Authentic Living – Robert Rabbin

Archive of ‘Authentic Living’ category

16
May
2016

SIX Words to Change the World

categories: Authentic Living, People, Social Transformation, Spirituality & Religion

I have been fortunate to meet several people who taught me about wisdom and in whose presence I traveled deeper and farther into the world of wonderment, beauty, grace and silence.

Huston Smith, Ph.D., is one such person and is, in my mind, a living saint, a man of prodigious knowledge and wisdom.

Huston Smith

During his distinguished career as an author and professor of philosophy and religion, Dr. Smith managed to not only study, but practice Vedanta, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism and Sufism for over 10 years each. In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a five-part PBS special to Smith’s life and work, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith. (more…)

16
May
2016

Meditation: An Un-common Perspective

categories: Authentic Living, Spirituality & Religion

Meditation is commonly thought to be a practice or method, rooted in some mystical-spiritual-religious tradition or philosophy with the purpose of disabusing us of delusional notions about the nature of self and reality.

Meditation is likewise defined as a path to enlightenment or self-realization—a set of steadying training wheels that helps us to ride the bike of our innate essence — to pedal our way towards the inherent clarity, wisdom, and compassion of our true nature.

Meditation thus implies a means of becoming, an action or process that leads from here to there, a catalyst that produces an effect not already in evidence. Even if one believes that meditation is the expression of our inner being, the intimation of becoming is still there, the implication that we must do something special to become or demonstrate what we are. (more…)

02
May
2016

Spiritual Humility

categories: Authentic Living, Spirituality & Religion

For anyone who embraces and embodies The 5 Principles of Authentic Living, learning is a daily occurrence. How could it not be?

These principles do not suggest anything final or absolute; they do not imply any kind of end-game. As someone who embraces and embodies these principles, and has done so for decades — even before I consciously knew and named them — I would say they have more to do with the idea of Zen mind, beginner’s mind. The more we live in and from these five principles, the more we learn about how to do so. We learn how to live from the inner hub of universal creative and expressive power. We learn how to live from the inside out, being carried by great unconquerable streams of shakti, life-force.

Every day we learn. If we are being present, paying attention, listening deeply, speaking truthfully, and acting creatively — if we are living with and from The 5 Principles of Authentic Living — learning is an everyday occurrence. And yet on some days, I am called to school in a way that is more intense, vivid, and expanding than the day-to-day learning. It’s as if I am called into an accelerated class, taught by a master teacher. It’s a master class, convened spontaneously for a particularly important and timely lesson. (more…)

19
Apr
2016

Speak Truthfully

categories: Art, Music & Literature, Authentic Living, Speaking Truthfully

This post is an excerpt from The 5 Principles of Authentic Living. Here, I discuss the fourth principle: Speak Truthfully.

Be Present, Pay Attention, Listen Deeply. With these principles, we become intimate with what is beneath the thoughtstream in order to uncover and discover our authenticity. These three principles illuminate us from the inside, through the clarity of awareness and power of silence. But this is not enough for an authentic life, because we have to bring this clarity and power from the inside to the outside, to the world in which we live and work and play, to where we see and feel the ripples of our authenticity in the reflections of our words and actions and relationships. (more…)

09
Apr
2016

The 5 Principles of Authentic Living

categories: Authentic Living, Lifestyles

I would like to share with you The 5 Principles of Authentic Living, which represent nearly 50 years of self-study and self-expression.

The first led to self-realization based on direct experience; the second led to unfettered forms of actualizing that realization in the world.

These five principles comprise 10 simple words: two words per principle. They are my scripture, the profoundly holy and profusely practical book I use to guide me along the pathless path of an authentic life. The value of this book isn’t so much in the reading of it (10 words, after all, doesn’t take long), but in the doing of it.

Embodiment. The value of these 10 words is in direct proportion to the degree we embody them. (more…)

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