The reality of impermanence and the inevitable experience of loss is enough in life to give us a wound. On the path of transformation, we need a broken heart that only God—which can be referred to in many ways such as the Divine or the Absolute—can heal. Heartbreak is extreme in the times we are living in. Bittersweet has an in-between quality where we experience different deep feelings at the same time. Caring is needed to work with bittersweetness in an alchemical way. Grief is a spiritual enz...
Jul 03, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 131
Relationship is meeting what arises with full feeling and consciousness. Dependent co-origination means that our consciousness arises at the same time as all consciousness. Lost in inner dialogue, we do not experience true relationship. Zazen (sitting) is an opportunity to meet what arises in the moment in a silent, unmoving state. Myosho Ginny Matthews describes practices of zazen, chanting, and samu (work) which were engaged in her sangha and with her teacher, Sasaki Roshi, who came to the U.S...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 130
Culturally, boredom has a negative connotation as something that we should not experience. Being bored is an uncomfortable place to be in, which we usually try to remedy. But this misses the point since boredom can be useful and even necessary on the path. Chogyam Trungpa notes that Westerners tend to be fascinated by the aesthetic appreciation of the simplicity or rigidity of rituals such as the Japanese tea ceremony or zazen. He says the point of vipassana meditation is to get bored. Trungpa m...
Jun 05, 2025•58 min•Ep. 129
Transformation is essential for the evolution and thriving of creation, which includes human beings. The process brings greater clarity, healing, and resilience into our lives and creative growth into the world. We see cycles of birth, death, and rebirth occurring in nature and on a global and personal level. Transformation is alchemical; it involves a shake-up of our usual routine and a plunge into groundlessness. Strong medicine is provided by life itself. There is poignant bittersweet beauty ...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 128
Stoicism is a philosophy founded by Zeno around the fourth century BC. It was important in Greece and Rome and culminated at the time Marcus Aurelius was emperor. The primary purpose of philosophy is to reveal our shortcomings so we can overcome them. Stoicism is about living in harmony with the universe. There are four cardinal virtues that Stoics cultivate: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Pithy quotes that are useful to consider are discussed. Knowing the difference between what we c...
May 08, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 127
Rick Lewis talks about the process that led him from being a performer and corporate events speaker to hosting an online writing program. Most everyone fashions a life that is obedient to our deepest fears. We carry stories about who we are and what is possible throughout life, having made unconscious decisions in childhood that we will not engage in activities that could put us in touch with feelings such as shame or rejection. The highest expression of spirituality on some paths is to serve wh...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 126
Is the source of yearning for connection on a human level the same as longing for God on a spiritual level? The urge for connection is pre-thought, pre-psychological. It begins at birth when we first experience separateness. Practice is about patterning the nervous system to let go. When we can sit in the center of the storm of our feelings, we can be with suffering and with "what is" in a way that does not seek fulfillment. To come to acceptance doesn't always happen gracefully. To go fully int...
Apr 10, 2025•58 min•Ep. 125
The need for humor and for incorporating something of the clown’s state of mind into spiritual practice is discussed. Bernie Glassman was a Zen master who invited Moshe Cohen, a clown performer, to help him learn tools to work with students who were taking themselves too seriously. The clown doesn’t know what will happen when he or she enters the stage. His improvisation is about encounters with everything he comes in contact with--inside and outside. The clown lives in the present and has no hi...
Mar 27, 2025•58 min•Ep. 124
Beginner’s mind is a Zen Buddhist principle of seeing everything as new, as it is, without preconception or expectation. It can be considered the simplest state but also the most advanced. Mind identifies, creates the illusion of separation, and focuses on survival of the individual body and psychological structure. But we can open to “big mind,” our true nature which has limited itself, as occurs in deep sleep and sometimes in meditation. We all experience freedom from the prison of ordinary mi...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 123
The Latin phrase “magnum opus” means great work. Our early ancestors had an intuitive relationship with nature and received knowledge directly from it. In alchemy, great work refers to awakening consciousness, the primary metaphor being the transformation of lead into gold. It is about transformation, working with the primordial material we are given in incarnation, which is consciousness. But that is not separate from the body, which goes through transformation also. Tarot can lead us on a jour...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 122
The aim of self-transformation from a divided mechanical self to a unified self that is free and has will is the subject of this second talk on Gurdjieff’s aphorisms. Several quotes including some which were posted in the study house where the mystic worked with students at the Prieure near Paris in the 1920s are discussed. Crystallization occurs when substances coalesce and incrementally form a durable structure or soul, as in the crystallization of rock. If anything in a man is able to resist ...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 121
This talk focuses on parts of the story and the learning written about in Red Hot Steel: Love Behind Bars, which involves love and loss with a man incarcerated in a maximum security prison. Sadhana is a Sanskrit word about our individual spiritual path that has the quality of going through fire. Grief is love that has slipped out of view. We live in self-imposed prisons and the path is about the way out by seeing the false nature of the prison. Prison is a place of loss, a hell realm of unrelent...
