“An elephant from a travelling exhibit was kept hidden in a barn outside the walls of a city whose inhabitants had never seen an elephant before. Hearing of this concealed marvel, four curious citizens went to see whether they might gain at least some preliminary idea of what an elephant was like. When they arrived […]
“He who can follow the small thoughts manages the big decisions.” Small thoughts are like the small pebbles that turn a car around. To notice them, we need uncommon observation and honesty. In terms of self-knowledge, these skills are the same as the microscope in the biology lab. That is why the knowledge that Maha […]
“You see, the power of the animus consists, as a rule, in the possession of a woman’s feeling; that is, when she is not responsible for her feeling, when she does not look out for it consciously, the animus eats it; and then he becomes powerful and may devour her or any other innocent prey.”— […]
“Abraham Lincoln once asked his secretary, “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs will a horse have?” “Five,” the secretary replied. “No,” said the president, “the answer is four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”” We often look at words as “things”. And in a sense, they […]
Padmasambhava says that when you throw a stick at a dog, the dog will run after the stick. When you throw a stick at a lion, the lion will chase you. The lion keeps its gaze fixed on the source—the one who throws the stick. The dog’s gaze follows the object, the stick. In the […]
According to therapist Brad Blanton, author of the book Radical Honesty, the main cause of stress is not something else, but living a lie. According to him, “We all lie like the world. It saps our life force. It’s the root cause of the stress people experience. In short: lying sees us through the bill.”
Scott Kiloby’s method for dealing with unbearable suffering A friend of mine recently sent me an article that deeply resonated with me. In it, the author, Fiona Robertson, shares her personal experience of working through overwhelming emotions and intense suffering using the Living Inquiries method: “The biggest revelation for me came when I was able […]
The Transformation of Thinking During Calcination For those who are passing through the fire of calcination—the purification of our desiring nature through suffering—there is something else of great importance that needs to be understood. The primary object of transformation at this first stage of spiritual transformation is thinking itself. In other words, at the core […]
This article is a continuation of the previous one called “The Two Rays of the “Just Sun”,” in which I introduced a particular species of “worms.” By this I mean those thoughts in the mind that gnaw away at our psychological well-being by telling us that we know what the truth is – the whole […]
It seems that Exupéry understood not only Gestalt therapy, but also systemic psychotherapy, because he “tested” adults with his famous Drawing Number One and Drawing Number Two. He could be seen as a secret predecessor of this approach in psychotherapy, because long before systemic psychotherapists he discovered that there exists a reality different from the […]
“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 […]
“People believe in so many lies. Some of these lies are so subtle and convincing that we build our entire virtual reality upon them without even noticing that they are lies. The lies we believe about ourselves can be difficult to detect, because we are so used to them that they seem normal. For example, […]
