Here is an idea from Eckhart Tolle on how to consciously practice the sadhana of disappointment, which I find deeply inspiring. “A powerful spiritual practice is to consciously allow the diminishment of the ego when it happens and to not try to restore it. I recommend that you experiment with this from time to time. […]
“Some spiritual seekers mistakenly understand the process of freeing the ego from all its “possessions” as killing or destroying the ego. Just as survival is the primary instinct of all nature, so the ego will try to survive at all costs. If you threaten it, you will not accomplish your spiritual purpose. If you starve […]
“Remember, spirit is free when it is neutral. When you build up a charge, whether positive or negative, it engages and becomes whatever it engages with. This means that when you decide to engage in a desire, you charge your inner spirit energy. The desire of wanting to bring something to you has an attractive […]
Recently, I came across a text on the topic of homosexuality viewed from a spiritual perspective. I felt an impulse to share it here, because I have more than one client with such an orientation who suffer from misunderstanding and rejection by others. Recently, I even received an email from a young woman asking for […]
“However, it is our Souls, not our Egos that create our lives. For instance, our Souls may choose to experience sickness or other kinds of loss or suffering as a way to be initiated into deeper wisdom so that we might grow. Such choices are anathema to the Ego, whose function is to help keep […]
On the path from “self-actualization to self-transcendence,” there is a very specific danger—in Maslow’s humanistic psychology, it is called “higher sidetracking.” Here is its description by Howard Sasportas in the book The Dynamics of the Unconscious: “Some people associate feelings like joy, bliss, or universal love with the Higher Self. But the perception of the […]
“You can recognize the dominance of the ego by the need for control. For example, when you want certain people to behave in a certain way. To make this happen, you use specific patterns of behavior. For instance, you are compliant, pleasant, and you try never to hurt anyone’s feelings. Behind such behavior lies the […]
In spiritual literature, the “ego” is often spoken of as the primary enemy of the “soul.” Such a perspective can be seriously harmful because it fails to account for the difference between the positive and negative forms of the same thing—the empirical Self of the human being. This difference lies in the fact that its […]
“Fears in relationship are usually rooted in our agendas for the other person or the relationship. It is not our job to try to make a relationship what we think it should be. If someone is not acting like a great romantic lover, perhaps they are not meant to be one for us. That does […]
From the author of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle: “As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged […]
