Central dynamic: Deconstruction, dereification, seeing through concepts, thoughts, and mental overlays

Experiences and phenomena: Awakening and deepening into nonduality, nonself, nonexistence, spaciousness, transcendence, subject/object collapse, kensho, satori, jhana, samadhi, nirodha, nirvana, sunyata, anatta, etc.

Opened and deepened by: Techniques and approaches drawn from Theravada, Zen, Advaita, Daoism, TM, Patañjali Yoga, Actualism, Headless Way, and related meditation and inquiry traditions.

Guiding question: What still seems real, actual, or present — and is it really so?

Essential practices: Focusing on deconstructing identity, concepts, and perception.

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These short videos are intended to provide basic “teasers” of highly complex practices. If anything appeals to you, please seek out further instruction, guidance, and safety advice from a qualified teacher.

Paradigmatic quote:

“All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, a mirage, a bubble, a shadow; they are like dew or like a flash of lightning. One should meditate on them like this.”

— The Diamond Sutra

See the entire Essential Spiritual Toolkit playlist here.

Central dynamic: Unity, merging, intimacy, uncovering connections, nonseparation

Experiences and phenomena: Awakening and deepening into unity, love, divinity, sacredness, holiness, benevolence, compassion, joy, healing, God, Goddess, cosmic intelligence, etc.

Opened and deepened by: Techniques and approaches drawn from Mahayana Buddhism, Bhakti Yoga, Deity Yoga, Christian Mysticism, Sufism, Jewish Mysticism, Goddess traditions, Paganism, Nature Mysticism, and related traditions.

Guiding question: What still seems to be separate or stand apart from love/divinity/unity — and is it really so?

Essential practices: Focusing on overcoming the separation of the self by merging into love, the divine, or the universe.

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These short videos are intended to provide basic “teasers” of highly complex practices. If anything appeals to you, please seek out further instruction, guidance, and safety advice from a qualified teacher.

Paradigmatic quote:

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

— Meister Eckhart 

See the entire Essential Spiritual Toolkit playlist here.

Central dynamic: Effervescence, dissolving, pulsation, vibration, dynamism, creativity

Experiences and phenomena: Awakening and deepening into energy, kundalini, qi, prana, winds, bliss, meridians, dantians, chakras, auras, koshas, light-body, rainbow body, quantum fields, astral projection, etc.

Opened and deepened by: Techniques and approaches drawn from Yoga, Qigong, Vajrayana, Daoism, Asian medicine, martial arts, and related traditions.

Guiding question: What still seems solid, static, or non-dynamic — and is it really so?

Essential practices: Focusing on experiencing the body, mind, and all other phenomena as dynamic fluctuations or pulsations.

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These short videos are intended to provide basic “teasers” of highly complex practices. If anything appeals to you, please seek out further instruction, guidance, and safety advice from a qualified teacher.

Paradigmatic quote:

O Divine Mother Kundalini, the Divine Cosmic Energy that is hidden in men!…. Thou hast manifested as Prana, electricity, force, magnetism, cohesion, gravitation in this universe. This whole universe rests in Thy bosom.

— Swami Sivananda 

See the entire Essential Spiritual Toolkit playlist here.

Central dynamic: Welcoming, surrendering, uncovering, holding

Experiences and phenomena: Awakening and deepening into the unconscious mind, including all traumatic, intergenerational, ancestral, sociocultural, transpersonal, archetypal, biological, elemental, and soul-level conditioning.

Opened and deepened by: Techniques and approaches drawn from psychology, Jungianism, IFS, shamanism, indigenous religions, dreamwork, plant medicines, and other traditions that plumb the depths of the psyche.

Guiding question: What still needs to be controlled, is not fully surrendered to, is not fully welcomed —and is it really so?  

Essential practices: Focusing on liberating the psyche, welcoming or surrendering to whatever surfaces from the shadows.

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These short videos are intended to provide basic “teasers” of highly complex practices. If anything appeals to you, please seek out further instruction, guidance, and safety advice from a qualified teacher.

Paradigmatic quote:

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

— C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

See the entire Essential Spiritual Toolkit playlist here.

Central dynamic: Multidimensionality, simultaneity, paradox

Experiences and phenomena: Initially, there is oscillation between different threads, realizations, identities, ways of seeing, or ways of being, including oscillation between awakened and unawakened states. As time goes by, there is deeper integration, blending, or bleed-through of these states into one another, until everything is eventually seen as multidimensional, coherent, seamless, integrated.

Guiding question for integrating two or more threads: These dimensions of awakening seem so different, incompatible, incommensurable with one another — but is it really so?

Guiding question for integrating daily life: What aspects of my everyday life still seem separate from awakening, untransformed by my realizations — and are they really so?

Guiding question for challenging experiences: Is this challenging experience really, actually, present? Is it really something separate from love or divinity? Is it really so solid, static, and non-dynamic? Is it really so unresolvable, unacceptable, and unwelcomeable? Is there anything practical that I can do to help me to address or improve this situation in the here and now?

Essential practices: All of the other practices you have previously learned may continue to apply during braiding and integrating, but it is often helpful to also lean into some basic practices focusing on wholeness and wellbeing, in order to form a solid foundation and a resilient safety net for the work being done.

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These short videos are intended to provide basic “teasers” of highly complex practices. If anything appeals to you, please seek out further instruction, guidance, and safety advice from a qualified teacher.

Paradigmatic quotes:

“Love says: ‘I am everything’. Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing’. Between the two my life flows.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Samsara does not have the slightest distinction from Nirvana. Nirvana does not have the slightest distinction from Samsara.

— Nagarjuna

See the entire Essential Spiritual Toolkit playlist here.

Central dynamic: Non-fixation

Experiences and phenomena: The realizations and experiences of the threads eventually become so integrated into one’s life and ways of being that they no longer stand out as anything needing to be focused on or given attention to. A general falling away of interest in or ability to engage with the threads, and the eventual fading of the relevance of awakening or spirituality altogether. 

Guiding question: What concepts, ontologies, identities, and ways of seeing and being have I built up around this thread — and what would happen if I dropped them?

Essential practices: Relaxation

Paradigmatic quotes:

“Before I studied Zen, mountains were mountains, and water was water. After studying Zen for some time, mountains were no longer mountains, and water was no longer water. But now, after studying Zen longer, mountains are just mountains, and water is just water.”

— Transmission of the Lamp

Enlightenment is the disappearance of the distinction between enlightenment and non-enlightenment.

— Shinzen Young