My spiritual blog & articles - My Spiritual Coach

What proverb best illuminates the path to spiritual growth and understanding for those seeking deeper wisdom?

11/22/2025

If we are talking about The Book of Proverbs from the Old Testament of the Bible, here is a great one from the English Standard Version:

Proverbs 4:23: "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life".

This is a reminder to be centered within instead of being distracted by the never-ending thoughts in our head while we are awake and even while dreaming. It suggests that we find the center of love, the heart center, and draw strength and vitality from that.

Coming from the heart center, we also find a form of love and gratitude that makes life worth living. The mind certainly does not bring us peace. It doesn’t really know how to love. It can reason, dissect, find patterns, see what is wrong with this picture, quantify, categorize and invent. But it cannot apprehend the Spirit. That is up to our heart.

This proverb is not referring directly to the physical heart. It is true, that without our physical hearts, we could not live. It is the source of our life’s physical energy. So take care of it and notice that it is there, beating away, far beyond our conscious will. It continually reminds us of how little control we have over spiritual and natural forces.

Proverbs 4:23 is talking about the center of our inner being. The being that is one with the harmony of the Universe itself. So the proverb is saying, “Go within and find the miracle that is your life. It is your connection to the spiritual energy of all that is. Find it, nourish it, cherish it, and pay attention to it for a meaningfully spiritual life.

Why do so many legends and spiritual traditions focus on the Himalayas as a place of immortals and enlightened beings?

10/5/2025

You have to experience the Himalayas to really understand why they are the inspiration for enlightened beings.

Their vastness, their profound silence. Your tiny and short human life centered on the body, with all its survival needs, immediately shows itself to be insignificant in a setting of such powerful and ancient hugeness.

The vibrational atmosphere shakes you to the roots and leaves you speechless. And you feel the presence of all those who chose the spiritual path as their main focus, all around you. So the best way to understand why so many spiritually focused people chose to go to the Himalayas is to go there.

I am not encouraging spiritual tourism. The Himalayas can be felt in your heart, wherever you are. Just think of the vastness of the Universe itself and then even the Himalayas are submicroscopic and young.

Living in the Himalayas shows a commitment to exploring consciousness and worshipping the eternal. The great sages did this to get away from the hustle of daily life in the cities, towns, and villages. But you don’t need to be situated physically in the Himalayas as a requirement for enlightenment. It can be a shortcut, but you don’t need any particular setting or any prerequisites to live in the light of inner peace—which is enlightenment.

What is the most profound, non-verbal insight a seeker gains through direct spiritual experience that artificial intelligence can never replicate?

9/11/2025

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can gather and inter-relate data and knowledge. All of this is recorded somewhere in the form of verbal expression, such as recorded speech or writing, and sometimes art. It can only report on experiences that people have said they have had. But AI can never experience it.

Direct spiritual experience is highly individual. It may be the peace or awe that is triggered by a glorious sunrise or sunset. It might be a whack on the side of the head by a zen master who wakes us out of our limiting mental ruts. Or it might be the feeling of complete communication and understanding between beings, one of which might not even be human. Such as being on the same wavelength with a special animal.

AI can only hint at direct experience. It can only compile what people have said about it. But direct experience. of the being who is aware is the only way to perceive the world of the spirit that takes us beyond just living in the body, surviving, worrying about the future and depressed about the past. It is direct experience of the higher Self that takes us into the present moment, which is all that exists anyway. Anything else is just talk, supposition, wishful thinking, or belief based on wishful thinking.

As Sri Ramana Marharshi pointed out: Direct, immediate, first-hand experience of the Self (awareness) is the path to spiritual realization, rather than intellectual understanding or external knowledge. Through the practice of Self-inquiry, we look inward to identify the source of the "I"-thought, realizing that the true Self is not an object to be known, but the unchanging, ever-present Pure Consciousness that experiences everything. This path is not about gaining something new, but about getting rid of thoughts and remaining as Pure Consciousness, which is a fundamental aspect of everyone's immediate experience.

So AI can give us a lot of information, but it can never experience it for us. It cannot be the awareness itself. It can only tell us about what awareness is. And that is limited because it can only tell us what we are aware of and not who we are as the ones who are aware, the ones who are the watchers of our thoughts, feelings, and external phenomena.

Looking back on your many decades of spiritual practice, what is the most surprising personal obstacle that repeatedly resurfaced even after you thought you had overcome it?

9/4/2025

Many decades is correct, for I have been devoted to practices that bring insight and relief from the agitation of the mind since I became aware of it at the age of four.
I have observed the antics of the mind, driven by fear and its definite patterns, a few of which are:

—I’ve got to survive at all costs.
—I’m right, everyone else is wrong.
—I will dominate, avoid domination, validate myself, invalidate others.
—Scan inner and outer manifestations for, “What’s wrong with this picture.”
—I crave this therefore I want more and more of it.

