Teachings

Life often turns out radically different from how we supposed it might. Have you noticed? You look back over some significant stretch of life and say, "Could I have imagined things would turn ... Continue Reading

Much of our planet is presently at the mercy of weather extremity. In the United States, as in so many other parts of the world, high temperatures and rising water have eclipsed other ... Continue Reading

We generally ask a question because we hope to get an answer. Sometimes, though, the deepest benefit of asking comes of turning the eyes from a would-be response and looking back at the ... Continue Reading

The storied container of a person's recollected history is a kind of static object that exists in the head. Mental memory is distorted by interpretation and sculpted by a sense of identity, helping ... Continue Reading

A human being blessedly is endowed with a dual capacity: to experience our oh-so-mortal physicality and simultaneously to attune, in the stillness of the now, to the timeless reality of which we partake ... Continue Reading

We keep getting older. From the moment we're born, each day we're older than we were the day before. This is vivid if you're around a baby or a little child. If you've ... Continue Reading

A new year has begun. “Happy New Year,” we wish one another. But what if we greeted each new morning (our own or someone else's) with “Happy New Day”? What if we saw ... Continue Reading

Life happens fast. The irony is noteworthy: while a given moment is utterly still (when you're really there), the succession of lived nows, when the mind revisits a stretch of time, appears to ... Continue Reading

Once upon a time I prided myself on the ability to multitask. Other people, observing the “skill,” admired me for it. As if it was good to be able to do two things ... Continue Reading

In the nearly 20 years since awakening, I have observed several lengthy “chapters” in the more fully waking-up of the several human expressions: heart, mind, and body.

Prior to 2003 ... Continue Reading

A seeker's aching desire to awaken is not apart from, not different from, what comes to many a regretful human being on their death bed. Oh that I had truly lived! That I ... Continue Reading

There is more than one way that knowing takes place in a human being. This is the case whether or not a person is awake, although for the most part the occurrence of ... Continue Reading

People longing to awaken sometimes hold mistaken impressions about what radical freedom would be like. Some suppose that the quieting of the mischief-causing mind, long in the thrall of ego-maintenance, leaves a person ... Continue Reading

The fully awakened heart knows what it is to love unconditionally. What could be more life-altering than to come to dwell in -- to dwell as -- radically fearless love, liberated from the ... Continue Reading

A person who longs to awaken, contemplating what the sweetness of freedom might be like, may suppose that it would mean living at a remove from ordinary experience. That matters of the body, ... Continue Reading

Awakening removed the fear of dying, taking with it the neurotic lifelong obsession with doing what “matters” (or “needs” doing), in the ever-diminishing time left. The number of days on that precious quantity ... Continue Reading

While it is often supposed to be so, awakening is not typically a single shining moment altering everything on one's interior, in one fell swoop, and then continuing unchanged ever after. Although the ... Continue Reading

He is the truest friend of my life, and likely of the before of this life.

How hesitant I was, for the longest stretch of time, to acknowledge (even to ... Continue Reading

There is a bounty of common assumptions about what it is to awaken, and about what it's like to live in the awakened “state.” The vast majority of those impressions are mistaken and ... Continue Reading

Once in a great while we are given two births in a single life. There's the one the body has, at its start, with its eventual giving rise to the sense of self, ... Continue Reading

Recent conditions on my road have made it clear that my Vermont town and my particular life experience is (like the entire human race) subject to the impact of climate change -- just ... Continue Reading

Spiritual teachers can be legendary for their ability to open a person's eyes to the truth (and some, for their unfortunate ability to harm or mislead). Does an earnest seeker need a teacher? ... Continue Reading

When reflecting on some life development, do you ever turn toward karma or divine will, or perhaps the configuration of the stars, as a way of accounting for things? Does the prospect of ... Continue Reading

Desire is wrongly maligned in spiritual circles. Many a well-meaning seeker supposes it to be the enemy of peaceful well-being, assuming that to want is inevitably to be attached. Desire needn't interfere with ... Continue Reading

For most of my life I've carried an impression, an assumption, having to do with a given thought and how it has come about, and what it seems to have set in motion ... Continue Reading

