My own earthly impermanence motivates my authentic expression, and this is the essence of my contribution to humanity. I am not the first to feel this way, but this is the pattern I have observed so far and need to express it so that the fruits of my existence are felt and I have no resistance to entering the formless state and leaving my body peacefully, when the time comes…  read more »

How many times have you heard the statement, “You can’t love anyone until you love yourself?”

While this is a true statement, the reality is we are not taught what it means to love ourselves; or more importantly, how it feels to love ourselves. If you stop and think about this for a moment, you probably will be able to come up with some ideas of what love is, but you would be hard-pressed to actually conjure up feelings of love for yourself. We know what it feels like to love another; yet we don’t know what it feels like to love ourselves.  read more »

The following text is an unedited, stream of consciousness account of my personal process to reveal the nature of the anxiety and fear that lives inside me. It was written with the intent to shed light on this universal experience in the hope of helping individuals better understand what lives in all of us, and how to free ourselves from its grip.

It begins at the pit of the stomach, and then it spreads to the rest of the body. There is a sense of restlessness, agitation, and an inability to concentrate. At times, it would actually paralyze me. I felt a strong desire to flee it somehow, a desire to stop the discomfort. Yet it won’t leave me. In the past I would have found ways to distract myself, call someone, listen to music, eat something, watch TV, anything to keep me from feeling this disturbing energy living inside of me. Sometimes, I would actually stop and listen to it. I would go inside and attempt to get to the source of these experiences. Other times, just redirecting my attention to them would alleviate their intensity. Most of the time though, they would get more severe and cause me to flee again. However, I discovered that avoiding, or distracting myself from them clearly did not diminish or make them disappear, on the contrary, the faster I ran, the stronger they got. The pain became so unbearable that I could no longer avoid the simple truth; there is no place to run. It finally dawned on me-these feelings are mine. They live in me. They are part of me. Running away from them only meant running away from myself.  read more »