I have been asked to write a clarifying BLOG about me and my work. I am a Spiritual Teacher and a Psycho-Spiritual Psychotherapist. My background is in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies and Psychotherapy, and my lineage comes from the teachings of Soto Zen, Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta,  and Adi Da Samraj, Vedanta, Sufism, and Taoism, among others. Although these teachers and teachings embodied and paved the way and provided stepping stones for an individual and progressive search, my internal knowing or unknowing springs from the heart-seat of eternal wisdom, truth, and bliss. Thus my search for Self and Reality amounted over time merely to the acceptance of present conditions and an understanding of the human predicament.

I have not been awakened. On the contrary I redefined nearly all my "transpersonal experiences" as heightened psychological events. Although at the time, in the heady days of the search, they seemed to be spiritual in nature and origin. My recasting such experiences as distinctly human ego-bound events has been part of my basic understanding and subsequent development of an innovative way of growth and development for the human being to be liberated in the twenty-first century.

My offering of this psycho-spiritual approach is not merely progressive and neither is it eclectic. I have followed the dictum, separate to join, by distinguishing psychology from spirituality, not because they are separate, but because people are confused and tend to merge the human with the Divine. Human neurosis inhibits the Divine, in the sense that contracting in our divisive ego-conditioning, we resist true understanding. In order to arrive at truth we must stop what we are doing and simply be. Then we realize ourselves. This means that your involvement in this work may be in any one of the following three levels of participation:

• Curiosity, in which your motivation is to add to yourself. You want something from this work and teaching and you are attached to the ego-based development of self and your fulfilment in this bodymind and present stage of life.

• You are inspired to go beyond self-interest and therefore you seek -- still seek -- some gratification, progression, or improvement. The way that this work offers for this progression is authenticity, true nature, and the realization and compassion of sacred practices centered in the heart.

• You possess the heart of the devotee, realized to some degree and your thought and feeling is turned toward sadhana or lifelong surrender and embracing and offering toward reality and truth.

If you have spiritual sensibilities you need psychological clarity in which to grow the spiritual flower in you. Psychology is the soil and the root, spirituality is the stem and the bud, Divine realization is the flower facing the sun. There are no secrets today. Those secrets of spirituality that were only available to the earnest initiate in ancient times are now freely available on a keyboard click. The search, therefore, is over... nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, no one to take credit for any supposed achievement.

However, one all-important aspect remains: lead the sacred-spiritual life centered in your Being, knowing you are Consciousness, that all is God and that wisdom, authenticity and compassion flow through you in receptive emptiness through your Divine soul. For within you lives the heart of compassion, the eternal soul, the ocean of the Spirit and infinite Consciousness. The Golden Thread of Truth has weaved itself into your life and your life is a gift of devotion to its wonder.

BLOG entry #33