Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

A compassionate perspective on Sant Mat and the spiritual pursuit

Here's a guest blog post from someone who writes well, thinks clearly, and has an interesting perspective on the spiritual pursuit. Kinder and gentler than my own attitude toward cults and religions. I added a couple of links to the person's post. Dear Brian, I was searching the internet for Sant Mat history and I found your blog. As I was reading it, back and forth, there have been quite a few entries of people over the years, I felt glad that I found some answers that clarified my own thinking. So then I wanted to , you know, say…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

I respond to a B.S. comment about my 52 years of meditation

UPDATE: Spence Tepper has apologized to me for his ridiculous attempt to claim that my 35 years of daily meditation while a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, usually for several hours a day, amounted to "nothing." Good for Spence. He recognized how wrong he was. Hopefully from now on he will realize that my approach to meditation is the wise one: don't challenge someone's personal experience in meditation, but DO challenge any claim that this experience proves the existence of a supernatural realm beyond the physical. Spence doesn't like my skepticism toward his brand of religious fundamentalism. I've pointed out…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t repress your feelings because you think that’s “spiritual”

I'm coming to dislike that word, spiritual. It conjures up an image of something ethereal, other-worldly, supernatural, divorced from the messy reality of this physical world. Which, of course, is the only world there is -- because there's precisely zero demonstrable evidence that any other realm exists. No heaven. No hell. No divine regions of reality.  This is it. So rather than say something like "I'm a spiritual person," how about simply "I'm s person." Just as we all are. Doing our best to live a good life in a world that's filled with challenges. That includes dealing with challenging…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Embrace everything about yourself, including the good, bad, and the ugly

I'm cured! But before I get too excited over this news, I need to remind myself that what happened yesterday was, after three counseling sessions, Wayne, the counselor I was seeing, agreeing with me that there wasn't any need for me to continue seeing him. What caused my therapeutic breakthrough is interesting, because it fits with the blog post I wrote about a week ago, "Zen'ish adage: when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy." I mentioned that post to Wayne in the course of explaining my Big Realization. Namely, that the goal I'd written down at Wayne's…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation Vedanta/Advaita

Nonduality says nothing about how the world really is

Following up on my previous post about David Loy's book, Nonduality, here's some additional thoughts on a subject that both intrigues me and irritates me. The intrigue part stems from a desire most of us have, me certainly included, to look upon the world without feeling so separate from it. That separateness is inherent in a central fact about we humans. Each of us views things from an inescapable subjective perspective. Meaning, we are subjective beings in an objective world. Or at least, what sure appears to be an objective world. No one knows what it is like to be…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris speaks eloquently about non-dual mindfulness

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about my Zen'ish adage that when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy.  I mentioned that part of the inspiration for that post came from listening to a conversation Sam Harris had with Nikki Mirghafori on his Waking Up app.  Mirghafori believes that equanimity is central to spirituality. She has a dualistic approach to enlightenment, or realization, where the goal is to attain an inward state of silent/pure consciousness that is separate from everyday consciousness.  I skipped quite a bit of the more than two hour conversation. But at…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Zen’ish adage: when you’re sad, be sad; when you’re happy, be happy

Whenever I have a Grand Intuition about something that really is obvious, I'm never sure whether (1) I deserve to be honored in the Great Hall of Enlightened Beings or (2) laughed at for not realizing sooner what I should have understood long ago. (Personally, I'll go with #1, but I can't argue with someone else who favors #2.) The core of today's Grand Intuition is the title of this blog post: When you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy. It's an emotional echo of some familiar Zen sayings. Chop wood, carry water. When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink.…
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Posted inAwareness Spiritual practice/meditation

Lose yourself to find yourself

For a long time, over three decades, I assumed that a central goal of my life was to know myself. Another way of saying this was self-realization. The idea was that somewhere hidden away in my psyche was a True Me who was different from the current Untrue Me. So I diligently meditated every morning. Sometimes as long as two and a half hours, sometimes for a shorter period, but never less than an hour.  I don't regret all that meditating, which totaled well over 20,000 hours. Plus, I've continued to meditate every day since the end of my religious…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Bruce Lee’s Six Diseases of a competitive attitude

I'm prone toward feeling competitive. That was obvious when I was playing competitive tennis. I didn't like to lose. It's been less obvious now. But today when I started reading Be Water, My Friend, a book written by Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, after putting it aside for a while, I came across her description of how Bruce Lee viewed a competitive attitude in everyday relationships and situations. I saw myself in these Six Diseases. Maybe you will also. Shannon Lee says: (the indented passages are from Bruce Lee) If we want to look at how we practice all forms…
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Posted inConsciousness Spiritual practice/meditation

You can’t go beyond mind, because that’s what you are

Yesterday Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog, responded to Appreciative Reader, another frequent commenter. I enjoy how Tepper thinks, even when I don't agree with him. Below I've shared in bold italics some observations on his interesting comment. Hi ARYou asked""Please explain in clear words what exactly you were trying to say."Thank you for the clarity of your question. It was a great question. And I appreciate the response from Tepper below, which is pleasingly direct. Beyond mind meaning beyond your own conventional thinking. OK, I agree that it isn't possible to go beyond the mind, because mind isn't…
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Posted inAwareness Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

