The journey inward, if earnestly pursued, begins to reveal a hideous truth: that I, and all others, are one and the same thing. There, just at the edge of my perception, I begin to see that aside from the window dressing each of us calls 'my life,' there is nothing. All of the characters and [...]

If you're suffering. If you're unhappy about the presidential election. If you're unhappy with your mate or your kids or your job - there's really only one thing you need to do: look within. After all, who or what is unhappy? This is the key to the whole thing, the lone pointer that is the [...]

Sitting on the beach last week, watching the waves rise and fall, rise and fall. The tide rolling in, receding. Clouds building, abating. Birds (and humans) coming, going. Any or all of it a perfect metaphor for life, for existence itself. Little wonder that the mystics so often use the ocean and its waves to explain [...]

What a peculiar prison sentence is this thing we call life. Each of us appears to have been born into captivity, a death sentence hanging over us, only the actual date of our 'execution' unknown. We are shackled to these bodies - bodies that are not of our choosing (otherwise, I'd have chosen the Brad [...]

If the season has you hurting, longing, or otherwise feeling out of sorts, I urge you toward nonduality. It's the only path to truth, because it is not a path at all and has no place for all the concepts I just mentioned. It has no room for anything, including self, time, or the universe [...]

“Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes.” – Karl Marx Karl Marx’s famous dictum that “religion is the opiate of the masses” is based on the idea that we humans, haunted by fears of our own mortality and apparent insignificance, need some kind of drug to get us through life and so we invented [...]

“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Jesus At the age of 13 something unimaginably humiliating happened to me in front of my entire military school cadet class. Racing back that night to my empty barrack’s room, certain my life [...]

Chatting not so long ago with a friend who is struggling to overcome the twin addictions of self-loathing and alcoholism, she announced that she had resigned herself to never being able to fully recover. To which I blurted, “But why would you wish to recover in the first place? What is it that you want [...]

Some years ago I had a remarkable dream. In it I was a raindrop tumbling from a great, gray cloud and I felt ecstatically free the way one can in flying dreams. Then, suddenly, the clouds parted and below me stretched a vast and endless blue ocean and to my horror I realized I was [...]

In the spring of 1999 I and another member of the American Red Cross boarded a flight bound for the Balkan conflict in Kosovo. A veteran of many humanitarian assignments, I felt no particular concern about the trip. But on the evening of my departure the chronic anxiety that had become a part of my [...]