Jan 30, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 120
We intuitively know that there is a strong connection between silence, prayer, and inner wisdom. There are Hindu teachers who have maintained silence for many years, and Zen masters and Native American elders who communicated wisdom but spoke very little. Hermits and monks in religious traditions have used silence as a discipline to deepen the inner life, and Realizers have said that expansion into the great field of silence is not separate from God. There are many textures of silence such as at...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 119
The way we identify ourselves and are identified in the world puts us into boxes of what we do rather than conveying who we are. Moving our bodies in any way we want to is dance. Part of “all things lovely” is having wide eyes on what is beautiful, intriguing, and awe-inspiring, and moving toward that. Pillars of pleasure activism are considered: we become what we practice, what we pay attention to grows, our no makes way for our yes and yes is the way, make justice and liberation feel good, whe...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 118
Ego is the foil to our spiritual development, to fulfilling our capacity for awareness, compassion, creativity, and self-transcendence. The urge to win, dominate, and control is a pithy definition of ego. It can also be defined as the self-sense or survival instinct involving cognitive and emotional as well as physical survival, or as the freedom of mind choosing an alternative to God or a higher power. It’s pretty obvious when someone is trying to win, dominate, or control but challenging to se...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 117
The being that occupies the body has two qualities—presence and attention—which is all that is needed to awaken. Attention has will and can place itself anywhere inside or outside the body. The present is the domain of the Divine and of love, which is not the emotional, sexual, or romantic love that we are taught and programmed to believe in. To be in service to the Divine, attention has to be present. If we’re not aware of the body, we’re identified and not present. Masculine energy holds atten...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 116
Spiritual teachings can be easily understood in a conceptual and not a bodily way. Just This, or the practice of Assertion, is the recognition of what is real in every moment. It was a practice given by the American teacher Lee Lozowick which can be equated to “what is as it is, here and now.” But what is real to ego is everything that maintains the illusion of separation from what is. We may engage in spiritual practice because we sense there is more to life than what we see, which is full of i...
Nov 21, 2024•47 min•Ep. 115
As long as we avoid truth, we are stuck in illusion. We may avoid telling the truth in small, seemingly inconsequential ways as a habit that originated in childhood as a survival mechanism. This can occur due to shame, denial, self-hatred, or by justifying or blaming. If we deny what is true for us, we don’t have to change. Deeply knowing the consequence of an action can sharpen our self-observation. Speaking about what is true for us and taking responsibility for it is not common. It is wise no...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 114
Grounded practice gives us direct experience of the pervasiveness of the mechanical, identified mind. Before we have direct experience of something, linguistic representations are ineffective at transmitting what it is. There is a distinction between results and practice. A teaching can be the result of practice, such as loving our neighbor, but we may consider it as a practice that we are unable to embody without having cultivated the necessary quality of being. Seeing the world as nondual is a...
Oct 24, 2024•59 min•Ep. 113
Our private life involves a flow between ourselves and others, and we may choose to share details of it with those we trust will receive it with empathy, responsiveness and understanding. Our secret life, on the other hand, is known only to ourselves. It would be hard to share with others except in a rather touching and intimate way. It's deeply personal and mysterious, unique to our individual being. A secret life can be compared to dark matter, which is not understood but which may be consider...
