My spiritual blog & articles - My Spiritual Coach

How does a person's spiritual enlightenment appear to others, such as their friends and family?

4/24/2024

For friends and family, it depends on the level of their own enlightenment. For they will not recognize it if they do not have the capacity for enlightenment themselves.

They will have to understand that enlightenment doesn’t mean that you are a saint that never makes mistakes and lives a faultless life. They will know that enlightenment is a context in which we view life as a manifestation of Eternal Energy creatively interacting in an endless network of magnificence. It is a state of awe and worship and complete trust that everything is perfect just the way it is. And they will know that you know this.

I was very fortunate, because my mother recognized my spiritual awakening when I was a small child and nurtured my mystic’s path. Though she taught me practical things, she also admitted that she had not attained the level of where I was in grasping the nature of the cosmos. Otherwise, I acted just like a normal child—getting into mischief and rough play.

Yet it soon became obvious, when I went to boarding school at age 11, that other children sought me out for comfort and advice. They would come into my room at night (after lights out). They were frightened, feeling alone and unloved (for there are no parents in boarding school to tuck you in and read you a story at night) and I would talk to them about life and just help them feel at peace.

This continued on into other boarding schools through high school (and college). The students made appointments with me after school to talk over their problems. These were the people who recognized enlightenment and it struck a note in their Soul. This recognition was not because I was a well-behaved girl. I had been expelled, suspended, and routinely punished for my antics. So it was not because I was an exemplary model of perfect behavior.

But if people are not on the wavelength or are just not interested in answering the deeper questions of life—if they just want to survive and have no curiosity about why—they will not acknowledge or even notice enlightenment. Often they will fall for flamboyant and false spiritual “leaders” who are more interested in self-aggrandizement than worshipping the power and glory of Life. They want the enlightened being to wear special costumes and do all kinds of entertaining rituals.

If they see a person like me, they won’t tune in. Because I am not trying to be anybody special. I don’t want to form large groups around me and have people kiss my feet (as happened often when I walked through India). Yet, regardless of their relationship to me: Family, friends, or just someone in line at the grocery store, if there is a spark of enlightenment within them, they will see it in me.

Does a person's past lives become irrelevant during a spiritual awakening?

2/16/2024

The significance of knowing about our past lives lies in our understanding of ourselves as Eternal Souls. Whether we were beggars or royalty is not as significant as how much of the loving energy we expressed. More important. in terms of karma, is if we inflicted intentional cruelty on anyone or anything. For the Universe is perfectly balanced and no one gets away with anything.

It can be useful to know the patterns of our past lives because they often shape our choices, likes, loves, and which people we attract into our lives this time around. These are our individual colorations, quirks, and talents—illustrated by Mozart composing perfectly complex symphonies at age 5. But in terms of our Eternal Soul, all these talents and abilities are like the individual grains of sand on the beach. Fascinating and unique, yet part of the whole mass of sand.

Spiritual awakening includes the deep feeling in our guts and hearts that we have passed this way before and encountered some of the same people. And therefore knowing about our past lives is a key to figuring out why certain patterns keep occurring or what impels the choices that we make. Yet, after all of these many lives our Souls have cycled through, we remain the One Eternal Soul.

So it is not irrelevant to acknowledge that we lived before in a different body when we live the awakened life. It is just part of the process of awareness that this body is not who we are and we have had many of them before this. In the case of Twin Souls, the same Soul resides in two different bodies in the same lifetime. Our Souls are eternal and do not perish when the body goes away.

What does it feel like to be without a mind or ego?

12/18/2023

A student once asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama, how does he handle his ego. The Dalai Lama asked him to explain what the ego is. After the student explained that it was a level of consciousness that we must be special. That we must survive no matter what. That we must make ourselves better, especially better than others. This ego—tendency is hard-wired into the human mind. It causes unrest, unease, discomfort, and a lot of anxiety about the past and the future.

