There is a good deal of confusion around the notion of enlightenment. Ask 10 spiritual leaders what enlightenment means and you will get 10 different answers. Ask your average spiritual seeker and you get the “deer in headlights” look that is not the result of introspective bliss. It appears that most people use the word almost offhandedly and yet when it comes down to it, most people don’t have a clear idea of what enlightenment really is. Because it is...
The Sword and the Leaf
My father was a warrior by profession and by deed. He fought in World War II, Korea and fought twice in the jungles of Viet Nam. He was not a very religious man but he was especially spiritual. In this regard he aligned more with the code of Bushido, the code of honor developed among the samurai, the military warriors of Japan. During World War II while fighting in the Pacific theater my father came by a katana, a samurai...
They Are Among Us (Part II)
Knowing that we are not complete is the first step to becoming whole. We feel it bubble up from deep inside when we are very quiet. It is a feeling of incompleteness, a sense that something is missing. One way we often try to drown out that uneasy feeling is by becoming busy, very busy. The more that feeling of emptiness tries to poke its meddlesome head into our conscious business the more we work to trample it under the...
Who Knows What Spiritual Means?
With the increasing problems and negativity facing this world, global warming, wars, financial uncertainty, the disintegration of the family unit, etc., it is only natural that we try to tip the scales back toward positivity. One of our strongest attempts to neutralize negativity is to uncover our spiritual side. There seems to be an innate necessity to point out that we are spiritual beings who have lost our way and if we could only learn to be more spiritual than...
