Near Enemies of the Truth: Avoid the Pitfalls of the Spiritual Life and Become Radically Free

Acting on the basis of love is inherently nourishing.

Growth is natural for a healthy human being, but it doesn’t redress some fundamental deficiency. There is no such thing as a fundamental deficiency, despite what our prevailing cultural narrative says. Each person perfectly instantiates the version of personhood that they embody.

The third version of the practice of presence is the natural culmination of the first and second versions (when practiced over years). I refer to that extraordinary mode of being in which the three primary centers of embodied consciousness—head, heart, and low belly—are open and clear, free of resistance to whatever energy wants to flow through, an

So though one can certainly enter meditative states of total timelessness, there’s nothing particularly spiritual about ignoring the past and future in one’s everyday life.

Whatever is yet to come will necessarily be an organic development of what is already happening now. Therefore, the best way to be prepared for the future is to pay attention to the whole of your experience in the now, especially its subtle dimensions, like the little intuitive feeling that a certain situation is not quite right. (I would suggest t

The ego would rather be right than happy.

In conclusion, if you are investing energy in growth and change out of love for yourself and others and out of the desire to express that love in beneficial ways, then not even a little effort goes to waste, as Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gītā. But if your attempts to change are based in veiled self-hatred, you might cause more harm to yourself an

That feeling of rightness might be accompanied by some fear of the unknown because pratibhā often leads us beyond the domain of what we think we know. It’s normal to feel apprehensive when following the pull of pratibhā.

True meditation is nothing but the cultivation of our capacity to deeply listen in this way.** Through listening—not with the ears but with our whole being—we arrive at a quiet inner knowing of what is right for us, which is not obtainable through any amount of thinking or discussing with others (though those activities can sometimes be valuable as

Without the alignment of view, practice, and fruit, the spiritual path doesn’t accomplish anything of substance. For many people, that doesn’t really matter, since spirituality is basically a hobby for them, even if they wouldn’t say so.