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Judgment & Forgiveness (Part One)

It might not be a popular opinion to express in spiritual circles, but I’m a big fan of judgment.  In fact, it receives a fair amount of…judgment! So, I had to come up with a better word. Words matter, We often shut down or dismiss a whole topic if we hear words that don’t sit right with us. Like teenager me, who would dismiss a whole clothes shop because of the music playing, or even the smell of the store. This isn’t personality type judging. It’s not about being inflexible or requiring good supporting data. And it’s not about where

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The Nondual Flip-Flop

Have you seen this, or experienced it? It’s my special phrase for when there’s a metaphorical thorn in someone’s foot. And they are suffering in that experience. Then they remember, “It’s all awareness!” (Or ‘thought’, ‘love’, ‘an illusion’, etc). And they take that to imply there is no pain, or no thorn. Bliss. But they don’t do anything about the thorn, or the pain. Soon enough, they are suffering again. Then ‘remembering’ again. Flipping into bliss, flopping into despair. And nothing changes. The bliss becomes addictive. The hit of relief of falling out of despair for a moment. And the

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Speechless

Sometimes, I’m speechless. There are three main reasons for this: One:My inner world is one of cognisance and sensation. Which is superlatively relaxing for someone with total aphantasia. Interacting with the world requires ultra fast mental word descriptions, to replace the absent images. It’s like having to verbally describe a photo in huge detail, instead of showing the image. Except all the time. I guess it’s part of why I like the dark. Two:There are situations in life where we thrive, and situations where we don’t. And no amount of understanding thought, rescripting experience, or transcending emotion is going to

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You Don’t Need a Coach

“I don’t need your support,” said a client recently. And I couldn’t agree more. They, and you don’t need a coach. You don’t need to become anything – learn anything, gain anything, lose anything – to be fully you, and to love your self. You, don’t need anyone telling you how to live your life. And you certainly don’t need a coach telling you subtly that you aren’t enough by painting their vision of who you ‘could’ be. Exactly how you are, you are already enough – you are valuable. (And that ‘you’ includes all your ambitions, study, hard work, changes

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Foolish?

Being fooled does not make you a fool. Reflect back on some time you were fooled by a prank, or tapped a stranger on the shoulder thinking they were your friend, or bought something worthless at an inflated price. You were fooled – by a joke, by appearances, by attractive marketing. And you might have felt a bit foolish, then shaken your head, chalked it up to experience, laughed and moved on.  But then it comes to what we call the ‘separate self’ – the idea of self that most adults have developed the habit of thinking, feeling and acting

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What if it’s Not Landing?

One feeling people sometimes express in a nondual exploration is a particular experiment or aspect of teaching doesn’t “land” or they don’t “get”. We often hear that in the book groups for The Complete Book of Awakening – from different people for different explorations, at different times. So, from what we see, here are seven reasons we might not relate to a given exploration or teaching: Key thing is, if one exploration or element of teaching doesn’t land right now, it’s not a problem. It’s stepping stone into doing it YOUR way, so that it resonates for you. Which is

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Simples

The nondual teaching is like a painted sign on a clear glass door that from the outside says, “Bizarrely complex, hard to understand, bit woo, maybe not for me.” But from the inside the same sign reads “Simple.” Let’s try to make it simple from the outside too.

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The Front of the Room

In any personal-spiritual development group, there is always someone at the front of the room. But how they show up in the role varies dramatically. Here are a few models: You can probably think of others, most likely hybrids of some of these. And you’ve probably passed through groups with one or more of these models. Have you noticed how you respond to each type of leader? When you are overawed by them, when you defer to them, when you run a mile from them, when you get frustrated by them, when you hardly notice them? Perhaps you notice where

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The Trouble with Dreams

We so often buy into a dream. Into an ideal.
We buy into how we think things could be, should be, ought to be.
Buying in is very different from simply imagining, planning or intending.

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