Spirituality and States: Getting Beyond the Good Stuff

Jay Michaelson
Spirituality is, in large part, a state-change business.  Before you pray, do yoga, meditate, etc., you're thinking about mortgages and to-do lists, but during your practice, something shifts and you feel opened to something that feels "greater."  Afterward, you feel refreshed and re-energized.  This is what state-change is: moving your mind from one way of being to another.  And spiritual seekers have developed a wonderful array of tools to enable it to happen.

For most spiritual folks, state change is what it's all about.  As I'll describe in a moment, spiritual states have the power to open the mind, nourish the heart, and change the world.  They are, I think, the most important force for social and environmental sustainability on the planet.  And they can be lots of fun, too.

But states can also become dead-ends, or misconstrued, or actually dangerous.

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