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.

How does your medical understanding of the body deepen your spiritual belief in a soul's journey beyond physical death?

11/4/2025

The body exists because of forces beyond our control. We think we are these bodies because they demand so much attention and maintenance, just as we think we are our minds that continually cycle through thoughts. Yet the body, mind, and all that is physical, are manifestations of forces of energy that are far beyond our control.

Medical science seeks to understand how to keep this body healthy and alive through external means of control. But it is clueless about our Eternal Soul because Soul cannot be tested under laboratory conditions. Yet its laws follow universal patterns that are beyond the physical and cross over into the metaphysical.

The body, while alive, is performing innumerable tasks far beyond our sanction. Circulating our blood, producing hormones, digesting food, eliminating toxins, are just a few of these activities. All of them are beyond our conscious will. They are manifestations of the Divine Intelligence of the Universe that medical science sometimes reveals to us through observation and study. Physicians can give advice about how to feed ourselves and keep ourselves safe. They can put things back into place or remove them.

But that is only one part of the system. The healing process is completely beyond their control, just as is the weather and the tides. Doctors can help the natural processes take place but healing depends on how we care for own bodies. If we think the doctor will heal us after years of abusing ourselves, it is like believers who think they can present themselves at confession and that will take care of all of the mess they made.

Seeing how little control we have as ego-driven entities deepens as life goes on. We see how limited the effect of medicine is on overall peace and joy—both qualities of the soul. It may diminish suffering short term, but long-term it is a failure. The force that drives us to discover universal laws, also drove us to discover medical practices that are in keeping with these laws. But because they are only focused on the body, which goes away, they are not based on the Spirit, which is eternal.

When I was a young mother I saw many of the universal spiritual laws demonstrating themselves through my body. Breast-feeding a baby is a great example of The Law of Supply and Demand. The babies demanded what they needed through their own instincts and each time my body produced the right amount of milk. The babies grew healthy and strong for six months on breast milk alone before I added other items to their menu.

The Law of Supply and Demand is an economic law and also a tenet of Medicine. Looking at it spiritually, this taught me to actively seek my soul. Our soul, the non-dying, universal aspect of us. is already attuned to universal laws. And in this way the eternal Universe reveals itself to us.

It took effort to birth the babies, showing me, once again, the participatory effort that the spiritual life also demands. I learned that if I want a lifeline to the Spirit, I must show up and meet the universe at least half-way. Just as a doctor can tell a patient to stop smoking but the patient actually has to put down the cigarette.

So we must meet the universe at least half way, yet still understand that universal laws are beyond our control. Before they appeared, the babies were growing within me, through no effort of my own. I had nothing to do with what sperm met what egg or any of the developmental markers in fetuses. All I had to do was participate by feeding myself and care for this gift—the body, the great teacher of spiritual laws. Part of taking care was check-ups with a wise doctor, who did the least amoung of interference possible.

Correctly practiced medicine shows we participate in life but we do not direct it. In spiritual life, the more spiritually aware we become, the more miraculous it all becomes to us. The physical body, with its attendant mind, is a beautiful illustration of a larger pattern. But it is also a painful experience, if that is who we think we are. It is always demanding something during our waking hours. These demands can blind us to our own spiritual connection to the powerful forces of energy and information that are the core of spiritual life.

When the body dies, it is a husk that demonstrates laws of entropy and decay, both of which are important parts of the dance of physical life. But these laws are about physics, chemistry, and biology—which are the concerns of medical science. Medical science grew from our soul’s yearning for release from suffering. Whether it has accomplished this task is another issue. It is a small segment of human endeavor to control and understand the physical world.

My independent study of medicine led me to appreciate the universal spiritual laws even more. They shine through every artistic and scientific endeaver. The soul’s yearning to find itself. When Medicine steps in to artificially circumvent the laws of nature, it usually fails. When it becomes a system of control based on financial greed, it certainly has missed its original intent. But in its purest form, it is a beautiful source of wisdom that leads to spiritual discovery.

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.

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.

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.”

Can two people be spiritually connected before meeting in person? Are there any examples of this?

9/29/2024

The Spirit or Soul is eternal. That is why we can be connected with someone who is important in our physical life long before we actually meet them. That connection is a Soul Mate connection and is not bound by time. We have been together in many physical lives as well as when we did not assume the shape of a body. We have been together forever and we take on a separate body temporarily to work out our own Soul’s expression.

