Contemplative Currents Podcast

One should not give up, neglect, or forget for a moment his inner life, but he must learn to work in it, with it, and out of it so that the unity of his soul may break out in all his activities —Meister Eckhart I held Milo against my body as I felt the waves of trembling rolling through his furry body. In the five years we have shared together, I had never felt him shake with this much intensity a...

When I dream, I sometimes dream of dreaming. This happens when my dreams are not clogged with the same familiar nightmares that mirror my waking life. And when I wake, there are moments when what we call ‘this reality’ appears dreamlike. Like right now! Oh, I’m not saying it’s unreal. I’m saying it feels insubstantial. Like the world is held together by an invisible field that’s lighter than we co...

I have a lot of trouble! Oh, where do I begin? Let me start with the basic living-in-america problem— some form of debt or the other. Is it the debt reminders that greet me through the emails I sometimes archive in contempt? Is it the gentle burden of belonging to a family. You know, the beautiful, unbearable weight of being fully a part of people whose blood I share and whose love I was born into...

There are moments that move me out of center. A phrase said in passing, a tone, a memory that catches me sideways, and suddenly I'm no longer here. I'm somewhere inside the reaction. ( Remember the one I wrote about my coworker? ) For most of my life I assumed those reactions were simply mine. I assumed they were “my thoughts”. Yes, we tend to claim them as our own. I assumed my feelings were my f...

Many of my recent conversations with close friends have circled around sustenance, the uncertainties the current economy presents, the ‘ rising cost of eggs ’, the incredibly tough job market and just general tensions in a more unpredictable world— not like anything was ever predictable. In the corporate environment, these conversations have become more scary. I currently work in IT and I have wat...

In our 7am Peace Chapel Meditation group this morning, we read and shared from the anonymously aggregated sayings of the Desert Fathers . It brought to inspiration one of the most beautiful and freeing realizations for me. The thoughts on attachment, how we attach to things, people and ideas, and what liberation from these mistaken positions could look like. From the passage: Two elders were stayi...

One morning in March, I looked up and the tree was green. You don’t understand! I could have sworn that the day before, it had been bare. No leaves, branches looking so dry and dead. In fact, three nights earlier I’d used that same bare tree as an analogy on a phone call with a friend, pacing my backyard, probably irritating the heck out of any neighbors listening over their fences. All winter it...

Welcome, fellow explorer. If you found your way here, ‘something’ must have brought you. Maybe you saw one of my videos. Maybe a friend who said you should read this . Or maybe it was a discussion you and I had inspired me to forward a link. Or maybe you saw a Substack Note somewhere while you were scrolling down the Substack rabbit hole at 11pm and this piqued your curiosity. Whatever the path, I...

Dear friends, I have not written as frequently as I normally do. That’s because a lot of interesting things have been going on here. To be honest, I almost cannot keep up with myself at this point. Still, 159 essays in, I've enjoyed experimenting with different styles of writing while finding a consistent voice, and the most authentic way I can share of this experience of awe. And that's exactly w...

Do you know what the source of attention is? Like, if you’re paying attention, where is the location of that which projects the attention? I wish I had known this earlier. And if you haven’t seen this yet, this might save you years of searching in the wrong direction. The thing is, all meditation practice, underneath their techniques and the various traditions, the fasting, the prayers, the ritual...

See, any exploration in contemplation(funny I say this because contemplation is in fact that exploration), has to go beyond the content of one’s experience to the origin of experience itself. You don’t just drink water, you go to the source of the water. That exploration is, in fact, the true unveiling of one’s self. Or in other words, a discovery of Mystery. In that exploration, one may find some...

I could not find a more appropriate title to this one. Earlier this week, I was lost in thought after watching someone narrate their harrowing experience during a visit to Mauritania. There seemed to be so much poverty, so much suffering. I could almost smell death just watching the video. I mean, things felt ominous at the same time conclusive. Like, there was no possible way a place like that co...

