Generally, everyone is walking around with some degree of energy pent up in their hands and throats—our systems of inter-personal relations being at fault— in need of a shaman (therapist?) to uncork and channel it all.

You are like a canvas that hates paint, needlessly

The trick isn’t to get rid of negative thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc.

The trick is to recognize that what you’re feeling and doing isn’t a consequence of negative thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc.

Rather, it’s the consequence of the LOADS of extra “badness” you’re adding to all of it.

The hazard of mindfulness is that it offers MOARRR CONTROL, and BOY are we primed to fall into that trap in our anxious, optimization-obsessed culture.

The true opportunity of mindfulness is that it can show you how that control reflex is ruining every moment of your life.

All the things your heart radiates out into the world each moment: love, anger, longing, despair, …

All of it carries the yawning, world-shattering echo of creation.

It’s there, at the root of every frequency. You only need to become sensitive enough to hear it.

Krishnamurti said he owed his happiness to “not minding what happens.”

More precisely, he didn’t mind that he minded what happens.

Get the flavor of working with koans, and all the world’s wisdom opens up to you.

Taking the “God of the Bible” and making it “your God” is like buying a potted orchid at the store so you can “live in the rain forest”.

To see your god(s), you should look around you, here and now.

Authentic human spirituality is a fine art.

How do you see the world *exactly* as you *ought* to see it without bastardizing it.

IMO… with a lifelong beginner’s mind.

I gave up evangelical Christianity and became a materialist as a tween when it was obvious the blind were leading the blind.

By 40, I’ll have sworn off materialism, too, for something richer, more romantic, more poetic.

But never for another “God” made in man’s image. Utter folly, that is. 🤷

feel, now
what couldn’t be felt, then

When I sit still
I can feel
that I am vast space
boundless compassion
full of grace

The “I” that I was
just before waking now
is suddenly seen
merely a useful clap
ringing out

Tantric-ish practices will have their moment in the sun (like, Mindfulness™️) once basic meditation tech is more normalized.

Mindfulness is great, anon, but have you tried dissolving your difficulty in the infinite vacuum of your true god nature?

Fully 3/4 of the benefit of “spiritual practice” is just ordinary growing up

Progress only means
That the good will get better
As the bad gets worse