Month: November 2024
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Anger Is A Good Sign For Spiritual Practitioners
Strange to say, anger is looked upon, by Westerners on a spiritual path, as brutish or boorish. It’s not. It’s, in fact, stuck energy. It’s, therefore, a good sign when seemingly placid but actually resentful spiritual practitioners get to a point at which anger starts to emerge. This tells you that your practice, your understanding…
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What Does The Nondual Teaching Say About The Good Samaritan?
In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we learn that a “certain man” was robbed, beaten, and left for dead. Two men–a priest and a Levite–pass by on the other side, presumably taking the half-dead man to be their stranger. Finally, a third man (the Samaritan), taking pity on this fallen man, “went to him,…
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If I Am The Self, How Come I Don’t Know It?
Question: If I am the Self, how come I don’t know that I am the Self? Let’s revisit Shankara’s discussion of how superimposition works. According to Swami Prabhavananda, superimposition unfolds in two phases: In the first phase, “The inner Self,” Swami Prabhavananda writes of Shankara’s view, “is therefore present in our normal consciousness as ‘the…
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How To Be With An Ailing Son
A man I converse with has a 9-year-old son, who may have a condition known as Pandas. Since he’s known about his son’s suffering, he’s been worried about him. The line of argument we followed consists of three steps: Step 1: Seeing Suffering Accept, as he put it, that “all people face challenges.” This, to…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 