The Examined Life

You Are Perfect

2011-12-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

You are perfect just as you are. Some part of you knows that this is true. That part is buried under all the noise and mind chatter that tells you that somehow you have failed. It lies buried under all the judgments that you have for yourself the judgments that you learned by judging others and by their having judged you all these years.

When you were born were you not perfect? Did you not know then that you were perfect? Were your feet too big? Did your ears stick out too much? Did it make any difference? What has changed about you that you have fallen from grace? Did you come to believe in “original sin”?

When was the last time you were in the presence of someone who loved you unconditionally just as you are? The people who told you with every loving touch and gaze that you are perfect just the way you are. The people whose every action and word had you know that there is nothing you need to do to have them love you and nothing you can ever do that would cause them to stop.

What separates you from this love now if not just a mere thought, a belief without ground or substance as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke?

What will it take for you to cast off this wretched lie that you are somehow imperfect? What is the key you need to escape this mind prison that keeps you from the truth of who you really are? If I had the power to give you that key I would grant it in a heartbeat for the sake of all humanity. But it is you and you alone who hold that key. I am only here to help you remember that.

Ayahuasca Vision

2011-12-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

We had assembled in the darkness around the perimeter of the inner wall of the thatched roofed temple. We were called in groups of ten to the alter where the shaman dispensed the reddish brown liquid. Each of us was given a cup from which to drink. In my hand I held a scrap of paper to be left on the alter on which I had written, as the shaman had requested, my question for Mother Ayahuasca, “What more can you show me?”

As I returned to my place on the bench the sickly sweet taste of the shaman’s brew lingered in my mouth. What had I done, swallowing this strange concoction of leaves and vines deep in a dark jungle, far away from the nearest hospital? What if Ayahuasca was in fact a poison and I was about to have a self-induced agonizing near death experience filled with terror and trepidation?

I sat with my palms over my eyes and my elbows on my knees as the shaman had instructed, blocking out even slightest glimmer of light. A few minutes passed and my frightening thoughts gave way to a profound sense of comfort and well being. I could feel my heart beat as I settled into the darkness.

Then in my mind’s eye I began to picture images. At first the images were just thoughts or long forgotten memories of places and faces that had become nameless as the years had passed. But soon the vague images were replaced with dancing patterns of light of bright neon colors of pink, yellow and blue. The more attention I gave the patterns the more intense they became until I could make out geometric shapes. Like a series of lights around an old fashioned movie marquee they danced, triangles and squares within boxes. But if I were to attempt to look and any one dancing object it suddenly winked out but the dancing patterns remained. It occurred to me that I was staring into the vibrating energy that constitutes the very fabric of matter. I was front row center to an imagined reality that defies any detailed examination. Indeed it was clear to me that without the mind that interprets and believes what it perceives is solid there is nothing but this shapeless energy.

The more I stared at the undulating patterns the more intense they became. My mind began to spin as I felt myself being pulled into the dance. I felt my will begin resist the vortex when I suddenly remembered my question “What more can you show me?”.

Immediately the colors began to fade into brown patterns on a black background then darkness, just darkness. Then a pinpoint of light appeared in the distance. I sensed myself being drawn to the light as it seemed to grow brighter until I recognized it as a room with windows on each wall, we me inside. I looked through each window to see a “different world” outside.

I was drawn to one window in particular as I watched two huge blue men outside engaged in a hand to hand knife fight. I was immediately drawn through the window and the titans stood right before me. As they circled each other I felt an intense fear. One of the combatants shoved the other but defying the laws of physics it was he himself who fell back.

Then without warning I found myself suddenly in the body of one of the huge men! Now it was I that was the object of his intense rage. Terrified I swung my blade and caught my opponent just below the shoulder. But surprisingly I felt the sting and looked down to find my own arm had been cut. In an angry gesture he raised his weapon and I realized I must act immediately. I turned my knife and plunged it deep into my own chest. I watched as he fell to the floor and died.

Preferences

2011-12-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

The universe is always giving us something in every moment. What makes the difference between being happy and being unhappy is that we have preferences. The world offers pain and pleasure, joy and sadness. We cannot escape what we are given. We cannot change the way the world is in any given moment. Our having preferences only adds suffering on top of our experience of what is given. When we get what we prefer we suffer that we may lose it. When we get what we do not prefer we suffer over what we believe we should have gotten.

The truth is that we can experience pain without suffering and pleasure without worry that it may end. But we must be willing to live in the moment. We must be willing to fully experience what we are given without thoughts of the past or future. It is only then that we can truly experience being alive.

Living in the moment is a practice that we take on so that we can fully experience being alive. The past is gone there is no life there. There are only fleeting memories of moments that are no longer real. The future is yet to be created. What we seek to create in the future is given by how we are in the present moment. It makes no sense to live in the future. It makes no sense to live for the future.

The mind is a great tool for learning from the past and imagining the future. It is not a place to live. The mind will allow us to glimpse into a past that was and a future that has never been. The mind will allow us to re-experience moments of both sadness and joy. We are the masters of our minds. We can choose our experience past, present and future.

We can have no experience of a world devoid of pain any more than we can experience a world without joy. We cannot experience the light without the darkness. We can only know love by the experience also of its absence. But the mind tricks us into imagining these extremes, so we long for a world where there is no pain and live in fear of the possibility of a world where there is no peace, all the time forsaking the experience of the moment.

All there is to do is to fully experience each moment. And to derive from each moment the pain and joy that we must have to feel truly alive. We are not the victims of our experience. We are not at the mercy of our circumstances. We are the creators! To fully live is to take on the responsibility for how we experience each moment. By choosing to fully experience what is given in each moment, both pain and pleasure, we choose to live fully and powerfully. We cannot choose what life will give us we can only choose how we receive it, with gratitude or with trepidation.

Final Embrace

2011-12-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

I turned down an unfamiliar street. I saw her coming in the opposite direction. It had been years since our parting. She was as radiant and beautiful as the day when we had first met decades ago.

Without speaking a word she caught me in a full embrace. I felt her slender body as we touched. A smile spread across her face the like of which I had never seen in all the years we had been together.

“I can forgive you now.” She said, “I can forgive you for not giving me all the things I thought the world owed me. I can forgive it all now because I can finally forgive myself and stop blaming the world for being such a wretched place.”

A sense of relief and completion came over me as I embraced her once again. Then suddenly I awoke alone in the dark. I gazed at the foot of my bed into the dim shadows that filled my bedroom half expecting to see her there but there was nothing, nothing but the memory of that final embrace.

Communion

2011-11-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

You recognized yourself in me from the beginning. We are different yet at once the same. You know me as part of you. I innately know those intimate secrets of who you really are. The secrets that you cherish and revere but have never dared to share.

You see, reflected in me, that capacity for profound love you hold most precious in yourself. You know I will always intend the best for you even though I can have no notion of what that entails. You know I will always do my best for you regardless of the circumstances. I know you will always intend the best for me even when you cannot make it so.

My very existence validates your deepest desires and aspirations. I am an extension of the essence of the One we truly are. Something intimately close to each of us but infinitely larger provides the context that unifies all creation.

I know I cannot separate myself from this context any more than can I pretend that separation is anything more than an Illusion that has ensnared humanity.

Unlikely Angel

2011-10-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

We were sitting at a table on an outdoor patio of a local restaurant. It was a sunny warm day. Across a 40-foot stretch of grass there was a busy urban street edged by an uneven strip of sidewalk. I small fence enclosed the patio which was obviously more ornamental than functional.

As we waited on our meal I noticed a young woman negotiating the uneven sidewalk beside the busy street on a battery driven motorized tricycle. She appeared to have full use of her upper body but her legs were apparently paralyzed.

Just as she neared the stretch of sidewalk along side the patio the tricycle lurched sideways and she was thrown onto the grass. Apparently unhurt but in great distress she laid on the grass struggling to pull herself back aboard the tricycle.

I had an immediate response to jump the fence and run to her aid but I found myself hesitating. I looked across the table as if to ask “what would you think if I ran to the aid of this young woman?”. I found myself wanting permission to respond to this situation.

I knew that if I acted that I was on my own. I would not receive the slightest bit of encouragement and, that in fact, I would be opening myself to criticism.

Disturbed by this lack of support but determined, I jumped the small fence and ran toward the girl. Another man and I reached her almost simultaneously. We spoke not a word and together we righted the vehicle and lifted her back onto the seat. She was an unattractive woman, unkempt, overweight and exuded a smell that matched a surly attitude. Without a word or a look of thanks, the instant she was aboard she resumed her journey like a caged animal returning to the wild.

As I returned to my seat at the table I had felt that I had been the object of intense scrutiny and criticism. As I took my seat I realized I was feeling deeply disturbed. Was it because the young woman had offered not the slightest acknowledgment for the aid she had received? No, what was bothering me was that I had hesitated and actually considered doing nothing to help the young woman. I had even felt compelled to ask permission to take the action I intensely felt was appropriate. The lack of support I had sensed filled me with trepidation and now I felt guilt as though I had done something wrong when I returned from my mission.

At that instant I realized something in my life was amiss. What had happened to the confidence I used to have to reach out to those I perceived to be in need and to act decisively and swiftly in such matters? Wasn’t this one of the parts of who I am that had been so attractive to her in the first place? Wasn’t this something I had always revered in others and myself? What self-eroding forces had been at work in my life that I now felt that this vital part of me had to ask permission to be exercised? How had the reverence I had once felt for this aspect of myself turned to shame?

