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In Integral Mindfulness, we not only integrate the meditative achievements from the East with the psychological, neurobiological and developmental discoveries from the West. We go back full circle to the East to apply these insights to the seven Chakras. They all have...

In this week’s group, we will explore “spiritual bypassing”. It is a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks. Symptoms of spiritual bypassing are...

From a spiritual perspective, the Ego, or false and separate sense of self, can not love, as it always wants something. And once it gets it, it becomes attached and afraid to lose it. To love unconditionally, both partners need to support each other to transcend their...

By getting into a dialog with the different negative voices in your head. This process is called Voice Dialog. It was developed by Hal and Sidra Stone in 1972 and advanced by Genpo Roshi in 1999. The first step is to recognize the different voices and to speak with...

The so-called “Law of Attraction” (as seen in movies like “The Secret” and “What the bleep do we know”) maintains that our thoughts create our reality. This idea ranges from thoughts forming our interpretations or perceptions of reality, to thoughts causing our...

How we approach to answer this existential question first depends on our belief in nihilism, creationism, evolutionary theory, intelligent design, or a co-creative impulse. Out of our answer typically arise different viewpoints about our biological purpose/imperative...

No we don’t. This is by and large a New-Age narcissistic notion that leads to the opposite of love. If we would have to love ourselves to love others, there would be no selfless love, altruistic love, transcendental love, unconditional love, pre-personal love, or love...

To surrender is an important spiritual practice. It means to fully accept and stay present with what arises moment to moment in your awareness. It does not mean to become passive, ignorant, a loser, or a victim. Quite the opposite! Surrendering and accepting by being...

You may have heard of people talking about the radical transformations they have undergone through meditation. Join us to share your experiences if you are trying to continue meditating, have trouble developing habits, and even start to doubt the reality of the...

In his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle talks a lot about the pain body. To him, it represents old emotional pain that we all carry around inside of us and, when triggered, controls our thinking and behavior in negative aggressive or defensive ways. In our...

Rumi wrote, your task is not to seek love, but to remove all the blocks that prevent it. The same is true for all of your other desires, such as happiness, peace, success, and abundance. Join us to learn and practice to remove these blocks by transforming your mind...

Karma originated in Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but is also used in the West to mean that good deeds will be rewarded with good results, and bad deeds with bad results. This idea is captured in the popular saying “What goes around comes around” and...

We will begin our exploration by understanding that pain is an essential bodily function that is important for our health and survival. Without pain, we would not notice when we touch something hot that burns our skin, cut or crush a limb, bite our lips or tongue,...

We will first explore that “still mind” is a paradox, because the mind can never be still. Like a river, it needs the flow of time to exist. As a consequence, it also can’t understand how to make itself still. You will then learn why we can only point to stillness as...

We will explore why meditation, mindfulness, yoga or other practices that strengthen the witness--the self, subject, or consciousness that is aware of the thinking mind--is the prerequisite for living in the now, and what the differences between these practices are....

Eckhart Tolle says “you are not your mind”. But who are we if we are not our thoughts and sense of self? If all the layers of mind or ego (the “I”) drop away, like in deep dreamless sleep, then we cease to exist. So this seems to be an unanswerable question, at least...

Spiritual state-stages tend to unfold in a certain order that are likened to the three broad states of waking (in which we are aware of physical objects), dreaming (in which we are identified with non-physical objects in our mind), and dreamless sleep (in which we...

Simply put, it is creating a new Ego identity out of spiritual experiences. Many spiritual seekers, practitioners, healers, and even teachers fall into this trap. They incessantly talk about their transpersonal experiences, self-perceived realizations, spiritual...

Today, an increasing number of people call themselves “spiritual but not religious”. Like religious people, many of them believe in a higher power and follow some creed, leader, teacher, or philosopher. Instead of God, they call this higher power spirit, source, or...

Yes, as long as we associate male with masculine and female with feminine. Masculine is defined as ascending and agentic, and feminine with descending and communion. They are obvious opposites in the dual world of emptiness and form. Of course, there are masculine...

A common problem, and actually the definition of New-Age thought and spirituality, is that its adherents commit the pre-trans or pre-post fallacy. They confuse pre-rational childish or magical beliefs with transrational experiences, because they are both irrational....

There are three dimensions to what we call “reality”. (1) The Real or essence, which exists independent of human knowledge or an observer, representing the underlying generative (causal) mechanisms or structures or fields (or powers) that co-create the flux of...

When people are asked what being spiritual means to them, their answers fall into three brought categories. The first is to seek a state of awareness that is free of pain and suffering by transcending the body and mind, and becoming one with everything (God or...

Living in “The NOW” or “Present Moment” is a huge step forward in our spiritual development and has been considered for eons to be the ultimate spiritual attainment. But resent history also teaches us about the evolution of consciousness and cultures. Non-Dual...

The notion of reincarnation and the concept of past lives has existed for thousands of years, spanning back to the ancient Celtic, Greek, Asian and Indian traditions. Goethe wrote: “I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to...

We find inner peace when we fully surrender to what is. When this inner peace is projected outward, we help to create a more peaceful world. We learn to surrender through integral mindfulness practices. It is important to understand the difference between surrender...

(1) The ground unconscious represents our unrealized embedded potentials, from body to mind, soul, and spirit. The unrealized stages of these future growth potentials are not actively suppressed or involuntarily repressed; they just have not developed yet. (2) The...

The shadow usually refers to painful emotional experiences in our past (often in our childhood) that are repressed into our unconscious part of the mind, because the pain was too much to be remembered. This repression is caused by the stress hormones adrenaline and...

Most people can differentiate between their body, mind, feelings, and emotions. And some people have a sense about their personality types and personal preferences. The exploration of ourselves becomes a little bit more obscure when we look at the unconscious...

The answer depends on our definition of love. As long as the definition includes the mind, feelings or actions in time and space, which is absolutely reasonable, love is always conditional or local. Otherwise, we would fall for what is called “The Myth of the...

From a materialistic/deterministic perspective, our bodies and brains respond to internal and external impulses before we even become aware of them. This is essential for our survival, as it would be impossible for us humans to exist without these instinctual and...

In spiritual teachings, the Ego means a false, separate, or fearful sense of self that cuts us off from ourselves, others and our surroundings. By transcending the ego, we awaken from this false sense of ourselves to our true nature. In psychology, we often talk about...

Many people and spiritual teachers have a sense that their animals, and especially cats, are Enlightened. They feel that way, because animals don’t seem to have painful memories of the past and fears (or hopes) for the future. In addition, they have what we call an...

Most spiritual seekers and teachers don’t understand the important difference between “waking up” or Ego Transcendence, and “growing up” or Ego (healthy self) development. This is one of the most important insights of Integral theory that is encapsulated in the...

In this week’s group, we will explore “idiot compassion”. You will learn the difference between authentic compassion, which means “to suffer with”, and leads to actions to support others in reducing their suffering by “getting their act together”. In contrast, idiot...

Many spiritual people and teachers talk about Non-Duality. However, few grasp the reality that it cannot be directly talked about, but only pointed to (called pointing out instructions). Thus, it says in the Tao Te Ching: “Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk,...