I recently received a question about experiences in meditation. I am reproducing in part my response here on the blog because I feel many people have a similar question. The experiences you are having are sometimes called "consolations." I tend to think of them as glimpses of awakening. Everything seems to make sense in those…
Why “Working on Myself” Isn’t Enough
Meditation in all of its various forms is great. I am a practitioner myself and can attest it has brought wonderful change to my life. Mindfulness meditation has seen a surge in popularity in recent years, and I would recent stay at home orders in some communities have afforded a wonderful opportunity to start or…
Pain as Spiritual Teacher
As someone who lives with chronic pain, I can tell you from my experience that it can be a tremendous spiritual teacher. It can also make you want to eat a bullet. Most of the time, I find I sit somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. You might say that if we constructed…
Ego and the Spiritual Path
We are an extremely competitive society. We can turn anything into a competition - to our detriment, I am afraid. If you can measure it, we can fight over who does it best. If you can quantify it, I guarantee you mine is bigger - unless being smaller is better, but to be honest most males…
Spiritual Practice
So, you say you want to start a spiritual practice? You say that first you just need to read these books, attend this retreat, or sign up for this class? You're fooling yourself. You're also being fooled by the spiritual marketplace that has commodified spirituality and turned it into a cash cow. Want to start…
Labels
Very often, we label ourselves - tall, short, fat, thin, conservative, progressive, smart, dumb, wealthy, middle class, poor, successful, compassionate, empathetic, competitive, and dozens of others. Then we only pay attention to people who carry the same labels we do. Are we that afraid of being challenged, that afraid of having our opinions changed, that…
A dose of reality
Present moment, mindfulness, perception, change, reality, expectations
Story
We tend to get caught up in story, as can be clearly seen by the reactions to the election of Donald Trump. Something happens and our minds go to work. In a matter of minutes, we have constructed a story of how whatever has happened will play out, and that story rarely has a happy…
Craig Bergland 