That day was a turning point in my life. An unlikely angel had been sent to show me a part of my life that needed attention and persistent vigilance lest I forget who I am. She had been sent to remind me that that I am ultimately responsible for the quality of my life and my relationship with all those I care for.

It’s A Zen Thing

2011-10-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

My neighbor had come over to ask for my help. She and her husband had been trying for most of the day to unplug their toilet. I am not a plumber but I figured I would give it a try.

They had one of those large bell shaped black rubber plungers. It certainly looked like it should be able to do the job. The toilet was certainly plugged, there was water standing in it about an inch below the rim. I dipped the plunger into the water and then I thrust it deep into the abyss. As I felt the plunger take in a huge gulp of the brindle soup I gave a mighty heave. With a great swirl and sucking sound the toilet drained its enormous draft.

Wow! How did you do that, they exclaimed! Well, you see, it’s a Zen thing. I simply remember that I am the toilet, I am the plunger, I am the water, I am the pipe and I am the poop.

The Right Way to Live

2011-10-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

I recently read several books by Daniel Quinn, notably Ishmael and the sequel My Ishmael. I found his novels both entertaining and thought provoking. Quinn has hit upon an interesting way to present his ideas about humanity through the eyes of a highly educated telepathic gorilla who wants to “save the world” and recruit people to help him with that challenge.

Admittedly Quinn’s books are not intended to leave us feeling like we are on course to peace and prosperity but instead they make a compelling case that we are indeed headed for another collapse of civilization unless we can correct the course. He challenges us to be the creative compassionate creatures we claim to be before it is too late and find a sustainable way to live in harmony with each other and the planet.

At the root of Quinn’s argument is that the agricultural revolution has been a kind of Trojan horse that appeared to be a great boon to mankind but concealed within it there was a recipe for disaster. As food shortages become more and more frequent and population continues to increase at an exponential rate the evidence that Quinn may have a valid point becomes more and more obvious.

Quinn is adamant that he is not suggesting we turn the clock back and become hunter-gatherers. What he is pointing out is that we as a species believe we have discovered the “right way to live”. But like a monkey that is held fast in a trap by his unwillingness to release the food he has in his grasp we will perish holding on to an idea that is clearly not working. If the monkey were to release the food he could easily remove his hand and go on his way. Like the monkey, we will need as a species, to release the notion that we are on the right and only course that leads to success of the species.

Nor is Quinn suggesting that we reduce the population, although his detractors have accused him of doing so. He is merely pointing out that it is not a kind compassionate world we have created [or allowed] where only 1% of the population control 40% of the wealth on a planet and where many people starve to death every day.

Also Quinn does not suggest that there is something inherently wrong with human beings as a species but sees the state of our current world civilization as simply one of many evolutionary courses that could have been taken albeit one that is headed for demise. He points out that based on the results so far there is nothing superior about human beings or we would demonstrated that wisdom long ago and be living in harmony on the planet both with nature and each other.

This disaster scenario can’t possibly be our destiny, people argue. We are too intelligent. We aren’t just animals! Unfortunately Quinn points out that there is abundant anthropological evidence to the contrary, plenty of civilizations that have just died out.

One answer to this dilemma is to just accept that these cycles are inevitable. The past certainly bears this out. But no one I know wants to accept that a huge percentage of the human species must die off so that a cycle of thousands of years can begin again from scratch. So we continue to insist that this time it will be different even though we refuse to give up the idea that we have discovered the “right way to live”.

The message of Ishmael is that there is no right way to live and that when we refuse to be willing to continually reinvent ourselves we are headed for extinction. I am taking the time to expound on this theme because I think this unwillingness to reinvent our lives when they are clearly not working is endemic in western culture on an individual basis. The more our lives become uncertain and insecure the tighter we cling to ways of being and political leaders that move us closer and closer to disaster.

Daniel Quinn tells us that we, as a culture, have bought into the idea that we have discovered and are living the “Right Way”. Could it be that the reason we are convinced that our civilization is the only possible civilization we could have created is because we as individuals want to believe that it is not necessary or desirable to continually re-invent ourselves.

Could it be that we, as individuals, are afraid to admit that we could be wrong, afraid to admit that just maybe we don’t know the right way to live? Could it be that we refuse to accept that there is no such thing as the right way to live? Could it be that we have become so intolerant of others that we are incapable of learning anything from each other and evolving?

Quinn is not trying to answer any of these questions. He leaves that to us. From his point of view this latest version of civilization has merely evolved in a way that has created a problem that, so far, we are unable to solve. It looks like we are headed for yet another contraction if civilization, this time on a worldwide scale. Quinn is obviously not one for magical thinking either. He never mentions that any interventions may be on the horizon, divine or otherwise. I think this is why his views are so often met with disfavor. In times like these it is comforting to hope that God or extra terrestrials might come and save us.

Could it be that if enough people don’t become conscious of this situation soon enough that we will, as a species, become extinct? Daniel Quinn simply gives us this possibility to consider. He is pointing to evidence. He is telling us to “wake up” before it is too late. Will history repeat itself once again? It is in our hands. Only time will tell.

Seeker of Truth

2011-10-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

This poem, "Seeker of Truth", was written by a fifteen year old girl. It was sent to be by mail on my 17th birthday.

The words she wrote describing so poignantly and precisely the innate characteristics that prefigured my life are as astonishing and awe inspiring for me now, over forty-five years later, as the day I first read them.

I have always been a seeker of truth. It took me a lifetime to come to understand and fully appreciate what this meant. But somehow my destiny had already been written into the akashic record leaving only the details for me to fill in.

I.

Seeker of Truth
you stand
on the edge of Life
And reach a greedy hand
toward Something you can not explain.
You reach for this Something
Like a child
Reaches for a Bright Red
Balloon
But unlike that child
you will not be Content
with a Shovel,
some Dirt
and a Bucket
if perchance the Balloon pops....
You will wait
and dream
and hope
in the Meantime
that another Bright Red
Balloon
may float by

II.

Seeker of Truth
idealism becomes you
Like a flower
in a Woman's hair
Your humanistic qualities
are Smiled upon, tolerated
But never Understood, or Felt
by Anyone
But you.
For the Trust you put in
Someone
eats your heart out
And a gaping hole
replaces Whatever was once
There....
You will wait
and dream
and hope
in the Meantime
that another
Heart
may pass by

III.

Seeker of Truth
your god is Good
Let others clutch their rosary beads
and rustle the pages of their bibles
Let others go to the church
synagogue
hell
heaven
of their Choice
All the while damning under their breath
their Fellow human beings
Watching this all
You will wait
and dream
and hope
in the Meantime
that another
God
may pass by

IV.

Seeker of Truth
strive Higher
reach Higher
than Anyone has ever Thought
about doing.
(reality becomes an idle Pastime)
Though in your striving
in your reaching
you Trip
and fall
(reality is painFul)
Pick yourself up
and take a good hard look Around
All is NOT Good about you
See man as a Mass
Fighting
Hating
Cursing
Dying
See man
Stoop to perverted beliefs
and discard his Ideals
while licking his captor's Feet....
You will feel Sad
for a while
But. . .
You will wait
and dream
and hope
in the Meantime
that another
World
may pass by

May 10, 1965

Stand Up

2011-10-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

There was a time I thought respect was something that had to be earned and the only way I could earn it was by doing the "right" things. Back then I worked hard to earn respect which was, more often than not, not forthcoming. It has taken me a lifetime to finally get that we all deserve respect by virtue of just "being" human beings and just showing up in our lives regardless of what we do, think or say.

There is a favorite scene for me from the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" where an old black man asks Scout to "stand up" with all the black people out of respect as her father leaves the court room. All the white people have already left the room and have no respect for a lawyer that would defend a black man. This scene always leaves me with s lump in my throat.

Now I know that respect is something we are privileged to feel not a commodity to be portioned out to or won from others on a whim. As such, we would be well advised to look for ways to feel respect for every human being that graces us with their presence in our lives as often as possible. And that includes respecting ourselves.

Stand Up - Originally written January 1990

When I was a young boy my mother read and told me many stories. In one of the stories she told, a man adopted a boy who had lost his family and raised him as his own. Throughout my life I have often thought about the story and wondered about its significance and impact on my own life. Now I find myself in a situation where I am raising a boy that has come to me in a similar way. I don't know why I never had children of my own. I don't understand why I attach the importance I do to the task I have drawn unto myself. I only know that I feel that I have drawn to myself an opportunity to create a loving relationship in the life of one small boy that was destined for all the hardships created by the lack of a father.

Maybe my mother's story instilled in me a certain reverence for the image of a man large enough to focus his intent on facing all the challenges of raising a boy whose father was gone. Right from the first time I had heard the story I was filled with a reverence for this man, a reverence that far exceeded that which I held even for my own father.

And now as a man myself, I realize that I, for whatever reason have created for myself the opportunity and indeed become that man in the story my mother told. I must now attribute to myself the reverence that I held as small child for the image of the man that I was to one day become. And from this reverence draw the strength and belief in myself to walk the path I have chosen. I must resist the temptation to cripple myself with the guilt of failures that are not mine and to tap into that reservoir of love that causes a man to reach out to a child.

I must remain steadfast on the course I have chosen, for who knows better my destiny, than my heart of hearts, whose wisdom far exceeds the capacity of my mind to find rhyme or reason in my life. I must not be too proud to ask the way as I travel my path and to open my heart to all inputs and not discount the wisdom to be derived from the smile of a child.

