Meditation and Beyond

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the familiar sense of “I” grows quiet—even for a moment? What remains is not emptiness, but a spacious, living awareness that has always been here. In this episode, we explore how meditation reveals our essential nature by allowing thoughts to liberate themselves as they arise, and how the habit of reification quietly contracts consciousness into the story we cal...

Send us Fan Mail What if everything you experience – thoughts, emotions, sensations, even the world itself –arises nowhere other than within the mind? This is not a philosophical idea to be believed, but a truth to be directly known. Like a night dream that feels utterly real until the moment of waking, our waking life appears solid and external until awareness turns back upon itself. This reflect...

Send us Fan Mail We weren’t born with a restless mind. We arrived in this world spacious, open, and untouched – like awareness itself. So how did that vast clarity become a chattering “me”? What silent shift pulls us from our natural wholeness into the frantic monkey mind? In this episode we explore the invisible turn of awareness where heaven is forgotten and the monkey mind is born.  And more im...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever wondered why your mind refuses to sit still—why thoughts surge, swirl, and rehearse themselves as if on an endless loop? The answer isn’t mysterious or psychological jargon. It comes down to one simple, ancient habit: the mind’s impulse to grab hold of fleeting appearances and turn them into solid realities. In the very moment the mind turns nothing into something, t...

Send us Fan Mail Behind the restless flow of thoughts lies a vast, silent field of awareness – the natural mind that precedes and sustains all experience. We live mostly within a fragment of this wholeness, mistaking our conditioned patterns, stories, and identities for the entirety of who we are. Meditation, when understood in its deeper sense, is not simply a technique to calm or improve the min...

Send us Fan Mail A question that all meditators confront is how to stabilize the qualities we experience in our natural state – serenity, spontaneous realizations, freedom from conditioning, and a natural simplicity and ease. These qualities often appear only as fleeting experiences, easily disrupted by the pressures of daily life.  In other words, we tend to know them as temporary states , not en...

Send us Fan Mail We are born with a simple, clear, and open awareness. Yet, this pristine consciousness is short lived. As we navigate life, our experiences – linked to external approval or criticism – progressively reduce our scope of consciousness to limited ways of perceiving reality, ingrained habits, and automated reaction patterns. Unbounded curiosity, exuberance and awe, novelty, and sponta...

Send us Fan Mail We have all experienced moments of circumstantial calmness – whether through a relaxing walk in nature, immersion in art and beauty, or through music, yoga, intimacy, meditation, and other such events that can calm mind and body. These moments offer a respite from the overactive mind, afflictive emotions, and daily challenges. We seek out these desirable circumstances, valuing the...

Send us Fan Mail A peak experience is a fleeting moment of profound inner peace, harmony, flow, and oneness. It’s T.S. Eliot’s image of children playing innocently in the apple tree, Wordsworth’s moment of splendor in the grass, or you and I “lost” in nature, wonderment, exuberance, beauty, art, intimacy, dance, or, music. It’s when the music, the playing, and the musician become one.  Most indivi...

Send us Fan Mail Shantideva, a famous 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk, shared with us a very wise realization: "All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others." When we desire that others be free of suffering and attain happiness, we swiftly lose our ego-based-self-cherishing and self-centered...

Send us Fan Mail "Self-liberation on arising" describes the natural dissolution of thoughts, feelings, and sensations when the mind refrains from grasping, elaborating, or fixating on them. Mental appearances arise and pass naturally, but fixation extends their lifespan, leading to suffering and distraction. This cycle detaches us from present experience and immerses us in past stories....

Send us Fan Mail "This Precious Life" explores the human journey from the expansive, limitless consciousness of childhood, to the constricted identity shaped by societal demands and ego, and in fortunate ones the return to the precious essence of an expanded conscousness. Eastern traditions highlight this second phase of life where one turns inward, rediscovering the vast possibilities a...