In other words, the mind, like a radar apparatus, is scanning the foreground to detect danger so it and I can survive. It is built into the system and no matter how hard we try to overcome this, it won’t work. It’s more about rising above it than overcoming it.

The mind is hard-wired to carry on this way. in every human that is cognizant. Only by dedicated practice could I lift myself out of these patterns. I could observe them, recognize them, yet they continued to obtrude themselves to disturb the peace. Trying to overcome the mind will not work. Fighting it does not work.

However, observing the mind and laughing at it’s peace-killing behaviors is an effective way of dealing with it. Sometimes I backslide and it takes over in its downward spiral of upset and disturbance. But after more than seven decades of practice I can say I have made a friend of it—for we are not meant, as biological species, to overcome it. We can appreciate it for what it is and makes friends with it.

Is it possible to "fail" at understanding a Zen koan, or is every interpretation valid?

5/10/2025

I started reading Koans when I was a child of 12. I was intrigued by how cryptic they were. I didn’t “understand” any of them. But through the years, as I revisited them, they revealed themselves to me. As I developed more awareness of the differences between knowledge and spiritual insight, each Koan that had seemed so inscrutable, became clear to me.

For example, the Koan—”What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It took me many years to arrive at the answer. But in the meantime, it was sitting in my consciousness, letting its meaning marinate within me—until one day, many decades later, I got it. The sound of one hand clapping is silence. It’s a paradox because by definition, clapping requires two or more hands to produce the sound.

It dawned on me that all of life and the cosmos itself is an interrelationship. Nothing stands alone. Everything is interacting with everything else. Furthermore, silence itself is what makes sound and the rhythms of sound, including music, discernible. And it is only within the silence of the undisturbed mind that we can find the peace that is at the root of spiritual contemplation and awareness.

Not every interpretation is valid. Zen students have been chastised by their masters if they come up with an overly intellectual answer or try to be too clever. Koans aren’t a free-for-all in which any answer will do, either. Their value is in the way they impact our consciousness. It might be ironic or humorous to say, “The sound of one hand clapping is pizza.” But it shows a flippant attitude rather than an intent to understand.

Koans are designed so that we “fail” to grasp them with simple and pat explanations. They are beyond the cliches and life-hacks that numb the mind with their rote explanations. They are funny. Aimed to take all the pompous seriousness out of spiritual practice. It’s best to fail at understanding a koan and eventually allow it to do its magic as the life force within us shows us the way. Then our world can be rocked out of “correct answers” and into expansive and freeing insights.

What does the word "Buddha" mean?

3/7/2025

"Buddha" comes from the Sanskrit root "budh," which means "to know" or "to awaken." To most, Buddha means someone who is free from the sorrows and suffering of life because they see the bigger picture. This may be an unattainable state and could actually be a state of non-compassion if interpreted incorrectly. As if such a being was above it all, diminishing human suffering as something we can all rise above.

In reality, the aim of the Buddhist discipline is to manage and reduce suffering through understanding its cause and its remedies. Yet people have insisted on making idols to the man (Siddhartha Gautama), asking for favors, healings, and any other advantage they want at the time. It takes away from Buddha’s dying statement, “Be a light unto yourself.” It is off the course of his message of doing inner work, rather than depending on an outside agency to bring whatever it is that you think you need.

The way Buddha is portrayed is similar to all the great spiritual masters. It is in large, broad, strokes in which we know nothing about his day-to-day routine or quirks as a human (unless fictionalized as in Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha). We hear more of the dramatic events and milestones of his life. This leads people to think they will never be so saintly as to attain the title of “The Awakened One.” They could never sit under the bodhi tree doing inner contemplation for seven weeks in a row as did Buddha. They are full of aches, pains, gripes, bad memories, fear of death. But the unattainable Buddha surpassed all that and seekers may demean themselves about their shortcomings.

Thinking the title of “Buddha” as something to be attained as a mark of the highest spiritual realization is therefore problematic. It postpones permanent inner peace to the future, as a goal after a long journey of moral and devotional practices. The goal is to eliminate suffering and be in eternal bliss (Nirvana) knowing that all is perfect just as it is.

Everyone wants Nirvana, or endless bliss, but they are not finding it as they search through doctrines and religious methods. So they hope Buddhism will bring it to them. Hope is about the future. It is not based on knowledge. Buddha brought awakening through knowledge more than 2,500 years ago. The practice is more about uncovering the inner wisdom and understanding inherent in us all than it is about achieving the illustrious title of “Buddha.”

Do enlightened individuals have a sense of purpose to help humanity become more aware of their spiritual nature and evolution?