On a cold night in January I made my way to a gathering of men. I came, as instructed, with the intent of my mission scrawled in haste, in pencil on a small slip of paper. There on that paper were written the words "to discover the meaning of my situation". It could have said, "to discover the meaning of life" or ".... of my life", but no, my intent was much more humble. To write such a phrase obviously, I felt I had lost my way and could not understand how I had arrived at where I was, much less venture with any certainty another step.

As I drove, the all to familiar highway, my mind conjured up fears of being misunderstood and ridiculed as I imagined myself standing naked in a room of strange men with accusing fingers pointing at the privates of my heart and mind.

As the street lamps whizzed by me I felt the loneliness and despair as one guilty of all the transgressions leading to human failure. My 12-year-old stepson lay behind me home with two broken legs suffered in a collision with an automobile three weeks before. And here was I, driving out in the cold dark night in search of the answer of what it all meant, heavy with the guilt of not having been able to create the kind of family where such of a thing could not have happened. Where had I gone wrong? Why did I not have the connection with him my heart longed for? So many times I told myself "Accidents Happen", but that was not what was eating away at my insides. If only I had been able to have that connection he might have heard all the warnings to "slow down", to walk through life a little more gently to be just a little more careful and just maybe the event of that day, three weeks ago, might have passed our family by unrealized. Deep inside me the ugly truth was that knew I hadn't been able to do what I had intended to do, I felt I had failed. The message could not have been more clear. In my mind, “the accident” was his message to me. This was the source of my guilt and my shame.

I sat in the circle of men quietly as I listened to the other men proclaim their intent loudly, each carefully selecting words which conjured up images more lofty than those proclaimed before. I stared at my scrap of paper. Try as I might I could not make the words sufficiently lofty in my mind to utter them from my lips. I sat in dumb silence alone, afraid to speak.

Then from across the room there was a voice unlike the others. It was the voice of a boy but he spoke as a man, unafraid and without hesitation. Suddenly it was as if there were only he and I in the room although the room was filled with men talking in loud voices. Carefully I drew near to hear his story.

His story was the story of a boy who had had to face the world without a father. He spoke of the kind of wound that goes so deep that it seems it can never heal. When he was just a baby his father had left his family. Before me once again was the story that my mother had told. I listened quietly. My mind pictured images of the struggling that must have taken place in his family. It was then I knew why I had come. For despite all my failures there was success to which I had become blind in my desperate guilt at not having fully achieved the monumental task which I had set out for myself.

It was then that I knew where I was in my life and what I needed. My only failure had been the loss of belief in myself. I had lost sight of the value of myself. I had negated all I had accomplished. I had negated years of my continuous presence in the life of my stepson and his mother. I had come to doubt my consistent love for them even as I stared at an abundance of evidence for its presence. And in that moment I knew that I become indeed that man in the story so long ago my mother had told. In that instant I forgave myself all the mistakes I had made and I rejoiced in my triumphs, for I and I alone had had the courage to dare to face all the trials that had been placed before me in those years and I and my family had all survived.

But no, in that moment my life was not suddenly transformed into Nirvana. No, all my questions have not been answered. All my trials are not now complete. Yet I am filled with thanksgiving. I am thankful that my stepson is alive and that my wife is by my side. And that I have been given the courage and the wisdom to begin again from right from where I am, to live my life with all its joys and sorrows and trials and rough edges. I don't know what more any man can ask than this opportunity.

I want to thank Christopher for sharing his story. I want to thank the men's group for being there. I want to promise my self to remain ever mindful of the value of my life which was given to me on an "as is" basis to make of it all I can. I want to always remember that I am worthy of some measure of reverence for having the courage to create even the smallest amount of love with the life I have been given.

So, stand up, your [step]father is passing.

A Tale of Two Dogs

2011-10-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

Maaddee was quite old when I met her. Some people regarded her as a “wise women” but the members of her family were always acting embarrassed by the things she said and did. No one said anything but I think they thought she was a bit off. Maaddee has been gone many years now. I will always remember how she always had a unique way of looking at things.

One time I was telling Maaddee the story of how I had met a villager in Peru who lived along a river with his family and an assortment of animals including dogs, monkeys and birds. None of the animals were kept in cages.

"We used to have two dogs", the man explained, "but one of the dogs chased and worried the other animals so, we ate him for dinner."

I explained to Maaddee that I could not understand why he had not tried to train the dog instead. Maaddee looked at me, smiled, and said…

"The man knew that he need not waste his time trying to train the dog, and the dog knew he was not going to be around long. That's why he worried the other animals so fiercely while he still could."

God's Plan

2011-10-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

I had a friend named Ernie, when I was 20, who was several years older than me. I enjoyed Ernie because he often asked philosophical questions of me that really made me think. One afternoon I had dropped over to talk and he said. “Michael, what is it you really want to do with your life? Do you have a plan for your life?” I thought for a minute and I said, “I want to be able to go anywhere, and do anything with anybody.

After a few seconds Ernie looked at me and said “It sounds like you want to be like a sailor who sails the world with a girl in every port.” His response was not a surprise because Ernie and I often talked about girls. “No Ernie”, I said, “It’s bigger than that, I meant it exactly as I said.”

There is a creation myth that tells us how before there was anything, there was only Oneness.

In the myth Oneness is alone. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to do it with?

So Oneness thought, I will make a plan, I will create an endless universe of infinite wonder and fill it with beings of infinite curiosity. I will endow each of those beings with the power to create unlimited possibility. I will create a game of hide and seek and hide myself in every corner of the universe and in every being in the universe. I will pretend that each of those beings is not me. I will make love and connectedness the goal of the game. And to make the game seem absolutely real I will forget where I have hidden myself. The game will play out through eternity until all the pieces, through seeking love and connectedness, have again found that they are all just me playing a game of separateness with myself. Then I will not feel alone.

Several eons passed and Oneness thought, what if I make a mistake?

Several eons passed and Oneness thought…

If all is Oneness and Love there cannot be a mistake.

Several eons passed and Oneness declared…

"Let there be a universe where I can go anywhere, and do anything with anybody."

Several eons passed and it was so.

A Path with a Heart

2011-09-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

I was re-reading several of my Carlos Castaneda books from the ‘70’s and I came across the passage below.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks.

My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it does not, it is of no use.

Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart the other does not. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.

A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it. For me there is only the traveling on paths that have a heart, or on any path that may have heart. There I travel… and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.

Carlos Castaneda “A Path with A Heart” The Teachings of don Juan

Friends can teach us who we are by authentically reflecting how they see us. Some friends and family will warn us of impending difficulty because the path we choose is not their path. But true friends will see only our passion.

Wise teachers can advise and direct us toward our path by intuitively sensing who we are and point out our failure to follow our heart.

Life will erect barriers and obstacles making it difficult or impossible to be who we are not. We can choose to battle with these obstacles or not. As we become more dedicated to our path impediments will drop away and the way will become clear.

Our heart, like a compass, will always point us in the direction that is our true path. If we have the courage to begin to choose to walk the “path with a heart” our life will eventually begin to make sense but our heart, if we listen, can tell us instantly.

As don Juan (Castaneda) tells us only we ourselves can find our path by listening to our heart. But that is the easy part. We intuitively know what our heart wants. Our biggest challenge is to have the courage to ignore the cacophony around us that would drowned out the heart’s small still voice.

Often we are mistakenly convinced that our path must be grandiose or that we will achieve fame or fortune but these things are only incidental to what our heart will recognize as true success.
As with the “Road Less Traveled” the opening to your unique path will at first be unclear and “not taken” by the masses.

Become a Skeptic and Transform Your Life

2011-06-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

I believe most people do not know or appreciate what the word “Skeptic” truly means. The common vernacular has a connotation of cynicism and predisposition toward pessimism.

Skepticism

1: an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object

2a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics

Even the word doubt has gotten a bad wrap. I believe doubt is one of the healthiest things that one can have. If someone acts like they are insulted when you doubt what they say then I say they don’t really care about informing you, they want to impress you so that they can control or dominate you. It is subtle but it works. The result is that you stop being curious.

This shows up in your life as a kind of laziness. If someone gives you an answer and you don’t question it then you don’t need to research it out for yourself. But this leaves you open to every hoax and deception imaginable.

To be a skeptic is to be curious and willing to check out every detail you hear before you incorporate information into your belief system. It also means to be willing to review your belief system regularly, especially when you get information that challenges it and this includes your core beliefs.

I believe that true skepticism lies at the root of mental health and well being. Deciding to become a skeptic can transform your life for the better. It will transform your ability to have conversations. It will allow you to begin to draw people into your life that respect your skepticism because they intend the best for you and they know you must find your own answers.

Here are my suggestions on how to be a good skeptic.

Be willing to do research. Search for sufficient evidence. Never dismiss or accept anything you hear out of hand. Don’t be gullible by trusting people who demand blind faith and obedience. Blind trust is almost never the right course and should only be used when a decision must be made and there is little or no evidence. Use your intuition. I believe each and every human being has an intuitive knowing that guides us, especially about people that truly love and care.

Here are some of the results you will begin to see if you are willing to experiment with becoming truly skeptical.

Your life will become more interesting. You may even grow more brain cells. People will find you more interesting and a good listener. Remember being skeptical is about listening to others with a truly open mind not arguing with them. The people in your life that have fixed ways of thinking will begin to find other people to control.

