Spirituality for Living

Conditioning is a terrible thing to overcome, and in identifying it we resist it. It was all we were taught to do… not identifying the source, that primal world that we still come from. We didn’t arise by accident. No body does. Accidents are human, but even that is not defining. Accidents are human, but [...]

Magic or Shamanism is where we started.  There were no worries about who was in charge as we didn’t have time.  Our initial instincts were good, but then as we got organized and formed nations, the spirit had to have a boss and that served socially.  It allowed for great strides in cooperation, but we [...]

You never perceive reality directly with your senses. It isn’t how it works. And how and what you perceive is determined by your focus, often subconsciously according to conditioning. If you can see what you don’t see, then your perspective isn’t a trap, it’s an incarnation.
Many schools speak of a mental body, in one terminology [...]

There are stories where the Zen master says something, and the student is said to be ‘enlightened’.  In that moment the words didn’t matter as much as the students thinking, and what will do that for any student differs. This is why you see the symbol of the dorje or lighting bolt in Buddhism, because [...]

There is a lot of popularity to the concept of manifestation, but it is poorly understood. It is like telling people to think of pink bunnies though nothing motivates them to think of pink bunnies. Expressed in the way they do, it has little power because it sees only part of the nature of what [...]

If you are fascinated with the astral plane, this is where you lose control because you set it apart. You see it as special, and disempowered yourself from dealing with it. When you set it apart you blind yourself, and many people do. They don’t want to engage. They want a fantasy story. They want [...]

Choice seems so readily obvious. People claim to make choices, and then complain about the consequences of those choices. We make choices every day if only minor ones, but do people really choose? Do they take the action that choice supposedly is? In my experience people tend to choose by habit not by thought, so [...]

Earlier, I worked with someone on a simple process of navigation and analysis, but even that can’t be performed without some connection on the spirit level. Here is her experience:
“It was interesting. One of the main things that was totally new to me was the realization that perception can be learned. As in, to understand [...]

Failure is one of the biggest demons anyone faces, and poorly understood in part because people feel it has to be understood as they conceive of it. Natures wisdom gives us what are very natural negative feedback mechanisms, but in our thinking we tend to push them aside. In doing so we are controlled by [...]

My own “mentality” is considered defective, but other people give what they don’t care about more often than what they do. For example, those who give money because they can, and it doesn’t really matter to them, are often pulled off center by it. They start wondering at the meaninglessness of things. It doesn’t benefit [...]

Centering is one of those so simple it seems impossible sort of things, but in fact centering is as simple as forgetting to breath. People tend to have breathing trouble not because they forget to breath, but because they are over concerned with it or their emotions (which differs from feelings).
Everyone can tell you what [...]

Loneliness is interesting. People who are experiencing what they call loneliness say it’s because there are few or inadequate people in their circle of acquaintance/friendship/love, but how many people are out there that seem socially and emotionally very well connected, and yet they still complain of being lonesome? It’s not a rare complaint.
Is it defined [...]

Emotion is not synonymous with awareness, so loneliness is an absence of recognizable feedback about the “self”, a.k.a. the ego. When a little boy or little girl are out playing in the yard, I mean a young one, maybe with a pet, or watching bugs, do they complain of being lonely?
I often don’t feel lonely [...]

How is not being lonely due to a correct identity superior to a conditioned sense of existing where one does not question and find they are alone? Is a suspicion of false identity necessarily present?
Ok, let’s get reductionistic. The brain has been shown to engage in a process of reality checking without you choosing. It [...]

Identity is innate, but it is not properly nurtured. The te as the Taoists say, the virtue of the uncarved block, is denied. Some children even before any conditioning are very physical and explorative, others are more observational and quiet. Any Moms care to confirm or refute this? But because the child is male (or [...]

Is acting out of character depression? Depression precedes acting out of character. It’s the natural decay of the minds faculties from a mass of inhibitory tensions. It is living a life of “thou shalt not” without actually understanding why, or managing that “inner demon” so that it doesn’t smash it’s prison, your mind. It’s a [...]

Is there unity in denying duality? In a sense you are everything, but you don’t have to do it. You are everything because you are a part of everything, but my toes are not my fingers. Our nature is to express a part. 
There is a lot of emphasis on unity in spiritual circles these days. [...]

I mean to discuss love, not as a personal feeling so much, but as an aspect of the world and its function. It’s a very pervasive principle, but as most people know it, it seems to be as much a source of grief as of support in this life. I will offer that the idea of [...]

Personality types actually reveal more than they would seem to. What makes our personality real? Is it really nothing more than conditioning and arbitrarily selected views?
We don’t have uniform instincts across the human spectrum do we? I mean, when people are pushed past reason do they all act the same way? When you are pushed [...]

We all seek comfort. Cling to it in the face of what we are told, and we often tell ourselves it is a cold cruel world. It can seem like life’s only saving grace, but comfort is both a great good, and also potentially one of the worst evils we face. It’s a natural cycle, [...]