The Dalai Lama’s response was they didn’t have that concept in his practice. He really didn’t know what the ego was because he never felt he was someone special. He didn’t feel the overpowering need for his physical presence to survive. He said in The Book of Joy:

“I always consider myself personally one of seven billion human beings. Nothing special. So, on that level, I have tried to make people aware that the ultimate source of happiness is simply a healthy body and a warm heart.”

When he said this, the statistics were at seven billion. But now it is more like 8.5 billion people on the planet—all thinking they are special, with their dreams, ambitions, and goals to make something out of themselves and make the world a better place. The Dalai Lama doesn’t have such lofty aspirations. He’s very simple. Alleviate suffering in yourself and others as much as you can. That’s it. You don’t have the be the holiest, most self-sacrificing monk in the world either. Or come here to fix the world that was doing fine before we meddled in it.

Imagine that you are a cat curled up by the fire, or a fish swimming smoothly through water. Do you have the kind of mind to create worry and upset? No. All animals are without the ego mind. So if you want to know what it feels like not to have an ego-mind, picture yourself as any animal, plant, or rock in nature—living harmoniously, dying or dissolving when the time has come, with no struggle involved.

The azalea isn’t saying, “I hate that yellow daisy over there. Yellow should be banned in nature. And look at how fresh and young that daisy is too, while I’m on my way out. It’s not fair. I should live forever. Because I’m special and above all others. Maybe, in my next life, I’ll reincarnate as an orchid.”

The deer isn’t saying, “When will I get married? I don’t want to be the one deer left behind in the thousands of herds.” The street mutt isn’t envying the pampered lapdog and planning a rebellion against the forces of nature that landed her in the streets. The snake isn’t protesting about not having legs and demanding compensation.

Imagine yourself as part of nature (which you actually are), with forces acting on you beyond your control, and you will know what it feels like to be without an ego mind. It is the only time, as a human, that you will feel free.

What is the difference between Buddhists who believe that there is no end to enlightenment and those who say that everyone eventually becomes enlightened?

11/5/2023

The way the human mind interprets “enlightenment” is that it is an end point. Like the end of a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Once we are enlightened, then all life is solved. We won't have any problems, there will be eternal peace of mind (an oxymoron), and we will never experience suffering again.

But enlightenment is not an end point. It is a context in which we view all of life and death. It is a space from which we perceive all the manifestations of life. It is not a state of perpetual bliss and ecstasy of escape. It is ability to be in the present moment no matter what is happening or what we are doing. That is what enlightenment was to Buddha and that is what he revealed.

He also taught how to live so the present moment reveals itself to us in profound ways that enriches our inner being, our Souls. He understood that our Soul is always and eternally Here and Now. The future, or enlightenment in the future, is not going to bring us anything. It is all about the Now because the Soul is ageless and doesn’t have anything to do with time, or any of the other human ways of measuring experience.

Let’s look at the word “believe.” “Believe” means we are willing to follow because we are not sure but it makes sense to us. “I believe it to be true,” is different from “I know it to be true.” We believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy when we were kids. Then, when we grow up, we know that Santa was a wonderful invention to make kids happy at Christmas. We don’t “believe” in him anymore.

Buddhism is not about following beliefs. It is about a proven method of alleviating suffering, both mental and physical.
Believing that everyone will eventually become enlightened is just one more statement saying, “I’m not sure but this guy sounds good so I’ll go with what he says.” That time is necessary to be enlightened.

The Soul is already enlightened, for it is not time-bound. It is eternal and doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That is what defines the Soul, as opposed to all the other things that come and go, including our bodies. Finding our way back to our Soul and deep inner peace has nothing to do with hoping (believing) that someone is right because it makes us feel better about where humanity is going.

There is no end to enlightenment, as there is no end to Source Energy of the Universe. It is always Now. It’s not like we have to work our way into heaven. Our Souls are already there. So to “believe” that everyone will go to a heaven of enlightenment is a nice fairy tale to adhere to, but enlightenment has nothing to do with believing what other people say or any religious system that will supposedly get us there.