Soul Mates are not always peace and love relationships. Sometimes they exist for reasons of our natural growth and expansion (in the expanding universe) and can actually be difficult or painful. But they are necessary for our Soul’s innate joy in learning and growing. We might have concepts in our heads about what Soul Mates are. Maybe we will resist the person who shows up again after we have already met them. When we meet them may not be what our imagination wants to envision.

I have had numerous incidents in this life of people showing up after I have dreamed about them. Other times it is the feeling of deja vu. You know you have known this person before, even though you just met. You feel familiar and they even look familiar. You even said the same things as before to each other. This is one portal into the ways of the Spirit. They are uncanny and it is best for us to not try and figure them out, for they are miraculous.

Dreams are one channel through which my Soul Mates have prefigured themselves before I met them. I had dreamed of a very important person in my life, long before I met him. I saw him in detail in many dreams. Then one day, I was in a crowded tram in Pittsburgh, I saw him walking out of Kauffman’s department store. The next day, he was sitting in my college dormitory. This was an all-girls school, so for him to be there was unusual.

A few weeks later, I randomly attended a gathering at Carnegie Mellon University, and he was there, walked up and introduced himself to me. And we completed the connection, which was life-changing for both of us.

Meeting the Soul in one body and then many years later meeting that Soul again can happen too. This occurred enough for me to take notice of the pattern, with the people even having the same names. An example: My best friends through different times of life were named Andrea.

Dear friends when I was a child showed up later as doppelgangers but with completely different backgrounds. Yet they expressed that same quality of Soul that I recognized from before. They looked like identical versions of themselves but were older.

People that fascinated me for no apparent reason, showed up later in my life to have significant impact on my growth and spiritual understanding. I never understood why, when I was 12 years old I was intrigued by a humble little man who did menial work for my father. When he’d come up the path to “borrow” money from my dad I stared and stared. Why would a child of that age be so absorbed with this insignificant-looking man that had nothing to do with her? Because later in life, Spirit arranged that we would meet again. He became on of my most cherished teachers and looked like his twin!

The quantity of these experiences brought further awe and wonder at the ways of the Spirit. They confirmed my understanding of unseen forces that do not conform to our ideas of how the world works. Many people would say what I have related is delusional or some kind of whacky chemical or neuronal/electrical reaction going on in my brain. But no. This happened too many times for it to be just a self-generated fluke. This is has been my recurrent experience and I am deeply grateful to be open to it.

Can a person with a low IQ still achieve spiritual development and enlightenment? If so, what are some ways in which they can achieve this?

9/16/2024

Intellect and cognitive development have nothing to do with the enlightened state. Thinking that we are highly evolved intellectuals can actually be an impediment to spiritual understanding. We think we are so smart and have all the answers, or at least educate ourselves to be cerebral and worthy of self-esteem and the admiration of others. But the intellect comes from the brain. Enlightenment comes from the heart and gut.

A low IQ person may have a highly-developed heart center. This may come from a state of grace. They may be gifted in the inclinations of the heart, which is the center of love, peace, and trust in the Universe. Heart-centered people do not have to go through exercises, practices, and meditations to achieve spiritual development. They are already there. It is just a matter of discovering it and letting it flow. They don’t offer as much resistance to the inspiration of Divine Intelligence. They don’t examine it. They go with it.

I once had a trainer in the gym who had Down Syndrome. He used his intuition and spiritual perception to design the perfect exercises for me. He was also an athlete in the Special Olympics. He was in peak condition and inspired me to new heights and fun in working out. It was never a struggle with him. Even though it was about physical achievement, it was also a current that passed from his heart to mine, making a lasting impression. I still use his techniques. The total experience stays with me to this day.

Low IQ doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have natural intelligence that comes from channeling the underlying intelligence of at the core of all creation.
Not standing in the way of the abundant flow of the Source Energy of the Universe is a more effective way to receive enlightenment that packing our brains with book-learning and cleverness of thought, meditating for hours in uncomfortable positions, or any other activity that people do in search of enlightenment.

I am not diminishing the wonders of the developed mind and its manifestations. But if we look around us, we will see that our high IQs have not led to happiness or to the health of the planet. So let’s not put too much stock in intellectual development as a path to enlightenment.

Is it possible to return to a "normal" life after having a spiritual awakening, or does it permanently change your life?

