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February 3, 2026
Today could be it, my love. It is at our peril that we ever lose track of that …
December 16, 2025
Miracle, miracle, this broken-open heart, this split-apart life. That such beauty — the picture of brevity, of childhood lost, of …
Nothing Matters: What That’s Like
November 21, 2025
Things that come along in life, at least the big things, are “supposed” to matter. (I don’t need to tell …
October 10, 2025
That I have lived on this earth. That I have stood out in the black night, in the sky that …
No Separateness: The Bodied Experience of Oneness
September 18, 2025
At our essence, we human beings are the same as one another. Nor are we apart from the world we …
The Very Light You’re Drawn to May Set You Afire
July 26, 2025
Which is to say, brace yourself. You don’t get to be “free” without having the self basically destroyed. The precious, …
June 19, 2025
If not, it’s time for a change. Let me say that again: If you don’t cherish your every day, your …
May 5, 2025
When I first felt myself drawn to Siddha Yoga, my long-time spiritual practice, one of the things that most appealed …
Discovering You’ve Been Home All Along
March 24, 2025
There are images for it. The box of treasure you sit on, extending your hand in begging. Though the box …
Surrender: Opening a Blessed Door
February 16, 2025
I gave birth twice, first to my son, later to my daughter. He was born Cesarean, to save his life …
January 9, 2025
A peaceful life can’t be provided for in a comprehensive way. Taking care of the imagined future, for instance, or …
December 2, 2024
Ten years ago I posted the Degrees of Consciousness. Many reported that they found it enormously useful. I offer it …
Enough: The Wisdom of Franklin Merrell-Wolff
October 30, 2024
This moment is enough. Life is enough. The way things are this moment (whatever the particulars) is plenty. The Latin …
September 22, 2024
If it matters to you, act like it matters. Express it. Do something! Maybe this has to do with someone …
The Difference Between Us and Other Creatures
August 17, 2024
This little construction of lichen I’m just now gazing upon, exotically designed, whimsically colored, its spongy tendrils of greenish gray …
June 21, 2024
Jiddu Krishnamurti would sit very still before vast crowds in India and all over the world. People traveled great distances …
Addiction: Shining Light on It
May 23, 2024
Most of us are (or have been) addicted to something. I used to be addicted to food. I have long …
April 7, 2024
Among the things we don’t have forever to do is express our gratitude to someone significant in our lives. This …
Want vs. Need: Noticing the Difference
February 26, 2024
Maybe like me, you sometimes tell yourself “I need to do this.” Every now and again, it can be useful …
January 30, 2024
When somebody says those words to us, it’s typically intended as a kind of rebuke. But when we pose the …
December 20, 2023
How I love to see the snow falling. I moved to New England many years ago so I would finally …
November 7, 2023
I am one of the greediest people I know. I am having just the best time. So much fun, such …
October 19, 2023
It is fall in New England, where I presently spend my days. I recently had an experience I am moved …
The Benefit of Looking Backwards
August 25, 2023
Life often turns out radically different from how we supposed it might. Have you noticed? You look back over some …
Uncertainty: A Surprising Blessing
July 18, 2023
Much of our planet is presently at the mercy of weather extremity. In the United States, as in so many …
June 14, 2023
We generally ask a question because we hope to get an answer. Sometimes, though, the deepest benefit of asking comes …
May 6, 2023
The storied container of a person’s recollected history is a kind of static object that exists in the head. Mental …
March 29, 2023
A human being blessedly is endowed with a dual capacity: to experience our oh-so-mortal physicality and simultaneously to attune, in …
February 13, 2023
We keep getting older. From the moment we’re born, each day we’re older than we were the day before. This …
January 2, 2023
A new year has begun. “Happy New Year,” we wish one another. But what if we greeted each new morning …
December 6, 2022
Life happens fast. The irony is noteworthy: while a given moment is utterly still (when you’re really there), the succession …
November 1, 2022
Once upon a time I prided myself on the ability to multitask. Other people, observing the “skill,” admired me for …