What is enlightenment? Is it just a myth or can it be achieved by meditating deeply?

6/27/2023

Enlightenment is not living in a fireworks display of ecstasy and spectacular mystical experiences. It is freedom from the constant onrush of fearful thoughts and feelings that disturb our peace and make our lives miserable. It is being in tune with the underlying energy and harmony of the Universe and it is directly experienced through the soul, heart, and gut—-not the mind.

Our need to survive has caused us to evolve into anxious, fearful creatures. The happy, unwary human contemplating the sunset was quickly consumed by the sabertooth tiger. The paranoid, wary human, who was startled by the rustling in the bushes and was constantly on the lookout for possible predators, lived another day. And so, through time, our minds enabled us to rise to the top of the food chain. Our nervousness and planning for all possible dangerous outcomes allowed us to dominate the planet but also not be happy while doing it.

Our minds, though brilliant problem-solvers and repositories of knowledge, create an enormous amount of distress and resultant physical ailments. Part of the problem is that the mind either abides in the past, thinking over hurts, bad experiences, and times of emotional turmoil. Or it rushes into the future, generating cascades of fear about what might or might not happen. Only the Soul, the inner connection to the perfect harmony of universal Source Energy is the gateway to the underlying peace of the eternal Now.

Enlightenment is finding our path to our Soul and abiding in it regardless of the changing circumstances of our lives. It is the direct experience of the eternal Now.

Many people think that enlightenment is some sort of mystical trance that allows us to be numb to all the difficulties of life. And that for the enlightened person, everything cooperates to create perfect physical comfort. They think that only a few people with spotless karma can reach it. Or that they need to take some mind-altering drug to get there. Or that they need to meditate for many hours a day in excruciating positions to achieve it. All this comes from a mistaken idea that enlightenment is “out there” and we have to go through the paces to “get there.”

It’s not “out there.” It is within—but few people can sit quietly enough to find it. As Pascal said, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." We need a constant onrush of companionship, input from social media, the news, whatever. Anything but be alone with ourselves. We can’t abide it. We can’t endure it. Yet being alone within ourselves is the gateway to inner peace, or enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not the result of a recipe for the “perfect life” with all the physical comforts taken care of for the duration. It is a context in which we experience our lives—no matter what comes our way. And it is our capacity to live in and appreciate the present moment—instead of thinking it is somewhere else—just not here and now.

It is simple but not easy.

Not easy, because the mind is automatic, repetitive, and thinks it’s helping us with its constant stream of “what ifs” from the moment we wake up. It justifies itself, wants to prove it's right all the time, and is looking out for “what’s wrong with this picture?”. It can be brilliant, but it does not know the way to happiness because it can’t live in the Now. Only the Soul abides in that eternal Now state. So enlightenment is finding our path to the Soul and then staying there. That is my definition of meditation, however we get there—mantras, music, being in nature, mandalas—it is the solitary contemplation of the Infinite.

It doesn’t come through any major activities or accumulation of knowledge. It comes first through a recognition of the human time-bound mental obsessions. Then it comes from finding that pathway to your inner heart, where all is still, at peace, and wise. The way I do this is to sit quietly, pay attention to my breath, open my palms upward on my lap, and say, “I am open and receptive to all vibrational levels of eternal joy and harmony.” I watch my thoughts as they cavort around but I realize that I am not my thoughts. They are just being generated by the automatic mind. They are not me.

Enlightenment does not mean that life is solved once and for all. Or that the mind won’t continue with its acrobatics. These activities are hard-wired into our minds and bodies. It also doesn’t mean that we have turned into perfect saints. We will still feel anger and all the unpleasant emotions—but we notice that these upsets will diminish as we practice abiding in inner peace.

