Spirituality for Living

If you do a thing and you do it right the first time, what must you learn? Really nothing. That is not defining of the human condition, but we make it a part of it. Mostly because as I have said before, we are taught to resist our problems. When all you have is a [...]

I think the idea of gratitude is for the most part misunderstood. Seen as a humiliation often, but if you think about it there is nothing more ennobling. When you are in the experience of gratitude, you are in peace. You are in the present. When you cannot rest in the now, gratitude for that [...]

Balance, the middle way, we hope to list toward it. At times it seems that we do not, often because we fear we are wrong. Like fumbling for a needed object in the dark, we go too far one way or too far another and we think it’s all very hard. We really make it [...]

People in the name of ego will refuse to take risks, and make choices. So their freedom of action is very limited. They refuse to make a mistake so they refuse to do anything at all. Thus in the name of ego they withhold themselves. They withhold there own happiness (which is infectious and a [...]

Dwelling is what gets me. I wonder how I could have done things differently.  Well for me on dwelling, I practice really only one thing. It helps me quite a lot, but it seems to be sort of complicated. Disinhibition. Your mind is inherently aware of error. You won’t stop being aware of error, and you [...]

What is psychosis, really? Psychosis is very simple. We all are neurotic. If you do anything that doesn’t serve a practical purpose for you, that’s a neurosis. But if you can choose to do it or not, then that is what it stays, a neurosis. A psychosis is exactly the same thing, but minus choice. [...]

Courage is not a well understood factor of life, but we do experience it anyway.  It’s a pretty important part of life, so it might profit us to understand it.  
Courage is often seen in negative definition only, and that tends to distort it. This is courage as it relates to fear, but every person we call courageous [...]

You can internally think about ‘doing the right thing’ with every little thing that you do, or that happens. It’s exhausting. Exhausting and crippling. Who has succeeded by conscience alone? Anyone? And those who complain of never succeeding, are they people of weak conscience?
What is conscience but learned values/ideals? Exactly, and is that judgment such [...]

Where does our ego come in? Ego comes in because we attach to the supposed virtue of rest, of a narrowly defined peace, and feel we can claim spiritual success if we can say “I am this” even if it’s a very broad term produced by very vague thinking. We turn to traditions and give [...]

I wish I could stop and reflect more often. What stops you? Not sure, partly personality. I ask a lot of questions. Questions can be patterned in a concerning way. Questions are always coherent with patterns of thinking, either perhaps corresponding to therapeutic method, or religious prejudice, or emotive bias/temperament. Sometimes they don’t maintain coherence.
In [...]

When you succeed at a goal even though it didn’t go like you planned, do you gain as much as if everything goes according to plan? Do you learn anything from your successes?
You learn more from disasters, and your originating spirit doesn’t actually care about anything other than the goal or the finished product. The [...]

We shape the future by the choices we make now. Do we choose to meet life’s circumstances via joy or resentment? Very true, and where is the awareness of our own joy? Is it not where we are told petty or evil things lay in our being? Is it not from the animal side that [...]

I’m wondering. How do we cope with so much shame going on? Cease identifying with the system, but we can’t take action based on that statement even if it’s clear. In hypnosis, they can’t use the suggestion “quit smoking” to make you quit smoking. You actually have to have a positive or present object of [...]