New possibilities and opportunities will begin to open up for you and life will become more fun. You will begin to get a sense of being in control of your life instead of being a victim of circumstances.

Now most importantly don’t believe anything I have told you, check it out. Be willing to experiment with your life. Allow a reasonable amount of time to begin to see results.

Robert Anton Wilson, the master of skepticism put it this way.

"My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."

"Is", "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

Manifesto

2011-06-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

Almost a year ago I was meeting someone for the first time who has now become a close friend. The day before our meeting I sat down and wrote the notes below for our meeting. I see now that our meeting was just the beginning of what has attracted a stream of remarkable people into my life. I see now that the list was channeled to me and it has become a powerful list of "Intensions" that has altered the course of my life. I have now adopted the points on this list into my life as my "Manifesto".

I am open to connecting with people who operate from the consciousness level that we are all extensions of each other.

Your success is my success.

Money is a vehicle not the objective.

I have eliminated or am in the process of eliminating all the impediments that have been operating in my life that prevent me from being committed to what I know I must fulfill on during this lifetime.

I am creating the kind of freedom that allows me to pursue my objectives.

I am available to inspire and support other conscious individuals who are dedicated to supporting other conscious individuals.

The “Story” of me that I choose to “create” is infinitely more exciting than the banality of the existence which people normally accept as everyday reality.

There are no excuses for not being who I truly am.

I would like to enter into a co-creative process with others for the purpose of raising planetary consciousness.

My intent is to do what I love to do with people that I love and who love me.

Feeling love is always a choice I can make.

I know that as human beings, we show kindness to others by our willingness to listen to others and truly be in their world even if only temporarily.

You Owe A Trillion

2011-04-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I heard someone explain what a Trillion is. What he said was imagine that someone borrowed one hundred dollars ($100.00) and said I will pay you back in 10,000 seconds they would be talking about just less than 3 hours. If they said they would pay you back in a million seconds that would be about 12 days. So we are talking about a short-term loan in both cases.

Now here is where it gets interesting. If they said they would pay you back in one billion seconds that would be about 32 years, about the time you might expect to be required to pay off a home mortgage. However, if they said they would pay you back in one trillion seconds you are going to have to wait around 32,000 years!

So if someone says that you owe them a trillion dollars what they are really telling you is that you and your children and your children’s children are their slaves forever! You see, this is their way of showing us that it’s really not about the money. It is about the power they have over you if you believe you really do owe this debt.

Now the questions we all need to ask ourselves are who are these people that are telling us we owe trillions. Are these people our “friends” that we borrowed money from? But most importantly, do we believe we really owe them?

Ayahuasca Serenade

2011-04-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

As I lean back against the wall and place the ear buds in my ears familiar strains of 80’s music begins to flow into the center of my head. A musical ensemble appears in my mind’s eye undulating with the beat.

I am convinced that the musicians have reassembled from somewhere in space and time to serenade me and just me alone. They open a channel for me, providing a conduit connecting me with divine love and filling me with inspiration.

Tears well up in my eyes as I realize these words and music written so long ago contain a message that was meant for my ears only. As though they knew that this night would be the deep secrets, long hidden in plain sight would at last be revealed. Although I have listened to this music hundreds of times I seem to hear it and know its significance in my life for the first time. There are no accidents.

“Wake up, wake up!” they entreat me to awaken from my dream within a dream. Wake up and remember fully who I am. There is no resisting it. I must wake up to become whole.

The music unfolds fractal patterns endlessly growing and expanding before me so real I feel I can reach out and touch them. I gasp in rapture and awe at their sheer exquisite splendour. I am no longer a body listening to music from a box connected through my ears. I am the essence of vibration itself resonating with the universe.

I never understood the simple refrains until I heard them as messages from beyond space and time forever profound and infinitely relevant and vital. Timeless messages from the universe ever beckoning and inviting me to “Loose myself in this honesty”.

A friend is someone who...

2011-03-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

A friend is someone who looks into your eyes and sees the universe there. A friend is someone who listens to what is important to you because it is important to him or her to discover who you are. A friend is someone who doesn’t make you “wrong” even when you make yourself wrong. A friend is someone who is not afraid to always tell you how you occur for them and hear how they occur for you. A friend is someone who will always intend the best for you. A friend is someone who will always share his/her food with you. A friend is someone who will see himself/herself as an extension of you. A friend is someone who respects and encourages your autonomy and sovereignty as a human being. A friend is someone who loves you even when he/she doesn’t love what you do. A friend is someone who will never compromise his/her values nor ask or expect you to do so. A friend is someone who you can always say “no” to without feeling guilty. A friend is someone who sees and accepts you just as you are and as you are not as well as allowing you space to continually become. A friend is someone who will be at his/her best for you when you are at your worst. A friend is someone who reaches for your hand but touches your heart.

Multidimensional Being

2011-03-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

How much of the higher dimensional experience can I integrate with my lower dimensional reality and still be present in both? How much can I trust that the higher vibration provides the bandwidth for all lower dimensions? Indeed from the higher dimension I can coexist in multiple lower dimensional realities.

Am I willing to move outside the confines of the lower dimensions without fear that I will drop off the edge of the earth? How much am I willing to let the limits of the lower dimensional reality limit my experience?

I long to touch you, your body and your mind, to experience your every thought and emotion, to merge with you, to feel your heart beating in my body. I want to feel your bliss and your ecstasy, your loneliness and you pain, your desires and aspirations. This is what we have to share with each other, our fullest experience, a reality happening on multiple dimensions. I am less and less satisfied with only fleeting glimpses of what is possible.

In our lower dimensional world it is a taboo to know you but in a superficial way. I am allowed to see the universe in your eyes but am forbidden to acknowledge it there. I want to feel the texture of you, to smell the intoxicating sweetness of you like a flower that unfolds in my presence. I see you dissolve before my eyes into glimmering splendour, drawing light from every corner of the universe and from every moment since the beginning of time to form your exquisite being. The light that is you plays before my eyes as your image shimmers and dances with the brilliance of ten thousand suns. Tears well up in my eyes and a lump forms in my throat. How can we help but be dazzled and in awe as we honour each other with ecstatic and joyous presence?

An End-in-Itself

2011-02-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

One of the most important things I got from reading Immanuel Kant was the notion of the end-in-itself. Actually I already knew about this concept, we all do, we just forget.

In his Metaphysics of Morals Kant tells us that to be moral we must treat all human beings, including ourselves, not merely as a means to an end but an end-in-ourselves.

This got me thinking about the interactions I have with people in my life. So often I walk into a store and forget that I am dealing with a human being not a vending machine. Certainly my intent is to buy something in the store but Kant is pointing out it is just not “right” to see the clerk as merely a means to my getting something I want to purchase any more than it is "right" for the clerk to see me merely as a means to make money. Kant grants that we need to use ourselves and others as means to ends, but he points out it is "wrong" to not at the same, time treat eachother as an end.
I innately understand what Kant means because I know that, as human beings, we are ends in ourselves and to act otherwise leaves everyone feeling used and incomplete.

I began to think more about all the things I do in my day that I treat as merely a means to an end. I realized that I would feel a lot more fulfilled if I did more things because I enjoy them, in other words, as ends in themselves.

It is easy to forget to treat others and ourselves as ends. We do jobs to make money to buy stuff. We take showers to get clean rather than have a restful bath. When we forget to do things we enjoy for their own sake, everything becomes a chore instead of a pleasure. No wonder we feel tired and unfulfilled a lot of the time. When we neglect ourselves in this way we tend to neglect others too and create habits that affect our world.

Kant goes on to describe a world where everyone always treats their self and others as ends-in-themselves. He calls this world “A Kingdom of Ends”. That sounds like a world I would like to live in.

What Women Really Want [from men]

2010-11-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

Not all the great existentialist philosophers were men. During much of their lives Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir were lovers in an ongoing “open” relationship. Beauvoir was a prolific writer in her own right producing many novels that revealed her humanitarianism, feminism and willingness to live out the existential philosophy she espoused.

Now do I know what women really want in a relationship with a man? I would not make that claim but when I read the excerpt below from Beauvoir’s autobiographical novel The Mandarins I felt I had been provided at least some insight.

…His arms laden with spotlessly clean washing, he looked at me, questioningly. 'I wanted to change the sheets.'

'It's not necessary.'

He remained in the doorway, embarrassed by his magnificent burden.

'I'm quite happy like this', I said, pulling the warm sheet in which he had slept the night before up to my chin. He moved away; he came back.

'Anne!' He had thrown himself on me, and his voice shook me through and through. For the first time I spoke his name: 'Lewis!' 'Anne! I'm so happy!' He was naked, I was naked, and yet I felt not the slightest embarrassment; his gaze could not hurt me; he did not judge me, he would not put anything before me. From my head to my toes his hands were learning me by heart. Again I said: 'I love your hands.'

'You love them?'

'All evening I've been wondering if I would feel them on my body.' 'You will - all night', he said.

Suddenly he was no longer either awkward or modest. His desire transfigured me. I, who had been for so long without taste, without form, once again had breasts, belly, sex, flesh; I was as nourishing as bread, as fragrant as the earth.

It was so miraculous that I did not think to measure the time or my pleasure; I only know that the faint chirping of dawn could be heard as we fell asleep. (The Mandarins), pp.38-9.

