Articles
Higher Reasoning II
A friend asked: Concerning Higher vs. Lower hierarchy: Isn’t it all one, all at the same level, no distinctions? Yes and no. The hierarchy “higher” and “lower” is a way of understanding a relationship according to, for example, the…
What is “Higher Reasoning“?
A friend sent a question: What meaning do you give to “Higher Reasoning”? I believe it started with Atmananda Krishna Menon. Higher Reasoning is an essential part of the total integration of awakening. Higher reason or transcendental reason simply…
Non-Duality 101: How to Realize Oneself
This is a reminder (to myself and others – who don’t actually exist). How To Know And Realize What Is Eternal Q: What is Non-Duality? A: Non-duality means “not two”. How it works is, you look at what you are…
The Three Stages of Liberation
Freedom manifests itself as a seeming human being along these lines: 1. Being open to being open to listening or seeing Reality-Truth. A teacher experience (could be any form – human, mountain…) in life happens. 2. Contemplating it, deepening…
All Else is Bandaids
The Truth, or Reality, or Awareness, whatever concepts you want to use, is intangible-and also the totality of tangibility-thus not abstract or intellectual; it is an experience, and felt as Joy. The totality of the invisible is concrete, as concrete…
The “Last Article” and Maktub
As it gets simpler and simpler, seeing what life is, there is less and less to say (unless you’re a “teacher” or a pundit, or a professional writer…). If I were to wander off into the wilderness, the desert –…
Notes On How to Live (Jean Klein Points)
Trapped in body? Trapped in a mind? But wait: where are the body and mind appearing? Looking for inspiration, I opened Jean Klein’s book Living Truth randomly: Your teaching helps our understanding mentally. What I do not understand is…
On Beyond Depression 2
The following are some tips I wrote down for a friend – it’s a more practice-oriented writing that the earlier On Beyond Depression from a couple years ago. I am posting this as a public service, to help those struggling…
Being Is, Non-Being is Not
This phrase is heard in Parmenides’, poem On Reality, and in a different form of language in the Bhagavad Gita, and in A Course in Miracles: Parmenides: Two paths are open to investigation. The first says: being is and nonbeing…
The Impersonal Nature of Thought
Thought is always impersonal, even when it seems not to be. Whether we see it or not… Indeed, it is kind of an odd experiencing, once it’s actually seen and experienced as it is, and is not just an idea,…
What Is “Self Realization”?
What does one really want? It may seem like an object at times: a partner, a material thing or state (“wealth”), a substance, an activity (beyond simple living that is – the psychological wanting arises)… but we want that object…
What’s Real and True (Poetic)
What is always true, Absolute, Not changing Obviously has to be outside of time or not in time, however you want to say it. So how do we talk about That? Or “This”? It’s not something that can be known.…
Beyond Subject and Object
Context of Reality (according to the author’s experience, corroborated by both science and non-duality: quantum mechanics and advanced neuroscience, as well as non-dual common ground of all valid wisdom traditions and central truths of the esoteric heart of religions, gnostic…
Knowing the Unknown
One of the main things to “know”, so to speak, regarding what is called “non-duality”, and the most basic paradox, is that it’s really ultimately about not knowing. It’s not an item of knowing; it’s not an understanding (unless you…
Infinite Life: An Inquiry
Who is running the brain? Where did these thoughts come from? They seem to come from nowhere and disappear into nowhere. Who’s running this show, anyway? Right now, listen. To whatever there is. Be it inside or outside. Look, listen…
Non-Duality and Suffering
A Dialogue with an Unknown Source Q: What’s your real value, at the end of the day, after years of seeking and suffering and finding, and all you’ve inquired into and seen and practiced over the decades? Is it…
The Open Everything
How does one describe this “openness”? It’s like trying to describe empty space. What does freedom smell like? It’s not spiritual, not scientific, not psychological – not any thing. It has no story, no past, no future. It can perhaps…
The End of Self Inquiry
Self inquiry can be in the form of not “Who am I?” or “What am I?” But it can also be “What Is?” or “what is This all?”, or “What’s real?”. It can be a question, or a just looking,…
Non-Duality Is Not Spiritual
Although what we call spirituality may have something to do with nonduality, it is obvious that nonduality has nothing to do with spirituality. It’s not even an experience, and cannot be an experience, nor item of experience. Nothing can be…
The Meaning of Words
I have noticed that even among the intelligent, well-educated spiritual folk, there is an assumption that the meaning of words is God-given or external or fixed: basically somehow sacrosanct or sacred. In other words, the meaning is in the words…
The Infinite Inquiry
Dear Friends – Just thought I’d write a short note, in lieu of a meeting announcement. In addressing those that have been on some kind of path for quite a while, and now have an acquaintance with the “direct” path:…
The Living Question
An earlier article was entitled “Living the Question”. This current missive turns out to be more from the non-doer perspective, so to speak… In other words, there is no one living the question (no separate entity): you are “being…
Some Notes on Self Inquiry
Self-inquiry is very simple. It is the simplest, humblest thing possible. How Do not think, or look for steps or a “how”, or see it as a complicated process or practice through time, or a sophisticated philosophy. Self It…
Never Not Not Two
Enlightenment There can be no enlightenment for a person. This is absolutely clear. So why worry about such a thing? It is a futile goal. Relax… “I”, as this (supposed) person was never enlightened, is not enlightened, and will never…
Bespoke Meditation: The Alive Center of Being
A Meditation on Pure Beingness “Thirty spokes has a wheel…” reads Lao Tzu*: the usefulness is the center, which still, silent, just as the usefulness of a pot is the empty space inside. The spokes are the sensations, perceptions…
Awareness Is Not Mind-Like
The Mind/Consciousness Distinction This article was spurred by a question – one that has also been asked on my website, in social media, and in my meetings, and so apparently is an important one to address. It’s a critical…
The Continuity of Awareness
One of the most fundamental questions students of consciousness and awareness have is, “If awareness is universal or nonlocal, then what about deep sleep or during anesthesia? Doesn’t consciousness go off and on?” I would like to offer to you…
The Integrity of the Teacher, Part II: Power & Authority
In part 1 of this series of articles, I brought up the key question of whether one can “separate the teaching from the teacher”: a phrase I heard from former students of gurus involved in scandals. The issue of Truth…
Notes on The Integrity Of The Teacher
No one is in any privileged position with respect to Truth (or Beauty or Love). There are no authorities in that regard. This is something I’ve discussed over the years with fellow “students” or “seekers” (including those who have been…
Desert Silence
The uniqueness of the experience… to be down in between those silent beautiful curving walls of the canyon – shades of tan, grey orange, yellow bright or dark in sun or shadow, so many textures and patterns… there’s no sound…
No Real Body or World? ! Why Is The Changing Unreal?