October 1, 2022
In the nearly 20 years since awakening, I have observed several lengthy “chapters” in the more fully waking-up of the …
August 9, 2022
A seeker’s aching desire to awaken is not apart from, not different from, what comes to many a regretful human …
July 2, 2022
There is more than one way that knowing takes place in a human being. This is the case whether or …
May 27, 2022
People longing to awaken sometimes hold mistaken impressions about what radical freedom would be like. Some suppose that the quieting …
The Vastness of the Wide-Open Heart
April 19, 2022
The fully awakened heart knows what it is to love unconditionally. What could be more life-altering than to come to …
March 27, 2022
A person who longs to awaken, contemplating what the sweetness of freedom might be like, may suppose that it would …
The Delight of Preference Without Attachment
February 21, 2022
Awakening removed the fear of dying, taking with it the neurotic lifelong obsession with doing what “matters” (or “needs” doing), …
January 14, 2022
While it is often supposed to be so, awakening is not typically a single shining moment altering everything on one’s …
Wisdom from Surprising Sources
December 10, 2021
He is the truest friend of my life, and likely of the before of this life. How hesitant I was, …
Awakening Misconceptions (My Own Included)
November 7, 2021
There is a bounty of common assumptions about what it is to awaken, and about what it’s like to live …
October 1, 2021
Once in a great while we are given two births in a single life. There’s the one the body has, …
Climate Change and the Climate Within
August 30, 2021
Recent conditions on my road have made it clear that my Vermont town and my particular life experience is (like …
July 13, 2021
Spiritual teachers can be legendary for their ability to open a person’s eyes to the truth (and some, for their …
God and Karma (and Other Ideas)
June 5, 2021
When reflecting on some life development, do you ever turn toward karma or divine will, or perhaps the configuration of …
April 30, 2021
Desire is wrongly maligned in spiritual circles. Many a well-meaning seeker supposes it to be the enemy of peaceful well-being, …
March 19, 2021
For most of my life I’ve carried an impression, an assumption, having to do with a given thought and how …
February 4, 2021
One of the more compelling features of human existence is the way a person is both timeless and mortal. This …
January 3, 2021
The life-altering time we’re all in carries its potential blessings. The extremity and uncertainty of the pandemic may attune us …
December 9, 2020
What is it to be in the now? It’s to gently allow awareness to take in whatever is immediate, inside …
November 14, 2020
The spiritual orientation to life is often set in motion by the desire to address painful inner forces like anxiety, …
October 11, 2020
What is it to live authentically, to be at no distance from the life you’re in? It’s to know what …
September 3, 2020
What does grief ask of a human being? When the heart is aching to break, what’s to be done? A …
August 18, 2020
If a person is fortunate, the question will come. What am I, at my essence? Is there something deeper than the daily …
July 17, 2020
Awakening is a beginning, not a triumphant conclusion. There might be the impression that once awakening has occurred, nothing remains …
April 20, 2020
A moment of life occurs. You’re doing something, or observing or listening, your senses engaged. A split second later, at …
Practical and Spiritual Wisdom, in a Single Gesture
March 21, 2020
How can you take care of yourself in a difficult moment (including this one), and at the same time come …
March 15, 2020
Here it is, the teacher of them all. Every blessed one of us at “school” nowadays, morning-noon-and-night. How might it …
March 3, 2020
When a person wakes up, what is it they awaken to? And what do they awaken from? Awakening is about …
January 27, 2020
You may sometimes find yourself thinking Things have never been this bad before. This thought could be about your own …
Unconditional Love and the Surrender to Fear
December 23, 2019
We ache all our lives to be loved unconditionally. To be seen through and through as we truly are, without …
November 19, 2019
When you allow yourself to sink into the reality of something challenging, to grant a painful feeling its necessary space, …
October 15, 2019
