About Tom Stine


Tom Stine–Writer, Spiritual Teacher and Life Coach

Tom Stine dot com has as its primary focus the never ending journey of awakening to our true nature. By looking at the related topics of awakening, consciousness and what I like to call “practical spirituality,” I hope to give you a taste of what I have experienced, and continue to experience, as I travel on this journey. A journey that doesn’t really exist, but nonetheless feels like a journey most of the time

While the term spirituality may be familiar to most people, the term consciousness and the phrase “practical spirituality” may not. Consciousness is a topic I will explore in detail in my various articles, but for now you can think of it as synonymous with awareness, awakeness, beingness, and even the divine. I find that consciousness is the term that works best for me, for are we not all conscious?

I used to refer to practical spirituality as enlightened personal growth, but that phrase, however, is a bit of an oxymoron. As you will see in the articles on this site, I’m of the school of spiritual thought that contends that there is no separate self, no “you” and no “me.” Thus, there is no person in personal, and hence no personal growth, and so there really can’t be such a thing as enlightened personal growth. So why use the term? Because there are so many blogs and websites devoted to helping the “person” grow, and so much of it is a mish-mash of feel-good spirituality and ego stroking, that I feel it important to bring a different perspective to the popular arenas of personal growth and personal development. I will let you be the judge of how “enlightened” this perspective is.

I think it goes without saying that TomStine.com is the creation of “me” — Tom Stine. Which naturally begs the question: who am I? Let’s see if I can shed a little light on a rather open ended subject:

  • I help spiritual people and spiritual seekers. I write about spirituality, and I am a part-time spiritual life coach and teacher who is taking a break from coaching. As you can see, my main interest is in teaching and writing about spirituality and the journey of awakening that we are all undertaking, whether we know it or not, and how this impacts our lives as seemingly separate human beings.
  • Long-time spiritual enthusiast and former spiritual seeker (I gave up seeking in favor of finding). My journey began with the usual mix of new age spiritualism, progressed to 10 years of using and studying A Course in Miracles, to finally working with teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj and Adyashanti.
  • A lover of mountains, big cities, travel and airplanes.
  • Long-time resident of the Missouri Ozarks, yet a bit too cosmopolitan for my own good. It has taken me a number of years to learn to love the Ozarks, its wonderful people and lifestyle. My family has been living here for over 100 years, and I’ve finally understood why they stayed. And yet, I’m feeling a strong urge to move. Isn’t life funny?
  • Awake consciousness enjoying its experience as a human being. A complete contradiction that has no simple explanation (or resolution).
  • A pretty normal guy who, for no apparent reason, is being dragged by his ankles down the rabbit hole of awakening.

If you want to know more, shoot me a question, or leave a comment on an article, or read some more articles. I’m always happy to share more about myself.

And to read what others are saying about me, you can visit my testimonials page.

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  • Emptiness, nothingness, the Void is your salvation. Who could have guessed that NOTHING could be so liberating? 1 day ago
  • Life wants you to fully live. But it might have to wear you down a bit to get you to let go enough to really live. 1 day ago
  • Everywhere you turn, it's the Void. Every time you look inside, you are confronted with Nothingness. Will you look, really look at it? Good! 6 days ago
  • Anything to avoid the Void. 6 days ago
  • Whatever will shake you loose and wake you up is just what you will get. This week prayer, next week meditation, and after that? A six pack? 1 week ago
  • Look around and simply remind yourself: I'm looking at nothing. Literally. I suspect your "practice" will take a nice forward leap. 1 week ago
  • Another day, another nobody. ;-) 1 week ago
  • What if you woke up one morning and had NO identity. You were 100% no one, nobody, nothing. All you could really say was "I exist." Bingo! 2 weeks ago
  • More updates...

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Guru Quotes

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

—Arthur C. Clarke

“Is Enlightenment easy or difficult?”
“It is as easy and as difficult as seeing what is right before your eyes.”
“How can seeing what is right before one’s eyes be difficult?”
To that the Master responded with the following anecdote:
A girl greeted her boyfriend. “Notice anything different about me?”
“New dress?”
“No.”
“New shoes?”
“No. Something else.”
“I give up.”
“I’m wearing a gas mask.”

—Anthony de Mello

All of our thoughts are conditioned. We all are thinking exactly along the lines we are conditioned to think. Programmed like a computer. Anybody who thinks they are actually choosing of their own free will the line of thinking that they have is completely deluded by their thinking.

—Adyashanti


Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.

—Suzanne Segal

In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.

—Jack Kornfield