Archive for April, 2015

When times are difficult, we wonder, “Why me? Why am I the only one on Earth who suffers?” We’re blinded to the fact that suffering is pandemic. It crosses every border. It cares little for race, social class, religion, or nationality. No one escapes it, yet everyone wonders, “Why me?” Rarely do people use their suffering to get to God. They lament, pray, and prostrate themselves, bemoan their fates, but almost never use suffering as a tool to grow. Things ...

God hides behind thousands of masks. He’s a master quick-change artist, an androgynous magician, prankster, vaudeville performer, wise man, rich man beggar and fool. He never fits any singular profile. Like the wind, He changes directions, and His legerdemain bewilders the most intelligent of mortals.

We can’t look for Him. We have to feel Him in our hearts; we have to become one with His being, evolve and grow, and develop heightened awareness. If we rekindle childlike innocence and joy in our hearts, the spectacle of God ...

The spiritual practice that I learned from my teacher is often called meditation. A better word for it is “inner work.” It’s a process that goes much deeper than meditation and requires mastery of mind and breath in order to open the chakra system. Relaxation and meditation are just means of preparing one’s self for deep “inner work.” Meditators are told to listen to their breathing, to focus on the third eye or the heart center, or to just sit ...

The past follows us wherever we go. Like a shadow, its substance-less presence haunts us, fills us with guilt, and remains a constant reminder of how many mistakes we’ve made and how difficult it is for us to correct them. We look “through a glass darkly” into a kaleidoscopic mass of particles that are barely recognizable. The good and the bad blend together in a blurred veil of illusion. It’s impossible to return to what has already happened; it’s impossible ...

Years of inner work and meditation practice have taught me that I know little or nothing about life. At first this frightened me: after so great an effort to now come up empty. I soon realized the value of knowing nothing: the entire world was at my fingertips. I could embrace life without having to defend my knowledge; I could sit in front of life and allow it to be my teacher; and best of all, I no longer had ...

The word Tantra brings to mind images of Buddhist deities and Mahasiddhas in union with their female consorts (yab-yum); it brings to mind the playful and sometimes erotic stories of Krishna, Radha and the Gopis rendered in Indian miniature paintings; and the temples at Khujaraho, India where medieval stone statues of Hindu gods and goddesses fornicate in every imaginable position. These artistic images are subtle and mysterious expressions of a highly evolved meditation practice that uses sexual energy to transform ...

There’s much talk about racial, religious, economic, and political freedoms, but real freedom is the ability to free our self from the internal chaos and dysfunction that plagues every human being.  It requires mastery over mind and breath, the ability to use those tools to develop balance and harmony, an open heart, and a quiet mind.  We need to unclog systems that have been ravaged by years of neglect and tension, by an insane belief that money, relationships, power, social ...