Oct 10, 2024•52 min•Ep. 112
The mythic image of Sisyphus, of a muscular man pushing a rock up a hill for eternity, represents something that needs to be known in us. We can consider it in various ways. For some, it’s about punishment by the gods for immoral behavior. For others, it’s a metaphor for an unfulfilling, demanding life. Or it can be a jumping off point from which to ask the larger questions of life. We can be taken by these characterizations, yet the Sisyphus image can open us to some other possibility. This tal...
Sep 26, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 111
The reason we have questions is that we don’t see the bigger picture. As children, we don’t recognize the trauma we experience, but as we get older the sense that something is not right in life may lead us to the spiritual path. What happened to us informs how we respond to life in the present, but we live out of the programming of the past. As long as we’re reacting from childish programming that was designed to protect us then we’re unable to accept what is in the present. Self-observation and...
Sep 12, 2024•47 min•Ep. 110
The aim of all religions is to point out the path that leads to freedom, peace, and joy, which can only be realized through the surrender of ego. The principle of ego or separation permeates our lives. To realize oneness with God or the universe is to be conscious of the divine presence everywhere. Intellectual understanding is different than actual spiritual experience. Ego avoids surrender at all costs; yet the universe brings about transformation. In an absolute sense, surrender is already th...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 109
Our willingness to feel the pain of the world is inextricably entwined with our capacity to love. What is the value of keeping our hearts open in hell, when life is most painful and difficult? We all have a deep desire to have our hearts awakened to love. Love can transform us in a powerful way when we are in hell. There is a lot of sorrow in life, but we can choose joy and beauty in the cracks between our sorrows. We can’t keep our hearts open when we are identified, but we are much more than o...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 108
As long as we have a body, ordinary life will present things that ego considers problems. Waking to ordinary life implies that we’re not awake. When we are stagnant and fearful, interested in a safe comfort zone, we do not notice the beauty of ordinary life. But we can broaden our view. Waking to ordinary life is about cultivating a vulnerability to beauty. This occurs when we have the necessity to face the difficulties of ordinary life without compromise. If we take a closer look at ordinary li...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 107
Mantra is likely older than language, sounds that were received by the rishis, poet mystics of the Vedas. It can be silent and internal, a form of thought that reveals more as one goes deeper into it. One meaning of mantra is “crossing over the mind.” How can a sacred sound take us beyond the incessant machinery of mind? Japa is defined as speaking mantra, a simple practice of devotional repetition of a name of God. We sacrifice self-reference and reorient attention to the Divine name. The world...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 106
We can’t separate our nervous system from the nervous systems of others we are in relationship to since we affect one another. In a practical sense, we are not separate. Nervous systems do not develop in isolation. If we are not regulated and have children, there is an immediate effect on them. Co-regulation is the regulation of emotions and behaviors in relationships or groups. We don’t have the family and tribal traditions that produce co-regulation today. Group protocols can help groups self-...
Jul 04, 2024•59 min•Ep. 105
The book, The Only Grace Is Loving God, written in twilight language or ecstatic speech by Lee Lozowick in 1982, was inspired by Answer to Job, CG Jung’s discussion of the human struggle with an image we have of God and the suffering we experience. The Divine image has to include the feminine aspect of existence in order for Christ consciousness, a God of love and mercy, to be born in us. Conscious participation in our individuation is needed for the image that we have of God to grow. Lee refers...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 104
French audio version, original talk released July 14, 2022. Rumi termine l’un de ses poèmes en disant : « Il y a mille façons de s'agenouiller et d'embrasser le sol ». Quand on regarde le monde tel qu'il est aujourd’hui, il est normal d’avoir peur, d’être anxieux, de ressentir du chagrin. Notre monde est à la fois bourré de toxines et débordant de nectar. Il y a trois façons de traiter ces toxines : soit nous les rejetons, soit nous nous en gavons sans aucun discernement, soit nous en prenons de...
Jun 16, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 106
There is a rightness to how we feel because of how we act when we provide what is wanted and needed in any given moment. This may be considered as the trademark of a revolutionist. Fresh insights and revelations come from use of a different language. Jan Cox was a teacher, in the mystical and philosophical sense, whose language was unique. Maxims from his “Revolutionist Code of Conduct” are discussed in this talk. Be judicious with euphemisms, without speaking in metaphors when we intend the lit...
Jun 06, 2024•54 min•Ep. 103
