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To be a true yoga master, you need to master the art of negation. That’s Patanjali’s idea, from the Yoga Sutras: 2.33 Vitarka badhane pratipaksha bhavanam. The practice of pratipaksha bhanavam prescribes that, when disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite thoughts should be brought into awareness.

The more we learn about other civilizations, the more anomalous the West seems. If we resist the presumption that Western culture is the growing tip of social evolution, to be contrasted with the stagnation of non-Western ones, what becomes highlighted is its dynamism, for better and worse. Rather than trying to account for the “undevelopment” of non-Western societies — why they did not evolve further along our path — it is the apparently self-generated and future-driven “progress” of the West that needs to be explained. What caused it?

When practitioners set foot on a spiritual path, we want to bring our whole selves—our ethics and values, our commitments to social and environmental justice, and our embodied interbeing with all animal and plant species, water-bodies and air-bodies, soil and rock.

The Upaniṣads, the ancient oral texts within the corpus of the Vedas, are the world’s earliest extant discussions of nonduality. They develop an integrative vision that reveals the hidden connections tying individuals to the world.

Lucidly expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita and especially in Tantra, we see instructions on why we should not escape the endless woes of samsara, but rather embrace this dualistic world of ecstasy and heartbreak openheartedly and with deep spiritual intention.

What’s happening is real and painful, but if we recognize that our emotions function within a narrow level of our consciousness, we can save ourselves from being devoured. Even as we’re being bludgeoned by an experience, we can pull back and tune in to a deeper dimension in ourselves.

The Latin word “homunculus” or “little man” was first used in the late 1500’s as a theory of thought of gestation that each man carried a complete little man inside himself.

How do we define the feminine, especially the divine kind? And who gets to define the divine feminine?