What is a painter without their brush or a sculptor without their stone? And what is enlightenment without mental health? Self-realization does best when we are mentally healthy. Avoiding or minimizing the issues of the ego can lead to lives being half lived, cults being formed and opportunities for love...

First, let's see why we want to know our true self, and then let's explore how we can do it.

Why do we want to know our true self? It brings us back into the beauty of each moment of our lives. You know yourself as the gift you...

Would it help if you knew you were the joy behind the laughter, the color in the painter's brush? Would it help if you knew the ache in your heart is your teacher, and loneliness your inner wisdom calling you back?

Your way will be different...

Reflection

In our last blog, "Uncovering Your Beauty: The Foundation of Awareness Spiritual Practice," we came to know our self as a still and silent awareness. If this is true, then why do we often think of ourselves as anything but stillness and silence, unable to be quiet...

The foundation of our awareness spiritual practice is the uncovering of your perfection and beauty. Life is not about becoming a more loving person, but coming to know and express the love you already are. It is not a matter of becoming a more compassionate person, but living a life...

Grounding our identity in awareness is our preparation for the complete realization of our oneness with the very ground of reality. The deeper our stillness the more fully we can reflect the movements of bliss. The more profound our silence the more clearly we can express compassionate love. We grow...

Why not be the heart of Christ,
The compassion of Buddha,
And the dance of Rumi?

Pure awareness looking out through their eyes,
Was the very same now looking out through yours.
Pure awareness extending their hand to her,
Was the very same now extending...

As a point of pure awareness we know and become whatever we are aware of. Don't rush this kiss. Here the mystical chanting begins, drums beat, and dancers spin. Heads thrown back, whirling faster and faster, awareness and love embrace, moment gives birth to eternity, universes are lost in a...

(Includes revised "I Am Awareness Exercises," Part 6)

Intention: I will know myself as a point of awareness capable of creating thoughts.

Reflection: There is awareness and love. All else comes from these two. You and I are awareness. The very essence of being itself is love. When...

(Includes revised "I Am Awareness Exercises", Part 5)

Reflection: Mother's Day is one of our most spiritual of holidays. The Dalai Lama remembers his mom this way. "I am now 71 years old [but] I feel, still, deep in my mind, my first experience, my mother's care. I can...

(Includes revised "I Am Awareness Exercises", Part 4)
Reflection:

(Includes revised "I Am Awareness Exercises", Part 3)

Reflection:
There is a way to prepare for self-realization that fits the season of spring. The world around us blossoms and sings. It calls to us, "Watch! Listen! Be with us!" It is a time of new, a time of...

(Includes revised "I Am Awareness Exercises", Part 2)

Reflection: Being part of a spiritual community can take many forms. Sometimes it is an organized religion or an informal group with common beliefs. And sometimes it is a mystical family. We join some by belief and action, but into others...

(Includes revised "I Am Awareness Exercises", Part 1)

Reflection: Me? Pure, blissful awareness? Most days I feel more like a tossed salad of peace and fear, pleasure and pain, health and disease. I know and have experienced the truth of being pure awareness, but it is not my...

It is the day I came to know each of us as pure awareness in a universe composed entirely of intimate, personal, blissful love. Combining overwhelming power with profound intimacy and compassion, the experience threw out the old questions, raised and answered new ones, exposed my former self as a...

(Continuation of There Is a Beauty Within You #17: Part 1 of 2 - My Experience of Being Pure Awareness)

I remain in the center of my chest looking out at students waiting by their classrooms. When I look at any person, a beam of orange light about...

The foundation of our spiritual practice is the uncovering of our perfection and beauty. Life is not about becoming a more loving person, but coming to know and express the love you already are. It is not a matter of becoming a more compassionate person, but living a life reflective...

When will there be time for you and me? When will we be present to each moment of our life, present to each person we meet, revealing, expressing, and receiving the compassionate love of Being? We are so much more than personality can satisfy or thoughts can contain, already the...

With the New Year let's refocus on the purpose of our blog. In short, it is for you to become a secret mystic, opening you up to a world of compassion, intimacy and bliss beyond what can be imagined.

While mysticism is traditionally associated with religion, it is not...

Reflection: The end of the year is always a good time to review and reflect. What have we been doing in our blog?

Simply put we have worked to lessen our identification with our body, mind, and personality as our true self. And at the same time we...