Previously, I offered some thoughts about cessation and some notes from my own experiences. That post addressed a classical experience that is known from Eastern traditions. One term for it is “nirvikalpa samadhi.”

After learning of an Irish spiritual teacher named Gareth Duignan, I decided to watch some of his YouTube videos. I noticed he had a video on

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Recently, I’ve been reading some books and journal articles on meditation and spiritual practice, primarily in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Both of these very diverse and massive traditions include the possibility of the experience of cessation, when all perception and awareness--and by ext…

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This is what happens when I publish a post.

1. I feel that I’ve written something true and personal and authentic.

2. I immediately regret it and want to edit it or take it down.

So, what happens in the three nanoseconds between those two events?

The Superego wakes up and starts singing that old, familiar refrain: “Don’t show off. Don’t be a smartie-pants. Nobod…

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Most of us have probably played this game. “What one book would you take with you if you were going to be stranded on a desert island for who knows how long?” A friend asked me this a while back, and I knew immediately: the Avatamsaka Sutra, otherwise know…

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I had forgotten this until recently, when arguments hit the news about whether or not biblical verses can be used as justification for human actions such as war. But here it is...that memory.

A few years ago, I attended the small Lutheran church I attended as a young child. It was a return to the…

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I suggested one way: that having had that brief experience, I directly understood how the prospect of dying--the guarantee of dying--colors every moment of my life. That is primarily a psychological interpretation. As I went through the day, I realized there are several other ways to extrac…

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When I was a teenager, I was lying on my bed one afternoon. I don’t recall exactly how old I was or if I was doing anything, but my recollection is that I was relaxing. Suddenly, and with no warning, I knew with absolute certainty that I would not die in the next minute. I knew, viscerally. There was no antecedent. I wasn’t thinking about death or morta…

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A few years ago, after having been out of the Buddhist stream for a long time, I decided to do a self-retreat, doing meditation on the Brahmaviharas. These four qualities--usually translated as lovingkindness, compassion, gladness, and equanimity--are valued in Buddhism, and the meditations are widely taught. Different teachers offer slightly different …

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Do you think disillusionment is a universal experience? I suspect so, and I’m curious about it.

Jeffrey Kripal, my favorite scholar of religion, tells his graduate students, “You have no business being a scholar of religion until you have lost at least two worlds.” When I first heard him say this, I felt it was true, and not only for academics. It made m…

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“Picture in your mind’s eye...” Surely most of us have heard this phrase, captured so evocatively in the sculpture above. But what on earth does that mean?

Most of us have eyes that can see the world around us. Many of us have eyes that see within. Some call this capacity “the mind’s eye.”…

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Electrical phenomena are not that uncommon, but many people either don’t notice or decide not to notice. Here are my personal experiences with them. Perhaps if more people read about them, they’ll start to notice.

Over a decade ago, I was in a difficult life pattern. Things weren’t going too well for me, and I was working with a psy…

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Blue has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember. My security blanket as a child was a blue wool blanket trimmed with blue satin. I still have it. But, another blue image arose during a meditation recently: a blue flannelboard…

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Most of us have had some kind of precognitive dream, so we know that dreams can seem to foretell the future, but can they work in reverse?

One evening, I watched a movie that had a scene featuring a bus. That night, I had a dream featuring a bus. Did I dream about the bus because I saw one in the movie? or did I see one in a movie because I would dream a…

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What is balanced time perspective? and why is it wyrd and highly strange? Well you may ask!

Balanced time perspective is...

the often nonconscious process whereby the continual flows of personal and social experiences are assigned to temporal categories, or time frames, that help to give order, coherence, and me…

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I just remembered that after my experience with a “presence,” I had two other experiences that precipitated a decision. Both had to do with slaves. As disturbing as this is to me, perhaps sharing it will be of some help.

When I returned from the retreat, I became interested in how …

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My handwritten note says that …

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I’ve been caught up in The Phenomenon recently, watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading books. I’ve never been into this topic much, but after I read The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained, by Whitley Strieber and Jeff Kripal, a few years ago, a little portal opened up. And then, somehow, I recently walked th…

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What goes around, comes around. Kali first showed up for me in 2018. She stood behind me, in her fierce aspect, and as she hovered over me, black India ink filled my body, eradicating me. Was that fierceness? or love? or both? That experience remains vivid in my memory. An image very close to the o…

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I am betting you can finish that phrase, especially with the TV as a hint.

I think the first time I ever heard of Marshall McLuhan was in the Woody Allen movie, “Annie Hall,” in 1977, when I was in college. Probably I had heard the phrase, “The medium is the message,” but it was the movie that cemented McLuhan in my memory.

Fast forward to 17 August 2025.

…

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Levitation. Did I ever disbelieve it? Probably. But now I wonder. I am open.

Last year, I listened to an entire book on levitation, They Flew: A History of the Impossible, by Carlos Eire. Eire, a scholar of religion at Yale, focuses on reports of levitation and bil…

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