Category: philosophical counseling
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The Unreality Of The Waking State & The Unreality Of Time
You might have the inkling, or intuition, that the waking state or that time is dreamlike. What sense can we make of this inkling or intuition? Let what is truly real be whatever it is that satisfies two criteria. One, it is permanent. Two, the appearance is identical with the essence. When you feel that…
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You Have Everything You Need Right Here
One reason that I’ve rarely included sharing circles in satsang is that there can be a tendency for spiritual practictioners to keep tabs, score points, seek approval, and make comparisons. The truth is that there isn’t “anyone” with any special, non-ordinary experiences, that there isn’t “anyone” who “traveled to” a higher state. Far better to…
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The Preciousness Of Life And The Nature Of Atman
Dear W, The Eastern teaching, I feel, asks one to hold onto two proposals. One is that life–all of life–is poignantly, achingly precious. Life can turn on a “knife’s edge,” on a single diagnosis, and any tuned-in person damn well knows this. Fobbing off the knife’s edge of life is a shitty dodge, a turning…
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Why I Don’t Generally Believe In Breathwork
Even though breathwork has become fairly popular in recent years, I’m not a fan–and here’s why: 1. To begin with, we need to understand that pranayama, at its best, is one “limb” that’s naturally placed in a bona fide progressive spiritual path consisting of many limbs. In my interpretation, Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga, for…
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Berry’s A Place On Earth: On Twisted Timber And Earthy Love
What I expected from a Wendell Berry novel is not what I’ve experienced. I presumed that we’d find in Port William a Christian town whose characters are, albeit imperfect, nonetheless shimmering with admirableness. A Place on Earth (2001; rev. ed.) provides no such reassurances. The characters are indeed “twisted timber” but with two dominant features.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 