Philip Goldberg – The Four Pathways to Awakening: How to Be Accident Prone

A Zen teacher once said, “Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you accident prone.”

We could paraphrase the statement and say: Spiritual awakenings tend to happen spontaneously; they can’t be planned, coerced, or ordered up like a takeout meal. Spiritual practice increases the likelihood of them occurring. Put another way, the winds of Grace are always blowing, but it helps immensely to set our sails properly.

In this presentation, we’ll dive into a useful framework for understanding spiritual practices and making wise choices that support and accelerate our: the four paths of yoga — bhakti (heart/devotion), jnana (mind/discernment), karma (action/selfless service), raja (method-driven). Each of the pathways contain a variety of practices within them, and they are not mutually exclusive. People following any tradition, and no tradition, can benefit from understanding this framework.