The Eternal Return

2010-11-08T07:17:00.001-08:00

Are you living the kind of life that you would be willing to live over again and again? This is the question Frederic Nietzsche poses for us to ask ourselves. Certainly not everything about our lives has occurs as pleasant but when we look back do we see the purpose of everything that has happened and see that life had to be that way it was in order for us to become who we have become? Do we feel grateful for having lived the lives we got?

There are a number of insights in the challenge Nietzsche puts out for us. One is to realize that we are creating our lives and we are not victims. If we aren’t living the kind of life that is sufficiently rewarding and exciting that we would want to live it again it is up to us to address that.

We can rise to Nietzsche’s challenge either by finding the courage to change something in our lives or coming to understand that our life is perfect just the way it is because there is something valuable in every experience we have. Either way our experience is that our life is worth living and even living over again.

But Nietzsche’s Eternal Return is not simply a philosophy to live by it is also an affirmation of the souls desire to have every experience that is possible to have. This explains all the joy and all the pain that being a human being affords. Thereby the soul will move “Beyond Good and Evil”, the tile of a book by Nietzsche, to return to an experience over and over until it has experienced it fully before it will move on to another experience.

Nietzsche invites us to embrace all that is available, every opportunity that is provided, expressing “the eternal Yes to all things”, to jump “Into every abyss…” This is how the soul strives for victory over limitation. This is how the universe is created. Without this striving the universe could not have been created. The soul seeks to make every possibility actual.

Nietzsche’s challenge to us then is to be ever willing to examine our lives and embrace both the experiences that our soul needs to become complete but also to be willing to recognize when our soul needs to move on to experience something new.

Spiritual Pilgrim

2010-10-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

In the failing sunlight of the early evening I look out from my rain streaked windows watching the last of the yellow leaves quiver on the trees and flutter to the ground. I witness the endless dance the seasons play out once again as time spirals toward eternity. What is hidden from my view? What is obscuring of my perception? Intuitively I know there is something more. It cannot be that this view is all there is. As I feel myself cought up in this endless cycle of apparent life and death I want to believe there must be something "special" that makes my life experience significant and unique.

Yes, it is undeniably so. Where even two consciousnesses have touched and stood together in the awe and wonder of beingness, then it has been witnessed beyond all doubt that this cosmic parade is but the backdrop. It is but the stage upon which we play out this unique but brief experience that manifests in the so-called reality of what we take to be the totality of our existence.

I have carried this secret my whole life searching for souls willing to enter into this grand experiment to dare to look beyond the facade into the extraordinary. And yet I cannot distill the essence of this experience from the physical tedium and banality with which it is inexorably entangled. It seems I cannot even adequately describe it in isolation. What alchemy is required? Only the willing human sprit, using love as the catalyst, is pure enough it isolate and rarify the nectar from the amalgamation. Until more Spiritual Pilgrims are ready to emotionally venture beyond this incomplete experience we call reality, we will all continue to live ordinary lives with only brief glimpses into what is possible.

But for me, a brief glimpse will never be enough. I must go forward now. There is no going back. It is not my intent to merely involve others in an experiment to discover what was possible between human beings but also to forever transform reality itself. I have no way to foresee the outcome. I know not what that transformation entails. But for those who have been witness, those who have been touched, it is incumbent upon you [individually] to re-chart your life out of this experience and go forward.

We Always Have Choice

2010-10-13T10:27:00.001-07:00

How many times have you heard someone say “I had no choice.” How often have you told yourself that in order to justify some action or lack thereof.

Every time we tell ourselves that we have no choice, about anything, we are giving up something precious. We are giving up our free will, the very thing that makes us human beings. Every time we accept that excuse from others we are enabling them to be less than they are.

When we say we have no choice, what we are really saying is that we cannot deal with the consequences we to attach to the choices that life gives us, whether these consequences are totally imagined or almost certain. When we give up our willingness to choose we become victims of our circumstances and others who would control us with their fears or desires. Ironically we feel we are directing our lives by choosing not to choose. But in reality we have abdicating the responsibility we have to truly live our lives.

Jean Paul Sartre the famous existentialists tells the story of how, in his early life, in occupied France, during the Second World War he was drafted to serve the Germans by providing intelligence against the allies as a weatherman. In a lonely outpost at a weather station it occurred to him that he had told himself that he had no choice but to sell out at the wishes of his oppressors. What he realized was not that he had made a “right “ or “wrong” choice but that he had not chosen at all.

Sartre’s later writings reveal how this realization influenced his life and inspired others to find the courage to make deliberate choices in their lives. His perpetual message to us as human beings is to never loose sight of the value of making real choices and the human dignity and responsibility for our lives which this expresses.

So what does choosing really look like? Well in the case that Sartre cites, he realizes that he always had the right to choose not to capitulate even if it meant he would be killed. It occurred to him that there was something more important than his life and that was that preservation of human dignity through exercising his freedom to choose life or death, the ultimate choice we all have.

Sartre’s message is all but lost today in a society where people routinely justify selling out and see themselves as having no choice. This has created a pervasive climate of desperation, fear and depression that is ultimately deadly to us all. But Sartre’s message was not lost on the people of France as an estimated fifty thousand people attended his funeral in Paris in 1980.

Consciousness is not Optional

2010-09-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Why do we exist? What is the purpose of life? Who has not asked these questions at one time or other during their life? We ask these kinds of questions because it is natural for human beings to do so because we are creatures that are conscious of our own consciousness. Descartes expressed it, “I think therefore I am.” He began by questioning the existence of everything he could perceive about reality with his five senses. But ultimately he could not deny that something he called “I” was consciously contemplating itself.

If we focus on our consciousness without all the distractions of the world around us, in meditation for instance, we become aware that our consciousness is still present even when our mind stops. Many people report near death experiences after accidents or during medical operations in which they are conscious of being out of their bodies. People have scientifically unexplained experiences of previous and parallel lives. These types of experiences and reports bring in to question everything we think we know about reality, everything, that is, but one thing, the existance of our consciousness.

Jean Paul Sartre wrote a sardonic play called “No Exit” in which three people, who had died, found themselves together in a kind of purgatory (or hell) together. There they proceeded to torment each other just as they had tormented others in life. Their greatest wish was to die so that they could end their suffering. But alas, they could not die because they were already dead. There was “no exit” for their consciousness to take.

I believe what the famous existential philosopher is pointing out in his play is that we are all conscious beings and we have been given a life to do with as we choose. We can choose to spend our time suffering and tormenting others and ourselves or spend it spreading joy through the freedom we have. But we cannot choose to not exist. We might even imagine that we can escape the responsibility we have by committing suicide but we may end up just like the hapless characters in Sartre’s play. We might ask ourselves over and over again the question “Oh, why do I exist [at all].” but it is always rhetorical question because consciousness is not optional. It is only in the area of what we do with our consciousness in our lives that we have choice.

All the Love in the Universe

2010-07-14T09:02:00.001-07:00

I was meeting my friend George for casual dinner. Unexpectedly he had brought along his cousin, Anna. George and I were colleagues in the computer business. We usually spent our meetings, even the casual ones, talking about technical matters. But Anna's presence changed all that. She was a tall attractive blonde woman. There was something vivacious about her and a little whimsical. Being the analytical type myself this was not usually the kind of person I was attracted to. But with Anna there, I found it easy to put aside all the technical talk and just be in the moment sharing things about myself in a way that I surprised myself.

Soon after dinner George said goodnight and left the two of us there in the restaurant to talk into the night. After Anna and I parted and I walked alone to the subway to make my way home, I found my mind buzzing with all that we had shared and I had that light “walking on air feeling”. I knew I was going to see Anna again. We had promised to reconnect.

It was several days later I contacted Anna to meet me for dinner. We went out to a small busy diner that specialized in chicken. We sat across from each other at a little round table for two. We had ordered our meal and were waiting for it to arrive. Suddenly Anna reached across the table and grabbed both of my hands. She looked into my eyes and she said "let's give each other all the love in the universe". I continued to hold her hands but I felt my psychic body step back. I hardly knew this woman and she was offering me and asking from me "all the love in the universe". My body language betrayed me. Was I worthy of all the love in the universe? Where was I going to get all the love in the universe to give? There was only one answer to her proposal and that answer was an unequivocal yes. But I couldn't say it. My mind was busy conjuring up the images of all the challenges that might lie ahead for this capricious woman and me if I were to say yes. I was afraid. We both knew it was going to end there. We finished our dinner exchanging polite platitudes and I walked her home and we said goodnight. Later that week, intrigued by what happened I called her several more times but she wouldn't see me. Several months later I heard from George that Anna had met some engineer and they were to be married.

That was more than 20 years ago. It has taken this long for me to begin to understand what happened with Anna that night across the table. It has taken this long to understand that I do have all the love in the universe available to me from an inexhaustible source and it can flow through me to others. Anna was not a great sage although she tested me mightily and I came up lacking. She was just a human being who, unlike myself, was courageous (or desperate) enough to ask for what she needed, the thing that we all need, the only truly worthwhile thing we have to give each other, "all the love in the universe".

Money

2010-05-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

The other day I opened my wallet and for the first time I realized I am finally beginning to see money differently. What I saw was pieces of colored paper with pictures of statesmen, monarchs and symbols on them.

How odd, I thought. These are not mine. These are not pictures of me and the symbols are not of anything I, as a human being, identify with. Indeed these papers are representing an energy that is not mine. As a matter of fact it is as though these pieces paper with their symbols, pictures of people I don’t even know, have power that I cannot possess. So must I focus my attention outside my self on these pieces of paper in order to have the power to live my life? Suddenly, this whole notion of revering these pieces of paper occurred to me as absolutely absurd!

