The most common and most important questions from live sessions — answered in writing. Click any question to expand.
I understand the teachings intellectually but can't seem to have a genuine recognition. What am I missing?
This is one of the most common and important questions. The short answer: nothing is missing. The recognition is not something you add to understanding — it is the understanding itself, when it stops being about an object and turns toward its own source. The moment you ask "who is understanding this?" genuinely, without rushing to an answer — that turning is the beginning of what you are looking for. The recognition is not a different state you need to reach. It is what is here right now, before the thought "I don't have it" arises. That thought arises in it. Notice what it arises in.
I had a profound experience of stillness once and now I can't get back to it. What happened?
The experience was real. The attempt to recreate it is what prevents its return. Experiences of genuine stillness, of recognition, of the falling away of the separate self — these are not events that need to be recreated. They are glimpses of what is always already present. What changes in a glimpse is not the reality — the reality was always there. What changes is the attention. And attention cannot be forced back to where it was by remembering where it was. It can only rest — completely, without agenda — in what is actually present right now. The next glimpse will not look like the last one.
How do I know if I'm meditating correctly?
If there is a "correctly," there is already a problem — because the thing that is checking whether you are doing it correctly is the very mind that meditation is supposed to see through. The truest instruction for meditation is: allow everything to be exactly as it is, without trying to change it, without trying to make it better, without even trying to meditate. What remains when you genuinely stop trying? That — whatever that is — is closer to meditation than anything produced by technique.
How do I work with anger in practice? I feel guilty having it.
The guilt about anger is usually more damaging than the anger itself. Genuine anger — as distinct from chronic resentment or reactive aggression — is a healthy, information-carrying response to something that matters. When someone crosses a real boundary, anger is the body's intelligence saying: this is not okay. The practice is not to eliminate anger but to meet it honestly — to feel it in the body without either suppressing it or acting from it compulsively. What does this anger actually want to protect? That question, asked genuinely in the middle of the feeling, is the practice.
After years of practice I feel more confused, not less. Is this normal?
Yes. And it is often a sign of genuine progress, not failure. The confusion you feel after years of practice is a different kind of confusion from the confusion of a beginner. It is the confusion of someone whose familiar maps have begun to fail — which means the territory they were mapping is becoming too real to be captured by the maps. The certainties that sustained early practice have dissolved. What hasn't yet dissolved is the habit of looking for certainty. Rest in the confusion without trying to resolve it. The confusion is closer to the truth than the certainties it replaced.
Can I do this work without a teacher?
To some degree, yes — and many people make genuine progress through self-directed practice, reading, and sincere inquiry. But there is something that a genuine living teacher offers that books and recordings cannot fully provide: the transmission of presence. Not information about what it is like to be awake, but the direct impact of awake presence on the field of the student. This is not mysticism — it is physics. The quality of consciousness in a room changes in the presence of someone who is genuinely awake. Whether you work with a teacher directly or through recordings, what you are absorbing is not only the content of the teaching but the quality of presence from which it arises.
What is the difference between the ego and the pain-body?
The ego is the structure of self that the mind constructs through thinking — the ongoing narrative of who you are, what you want, what you fear, how you compare to others. It is a cognitive structure. The pain-body is something more somatic — the accumulated emotional residue of past experience that lives in the body as an energetic presence. They are related but distinct. The ego often uses the pain-body as material — it builds its narratives partly from the emotional history stored in the pain-body. Conversely, the pain-body often reinforces the ego's stories by providing the emotional charge that makes them feel real. In practice: the ego tends to be worked with through awareness and self-inquiry; the pain-body tends to be worked with through somatic presence and compassion.
I find it very hard to be compassionate toward myself. Where do I start?
Start where you actually are, not where you think you should be. If genuine self-compassion feels impossible, begin with the observation: "I notice I am unable to be compassionate toward myself right now." That observation, made honestly and without self-judgment, is itself a small act of compassion. You are acknowledging your actual state rather than pretending to feel something you do not feel. From that small, honest acknowledgment — "this is where I am" — genuine compassion can begin to grow. It does not begin with warmth. It begins with honesty. The warmth follows.