If you're still hoping for nonduality to cohere, to make your life better, to make you happier, you're still clinging to spiritual materialism.  Better for it all to be for nought.  Surrender even the hope of progress, and progress will happen on its own.

We're told that without integrating spiritual insights into our daily lives, even the greatest of peak experiences is just a narcissistic thrill. We say true spirituality, and certainly Jewish spirituality, is about being in the world. But I think we integrate too quickly, and use this language to avoid making the changes that true spirituality would demand of us.

If you ask most people what makes them who they are, chances are you'll get an answer that has to do with the self, the personality -- perhaps even the "soul." Yet if you look closely at the personality (or mind, or heart, or soul), you discover that it isn't there.

This Saturday is the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, one of the few Jewish festivals which many, many lapsed Jews still observe, if only out of guilt. Some of my friends right here in the Evolver community are in that crowd. Others have expressed an interest in participating in the observance of the day somehow. For both, I’d like to offer some thoughts on the benefits of fasting as a spiritual practice.