In a yogic practice we gain control of the body to influence the breath, the breath to quiet the mind, and once releasing the mind we allow the God presence to pour in and direct our lives. Eventually we learn to stop being driven by every physical urge, emotional reaction, impulse, and thought and allow ourselves to experience life as it comes. A yoga practice really is not about your body or being able to contort into extreme shapes and take the best picture. The body is simply the...

There is no spiritual journey that comes with instructions. You need to seek knowledge—especially knowledge of yourself—and then learn how to apply that knowledge to your own life. That is how knowledge becomes wisdom. When you are constantly seeking instructions and following authorities outside of yourself, you only learn how to apply information the way someone else told you to apply it. You are learning their way. Their interpretation. Their rules. At some point, that stops being a...

The healing everybody yearns for—self-actualization, enlightenment, the becoming whole that everyone claims to want—doesn't happen only when you are in hermit mode. Much of it can only happen within relationship to others. It is very easy to be single, isolated, or emotionally unavailable and think that you are healed when nothing is happening. Nothing is triggering you. Nobody is disappointing you. No one is getting close enough to activate your fear of abandonment, rejection,...