You wake up to the clarity of the present moment. Then the mind steps in with deadlines, memories, and unfinished business. The peace feels lost. This piece looks at that tension. On one side, there is the direct seeing that only this moment exists. It is not a slice of time. It is a living field where everything unfolds. On the other side, there is the pull of plans, tasks, and past experiences....

Every single morning, about sixty of us gather in silence at 7.20am. We spend twenty minutes sititing in stillness. Then a poem is read, or a verse, a passage from a novel, a song lyric, a fragment of something really powerful, written by a thought leader. And then, one by one, we share how it landed. We say a short prayer and close up the Zoom room. What I most often leave with is a word. A phras...

What if the most wondrous thing you could ever encounter is something you've never actually left? In this essay, I walk through four movements releasing origin stories, opening the aperture of perception, dimming the noise of self-concept, and the practice of remembering ..that point toward something prior to all of it. Not a philosophy. Not a doctrine. Just a crack in the ordinary, and the strang...

I sit on a bench in my backyard everyday, silently observing what nature is doing. In these cold season, I'm well familiar with the dormancy of grasses that grew before my eyes just a few months ago. And the trees, their greenery stained the dew with their luscious green. But now they are dormant. The three of them. You see, there is something about sitting still long enough that the world stops p...

I tell you, it seems like most of my life, I have waited for “this part” to be finally over so I can just move on to other good things. Like when I was in the University. I hated it so much! Life seemed impossibly hard. My classes were difficult to understand and quite honestly, I was disinterested in most of my courses because I was more focused on making ends meet(in my immediate situation) than...

I have had a lot of background conversations about my orientation towards the concept of Prayer from the last post, the one called Pray, Not As Prey . These conversations have circled around questions I've been living with for years: What do we do with our desires? How do we hold our wanting without being consumed by it? Is there a way to pray that doesn't feel like begging an indifferent universe...

I want to start this by expressing my immense gratitude for the outpouring of love from my last post. I received dozens of private messages that I am holding so tenderly in my heart. I still am. You see, when I look at my life honestly, without doubt, I see how generously it has been held. Oh, the words of support! Thank you! You know, I could never in a million years have dreamed or willed myself...

I am currently bracing for a season of solitude, putting structures in place for minimal physical interactions with the outer world, keeping documents and important paraphernalia in easily accessible locations, making sure I can easily access emergency contact while figuring out guardianship for Milo, my doggie roommate. In this space, I have also been exploring, as practice, deeper levels of what...

When I’m not so heavily caught up in my own life drama or sulking over how incredibly harsh the world seems to be at times, when I’m not doomscrolling from under a blanket curled up like a deplorable fetus lost in the narratives of news around the world and my existential fears, brewing like a moka pot that’s about to boil over, is seen through, I enjoy playing with the display and dance of form t...

The rather harsh personal truth that’s sometimes difficult to communicate is that I do not mind dying. I sometimes say that if I were given the option to silently disappear without anyone grieving or remembering that I ever existed, I would do this without thinking twice. No, it’s not that I’m nihilistic. Well, maybe some. Rather, it’s that what I am on the external(the personality, character, att...

In conversations with my more intimate friends, when we share the difficult experiences we face, the more dense matters of being alive in society, it is not uncommon for me to share what I have found to be the ultimate stance of our existence in this plain of experience: the posture of surrender. Surrender, it seems clear to me is the only practice that this incarnation, this instance of being has...

One of the most challenging invitations of this human life for all of us is or would be the call to intimacy. We often limit the call to intimacy to an outward experience like the sometimes clumsy dance of physical and emotional connection within and without our relationships. We learn to navigate the landscapes of a partner’s heart, we learn to build bridges of trust, and to find shelter in mutua...

You know that chair the laundry sits on? That chair! YOU KNOW THE ONE! Okay…if you don’t have the chair, you know someone who does! It’s that chair you dump clothes and things you plan to deal with later. Those clothes you wore once or the ones you might wear again later. The clothes you tested out but were too tight or didn’t match but you were in a hurry so you just dumped them on THE chair. The...