The Power of Self-Efficacy: A Useful Tool to Transform Our View of Ourselves and Others and Get More Effective Results in Our Work, Play, and Relationships

By Adam J. Pearson One of the most interesting things I learned as a student of both psychology and pedagogy was the concept self-efficacy. This vital idea has a powerful effect on how we live our daily lives, how we teach, lead, parent, work, play, grow in our hobbies, and develop in relationships. As a…

The Innocent Habit of Believing Unloving Thoughts

By Adam J. Pearson Friend: Things are slowly working out for me but I’m really struggling today and succumbing to suicidal thoughts. Me: I’m happy to hear that you feel that things are slowly working out. Healing and growth are a process and moments of struggle along the way are a normal part of that….

Does “Living in Bliss” Mean We Feel Like We’re Having a Constant Orgasm?: Ananda and Equanimity

By Adam J. Pearson Bliss and Equanimity When the yoga sutras and Buddhist discourses talk about stabilizing in bliss (ananda), we might think they mean we’d feel like we were having a constant orgasm all day. As great as that sounds like it would be, though, it’s not hard to see that such a state wouldn’t…

“I Shouldn’t Be Feeling What I Feel Right Now,” Is That True?

By Adam J. Pearson So, a thought pops up and says: “I shouldn’t be feeling what I feel right now…” That’s a good one! Can you absolutely know that’s true? What’s the reality? You’re feeling it! Reality has spoken. You should be feeling what you are feeling, because you are. That’s the reality. How do you know when…

No One Has Ever Hated Themselves

By Adam J. Pearson Introduction: You’ve Never Hated What You Are, Only What You Believed You Were One of the most shocking things I ever discovered is that no one has ever hated themselves. Really. And trust me, I thought I did. There were periods that I thought I hated myself badly enough to want…

The Madness of Our Present Situation

By Adam J. Pearson Such is the madness Of our present situation that… Being freedom itself, We come to believe we are bound, And desperately seek to become free, For the bound self we believe we are. Being the source of all love, We come to believe we are unlovable, And fervently seek to find love, For…

Stabilization, Insight, and the Four Images of the Diamond Sutra

By Adam J. Pearson [Cover Image by Doug Adams, Gungarama temple, 1998] “Subhuti, if bodhisattvas have images of self, images of person, images of a being, images of a liver of life, they are not bodhisattvas.” ~ From the Diamond Sutra, the oldest printed book in the world (printed via a 9th century block print)…

Satsang Hopping and the End of the Search

By Adam J. Pearson When I met my Guru, he told me: “You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what you are. Watch the sense ‘I am’, find your real Self.” I obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my spare time I would spend…

The Vibrancy of Life and the Deadness of the “Story of Me”

By Adam J. Pearson The mind’s constant storytelling about “me” and “my” and “mine” is so clearly… dead. It’s a mental process generated by a live brain, but its content is dead: its focus is the past and the future, the past it remembers, the future it imagines. The storytelling takes it for granted that behind its river-flow of thoughts…

The Difference Between Seeing A Thought or Emotion and Looking From It

This is the most fundamental thing to understand: the heaviness that “my” thoughts and feelings seem to have isn’t in the thoughts and feelings; it’s in the “my.”