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 longer at a distance from life itself, as it is just now. You’re able to rest — to feel that you’re really here. [Read more…]

Why might a person choose to eat in a healthy way, to get regular exercise? What’s behind the wish to take care of the body? And what might these questions have to do with a spiritual orientation to life? [Read more…]

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. [Read more…]

“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 utter stillness dawns, a quiet radical okayness suffusing the body. The visceral experience of all-is-well.  [Read more…]

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 space. For the truest self is its own felt presence, independent of outer conditions, of emotion and idea. [Read more…]

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 boundaries (if, for instance, one’s boundaries are somewhat permeable or tentative). If the sense of self is amorphous, or if the orientation to self is negative, there may be an effort to address these perceived “issues.” [Read more…]

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, in which the mind engages with what the senses have perceived. It does something with reality: names, interprets, judges. Perhaps it generates a story, which may stir a (mind-made) emotion. [Read more…]

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” considers such a change in condition, there can be certain assumptions. One thing often supposed is that a life of steady wakefulness consists of uninterrupted happiness. That existence is entirely pain-free. [Read more…]

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 all limiting definition of a self. [Read more…]

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 are doing, observing. At no distance from the vastness that some call divinity. [Read more…]