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Photo by Lan Gao, on Unsplash Is it even possible to change? The question usually comes after years of struggle. We’ve tried to stop losing our temper, worrying excessively, criticizing ourselves, overeating, drinking too much, procrastinating, or falling into the same kind of dysfunctional relationships. We make sincere resolutions, only to find ourselves repeating the same behavior a few days or weeks later. At that point, it’s tempting to give up. But I know without a doub

Photo by Chi Chen It is easy to speak about peace when no one is challenging us. It is easy to speak about compassion when the person in front of us is kind. But when someone attacks, misunderstands, accuses, or lashes out, then we see the actual state of our practice. Recently, I had an experience that brought this home. I called a dear friend whom I’d not spoken to for some time. She has been going through a difficult period and I wanted to reach out and let her know I was

We live in these little bodies, and from the inside they feel pretty much the same throughout our whole lives. It's the outside that changes. Something inside stays constant. This is one of the central teachings of Swami Rama's Sacred Journey: our true Self — the Atman, the Purusha, by many names — never changes. Our task is to find it. Swami Rama tells us to begin with the inner instrument, the antakarana. In the West we call it simply "the mind," but the tradition describes

Refusing the Baubles: A Lesson from the Katha Upanishad Think about what you most enjoy in life. Good food, beautiful music, the pleasure of good company, the comfort of familiar routines. Now imagine being offered all of it — in abundance, without limit — and being asked to trade it for something you cannot see, cannot taste, and cannot easily describe. Would that be a hard choice? For most of us, if we are honest, the answer is yes. The Katha Upanishad opens with exactly th