My spiritual blog & articles - My Spiritual Coach

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 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.”

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.

Plato said that all souls are eternal and indestructible. Do you agree?

5/4/2023

I agree with Plato that Soul is, by definition, eternal and indestructible. Bodies and minds come and go. Everything physical withers away and dies, from the tiniest one-celled animal to the whale. Mountains turn into grains of sand on the beach, worn away by time and weather. And deep rivers have dried up into canyons.

Only one thing is eternal—the fundamental Energy of the Universe, which never had a beginning and has no ending. It always was and always will be. It takes many, many forms, but always originates from the One Eternal Source. That is also true about the Soul because it is through our Soul that we partake of the Universe. It participates in us and we participate in it. But most of us don’t recognize the, because we are run by the mind-stream of endless thoughts, fears, and regrets.

Yet deep within each of us, we know that the Soul we were when we are eleven years old is still the Soul we are now. And when we meet someone who is on the same vibrational level as our Soul, we feel a spiritual reaction. Our Souls are tuned into each other. We inherently know that there is something within us and surrounding us that can never die or be destroyed and we feel it in this connection too. It is in a state of growth and freedom, like the expanding Universe itself.

Plato understood that the Great One Source Energy is the fountain of all that is. And that within each of us, regardless of our individual characteristics, is Divine Consciousness. It’s just a matter of how much are we allowing into our fields of recognition and how much of it we are uncovering. For it is all there, like a lightbulb covered over with duct tape. Take away the layers of the obscuring tape and you will find the eternal light of the Soul within.

What is the relationship between depression and spiritual awareness? Does being spiritually awakened help depressives cope with their condition?

4/4/2023

Simply put, depression is lack of spiritual awareness. Depression is being lost in the quagmire of the ego-mind, the “little me,” and not seeing a way out. It is endless hopelessness and anger turned inward. It is being upset, anxious, and sluggish, lacking in energy. And it is being dragged along by a fearful mind that is bent on survival above anything else, including happiness.

This is because the ego-mind and it’s constant babble shuts out the spiritual vibrational fields that bring inner peace, comfort, joy, and appreciation of all the beauty around us. It focusses on “what’s wrong with this picture?”, finding a flaw in everything and then zoning in on that flaw. This includes finding fault with ourselves, others, and with the world. Of course, at one time this enabled us to survive and rise to the top of the food chain. But now, like the appendix, it is a useless function that causes more harm than good.

Spiritual awareness, which is tuning into another level of vibration and being receptive to it, is the only way out of depression. People have tried drugs for centuries but they are only a quick fix. They usually need augmentation as the ego-mind finds its ways around them (like a fox trying to get into a henhouse). They also do not build coping skills. Some drugs have opened peoples’ consciousness to non-physical realms but they are also only a temporary doorway.

Tuning into the underlying Source Energy of the Universe brings us into an awareness that we are more than our rambunctious minds. We are not so apt to be carried away by the “little me” and it’s perpetual worries. When we allow the natural well-being of All That Is permeate us we are actually harnessing that energy and we can freely flow with life now. We are not stuck in the past and we are not worried over the future because we live in Eternity. This is the only lasting source of happiness, joy, and excitement about being alive. We step back from the mind and all its anxiety and depressive tendencies and allow ourselves to experience eternity, space, freedom and move into the vibrational space of Spirit.

Spiritual awareness needs practice to get there for most people. It’s worth it to find our way to emotional freedom and joy. All other methods, including talk therapy and drugs have been enormous failures, with a few individual exceptions. Also, I am not vilifying our thinking apparatus, the miraculous mind that is capable of creativity, problem-solving, and communication. That aspect of the mind is in keeping with the miracles of the Universe. Being in contact with Source Energy sharpens those aspects of our thinking because we are not giving so much attention to turmoil and unhappiness.

Spiritual awareness also helps people who have chemical or neurological brain imbalances. For they are able to recognize the tricks of depressive thinking. They begin to see how the fretful mind works and are able to put it in its place. They learn to watch their thoughts and even laugh at them, instead of being dragged down into the quicksand. It takes skill and training to do this when we have depressive tendencies. But it’s worth it to uncover the shining light that has always been there: Our Eternal Soul.

Did Oscar Wilde believe in soul mates?

11/1/2022

Oscar Wilde went to prison because of his soulmate relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde ruined his life to be with him. That can be a sure sign of soulmate bonds, which sometimes do not end happily. Though Wilde did not specifically use the term “soulmate,” he refers to the same feelings soulmates elicit, especially in his letter to Douglas.

