Western Baul Podcast Series

Many of us feel that we want to stop the world and get off given the suffering that we see all around. But without conflict and adversity, how would we have the opportunity to practice compassion? And where would we go if we got off? There is the implication that there is a place to go away from “what is.” It’s useful to look at our escape fantasies. While resistance is sometimes demonized on the...

Basic trust is a term used by A.H. Almaas. It manifests as the willingness to leap into the unknown. Basic trust is different than our ordinary sense of trust that is dependent on external circumstances. It is an implicit trust that reality is ultimately good, that the universe will take care of us, that everything is OK and that what is optimal will happen. Almost no one has this basic trust--tho...

“There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” This is the last line of one of Rumi’s poems. Fear, anxiety and grief are natural responses to the world as-it-is, which is full of poison and full of nectar. There are 3 ways of working with the poison of today’s world: we can reject it, we can gorge ourselves without discrimination, or we can partake in healthy doses through the discernm...

A difficulty that shows up in relationship is not voicing our considerations to another person. If we don’t speak such things, we may stop talking and lose affinity. The quality of relationship does not depend on the circumstances or the content of the relationship. It depends on what we create, the promise we make about it. There is often an assumption that there is a problem if we disagree about...

Good company is that which we experience with those companions who are a beacon of light by nature of their vision, commitment, practice, enduring love, and personal sacrifice. It feeds our deepest essence and longing and can keep reminding us of what the necessity is in our lives. Good company is a mood, a context that creates and sustains an energetic field that is necessary for any work on the...

When there is misunderstanding, hostility, and aggression, the question is, “Why?” We would like to think that we are not capable of such things as occur in war, but we can consider that “what’s going on out there is what’s going on in here.” There are qualities such as vigilance that are needed in war that are also needed in spiritual work. A feeling of self-righteousness tends to go along with a...

We’ve got to have necessity to cultivate spiritual maturity. The foundation that we need for maturing is always being built stronger. What do we expect from our spiritual practice? What are we willing to pay for it in terms of our attention, time, and necessity? When we cultivate spiritual maturity, we open up senses we don’t even know we have and develop the capacity to “eat” the “substance” of n...

Writing is an inroad into our deepest self. Sometimes it is painful because we all have wounds and obstacles that we work with over a lifetime. There is a healing quality to writing—we can tell the truth about our experience. Developing or honing a writing practice, whether we are skilled writers or not, is an invaluable means of telling our stories and bringing greater objectivity and insight int...

We live in the world of duality, the linear world of opposites, and non-duality, the non-linear world of unity outside of time and space. Paradox is when two things seem to contradict each other but are both true. In order to grow, we need to be comfortable with paradox, embrace it and live from it. Paradox holds the key that shows us that life works if we let it. Duality is both real and illusion...

True hospitality is emotionally powerful and touches something very deep in us. As hosts, we drop mechanicality about how we should do something and are present. A statement by the teacher EJ Gold is discussed: “Hospitality is the greatest law given to man. If he knew how to obey this one law he could overcome his imperfections.” It is not limited to food or drink, but also involves giving our att...

This talk references teachings from the writings of Carlos Castaneda and material from the book The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski. Holding on to things goes against nature since everything ends. In our culture, we seek to have death affect us as little as possible. Another option is to look at and show up for death when it crosses our path so that it informs our lives. If we push death away,...

It is difficult for us to relate to cosmic forces and energies, and so it is useful to see them personified in human form. Myth helps us to make the leap from ego, from our small window on the world, to a much bigger reality. In the Hindu tradition (as in others including the Celtic tradition), the Divine is inclusive of three primal forces—creation, preservation, and destruction. These forces are...

A conversation with Bono about the meaning of U2 lyrics is parodied in this talk about the spiritual search. Matthew wants to know why Bono still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. The search is rooted in dissatisfaction, a feeling that something is incomplete or missing—whether it be about mundane things like money or relationship or the spiritual search for God. We can lament or be proud of the...

Love shatters three abiding illusions: that we can construct an invulnerable life, that our hearts will remain unbroken, and that we can know life’s outcomes from where we stand now. A distinction can be made between loving and giving ourselves to love, which involves being willing to go wherever love takes us. Love is always fresh and new. It unravels and then reconfigures us—we are never the sam...

Nonduality is another way of saying God, Reality, Truth, "Father," or that consciousness is all that is. The human mind is a dualistic machine; it can only think in terms of opposites, of subjects and objects. Nondual (direct) teachings are specifically focused on the nature of reality and questions such as, “Who are you? What is ultimately real?” Behind all passing phenomena is an aware presence....

Our inner state is difficult for us to see. One of the hardest ideas to understand in spiritual work is that we are not unified beings, always and everywhere the same, but a self divided into a multiplicity of I’s or parts of ourselves that are in conflict with each other. We must verify this for ourselves. When we loosen up and become more playful, things can be revealed more easily. In studying...

Conscience is an internal uniting force that acts as a compass, always orienting us toward non-judgmental love. Though everyone in human form has a mustard seed of conscience, it must be developed. Buffers are mechanical habits that negate the influence of conscience and blind us to our contradictions to the positive qualities we like to identify with. We have to train attention to recognize consc...

Embodiment can be considered in different ways: bringing something into physical reality from a more subtle dimension, as when creative ideas are manifested through art, and being fully present and inhabiting the body, as when spiritual qualities such as compassion become grounded in the body. The mind tends to grasp and hold ideas like a possession. The superficial mental satisfaction of feeling...

There is a saying in Sanskrit, “Sarvam Annam,” which translates as “Everything is food.” Tibetan Buddhist teaching tells us that every setback can be brought to the path and used for the purpose of liberation. If we argue with reality, we waste a huge amount of energy. No real transformation can take place unless a great amount of energy is saved. We fritter away our vital life force in many ways...

There are deep religious programs that go back thousands of years that tell us that we need to get away from the body and the senses. Tantra arose in response to repressive religious structures, but all indigenous and tribal cultures have their versions of tantric principles. Tantra asks if we have to abandon our earthly existence, the body, and pleasure in order to realize the bliss of the Self....

We generally model relationships that are dysfunctional in some way since we grow up in situations where conflict and relational instability are common. That’s where we start, but we can take relationship—with whoever it is that we have love for—deep into the heart of love. There is something archetypal, that we all resonate with, about the relationship between love and longing. The mood of love t...

The happiness of others fulfills the deepest need of the heart. Conscience develops with remorse, which is different than guilt. It involves the capacity to feel multiple contradictory things, conflicting parts of ourselves, at the same time. The “real war” is with sleep and unconsciousness and is about becoming a participant in life with one’s whole heart and self. Music makes a communication tha...

One must leave the mind and all of its knowledge at the gate of the Mother Spirit, which dwells in the present only and is a still field of vibratory awareness. We then enter into completely unknown territory. Awareness of the breath is an objective feedback mechanism that lets us know when we are present and awake in the body. The most fundamental, primal, and ancient of all longings is to return...

Enlightenment does not exist as a thing that can be achieved or acquired. We can see its effect, which cannot be grasped. There is a Buddhist perspective that there is no enlightened person, only enlightened activity. Knowing the truth of reality is irrelevant if our behavior does not serve reality. Impermanence can be known as an advantage, as a blessing and not a threat. The person is continuall...

One way of allowing a topic to go deep is not putting it in a box of what we assume we already know. Through self-observation, we can see that we are not free but that we react constantly to circumstances in the environment. We can't get beyond this state of sleep because of the place we live life from: the context of scarcity and survival (which involves self-image, our identity, who we take ours...