Why might a person choose to eat in a healthy way, to get regular exercise? What’s behind the wish to …
September 12, 2019
Disasters befalling one acquaintance and another. No shortage of reminders of how uncertain everything is, always. How constantly subject to …
August 13, 2019
“Briefly, briefly, we see it, and forget,” writes the poet Jane Hirshfield. What is that it? How can it be described? How …
July 21, 2019
We are all our lives estranged from our very selves — that stillness at the heart of each moment, the …
June 26, 2019
In some ways of looking at a human life, having a healthy sense of self appears to be a good …
May 14, 2019
A human being is endowed with two essential capacities. One is attention, which is about direct encounter, attuned to the …
April 13, 2019
What’s it like living a human life after the mind has ceased running the show – once radical freedom has …
The Value and Limitation of Religion
March 29, 2019
So much trouble has been set in motion by religion. Even so, religious or spiritual practice surely has been a …
February 11, 2019
What does it mean when it’s said that you are not separate? That you are not (compelling appearances to the …
January 8, 2019
Attention is gold, a commodity of priceless value. For it is via attention that we come to know reality, to …
November 27, 2018
[This writing is more personal than most posts on this site. I was encouraged to make it available, even so, …
October 6, 2018
Do you ever notice yourself in the act of being judgmental or unkind, either to another or to yourself? When …
August 27, 2018
Hope is thought to be a good thing, a positive force. Its absence is associated with depression, pessimism, negativity. What …
July 10, 2018
Undo all the ideas in the head, or at least see them for what they are: mind-made, and so maybe …
May 20, 2018
Each moment – when rightly received, fully occupied – is an incredibly potent thing. When you’re fully attuned to what-is, …
The Breakthrough Shift: Lost and Found
March 24, 2018
So much seeking is misguided. Many get hopelessly lost in the impression that somebody else “has it” while they do …
February 6, 2018
The impression is that “I” exist, that I am here – that each of us is a person, recognizable, ongoing …
December 31, 2017
The holy of holies, missed. All one’s life, it’s missed. Never entered, embodied. Never even (maybe) sensed the presence of …
The Disappearing Act of the Self
November 21, 2017
How up for grabs it all turns out to be: that enduring impression of a self, having substance and boundary, …
The Secret Room Where Peace Lives
October 17, 2017
How naturally a person tends to equate accepting something with liking it. It’s easier to see this in the negation: …
September 4, 2017
It was like I’d been robbed. As if someone crept into my dark house in the night and made off …
Interview on Spiritual Teachers Podcast
August 27, 2017
This is a 90-minute interview Jan recently had with Shawn Nevins on Spiritual Teachers.org. It may be listened to via …
July 3, 2017
I used to picture time – the collective moments of a lived life – as a horizontal line. The present …
Audio of The Freedom of Being: At Ease with What Is
June 6, 2017
Jan Frazier has just recorded the final section of her second book, The Freedom of Being: At Ease with What …
May 26, 2017
How surprising it was, one Christmas not too many years ago, to feel myself moved in a new way by …
April 18, 2017
“What is real?” Or, “What am I?” These are two ways into the heart of the matter, the essential thing …
Spiritual Vigilance: Give It a Rest
March 20, 2017
Conscious awareness is often confused with vigilance, an enforced self-observation having the goal of catching oneself at something “unspiritual,” so …
February 17, 2017
It’s a rich thing to contemplate: what it’s like to no longer identify with body, history, opinions, thoughts – and …
January 20, 2017
I used to be a little crazy. I don’t know how my poor heart managed to hold up as long …
Living in the Constantly-Dying Moment
December 9, 2016
I once lived (or tried to) in ongoing disregard of the fact of radical uncertainty, of brevity. Every single thing …
The Embodied Expression of Consciousness
October 30, 2016
What has changed, when awakening occurs? What’s essentially different from how it was before? …
September 29, 2016
What happens within seems to move outward and to also happen “out there,” with other people, with one’s surroundings. The …
August 18, 2016
“It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense …
