Spirituality for Living

About changing essential nature… I can turn water into vapour. It’s in waters nature to become vapour. You interact with it, but you don’t change its nature. The sun makes it vapour also. It is a part of what we consider “unseen” but it is very much the essence, it’s spirit.
The sun also turns oceans [...]

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 [...]

I have experienced a spiritual state. A variety of issues sort of gave me no choice. I used to suffer seizures, irregular theta waves. Those are what make you “unconscious” or at rest, but it wasn’t the sleep cycle. I wasn’t asleep, I was sort of scared. Not even aware of my body. Experienced a shift in [...]

Observation is really a keystone of spirituality as well as science. The capability we call observation runs deeper than the sense. As a matter of fact, there are whole scientific and military disciplines focused on “training” observation even though our senses work. The eastern teachings pointed out that senses are distracting and meditation is in [...]

The language gets sketchy. Is mind thinking? Isn’t thinking just an action? Awareness goes beyond thinking. The mind as we know it comes after, not before. It’s automatic and it is why people get so tripped up. They are told to control your mind. Free yourself from your mind. Like somehow you can lobotomize yourself [...]

How often should we practice meditation? When you feel a lack of peace, return to center. When mind controls you, return to center. When you don’t know what you feel or what to do, return to center. How often are these things for you? That is how often you should look within.
Perhaps twice, morning and [...]

What exactly is meditation? There are many definitions. Meditation isn’t an action. That is the tricky thing. Meditation is a settling. A disengagement from action. The techniques are for stilling the mind. We seek to meditate not so much to find a new level of awareness. It isn’t a special state. It’s a primal state. [...]

So eliminate the concept of future… or past? Even physics suggests that future and past are actually not evidenced in the nature of the systems we use the ideas to describe. In being timeless you are being what you are at the core, the soul.
It is hard to live without time, maybe impossible. The Persians [...]

It seems one of the significant stumbling blocks in both spiritual and practical matters is how we have been conditioned to think “rationally”. We are led to believe that by breaking things down to ideas we label as “facts” that we somehow are engaging in the only sane way of thinking. We are like the [...]

My own spiritual path is based not on abstaining from passion, but on embracing it. When you truly embrace it and let it consume you, you learn something surprising. This you it consumed is not “you”. Not the all encompassing thing. Some have described me as having strong self control. I don’t actually. I don’t [...]

It is a commonly mistaken notion that Buddhists see the Buddha as especially divine. There is a school or two that does, but in fact the majority of Buddhist sects are almost agnostic as it regards deities. Zen would be one of these.
There are two branches of thought in Buddhism. One is that enlightenment is [...]

Ever see Zen art? They use simple ink and they refuse to draw from memory. They seek to trap the sense impression, so the images seem very impressionistic. Suggesting the image of say a bird, because in fact as we move about in our normal consciousness how vividly does anything register on us? Usually not very. [...]

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 [...]

How does a demon go about being spiritual? Demons are spiritual. Darkness is merely the mirror image of light, and much is declared dark from prejudice only. Bad is debatable. The spirit that challenges you to know the truth of yourself is bad? The spirit that reminds you of the value of life, or what [...]

Tell me what you think anything means. I will describe your world. Sound boastful? Any takers? Our meaning is our reality.
“I’m living, breathing.  With each breath it’s a new world. How can I grasp at that? I try and try to grasp a meaning, but all I get is more questions.”
You grasp it in making [...]

Ever witness people arguing over what is ultimately a matter of syntax? And in fact they were saying the same thing? It even grows very negative. I would say in a sense it’s the rule with few exceptions. The evil of semantics.
Would you rather be right, or happy?  It seems people would rather be right, [...]

In the spiritual realm, the center of the persons spirit creates a zone around them. I call this the logos. In the Bible they say in the beginning was the word, and the word was God and was with God. I paraphrase, but in the beginning God spoke and it came to pass. It came [...]

Regarding emotions and attaching them to others, it seems in defining ourselves we will over exaggerate to the point of absurdity to see parts of ourselves that we have yet defined. For example, if you said to me that Jeff sure is a long winded dude, and I had not yet defined that within myself, [...]

Nature can be a good parent, but nature can’t help us discover human nature very well. That’s supposed to be our human parents’ job. Nature also teaches us to respect life in general if we are receptive, and in general we were when we were happy. When we were happy there wasn’t any elsewhere or [...]

The “no you” idea always sets me off a bit. We are so programmed to be self negating that it seems to be reverse arrogance, false humility. It’s like saying we can’t be involved, or it’s beneath us because there is no us. We are still here. I see you.
Who is still here? The buddha, [...]