Can you imagine yourself without a gender, a role, a story, a sense of self that precedes you into the world? No mental concepts that define how you see everything? No language to structure the formless into form and separate you from others? This is how you were born. This is how you entered life on Earth (and how you will leave it), a divine soul without human definitions to shape it. And this is who you still are, deep within. No matter what words were spoken or names were given to you, your soul remains intact. Your soul is always connected to the Source from which it came, regardless of what separation is experienced by your personality or ego in the course of a lifetime.

Now that meditation has caught on widely, it’s time to understand why it works. The physical findings measured by neuroscience gives intriguing hints about changes in brain wave activity, but that’s an effect, not a cause. The same holds true for physiological changes outside the brain, such as lowered heart rate and blood pressure. The how and why of meditation must be sought “in here,” in the meditator’s subjective experience.

This isn’t a mysterious route to take. Pain studies are based on how much pain a subject feels; there is no objective way to measure this. In the case of meditation, I believe the correct model is that the mind in meditation is rebalancing itself. Medical studies have known for a long time that the body tends toward a state of dynamic balance known as homeostasis. If you push your body out of balance by shoveling snow off the driveway or running a marathon, as soon as you stop that activity, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen use in the muscles, and even digestion and the immune system return to homeostatic balance.

In the 11th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna shows Arjuna all the forms of the Universe, turning back into the pure form from which they were manifested.

The forms of the Universe: Breathe them in. Take in the baby’s crying, the sound of traffic, it’s all energy, it’s all shakti in form. As you draw it into your being, let the forms go, let your concepts about it all go, turn it back into pure shakti. Sit straight, draw it all into your chest.

All of your thoughts now, your memories, think of the political world, a breath for that.

See all the candidates, all of the international intrigue, all of the genuine seeking for peace, a breath for that.

See it all; the play, the dance, the forms, the mother, the mother at play, all aspects of the mother. Draw it back into its pure form within you, Mother shakti. Draw it into your heart.

Have you noticed the almost sacred ritual that happens as it gets dark outside, at dusk? It’s especially noticeable for me on a warm summer evening. The air cools and stills. The lighting becomes surreal, glowing, soft, almost like a dream. Birds of a particular feather, shift location as if cued by an internal alarm. Humans and cars bustle about leaving and returning. Mosquitoes might try and get their last bite in. Certain other critters offer a strange but steady musical chorus to welcome the night. It feels like there is a divine design to all of it, like it would be imperfect with just one of its many guests missing. Where the sum of these individual pieces, and what can seem like disorder and disparateness, comes together to truly create the experience of dusk and night falling. Can you tell its my favorite time of day?

But more than that, in a weird way, it has me thinking about the incredibly crazy, imperfect but deliberate plan that is playing out in the world right now and our roles in it. Specifically I’m thinking about the disruption and dismantling of privilege, “business as usual” in its many forms. We see this as it relates to global politics, religion, women’s rights, ethnicity and race, sexual preference and so many things really. As of late, my own experience and attention has been on what greater healing and inclusion looks like in the spirituality/wellbeing space. But I think these reflections might also resonate in other spaces as well.

Being mindful, understanding and keeping track of your thoughts and emotions is critical in being able to change your state.

This simple but powerful tool will raise your awareness of exactly how you’re feeling at any given moment and can help you change the way you feel from one moment to the next.

Practice this technique and make a habit of using it.

Answer the questions truthfully and spontaneously. Stay focused on the answer to question number four for as long as you can.

Use your own words and the wisdom of your own heart to answer the questions.

“The Sage does not talk – the Talented Ones talk, and the stupid ones argue.” – Kung Tingan

Though the numbers are proportionally few, many thousands of us have, through discipline and persistence, arrived at a view of our lives that is open, clear, and detached. In this new space we have lightness, an ease in carrying out our daily lives. An ability to keep a certain sense of humor about our predicaments. We find that because of the quietness of our minds it’s easier to relate to acquaintances, to family, to employers, to friends. It’s also easier to bring together our economic scene and the other aspects of our lives.

We begin to feel a little bit like gods on earth. Where we see sadness and suffering around us, we are able to empathize and still feel lightness and joy.

It’s as if the world is made for our delight, and even our own troubles become a source of amusement. When we look one another in the eye there is clarity and honesty. We have a certain degree of inner peace. Many of us never thought possible this level of equanimity, fullness, and delight in life. We have a sense of self-acceptance, spaciousness, and fullness in the moment that makes each day enough. In many ways it seems like liberation.