These letters refer to being together in the afterlife, the divine and otherworldly nature of their love, and Wilde’s inability to be without him, even after he treated Wilde in a cruel and cowardly manner. Here are some statements from Wilde to his beloved, from various letters, which state the infinity of a soulmate interaction:

“I must see you soon — you are the divine thing I want — the thing of grace and genius. . . .”

“Let us always be infinitely dear to each other, as indeed we have been always. . . .I think of you daily, and am always devotedly yours.”

Wilde says that he cannot be without Douglas, no matter what, which many soulmates feel. They often take it literally and many documented cases show they even die together, though this was not the case for Wilde and Douglas:

“It is really absurd. I can’t live without you. You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your boyish beauty, the bright sword-play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north and south, towards sun and moon — and, above all, yourself.”

In this excerpt, Wilde places their relationship in the context of life and death:

“Death and Love seem to walk on either hand as I go through life: they are the only things I think of, their wings shadow me.”

Here, Wilde talks about his soul’s yearning, and brings in eternity (now and forever) once again.

“London is a desert without your dainty feet… Write me a line and take all my love — now and forever.”

And finally, we see eternity mentioned again. He was sure of the deathlessness of their love. He wrote this just before he got out of prison for practicing “The love the dares not say its name.” Here he talks about meeting Douglas in the afterlife. This is what gives him hope after the ordeals he suffered in this life to continue his contact with Lord Douglas:

“This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonour be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. Since the hope, nay rather the certainty, of meeting you again in some world is the goal and the encouragement of my present life, ah! I must continue to live in this world because of that.”

Therefore, we can see, that though the term “soulmate” is not explicitly used, Wilde feels in his deepest heart and Soul, that this love is the most profound relationship of his life. He has a “divine belief” it it. And he feels that it will continue forever. It will never die. And that is what characterizes soulmates.

Does consciousness depend on the brain, or is it dependent on something else like soul or spirit?

10/23/2022

There are different levels of consciousness. They range from simple mental awareness, depending on the brain, to body-levels of consciousness that include the gut and the endocrine systems. We also exist within a higher level of consciousness, called Cosmic Consciousness, which is the organizing intelligence of the Universe.

The level of awareness that most call consciousness is dependent on the brain and body. It would go away if we starved ourselves to death or didn’t drink anything for 10 days. That level of consciousness, which is what helps us survive and navigate through the physical world, would just vanish. When we are brain dead, we don’t know our name, gender, or any of our physical attributes.

Yet we also have a circulating nervous system, or second brain or layer of consciousness. It is called “the Enteric Nervous System.” It is located inside of our gut. It causes us to feel emotions, such as butterflies in our stomach when we’re excited or nervous. Or feeling sick to our stomach when we’re frightened or repulsed. The Enteric Nervous System is made up of more than 100 million nerve cells. These cells line our gastrointestinal tract that runs from our esophagus all the way down to our rectum.

This second brain communicates directly with the brain in our head. But it is non-verbal. This is called the brain-gut connection or gut brain link. For a long time, doctors thought that anxiety and stress were the root cause of gastrointestinal problems, but it’s actually now thought to be the opposite. Poor gut health can send signals to the central nervous system and influence our moods, and how we perceive the world.

The endocrine system, our hormones, are also another layer of consciousness within the Enteric Nervous System. Hormones and other neurotransmitters travel along the gut-brain axis to send chemical messages. So we now know that he brain is not the only origin of thinking, feeling, and the operation of intelligence. “Messenger molecules” associated with the brain circulate throughout our body via the bloodstream. They also affect our health, the way we think and perceive our environment and other people.

As I said, outside the brain, intelligence and consciousness is nonverbal. For example, the immune system can identify and fight invading bacteria and viruses, and is sometimes called “the floating brain.” Yet it does not use language to communicate. It can be influenced by our thinking but it can also influence our thinking, causing us to have moods and other reactions, inducing ill health.

Then there is Cosmic Consciousness. That is the overall, underlying organizing intelligence of the entire Universe, in which we live. We abide within this level of consciousness and it is beyond our control. Even after we are brain dead, that level of consciousness, of which we are a part, exists for eternity. That is our Soul. It is felt within our hearts as well as all around us. Most have to enter a mystical state to perceive this level of consciousness. Yet, even people in a coma exist within this Cosmic Consciousness, for it is the underlying structure of the universe and all that is.

In other words, our Cosmic Consciousness is using the physical brain and the circulating brain as processing devices, moving molecules where they are needed to create the sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell of the world. Cosmic Consciousness does not depend on the brain’s mechanics of thought, perception, and transforming raw data into the world around us. The brain depends on it.

