We are living through a time of enormous uncertainty, conflict, and moral complexity. In periods like these, spiritual practice is tested. It is easy to become overwhelmed, reactive, emotionally shut down, or polarized. Yet it is precisely during difficult times that practice becomes most essential. Spiritual resilience is not about avoiding hardship — it is about developing the inner strength to remain conscious, grounded, and connected to our humanity in the midst of hardship

I recently held a meditation gathering, where we explored two complementary qualities of Spiritual Resiliency: Withstanding Power and the Repelling Power.

Withstanding Power is the capacity to remain present with discomfort, ambiguity, grief, fear, and uncertainty without immediately collapsing or reacting unconsciously. It is the skill to stay open to whatever challenge may arise in your experience. But resilience also requires healthy boundaries.

Repelling Power is about asserting healthy boundaries. It is the skill to boundary up in order to protect what is sacred within you. Ethical guidelines such as non-harming, mindfulness, and compassion serve as stabilizing forces that protect both ourselves and others from unnecessary suffering.

Spiritual maturity involves learning the wisdom of when to open up to and withstand experience, and when to protect yourself and repel experience. It is knowing when to soften and when to establish clear boundaries.

The ongoing dance between these two skills becomes part of our evolution and growth. Through practice, we cultivate the clarity needed to navigate the moral dilemmas of life with greater awareness, steadiness, and heart. In doing so, resilience ceases to be merely psychological — it becomes deeply spiritual.

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For over twenty years, The Integral Dojo in Tel Aviv has offered Aikido, meditation, and conflict resolution to a community of practitioners seeking stability, strength, and inner transformation. The past two and a half years of war have tested us like never before.

Yet, even under daily sirens from rocket fire, drone threats, and ballistic missile strikes close by the dojo, we stayed open as a sanctuary of emotional and spiritual stability for our community. There were many evenings when we trained under the echo of rocket fire. Often, the sirens sent us running to the shelter mid-class, standing shoulder to shoulder, listening to explosions overhead. And every time the “all clear” sounded, we chose to come back upstairs, bow in, and continue our practice of Aikido.

But while our spirit has stayed strong, our financial foundation has not. The war’s toll has been severe on our dojo. Over the past 2 and a half years, we have lost significant revenue due to membership decline and the cancellation of international seminars and camps. Today, we’ve fallen behind on rent and operating expenses — and without support, the dojo is at risk of closing.

If this dojo and its community have ever touched your life — or if you see meditation and Aikido as an answer to the growing wars and conflicts in the world, then I’m asking from the heart: Please help us stay open.

If you can donate — whatever the amount — your support will make a real difference in a place that needs it very much. You can go to our GoFundMe page here:

Thank you for helping us keep the dojo open and our mission alive.

Miles Kessler Shihan, 6th dan Aikikai
Dojo-Cho – The Integral Dojo, Tel Aviv Director
Aikido Without Borders, Israel/ Palestine
BOD – Israel Aikikai

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It is said, “We don’t see things as they are — we see things as we are.” This points to one of the deepest insights of meditation practice: our experience of reality is shaped by conditioning, identity, trauma, preference, and habits. We are only partially seeing the world — we are also seeing the filters through which we perceive it.

In Buddhist psychology, experience unfolds incredibly quickly. A sound, sensation, or thought arises. Almost instantly, the mind labels it as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. From there comes grasping, aversion, or ignoring — and then the sense of “me” forms around the experience.

Meditation helps us slow this process down enough to observe it directly.

We begin to discover the difference between filtered experience and bare experience. A sound is simply heard. A sensation is simply felt. A thought is simply known.

As mindfulness deepens, the mind naturally begins to release its grip. We often think letting go is something we force ourselves to do, but genuine letting go begins through clear seeing itself.

In the talk, I used the metaphor of floating down a river. When we grasp for control, we feel the pressure of the current pushing against us. But when we release our grip and return to the flow, the resistance softens.

Through mindfulness, we gradually return to direct contact with reality as it is. And in that direct seeing, the mind becomes free.

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When everything around you is shifting, the Buddha’s final teaching points you back to something unshakable. On his deathbed, the Buddha encouraged all practitioners to follow this injunction: “Be an island unto yourself.”

In a time of uncertainty and change, this teaching invites you to discover an inner ground that is not dependent on external conditions. It is not a call to isolation, but to clarity—to rooting your practice in direct experience, awareness, and wisdom, even as the world around you shifts.

