Contemplative Currents Podcast

I am no stranger to the emotion of fear. Sometimes life events would rise to unearth energetic residues within me, and then sometimes I resist what life is presenting and suffer even more. Sometimes, all that is there to do is see what’s going on under the hood. In observing today about what was showing up for me, I thought to share a reflection from the Skanda Purana, one of the Mahāpurāṇas. If y...

Friends, a lot has been moving in my personal space. Life has been full! From waiting for my body to heal from a flu to accepting the wishes from friends on my birthday to preparing for a critical appointment… life has been full! This just means my posting has been slower. Today I am hosting friends for Friendsgiving at mine—which means practicing surrender…for someone who would rather be secluded...

In the after math of an ecstatic explosion of a meditation session yesterday, I quickly penned a reflection in verse. It was this: that i can walk is an absolute miracle, my left leg unsure where we go, the right coming along for the ride, my belly bellies and my crotch crutches, my nose knows and my ears hear. my beard itches and my pinky wishes. that i can laugh is a mystery, sounds leaping free...

This episode explores the paradox that life is both benevolent and brutal. From lions suffocating prey, wasps laying eggs in living hosts, and dolphins killing for play, to the deep grief of a mother losing her child, we see that nature’s intelligence is not sentimental. It destroys and renews in the same motion. Through these reflections, I look at how the mind resists this truth by grasping for...

Believe it or not, I used to be one of those toxic productivity coaches. I’d set goals, crush them, and then preach about how others could do the same. I even taught people how to “own their mornings.” Oh, I have a book called Good Morning: How To Win Your Day(still on Amazon). But behind the curtain, I was quietly shaming myself every night, wondering why some of my to-dos kept sneaking onto the...

A viral outcry over the death of Stranger Things’ Barb becomes the doorway to a deeper inquiry: why do we grieve fictional characters as if they were real—and how is that different from the “character” we call me ? This reflection explores how our sense of self is stitched together from memory, emotion, and cultural archetypes—the achiever, the rebel, the caregiver, the cynic—none more real than t...

Episode Summary: A reflection on the futility and beauty of seeking. How even the small, ordinary moments—like not wanting to get out of bed, or stubbing a toe—can open portals to deeper awareness. The episode explores how the search for happiness dissolves into the realization that joy was never missing, and how pain itself becomes an offering to love. Key Themes: The body as a mirror for unproce...

A week ago, I found myself in the middle of a medical emergency. In one moment I was in meetings, sitting quietly in meditation, and moving through the day as usual. Minutes later my chest was heavy and my cognition slipped away. In that crisis I noticed something striking: while panic rose in the mind, something deeper remained unshaken, watching. This episode reflects on that experience and the...

Episode Notes What if not knowing isn’t a problem, but the most honest ground we stand on? In this episode, I use a scene from Silo to explore the big question of why we are here—and why no story ever fully answers it. Beyond all the theories and meanings, one fact remains: we are. In this presence of “I am,” there’s a steadiness that doesn’t falter, even when everything else does. This is a publi...

How do we love reality in all its messiness? With its crude edges, its weight of suffering, its unpredictability? How do we stay present with what is demanding, unclear, or painfully sharp? In this episode, I explore what it means to be in love with reality. Not as a sentimental idea, but as an act of surrender. It begins with a simple seeing: there is only this moment. Nothing else. Not yesterday...

In past reflections I wrote about The Sweet Sweetness That I Am and The Nectar of True Devotion . Today I want to take this further by sharing a practice that laces my experience with joy and mystery, even in the thick of life’s turbulence. James, the brother of Jesus, once wrote: count it all joy when you go through trials and tribulations . That line puzzled me for years. What joy can be counted...

In today’s episode, I share a story that begins with a small drama by a pond in my neighborhood: a duck, broken and abandoned, dropped off to fend for itself. What seemed like the end of its story turned into a lesson in trust, because of the unlikely care of a young girl named Michelina. From there, I reflect on what this duck’s survival has to say about our own anxieties in a time of layoffs, ec...

I share the story of an ordinary outdoor bench that became something extraordinary—a place of stillness, communion, and peace during the uncertainty of the pandemic. It was on this bench that I wrote, reflected, and connected with both neighbors and the Mystery itself. But as I prepared to leave my home after five years, I realized how easy it is to mistake the tool for the source, to confuse the...

