Tag Archives: beliefs

YOU Do Not Exist

you do not exist
There was a naked sage in India who, by even Indian standards, was quite bizarre and very direct with those who would seek his consul.  The word was that even just being around this guy would elicit an almost overwhelming blissful and loving state of consciousness.  I recall this same guy would even poop in his own hand and throw it at the hoards of people that wouldn’t leave him alone.  This may be a good best practice we could all benefit from adopting, as it seems likely it could be quite effective.

One of the visitors approached this crazy naked sage and said, “What do I need to do to become enlightened?” To which the sage responded, “You want to become enlightened?  YOU do not  exist!”

This is kind of a bad-ass cool thing to say to someone but what does it really mean?

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Adyashanti Retreat Review 2016

adyashanti retreat review

Adyashanti Retreat Review: The Omega Institute

Note: This post is epic. Sadly, not in that the content is superb, but rather in length. With close to 3000 words, the average read time is 15 minutes. You’ve been warned.

I’ve recently returned from my first silent retreat with Adyashanti. I’ll just refer to him as Adya from now on, as that’s what his friends call him… so I hear.

Although the majority of his retreats seem to take place in his home state of California, I was fortunate to catch him on an east coast stop at The Omega Institute. The Omega Institute is a lovely property close to the Hudson River in upstate New York. It’s a non-profit organization that has an almost unbelievable number of events (seemingly every week) with topics ranging from spirituality to holistic health to personal empowerment, to name just a few.

Let’s be clear, Omega is much more of a “retreat center” or maybe “retreat camp” than any type of resort. It bears little resemblance to a place like the Canyon Ranch Resorts.

It’s a more crunchy or hippie scene than those types of resorts. Let’s just say that there were a lot of “Birkenstocks and Socks”.

adyashanti retreat review

Don’t get me wrong, that’s actually my personal preference.

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A Conditional Acceptance of the Bhakti Path

Hello Bliss Seekers,

This one is kind of a sticky-wicket. What I mean by that is that “sticky-wicket” is really fun to say out loud. Please stop reading and quickly say “sticky-wicket” out loud.

All You Need Is Love?

For those you that haven’t been exposed to all the super cool and eastern sounding Sanskrit words thrown around by seekers immersifying their egos in “Eastern philosophy and spiritual practices”, thank your lucky fucking stars. Bhakti basically means love. The Bhakti path is a path of love and devotion. Is it dualistic or non-dualistic? It depends on if the seeker has the ability to truly embrace non-dualism.

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On Spiritual Ego

 

spiritual ego

A health check for your practice

From time to time it makes sense to take inventory of our practice and if we are effectively “moving forward”. As a start, you may want to ask yourself some of these questions?

  • How would I describe myself spiritually?
  • Where am I on my current path?
  • How dedicated am I?
  • How long have I been practicing?
  • How do I feel about my progress?
  • Do I feel more centered, calm, and peaceful than a month or year ago?
  • How do I deal with those less conscious that I have to interact with in my life?
  • Should I be doing more or adding time or dimensions to my practice?
  • How knowledgeable am I on the foundation and writers in my given path?
  • Do I feel good about my dedication and consistently?

Maybe even add some more of your own if you are serious about this. I suggest you briefly write out your answers before moving on. Look at the answers and assess your opinions, perspectives, and beliefs about who you are as a spiritual seeker and where you are on your path and what goals you may have achieved or are striving to.

Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step and are now looking, right in the face, at a steaming pile of dog shit called your Spiritual Ego.

This is a nice extra piece of luggage we can add to our existing baggage of beliefs around who we are and why we are special or a victim. The beauty of this is that we actually feel good about all these perspectives because they are “spiritual”.

We now have another dimension we can add to our beliefs about who we are physically, mentally, emotionally, professionally, and financially.   We have a spiritual dimension that makes us even more balanced, interesting, and pretty fucking deep.

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The Philanthropic Egomaniac

Philanthropic Egomaniac burning money

Hello Fun Seekers.

For better or for worse, I’ve been exposed to more than my share of wealthy individuals during my tenure of this life. I ended up in some private school from 8th-12th grade. I was on scholarship helping to satisfy their “diversity” claims. I guess socio-economic diversity needed its token representation. Needless to say, you couldn’t swing a dead cat at back-to-school night without hitting some extremely wealthy, white, overachieving, stressed out, type-A parent right between the eyes.

Then I ended up raising kids in San Francisco, ground zero of shitty public schools, and we became the wealthy, white, overachieving, stressed out, type-A parents that sent our kids to insanely expensive private schools.

What I learned from my exposure to the other parents at this school is that if you are really into accumulating wealth, only an idiot would go into the software industry (me) if they could find a way into the financial services industry, especially any type of venture capital, merger and acquisition type of shit.

I got to hang out with these types for good part of seven years, until we pulled the ripcord on the whole circus and I quite my job, left the high-tech world, San Francisco, private schools and bolted to a small town and started over.

All this is an elaborate set-up to overcome the objection that the first philanthropic offended mother-fucker tries to slap into the comment section at the bottom of this article. This objection is the classic, “you wouldn’t say these things if you really knew these people and how big their hearts are, and how hard they work, and how much they love everyone, and blah, blah, blah…..”

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