In cultivating this kind of inner refuge, three qualities naturally begin to develop:

1. First, non-attachment—the ability to meet experience without clinging or aversion.
2. Second, self-regulation—a steadiness of mind that allows you to respond rather than react.
3. And third, creative problem solving—the freedom to meet life with flexibility and insight.

I hope you’ll take some time to watch the recording and apply the Buddha’s injunction to your practice.

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How can you keep your heart open in the midst of a moral dilemma? In times of conflict, we are often confronted with moral dilemmas that cannot be easily resolved—questions of action and restraint, justice and compassion.

Meditation practice does not ask us to escape these tensions, but to hold them open. To remain present with the complexity. To resist the urge for premature certainty. In this way, practice becomes less about finding answers and more about developing the capacity to stay awake amid what is unresolved.

I explored these questions in a recent community meditation on “War Is A Koan”, and I’m sharing an excerpt below. As Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” 

You can watch the full video here (14 min.):

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In Zen Buddhism, the practice of “Koan Study” is meant to give the practitioner a transpersonal experience by exhausting the mind with an unanswerable riddle. But what happens when you insert koan practice into our experience of conflict?

In this short video of “The Aikido Koan”, I lead you through a simple (but not necessarily easy) spiritual practice for working with conflict from the “way of the spiritual warrior”.

There are 3 three typical “egoic” trigger reactions in conflict: aggressiveness, passiveness, or passive-aggressiveness. All three perpetuate conflict rather than resolve it.

The “Aikido Koan” is a self-inquiry practice done while staying present with the stress of conflict, which initiates a process of healing. Engaging with conflict in this mindful, ego-free way opens a path to transformation.

Leave your thoughts, comments, and questions below!

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The Inner Path of meditation is thoroughly known. Its development is predictable, which means that it is teachable. And since it’s teachable, it’s learnable.

“Progress Of Insight – The Inner Path Of Meditation”
Workshop, March 23rd, 2025

Click below for details!

Join meditation teacher Miles Kessler for this online workshop, March 23rd, 2025.

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The 3 Stages of Japanese sword crafting are the same 3 stages of traditional Budo training, of any form of personal development. Namely; 1) shape, 2) sharpen, 3) polish.

1. Shape: In shaping raw iron forged by extreme fire and hammered into a rough shape of a sword.

   In this practice stage, your mind and body is forged into the forms of the art you are learning. The status quo of your mind rebels against being shaped (against change). But with discipline, patience, persistence, and a lot of trust, you will gradually conform to the forms of the art. At this stage, you are only an unrefined copy of the forms, but this is a necessary step that prepares you and sets you on the path toward the higher stages of the art.

2. Sharpen: In this practice stage, the rough shape of the sword is smoothed out, creating a clear and effective form that functions according to its design. The edge is sharp, and it is able to cut the desired objects.

   In sharpening, you learn to clarify the forms for optimal efficiency and effectiveness. All your rough edges get sharpened up, and all your unnecessary exertions get removed. This is the stage of technical mastery, of creating optimal effectiveness in the free application of the forms. This is the beginning of the embodiment of the art.

3. Polish: In this stage, refinement of the sword is brought to the point where its true essence is brought out to shine.

   This is the practice stage where your forms become internalized, and their outward expression is spontaneous and appropriate. You become a living expression of the art in ever-refined ways. The art is now a natural expression of who you are, responding in perfect conformity with reality.

From gross, to subtle, to highly refined. A masterfully crafted sword and may take months to create.  Creating mastery in an art may take decades.

This is the WAY.

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When transitioning from one year to the next, it’s good to assess what aspects of your life would you like to leave behind, what would you like to carry forward, and what would you like to awaken in the new year. Most importantly, where are you at this very moment, and how does this facilitate the transition?

On Dec. 20th, I facilitated an end-of-year community meditation with our community. In this session, I spoke about how transitions apply to the Tibetan Buddhist teaching of rebirth consciousness. In this teaching, it is said that what we carry forward into our next rebirth is the totality of our karma and the totality of our wisdom.

Based on this talk, we did a reflection practice on where we’ve been, a mindfulness exercise to ground in the present, and a guided meditation to set intentions for the coming year. You are invited to join this practice by watching the replay below.

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