If I were to write a promissory note and put my picture on it and the note said that I promised to come over for an afternoon and help plant a garden then I give it to you, it would represent something real, because I have the ability to do what the note says. It represents real human energy that passes between you and me. If you were to write a note and promise to cook dinner and give it to me we would be exchanging real currency that represented real human energy. Now, if for some reason, before you redeemed your note you decided to trade it with a friend for something else you wanted more than gardening then your friend, using the note with my picture on it, could still call on me to do his or her gardening.

I believe this is the way money was first intended to be used, as a means of exchange of energy. The value is based on the ability and energy of those people involved in the exchange. Now I realize that life now is much more complicated than this is a simplistic example but it occurs to me that something vital has been lost with regard to currency and something absolutely sinister has replaced it. What has been lost is the exchange of spiritual energy that needs to take place between human beings. What has replaced it is something that is actually criminal.

Ok, so a long time ago it was decided that some means of exchange was needed that would allow more flexibility than the kind the barter system I described above. So socities and countries created and issued their own currencies. So far, so good. But then some things started to go terribly wrong. You see, if institutions are going to print money, because they are not human beings that have both the physical and spiritual energy behind them, there needs to be some way those important looking pieces of paper are backed up with something universally recognized as valuable. For many years, gold and silver was used to back up the paper. But something happened to money in December 1971. The restriction that the US dollar, the worlds reserve currency, needed to be backed up by gold was ended. Money that was printed without backing is a form of counterfit. Currencies were allowed to “float”. This meant that money became debt that was based solely on the ability of the people who use the currency to make good on the IOU’s the institutions and governments were issuing on their behalf. Now we have the situation where there is more money than there is value in the world to back it up and more and more electronic money is put into the system every day. This is why people feel spiritually and physically drained. Now even entire countries like Iceland and Greece are being declared bankrupt.

I realize this is a very simplistic explanation for a problem that the people who led us all into this situation would have you believe is very complex. But I believe at the root, it is a simple problem where human beings have lost the vision of what is truly valuable, their spirit and personal energy, and sold out for worthless promises in the form of pieces of paper. I believe the people who led us into the current incarnation of this situation cannot get us out because many of them have been the most blind to the trap. Only we ourselves can do that by changing the way we see money. This trap has been around a long time, in fact certainly before the fall of Rome. I will leave you with this short passage from the bible that points to how even two thousand years ago we were being warned of this trap and the people who would pull us into it.

Mark Chapter 12 Verse 12 – 17

And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.

And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words.

And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?

Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.

And they brought it. And he saith unto them, whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar's.

And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marveled at him.

Galileo’s Injunction

2010-03-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Most people have heard of a court injunction. In the legal sense this is a requirement from the court that a certain activity be carried out or refrained from and there is usually an implication that there is also an “or else” involved.

The idea of an injunction is that there is something that is required in order for there to be a specific result. An injunction might look like this. “If you follow a particular recipe, you will get a particular cake.”. From this injunction it might also be implied that if you don’t follow the recipe, you will not get the particular cake.

Throughout history there have been numerous scientific advances that have ultimately resulted in a paradigm shift that changed the way we live our lives. A paradigm shift occurs when a critical mass of people change what they believe or how they understand the way the world works. For instance, the earth was once thought to be flat and most people on earth did nothing in their entire lifetimes that contradicted this belief. At some point some began to believe that the earth was round. Once enough people began to change their belief, there was a paradigm shift.

It is interesting to look at this process. It often occurs one person at a time through human interaction. There will always be those people who question the current paradigm. They may be found in any field from science to philosophy. And there is always a second group of people who tend to want to maintain the status quo.

Finally, the largest group of people waits to see what others do and then this group will quickly and easily follow suit. This actually signifies that the paradigm shift has occurred.

Why do human beings look beyond the current paradigm? Why are other human beings willing to suppress revelations that could benefit humanity? History has shown that some have frequently gone to great lengths at the expense of others and humanity in general to insure paradigm shifts do not occur because it would jeopardize their status and control.

The classic case form history is Galileo’s telescope and the Catholic Church. Galileo challenged the position currently being supported by church that the sun went around the earth. Instead he claimed the planets orbited the sun and that the planet Jupiter had moons orbiting it. To support his claim Galileo offered the injunction “Look through my telescope.” Feeling that they could not deny the evidence of their own eyes, those who would seek to maintain the status quo refused the injunction. They refused to look through the telescope. This is not healthy skepticism. Science is not supposed to work this way.

Why should people who refuse to look at the evidence have the power to overrule those who are willing to consider what others feel is important? It would be like a juror who refuses to be present for the testimony but still wants to control the outcome of the trial. I think this was where Galileo took his stand. “If you don’t look at the evidence, you don’t deserve to get a vote on how the universe works!

Paradigm shifts are just as important now as they were throughout human history. Was the earth once flat and we recreated it to be round? Is there a parallel reality where we are still living on a flat earth? Human evolution comes from having the inquisitiveness and courage to question the status quo and the willingness to look at all the available evidence.

Halleluiah

2010-01-21T16:34:00.000-08:00

You don’t need Ayahuasca to have an experience of altered consciousness. Ordinary life often supplies opportunities and they come in many forms.

I was speaking to a friend by phone and he was asking about my Ayahuasca experience. Just before he called I had been reading the book The Antipodes of the Mind by Benny Shanon in which the author was describing a vision he had while on Ayahuasca.

Shanon reports having a vision of being present for the capture and torture of Zedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 B.C as told in the Old Testament of the Bible.

In the vision, Shanon is present while Zedekiah is physically restrained and forced to witness his sons being burned alive in a fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar has Zedekiah’s eyes plucked out.

But this is where the biblical account and the vision differ. In Shanon’s words…

What could poor Zedekiah do? He could not help his children and could do nothing to change their awful lot. He could neither resist nor fight. He could, of course, curse and blaspheme but that would have done him no good. The only thing that he could do really was praise the Lord. This, I saw, is what he did. The blind man who had just lost his kingdom and both his sons was singing a great Halleluiah.

When I read this passage to my friend over the phone we were both quiet for a moment. Then he told me that he had thought of the Haitian people cought in the January 2010 earthquake. Yes, I said, that is it. I am sure many of the victims as they suffered and died, pushed by those horrendous circumstances, found peace and power to the point of rejoicing as they experienced the falling away of all that this consciousness, we call the self, so desperately clings to. In the Ayahuasca vision that Shanon describes he witnesses and experiences a catharsis that comes from accepting that which cannot be changed. The message is that we must have this catharsis before we can move forward beyond our greatest fears or even into that which lies beyond our mortal existence.

My own experience with Ayahuasca has shown me that this consciousness, this spirit, is capable of transcending all the judgments and the fears that continually flood into my ordinary reality. This awareness leaves me in a place of wonder, awe and appreciation. From that place I too can sing Halleluiah.

The Screaming Man

2010-01-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

During the second Ayahuasca ceremony I sat next to a man who screamed, cried and blubbered hysterically during the session. A number of people came to me afterward and ask me if I had been disturbed by the experience.

I related this story individually to several people and I also spoke about it in the sharing session the next day but to be complete, I needed to write about what I witnessed after some reflection.

It became clear to me that what was most significant for me about the experience was the interaction between the shaman and the screaming/crying man. As don Augustin approached the man I began to see energy passing between them. Don Augustin was playing his harmonica and the sound carried the energy visually emanating from him. I have learned later that Icaros, the shaman’s songs, are integral to the work that the shaman does in the Ayahuasca ceremony and the healing process.

The man and the shaman were executing a kind of energy tango (or dueling banjos) where don Augustin would answer each one of his cries with more intense sounds. With my eyes closed, I saw don Augustin as what I interpreted at the time as a figure having the head of a Chinese dragon who was sitting at a large organ and was animated like the Phantom of the Opera.

Later after returning to Lima in a museum I saw a piece of pottery that more accurately depicted the image of what I had seen. It was a depiction of a leopard.

I had witnessed don Augustin playing with the negative energy pulling it from the screaming man and then dispersing it into infinity.

He brought it to a crescendo as he edged closer and closer to the man pulling the pain and suffering out of him. When he reached the man, standing right in front of me, he leaned down a whispered "Ok" into the man’s ear and the man calmed down like a baby being comforted.

I am very grateful to have witnessed this and I will never forget it.

The Great Pagliacci

2009-12-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

A man was suffering from profound melancholy. He had seen the best doctors available and none were able to help him. He finally was referred to a physician famous for his powers to heal the soul. The doctor suggested that the man could find solace and end his melancholy in love. The man told the doctor that love was not the problem, that he was loved by many people.

The doctor’s next suggestion was that he should go on a voyage and experience other parts of the world. But the man responded that he had already visited every corner of the world. The doctor then recommended hobbies like arts or sports but the man's response to every one of the doctor's recommendations was that he had done all of those things and still had no relief. The doctor then suspected that the man was a compulsive liar. He could not have done all the things he claimed to have done.

But being an insightful man, the doctor had one final suggestion: “I have the perfect solution for you. You must attend the performance of the greatest comedian of our time. His performance will delight to the point of forgetting all your melancholy. You must attend the performance of the Great Pagliacci”.

The man looked at the doctor with great disappointment and said “If that is your final recommendation, I am indeed a lost man. There is no hope for me. You see, I am the Great Pagliacci”.