One of the more compelling features of human existence is the way a person is both timeless and mortal. This is a deeply challenging “overlap” to fathom, by whatever means. It's not to ... Continue Reading

The life-altering time we're all in carries its potential blessings. The extremity and uncertainty of the pandemic may attune us at last to the matter of what it is to be kind to ... Continue Reading

What is it to be in the now? It's to gently allow awareness to take in whatever is immediate, inside yourself and in the present-moment scene. It's to register what is being actually ... Continue Reading

The spiritual orientation to life is often set in motion by the desire to address painful inner forces like anxiety, frustration, and disappointment. The natural wish is to soothe oneself, to settle the ... Continue Reading

What is it to live authentically, to be at no distance from the life you're in? It's to know what matters to you, to have a background awareness of where you've come from, ... Continue Reading

What does grief ask of a human being? When the heart is aching to break, what's to be done?

A breaking heart brings a surge of pain. Whether physical or heartfelt, ... Continue Reading

If a person is fortunate, the question will come. What am I, at my essence? Is there something deeper than the daily struggle to satisfy and solve?

In rare moments of brave authenticity, ... Continue Reading

Awakening is a beginning, not a triumphant conclusion. There might be the impression that once awakening has occurred, nothing remains to happen -- to develop, unfold, blossom. This could not be further from ... Continue Reading

What is it to pray? At its essence, what is prayer? Sometimes in explorations with seekers, the subject will come up. Do you pray? I’ve occasionally been asked, or Do you think I ... Continue Reading

A moment of life occurs. You're doing something, or observing or listening, your senses engaged. A split second later, at a subtle distance from the experience itself, you assign it meaning. These two ... Continue Reading

How can you take care of yourself in a difficult moment (including this one), and at the same time come to know — and rest in — your essential nature?

• Focus ... Continue Reading

Here it is, the teacher of them all. Every blessed one of us at “school” nowadays, morning-noon-and-night.

How might it be possible to orient to the coronavirus and its widespread disruptions, ... Continue Reading

When a person wakes up, what is it they awaken to? And what do they awaken from?

Awakening is about discovering the nature of what is real — what inside you ... Continue Reading

You may sometimes find yourself thinking Things have never been this bad before. This thought could be about your own life or the life of a loved one, or perhaps in reference to ... Continue Reading

We ache all our lives to be loved unconditionally. To be seen through and through as we truly are, without judgment or any attempt to alter. To be entirely held in that vast ... Continue Reading

When you allow yourself to sink into the reality of something challenging, or to grant a painful feeling its necessary space, in that moment you are really and truly alive. Because you're no ... Continue Reading

Disasters befalling one acquaintance and another. No shortage of reminders of how uncertain everything is, always. How constantly subject to change all that appears to be stable ... Continue Reading

"Briefly, briefly, we see it, and forget," writes the poet Jane Hirshfield. What is that it? How can it be described? How many moving accounts have I heard by now, that rare and cherished moment when ... Continue Reading

We are all our lives estranged from our very selves — that stillness at the heart of each moment, the space that gently cradles every difficulty. Even a momentary delight is held in that ... Continue Reading

In some ways of looking at a human life, having a healthy sense of self appears to be a good thing, worthy of attention, possibly meriting professional support. The same goes with having healthy ... Continue Reading

A human being is endowed with two essential capacities. One is attention, which is about direct encounter, attuned to the sensation and movement of the immediate scene. The other innate gift is mental processing, ... Continue Reading

What's it like living a human life after the mind has ceased running the show — once radical freedom has entered the picture and mental suffering has unwound to stillness? When someone not “there” ... Continue Reading

So much trouble has been set in motion by religion. Even so, religious or spiritual practice surely has been a blessing for some who long to know the truth of what they are, beyond ... Continue Reading

What does it mean when it's said that you are not separate? That you are not (compelling appearances to the contrary) apart from anything in momentary experience: another person, the immediate scene, what you ... Continue Reading

Attention is gold, a commodity of priceless value. For it is via attention that we come to know reality, to sense what we deeply are. That “knowing” is not of the mind. It ... Continue Reading

This writing is more personal than most posts on this site. I was encouraged to make it available, even so, in the hope it would shine a light. The bravest thing I ever did ... Continue Reading