3/2/2025

Humanity has a huge uncovered resource of spiritual understanding. The enlightened beings who have achieved world-wide recognition, such as Buddha and Jesus Christ, have brought forward this potential through their communication and presence.

Buddha’s chosen purpose was to find a path to relieve suffering. He focussed on the acute mental anguish that is part of the human condition. He saw that so much suffering is due to our hard-wired fear-based mental patterns and emotional upset over loss, change, death, and physical pain. He saw so much suffering around him and he, himself was so uncomfortable with day-to-day reality, he sought a way to deal with it all. When he found it, he communicated it though his Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path. His purpose was to alleviate suffering and that is also the purpose of Buddhism.

Jesus Christ was also about alleviating suffering, superficially his emphasis looked like it was on physical healing, raising the dead, and other miracles. The masses came to him because they were sick, their loved ones were dying, they themselves were afraid of death, and they were also afraid of possession by demons. Because he could heal them, that became his fame, but he was really here to teach love, forgiveness, mercy, kindness, and integrity, as he communicated in the Sermon on the Mount.

Both of these enlightened beings were driven by the enlightenment process itself, to communicate it. They were willing to pay the price for sharing their revelations. Buddha gave up a life of pampered luxury and Jesus Christ was crucified. Yet they had to set things straight with people who were going on all kinds of paths that were off base when it came to the revelations of divine consciousness.

Buddha told people they didn’t need to do drastic painful penances, live like ascetics, or punish themselves. These people thought they could earn enlightenment through extreme practices. Jesus Christ told the hyper-religious hypocrites that their’s wasn’t the path either. Buddha and Jesus were spiritual coaches. But not everyone wants a spiritual coach or someone who can show them a path to the harmonious laws of the universe.

Therefore, though there are many people who have grasped the deepest aspects of spiritual consciousness, only a few have been recognized globally. Some people live quietly enlightened lives and do not feel compelled to teach or tell anyone about it. Others say they are enlightened, gain huge followings, and show that they are power-hungry—such as John of God, capitalizing on human suffering.

In general, enlightened beings don’t feel or need a purpose. They put aside the anxious human mind and see that all is well just the way it is, as long as we keep an open path to divine energy. They communicate this because they are driven by the higher consciousness that took them over to do so. Their individual needs are set aside. As Jesus Christ said, “I can of mine own self do nothing: because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.”

It is why I am writing this now. Since I was four years old my obsession has been awareness of higher consciousness. Every human live human being has the potential to discover this and it came to me at a very young age. The expectations of my family were that I would be arm candy for a wealthy man. If I fulfilled that, then I fulfilled my purpose to them. They were dismayed that I began a lifelong devotion to cosmic consciousness, beyond the day-to-day. I sent away for spiritual classics: Predominantly zen, Hindu, Sufi, and Christian mystics starting at 12 years old.

Never did I think I was here to set people right about their suffering or their mistaken, primitive tribal religious ritualisms. But people started coming to me in boarding school when I was 11 for spiritual counseling and to find their inner light. In that sense, an enlightened being is here for everyone but not everyone wants an enlightened being. Therefore, I am not here to help people just because it’s nice to help. Yet I am compelled to alleviate the suffering of those who come to me and are willing to work it out, just like a coach.

What factors contribute to people becoming more "spiritual" as they age? Is it a result of maturity or other influences?

12/2/2024

On one level, age has nothing to do with spirituality. I have met very evolved spiritual beings who were young children. My understanding is that we are all born with an inherent spiritual sense and cosmic consciousness. Then life experiences and the development of our ego minds cause us to cover over this light like a lightbulb covered with masking tape.

We lose our way to the Soul within and think we must survive at all costs as time goes by. People hurt us, we are in unavoidably painful situations. This causes many to form protective callouses that surround our inner light. If these callouses grow too thick, age only forms a greater barrier to spiritual understanding as we pile them on through the years. Then we are amazed that a person has lived so long and is nothing but an old grouchy, self-righteous, bitter, and regretful person who envies the young and puts them down for their ideas while they are still growing.

But if we maintain our connection to the inner light that is a reflection of the Source of All, then age is definitely a plus. Older people have a chance to experience more and see how it all turns out. We see that things we worried about never happened. We know we are capable of handling whatever comes up. We see life as a huge adventure, with moments of joy, moments of pain and that they alll pass. We are emotionally mature and don’t have tantrums because the world doesn’t bend to our wishes.

We have enough experience to see that things clear up over time. Or we accept them. Or we walk away from them. It’s not a big emotional rollercoaster and drama production. We know that we don’t have that much time left in the body so striving to fix things that are beyond our control or trying to create a spectacular life that fulfills our fantasies is really pointless. We can relax and let life unfold and take delight in all the manifestations of physical reality.