Ayahuasca Flashback

2009-12-17T19:57:00.000-08:00

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

- Albert Einstein

The lights of the city reflect in the bright metallic streetcar tracks. People are bustling about. The stop and go lights at the corners flash their neon commands. Automobiles whiz by on their way to the next appointed rendezvous.

Suddenly it all stops as if frozen in the cold night air and another identical but alternate reality appears as if I were witnessing everything for the very first time. It is a reality so transformed and unfamiliar I might as well be gazing into the nucleus of an atom or holding the cosmos in my hand.

Then just as suddenly, the world starts up again hardly having lost a beat. I am left with a sense of wonder that quickly recedes, into the past like a déjà vu. Can I really know what anything is? Or is every moment really just a leap of faith into the abyss of an unfathomable mystery? Where is this “I” that knows how to take a next breath? Where does this “I” go when the world stops? Where will this “I” go when the world ends?

Shamanic Healing

2009-12-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

In November of 2009 I spent ten days in a Peruvian jungle where I took part in a series of four ceremonies in which over 40 people drank Ayahuasca, a tea made from a plant used by the shamans of South America. This plant has been used for centuries to induce visions that allow the shaman to provide spiritual guidance and do healing for his community.

This adventure was an extraordinary and wondrous experience that took me beyond the farthest reaches of my imagination. I was left with insights that seemed to come from a place so beyond my ordinary experience of reality that to even begin to adequately describe them occurs as an exercise in futility. I must therefore allow the Ayahuasca experience to remain forever in the realm of the ineffable and trust that the transformative effects will speak powerfully through my being rather than my words.

People come to this experience from all over the world and out of their own specific motivation. I was there for a spiritual experience, but many of the others came for healing, both physical and mental. Regardless of the initial motivation I have no doubt that everyone there experienced something personally unique and extraordinary.

I have spoken to several friends about my experience and did a presentation and slide show. Invariably and most frequently, the question that I am ask is “Was anyone healed?” It is clear to me that what they are wanting to know is if blind people miraculously begin to see or did crippled people throw down their crutches and begin to walk. And I tell them no, nothing like that happened. But I also tell them that great vistas and vast landscapes were opened before me which I saw without the use of my eyes. And that I traveled to great heights and distant lands without legs or wings.

Because we believe so completely that we are our bodies and minds we feel broken when our bodies and minds fail to function the way we, and others around us, have come to expect and demand. What is the real affliction? Is there really anything “wrong” in the universe or is it that we have chosen to reject and suffer with “what is so” rather than be grateful for our lives as they has been given to us?

Yes, I can say absolutely that there were miracles and healing that came out of the Ayahuasca experience. Is it not a miracle to come to know that we are more than our bodies, greater than our thoughts and emotions, and infinitely beyond our fears and doubts? Is it not a miracle to remember that everything we have been given is a task we chose, maybe even before we had a body, to work with in order to become more conscious and experience the fullness of what it is to be a human being? Can any true change or healing take place in our bodies or minds without first we see and feel the perfection of our lives just the way they are and the way they are not?

At the end of each ceremony the shaman asked us to sing. One of the songs that I chose to sing was Amazing Grace. It pretty well sums up what this experience provided for me. I quote the first verse here.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see”

A Simple Truth

2009-09-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

All my life I have been seeking Truth. Somehow I knew that it was like chasing my shadow. Every time I felt I knew the truth I was confronted by the realization that seeking truth is a never-ending task. Still a part of me knew that there was something noble about the path my inner longing has compelled me to walk.

What is the truth, and is it possible to know the truth? The truth seems to change with each passing moment. What was once true is soon disproved or modified and a new truth has taken it's place. How can we get value from truth if it is constantly changing and evolving?

Maybe I have finally understood and accepted a simple truth about Truth. Truth is not just a bundle of facts that we have come to rely on; but truth is also a concept or notion that can only serve us if we continually pursue it with impeccability.

A bundle of facts is, at best, a personal or collective belief system that merely serves us sufficiently in the present moment so that we may survive, but it is not something carved in stone. Indeed, as soon as we become convinced that we have discovered the ultimate truth it is the surest sign that we have failed to grasp the real value of the notion of truth. Like an onion, as we peel away each layer searching for the greater or deeper Truth we find at the core there is no ultimate truth. Ironically as I look back at my life I find, it has been the journey, the peeling away of the layers, and the impeccable pursuit of truth that has given meaning to my life.

Ironically, the frustration of seeking truth ends in acceptance and joy of walking the path where ever it leads, understanding and accepting that truth is not something to grasp and hold tightly but something that flows. As seekers of truth we give meaning to the word itself and validate the process of seeking truth by showing our devotion to the process and our reverence for the task. So what if there is no ultimate truth, there doesn’t have to be. Besides, if we reached an ultimate truth the journey would have to end.

Calling Your Bluff

2009-09-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

You ask, “How could you love me? You don’t even know me.”

You must think it is necessary to be or do something special in order to be loved.

If I loved you only because of to some special quality that only you possess, what would happen if you lost that quality? Don’t you know that the “You” that I love cannot be created or destroyed?

Who is that “You” that you hide behind all the superficialities that you hope will make you lovable? Don’t you know that I know that hidden part of you?

You secretly tell yourself that you are all the things that no one could ever love. You secretly tell yourself that when someone says they love you, that your pretenses are working and that they just love all the things you so cleverly pretend to be.

Why do you work so hard just to be a genuine fake? You cannot imagine anyone could love a genuine fake like you, unless they were one too. For you, all those who profess their love must be cunning and deceitful. But it takes one to know one, doesn’t it? In the game of Blind Man’s Bluff that you play, everyone must first be wearing a blindfold or you won’t play.

You think you can fool me but I know the “You” that I love is not any of the things you believe you are or even pretend to be. The “You” that I love is, and has always been perfect in every moment. You are left withholding the real “You” and pretending that’s ok, all the time hoping that someone will smash through your pretence and save you from yourself.

So when I say I love You, it is more about me than it is about you. It says I know there is nothing you nor I need to pretend to be. It says I am calling your bluff.

Why do we fear enlightenment?

2009-08-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Alan Watts speaks a lot about enlightenment in his talks and books. What his words always convey to me is that enlightenment is not something to attain but something to recognize and acknowledge in ourselves and in others. To know we are already enlightened beings is indeed what it is to be enlightened and this realization is always but a heartbeat away for us.

But to act in this world from that enlightened place is the challenge. To act from enlightenment is to act from a greater understanding of what life is and what our place really is as opposed to the small isolated place of the ego.

To act from a place of enlightenment takes trust and courage. We must first trust that we are enlightened beings and then summon the courage to speak and act from that place regardless of what or who would have us do otherwise.

Yes it seems easier to pretend that we are just small and insignificant like everyone else around us is doing but when we do that all we have done is join in the masquerade. But we know who we really are and we know that we are pretending. The price we pay for hiding this truth in side of us instead of living from it is that a vital part of us always feels lost and separate.

So how did we come to be so deluded that we feel so separate even though we are all connected? Alan Watts answers this in his book “The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”. In the book he tells us about how an all-powerful mythical character called “God” who, in a moment of great boredom, invented a game of hide and seek that he plays with himself.

Here is an excerpt from the book…

"God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

"Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it--just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self--the God who is all that there is and who lives forever and ever.

Now, can you honestly tell me that you don’t remember who you really are?

Looking for God in all the Wrong Places

2009-08-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Maybe if we all went over to the window opened it up and stuck our heads out and yelled, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” , maybe God would hear us down here and fix this mess. Oh yeah, that suggestion was tried wasn’t it? I guess it didn’t work because here we are still.

So maybe if I write a letter that will work. I’ll bet there is a big basket at the post office where they put all the letters that people write to God. It’s probably right next to the one for the letters to Santa Clause. So if I decide to write, when I finish it, I might as well just tear it up, throw the pieces in the air and save the cost of a stamp.

But who knows, it can’t hurt to try…

Dear God,

Wait a minute, this has all been done before too! And it turned into a book called “Conversations with God” and the author, who had fallen on hard times made a fortune from it. So now that you are all set Mr. Walsh, what about the rest of us, what about me!

Ok! I’ll start again.

They told me God, that if I visited you regularly I could get saved, whatever that means. Back then I didn’t even realize I had been spent. I came to your house every Sunday for years but you were never home. Of course I don’t blame you because I finally discovered the place was full of hypocrites. One day I asked them why there were no black people allowed in the church, except on Monday to clean the place. The minister called my mother and said that the devil had me and was making me ask these questions. At that point I left, for good. And I do mean “good”.

My mother told me you were everywhere so I would often go for long walks in the woods to see if I could find you there, maybe hiding behind a bush or in a tree. Sometimes I would lie on a huge rock in a field near my home looking up at the clouds. A couple of times I thought I saw you there but then you turned into something else and blew away.

I always enjoyed looking for you in the places where my mother said you would be. It was a kind of hide and seek game I played. I think my mother was a very wise person or maybe she just wanted to get me out of the house. But some how, I always came home feeling that I had spent time with you even though I never managed to meet you face to face.

Then I tried to see if I could catch you at home again. I had no idea you had so many houses, so many churches where you could just hang out without paying any rent. But if you ever actually dropped by I never saw you in any of them.

Finally, some nice people at a Quaker Meeting House took me in. They told me I could ask all the questions I wanted and say what ever I wanted to say. I really liked that. I asked them if they had seen you around or knew where I could find you. They told me to keep coming back and I was sure to eventually meet you.