Consciousness and Chronic Pain
July 20, 2016
A conscious orientation to ongoing pain, whether physical or emotional, means the “ongoingness” of the condition doesn’t hold your attention …
June 3, 2016
We live our lives in definition, in naming. Above all, in self-definition. All of life, it’s I am a this, …
Northampton Insight Meditation Center, July 24
May 14, 2016
On Sunday, July 24, Jan will give a talk at the Karuna Yoga Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. The evening will …
Northampton Insight Meditation Center, September 25
May 14, 2016
On Sunday, September 25, Jan will give a talk at the Karuna Yoga Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. The evening will …
May 5, 2016
It’s a force of nature, the largeness of whatever it is that opens a person to possibility beyond how things …
The Drunk Carpenter and Life Without a Map
March 25, 2016
We invent disturbances, ways to be at a distance from the harmony that’s ongoing. Mostly we aren’t attuned to it …
February 17, 2016
Nothing has compelled me in the lasting way this has: the idea of how a life can change, comprehensively. How …
December 11, 2015
Sometimes I ask myself this: If this were to be my last opportunity to say something that might be of …
October 26, 2015
A question that gets asked (by others and also inside my own head) is this. Given that the sensation of …
Suffering: That Extra Something
October 10, 2015
Someone observed that suffering is what happens when a person adds something on. Suffering is generated when thoughts are piled …
The Line Dividing Fear from Love
August 21, 2015
There is a line clearly dividing the first 50 years of life from the years since (twelve, at the present …
July 6, 2015
There are two kinds of suffering: the kind that bears fruit, and the kind that’s pointless (and therefore doomed to …
June 19, 2015
Freedom is living unencumbered. You are free to move easily among whatever things come along. You are soft, without the …
May 17, 2015
What appears to be a single multifaceted response to a moment of life is, if you look closely, several steps …
April 6, 2015
I found a door I hadn’t known was there. It was like entering into another dimension, only this wasn’t science …
March 11, 2015
Living awake feels like being in a child’s story, a simple story about a simple thing. The restoration to innocence, …
February 15, 2015
Why does a person meditate? What does that mean, to meditate? When someone sits for meditation, on a given occasion …
January 13, 2015
We are betrayed daily, hourly, by the persisting sense of self. That sense of who I am, and how it …
December 19, 2014
This is the day the Lord has made. Although I have read almost none of the Bible, these words often …
November 25, 2014
The question is, What am I? What is the thing I don’t want to have missed? What is life really …
November 9, 2014
Once upon a time there was a creature endowed with a fine mind, and also with sense receptors that were …
Resting from Mind-Caused Suffering
October 11, 2014
This is the terrible irony of the vast majority of human suffering: the thing that gives rise to it in …
September 17, 2014
It’s said (and has been said for millennia) that it’s possible for a person not to suffer, not to be …
August 6, 2014
There appears to be a you having an objective existence, independent of your mind’s narrative of a self. The further …
July 13, 2014
Talking to God. Who never talks back. Just a receptivity, a ceaseless openness …
What You Can Do to Wake Up: Not This
July 1, 2014
The longing to become free of suffering, to rest in peaceful well-being, gives rise to various approaches, not all of …
June 16, 2014
A door without a lock. A door without a lock that appears to be locked — that gives the impression …
Weekend Retreat Aug. 15-17 in Port Townsend, WA
June 2, 2014
On the weekend of August 15-17, in Port Townsend, Washington, Jan will offer a retreat called “Living an Unburdened Life.” …
May 26, 2014
Being conscious occurs in the now. (Even if your attachment to ego has ended, and you’re conscious as the norm, …
April 26, 2014
How is it possible to live in this world, where suffering and deterioration are rampant, and yet be steadily at …
Weekend Retreat Aug. 15-17 in Port Townsend, WA
April 21, 2014
On the weekend of August 15-17, in Port Townsend, Washington, Jan will offer a retreat called “Living an Unburdened Life.” …
April 8, 2014
Anger — whether outwardly expressed or concealed — is a response to something underlying it, something felt before. …