Earthquakes, fires, and illness will still happen. The death of loved ones, cruelty, and war will still happen on this planet. This is the endless activity of physical existence and no amount of enlightenment will stop a tsunami. But if we are caught up in the inevitable, we can view it from the standpoint of the Eternal Soul and therefore not live and die in agony and terror. We understand instead, the eternal aspect of us, which is not separate from the unchanging and immortal Energy of the Universe, which has no beginning or ending.

Finally, enlightenment is being in touch with eternity. We don’t fear physical death. We don’t fear the end of this collection of memories and conditioning that we call our personality. It is a state of emotional freedom and it has nothing to do with being a devotee of a particular set of religious beliefs. It is the way out of suffering that all the great beings with spiritual insight have discovered. They have pointed the way but we must find our own path.

What are the pros and cons of a woman joining an ashram and staying there for her entire life?

6/8/2023

The pros and cons for a woman joining an ashram and staying there for the rest of her life are slightly different from those for men who choose to join a monastic path. Both want to accelerate their understanding of the unseen, powerful world of the spirit and manifest it in a way that erases their individual egos.

The pros:

---Less emphasis on physical appearance, especially according to cultural norms of beauty.---

Women all over the world spend a huge amount of time and money on making themselves look good so they will fit in, or receive praise and validation, or to just not be rejected. This is all a function of the frightened ego-mind, which is constantly chasing after fixing things and appearing to have it all “made” so someone will love you. If you are in an ashram, simple hygiene is all you need and your inner light provides the rest.

You are not concerned with shopping and accumulating fashionable or fabulous clothes because you wear a simple habit, uniform, or have a way of dressing that does not emphasize the external. Therefore, you have time to devote to long contemplation; serving others to eliminate suffering, and keeping inner peace without distractions.

---No need to continually be at the beck and call of husbands and children.---

For centuries, women’s biology has been their destiny. That is why we didn’t have many great female composers, mathematicians, painters or even writers until the 19th century. Up to that point the majority of women were engaged in the endless tasks of looking after children, cooking, tending to the men, and keeping house. Even if they had servants, their time was taken up by traditional household and social maintenance. The great female writers of the 19th century such as the Brontes and Jane Austen, were not married and thus had time for intellectual pursuits, spiritual development, and self-expression.

Now we have birth control and are not forced into the endless sacrifices of motherhood time every time our husbands need to fulfill their urges (or we need to fulfill ours). But still, with all the information overload and being bombarded by our attention-seeking society, it is more demanding than ever to rear children. And it may be a thankless job, if the Souls are not in alignment with ours and they may leave us after all the love and passion we put into them.

And so a woman might want to opt out of all of this compulsion and just live simply and in peace. If you want to surround yourself with women who are sincerely on the path to Soul and Spirit, this could be just the right place. The rest of the world does not encourage spirituality and even laughs at it if you bring it up as a topic at a party. In general the world thinks that there’s something weird about you. If you are in an ashram, everyone is on the same page of finding their inner joy through praise and service.

---No need to be appealing to men to bolster validity or to fulfill sexual needs.---

Again, we are biological creatures, driven by certain compulsions that can be beyond our control. Sexual needs can cause us to be in relationships that are far from spiritually nourishing. It might be best for some women to just opt out of the whole dance. These women feel best when they bypass their bodily needs and pour all their passion into the radiant beauty of the Perfect Universe.

---De-emphasizing a life of tasks and material maintenance---

Most people’s jobs are repetitive and are dedicated to making the rich, richer. Or, if you are an entrepreneur, you will be spending 18-hours a day to keep your business viable. Taking care of a house is exhausting and it just gets dirty quickly anyway. And it is all for the narrow needs of just one family. In the ashram, you are still doing tasks, but they are dedicated to a higher good and it feels like it is worth the effort.

Cons:

---You don’t need to be away from the world to do things with mindfulness, grace, and praise.---

Just changing location or venue is no guarantee that the ego-mind won’t find another way to act up. As a spiritually grounded being, you can be in the midst of screaming babies and find that place of peace within. You don’t need to go anywhere to find the Heart of the Universe.

