We are all aware – sometimes painfully so – that the past influences the present. If we have not studied we will not do well on our exam. If we don’t practice our instrument we …
What is the Relationship Between Meditation and Transformation?
I have dedicated my life to the exploration of the profound potential for transformation that all human beings possess. In this pursuit I have had the grace of experiencing transformation at the core of my …
Self-Authoring a Paradigm Shift
We live inside of a paradigm based on an assumption of separation and division. We have been trained to believe that we live in reality and we have been taught that the reality we live …
The Experience of Suspended Limitation
The experience of spiritual freedom is a condition of suspended limitation. I remember a very profound moment in my life when I realized that I didn’t really know what was possible. Stop and think about …
The Three Stage Process of Evolving Selfhood
I believe that the evolution of the self occurs through successive transformative leaps and that this is the whole purpose of spiritual life. The spiritual experiences that we have, the breakthroughs, openings and energetic surges …
Spiritual Growth and the Emergence of the Meta-Being
The purpose of spiritual growth is the expansion of self-awareness. As we grow we become more aware of who we are. Human life is our spiritual path. It leads to the gradual expansion of self-awareness. …
William James and Radical Empiricism
William James is the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience and one of my biggest philosophical heroes. He was born in upstate New York in a family rich with inherited wealth. James was a …
Participatory Ontological Emergence: Questioning Some Foundational Assumptions of our Current Reality
It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. – Alfred North Whitehead Ontology is the branch of philosophy that asks the question “What is Reality?” This is a profound question, …
Embracing Radical Pluralism – or – Can we really live with Paradox?
Ontology is the branch of philosophy concerned with questions about the essential nature of reality. When you ask, “Is this real?” you are asking an ontological question. Ontology is often what we think about when …
The Secret of Perpetual Awakening
For the past few years I have been exploring and teaching about a distinction that I speak about as the first and second surrender of spiritual awakening. The first surrender is the utterly passive acceptance …
The Non-Locality of Self
The literary movement known as Romanticism actively embraced the idea of multiple perspectives. The Romantics were in part reacting against what they saw as the limitations of the Enlightenment. One of those limitations was that …
A Multi-Dimensional View of Consciousness
Most of us have been taught to understand mind, thought, and self through a dualistic model of reality. I call that model of reality things-in-space consciousness, and it was born in the West during the …
How Meditation Supports a Paradigm Shift
Many of us have discovered that profound transformation necessitates a deep shift in the paradigm we live in. In moments of deep insight we realize that we live under the influence of deeply held beliefs …
Surrender, Kundalini and Inner Spiritual Guidance: Part 3
Once we feel ourselves to be the-one-who-is-experiencing we know who we are and the process of self-forgetting ceases. If we resist the temptation to focus on some familiar way of being we will lose all …
Surrender, Kundalini and Inner Spiritual Guidance: Part 2
When spiritual paths call for surrender they are asking us to give up our identification with an isolated and separate small ‘s’ self so that we can expand into the fullness of who we are. …
Surrender, Kundalini and Inner Spiritual Guidance: Part 1
Spiritual paths, both traditional and alternative, in one way or another, always revolve around to call for surrender. Surrender means giving up, letting go, ceasing to resist. The moment of surrender is the moment of …
Love, Healing and The Journey Home: Part 3
The experience of being a human who experiences contractedness caused by past pain and suffering, who has occasional moments of tremendous release and relief, and may even experience periodic illuminations of spirit, is the human …
Love, Healing and The Journey Home: Part 2
Spiritual Awakening is the ultimate homecoming. It is the discovery of a home that you can never leave and the realization that you have never been anywhere but home all along. This human life – …
Love, Healing and The Journey Home: Part 1
I believe that spiritual growth under the right conditions is as natural as breathing…and the conditions of our world are the perfect conditions for spiritual growth. The person you are right now, with all of …
Tantra, Non-Duality and the Practice of No Problem: Part 3
One of the miracles of meditation is the recognition that contentment is not just a feeling. We can be content even when we feel discontent. We can be happy even when we feel unhappy. I …