Change Per Post

A common “suggestion/implied obligation” encountered in one’s spiritual study is to “overcome the ego.” The idea seems to be that one should subdue, train, or even eliminate the ego. As a tool to avoid misidentifying myself as only ego, it has often been suggested to me to consider “the watcher” that remains outside the psychodrama of any moment of my mind or life—a marker to bring my awareness to the true, higher self.

I, however, would suggest that as long as there is a “watcher,” there is ego. Coming to awareness of the watcher merely brings my attention from one level of ego to another. Perhaps the nature of this next level of ego is something the (egoic) mind would consider less objectionable, but it is still ego. Does the Tao ‘watch’ the unfolding of its infinite manifestations? Does it care? Caring and watching (more “considering what we see”, in this context) is an anthropomorphic—human-like—characteristic. ‘Human’ is by definition ‘self-aware.’ Self-awareness is interdependent with—the soil of—ego.

I am by no means in disagreement with this long-established practice—focusing on “who is watching”—to pull oneself from the mire of immediate obsession. Nor do I question the benefit of this method. I have already suggested that we might better define where our attention has arrived when considering this watcher, and I would also suggest we reconsider our intention of subduing, training, or (especially) eliminating the ego…

(Continue reading this post via Into The Mist)

Someone may be “walking on water” not because they have learned a great secret, but rather that they have not ‘learned’ that they cannot do such a thing. Sometimes the correction for a situation is not to do something more, but primarily to stop what we have being doing; rather than learning something new, relinquish limiting information that you have acquired along the way.

Knowledge is gained by daily increment,
Tao is gained by daily loss
Verse 48: Tao Te Ching

Some would assert that except in certain medically or psychologically induced conditions unlearning our limitations is a hopeless fantasy. But isn’t the effect of a Zen koan a bit of “un-learning”? In such things exposed via a koan, the conscious mind is provided ‘enough rope to hang itself’ so that the wisdom beyond and before the dubious learning can come forward. When the blaring flaw in any held/learned concept is exposed, the accepted reality of it crumbles.

One might argue that the purpose of a Zen koan is redirection of the mind. It is generally a question unanswerable in the context of the logical mind—something like, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” The logical mind will grapple with such a question until it exhausts itself. At that point, with it defenses—the infallible fortress of reason—down, the mind is open for a new perspective…thinking outside the box, as it is sometimes called…

(Continue reading this post via Into the Mist)

Each day, more people are awakening to the realization that we are connected at a much deeper level—to each other, to the planet, and to the universe at large.  Consciousness is blossoming, and I truly believe we are living in a time where humanity will awaken to a new reality that is marked by peace, sustainability, social justice and love. 

But we are not there yet, and most human beings still feel completely isolated and alone (a phenomenon that has been referred to as “the human dilemma” throughout history, among other things).  Conscious living is not the norm…yet.

There are volumes and volumes written about the illusion the human mind perpetuates; the greatest thinkers in human history—Jesus, Buddha, Emerson, Descartes, Gandhi and countless others—explored the implications of the mind and theorized about a time of conscious enlightenment. 

Although many people are becoming intellectually aware of what “consciousness” refers to, they have not yet made the leap to integrating this type of awareness into their own lives.  The thing about consciousness is this: it has to be personally experienced for it to permeate an individual’s life, and there has to be a critical mass of people experiencing it to generate a cultural tipping point. 

In my opinion, there is nothing more important than this pursuit– it can be the very thing that saves humanity and planet earth!  With that said here are 12 excellent practices for starting yourself down a path of increased awareness and heightened consciousness: 

(Continue reading this post via We The Change)

I went looking for a single, unchanging truth—something to buffer my mind and spirit from the harsh realities of life. Many popular paths were sampled. Despite their undeniable benefits for so many others, I was not able to achieve a similar satisfaction. I never doubted the value of the practices I sampled, but merely accepted they were not right for me at that time. A key does not cease to be a key because it does not fit the lock in hand.

In time, I collected tools of insight, from here and there, that promised to be helpful. I was determined to construct a custom truth, catering exactly to my unique ‘lock’. Once my compilation had come to some initial stopping point, I realized that some basic concepts within the items from the varied sources were repeated. So, I started to trim out the duplicates and those issues that seemed to possess the least power for me—what I deemed as not vital to my personal definition of reality…Occam’s razor, if you will.

Having felt successful in my collection, I was inspired to condense this compilation to its most basic form. Surely, such a simple answer as I sought did not require a tome to store its meaning. Maybe there could be a mere handful of insights that I could carry about through life. From those few, all other needed knowledge could blossom, as—and only when—needed…

(Continue reading this post via Into the Mist)

Whether you choose to be aware of it or not, we are living in an extremely unique time in human history. Many of the fundamental “systems” we take for granted are proving to be unsustainable, and there is a burgeoning movement of environmentalists, spiritualists, writers, speakers, activists, humanitarians and even bloggers who are at the forefront of bringing mass attention to the “un”sustainability of our deep-seated ways of doing things.

One of those people is Duane Elgin, creator and founder of Awakening Earth, who has agreed to share his thoughts on paradigm shift with the We The Change audience. For over thirty years Duane has been speaking and conducting workshops with business leaders, educators, students, and others about the extraordinary time of transition we are moving through as a human family, and we are happy to have him here today:

(Continue reading this post via We The Change)

The Google Analytics statistics for this blog have been playing a really interesting role in my recent ‘enlightenment’ process.

As most know, the popular Google tool has a feature that shows you what information (or keywords) readers around the world were searching for when they happened to run across your website in the search engine results.

So because this blog has been focusing more and more on spirituality lately (as my own understandings unfold), it is starting to draw in readers who are searching for similar information. What it ALSO does is give me a close, personal, inside look at ‘topics of interest’ that people like myself have been researching lately on the web.

And I can tell you this: the different keywords that have been showing up on my statistics lately really start to paint a clear picture that something.. SOMETHING is happening to our collective consciousness - much of which I myself have yet to understand.

Here are some examples of real keywords that people have been looking for:…

(Continue reading this post via Living in My Own World)

Is there an inherent conflict between spirituality and intelligence? Are they perpetually at odds with each other? Must we choose to embrace either spirituality or rationality but never both at the same time?

Several years ago I would have said yes to these questions. But today I see that this conflict is nothing but an illusion. In fact, I think intelligence and spirituality ultimately follow the same path, and I don’t mean this in the sense of trying to program your head with religious doctrine and then trying to convince you of it by manipulating the facts. I mean that by embracing your intellect to its fullest extent, you will eventually arrive at a sense of spirituality. You may not label it as such, but you will find yourself generating similar results to some of the most enlightened people around.

In terms of the question of intelligence vs. spirituality, the problem arises from the perceived sense of conflict between these two supposed opposites. This perception prevents us from trusting and following either side far enough. We’ll only go so far down one side or the other before flipping back to the other side. We have our intellectual pursuits and our spiritual pursuits, and never the twain shall meet. They are both kept separate and compartmentalized. In the business world, our actions are governed by intelligence; we achieve the best results when we make the most intelligent decisions. But if we go home, meditate, and begin asking questions like, “What is the purpose of my life?” we have to load up a different set of rules. Now we’ve supposedly left the territory of the intellect and entered the spiritual realm. We try to interact intelligently with our outer world and spiritually with our inner world.

However, this perceived conflict is a fabricated one. If you were only to follow your intelligence or your spiritual beliefs far enough — really push them to the limits — you’d see they end up at the same place. The conflict is purely imaginary. It exists only in our thoughts…

(Continue reading this post via Steve Pavlina)