Sometimes an ashram can be filled with spiritual one-upmanship, as in: “You’re just a novice. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.” The hierarchical structure may be just as restricting as being in regular society and just as snobby.

Even if the surroundings are different, the ego mind and its fearful tricks can pipe up in fresh, new ways that leave us stewing and wondering if we made a really wrong choice. Being in the ashram and burning all your financial bridges so you can’t back out of the commitment, forces you to eradicate the ego and even find others who can assist you. For your back will once again, be up against the wall.

---It can be a form of escape from jobs, household maintenance, and financial concerns.---

Getting a job and performing repetitive, boring tasks for the sake of making the rich get richer is not emotionally or spiritually fulfilling. Facing piles of laundry after a day at the job to be able to pay for housing is one example of the treadmill of material maintenance that can block our access to peace of mind. And so some women want to opt out of all of it.

At the ashram, most of the decisions are made for you. You follow a certain protocol. You, as an individual ego, are being erased. You are like a raindrop that has merged with the pond. And you don’t have to bother with all the concerns that grown-ups have to face. You don’t have to worry about money and all your food is provided for you. It is like being a kid again in some ways. Is this a pro or a con? It depends on how you look at it.

Who is Eckhart Tolle? Why should we read him? What is his background?

5/30/2023

Let’s begin by saying that nobody “should” read anything. Either what someone has written resonates within our consciousness and inner being, or it does not. No one is saying we should read or listen to anyone. However, if what someone is imparting to us leads to a new understanding of life and who we are, then we will want to hear what they are communicating. Either we see that the relief Tolle is bringing is of value to us, or it isn’t.

Eckhart Tolle is a well-educated man who is fluent in several languages and studied Psychology, Philosophy, and Literature at the University of London. He also was in a postgraduate program at Cambridge towards his PhD, from which he dropped out.

But his education, and even his intelligence and ability to write and speak effectively, have nothing to do with the insight he brings to the human condition. Knowledge and education were of no comfort to him during the fretful nights and anxious days that plagued him for many years. Education, learning, degrees, and credentials have nothing whatsoever to do with grasping what he came here to teach.

His teachings focus on the power and beauty of being in the present moment. This awakened state of consciousness goes beyond the unfortunate tricks of the ego and its non-stop tangle of thoughts. If we are going to survive as a species and not wreck most of the planet in the process, this awakening is the essential next step in human evolution.

All the ancient spiritual communicators have brought this same message. Tolle just relates it to our times. He chronicles how the human ego, unique only to humans, causes untold suffering and destruction—as witnessed by history. With 110 million estimated people who have been put to death under communism alone, the rest of the death toll resulting from humans inflicting violence on each other is monstrous. So he is putting this ancient philosophy in the context of historical as well as modern developments that affect the peace and well-being of each one of us.

So, nobody “should” read his reflections on how the ego-mind works just because he is the latest authority on how we should live our lives and win the game of life. But if we passionately want to find a way out of the knots the ego-mind, which cannot abide in the present moment, then he is there to guide the way.

How do you know you are an immortal individual infinitely aware spiritual being?

5/5/2023

Practical knowledge can change through the years and is based on experimentation, observation, facts, information, and skills acquired through education. Spiritual knowledge is based on awareness and individual experience of another energy field, often unavailable to the physical senses.

And so we really can’t “know” that we are immortal individual infinitely aware spiritual beings. We can only experience this vibrational field. We cannot find this in books or talks. Others can point the way through these methods, but we have to have the direct experience of this infinite awareness to be the “knower” of this state of consciousness.

This state of awareness comes through many ways but the easiest for me is experiencing the peace of being in the present moment, the joy of a loving heart, and gratitude and wonderment at the mystery of life. It is not something to know and say, “I’ve got it all solved and I know it.”