Do you ever notice yourself in the act of being judgmental or unkind, either to another or to yourself? When your “spiritual” self becomes conscious of this, what goes on inside? Do you look ... Continue Reading

Hope is thought to be a good thing, a positive force. Its absence is associated with depression, pessimism, negativity. What would a life be without hope? What a revelation: to discover the deep truth ... Continue Reading

Undo all the ideas in the head, or at least see them for what they are: mind-made, and so maybe not the same thing as reality. Rock your world. Witness what happens when you ... Continue Reading

Each moment — when rightly received, fully occupied — is an incredibly potent thing. When you're fully attuned to what-is, spiritual fertility abounds. Savoring is able to blossom in the now, maybe the exploration ... Continue Reading

So much seeking is misguided. Many get hopelessly lost in the impression that somebody else “has it” while they do not. Awakeness is made into something extraordinary — something outside the one longing ... Continue Reading

The impression is that “I” exist, that I am here — that each of us is a person, recognizable, ongoing. That life is a medium, like water or air, through which each person moves ... Continue Reading

The holy of holies, missed. All one's life, it's missed. Never entered, embodied. Never even (maybe) sensed the presence of.   ... Continue Reading

How up for grabs it all turns out to be: that enduring impression of a self, having substance and boundary, requiring vigilance, deserving of respect and maybe even that vaunted thing, self-esteem ... Continue Reading

It was like I'd been robbed. As if someone crept into my dark house in the night and made off with what had always been my dearest possession: my sense of who I was ... Continue Reading

This is a 90-minute interview Jan recently had with Shawn Nevins on Spiritual Teachers.org. It may be listened to via several online sources, as well as downloaded (all without cost) ... Continue Reading

I used to picture time — the collective moments of a lived life — as a horizontal line. The present moment was a point on that line, with everything to the left of now ... Continue Reading

Jan Frazier has just recorded the final section of her second book, The Freedom of Being: At Ease with What Is. The recording is available for free listening/downloading on the audio page of her ... Continue Reading

How surprising it was, one Christmas not too many years ago, to feel myself moved in a new way by the sacred music of the season. I'd always loved the music-as-music; Handel's Messiah was ... Continue Reading

“What is real?” Or, “What am I?” These are two ways into the heart of the matter, the essential thing — the thing a human life is, at bottom, about. The thing all earnest ... Continue Reading

Conscious awareness is often confused with vigilance, an enforced self-observation having the goal of catching oneself at something “unspiritual,” so a correction can be made. Growing ever more aware of mental (and emotional) trouble-making, ... Continue Reading

It’s a rich thing to contemplate: what it’s like to no longer identify with body, history, opinions, thoughts — and yet to still be a person. To live a life, love people, do ... Continue Reading

I used to be a little crazy. I don't know how my poor heart managed to hold up as long as it did. Even if I frequently appeared sane, from somebody else's unknowing perspective, I ... Continue Reading

I once lived (or tried to) in ongoing disregard of the fact of radical uncertainty, of brevity. Every single thing being brief, in flux, each apparently substantial thing falling apart even as it was ... Continue Reading

What has changed, when awakening occurs? What's essentially different from how it was before? ... Continue Reading

What happens within seems to move outward and to also happen "out there," with other people, with one's surroundings. The more inner allowing occurs -- feeling what's there to be felt, letting the light ... Continue Reading

“It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.” There is ... Continue Reading

A conscious orientation to ongoing pain, whether physical or emotional, means the “ongoingness” of the condition doesn't hold your attention. What's attended is this moment, whatever the moment consists of — however bad it ... Continue Reading

We live our lives in definition, in naming. Above all, in self-definition. All of life, it's I am a this, I am a that. As if a label, a declaration, can account for it ... Continue Reading

It's a force of nature, the largeness of whatever it is that opens a person to possibility beyond how things have been so far. The expanding sense of self, the softening, the falling apart ... Continue Reading

We invent disturbances, ways to be at a distance from the harmony that's ongoing. Mostly we aren't attuned to it. I have witnessed this, in myself and in others. It's poignant. Pointless. Why do ... Continue Reading

