A few times a year anxiety sends my mind into a death spiral. I wake in the middle of the night with my stomach clenched like an angry fist. Thoughts race from zero to catastrophe and I am convinced that social interactions will only result in total alienation. By the...
The Fruit of Practice
A meditation teacher of mine once quoted a Burmese teacher as saying “When everything that can go is gone, what’s left is the truth.” That sentence resonated with me. I heard it maybe 20 years ago and I still reference it and repeat it a lot. And I think that’s...
The Mind is the Mirror of the Self
Have you ever seen your own face? No. What you see in a mirror is not your face. It’s a reflection. If, to your great surprise, your face looks horrible and distorted in the mirror, do you jump up and run to the hospital? No, you get another mirror. You know that the...
Developing Spiritual Vision
How to love everyone equally? It’s a beautiful question. There are so many differences among us in terms of age, physical characteristics, professions, and so on. The only way to love everybody equally is to see the common element running through all these...
Do Not Depend on Anything
Happiness is not something that can come from the outside. One of the things we seem to depend upon for our happiness is physical beauty. We don’t want to accept the fact that we will get old and our bodies will change. When we see others getting old we may think to...
Peace is the Real You!
Peace and joy are more or less different aspects of the same thing. If you are peaceful, you are joyful. Peace doesn’t depend on anything, but is totally independent, and it is always there. When you feel that peace, you feel a supreme happiness that also does not...
Patanjali’s Words: Purusha—the True Self
Rev. Jaganath, Integral Yoga Minister and Raja Yoga master teacher, has spent a lifetime delving into the deepest layers of meaning in Patanjali’s words within the Yoga Sutras. Our series continues with the 16th sutra of Chapter 1 in which Patanjali describes what he...
Raja Yoga: The Essence of Yoga
When the word Yoga is mentioned, most people immediately think of some physical postures for relaxing and limbering up the body. This is one aspect of the Yogic science, but actually only a very small part and relatively recent in development. The physical Yoga, or...