It’s been a while since I’ve written a post – I hope the holidays went well for everyone, and happy new year. And a big welcome to those of you who are new to the Transformational Acupuncture blog. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a weeklong spiritual retreat in the second week of December, led by my teacher Rupert Spira. Located in Westchester County about 45 minutes north of New York City, the retreat took place at a small retreat center called Bailey Farms. The days consisted of guided meditation, silent ...
From The Transparency of Things, by Rupert Spira www.rupertspira.com Pages 34-36 Meditation is not an activity. It is the cessation of an activity. . . However, in order to understand that meditation is not an activity, we first come to the understanding that it is the cessation of an activity. This understanding is a very efficient tool for undermining the belief that meditation is something that we do. Once we have fully understood that meditation is not an activity, the activity that we previously considered to be meditation will naturally come to an end. ...
Unusually for me, I found myself fairly wide awake last night, around 2:45 am, and I started wondering how I was going to get back to sleep. I remembered that my mom had mentioned a book by a woman who had tried all the western and alternative cures for insomnia, and had finally found that qigong was the only thing that really helped her. I have to say that I like the title: Wide Awake: What I Learned About Sleep from Doctors, Drug Companies, Dream Experts, and a Reindeer Herder in the Arctic Circle, by Patricia Morrisroe As a ...
Rupert Spira, in his book, The Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience, explains in greater detail exactly what is involved in the process of welcoming difficult emotions. He also connects this process to the deepest spiritual perspective. From The Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience, by Rupert Spira, pages 240-242. Italics in […] are my commentary. Questioner: What part do feelings and the body have to play in this investigation [of Consciousness and Presence]? Rupert Spira: Much of the mind’s activity is designed to avoid feeling. For instance, any form ...
Why do many people turn to meditation? They are interested in relieving their suffering. Suffering comes in many forms – physical, emotional, and mental. As I mentioned in a previous article about finding a meditation style that is right for you, there are many meditative approaches to healing on all three of these levels. In this article, I’d like to discuss a form of meditation that I’ve found to be very helpful for the emotional and mental levels of suffering. It centers around the concept of welcoming, or allowing things to be just as they ...
When I first started meditating and studying spiritual philosophy in earnest, about 12 years ago, my goal was spiritual enlightenment. I clearly remember, in 2000, participating in a group meeting at the Heartwood Institute, a holistic healing training center where I was doing a work-study program right out of college. Everyone in the group was stating their life goal, and I boldly pronounced that my goal was “Self-Realization,” or enlightenment. At the time I think I had some vague concepts about what enlightenment was. They were mostly centered around ideas of a blissful ecstatic awakening experience, after which I would know ...
This article is a reprint from my July 2010 Newsletter You may have noticed the business name at the top of the page - Transformational Acupuncture. After some long hours (and a lot of indecision!) I decided to go with this name, as supposed to a more normal business name like using my own name and title, or something like Holistic Health Associates, or DC Acupuncture Center. Why did I choose this name? About 11 years ago, just out of college, my health hit bottom. I was about 25 pounds underweight (which I ...
