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Monthly Archives: April 2008
Get 20 “enlightened beings,” 20 of the greatest avatars that ever walked the earth and put them together. The most enlightened avatars from the whole of humanity, get 20 of them in the same room, and start asking them about the thoughts in their heads. And they’re not going to agree. Because that’s not where the Oneness is. That’s not what’s unifying. It’s only if you get down to the fundamental nature of being. Then there could be agreement.
Tagged with: Adyashanti, mind, oneness
I finished my second 5 day retreat with Adyashanti last Friday, and I’d like to share with you my experience once again. I will follow the same basic format as the last report, so have fun doing a comparison between the two.
Purpose of the Retreat
As I mentioned in my last retreat report, the purpose of the retreat was to deepen one’s experience of Truth, to experience a true opening or moment of pure awareness, and to possibly experience an abiding awakening. Adyashanti is a big proponent of “awakening in this lifetime, if not now.”
Adyashanti
A middle class guy, he used to work as a machinist before he started the spiritual teacher gig.… Read the rest →
Tagged with: Adyashanti, oneness, retreat, silence
Welcome home! I came back to Missouri to the warm embrace of my amazing son. It was a pleasure to be around him for a few hours (he’s at his mom’s house until Monday). I felt a tenderness for him that, while I have felt before, feels deeper and richer now. More expansive and loving. I have always adored my kid, but now, so much sweeter.
I will be slowly coming “down off the mountaintop” of my retreat with Adyashanti over the next few days. I tried last night, after the end of the retreat, to write a few words and respond to some comments here, but I had a difficult time. The Silence this time was very intense, and while I’ve been talking easily with people, I almost need… Read the rest →
I dig spiritual awakening. Do you? Honestly, I know of no other topic that lights me up and gets my attention. Therefore, I’d like to share some cool blogs that are very awakening focused. I’ve discovered these great sites and people over the past few months, and they put out some great stuff.
Takuin Minamoto writes passionately from his experience. His posts are moving and almost a meditation in and of themselves.
Davidya has a lot of great commentary on the subject of awakening. I found him recently because of a post he did on Adyashanti. He has been leaving some fantastic comments on my post Adyashanti Retreat Report, where he, J Stone and… Read the rest →
Tagged with: personal development, spiritual awakening
“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to you life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought. A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels and images. For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I, of Beingness, from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say, identified with.”
Eckhart Tolle does a marvelous job of expressing the essence of the spiritual journey in this one little paragraph. A vast array of ideas, activities, thoughts,… Read the rest →
Greetings everyone!
Beginning this evening (Sunday), I’m doing a 5 day silent retreat with Adyashanti and 300 other people near Monterey, CA. So, I will be out of touch for 5 days. I will fire-up my MacBook on Friday evening and start getting back into things. I plan to do another write-up of my retreat experience.
I have a couple of posts prepared, so you will get a little something over the next week.
Until Friday, be well!….. Tom
Last week, I wrote an article listing 6 “mistakes” I had made on the spiritual journey. Being of reasonable intelligence (no comments, please!), it dawned on me that maybe I could do a follow-up article on what I’ve learned from spirituality. Admittedly, I learned from all my seeming mistakes, but this article will look at my learnings from a slightly more positive angle.
Warning: I’m going to take some shots at some deeply held spiritual ideas and beliefs. I can’t possibly explain some of what I’ve learned without them. Some of what you find under the heading of spirituality just doesn’t make much sense to me, or simply doesn’t seem to work. So, you’ve been warned. 
… Read the rest →
In my last video post, I answered the question Why I Write About Spirituality. I really enjoyed answering that question, and it got me thinking about the subject more and more. Spirituality is a big topic, so I started asking myself a bunch of what questions, such as “What subjects in spirituality do I enjoy most?” and others. The more I played around with these questions, the more my thinking started shifting and jumping around, doing a little dance about the writing I do and what I am writing about.
For a while, I’ve had a strong notion of what it is that I am writing about, but for some reason I’ve had a… Read the rest →
What is this mind?
Who is hearing these sounds?
Do not mistake any state for Self-realization, but continue to ask yourself even more intensely,
What is it that hears?
Yes, I know, there are no mistakes on the spiritual journey. There can’t be, if you think about it. The spiritual journey is, to a certain extent, a process of learning. And don’t we almost always learn best from what we often see as our mistakes? But then, if we learn from them, if we grow from them, how could they really be mistakes?
As you venture down the spiritual path, you really start seeing your life as a long curriculum in a giant classroom called Life. No mistakes. Just your individual assignments. I have had my “lessons” to learn, my conditioning to undo.
That said, here are 6 things that I would have previously called mistakes. For me, they weren’t. But maybe you will see something in them that… Read the rest →
Q: This ‘I’-thought rises from me. But I do not know the Self.
A. All these are only mental concepts. You are now identifying yourself with a wrong ‘I’, which is the ‘I’-thought. This ‘I’-thought rises and sinks, whereas the true significance of ‘I’ is beyond both. There cannot be a break in your being. You who slept are also now awake. There is no unhappiness in your deep sleep whereas it exists now. What is it that has happened now so that this difference is experienced? There was no ‘I’-thought in your sleep, whereas it is present now. The true ‘I’ is not apparent and the false ‘I’ is parading itself. This false ‘I’ is the obstacle to your right knowledge. Find out from where this false ‘I’ arises.… Read the rest →
Tagged with: Ramana Maharshi
You would think that one of the first things I would do with a website focused on spirituality would be to write an article on “What is Spirituality?” At first thought, the answer is obvious. But sit for a few minutes trying to think of a sensible answer to that question and you discover that it isn’t as obvious as it seems. So what is spirituality? Really. Follow along as I think out loud and explore this one with you.
Some Definitions
Well, let’s start with the good old dictionary definition as we explore what is spirituality. Webster’s offers the following four entries:
Spirituality:
- something that in ecclesiastical law belongs to the church or to
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