Does stoicism have a cosmology and views of a soul or life beyond the human experience, or is it more so a philosophy of how to effectively live life?

10/18/2021

For the most part, people think of Stoicism as an extremely practical way of living. It is about accepting what we cannot change. It is also about living life to the fullest because we never know when it’s going to be our last day.
But the Stoics also had a cosmology and a concept of the soul.

They believed in what in Hinduism is called Prana—the breath of life. But they called it the pneuma The pneuma a mixture of the elements air and fire.

This pneuma is the creative force behind the all life, all inanimate objects, and the cosmos as a whole. The highest form of the pneuma is our soul, which they called the “psyche.”
The psyche is a a small part of the overall pneuma, which is the soul of God. Everything that exists is part of the pneuma in some way. Stoics divide it all into two categories:

Passive—matter and the material world, including us and our bodies

Active—divine purpose, or the “logos”

The Stoics saw the cosmos as an all-encompassing presence, with a mega-soul. This is where the god Zeus come into play. He’s the one that holds it all together with the power of the pneuma. And everything in the world is imbued with the pneuma.

I am completely in agreement with this view of the cosmos, minus Zeus. But I understand the need for humans to embody the forces of the Universe, and put a label on them, such as “Zeus” or “God.”

Is constant unbearable physical pain the result of one’s karma?

10/1/2021

Pain comes with the body and may not have anything to do with your karma. The body breaks down or has inflammation or it itches, it aches, it has stabbing pains. We can point to obvious physical causes: We stubbed our toe on the table, we cut ourselves, we got into an accident. On one level, pain is our friend because it is telling us that something needs to be attended to.

Maybe we didn’t eat as nutritionally as we could. Maybe we are careless or overindulge. We don’t want to blame all this on Karma. Karma isn’t like that anyway, giving out pain as punishment. It is more about how you face your life when you are ready to cross over. How much love did you show?

Humans often want all the pleasure of the body but we often don’t understand the yin/yang of pleasure and pain. Are we going to have all the pleasure and fun and none of the pain? That is not how the Universe manifests itself. Actually, people who cannot feel pain at all, die at an early age because they can bite their tongues or seriously injure themselves and just bleed to death because they have not sought help.

Don’t blame yourself for your pain. You don’t need that added psychlogical burden to your discomfort. Separate the pain from the suffering and see the difference. You can’t choose the pain, but you can choose the suffering (or not to suffer).
Yet pain has nothing to do with who you really are, as a Soul. The Soul feels nothing of pain or distress. It is not physical.

How does Eckart Tolle's "Power of Now" help people who live in countries which are a failed state with the lack of basic everything and not a glimmer of hope for improvements?

10/1/2021

All of us, no matter how wealthy or well-fed have found ourselves in terrible circumstances beyond our physical control. Eckart Tolle teaches methods for finding the peace within, from which we can solve whatever problem presents itself. We cannot solve any problem from a position of upset, anger, want, lack, need, and distress. Those emotions only cloud our problem-solving ability.

We cannot solve the problem of a failed state from a position of greed of the elite, torture, imposed hunger, and terrorism. Those are all the results of the lesser, human ego mind that seeks to entrench its position through domination and control. Only an enlightened understanding of the peace that dwells within the soul produces cooperation, preservation of resources, and the overall happiness of all in any society.

Eckhart Tolle’s books are not a magic bullet for all of a sudden getting rid of the human greed and cruelty that fuels world hunger and other human-caused disasters.

Eckart Tolle’s work has helped people who are in prison, on death row, and other circumstances that are beyond the individual’s control. He explains that you can be in the worst of circumstances and still find that peace within. From that standpoint, you can then work to embrace your life, and understand that you are more than a survival machine that eats, procreates, and dies.

But first, we must clear our minds of all the garbage and fear that it automatically generates. Then we must find a path to where our inner peace lives. After that, no matter what the circumstances, they do not affect our inner happiness or peace.

Tolle uses the example of being stuck in the mud or quicksand. It would do no good whatsoever to kick and scream in fear and upset until you wear yourself out and get taken under. Better to acknowledge, “This is where I am right now. What is my next step to get out of this?” Thinking clearly and calmly will bring much better results. That is all Eckart Tolle is about. Get rid of the little, fear-filled human mind and tune into the rich territory of the Soul.

The Soul is connected to all the natural intelligence of the Universe. And when people tune into it, problems get solved. Even if you do get taken under, you will not die in an agonized state of resistance, but will surrender to the larger forces that work within and are much larger than the individual ego.
Tolle is very clear that anything in the physical state is unstable. We cannot expect anything in the physical to last. But he points the way to what does last: The Eternal Soul.