Browse Topics

The Choice Of Emptiness

The question becomes, how do we become aware of the limitations culture imposes on us from inside those limitations? How do we see through blind eyes? How do we begin to unclothe ourselves to return to our original nakedness, when we are taught that the clothes are us?

When The Heart Speaks

An Interview With Deena Metzger

Working with people who have life threatening diseases, it’s useful to approach disease as a metaphor because then you can do something about it. Then you are not simply in the hands of the doctors. If you can look at disease as a story being told that has to get your attention, and you can discover the story that your disease is telling you, then you have a chance of finding the healing story. People begin telling remarkable stories about important things that have been distorted or have been missing in their lives, areas that must be reconciled. The body says, “This loss, this distortion, or this amnesia that you’re living is killing me. The silence is killing me. And if you don’t fix it, we’ll die.”

Selected Poems

Love Bomb

I feel much closer to all of you when we pretend we’re all fighting real dangers together in order to stay alive. The telepathic links among us heat up when our bodies register the information that we may really die horribly together all at once.

Teachers

It was the intensity of the stare that made Sherab aware of the man. With a start he looked up from the orange basin of half-washed cups and saucers on the floor. The man’s pale, long-jawed face under its raft of red hair, a furious question in the blue eyes, sent a shock through him.

The Word Accomplished

Who asks me for directions when Man has such wonderful maps? I have no maps, for in all my kingdom there is only one road and I have made it easy for you to find: just ask your Holy Spirit at any time of the day or night and it will lead you there.

Miracle Of Love

A Collection Of Stories About Neem Karoli Baba

At this point Maharaj-ji said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were so attached to money.” And with that he took a set of tongs, reached into the fire, and began pulling new, unburned rupee notes from the fire until he had returned all the rupees to the sadhu. After that, the sadhu did not sit on Maharaj-ji’s tucket anymore — but at his feet.

The Very Last Supper

“Unique” is not the word to describe the messiah who came to stay with us. “Awesome” does better and “eerie” gets closer to home. . . . What I call eerie was his expression. His lips were always poised as if he were about to speak. But he never did, not a word. It got on my nerves.

What In The Name Of God?

We’ve got to appreciate that the “New Age” is not immune to corruption, sophisticated fundamentalism, empire-building, or sincere delusion. In any age, a variety of appealing fads will be taking place alongside genuine spiritual evolution. The decision to surrender to a teaching or teacher is not one to be taken lightly.

On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. . . . I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was.