As I look around at people I know who have been working intensely on themselves for some time, there is a dramatic change.

A young woman named Melinda came to see me for a reading. As she sat quietly across the room from me, there was a full line-up of relatives from the Other-Side stepping forward one by one.

In the background, I was acutely aware of a faint tapping that I was psychically hearing. It wasn’t the familiar tempo of a waltz or even a song that I'd recognize; yet, there it was again—a definite rhythm. It sounded more like: Clackity-clack, clackity-clack, clackity-clack.

Oh my God, heaven was actually tap dancing! I thought to myself. At that moment, a little girl stepped forward and gave me her name. I didn’t hesitate a moment longer, “Melinda, I have a little girl here and she is giving me the name of Jen or Jennifer. Do you understand that?”

“That’s my daughter!” Melinda’s eyes instantly filled with tears. Jennifer was her five-year-old daughter who’d tragically died after a kidney operation. Melinda recalled that day when the hospital staff had begged her and the rest of the family to “go home, relax, and get something to eat”—just for an hour— because nothing would happen­. Yet, something awful did happen.

Desire is intrinsic to our aliveness, yet when we have unmet needs, it can possess us. This talk explores how to relax open the grip of wanting and heal the suffering of addiction. You will learn how to bring mindfulness and compassion to the roots of desire, and be carried home to open loving presence (a favorite from the archives).

For us addicts, recovery is more than just taking a pill or maybe getting a shot. Recovery is also about the spirit, about dealing with that hole in the soul.
~ William Moyers

You might also enjoy Tara’s online course, curated from this talk, plus several of her others: Freeing Ourselves with Mindfulness: Using mindfulness and meditation to heal harmful habits, attachments, and addictions. Register at any time. Link includes discounted price.

If you held a compass in your hand with the intention of locating God, you would see the needle spin in all directions. The GPS in your car could not come up with an exact position for God in its system either. That’s because (of course) God is everywhere at the same time. Its physical form in this dimension is us, our human bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, trees, birds, insects, fish, seashells, stones, etc.

From the nonphysical perspective, God is an experience not a visible object. On Earth, the experience of God is love. And love has no form, no language, no location. If you deepen your awareness of divine connection, you come to realize that you are always held in a love beyond any words to describe it. Peace fills your being and Presence fills your consciousness. I have been there. It’s a place to which I am always longing to return. But there is no compass or GPS to guide you to God. Only in the process of living and letting go do you suddenly turn up in that spaceless space that defies description.

Dearest You,

The energy in the universal Oracle Card reading this week is all about co-creation, abundance and our infinite potential for prosperity. 

When we can harness and get in alignment with the energy of abundance there’s an anticipation, a palpable buzz, that we can tune into that turns on a switch, like all of a sudden going from dim and hazy to bright and shiny.

The click happens when we fully embrace ourselves as we’re meant to be, not as we’ve been taught (or coerced) to be. We all have a window of opportunity now that requires casting off the shell of conformity, removing all the masks that we thought might help us gain social acceptance, to get to our molten core where Spirit’s spark waits for us to ignite our destiny.

When you tap into this energy and click into your own “destiny switch” abundance seems to appear as if magic sparkle dust got dumped on your head. One minute you were struggling to figure it all out then BAM you’re at a party!

I want me some of that—don’t you?

If we are to help heal the world, we need to remember that it is a sacred place.

Our actions need to be positive statements, reminders that even in the worst times there is a world worth struggling for. We need to find ways to keep the vision alive, to acknowledge but not get caught in the dark side. To remember that even the worst aspects of suffering are only part of the whole picture. We need to enter lightly.

Entering lightly means not ignoring suffering but treating it gently.

We don’t want to ignore another’s pain, but our becoming depressed or angry about it doesn’t relieve it and may increase it. The delicate balance is in allowing ourselves to feel the pain fully, to be sad or angry or hurt by it, but not be so weighted down by it that we are unable to act to relieve it. It is a matter of ends and means again: to create a caring, loving, peaceful world, we need to act with care and love and peace.

People have loved practicing mindfulness and meditation for centuries – and for good reason. Studies have found that this time-honored tradition has huge mental and physical benefits. Research attributes mindfulness to increased focus and working memory as well as increased quality of life. Also attributed are reductions in anxiety and stress, so with all these reasons to be mindful what's stopping us?

