In yoga practice, an aspirant may worship a form of God as a means of making accessible the One, formless Absolute. This chosen form of God is called one’s Ishtadeva. The only means of determining one’s Ishtadeva is through one’s own heart, and through experiences that may arise on the spiritual path. This is the […]
The Goddess Kali recently answered my prayers. I had become increasingly aware of a knot of tension, of selfishness, of impurity in my consciousness and I wanted to remove it. I was raising a ton of energy in my meditation and yoga practice but I was having some trouble getting it all to flow. I
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I once asked Baba Hari Dass, “Does the world exist outside of our minds?” I had been contemplating the relationship of the outside world to my inner environment, and I wondered just what was “out there” triggering the electrical activities of my brain. “Yes,” Babaji replied, the world does exist outside of one’s mind. “But
One of the most striking aspects of yogic philosophy is the teaching that the mind is not, in itself, conscious. The mind is an insentient reflector of consciousness. Its activity reflects consciousness in somewhat the same fashion that the activity of a compass reflects the presence of magnetic impulses. In the West, we tend to
A man is driving down a road and his car develops a flat tire. He doesn’t have a jack, so he is forced to walk to a nearby farmhouse in order to ask for help. The walk causes him to become grouchy and curse his fate. Why should he have to suffer this inconvenience? Why
A man goes to a spiritual teacher and is given a small statue of a form of God. He thinks the statue is pretty snazzy so he places it on the mantle in his living room. A few days later he notices how dusty the statue has gotten, so he cleans it off. While doing
A man goes to a spiritual teacher and is told, “God is inside every living being.” Thrilled with this new knowledge, the fellow walks home repeating to himself, “God is inside all beings, God is inside all beings, God is inside…” Suddenly startled from his reverie, he hears someone yelling, “Look out! A wild elephant
There once was a prince who, being the son of a wise and powerful king, was also wise and powerful. One fine day he went to the river to take his morning bath. He felt so good that he decided to swim clear across to the other shore. He took off his royal robes and
In this essay, I would like to outline five stages along the spiritual path. These are intended to serve as a contextual map which I hope can help the aspirant make sense of the major issues he will face in his spiritual growth. In writing this, I risk exacerbating a common problem — the tendency
Stages of Spiritual Development Read More »
The contemporary Zen Master, John Daido Lori, has said that for an aspirant to progress on the spiritual path he or she will need Great Faith, Great Doubt, and Great Determination. I capitalize these qualities in an effort to represent the magnitude of the spiritual undertaking. We are not referring to faith, doubt, or determination