9/15/2024

After my spiritual awakening dawned on me, I dropped out of society. All the things people strove for to “make it,” to find relief from the constant turmoil of the human ego-mind, were meaningless to me. I didn’t want what other people wanted. I wanted the “Peace of God that passeth understanding.” And I wanted to explore the spaciousness of the background instead of being focussed solely on the foreground.

I owned nothing for 5 years, including the clothes I wore, which I borrowed. The only money I had was from odd jobs for the moment. Most of the food I ate, I grew. I devoted myself to living in the light of the Divine Consciousness of the Universe. I studied the great spiritual masters and lived in inspiration. That isn’t to say I didn’t experience physical difficulties but I felt courageous and free.

Yet certain necessities of survival and family matters propelled me back into the “normal” life. Circumstances made having a regular income a must at that time. Though dropping out was appropriate for me before, now it was appropriate for me to bring the context of enlightenment into the regular workaday world. It brings to mind the old Zen Buddhist saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

The meaning of the quote is that:

Enlightenment does not change your life. Life will still go on being life, with pain, sorrow, loss, suffering, with happiness and good times too. You just view it in a different context and don’t take it personally. You are not its puppet. You are the observer.
Enlightenment is not about fireworks and wild ecstasy. It is simple and has to do with performing simple things mindfully. You are living in the now and not doing everything because you think the future will bring you salvation from your present unease. You are not putting yourself on display as a paragon of anything.
Before enlightenment, you still needed to chop wood for the fire. Now most of us don’t chop wood on a daily basis, but when this proverb came out, that is what we did if we wanted a fire. The fire didn’t appear magically when we wanted it. It’s the spirit in which we do any task that is the underlying hallmark of enlightenment. Also, even if we don’t go down to the river now to fetch a bucket of water, our bodies would perish if we didn’t get the water for ourselves from the faucet or the grocery store.

No, I never returned to “normal” after enlightenment swept me away. Yet I still look and behave life a normal person. I am by no means a perfect saint. I laugh at my weaknesses and laugh at my strengths as well. And I don’t take credit for any of it. I am grateful for the gift!

What is spiritual therapy?

9/1/2023

Spiritual therapy is a process that enables people to discover, or find their way back to, who they are as Eternal Souls. Unlike psychotherapy, It is not about coping strategies or life hacks so we can get all that we want while we are alive. It is not about treating the mind and its illnesses through talking about past hurts and traumas and or reliving them. It is not about finding the cause and effect in childhood upsets in this lifetime.

It actually has nothing to do with the thinking mind at all—except to identify the mental patterns that are hard-wired into every brain, causing us anxiety and endless unhappiness. The premise of spiritual therapy is that the ego-mind is a difficult entity to manage if we let it run wild, even if we have the best of intentions of being happy and good. To use the mind to treat the mind is part of the problem and not the solution.

That is why so much of psychotherapy ends up relying on drugs to dull out, or change, emotions. And that is why it is such a failure. (Look around at any big city street, the self-medicating homeless, and you’ll see what I mean). And in certain cases, such as personality disorders, it is completely helpless to effect major changes.

Psychotherapy can teach proven coping strategies for getting on in life. It can make people feel better because they need someone to talk to and tell their story to. Sometimes that is enough for the time being. But it does not address the question, “Why do we want to strive so hard to get on in life when we are one of 8.5 billion people on the planet, who all want the same thing and are willing to kill at times to get it?”

Psychology also does not even approach one of people’s greatest fears: The fear of death. It doesn’t address what happens during death at all, except for such works as Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. In that case too, it is about a series of behavioral and emotional stages we go through, rather that what is the meaning of our death in the context of our lives. Or our lives in the context of death? And if there is any death regarding the Soul, which by definition is eternal. Spiritual therapy tackles these questions head-on.

Spiritual therapy employs certain techniques to guide students into understanding and experiencing the immortal nature of their Soul(s). It tunes them into a place beyond the endless churning of the mind and into an internal space of deep quiet and timelessness. It requires a lot of introspection on the part of the student but it is fun and liberating. It has no side effects and works in proportion to how aware the student is, with much emphasis on the burning desire to find that place of joy, independent of external circumstances.

Once students find their inner light, other forms of therapy are helpful, yet superficial and shallow because they do not answer the question, “Why are we doing all this? Is it just to survive? And is survival of the physical organism enough of a reason for enduring so much suffering?” Spiritual therapy answers with, “You are not the perishable body. Find out who you really are.”