The best spiritual practice could be…nothing

Here's some thoughts about the value of basing your spiritual practice on... drumroll please... absolutely nothing. But I'll introduce this topic by sharing an anecdote. Yesterday I took our dog for a walk around the community lake near our rural property. A house is for sale that overlooks the lake. A woman and two children were walking down from the house toward the lake, seemingly because the family was looking into buying the house. A young boy came up to the fence that our dog and me were on the other side of. He pointed and said, "nice lake." Then…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

This talk by Alan Watts is marvelous

Thank you, Sam Harris. As of January 1, he's arranged to have about 100 hours of recorded talks by Alan Watts put on his Waking Up app.  I've read just about of all of Watts' books. Some I've read numerous times, notably The Wisdom of Insecurity, one of my favorite books.  The recordings are arranged in categories: Tao of Philosophy, Philosophies of Asia, Myth & Religion, Philosophy & Society, Comparative Philosophy, Ways of Liberation, Religion of No Religion, Eastern & Western Zen, Taoism, Zen & Meditation, Comparative Religion, Early Radio Talks, Human Consciousness, Buddhism, Spiritual Alchemy, The Arts, The Future,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Mental Tai Chi and dissolving the remove

Yesterday I had one of those pleasing experiences where I got the same message from three different sources -- one inside my head, from me, and the other two from outside, a guided meditation and a book I was reading.  First, me. I was idly going to sleep, not thinking about much of anything in particular, when the notion mental Tai Chi popped into my mind.  For seventeen years I've been practicing Tai Chi under the guidance of a skilled instructor who is adept at teaching the martial aspect of Tai Chi, as well as the more typical relaxation/exercise aspect. …
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Genuine spirituality is very simple. Not like religion at all.

Here's what I've come to realize after over fifty years of searching for spiritual truth. For most of that time, I had things completely backward, because I didn't understand how simple genuine spirituality really is.  I've got lots of company in that regard.  At first, almost everyone approaches spirituality, or religion, like everything else in life. It's viewed as something to be desired, then worked for, then hopefully attained. This is how we get a college degree. This is how we get our first real job. This is how we get married. This is how we have children. This is…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Right in the middle is where life really happens

I really liked today's guided meditation by Jeff Warren, which I regularly listen to on the Calm iPhone app. So much so, I made a transcript of what Warren had to say. The ellipsis (...) in the transcript below indicate a marked pause in the guided meditation.  This afternoon I shared some copies of the transcript with my Tai Chi class. There's a close connection between the notion of staying in the center of a movement and basic principles of Tai Chi.  More philosophically, I enjoyed Warren's observation that when we're right in the middle, we have the greatest ability…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

“There is no path” — poet Antonio Machado

For a long time I believed in a path. A path back to God. The religious group I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, taught there was such a path. One of their books was called "Path of the Masters." Since I no longer accept that such a path exists, I like this poem by Antonio Machado. There are various translations from the Spanish. I've shared several. Wanderer, your footprints arethe path, and nothing else;wanderer, there is no path,the path is made by walking.Walking makes the path,and on glancing backone sees the paththat must never be trod…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Transcendence and immanence: two paths to attain oneness

It's important to not get one-sided in our approach to meditation and spirituality. After all, oneness is a laudable goal, even if it can't be attained perfectly. (If there truly was only one, there would be no one else to know there was only one, so oneness would never be experienced.) A one-sided coin doesn't exist. It takes two sides to make a coin.  So we shouldn't get locked into a single way of looking upon oneness. Many commenters on this blog appear to be so enamored with transcendence -- leaving this world behind to find a better one --…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m enjoying my Mendi neurofeedback device

Recently I got the Mendi brain exercise (neurofeedback) device that I'd ordered early last year via a Kickstarter campaign. Repeated delays kept pushing back the estimated time us backers would get our Mendi. Finally it came, from Sweden. Here I am modeling my Mendi. I took the photo in front of several katana swords and a fan in my office, because the Mendi has a certain Japanese/samurai look to it. The Mendi web site describes what the device does. An iPhone app connects with the Mendi via bluetooth. You train your brain by playing a game. You focus on a…
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Posted inComments Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

Is a mechanism required for realizing Oneness?

Below I've shared a lengthy comment from "Appreciative Reader" that deserved to be made into a blog post. Why? Because the comment is nicely thought out and well written. It addresses an interesting question: whether someone's experience of Oneness just happened, and can't be described in a step-by-step fashion, or whether a mechanism that leads to an experience like this can be communicated to others. I tend to agree with Appreciative Reader that in general, someone's spiritual realization is capable of being analyzed and critiqued to a significant degree. As I've noted before, dreams are highly personal and unlike everyday…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Bruce Lee’s daughter writes about her father’s philosophy

A fellow Tai Chi student and friend mentioned "Be Water, My Friend" a while back. This is a book by Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter. I'm enjoying it.  My favorite Tai Chi form is called in English, Water Boxing. It's very long, difficult to learn, not known by very many, and involves a lot of subtleties.  I probably should call it a Tai Chi'ish form, because few of the hundreds of moves look like traditional Tai Chi. But that's the way of water. It can take on an infinity of forms, because water is fluid, flexible, formless. Which is the…
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