Society, as usual, has it backwards. Being older is the best time of life—as long as we are fit and maintain contact with our inner light, or Soul. Otherwise, we are a mass of aches and pains, stiffness, insomnia, poor digestion, facing some horrible form of death. If we don’t know we are more than the body—that we have a body but are Eternal Soul watching the show—then age is no advantage at all. Thus the time-worn expression, “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

What is the purpose of spirituality if there is no tangible outcome after reaching enlightenment?

7/21/2024

Spiritual enlightenment is a way of looking at and experiencing life. It is not goal-oriented about achieving anything in the physical world. It is about going deeper into our consciousness to acknowledge the background of our lives instead of the activities that consume our days.

Humans think that achieving tangible outcomes matters. Or we may think spirituality will ensure our comfortable place in the afterlife. Spiritual enlightenment has nothing to do with our getting things, getting things done, or ensuring our survival.

Humans have been producing tangible outcomes for centuries. In the process of all this activity and getting things done, we have destroyed each other and huge sections of the planet. We think getting things done is progress and it will be profitable too. For example, the highway systems that cross the world now. They are great conveniences for getting things done. But what has happened to all the forests and farmlands, mountains that had been blasted through? They will never be the same again as we continue to pave the land and use it to get things done.

The byproducts of these progressive highways are pileups, traffic jams, gruesome fatalities, shredded nerves, road rage, self righteousness and condemnation of other drivers.
Enlightenment does no harm. It does not transform matter into other forms of matter. It acknowledges the background that is always there from which all the physical manifestations emerge and into which they disappear. It is a peaceful state that remains, even if on the surface our emotions have been ruffled.

The only purpose of enlightenment is to relieve human suffering. That is how the Buddha defined enlightenment: The end of suffering. If we want to go through life kicking and screaming, resisting what is and being ungrateful for its multifaceted magnificence, be my guest. But if we need to enjoy life, spiritual enlightenment is the way to go because it is based on eternity. It cannot be destroyed while all else passes away.

Is it possible to differentiate between an ordinary man and an enlightened man based solely on their words and actions? If so, how can we do so?

5/20/2024

As an enlightened woman, it is difficult when people speak of the “enlightened man.” And in some religions, such as branches of Buddhism and Jainism, men are the only ones entitled to enlightenment. They hold that we must be born in the body of a man before we can even qualify for Nirvana, heaven, or any form of higher consciousness.

I understand that “man” can also stand for “mankind” and therefore includes everyone. But other beings are enlightened as well, such as babies and animals. So we don’t want to say that only humans are enlightened. If we look at human behavior, we can see that it is ego-centered and based on dominance and proving ourselves right, either on a personal or or a political scale. How much more enlightened is a baby, a dog, or a cat, who live only in the present moment and do not fret over the baggage of the past or anxiety about the future.

Enlightenment is a context in which we experience and view life. It is not a big fanfare of peak experiences, emotional fireworks, and do-gooder behavior. Enlightened people may act the exact same way as they did before the light went on in their consciousness about the interconnectedness of the entire Universe and the power of Source Energy. We still can get angry and cry, we may not be saintlike, we still feel things the way humans do—but we have an unshakeable inner peace that is not affected by changeful outer circumstances.
Entertaining displays of magical powers and having a cult following has nothing to do with the inner knowing that accompanies enlightenment. Words, of course, mean absolutely nothing. Anyone can spout words and sound good. They can say what people want to hear and thus be validated. Politicians have been spewing all kinds of great-sounding fluff for centuries. Televangelists have been raking in the chips with their rhetoric and end up showing moral and financial corruption in their lives.

Actions may be based on ulterior motives, such as, if I do this, I will ensure my place in heaven at the right hand of God. If I do or say this, other people with think I am awesome. And I’ve been baptized and saved because I got dunked in the river. And you’re not saved because you didn’t do that. And I also give lots to charity, so you should know how generous I am.
Enlightened people don’t care about what others think of them. They do not have to put on a show or be holier than anyone else, thus putting them down. They do not make others feel “less than” because no one can measure up to their saintliness. They may appear quite ordinary and even less spectacular than people who put on an exhibit of their holiness.

Alan Watts was an enlightened being, yet he was an alcoholic and chain smoker. Just because people have habits that are associated with the body doesn’t mean they don’t live in the divine splendor of inner radiance. Assuming that an enlightened human isn’t working through challenges because they have it all figured out is delusional.

If you have a spark of enlightenment in you, regardless of the words or actions of anyone, you will recognize their vibrational level. I walked through the majority of India and I only found one enlightened person. I only saw him for an hour or less. But that was enough. It wasn’t about his words or actions. It was strictly vibrational. I felt it when I was with him. I don’t even know his name. He was a hermit in the forest of Rishikesh. That one hour of being drenched in his powerful vibrations, was enough to last for the rest of my life.