Spirituality for Living

Is illusion without value? Or is all value illusion? And ultimately does this question even matter? Maybe it’s a huge illusion? What matters is you and how you see an illusion. You create the questions on what is illusion and what isn’t. This goes into a personal, individual level and brings you back out again. [...]

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 [...]

Questions come from quest, from seeking, not identifying what we disengage from and don’t believe in. We question based on what we believe might be true. Perhaps we know nothing at all, and all our knowing is just self expression. Does that invalidate it? I would put forth that there is no reality in an [...]

We have alot of interferences in our thought. People try to do thinking, and it makes the mind grind against itself. I think all the time, and I don’t do anything about it. The thoughts I share with you occur as I just sit. I don’t do them. Sometimes they occur as I’m paying attention to [...]

You hear a lot about Yoga philosophy in this day and age. It has become quite fashionable; let go, have faith in the divine, seek peace. It’s what I refer to as the blue sky doctrine.
Put your body in impossible positions? Oh, asanas are not the main element of Yoga. They are an aid, but [...]

I do get very emotional about knowledge, does Gnani preclude bliss? No, in fact it acknowledges that some people most naturally arrive at bliss by intellectual contemplations. That they are moved to awe by inspiring ideas, and religious observance may not speak to them. It’s not considered to be profane to be unmoved by ceremonial [...]

Gnani is more about the questions then the answers? Yes, they don’t deny that answers can be arrived at, but getting an answer and clinging to it is not the Gnani way. It’s the dynamic of inquiry itself that is their path.
It’s almost like the question is a mind asana? Exactly.
Knowing the path can change [...]

When you ask a question (and all oracles have this step), you are already connecting you as a program in the hologram to the oracle. Part of why people often get weird or meaningless divinations is they expect the program of the oracle to tell them the answer. That isn’t how it works. The oracle [...]

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 [...]

Are the spirits really inconsistent about anything? They live within their realms very consistently. Solid is agreement to stay at a certain state. The human inconsistent isn’t about humans having any programming, it’s more about them not knowing that they aren’t actually programmed. Human’s won’t actually claim their domain.
It’s not a matter of conscious agreement, [...]

As human beings, we are subject to a number of emotions and feelings. It is the sixth sense that we are blessed with that enables us to feel much more than animals and other life forms, and it is this sense that teaches us the difference between right and wrong. While most of us stick [...]

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 [...]

In Sufi psychology, they refer to humanity as having three parts:

physical being
spiritual heart
transcendent godlike soul

The dervish dancing was a way of exhausting the body to open awareness of the heart, because only by the devotions of the heart can there be knowledge of the soul.
It is believed that people are one of these three psychologies. [...]

Sufis don’t have a single set of practices that apply to all disciples, thus the absolute need of the teacher. The Sufi master is the only one in their view who has the insight to help a disciple pursue the practices in a way that would have any merit. Otherwise, it’s believed that rather than bringing [...]

Destruction is sometimes the way to get the wall out of the way of a creative person, or destroy the philosophers principles so they can find better ones. The person whose calling is destruction, brings the gift of strength. The person whose calling is fundamentally creative, brings the gift of possibilities and hope, but avocation [...]

Avocation = calling, or that which you find yourself doing even when you intended to do something else. If you feel your body is a gift to use to help others, that may be your calling. Some peoples magnum opus is powerful labour.
Magnum opus? Latin. Great work, and also the term for the spiritual path [...]

The topic is avocation, and we won’t be talking about your career unless it’s noticeably congruous with your nature, but this isn’t most peoples experience.
Avocation is calling. It’s what we find ourselves doing even when we don’t feel we are doing anything really at all, and it stems from our nature. We all know people who [...]

We all have one question. It’s really pretty easy to identify this one question. This question is about life. The question isn’t about ourselves.  A very young human being just sort of accepts that they are here and things are around them. They don’t go much farther than that as far as purpose goes.
The question is [...]

You can see a political leader, or wealthy person, and not respect them when you see what is really there, even though convention in society is to respect this person. Is there virtue in being exhorted to extol an unhealthy parasitical relationship with authority? Extol/respect, venerate. People worship money and the money maker, and don’t [...]

We are going to talk about identity. First, I will ask people: Who are you?
I am me!
Hard question. And this is good.
Who is me? Good extenuating question.
Me is not thee? Ah, but is negative definition real understanding?
A state of focusing consciousness, filtered through a perception honed over time. Ah, sort of ethereal?
An avatar being driven [...]