In this new age of technology, distraction is just a click away. Tiny pocket-sized devices provide hours of entertainment with a few taps of a finger. This daily intake of likes, notifications and messages does come at a cost. Technology has brought with it many great conveniences but not without consequence. Overuse of technology has been linked to depression, anxiety and many other mental health issues that are currently on the rise. Developing mindfulness can help to prevent and even repair these negative impacts of technology.

Mahasati hand meditation is a practice that can be particularly useful during times of excessive stress or emotional upheaval, or when our minds just won’t shut the f__k up no matter how much yogic breathing or how many rounds of mantras we’ve done. And yeah, I speak from experience.

I learned this practice at my most rock bottom of rock bottoms. I was at a rehab facility, three days into a seven-day stay in detox from alcohol. My body was still squeamish, my brain still racing, my hope nonexistent, and my self-loathing at an all-time high. As I lay in bed aware of the physical battle going on between withdrawal and the benzodiazepines I’d been given to help relax me and keep me from having a seizure, my thoughts raced—I’d just lost my job, my car was about to be repossessed, I had a court date and jail time awaiting me, and last but (definitely) not least, I was going to miss my brother’s wedding, the one where I was supposed to be his best man. Yeah, I was in rough shape.

Later that morning I stumbled into our group session, where a young, prayer-bead-wearing, bald-headed man announced we were going to practice meditation. Grunts and grumbles filled the room, and the corner I’d staked out as my own was no exception. I’d been meditating for several years already and knew that I was in no place mentally or emotionally to sit quietly and let my mind cause me even more trouble than it already was.

In all fairness, yes, those are often the times when meditation can be extremely beneficial. I’m all about gently and compassionately leaning into the pain and allowing it to teach us what it can, but I also believe that there are times in life when the pain is too great and it’s counterproductive to lean into it. There’s no such thing as a spiritual superhero; no trophies are awarded to those who can endure the heaviest shit, so please, honor what you can and can’t do in the moment and go from there. Only you can know for sure, so be honest with yourself.

Once you have drunk from the water of unconditional love, no other well can satisfy your thirst. The pangs of separation may become so intense that seeking the affection of the Beloved becomes an obsession. When we were with Maharaji, we were intoxicated with his form, the colors of his blanket, the buttery softness of his skin, his tapering, almost simian fingers, the long eyelashes that so often hid his eyes, the red toenail on his big toe. As with any lover we, too, became fascinated and enamored of every detail, although these cues triggered spiritual bliss instead of physical desire.

In their way intoxication and addiction are analogies for devotion.

Once you experience unconditional love, you really get hooked. The attraction is to that intimacy between the lover and the Beloved.

The entire universe is made up of energy, and that includes YOU. This energy can be found both inside and outside you. Sometimes energy feels light and warm, expansive and uplifting. Imagine a spring day after a hard and cold winter. You turn your face up to the sun, letting its soothing warmth permeate your skin. It lulls you into an infinitely peaceful state. Sometimes energy feels dark and heavy, like the charged air before a violent thunderstorm. The sky looks ominous and foreboding. The light disappears and everything feels uneasy and menacing.

When you are filled with this kind of energy it can feel difficult to evade. All you know is that things just seem heavy, without joy, motivation, or inspiration. So when you feel this way, what can you do to get your energy back on track?

The first thing you should do is try to discover where the negativity is coming from. Maybe it’s your job, and you can’t quite seem to leave it at the office. If it’s a personal relationship that is the cause, the heavy feelings can pervade almost every other area of your life. Or maybe you’ve been feeling this way for so long that you simply can’t figure out where it’s coming from or what started it. You just know that you need change.

The good news is that you CAN change your inner energy! When you do, you change your life!

Every doctrine of the afterlife has run into the same problem, which is that of belief. For centuries the existence of life after death has been couched in religious terms, which necessitates believing in religion before the question of the afterlife can be approached. Is it possible to say something more firmly grounded than mere belief, which falls so short of certainty?

With the continuing decline of organized religion in developed countries, a strain of rational atheism has arisen that seems to have the backing of science. In this view, since we lack data from people who have died, there is no reason to abide by age-old myths concerning a promise of life after death. Fundamentally, the death and decay of the physical body points to the death of the mind, because to a physicalist the mind is a product of the brain.