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Spiritual Teachers

My Buddhism for today, why I choose only ONE lineage…

As I’ve noted before, on my Dutch blog people respond very critically. This is often annoying, but they also sometimes ask great questions. The question asked in this case was: doesn’t your present path contradict your earlier assertion that we need to balance certainty and uncertainty? The answer is – as it often is – [...]

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Gratitude meditation – thanking our teachers

I’ve written about gratitude before, but I think the topic merits a revisit. For one thing: in our culture we’re taught, by psychologists, to face up to the negative things our parents and teachers did to us as we grew up. Facing up to our emotions, including the negative, is a good thing no doubt. [...]

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Jiddu Krishnamurti as a man of his time

Let met start this by saying that as I’ve had more experience meditating, I have gained in respect for Jiddu Krishnamurti, because he describes the experience so well. However, it’s not thanks to Krishnamurti that I did start meditating, nor is he any help in doing so. And that is precisely the limit to his [...]

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H.P. Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Benjamin Creme and others

In my previous post I talked about the quality of a spiritual teacher, and how to sense it. However, since I get asked this question a lot, I’d like to go into the Blavatsky-Bailey-Creme triangle a bit more. Last night we had a lecturer in our The Hague theosophical lodge, who was – aside from [...]

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The present and future of Buddhism – plus a contest :)

I’ve recently been put on Shambhala’s list of book reviewers which is great. I mean, they’re the top Buddhist publisher and one of the top spiritual publishers. Anyhow, they sent me three books for review this month – and I get to offer one to my readers. Read on to know what you can do [...]

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Spiritual teachings best fresh?

I dreamt of fruit going bad last night, so I wonder… are spiritual teachings best ‘consumed’ fresh? What do you all think… are classic spiritual books for instance of the same value as say the fresh teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle and the Dalai Lama? Comment Zen: I’m not asking for dream analysis [...]

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What’s the goal of the spiritual path?

I got three books in the mail this week… Two from Quest publishing, the Theosophical Publishing House of the TS Adyar in the US, another from an author herself. All three are about what one might call ‘the spiritual path‘. Two are highly personal accounts of people on the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff, one was [...]

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KH, Koot Hoomi and Katinka Hesselink

Yes, that’s tongue in cheek headline. For those not ‘in the know’, Koot Hoomi was one of Blavatsky’s Masters. With his friend Morya he wrote a lot of letters that form some of the earliest theosophical literature. The Masters, or Mahatmas as they are often called, often abbreviated their names. This has become something of [...]

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Michael Mirdad interview

As promised, here’s some questions I had for Michael Mirdad, author of ‘You’re Not Going Crazy…You’re Just Waking Up! The Five Stages of Soul Transformation Process’, and his answers. 1. You say that nearly every process of learning is ultimately about understanding and experiencing greater levels of unconditional love (p. 14). What do you mean [...]

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The five stages of the soul transformation process: Michael Mirdad

Two weeks ago I wrote about spiritual evolution from the perspective of long term cycles. This week I will go into the more practical day to day questions relating to our own soul transformation process. Personally I can’t take 2012 seriously enough worry about it. I do however have to deal with personal challenges just [...]

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