Category: Foundations
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Triumph And Disaster Or Uncompromising Truth: One Or The Other
Read time 6 minutes. Triumph and Disaster is a stand alone article in our Blocked Energy series. Right now, some people feel as though the world is ending. Others feel on top of it. Every so often I find the need to have what I playfully call a come to Buddha conversation. This lesson is for those…
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Abundance: Receiving Life In The Face of Unrestful Distress
Read time 5 minutes. Abundance is a stand alone article in our Blocked Energy series. Some weeks press harder than others. Noise in the world multiplies, and our minds run with it. Today let’s expand the meaning and definition of blocked energy. There is something we often overlook, though it never stops offering itself: abundance. Life, meaning,…
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Blocked Energy: The Birth of Unfinished Business
Read time 4 minutes. This is a stand alone article in our Blocked Energy series. The teachings speak often about the benefits of remaining open to whatever life throws our way. We hear it said: let go, don’t cling. But the deeper message is not to become some idealized open person. The invitation is to practice in…
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Become a Verb: Practice of Self-inquiry in Review
Read time 5 minutes. Become a Verb is a stand alone article in our Who Am I series. Our exploration into the practice of self-inquiry has stretched across ten lessons—sometimes direct, sometimes meandering, always circling back to the same essential question: Who am I? The aim has not been to collect more theories but to transform intellectual understanding…
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The Illusion of I and the Burden of Concepts and Ideas
Read time 5 minutes. The attached video opens with a quote from One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein: “Thoughts themselves are the thinker.” The Illusion of I is a stand alone article in our Who Am I series. At first glance, this statement is almost disarming in its simplicity. But if we sit with it, the implications unravel the very core…
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Empty Awareness: Presence Dwarfs the Identity Center
Read time 6 minutes. Empty Awareness is a stand alone article in our Who Am I series. Our last lesson on self-inquiry ended with a warning. The question Who am I? is powerful, but it is not meant to become a lifeless mantra, repeated without presence. Nor is it meant to be dissected endlessly until we obsess and overthink.…
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Perfect Composure: An All-embracing Remedy
Read time 3 minutes. See how presence and perfect composure dissolve ego’s clouds, offering both daily relief and lasting transformation Some of us arrive at practice with a burning hunger for enlightenment. Others simply want to find a way through the difficulties of the day. Both positions are valid. Both are human. From the stance…
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Ultimate Reality: Truth That Transcends Linguistic Expression
Read time 5 minutes. Ultimate Reality is a stand alone article in our Who Am I series. At the heart of self-inquiry lies the question Who am I?—a question that immediately collides with the mother of all dualities: the false self of the ego and the true self of Tao. Yet here we run into a paradox. Our…
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Essential Nature, I Am and the Duality Within
Read time 4 minutes. Essential Nature is a stand alone article in our Who Am I series. In earlier lessons, we explored self-inquiry and the danger of turning Who am I? into a mechanical mantra. Today, let us approach from another angle. Instead of repetition, let us consider the experience of being struck by a poetic line—a phrase that…