Nothing has compelled me in the lasting way this has: the idea of how a life can change, comprehensively. How what it feels like to be a person, to live a human life, can ... Continue Reading

Sometimes I ask myself this: If this were to be my last opportunity to say something that might be of use, what might I say? What would I wish for people? ... Continue Reading

A question that gets asked (by others and also inside my own head) is this. Given that the sensation of sweet, unruffled well-being may occasionally visit a person, in which the mind is still ... Continue Reading

Someone observed that suffering is what happens when a person adds something on. Suffering is generated when thoughts are piled on to a challenging life development, or a loss, or physical discomfort. Each of ... Continue Reading

There is a line clearly dividing the first 50 years of life from the years since (twelve, at the present accounting). From here, looking back, it's as if the time before were black-and-white, two-dimensional, ... Continue Reading

There are two kinds of suffering: the kind that bears fruit, and the kind that's pointless (and therefore doomed to repeat).  ... Continue Reading

Freedom is living unencumbered. You are free to move easily among whatever things come along. You are soft, without the tension of doing, of anticipation; without the readiness to defend ... Continue Reading

What appears to be a single multifaceted response to a moment of life is, if you look closely, several steps that occur in rapid succession. They happen in a particular order. Every time. The ... Continue Reading

I found a door I hadn't known was there. It was like entering into another dimension, only this wasn't science fiction, or a dream, or delusion. It was just plain true. There had been ... Continue Reading

Living awake feels like being in a child's story, a simple story about a simple thing. The restoration to innocence, to the time before time, with no possibility of harm ... Continue Reading

Why does a person meditate? What does that mean, to meditate? When someone sits for meditation, on a given occasion or as a practice, what expectations are in the picture? 

... Continue Reading

We are betrayed daily, hourly, by the persisting sense of self. That sense of who I am, and how it tends itself, how it keeps itself seeming real. It's a betrayal because of how ... Continue Reading

This is the day the Lord has made. Although I have read almost none of the Bible, these words often come spontaneously when I first step outside and greet the morning.  ... Continue Reading

The question is, What am I? What is the thing I don't want to have missed? What is life really about?  ... Continue Reading

Once upon a time there was a creature endowed with a fine mind, and also with sense receptors that were sweetly attuned to the surrounding world and to its own delightful body ... Continue Reading

This is the terrible irony of the vast majority of human suffering: the thing that gives rise to it in the first place is then asked to alleviate it. The mind cannot relieve what ... Continue Reading

It's said (and has been said for millennia) that it's possible for a person not to suffer, not to be subject to fear and desire ... Continue Reading

There appears to be a you having an objective existence, independent of your mind's narrative of a self. The further impression is that this you has experiences.   ... Continue Reading

Talking to God. Who never talks back. Just a receptivity, a ceaseless openness.  ... Continue Reading

The longing to become free of suffering, to rest in peaceful well-being, gives rise to various approaches, not all of which bear fruit. Here are three common ones: ... Continue Reading

A door without a lock.  A door without a lock that appears to be locked -- that gives the impression of being un-openable.  This is the human situation.  ... Continue Reading

Looking at thought . . .

... Continue Reading

Being conscious occurs in the now.  (Even if your attachment to ego has ended, and you’re conscious as the norm, consciousness is experienced now.)  When you’re conscious, you’re aware of what’s happening in the ... Continue Reading

How is it possible to live in this world, where suffering and deterioration are rampant, and yet be steadily at peace, even joyful?  In the face of so much pain and decay, is it ... Continue Reading

Anger -- whether outwardly expressed or concealed -- is a response to something underlying it, something felt before.  ... Continue Reading

When the mind has lost the habit of running on its own, one of the things that's become vivid is the difference between thought and life.   ... Continue Reading

To see "Degrees of Consciousness" click here.

... Continue Reading

Assume there is more to you than the apparent.  ... Continue Reading

I had been singing for many years before I realized why I was often short on breath.  To produce a well-made, fully-bodied note, I was using more air than I needed to.  I had ... Continue Reading

The pain caused by resisting is a pointless pain.  So unnecessary.  ... Continue Reading

Let yourself love. Isn't that what it is to be radically alive? To be awake? Not love somebody or something. But everybody, anybody, anything ... Continue Reading