To see beyond the apparent requires the discriminating awareness of the hamsa bird, a mythical creature that has a unique talent. If milk and water are mixed together, the bird can extract the milk from the mixture, and then can extract the sweetness from the milk.

In nondual traditions, the term used to describe the discriminating awareness within us is buddhi. It’s important to realize that we can access this level of consciousness — one that is free from the constraint of only seeing the appearance of duality. Buddhi can be understood as vimarśa, or self-reflective capacity. In its highest sense, this is the capacity of God’s infinite Consciousness to know Itself as Consciousness. And, since we are never separate from God’s awareness, we are also able to know ourselves as that same Consciousness. However, to have this level of realization, we first need to know our own state. Buddhi provides the ability to recognize where we are functioning from in...

The ego is like a spider trapped in its own web of tensions, contractions, patterns, and samskaras.

When a spider spins a web out of its own body, its experience is restricted to the very web it creates. The ego does much the same thing. It weaves a sticky web made up of tensions, patterns, karma, and samskaras (latent tendencies), creating the blockages and limitations we experience in life. In fact, this is all the ego is capable of doing. It cannot see or experience any level of reality outside of its own limitations — nor does it want to!

When a storm destroys a spider’s web, it immediately spins another one. Unfortunately, the ego does the same thing. And if we aren’t free from the ego’s grip, we keep spinning the same experience of life, unaware that there’s a deeper experience available to us. At the highest end of the spectrum of reality is God’s infinite Consciousness, but the resonance of that Presence remains forever outside the...

Gaṇeśa is the remover of obstacles, often called upon at the beginning of a pujā ceremony. One of his name's is Buddhi Priya, referring to the discriminating power of Consciousness. Begin your day calling upon your own discriminating capacity to choose openness.

Within the nondual tradition, the term buddhi is most accurately defined as “the capacity of discrimination.” Buddhi is also understood as the power of Consciousness to know Itself — often referred to as vimarśa, our own self-reflective capacity. For us, this means that it's not enough to simply be conscious. We must also know that we're conscious. Sādhana is that which helps us uncover the highest consciousness, which is our one true essence. Our spiritual practice is how we allow that awareness to reveal itself — and this is only possible because of our inherent capacity to know ourselves. Discrimination plays a key role in the unfoldment of our spiritual growth.  

All movement toward...

Like the simplicity of a child, true realization becomes your default state, not just an occasional experience. Jīvanmukti means freeing yourself of your separate identity; it is the unwavering experience of oneness with the Divine. There is no separation between you and That. Freedom happens without the dissolution of the body. You still function, but as God’s pure joy embodied as you.

Freedom in this lifetime — having the unwavering experience of oneness with the Divine —requires that we contact the joy within us and establish ourselves in that unconditional resonance. If you wish to live in that state of embodied joy, you must ask yourself this fundamental question: What am I looking for?

If we want to find freedom and joy, we must start by looking for it. Joy is not created by form, by anything we do, or by what is happening in our life. Although joy is not something that we can see in form or gain by possessing something, every form is the expression of the...

The awakened energy transmitted through lineage enters into and alters our own energy field revealing a pure, perfect awareness and capacity that is expressed in the landscape of our own life.

Can a relationship with a teacher and with śakti transmission create a tendency for over-reliance? Does it get in the way of cultivating our inner capacity to connect to and establish ourselves in a dynamic flow of śakti? 

Let me begin with this emphatic statement: Transmission has nothing to do with something coming from outside of us. Infinite Consciousness and Its power of kuṇḍalinī śakti are what create and sustain our life. This is what is now awakening in us — calling forth to Itself the energy of a lineage to nourish and unfold that which is emerging. Our work is to open and receive that resonance from the teacher so that we can experience it fully within ourselves.

The power of transmission from a teacher is that of a living spiritual force, and what is being transmitted is...

The ego is the black hole of Consciousness that devours the light that illuminates our divine essence. The profound experience of separation creates the perpetual grasping for completeness. But the grasping for “some other” is another action of the ego, perpetually pulling its own misunderstanding back on itself. That which you seek outside of yourself is already present inside of you.

Divine essence is ever-present within us, and because it is our essence, we must respond to that truth with something more than, “isn’t that nice?” Many of us have a deep aspiration and intent to live this highest knowledge in the face of everything that tries to prevent us from doing so. The greatest masters of many traditions have told us that in order to have a direct experience that we are this divine essence, all we need to do is to recognize that truth. Some of the greatest masters within the Tantric Tradition emphatically state that...

In our sādhana there are times when we must make a concerted effort to work harder, to open a greater depth in ourselves. At other times, if we can easily make contact with an expanded inner awareness, we can simply remain at ease in that place and allow it to open and reveal itself in stillness. Both approaches are correct, but we must use our discrimination to know which is appropriate at any given time.

If we feel contracted — perhaps because we have projected our energy and attention outside of ourselves — we must first connect back into a place of openness. Once we make that effort, we can simply let that inner state show itself.

We can best understand this by looking at what Tantric tradition calls the upāyas, the triadic means to liberation. They are āṇavopāya, the path of effort; śāktopāya, the path of energy; and śāmbhavopāya, the path of awareness.

The Three Upāyas

The effort in āṇavopāya is to direct our awareness inside, which is best summed up by the basic...

A student reported to me recently that a closed door had appeared on his heart chakra, and he wondered what it meant. My response was, “How beautiful to have the door to the heart show up!”

If we perceive an inner portal, God’s message is: Here. Open this door. We could interpret this opening in two ways. The first is that we can open the door to let ourselves out, so that our consciousness is free to fly and expand into the sky of Consciousness. The second is that we can open the door and let God in. Of course, God is already within us, but we can open and be willing to receive a deeper knowledge that might appear to be descending into us. 

Both approaches imply an expansion from our limited, contracted self. Because that individuation is really God’s expression of Himself in limited form, we can expand beyond our capacities of experience, knowledge, and awareness and become immersed in our Source, which is infinite Awareness. Whichever way we...

In the American Indian Lakota view, from Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things — the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, the buffalo, and all animals... Thus, all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. It filled their being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave them reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. — Chief Luther Standing Bear

There are many traditions that convey the same essential message to us: That the purpose of life is to discover this Great Mystery. Nondual Tantric tradition explicitly tells us that there is a unifying living force that creates all of life, perpetually vibrating and expressing Its very nature — and that Supreme Consciousness (Śiva), through Its inherent power (Kuṇḍalinī Śakti), manifests all form for the singular purpose of...

When you look into the “lake of clear reflection” you see God. You see yourself.

A human being is an extraordinarily complex matrix of energy and consciousness, a miniature version of the matrix of energy and Consciousness that is the fabric of the Universe. That infinite matrix distills itself into our individuality, into human form. In that distillation there is nothing lost, there is reduction of the infinite potential and multiple dimensions of consciousness inherent in that Pure Awareness.

Since we are made of Pure Awareness, nothing in us is “bad.” It is imperative that we approach our individuality and humanness from this understanding and seek to uncover our unity with God. With this as our intent, we can use our capacity for self-inquiry to recognize all the different dimensions of our humanness, of the fabric from which we have been woven.

The level of consciousness in us we call ego does not have the capacity to see the fullness of what we are...