There comes a point in every search when all faith is lost and all hope fades. This is a screaming crossroad on the path. Will you turn your back on that most treasured longing and allow your doubting, cynical mind to crucify you? Or will you let helplessness break you into a million pieces and destroy your 'you' so that you may be born anew? Comment Share

The 'I am' and 'the felt sense of being' are still objects in awareness and therefore not who I am. I am the empty, luminous, aware spaciousness in which they appear. This empty, aware spaciousness can never be an object, only the unknowable subject. Why? When empty, luminous awareness becomes aware of itself, all distinctions between the seer and the seen collapse, leaving only seeing/awareness.

Here is the entire teaching of Dzogchen in a single sentence: "You are the impersonal, universal, unchanging and perfect background mirror of empty awareness, in which the foreground of the universe appears." Jackson Peterson Zen Buddhist and Dzogchen Teacher

Regarding enlightenment and right action/ethics: a simple definition of enlightenment in my understanding would be the stable, enduring and effortless recognition of oneself as Being/awareness/peace and no longer being identified with the contracted, constricted personal self/ego. It's common in spiritual circles to believe that this realization automatically enlightens the entire individual and dissolves all their unconscious/unethical/shadow behaviours. A quick look at the

What is awakening and does it solve the riddle of life and death? M.C From one perspective, awakening is very simple and down to earth: normally we experience ourselves as somehow confined and conflicted, endlessly self-concerned and distracted by the constant movement of thoughts and feelings. We take this sense of self to be the truth of who we are, but who we actually are is something very different. Beneath the noise of the personal self lies our true nature: unlimited, p

Second interview (co-panelist Amir Freimann) with 'The Mystical Positivist' Mystical Positivist show #382 just posted: This week on The Mystical Positivist, we feature a pre-recorded discussion with returning guests Anne Sweet and Amir Freimann about spiritual transformation through conversation. As Anne and Amir have found in multiple conversations with a number of spiritual exemplars that the interviewer/interviewee dynamic can somehow dissolve and give rise to a truly inti

"I don't know if it's possible to live without any masks, to be completely true. It seems to me that I'm wearing a mask, in some way pretending and manipulating others, almost all the time. This means I'm hardly ever completely comfortable and at ease with myself. The only time I feel true and at ease is in an intimate I-Thou/intersubjective space with someone, but I cannot create that space on my own. Where do I go from here?" A.F Thanks for your honest and sincere question.