Pictures from Assisi

In a previous blog post, I described a beautiful experience I had at St. Francis’ tomb in Assisi. Well, we just started looking at some of the pictures from our trip, and found some really nice ones. Here are just a few of them….

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Confronting the Collective Shadow

I am nearing the end of my almost 4-week journey in Europe. As I write this, I am on a train from Berlin headed for Amsterdam, which will be the last leg of my trip before I fly back to the U.S. in four days. The time has been so rich in connections and learning…

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Surfaces and Depth – Part 1

One of the main insights of the great mystics, and one of the essential truths of Integral Recovery, is that all suffering comes from identification with surfaces. This is not a dogma that one has to believe or buy based on what I or anyone else is saying—it is an experiential given that one will…

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Practice, Damn It! Practice!

I am writing from the train station in Berlin, nearing the halfway mark in my month long trip to Germany. It seems like I have been gone from Utah much longer than 2 weeks. I have felt lonely at times, but the depths of the experience have more than compensated for the occasional bouts of…

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In St. Francis’ Tomb

Something really remarkable happened to me last week, and I’d like to unpack it and see where it takes us. I had the chance to be in the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi. We had just arrived in Assisi and were visiting the Basilica. Somehow, I had gotten it in my head that Francis’…

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Hope at the End of the Tunnel

Transcribed from iAwake’s weekly, free teleconference call on July 25, 2012. I was recently in the Bay Area to teach a class on Addiction Studies. When my class and I did our first meditation together, we sank into a very deep meditative state, one which we could all really feel. When you meditate in a…

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The Buddha Didn’t Need no Stinkin’ Holosync®

I wanted to write a few words about the use of binaural brain entrainment technology (specifically Holosync® technology) for enhanced meditation, shadow work, and brain transformation. There seems to be some controversy, albeit small controversy, regarding its use. There’s the argument that goes something like this: Well, Buddha didn’t have Holosync®, which makes using Holosync® seem…

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An Answer and a Gift

I wanted to share a powerful experience that I had in meditation the other day. I was using the iAwake Special Edition Digital Euphoria track and I was in a profound state of contemplative prayer, or resting in the presence, as I have begun to call it. Paul Smith, author of Integral Christianity, calls it the…

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Sitting in the Fire

Here is a technique that I have been using for over three years in my personal work and also shared with clients and students and watched them use it with great success. I call it “Sitting in the Fire.” While I arrived at this technique semi-independently, I have found similar examples of this particular method…

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