Underneath the narrative of your life, just below the grand storyline, even beneath the colorful emotional landscape, there exists a rich, mysterious world of sensations – a somatically-organized field of intelligence, creativity, and aliveness. But there is no support here for personal identity; here, life is revealed to be much less about “me” than we thought. There are no “problems” here, nothing to be fixed, cured, or shifted. There is only an untamed fire of presence.
In any moment, you can enter this field and come to see, in a very direct way, that whatever arises in your present experience – whatever thought, feeling, emotion, image, hope, fear, or longing – no matter how seemingly disturbing – is ultimately and immediately workable, and a portal into the great natural perfection. It is pure energy, woven of the substance of sweet and fierce love.
Descending into the body, into this wide open, empty space can seem terrifying, because it is so unknown. You can no longer find many of the familiar reference points of the mind from which you have come to organize your life. There is no complaining here, no resentment, no “understanding” – not even any “transformation” or “healing” as we have come to think of these terms. Nothing is “unhealed” or in need of transformation. Just raw, naked, experience, free from interpretation.
The body is an invitation, an entryway into the freedom, love, and vastness that you are. For it is out of this alive, pregnant mandala of creativity that flow the qualities of kindness, compassion, attunement, and presence. This is what you are.
The late great Bernie Glassman was a Zen Buddhist Roshi, interfaith and social activist. He and Integral Yoga founder Swami Satchidananda were very close collaborators and shared many platforms together. In this episode of the Peacemakers Podcast, Bernie Glassman...
Swami Vivekananda arrived in Chicago at age thirty as a delegate to the World’s Parliament of Religions. It was the first such parliament and might have been the last if the “handsome monk in the orange robe,” as one writer described him, had not made it memorable. He...
After his years of disciplined training at Sri Ramakrishna Tapovanam and his time of hands-on service with Sri Bhikshu Swamigal in the nature cure camps, Sambasivam Chaitanya’s journey began to move in another direction. The earlier stages had shaped him through...
There is a Hindu scripture that compares our human mind with a monkey. It says that the mind is like a monkey—a drunken monkey. And not just like a drunken monkey, but like a drunken monkey bitten by a scorpion. Just imagine the condition of that monkey! So, how are...
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