Spirituality for Living

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 [...]

There is a simpler word for gratitude, but the word is generally seen in a more abstract light. Gratitude is love.
We didn’t make ourselves. We are not the source of our own advent. We still exist due to a process that we can’t really control and we don’t need to. Gratitude is faith, present centered [...]

I have an issue of action to share. Recently I had an issue with a loss of trust. Major broad spectrum loss of trust. It was activating me like crazy. I didn’t like feeling so badly about people, even about people I love. Well no amount of action was going to fix that. I was [...]

People speak of temptation when they experience instinct and they say it is a distraction. This nature. Why supposedly is this nature unholy? This instinct. Why supposedly is there no wisdom in it? I think that it is our clearest wisdom. Who needs a religious cannon? The bible itself says that the word of god [...]

What are the big attachments? Money is one and many find that no amount of money is enough. Is supposedly a good thing, but they make themselves miserable in the pursuit of money. Money isn’t evil but attachment to it is. Same is true of knowledge. Learning is a good thing, but there is a [...]

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 [...]

The secret of conflict is that there is no conflict. We perceive ourselves to be in opposition. But the one who opposes you, do they oppose “you”? Or has their way run afoul of yours? They seek something in opposition.
Imagine an auto accident …is nothing about opposition, just nature interacting with nature. And adaptation is [...]

‘Focus determines your reality’. Your reality is more than what you see with your eyes. Can you recall a time when you really only had one thing on your mind? When you’re doing a task that you’re really absorbed in?
Have you ever been in that state where you desired companionship and didn’t perceive yourself to [...]

The difference between coming to rest in life, and stagnation. Very different dynamics. We often feel that anything in life must be our decision. That we have to be in control. So we often set rhythms in our life that actually raise our general stress level. We think we either have to be driven, or [...]

The search for rest is what takes so many people into substance abuse. To take a break from their inner chaos. The process that leads to addiction is not “evil” in the person. We do even the harmful things because we perceive a need, but are not always in touch with our real needs. So [...]

There is a love beyond human limits. It is the peace that allows balance in the planets eco-systems. It’s the rhythms that perpetuate life on this world despite some species being so determinedly self destructive. It is our nature which we so often ignore because “I” is afraid. Afraid for themselves and for their extended [...]

How do I find my path? This is a question most people ask. In Taoism they say if in anything you encounter resistance it is not it, but yourself. You encounter resistance because you haven’t found the way of your act. The way of your being. This resistance is a good thing. It is like [...]

The monk is passionate, passionate in ascetic seeking. The zealot is also passionate, passionate in persecution. Some believe the monk is trained to forget his physical humanity, and to focus on the mind and that is not passion but doctrine. I would disagree. There are surfaces and there are depths. Monks live in their own “chosen” world [...]

What’s my religion, if I have one? Officially I don’t, or perhaps in the strictest sense of the word religion I do. I adopt a Gnostic view and see the spirit and the universe as one, however you choose to characterize these principles. I see neither a reason to anthropomorphize divinity, nor to view it [...]

In a sense I am of two minds. It is even the focus of our MySpace comment. There are many minds in a single soul, but in truth reconciling I am of one mind. They say love is a law, the highest law. Inside of me there is a part that rages, is impassioned and [...]

What is the worst projections people do? Fear is very virulent and it isn’t instinctive. We warp our own natures for the sake of fear. Fear of rejection, it creates rejection. Fear of failure, it creates failure. Fear is an obsessive (I dare say psychotic) focus on bad. You don’t avoid bad things by thinking [...]

So, are you advocating for self-mortification? No. I am advocating experience. No one practice. When you are impassioned, and begin cleaning house despite physical fatigue, you restructure your whole living space. You ache miserably after pushing yourself so hard, but from somewhere not explained by your body something moved you. Experience of this I see [...]

Voodoo is basically African shamanism. There was a first great spirit, the source of all life and creation, but he created the world not as separate from himself but as an act of self expression. Dancing. As he revealed more of his inherent power, or ‘ashe’ as it’s known, he took the form of various [...]

I wonder how Machiavelli would be seen back in the day? As you know Machiavelli, had considerable influence as a strategist, but not much virtue. His power came from “not revealing the rules of the game”, and for supposedly not having much virtue but he would not have been villainized in African culture.  His guidelines in [...]

Perhaps less philosophical is therapeutic touch. Therapeutic touch has been found to reduce the nervous defence response. This is the biggest part of its healing benefit. They have done extensive studies on a phenomenon called biophilia. We inherently are comforted by life. Even loud noisy life, wild life, and more than life in general we have the [...]