ego and emotions

How to Discuss Teachers and Teachings Properly First, let's consider some questions related to this topic. Please review these after you have read the article and examine if your perception or attitude has changed. Am I motivated to understand better? If not, then what makes me a student? Do I...

Teachings about Love and Altruism Here we share what teachers and sages have said or written about love. Love is good nourishment and moisture for any person's life, but being skillful with it is another matter. This is what we want to understand here. The Western people often idealize romantic...

Trauma of Shattered Community As practitioners we aren't only working on ourselves but also for the betterment of mankind. Our neighbors and kin affect us and they are in turn affected by how we become better human beings just as we should. Sometimes entire communities become sick and people...

Self-Expression, Non-violent Communication, and Speaking Your Heart Genuine heartfelt communication comes from self-expression that is not founded in the fear of rejection or violent opposition. One of the things evident in the global cultural milieu is how neurotic traits block people from...

Liveliness of Discussion and How to Avoid Treading Water I want to spell it clearly about what makes for a lively discussion so that active threads don't start treading water and stagnate. Don't make hit and run posts or have that type of loser mentality where you are already willing to give...

A conversation with both Master JR Rodriguez and I and also a separate conversation with @小梦想 had the latter bring up verbatim the title of this essay. Background: we were chatting about the kinds of individuals interested in power and the internal arts, which for the sake of discussion, I will...

Misuse and Appropriation of Spiritual Labels to Encourage Greed Every so often we can see how spiritual labels are turned against their original aspirations: The search of true reality and its unconditional happiness becomes subverted for earthly ideals that lead away from these. In particular...

Simple answer: don’t do it. Qigong usually is the big problem here because unstable and overstimulated qi easily rises to the head. If you allow qi to rise to the head and don’t know how to ground it, it can lead to later mental health issues such as delusions and anxiety, depression, anger...

Wanting Direct Taste and Independence As Measures of Spiritual Growth Why do we need spiritual teachers? It's a good question because real wisdom comes through the direct taste of experiences and personal effort. Intermediate agencies like personal biases and clinging to formalities could easily...

Fear of Missing out: A Marketing Ploy to Monetize Spiritual Cultivation There are many violent ways to control and entrap unwary people, but often times it can literally pay back in saved time and money if you pay attention early whether there are subtle mechanisms of manipulation that heighten...

There is a lot to discuss about hormones. Not only are they essential to maintaining healthy homeostasis in the physical body, they also represent the important nourishing quality close to the primordial water element. Steroid hormones are effective because they are small lipophilic...

As you can see, the title plays with the name of this section. This one is inspired by almost a decade on forums. Why is it so, that some beginners, when starting to feel stuff, start to mix systems and fill in the blanks much like the gene sequencing described in Jurassic Park (1)? The...

How can we prevent psychological abuse? Why is psychological abuse difficult to recover from? How can the members of society help the abuse victims? What successful modalities and medical theories exist to treat the person recovering from abuse? This group study has its starting premise in...

Let's discuss how pop culture is actively catalyzing the dissemination spiritual themes across civilizations and what is this pollination's impact on people's personal views. Popular culture is created for mass appeal and consumption. It appropriates everything that can be grasped in...

Here we share and examine insightful quips that reflect visceral street wisdom. Wisdom bits from unconventional sources (e.g. profane circumstances) are also welcome if they are of great quality. Please avoid pop culture sources such as TV entertainment and movies. Mike Tyson quote in "Tall...

In contrast to my recent post on difficult students and praise of my teachers, I now turn my attention towards praise of students. The most I have ever learned was not from my teachers telling me what to do or explaining things, it was in applying that knowledge and developing the wisdom that...

Following on from the "Tai Chi Scammer" thread, this post inspired me to open this one: This sort of thing has got under my skin way too often, so I think I need to vent it here. The thing that I'm starting to open my eyes to is this trend of "everyone's a guru". Or if they're not a "guru"...

The other day, I threw my arms up in frustration over one of my informal students, coming to the point of shouting using all caps and unsubtly telling the student to fuck off and saying to never contact me again. [Errata: This is a completely sardonic piece done in a tongue-in-cheek style]...

Sometimes we see news of supposed health breakthroughs or claims that a new health innovation will help you heal and keep fit. Is it an implausible money-grab and a complete waste of time, or could it perhaps turn out to be something? While science and materialistic knowledge may thrive with...

Here I would like to share a piece of writing done by one of my favourite lamas lama Pema Chophel. Lama Pema Chophel is an American Buddhist lama that has been practicing since the 70's and has been recognized as a trained lama in the Nyingma lineage. I extremely adore him for his traditional...