When during one of our regular walks she spoke to me about a novel by Niall Williams she had just read, entitled ‘This Is Happiness’, my friend Janet did not know that I had started a blog about enlightenment and liberation. I have not yet read the book myself, but this coincidence seemed synchronistically meaningful to me as I felt a lovely resonance between us. This apparently very well-written novel seems to be about what I am addressing here in non-fiction form. The desire for liberation The desire to feel better and get to better places in our lives is deep and pervasive, causing strong ..read more

Sometimes our meditation practice ‘does not go well’, whatever that may mean in the meditator’s mind, and we get frustrated and end up giving up. The interpretation of it ‘not going well’ is fraught with confusion and misunderstanding about what meditation is. Inexperienced practitioners often say that a practice does not go well when painful experiences arise that are difficult to handle. Such experiences are routinely part of practice, though, since mindfulness meditation opens our awareness to the entirety of possible experiences, good or bad. Whatever experience content thus arises, pleas ..read more

The Mindsight Intensive is more than a program. It is a statement of intent put into daily practice, aiming at mustering the courage to stand as uncompromisingly as possible in truth and learn to speak it, no matter the consequences or how uncomfortable it may be. Truth as opposed to the truth is honesty with oneself and others in evolution. Truth evolves and deepens, and is not an immutable authoritative decree. There is no end to the development of honesty, as there is no end to the unconscious conditionings that interfere with it. Truth being a process, it arises from the ashes of the exami ..read more

The hidden power of awareness. Why Golgi? The Golgi body is an organelle, a subcellular structure that is part of each cell like organs are part of each body. It was named in 1898 after its discoverer, the Italian scientist Camillo Golgi. Its function is to package proteins inside the cell so that they are transportable outside the cell as they are sent to their destination. As an alliteration to ‘God’, ‘Golgi’ creates a verbal resonance across the vast spectrum of seemingly separate domains of knowledge, from the most intricately physical to the numinous. Those domains are not separate at all ..read more

As opposed to person-to-person psychotherapy, mindfulness meditation is primarily a solo exploration. Because in both cases we deal with the same mind, brain, and body, healing principles of psychotherapy have to be adapted to the solo journey of meditation. This course provides an advanced, practical, and experiential mindfulness meditation training conceived to hold participants as close to direct experience as possible. Having access to at least four awareness modes (fields of consciousness, nihility, emptiness, and return), we begin by working within our naturally available awareness mode ..read more

Examining ordinary waking consciousness The content of this article is taught in a practical and experiential manner in next year’s 2022 Mindsight Intensive. Details of the curriculum can be found here. The movie Escape Plan with Stallone and Schwarzenegger depicts an archetype we have to wrestle with when we want to examine ordinary waking consciousness. Stallone is a top-secret agent specializing in breaking out of prisons to reveal weaknesses in the prisons’ security. A government official sends him to the most modern and advanced prison that exists, an escape from which is supposedly impos ..read more

Around 1991 I took a trip to Bombay, Bangalore, and Uti in India. My mission was to have a closer look at Sai Baba, an Indian guru considered a holy man, said to be capable of performing miracles. Apart from his alleged ability to cause paralyzed people to walk again, his signature routine miracle was the materialization of ash called ‘vibuti’.One ‘paralyzed’ woman appeared once a week on his ‘show’ as she would be wheeled in a wheelchair onto the stage and after a few of Sai Baba’s hand gestures, she would ‘miraculously’ be able to walk. During my time there, I satisfied myself that he was a ..read more

Our organism is a structured and interactive collection of variously patterned energy flows, such as the individual cells and their interconnections, the hormonal and organ systems, and the different aspects of the mind including awareness, cognition/thoughts, emotions, and somatic sensations. These energy flows are in a constant process of self-regulation for survival and thriving, which unfolds through self-monitoring and appraising how fluid and adaptive the different energy flows and their intricate interactions are at any one moment. Once a determination is made that these energies flow s ..read more

Examining ordinary waking consciousness The content of this article is taught in a practical and experiential manner in next year’s 2022 Mindsight Intensive. Details of the curriculum can be found here. The movie Escape Plan with Stallone and Schwarzenegger depicts an archetype we have to wrestle with when we want to examine ordinary waking consciousness. Stallone is a top-secret agent specializing in breaking out of prisons to reveal weaknesses in the prisons’ security. A government official sends him to the most modern and advanced prison that exists, an escape from which is supposedly impos ..read more

Our organism is a structured and interactive collection of variously patterned energy flows, such as the individual cells and their interconnections, the hormonal and organ systems, and the different aspects of the mind including awareness, cognition/thoughts, emotions, and somatic sensations. These energy flows are in a constant process of self-regulation for survival and thriving, which unfolds through self-monitoring and appraising how fluid and adaptive the different energy flows and their intricate interactions are at any one moment. Once a determination is made that these energies flow s ..read more