Imagine what our world would be like if more and more people began to awaken. What if awakening became available to us as a normal stage of development? It can happen, and I am hopeful it will. In these contemporary times with so many choices, we can become distracted and end up living on the surface. I designed these practices to encourage experiences of the simplest and deepest dimensions of our human experience in the midst of our daily life.... Read more

Today marks the new release of the unabridged audiobook Shift Into Freedom, read by Loch Kelly! The book has been a bestseller and won a number of Best Books of the Year Awards. However, this kind of subtle teaching is often best listened to and absorbed directly. There is a tradition in the East of communicating these kind of teachings by “ear-whispering.” Enjoy! Foreword read by Adyashanti. Below is a selection from the book, which you can hear directly from Loch... Read more

Normally, local awareness is identified, attached, or obscured within the thinking mind and ego function. Yet we cannot know awake awareness through thinking; our contracted, isolated sense of self prevents us from recognizing it. We may begin with a few preliminary practices such as reading, chanting, meditating, or yoga. These initial practices are done by ego-identification with the goal of relaxing the grip of ego identification. However, ultimately, it is imperative to let go of any initial technique, level of... Read more

On the physical level, if we forget to eat, we will die, so our body registers our need for intake of food as hunger pains. Hunger creates unpleasant feelings of dissatisfaction that motivate us to crave food, seek it, possess it, and consume it. As such, desire, seeking, and dissatisfaction are natural on the everyday level. When our bellies are full, our bodies produce sensations of pleasure and satisfaction. Our suffering begins when ego-identification mistakes itself to be a real... Read more

The small sense of self feels separate, and this location makes us feel contracted, isolated, and in our heads. The experience of opening up during the process of awakening first brings spaciousness, emptiness, and freedom; these qualities can then be followed by embodiment, unity, and flow. In our journey of awakening the sense of no-self is a freedom from a specific place of viewing. We can feel infinite, everywhere, nowhere, here, and now. Location matters: Where are you viewing from?... Read more

When we don’t shift into open-hearted awareness, our hearts can be painfully closed, or they can be too open so that we’re frequently overwhelmed. Then we end up looking to our thoughts to create a sense of self. The result is a small, mental sense of self that makes us fearful and unworthy. Sadly, a thought-based identity cuts us off from our greatest resources for connection, loving-kindness, and wellbeing. While identified solely with a mental self, we may not be... Read more

The main role of a teacher is to point you toward your own inner teacher. It was when I learned to look within that awake awareness showed me its own capacities, clarity, and love. It is important to have mentors and teachers who have traveled farther along the path to offer guidance. From psychotherapy studies, we know that transference, idealization, and projection are normal parts of our psychological relationship to a mentor. However, failing to recognize transference or over-reliance on... Read more

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called neurosis the avoidance of legitimate suffering. We avoid suffering related to loss, disappointment, or growing pains because we don’t have the capacity to bear it if we’re operating from ego-identification. Our sense of self is just too small to deal with more powerful emotions. How do we remain vulnerable, sensitive, and intimate with life without being overwhelmed? Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche says, “Everyone is overcome by disturbing emotions unless they are stable in nondual [awake] awareness.... Read more

Humanity has made rapid progress during recent years in areas such as technology, medicine, and communications. Yet parts of our brain and consciousness still operate as if we’re living in primitive times. If we’re going to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century, we must consciously participate in evolving and upgrading our own operating system. Effective tools of awareness are very much needed now, if we want to preserve our planet and create a sustainable quality of life for all... Read more

There is a Chinese term called wu wei, which can be translated as “spontaneity” or “effortless action.” Wu wei does not mean passively waiting around, but actively recognizing that spontaneous action is already occurring, without being conducted by an ego-identified “doer.” Being is always already naturally here, but we aren’t yet wired to function from Being. Functioning from Being means interacting, responding, and creating from a panoramic flow state where we feel free of self-centeredness and ego-identification, yet retain full... Read more