This was written to be a contemplative read, and if you’re listening to this as a voice-over, remember to do so preferrably when not doing anything active. It would be more effective if you use this experientially and exploratively. The attempt of this exploration is to point you, the reader, to the experience of emptiness, where paradoxically a sense of fullness emerges. Emptiness? What is that?...

What if the only thing you’ve ever truly known… is the fact that you are ? In this contemplative episode, we explore the mystery of existence—not as a philosophical concept, but as the living fact that precedes every thought, identity, and story. Shay reflects on the nature of life as an unearned, unowned unfolding, drawing on experiences from his own practice of self-inquiry. Together, we examine...

There was a time when the most captivating part of Noah’s Ark was the logistical absurdity of it all. How could anyone fit every species onto one boat? How did he find a pair of snow leopards—if he was somewhere near Mesopotamia? Did he go on a divine scavenger hunt for kangaroos? Was there really room for the insects, the microbes, the elephants, the entire symphony of living things? And if we ta...

In the search for ultimate meaning(assuming one hasn’t short-circuited the journey by adopting someone else’s conclusions), we eventually run into paradoxes. I am talking about loads and loads of paradoxes. The rookie mistake is trying to resolve them. And the impulse to tie everything up in a neat bow is what strands many of us on the roadside of what is, in truth, an endless unfolding of experie...

I am overjoyed when I remember that I'm alive. I am alive, just like you, in the most mysterious, boundaryless sense. And that Life, as such, never began and cannot possibly end. For if life did begin, at what point did it begin? Wouldn’t we have to locate the starting point? Was it the moment of birth? The moment of conception? The formation of stars? Of atoms? Of time itself? Of God? And if Life...

In this episode, I reflect on a heated phone call with a family member that unexpectedly opened a doorway into deeper inquiry. We explore how our constant mental tug-of-war—between what should have been and what shouldn’t have happened—pulls us away from the raw intelligence of what is . What if the moment isn’t wrong? What if presence is found not in fixing, but in resting with what unfolds? This...

Our everyday perception suggests a clear dualistic distinction: there's an "outside" world of solid objects and an "inside" self that observes and interacts with it. This sense of solidity is then reinforced by our experiences, where we feel like distinct entities moving through a concrete world. So we may think, “ I am here and you with all other things in the world are things that are apart/sepa...

For a second, let’s engage in this thought experiment. Let’s imagine you’re in a dream. I’m in it too. In your own dream! Remember that! It’s just you and I taking a walk on the streets of where-ever-the-heck dreams conjure up. We are having an existentialism conversation. I then pose a question to you, “What if you are not in your body, and you’re located somewhere totally different? Perhaps not...

It’s as if life finally picked you up by the scruff of your neck like a lioness does her cub, not to punish you, not to abandon you, but to deliver you back to the very place you never left. And suddenly, with no trumpets, no neon lights, no sense of achievement, you realize: you’ve never driven one single day of your life. And weirdly, it’s not terrifying—it’s delicious. Now, every event becomes...

Summary: In this introspective episode, Seye Kuyinu explores the radical proposition of letting go—not just of beliefs and concepts, but even of religion and spirituality themselves. Rooted in a recent Substack post and a private conversation with a friend, this reflection invites you to examine the hidden attachments beneath their most sacred practices. Rather than attack belief systems, Seye cha...

Just this week, scrolling on Tiktok, I watched in sadness as a woman recounted her unraveling in tears. At 57, she had lost everything: her house, her savings, the career she’d built over decades— all happened in the last 3 years. Her voice cracked with the raw bewilderment of someone who had followed all the rules and still ended up with nothing. She wasn’t like soliciting for pity or help or any...

Episode Summary: Seye shares a deeply personal story of being struck in a hit-and-run accident on December 24, 1998. What began as trauma unfolds into a powerful exploration of consciousness, the nature of the Self, and the mystery at the heart of suffering. Through reflections on Ramana Maharshi, Rumi, Carl Jung, and David Hawkins, this episode investigates how intense pain can become a gateway t...