Articles from The Practical Spirituality Press

The Secret of Surrender — In our feeling, there is no bigger psychic bully than death... We'd like to avoid thinking about death more than anything else! And yet when we actually die (or have a "near-death" experience), despite whatever wriggling we did to try to get out of it (denial, anger, bargaining, etc.), all the reports indicate that we experience something quite different from what we imagined: we experience the overwhelmingly loving and blissful Presence of the Divine. There is a great secret here: in any moment that we completely surrender ourselves — surrendering our struggle, our searching for a way out, our reactivity — the Revelation of God is bound to appear in some form. The moment of our death provides a great Gift then — with overwhelming strength, it forces us to completely surrender, and then it reveals to us the Fruit of doing so. But if we get this point, why not practice that surrender in every moment of life, and receive that Fruit in every moment?

excerpt from Book 6: You CAN Take It With You
What is the FASTEST Way Out of This Mortal Dream? — The human heart longs for perfect and unending happiness, because perfect and unending happiness is indeed possible: through Spiritual Awakening. The great spiritual traditions throughout history that refer to such Awakening really mean a literal Awakening from this mortal dream to a more fundamental Reality. You can think of it as a spiritual analog to the "awakening" in The Matrix — only, one awakens to a state of Absolute Bliss, rather than some dismal revelation about the true nature of things. What is the fastest and most direct Way to Awaken out of this mortal dream?

excerpt from Book 3: Habits of Highly Spiritual People
What Do We Actually Mean When We Say: "I Believe"? — When I talk to people about my wife, I never say, "I believe my wife exists!". Instead, I talk to them very concretely about her – her qualities, what she did this week – and about our relationship – how much her love and support means in my life, for instance. It's something worth examining, then, when we find one of the things we say most commonly in reference to the Divine is: "I believe in God." Let's really consider what that means!

excerpt from Book 1: Beyond Believing
Heat Management and Spiritual Realization — There are (and have been throughout history) only a very few people who practice the habits outlined in my book, "Habits of Highly Spiritual People". At the crux of the issue is the matter of heat. When we attempt to make a change in ourselves, there is a friction between the old tendencies and the new habit. This friction is subjectively experienced as heat. And it is anything but comfortable. The basic reason so few people realize anything great spiritually is: if you can't stand the heat, you will get out of the kitchen. So effective schools of transformation have to explicitly address this matter of heat. It can't just be ignored; any school of change that is founded merely on good intentions, positive thinking, or talking alone, will drop the ball of change the instant things start heating up. It is also true that it is only because we are adapted to such "low energy" states that we make such a fuss about the heat, and about distinguishing between slightly more pleasurable and slightly more painful experiences. But these are indeed "slight" differences of state on the Infinite Scale, which we altogether fail to notice when we have re-adapted to melting in an Infinite Sea of Spiritual Energy.

excerpt from Book 2: Secrets of Human Transformation
Why Be Blinded By Science and Materialism? — Unlike scientific materialism, genuine spirituality does not exclude the spiritual or the subjective from the study of Reality, nor does it exclude the "objective reality" of scientific study. Genuine spirituality is based on accounting for the full nature of Reality, including greater-than-material dimensions, consciousness, death and beyond. For this reason, it is capable of identifying and realizing the greatest human potential, which is inherently Spiritual and Transcendental, and not material-only. To be blinded by science and materialism into thinking technological self-fulfillment is one's highest potential is to choose a destiny wherein one is increasingly pleasurized in body, and increasingly stimulated in mind, but increasingly desperate at heart.
excerpt from Book 8: Three Views of Reality and Human Potential

There But for the Grace of God Go I: The "Outside Force" That Liberates Man the Machine — Are we machines? If not altogether mechanical, to what degree are we "machine", and to what degree, "free being"? Many wisdom traditions suggest that increasing spiritual maturity is what moves us along the spectrum from the "machine" end toward the "free being" end. But how does one mature spiritually? Grace — tangible help from the Spiritual Reality — is what makes the difference.