Notes To Myself: Spiritual Essays by Rick Baldwin

There Is No ‘Being Aware of Being Aware’

The phrase "Be aware of Being Aware" is commonly used in contemporary non-dual teachings. However,...

Searching for Consciousness, Jesus and My Apple Pencil

Lots of things are right in front of our face and we can’t seem to find them. Spirit? Consciousness? Where the heck are they? In this video, I explore a new way to think of these essential life essences. Try it if you want.

The Name That Unlocks

One only needs a name for something to distinguish it from something else and how can there ever be God and something else?

Morning Coffee Ramble Part 2 – The NOW – Nonduality – Metaphysics

This is a sequel to my last metaphysical ramble video. I had some new insights about the NOW and thought I would share.

Morning Coffee Ramble with Rick: Past, Future, the NOW and the Nature of Experience

I’ve been pondering these ideas about the past and future, the NOW and the nature of existence and experience.

The Peace of Christmas

To celebrate a solitary birth at Christmas time is to completely miss the point. The Christmas season points more to discovery than birth.

No Way To Know

To think any of our descriptions and understandings of reality and spirituality are whole and complete is misguided. While I don’t think I want to go so far as say communicating our understanding of reality is a waste of time, I will say any attempt at doing so should be understood to be as flawed as it is. Every attempt is an inaccurate and incomplete one. Human beings can only ever understand a finite idea of infinite reality.

Distraction

Even when we realize we are the peaceful stillness known as Truth, it can be difficult to not to become hypnotized by the illusionary content of mind.

Random Renaissance Person

Let me first explain that Random Renaissance Person is just that: any random person who lived during the Renaissance period (almost any other period will also work if you happen to have some aversion to pondering people from the Renaissance). Simply imagine a single person who could have lived during that time period. Make the person as average as possible – no kings or queens or dignitaries. Just your average Renaissance villager person.

Beyond Appearances

In spiritual work, there is regular need for “translation” of appearances into reality. Often those translations meet resistance from the mind, which constantly seeks tradition, reason and logic. While those are useful features in the so-called physical world, the human mind is not always the best interpreter of reason for the spiritual domain.

Meditation Myths

Meditation is an essential practice for those looking to become more conscious in life. However, there are quite a few myths about meditation I often see which I feel can result in some people avoiding meditation all together simply because they either can’t understand certain practices or they don’t seem to get the suggested results when they try meditation.

You Are Not Your Mind

It is always a useful activity to keep in awareness the recognition that you are not your mind. If there is any constant “task” in the spiritual life it seems to be this. Human life, by it’s very nature, continually works to bring us into identification with our minds. It is this identification which brings about the sense of separation, aloneness and unhappiness that many of us struggle with on a regular basis.

The Journey Is An Illusion

The biggest deception in spirituality is “the journey.” Practically everyone participates in it to some extent or another. I’ve found myself many times over the course of my life talking about my own spiritual journey. How I got from where I was to where I am. And while it certainly seems that way, it’s nothing but an illusion. A big lie.

Our Strange, Habitual Mental Collections

Do you carry a collection of opinions around with you wherever you go, like pins or patches on a jacket or bumper stickers on a car? Have you ever considered what purpose your opinions serve? Do you use them to show people what type of person you are? What you think? What you believe? What you like? What you hate? What you are sure is right and what you are convinced is wrong? Do these opinions allow you to avoid investigating something further? Maybe the opinion is a position you held many years ago but you haven’t spent much time examining the topic since. No doubt it’s still true, right?

That Isn’t A God

To be recognized as a god, a being would need to be significantly better at following its own rules of moral behavior than its own worshippers are. A god which demonstrated a “do as I say, not as I do” type of lifestyle behavior would simply be a manipulative con artist and not worthy of worship by any followers.

Meditation Is Doing Nothing

In meditation, I am not attempting to “do” anything. There is no striving or desiring to make anything happen, nor is there an expectation of anything happening.

Original Sin?

“Human beings did not first sin when they disobeyed God. Human Beings first sinned when they believed they were separate and apart from God.”

Shaking The Dust

In Biblical times, when leaving Gentile cities, pious Jews often shook the dust from their feet to show their separation from Gentile practices. According to the New Testament, when Jesus called his twelve disciples, he sent them into Jewish lands and told them, in a reversal, to perform the same act against the non-believing Jews.