As we mature, it’s not hard to see identity as a fool’s errand. In the light of self-realization, identity may at first seem like shoddy construction work, a house built from erosive materials on a sandy foundation, but really its great crime against our growth is its reductiveness. We aren’t building something from nothing, but […]
Interview With David Tien!
A great interview with a Ancient Chinese philosophy scholar, relationship and masculinity expert David Tien who is based in Singapore but from my hometown in the Toronto suburbs! We discuss a topic that I could go on about for hours: meditation and masculinity. His operation here: https://www.auratransformation.org/
Guru Purnima: Honoring The Teacher Within, Without & Everywhere
“It’s not. About. This.” -Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, pounding his chest with every word. Tonight’s full moon concludes the celebration of Guru Purnima, an auspicious day spanning from Buddhism to Jainism to Hinduism, each with their own origin story and unique rituals. But the essence for each remains the same: honoring the teacher. “Guru” is a […]
In Case You’re Worried About Becoming A Spiritual Pollyanna
The incredibly valuable work of Robert Augustus Masters includes in its oeuvre one of the first treatises on the hazards of “spiritual bypassing”, which describes critical ways Western practitioners of eastern or otherwise ancient modalities can create unhealthy self-deluding relationships to its ideologies. The text raises very cogent points and should be required reading for […]
A Fun Family Holiday Frolic!: Snow, Christmas Movies & Divine Agents of Destruction
Twenty years ago today Bill Watterson retired the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip (and with it his entire cartooning career). I was deeply invested by then, having read/re-read every panel of the series and when the final strip (pictured above) was published at the very horizon of the mid-nineties, it delivered nothing short of a […]
What’s There When The Steam Clears
Sometimes, we meet someone and it feels like the collision of two guitar solos that somehow layer over each other in perfect harmony. Our entire life folds into theirs effortlessly. All those shadowy crevices of our existence that we were worried might be unattractive, troubling, or irritating for another just fit this uncanny beauty like […]