Learning to live in the stillness of the heart is vital to spiritual growth. An authentic spiritual practice provides us with the tools to contact this deepest resonance of our heart—both during our meditation and as we extend ourselves out in to the world. We anchor ourselves in our center, in the stillness of our heart, and this is what creates a profound, permanent immersion into the heart of God.

When we find ourselves caught in turmoil, it is a strong clue that we need to get still. Instead of immediately reacting to the incessant need to do something, find something, or get rid of something, we must learn to rest in stillness. If we do that, whatever we are attached to will lose its grip. It is vital to recognize that our personal willfulness emerges from and perpetuates our patterns of desire and attachment. That need to control life comes from the mind, which is able to create an extraordinary amount of delusion in us.

Desirelessness is freedom from the incessant...

One of my guru Rudi’s most important teachings can be summed up in his following statement: "The formula for growth is to give not what you want to give, but what is wanted and needed." This is such an important message, and it touches on the many conversations we’ve had about seva, or selfless service. For me, Rudi’s statement clarifies how important it is to recognize that the act of not giving is precisely what prevents us from receiving. And most of us spend our lives not giving; or rather, we spend our lives giving what we want to give, instead of what is asked of us. An even deeper capacity of service is to not even have to be asked, but to recognize what is needed and to simply give it.

While this applies to all dimensions of our lives, as spiritual students, what is being asked of us is to discover the joy and freedom that lie within us, as our true essence. When that moment of grace awakens in us some profound longing for a spiritual life, realize that...

A Tenuous Consciousness, a Fragile Openness: Revelation must be established and strengthened by conscious choice, then perfected through disciplined action.

The opportunity and possibility for living in a state of openness is fragile. The crystalline encasing of our own consciousness can be broken, penetrated, or shattered by something insignificant, like a discomforting word that was said to us. Revelation is only possible in the moments when we can stop our reaction and pull ourselves back into the heart. What ensues is the simple joy that comes from resting in our own consciousness. Unless these moments become a permanent state, our consciousness remains fragile and tenuous.

To establish ourselves in joy we must bring consistent, convicted attention to our awareness. We must be like Shakyamuni Buddha, sitting under the Bodhi Tree. With his fingers extended, touching the ground, he called forth the earth as his witness, affirming, “I will not move from here until I know...

To see beyond the apparent requires the discriminating awareness of the hamsa bird, a mythical creature that has a unique talent. If milk and water are mixed together, the bird can extract the milk from the mixture, and then can extract the sweetness from the milk.

In nondual traditions, the term used to describe the discriminating awareness within us is buddhi. It’s important to realize that we can access this level of consciousness — one that is free from the constraint of only seeing the appearance of duality. Buddhi can be understood as vimarśa, or self-reflective capacity. In its highest sense, this is the capacity of God’s infinite Consciousness to know Itself as Consciousness. And, since we are never separate from God’s awareness, we are also able to know ourselves as that same Consciousness. However, to have this level of realization, we first need to know our own state. Buddhi provides the ability to recognize where we are functioning from in...

The ego is like a spider trapped in its own web of tensions, contractions, patterns, and samskaras.

When a spider spins a web out of its own body, its experience is restricted to the very web it creates. The ego does much the same thing. It weaves a sticky web made up of tensions, patterns, karma, and samskaras (latent tendencies), creating the blockages and limitations we experience in life. In fact, this is all the ego is capable of doing. It cannot see or experience any level of reality outside of its own limitations — nor does it want to!

When a storm destroys a spider’s web, it immediately spins another one. Unfortunately, the ego does the same thing. And if we aren’t free from the ego’s grip, we keep spinning the same experience of life, unaware that there’s a deeper experience available to us. At the highest end of the spectrum of reality is God’s infinite Consciousness, but the resonance of that Presence remains forever outside the...

Gaṇeśa is the remover of obstacles, often called upon at the beginning of a pujā ceremony. One of his name's is Buddhi Priya, referring to the discriminating power of Consciousness. Begin your day calling upon your own discriminating capacity to choose openness.

Within the nondual tradition, the term buddhi is most accurately defined as “the capacity of discrimination.” Buddhi is also understood as the power of Consciousness to know Itself — often referred to as vimarśa, our own self-reflective capacity. For us, this means that it's not enough to simply be conscious. We must also know that we're conscious. Sādhana is that which helps us uncover the highest consciousness, which is our one true essence. Our spiritual practice is how we allow that awareness to reveal itself — and this is only possible because of our inherent capacity to know ourselves. Discrimination plays a key role in the unfoldment of our spiritual growth.  

All movement toward...

Like the simplicity of a child, true realization becomes your default state, not just an occasional experience. Jīvanmukti means freeing yourself of your separate identity; it is the unwavering experience of oneness with the Divine. There is no separation between you and That. Freedom happens without the dissolution of the body. You still function, but as God’s pure joy embodied as you.

Freedom in this lifetime — having the unwavering experience of oneness with the Divine —requires that we contact the joy within us and establish ourselves in that unconditional resonance. If you wish to live in that state of embodied joy, you must ask yourself this fundamental question: What am I looking for?

If we want to find freedom and joy, we must start by looking for it. Joy is not created by form, by anything we do, or by what is happening in our life. Although joy is not something that we can see in form or gain by possessing something, every form is the expression of the...

The awakened energy transmitted through lineage enters into and alters our own energy field revealing a pure, perfect awareness and capacity that is expressed in the landscape of our own life.

Can a relationship with a teacher and with śakti transmission create a tendency for over-reliance? Does it get in the way of cultivating our inner capacity to connect to and establish ourselves in a dynamic flow of śakti? 

Let me begin with this emphatic statement: Transmission has nothing to do with something coming from outside of us. Infinite Consciousness and Its power of kuṇḍalinī śakti are what create and sustain our life. This is what is now awakening in us — calling forth to Itself the energy of a lineage to nourish and unfold that which is emerging. Our work is to open and receive that resonance from the teacher so that we can experience it fully within ourselves.

The power of transmission from a teacher is that of a living spiritual force, and what is being transmitted is...

The ego is the black hole of Consciousness that devours the light that illuminates our divine essence. The profound experience of separation creates the perpetual grasping for completeness. But the grasping for “some other” is another action of the ego, perpetually pulling its own misunderstanding back on itself. That which you seek outside of yourself is already present inside of you.

Divine essence is ever-present within us, and because it is our essence, we must respond to that truth with something more than, “isn’t that nice?” Many of us have a deep aspiration and intent to live this highest knowledge in the face of everything that tries to prevent us from doing so. The greatest masters of many traditions have told us that in order to have a direct experience that we are this divine essence, all we need to do is to recognize that truth. Some of the greatest masters within the Tantric Tradition emphatically state that...

In our sādhana there are times when we must make a concerted effort to work harder, to open a greater depth in ourselves. At other times, if we can easily make contact with an expanded inner awareness, we can simply remain at ease in that place and allow it to open and reveal itself in stillness. Both approaches are correct, but we must use our discrimination to know which is appropriate at any given time.

If we feel contracted — perhaps because we have projected our energy and attention outside of ourselves — we must first connect back into a place of openness. Once we make that effort, we can simply let that inner state show itself.

We can best understand this by looking at what Tantric tradition calls the upāyas, the triadic means to liberation. They are āṇavopāya, the path of effort; śāktopāya, the path of energy; and śāmbhavopāya, the path of awareness.

The Three Upāyas

The effort in āṇavopāya is to direct our awareness inside, which is best summed up by the basic...