Category: philosophical counseling
-
Opening Courageously To Uncomfortable Feelings
In his book The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira speaks, near the end, about turning toward and being with what he terms “uncomfortable feelings.” How might this look? Step 1: Uncomfortable Feeling Identify any uncomfortable feeling arising just now. Or just memory to call forth any especially uncomfortable feeling–a vivid, a fresh one or an…
-
Does My Material Body Exist?
What is the relationship between images of the body (thoughts, memories, concepts, visual perceptions, etc.) and the so-called material body itself? A moment’s reflection reveals that naive realism can’t be true: the image of the body is not the material body. For example, the image in the mirror is a representation of the material body.…
-
The Impossibility Of Substantiating the “I Am The Body” View
“I am the body.” It is impossible to substantiate this view: 1.) For when I think, “I am the body,” I am involved in thought alone, and this thought cannot make contact with the presumed referent (i.e., the body). 2.) And when I don’t think, “I am the body,” then the experience is unfolding as…
-
Is It True That I Can Only Ever Know Experience?
If we’re going to take Atmananda’s teaching seriously, we had better start at the beginning: is it true that we can only ever know, or make contact with, direct experience? Is experience really the starting point for our investigation into Consciousness? Some years ago, my wife Alexandra and I had a one-on-one with Rupert Spira.…
-
Three Steps In The Direct Path
One way of understanding Atmananda’s Direct Path–and it is not the only way–is to move in three steps. In Step 1, one takes one’s stand as witnessing awareness. This means that it’s clear that every single experience–perceiving, sensing, and thinking–appears to me, witnessing awareness, and only to me. For a while, it seems as if…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 