Send us Fan Mail This podcast explores the distinction between two aspects of self: the essential self , characterized by unconditioned awareness present from birth, and the personal (ego) self , a constructed identity shaped by experiences and societal conditioning. The ego self narrows our expansive consciousness into patterns and beliefs, obscuring our natural state of openness and wonder. Desp...

Send us Fan Mail Simply stated, virtual reality is an experience that on first glance appears real but on further examination is found not to be real. The experience seems real, looks real, and sounds real, but it is isn’t. It doesn't appear in the manner in which it appears. In addition to dreams and mirages onsider our ordinary day-to-day life and activities – the usual experience of people...

Send us Fan Mail "Zooming In – Zooming Out" explores the practice of reconnecting with our fundamental, unconditioned awareness, which we are born with but often lose touch with as our ego and personal identity develop. This is called "Zooming-In." When we need to navigate day-to-day life, we simply "Zoom-Out" by reaching into our vast unconditioned consciousness and...

Send us Fan Mail We  can begin by agreeing that there are two fundamental kinds of love – personal love and essence love.  Although the first, personal love, may take many forms, it is characterized by the love of one person for another within the scope of our usual mind/body life. That love will vary in character and quality following the psychological development of the individuals involved. The...

Send us Fan Mail A desert mirage, an echo, train tracks appearing to meet in the distance, and magic tricks are among those experiences that we can see or hear, but they are not actually real. These are sensory-based illusions that we initially think are real, but later learn that they are not real. Love, kindness, patience, and spirit cannot be directly seen. They have no form, shape, texture, co...

Send us Fan Mail Our lives are influenced and guided by our sense of “self.” When we refer to our self – I believe, I think, I feel – it is important to ask what self, what “I,” are we referring to. Is it our customary, personal day-to-day self, or our natural, inner self? Which “self” have we placed at the center of our life? What we place at the center will define how we experience the world. Wh...

Send us Fan Mail We have all had moments when the tumult of life stops and clear and truthful insights arise from the depth of our being. We call them “aha” experiences. These moments of understanding are neither planned nor organized. They come unexpectedly and spontaneously. They are brief and carry with them a sense of truth, authenticity, and authority. We don’t know how or where they come fro...

Send us Fan Mail A child is born with a clear, pure awareness. Not an awareness of this or that or an awareness accompanied by interpretations, commentary, judgments, or preferences. A simple clear awareness is experienced without labels and filled with a natural wonder, awe and curiosity. And that miracle of beingness is experienced, but at the time unknown to the infant. We use the same terms –...

Send us Fan Mail We have all experienced glimpses of a larger consciousness that lies beyond our personal identity and day-to-day life. These glimpses are characterized by a sense of flow, ease, wholeness, peace, delight, and freedom. They are a welcome release from the day-to-day struggles of our usual self and life. We would, of course like, to know what causes these glimpses so that we can re-e...

Send us Fan Mail Consciousness is not a “thing.” It has no form, shape, color, texture, weight, mass, contour, or location. These qualities refer to tangible objects with tangible characteristics that can be described and communicated through language. That is not so with consciousness. Although it is the central aspect of human life, in its full scope it defies the limited capacities of the spoke...

Send us Fan Mail There are five increasingly complex and dysfunctional levels of ego development, the development of our personal "I." These are: the Mere "I," the Reified "I," the Self-cherishing "I," the Protective and Defensive "I," and the Social "I."  As adults we attempt to function with this complex and afflictive sense of self. Lo...

Send us Fan Mail While meditating we’ve all had the experience of a blissful moment of serenity, clarity, or realization, only to be pulled back into the stresses and strains of daily life. That can feel quite frustrating and even disempowering. We touch the glory of the sacred and are thrown back into the mundane. We think that our experience and insights will change our life, but too often they...

Send us Fan Mail The transcendent state of consciousness is a non-sensory experience. It is a non-ordinary experience. It can neither be experienced or known through our senses, nor through our usual intellectual capacities. It is an inner, personal, “invisible” experience. Words that point towards it include: transpersonal, timeless, infinite, wholeness, natural, all-embracing, essential being, p...