March 17, 2014
When the mind has lost the habit of running on its own, one of the things that’s become vivid is …
January 26, 2014
I had been singing for many years before I realized why I was often short on breath. To produce a …
Preparing the Ground for Resistance
January 6, 2014
The pain caused by resisting is a pointless pain. So unnecessary. …
Discovering the Freedom of Being, February 28 and March 1
October 12, 2013
Jan will be in Austin (TX) this winter. On Friday, February 28, she will give a talk from 7:00 to …
Philadelphia Workshop February 2, 2014
July 23, 2013
A day-long workshop with Jan will take place in Philadelphia on Sunday, February 2, from 10 am to 4 pm. We …
Weekend Workshop, Novato, CA, August 24-25
June 14, 2013
Jan will give a weekend workshop in Novato, CA, on August 24-25. The theme of the workshop is “The Unburdened …
June 14, 2013
Jan will give a talk at East Bay Open Circle on Thursday, August 22, from 7 to 9 p.m. The …
June 14, 2013
Jan will give a talk at Yoga Mendocino on Wednesday, August 21, from 7 to 9 p.m. The talk’s title …
June 14, 2013
Jan will give a talk at Marin Open Circle on Tuesday, August 20, from 7 to 9 p.m. The talk’s title …
June 14, 2013
Jan will give a talk at Sebastopol Open Circle on Monday, August 19, from 7 to 9 p.m. The talk’s …
Lynchburg (VA) and Raleigh (NC), DATES CHANGING
June 4, 2013
In the coming weeks, details about each of these events will appear on this website. If you would like to …
Weekend Retreat October 18-20 in Shutesbury, MA
April 29, 2013
On the weekend of October 18-20, 2013, there will be a retreat with Jan in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. The retreat will be …
April 20, 2013
On Saturday, June 8, Jan will be in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, at the Hunter River Lions Hall, from …
Buddhist Discussion Group in Grafton, VT, April 23
January 26, 2013
On Tuesday, April 23, at 6:30, Jan will be a guest speaker at the Buddhist Discussion Group in Grafton, VT …
Satsang and Evening Talk in Shelburne, VT April 5-6
January 26, 2013
Jan will be in Shelburne, VT (10 miles south of Burlington) on Friday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6. On …
January 2, 2013
On Sunday, April 21, Jan will hold a retreat in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Sponsored by Insight Meditation of Pioneer Valley, the retreat is called “Rethinking …
Cambridge Retreat, February 22-23, 2013
November 19, 2012
Jan will lead a retreat in Cambridge (MA) on February 22 and 23, 2013. We will be at the Friends …
Northampton Insight Meditation Center, April 27
September 2, 2012
On Sunday, April 27, Jan will give a talk at the Karuna Yoga Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. The evening will …
Jan in Philadelphia Saturday, September 22
July 6, 2012
On Saturday, September 22, Jan will give a talk in Philadelphia from 2:00 to 5:00 at the Germantown Friends School, at …
Self Inquiry Discussion Group Retreat, Raleigh, October 5-7
July 6, 2012
Jan will be one of several teachers at this year’s retreat sponsored by the Self-Inquiry Group in Raleigh. The weekend …
Jan in New York City on Friday, September 21
June 29, 2012
On Friday, September 21, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Jan will have a satsang in New York City at One …
Satsang in Acton (MA) August 4
June 19, 2012
On Saturday, August 4, Jan will have a satsang in Acton, Massachusetts. This will be at a private home, so …
June 2, 2012
On Sunday, September 16, Jan will read from her new book, The Freedom of Being: At Ease with What Is …
Resting in Present-Moment Awareness
April 29, 2012
On Saturday, May 12, from 10 am to 4 pm, Jan Frazier will offer a retreat called “Resting in Present-Moment …
Retreat and Evening Talk in Shelburne, VT April 27-28
February 24, 2012
Jan will be in Shelburne, VT (10 miles south of Burlington) on Friday, April 27, and Saturday, April 28. On …
Cape Cod April 22: Sunday Morning Service, Afternoon Retreat
January 17, 2012
Jan will be in West Yarmouth (MA) on Sunday, April 22, at One Light: A Center for Spiritual Transformation. She …
December 2, 2011
On Thursday, April 12, 2012, Jan will be at the East West Bookshop of Seattle (WA), from 7:00 to 8:30 …
This Sweet Moment: A Weekend with Jan Frazier
February 26, 2011
On Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1, Jan will be in Raleigh, North Carolina. Friday evening, from 7:00 to …