The Dispatches
14 Dispatches
The Beloved Withdrawn
On losing a formal practice through the accumulation of ordinary life, and the difficulty and gift of karma yoga as the practice that becomes available in its place. On separation from the beloved as a real state the tradition has been…
The Third Man
Shackleton on South Georgia, Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis, Joe Simpson in the crevasse, Ron DiFrancesco in the South Tower. A century of well-documented testimony about an unseen presence arriving in extremis — and what the best…
The Crucible
A letter Ram Dass wrote to two parents who lost their daughter, and the recognition it holds for everyone who fears losing what they love most. On the holding-both of the cosmic and the human, when up-leveling refuses to do its usual work.
The Renewer
The world feels like it is coming apart, and the traditions have a name for the feeling. But the figure who presides over the dissolution is almost universally misunderstood. On Shiva the Renewer, Kali, the age of dissolution, and the open…
The Cosmic Giggle
Everyone has had the laugh that arrives at the worst possible moment. Following it upward, through Maharaj-ji, the dancing Shiva, and the Buddha's half-smile, to the place where the deepest comedy and the deepest compassion turn out to be…
Too True to Be Good
Everyone has tried to be good and failed. An older reading of the Sermon on the Mount suggests the failure was the design, and that what Jesus was pointing at is what every tradition that pushed far enough found waiting.
The Great Work
The question everyone who studies the mystics eventually runs into: the miracles. The skeptic dismisses. The credulous accepts. There is a third option — and alchemy, rightly understood, is where it lives. A reading that ends by turning…
The Word
A reading of Genesis that starts as a literary observation and ends somewhere much larger — that the world is made of words, that the voice which spoke it is the one every tradition has been trying to name, and that the physicists,…
The Field
The exhaustion of carrying weight that isn’t yours. Of walking into a room and knowing, before a word is spoken, that something is wrong. Science has now measured what mystics and empaths have always known. This is not a burden to be…
The River
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with being tired. It is the exhaustion of resistance — of pushing against something that doesn’t push back so much as simply continues. Most people know this feeling. Very few…
When the Light Goes Out
There are periods when the connection simply isn’t there — the line gone quiet, the felt sense of presence absent, the practice continuing without knowing why. Every tradition has a name for this territory. And every tradition arrives at…
The Curriculum
Most people arrive at karma believing the universe keeps a ledger. The traditions agree that actions have consequences — but they locate the mechanism somewhere entirely different. Five teachings trace the thread from what karma actually…
What You’re Really Asking For
Many people arrive at manifestation looking for a better way to get what they want. The traditions agree the intuition is sound — consciousness and reality are not as separate as materialism insists. But they locate the mechanism somewhere…
The God Behind God
What do you do when the divine itself is the problem? A line running from the Book of Job through Gnostic theology, the Bhagavad Gita, and into the heart of Christian mysticism — and what every tradition that pushed far enough found…