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

(That’s why Carl Sagan said, on his television show Cosmos, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”) So everything is the cause of everything. Including retroactively

You are perfectly human, right now. Your so-called flaws do not indicate unworthiness or deficiency any more than the dark spots on the moon indicate some kind of lunar unworthiness or deficiency. Everyone has flaws, and your unique set of flaws do not uniquely vitiate your value. Flaws are just part of being human. It’s how we’re supposed to be.

labeling a person (or even a place) as having “negative energy” is a way of avoiding responsibility for your own inner state. I would argue that shifting this paradigm is crucial for one’s spiritual life.

Pratibhā simultaneously means intuitive insight, embodied instinct, and spontaneous inspiration.

However, if you glimpse that the spiritual journey inevitably unveils nothing less than the very reason for being, the truth of existence, the infinite majesty of your own innate divinity expressed in the whole of reality, you do not hesitate to walk the path presented to you in each moment. To truly follow your bliss means that you would willingly

This inner wisdom inclines in one direction or another for the benefit of all beings, which is one key way it is different from the desires of the heart-mind, which usually tend to move toward what is beneficial for you personally. So, the inner wisdom won’t necessarily lead you toward what you most like or enjoy. (However, through spiritual practi

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.

Acting on the basis of love is inherently nourishing.

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.