Spiritual Therapy: An Introductin

07 November 2011

Psycho-spiritual psychotherapy has been extraordinarily open in amassing knowledge and wisdom. Drawing on the insights into neurosis, character and the unconscious of Western psychology and the wisdom of the East - Vedanta, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism - and making a deep bow to the mystics of all traditions - to the shamans, mentors, seers, sages, prophets as well as many contemporary spiritual teachers, psycho-spiritual psychotherapy has assimilated these insights into a profound understanding of human development and created a powerful way to heal.

Authentic

31 October 2011

Authenticity is the bridge between our personal egoic existence and our true nature.

How Do You Become Spiritual?

17 October 2011

How do you become spiritual? Start with a little discipline. Feel the world, cultivate awareness, keep your eyes open wide and your heart open wider, allow yourself to be affected by the world, touched by people and events, be present and breathe - that is a good start.

Humanity/Spirituality

10 October 2011

We are suffering from an inner mental-emotional mix of guilt, resentment, anxiety and over-active minds. The way to heal these conditions is through healing our humanity, not striving for our divinity. Spiritual practice does not lead to spiritual enlightenment while our minds and hearts are filled with repressed emotions and hidden resentment.

Suffering

03 October 2011

While the plight of people living in extreme conditions due to war, famine and tyranny calls for the heart’s attention, so too do the causes of suffering in the materially decadent West where suffering is turned inwards and manifested psychologically.

Love

26 September 2011

When we seek love outside ourselves, we have difficulty loving.

Love

19 September 2011

Love evades all our seeking because we can never possess or define it. It eludes discovery or understanding because it is so close to us we may never make an object of it or see it clearly.

Awakening

12 September 2011

Spiritual awakening results from a shock which disturbs our normal points of reference. True spiritual teaching is a physical, emotional and mental revolution, an upheaval, an earthquake, a radical disturbance to the complacent organization of our small sense of self.

Cosmic

05 September 2011

From our first gulp to our last gasp of breath our individual life shimmers like a shard of sunlight for a cosmic moment before it is gone forever.

Human Development

29 August 2011

The sequence of trust, through betrayal to forgiveness and, finally, transcendence mirrors the growth of human development through infancy, adulthood, old age and death. Childhood is a time of great trust and innocence. In adulthood we ‘betray’ this original innocence by becoming more worldly and losing our innate sense of openness and trust. In old age there is the potential to soften and find forgiveness for ourselves, for others and for life and the suffering and joy it has given us.

Same

22 August 2011

People with disabilities are made to feel different, not because they are different, but because we can’t bear to think that we are the same as them.

Community

15 August 2011

Our sense of community begins with the community of selves within.

Transformation

08 August 2011

When we share our ‘human wealth’ - the heart-felt qualities of expansiveness, generosity and kindness - transformation takes place.

Connect

01 August 2011

We are all interconnected, so much so that no feeling, thought or action is exclusively our own.

Changing Truth

25 July 2011

The truth is never fixed; it is always changing.

Compassion

18 July 2011

True compassion is only present when we are not.

Purpose

11 July 2011

Bliss, or purpose, gives our lives meaning, not by altering the conditions of our lives, but by being with those conditions exactly as they are

Purpose

04 July 2011

Purpose requires surrender. We have to free ourselves from other people’s aspirations and let go of our ideas of what we think we should be doing. Many of us spend a lifetime trying to fulfill the expectations of someone else, rather than living our own lives.

Inner and Outer

27 June 2011

Our inner work reflects into the world. We feel the suffering of others and resonate with their life predicaments. No longer self-obsessed, the fruits of our inner work fill us and overflow into the world.

Spiritual Path

20 June 2011

Today many people experience a call to follow a spiritual path in the world, rather than outside it. For many the spiritual journey is no longer formally prescribed by an outward authority or pursued in an institutionalized setting; each individual discovers it for his or her self. It is an expression of the emerging intimacy between our humanity and our divinity.

 

Share this page

• Print this page
• Email this page to a friend

Related information

• Workshops for Personal and Spiritual Growth
• Courses for Spiritual Development
• Retreats for Personal and Spiritual Growth
• Books on Spiritual Growth by Richard Harvey

• start of page
• privacy policy
• legal disclaimer
• site map