Hidebound knowledge is based on the past. It is established. We know something to be true because other people told us so and wrote it in books. Knowledge has the quality of being written in stone. It is not considered to be a fluid, changing thing. Yet we can still find many cases of “facts” that were thought to be common knowledge and now are completely debunked. For example, at one time we “knew” that the earth was the center of the universe, that the earth was flat, and that bloodletting of already weak and sickly patients was a cure-all for what ailed them.

As De Bruin says, “… the human mind is loyal to what it has known and used for a longer period, even when confronted with the incorrectness of that knowledge.”

Fluid, cosmic knowledge (in this case awareness) changes, grows, and is not confined to the past. It is experienced now. When that awareness comes to us, we are the Knower of The Now. We are the watcher. It is something we can only hint about. It is difficult to express through language and is not subject to debate about whether we are right or wrong. Ultimately, we feel it in our heart and gut and it has very little to do with the human mind except as a means of communication.

How did Eckart Tolle become enlightened, and what was his life like before he became enlightened?

4/29/2023

Eckart Tolle had been an extremely unhappy and depressed child and young man. His parents weren’t getting along, finally split, and he felt the atmosphere of joylessness in his surroundings. He felt alienated at school and even dropped out for a while. His excellently logical mind and personal experience drove him to reason that life was a meaningless round of pain with a few moments of short-lived happiness mixed in just to keep us going in the quest for survival.

Then, one night, while he was lying awake being tortured by his endless stream of anxious and sad thoughts, he said, “I can’t stand myself anymore!” This led him to reason that there must be two selves—one that can’t stand the other. It was such a weird contradiction, it “blew his mind.” Who is this self that he can’t take anymore?

This question cleared his mind and he was able to go back to sleep, peacefully. The next morning, the world appeared bright and clean to him—sparkling like a diamond. The birdsong outside his window took on the dimensions of a brilliant diamond as well. All of the world was new and fresh and he felt deep gratitude for these first-time revelations. For he saw there was a Big Me (the source energy of the universe localized within his body) and the Little Me (a frightened animal, trying to ensure its survival in an uncaring world).

This began his period of life when he acknowledged his immortal, spiritual Self for the first time. It was an act of grace and was also because he was brought to his knees by despair. This is how it happens to some. Some are initiated by a guru, others get it through holy visions, some through divine communication, some through shamanic or psychedelic rituals. Enlightenment was bestowed on Eckart Tolle through grace. Grace can be likened to heavenly intervention but the ground needs to be prepared for us to let it in (usually our back is against the wall).

He was ready to receive the inspiration that brought on enlightenment. He was directly experiencing the eternal present moment. He dropped out of his academic career to sit on a park bench and contemplate his discovery about the unseen world. He was deeply happy for the first time. His family thought he was crazy. But he knew within his Soul that he had found a path. The path is always being in the Now and that is where he lives to this day.

What are some reasons why the book "The Awakening of Intelligence" by J. Krishnamurti is highly regarded?

4/27/2023

I am glad to hear that J. Krishnamurti’s The Awakening of Intelligence is highly regarded. For I was under the impression that people have moved on to more spectacular gurus, that offer more entertainment.

Krishamurti was serious about understanding what is really holy about life and all its permutations. He wasn’t about ceremonies, dancing and writhing around in ecstasy, and putting on a dramatic display of how “enlightened” we are. He was more like what Jesus said when someone asked him how to pray. He wasn’t for the big public grandstanding of the ego, showing how religious one is and how one is going to “heaven.” He said,

“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
—Matthew 6:5-6

Krishnamurti is about the inward journey towards finding out what is really true for us. Not what others tell us, not what we believe because we were brought up that way, and not because it is a trendy lifestyle to be caught up in Bikram yoga and Osho’s sexual pyrotechnics because we are lost and lonely.

I am not surprised that Krishanmurti has stood the test of time. I am just surprised that in this period of mass amusement, passing as spirituality, that he would be embraced at all. He is not kidding and he is not nice. He outright tells us to look within and find the wisdom that resides in silence and stillness. It’s not effortful. It’s a quiet space that discards all the trapping of what everyone else tells us is “the Truth.”