Complete Forgiveness

Today, a series of articles on several blogs were posted on Forgiveness. This is a response to some of the feedback I’ve received. In no particular order.
NOTE – if you land here first, you may find reading Deep Forgiveness (above) useful first, as well as following the links to other posts on the subject. There [...]

Deep Forgiveness

Takuin and Albert (Urban Monk) decided to post on the subject of Forgiveness on the same day. They invited me and others to do the same. It’s an important subject and a good time of year to consider it.
As an experiment, I’ve done 2 versions. The usual text version follows. And I recorded an audio [...]

Pain Redux

The subject of pain has arisen again, so it would be useful to review the points. All pain, including physical and emotional, is a signal that something is wrong. All we have to do is hear the signal to complete the experience. Once the signal is received, the pain will end*. But if we don’t [...]

What Leads to Awakening?

In a recent post, I spoke of how our gifts come, not from our suffering, but from the movement of life through us. This arose from the underlying idea that suffering is necessary and will lead to benefit. We notice that we suffer and then improvement comes along, so the suffering must have been the [...]

Guardians

I’ve always enjoyed a cartoon’s ability to capture the essence of a story, idea, or vision. Both word and picture have to be refined to an aphorism. What they call in Sanskrit a sutra, meaning thread.
While many people view cartoons as childrens fare, they did not start out that way. Characters such as Wile E. [...]

Getting Simple

One of the qualities of Awakening people sometimes describe is living a problem free life. We can understand that if we are no longer fighting life, problems will be less. But it’s interesting to explore this further.
Some of the things that happen around waking include:
1) falling away of reactivity
As what Eckhart Tolle calls the “pain [...]

Practical Oneness

Recently, I heard another talk by Constance Kellough. In this talk, she spoke of Oneness, a term exemplified by the heartfelt name of her company, Namaste Publishing.
She spoke of how karma was not retribution but a demonstration of Oneness. The feedback was redemptive, offering an intunement that activates the experience of oneness. [assuming we don't [...]

The Story

Today I was called to explain the Story briefly to someone without background in this.
The essential idea is that in our evolutionary journey, there is a cycle of stepping away and a cycle of stepping in. One of the effects of a cycle of stepping away is the drive to independence. One example would be [...]

The Leap

Last weekend, I heard a short talk by Constance Kellough. Constance was once a management consultant with a private spiritual practice. She felt that inner restlessness, then realized she wanted a group practice or sangha. And that’s a key point – the recognition that the restlessness is an inner liveliness trying to get a message [...]

The Shadow Knows

In the opening of Within Bliss, I joked about the ’spiritually positive’. Some New Age and New Thought communities are rife with ‘Think Positivists’, the idea that if you think happy you’ll be happy.
Now, there is some truth to the idea. What you put your attention on grows stronger. Gratitude is a powerful tool as [...]