Eliezer Sobel's blog

[RS Singles] • Let's face it: of all the people that you and I know who have spent a good deal of their lives sitting on meditation cushions, chanting in Sanskrit, gulping psychedelics like M & Ms, and subscribing to The Yoga Journal, how many have achieved the pinnacle of human possibility that all of the great spiritual teachings insist is available to anyone? (more)

I vividly remember the intensity and significance of our first meeting.  He would often do an exercise with new students that involved sitting across from one another, eyeball to eyeball, with the instruction, "Anything that comes into your mind that you don't want to share with me, share with me."  (more)

Our True Nature is who we already are, not something we can become or attain in the future. We somehow don't recognize this fact and spend years searching for something that was never lost, and if we're fortunate, we'll run into a teacher along the way who will simply point out what is perfectly obvious. (more)

Reports have appeared of people who see Avatar and fall into depression at their inability to access a world as beautiful and spiritual as Pandora, the mythical planet depicted in the film. But before you join a PADS support group, consider the lessons of LSD. (more)

When I realized my email account was lost, I went through Elizabeth Kubler Ross's well-known Five Stages of Grief. It couldn't possibly, really, all be gone, could it? Nah. Yes, it could, and it was. (more)

Context is everything, and it literally determines which "me" shows up. I have seen this again and again in various roles over the years. But context can also work against us. (more)

For many of us, the very real evolution of our awareness moves from the unexamined assumption of a victim mentality that blames others, life itself or God for everything that happens, to the astounding and liberating insight that we are responsible for our experience of reality. (more)

Zen-ish people are always saying "This is it, there's nothing to get, it's all here now," but I never really thought they meant it! Did they really mean this is as good as it gets? Surely they must be referring to some other version of this that will come along later, once I really understand that "this is it, here and now." (more)

The moment of spiritual epiphany reveals that one's true identity is an infinite blank slate of primordial awareness. And if that's not hilarious, what is? (more)

What if the Mayan calendar math is off? More time to stockpile Basmati rice, peanut-butter cookies and Power Bars, and keep paying late fees on your CCs. (more)