There are many ways to enter enlightenment. All forms of spiritual awakening spring from the horribly mundane: the things we don’t often think of as spiritual. This carnal realm is the touchpoint we have and need, however, to access the outer and lighter realms. Most of our lives, we feel dense, anchored to the ground by gravity and the heaviness of our bodies. Every once in a while, though (and sometimes accidentally), we go soaring. We just need to train ourselves to pass into this ethereal ...
Tag: surrender
Slowing Down Becomes Non-Violence
Given a long enough timeline, you can do anything. The work must happen on the inside, which means you must slow down. That is what all this inner work is aimed at doing: giving you control over your internal experience. Meditation, then, is not just an end in itself (trying to rid yourself of thoughts). It is a practice that is fundamental to redeeming everything that has come from outside you and has become your inner experience. Once you ...
Your Orientation Matters
So much of our consternation and anxiety come about because we are oriented against the way life is. When you’re oriented toward always being right, it hurts real bad to be wrong. When you are oriented toward being perfect, you get defensive when it is insinuated you are not. And when you are oriented toward projecting a certain image to the world, you brace yourself against anything less being portrayed. All this fighting against the natural way of things creates anxiety. We spend a lot of ...
When In Pain
When I am in pain, just let me be
I don’t need your pity or outrage or sympathy
I only need Presence
Just give me your eyes
You lived out your story, now this one’s for me
Let me be wrenched
Let me feel it myself
Let me pass through it fully
Or, rather, let it pass through me
I earned it wholeheartedly, now let it consume me
Too many people have tried to explain it
They give it a name
They give antecedents
But pain has been pure since the beginning
It’s the thing that melts wings and it’s ...
Deconstructing is Having A Soft Grip
There is nothing wrong with having some working idea of what you believe about the world. Just know you are wrong or, at the very least, not finished learning. Come to some conclusions, but hold those conclusions softly. Soon, you will be presented with information that challenges what you think you “know”. If your grip is too tight on your current assumptions, you will not listen well and you will spend a lot of energy furiously defending the things you think you need to believe.
It is tempting ...
Deconstructing is The Point
Deconstructing is about breaking yourself apart so you can become more malleable and also receptive – able to accept and handle more and more. The more things you are able to accept and love, the more you are becoming love yourself. Then you love all manner of people and things; there is nothing you don’t love. Deconstructing is also about becoming open to how big the world is and all the people who are different from you. Not everyone is like you. Your goal is to love them ALL.
We tend to ...
Loss is Where You Live
Once you have experienced your first big grief, you live your whole life looking back on that thing. You also spend it looking forward to the rest of life’s losses that will eventually occur. That is why the feeling of anxious anticipation – waiting for the other shoe to drop – is so normal. Life balances itself out. The sum always returns to zero. If things are going swimmingly at the moment, you can be sure a time of want is coming. Don’t worry – once you learn how to grieve, you ...
Noah Gundersen – Oh Death