What in the world is meant by this? It’s an outlandish and ridiculous claim, an unworldly Eastern philosophical religious bit of non-sense, New Age woo woo, right? Even spiritual folks with a lifetime of meditation, practices, study and experience under…
What is Truth and Knowledge: Part 1
What is Knowledge? What is Truth? What can we know for certain, and what can we know only with a probability? What is the difference between an opinion, and knowing, or between a belief and a fact? These questions are…
On Beyond “Awakened” Relating to Direct Relating
We are changing the name of the online group about relationship and the direct path from “Awakened Relating” to “Direct Relating”. This was inspired by the fact that “awakened” is too often interpreted as being about a person “awakening”, and…
Love, Freedom, and Relating, Revisited
“Love and freedom cannot be separated.” —Francis Lucille This is a paraphrase of what the Advaita (non-duality) teacher Francis Lucille said, since it’s been a few years since we had the dialogue — but is the essence of what was…
Reflections on “There is no such thing as human love”
On more than one occasion I’ve heard the Advaita (non-duality) teacher Francis Lucille (or his wife Laura also) say “There is no such thing as human love.” What on Earth are they talking about? This would seem to go against…
The Three Spiritual Paths
The Three Spiritual Paths, or How To Do Nothing 162. YOGA AND DEVOTION (125) These are both processes of intense activity, always upholding the doer and enjoyer – even at the highest state, though in a highly general form.…
“The Real Awakening”, by Zephinanda
A Phantom Cannot Awaken There is no person to awaken, no separate entity that can awaken. From bodily sleep, a seeming entity can awaken, but this is only a seeming. It is in a relative way. How can…
Change the World to Beauty
To want to change the world, you are already saying, or thinking, there is something wrong with me. I am not good enough, there is a separate me, and there is a world apart from me. Already hidden in that…
The Matrix Resurrections and The Desert of the Unreal
The Matrix Resurrections and The Desert of the Unreal: A Philosophical Review Somewhere in a shop in the matrix world: [Bugs] It’s not something I can explain easily, but… But the moment he looked at me, I felt something… unlock…
alOne in the Silence: A Poem
A persistent assumption There are Others And listening to the insistent mind Which wants attention – Look at me! As if it were alone in a vast universe of loneliness “I’m a This, I’m a that…” it says A man,…
Tag, You’re It: A Poem and a Contemplation of Reality
In my journal, scribbled some reflections, and a little “poem” this morning … Tag, You’re It. In short … One cannot stand outside reality, one is It. One cannot know that reality any more than one can see one’s…
Silent Mind, Revisited
(An older, longer, more elaborate essay on “True Meditation: A Quiet Mind Versus A Silent Mind” can be found here) “To sum up the whole thing, it’s very simple. It’s the old dictum ‘Thou art that.’ And the way to…
Who Are You Really?
If you had no thoughts, and if your girlfriend or boyfriend asks you what you were thinking about, and you say to her or him that you were thinking how you had no thoughts, your thought would be that you…
On Communication, Texting, and Real Intimacy
Humans are sensitive to language like dogs are sensitive to smells. We take these funny sounds we make or think or read, seriously, like a big deal sometimes. Nations are built or destroyed on them. And new relationships formed. And…
On Beyond Online (Non-Duality) Group Meetings
I am putting the online group meetings on hold while I go to the desert for a short, unpaid “sabbatical”, and do my monk thing, like the “Fathers of the Desert” … “hang out in the Unknown” as a wise…
The Meaning of Meaning (and On Beyond Religion)
If you’re happy and not worried, and absorbed in living, you’re generally not inherently concerned with the “meaning of life” question (although one might contemplate it for fun or to share with friends, like I am doing). Still, even if…
Why Survive?
I had a dream around 1997 that contained a revelation, where I saw that saw life as being happiness itself, and a permanent peace that resided within, beyond all thought, and in fact that it’s only an imagination of scary…
Art and Freedom
Art and Freedom, The Art of Living, Love and Consciousness, True Freedom Sometimes the obvious is useful or helpful to state. I used to be an artist. That is, I identified with that sense of being one, of doing art,…
No Mind
The mind doesn’t actually exist. While it is useful to say, such as to a student of non-duality or of a spiritual path, that “mind” is defined as external sense perceptions, bodily sensations, and thoughts (which are in fact internal…
The Heart of the Self (A Poem)
Use every moment to go deeper into the heart of the Self. It is always there. Hidden in the facade of the mind, the appearances of the moment, the people and problems of the world… How can the Self, absolute…