Tag: Zen
These are very personal questions: What is spiritual to you? When and where do you feel spiritual? How do these spiritual feelings get blocked or expanded?
We can carry these questions throughout our lives. Spiritual practice aims to refine and deepen our understanding of them.
I will focus on three specific spiritual practices: psychological relationships, meditation, and psychedelic plant medicines, including cannabis.
Spiritual practice is about psychological relationships because if our spiritual practice doesn’t improve our relationships with others, what’s the point?
The practice of psychological relationships with others and with one’s inner life is a personal experience with spiritual meaning. This involves experiences of vulnerability, hurt, and confusion that teach us the depth of human love and kindness.
Spiritual practice is not only personal but also universal and objective. We need to look at our minds as they are, our human instincts as they are, and our relationship with the natural world. We are born, go through all the developmental stages, and then die. Life is both precious and painful. We cannot change most of life, but we can learn to connect with it gracefully, little by little.
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Silent Treatment Abuse or Shunning, page 2
As I wrote in the previous post page 1: “Silent Treatment Abuse” is the ancient practice of shunning using modern terminology to describe how it appears in our present relationships. It can be most confusing and frustrating because it feels like there is nothing that can be done about it. Many people have experienced abandonment, helplessness…
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The Art and Science of Being Happy; A Soft Technology
“How to be happy?” is a most important question. It is a question hidden in every decision we make, from what we consume, to how we do relationships, to spiritual practices of any kind. We usually do not choose to be unhappy, even though that is often our state of being. The technology of being…
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How to Clear Your Mind; Finding Your Way
Some ways to clear your mind are healthier than others, some longer lasting. You can clear your mind with a temporary distraction or clear it with a transformative experience. There are ways to calm down that have deeper and more lasting effects. The side effects are more positive. It can be exhausting when the mind…
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Materialistic Values Hidden in Spirituality
Everyone needs material things, a healthy sense of pride, and a means to personal and spiritual satisfaction. We have all experienced our materialistic attitudes out of balance. It is how we know our spirit, when we are losing it or when it is gone. That is how we come to value it and even want…
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Practicing Mindfulness
The term mindfulness is used in the three major schools of meditation in the East. It is not necessary to go into their perspectives on practicing mindfulness at this time, but a few examples of mindfulness meditation from these three traditions may give you a sense of how to practice mindfulness in everyday situations. The…
