The Contemplative Path Podcast

Fear, craving, and the wish for a more comfortable world are some of the oldest concerns in contemplative traditions. You’ll explore how Buddhism, existentialism, and Marie Curie’s scientific outlook each point toward the same insight: fear loosens its grip when you turn toward it and seek to understand it.

You’ll also look at the practice of reading wis…

Isaiah 58 describes a fast that has nothing to do with food. It asks what happens when you take the yoke away from your midst, and what that yoke might be.

You’ll explore the yoke of pride that tempts you to control others through your expectations, the pointing finger, and the demand that people change so you can feel comfortable. You’ll also look at th…

Gratitude can steady you, but it can’t be forced, and it shouldn’t be used to gloss over real pain. You’ll explore why “positive vibes only” rings hollow, how suffering and depression narrow what we perceive, and why listening often helps more than cheerful advice. You’ll consider how a morning media diet shapes mood, and how contemplative traditions, from Buddhist contentment to Eckhart Tolle’s emphasis on the present, see each moment as neither all good nor all bad.

You’ll also practice a simple pattern: name what you’re feeling, accept it, then look for what else is changing around you, such as a ticking clock, the first bird of the morning, or the stars overhead.

Along the way, you’ll ask: Is my pain the whole of this moment? And what might my demand for things to be different be keeping me from seeing?

Why does spiritual practice sometimes ask us to stay with discomfort instead of escaping it? You’ll explore how contemplative practice helps you face what’s in front of you with courage and authenticity, without sugarcoating it or running toward distraction.

You’ll reflect on a daily reading about the contemplative that lives in all of us: the part that …

Autopilot mornings — phone first, news first — make it easy to forget you’re a spiritual being as much as a physical one. This is a rule, in the old monastic sense: short, repeatable words for resetting your inner compass before the day takes over.

The practice moves through the sacred web beneath ordinary appearances, the roots beneath roots connecting …

Creative blocks often come from lines of approval, acceptability, and fear. You'll explore a short blessing for stepping beyond them, releasing the need to be admired or chosen, and creating from love. Creativity doesn't need a finished product. Sometimes it's simply an exhale.

You're hearing this one first. As a paid subscriber, you get this blessing be…

Ignatian contemplation invites you into a Gospel story with your full imagination — its sights, sounds, and textures becoming as personal as your own memory. You move through the practice’s classic preparation: inviting the Holy Spirit, withdrawing from the sensory environment around you (the yogic descent of pratyahara), and naming a particular grace t…

This talk explores balance not as the absence of chaos, but as the capacity to hold multiple parts of life — professional, personal, physical, spiritual — without letting one dominate. Recorded during a season of major upheaval — a cross-country move, a career transition, total instability — it traces how spiritual grounding, more than certainty in any …

Old expectations have a way of drowning out the quiet, new thing trying to emerge. In this Lectio Divina practice on Isaiah 48:6-7, you'll sit with the same short passage three times, letting a word or image surface a little more with each round. A time of open prayer follows, then space to simply rest and receive.

You’ll now find this audio meditation on my Insight Timer page. Press play when you're ready to loosen your grip on what you thought you already knew — and notice what's sprouting instead.

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Trace the prayer of recollection from Osuna's Third Spiritual Alphabet — the text Teresa of Ávila's uncle gave her — through to yoga's chitta vrittis and pratyahara. You'll withdraw from the senses, settle into stillness, and rest in God's presence, then journal what surfaces.