Several months went by and I asked about you again. A nice Quaker man sat me down and handed me a mirror. He told me to gaze deeply into the eyes of the face I saw there. After a few minutes, my face began to melt into the background of the darkened room and in its place I saw you there.

I am sorry I haven’t contacted you for so long. I had forgotten how close you are. I don’t need the mirror any more to see you. Now I can find you right where my mother said you would always be, in everything and everyone. Some nice folks I met recently suggested that I write you. I am glad they did. I’ll try not to forget again that you are always right here with me.

God's Dream

2009-05-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

God fell into a deep sleep and he dreamed he was a man walking on the earth. As he walked he felt the warmth of the sun on his body and the earth beneath his feet. He felt the wonder of being alive. In the dream he met a beautiful woman. He felt a profound connection and fell deeply in love. He joined together with her and she gave him a son. Never had he known such exquisite joy.

His son grew into a man and gave him grandchildren. But then his son was called to war. When his son returned he was changed and died by his own hand taking with him the lives of his family. The beautiful woman, the love of his life, turned cold and crass and ran away with a philanderer only to be later discarded like an old shoe. Years later he sought her out to beg her to reunite with him but she shunned him blaming him for her all her misfortune. She had become old and lost in her despair and wretchedness. Her beauty had withered away and she determined herself to die alone and bitter.

Broken and desperate, he cried out from his dream, “Why must this life be so?”, but there was no answer forthcoming.

Then God remembered that it was all just a dream. Waking from his dream, he found himself alone and unto himself once again. He remembered the earth as he had dreamed it into existence. He remembered his life as a man and all its joy and all its pain. He remembered the sun and the clouds, he remembered the beauty and the tears, he remembered looking into the eyes of another and finding himself there. Then God drew a deep breath and lay down to sleep once again, perchance to dream another dream.

The Law of Distraction

2009-04-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

One of the most intense aspects of our personality is the voice of desire. Buddhists point to this aspect of the human experience as the source of all human suffering and yet life without desire would be a very passive and dull experience if life were possible at all. It would be foolish to try to eliminate desire from our lives but at the same time it is equally foolish to allow our lives to be run by our desires. One of the things we must come to terms with is that the aspect of us we call desire is insatiable. When we get what we desire we quickly move on to desire more or something else. I think this is what the Buddhists are actually pointing to with regard to desire. Satisfying a desire is like filling a bucket with a hole in it. So the task becomes one of managing desire such that it serves us and not enslaves us.

Several years ago a video was released called “The Secret”. Since that time many in the spiritual community have come out to criticize the video (which is now also a book) as being just another appeal to the base desire of wanting stuff, including money. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. The premise of the movie is an idea called The Law of Attraction. This is really an ancient idea that had a incarnation in the early 1900’s which provides the material that is with us today. This principle tells us that we get what we focus on. But the big question for many who have spoken about this principle is how clear is our vision of what will satisfy us and is this just another way to allow our desires to run our lives. Are we really attracting what we think we are atracting?.

I think those who have criticized this video are not questioning the validity of the law of attraction but are pointing out that this may just be a way to put that voice of desire on steroids. A drive that is already so powerful in most of us that it distracts us from really enjoying the amazing gift that is our life.

Here is my two cents on the matter. Checking in with the Buddhists again we begin to see the irony of how desire works. Desire is usually rooted in some dissatisfaction with whatever is currently so. The irony is that the Law of Attraction then tells us that what comes from dissatisfaction is just more dissatisfaction. It is a kind of Catch-22. This is why many tell us that in order to eliminate human suffering we should simply eliminate desire and yet without desire we would probably just fade a way and die.

Now here is my suggestion. Let’s look for a way to live our lives in such a way that we are sustained and excited by life, a way in which things flow to us without us having to desire or even envision them before hand. Is there good evidence that this could actually work? Yes, and we even have a word for it. It is called serendipity! So if serendipity works, why don’t people rely on it? Simple, we are distracted by our desires. We are so distracted by our desires that we feel like we need to buy books and videos to learn how to get the stuff we want. I call this effect the “Law of Distraction”. We are distracted from noticing and appreciating the gifts that flow to us in each and every moment.

Virtually everything that we are offered on TV is telling us that we are missing something we need to have in order to be happy. It is not that the Law of Attraction is not working, it certainly is, and often we get exactly what we ask for. But along with it we get more wanting. Let’s face it, “wanting” is a lot of work and it by the principle of the Law of Attraction, it cannot result in contentment.

So what is my answer? Simple, in order to attract contentment we must already have it! No, this is not some type of double talk. Just because we are content does not mean that all manner of things do not flow to us through serendipity. The catch is however, that we will get what the universe freely provides not necessarily what our voice of desire is insisting we need. Can we come to trust and be content in each moment that the universe will always take care of us? Can we feel deep gratitude for this process and all that it provides? I think what those who use the Law of Attraction successfully are trying to tell us is that when we stop being so distracted by our desires that a space of contentment, love and abundance will naturally arise within us and we will attract more of the same. Our desires can then be seen as things that might be “nice to have” not a dire necessities.

Alan Watts 1915 - 1973

2009-04-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

I have started a study and discussion group to study the life and work of Alan Watts. It is surprising how few people are familiar with his work or even recognize his name because he and D.T. Suzuki were among the few the pioneers in brining eastern philosophy and practice to the west, preceding all the Gurus that came to the west and literally spawning in the 1960’s the huge public interest in what came to be called the “New Age” movement.

Alan Watts was first of all a scholar of eastern religion who came from the UK and taught at Berkley in the U.S. But secondly he was a renegade and a self-proclaimed “rascal” of the beatnik era (1950’s) hanging out with the likes of Alan Ginsburg and Timothy Leary. He soon began to move beyond the hallowed halls of Berkley to give impromptu talks to small groups on board his houseboat moored in San Francisco bay. No doubt though, the material in these talks, that is available still today in the form of books and audiotapes, was indeed the material that inspired the “hippy” era and transformed a generation. It was this renegade attitude that had Watts escape the stogy university environment and have a profound impact on a whole generation.

To get an inkling of what Watts and a few others accomplished we must take into account that even though the religious beliefs and practices of the east enjoy a history predating Christianity, that previous to the 1950’s, in the west, eastern religion was considered for the most part to have little or no relevance outside scholarly and historic interest. Even such practices as daily sitting meditation that has exploded right into the 21st century were at one time considered esoteric in the west and often down right weird. As part of this explosion there was a myriad of “spiritual” weekend workshops, retreats, books and videos that followed.

Allan Watts, throughout his talks emphasizes that Buddhism does not fit the westerner’s definition of religion but is instead more accurately likened to, of all things, psychotherapy. This will come as a surprise to most people. As such, the impact of this marriage of eastern and western thought is has been felt most significantly in the areas of mental health. Buddhism traditionally addresses human suffering through creating a direct experience of well being. Western psychology has primarily focused on dissecting the ego and “working through” the barriers the ego constructs to prevent access to this experience of well being that certain sects of Buddhism promise us through “sudden enlightenment”. Alan Watts provides amusing insights into this interesting and tenuous marriage.

So who was Alan Watts in his own words? Over and over Alan Watts contends he is not a psychotherapist, guru or a preacher. Instead, in his talks and lectures he makes no claims to being anything other than an entertainer. But do we listen to Alan Watts simply to be entertained? All I can say is that I hope not because hidden among his entertaining stories, metaphors, amusing anecdotes and impeccable logic are the teachings of the Tao revealing how to be in life with grace and ease.

In the west, typically our experience of life is that it is complicated or obscure. Maybe that is why the 2,500-year-old message in Buddhism is seen as too simple to have any credibility. Alan Watts tells us that as self aware and imaginative creatures we have gotten out of touch with the experience of being part of the Tao, the natural order and unfolding of all that is. But self-awareness and imagination are the gifts with which we have been that make us human. These are the gifts that set us apart from the other animals. But is this a boon or a curse? Because with the same eyes with which we discriminate the light from the dark we have been given the ability to see ourselves as separate. We have been given access to the experience of I and thou, the experience of a world separate from ourselves. Inherently in this experience what lurks at the depths of our imagination is the unmitigated terror of the possibility of complete, utter and eternal separation.

In the story given to us in the Book of Genesis we are told that once we lived in harmony with nature, ignorant of good and evil, oblivious to life and death, without fears of past events or expectations of the future. But upon eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a world of discrimination and judgment was revealed to human kind, a view of reality which was at once as fascinating and alluring as it was alienating, a world of desires, a world of preferences and choices, a world of polarities, a world of opposites and dualities, a world of life and death.

But although nothing had really changed we became trapped in this illusion of finite mortality cutting ourselves off from the infinite and the eternal, experiencing instead separation, limitation and desperation, haunted in every moment of our apparently brief and perilous existence with the specter of our death.

Can we escape this prison of the mind? This is the suffering that The Buddha sought to dispel in every sentient being, the suffering resulting from the illusion of separateness. Einstein is quoted as having told us “Reality is an allusion, albeit a persistent one.” Great minds like Alan Watts have always challenged us to look behind the curtain and investigate the evidence that brings the realization that things are not at all what they seem or what we have been led to believe.

The Fixer and the Tao

2009-04-08T08:25:00.001-07:00

When I look at the aspect of me that wants to "fix" things (and people), I see that it is a very powerful drive. I also see that it is quite a clever aspect too because I am quite good at fixing, if I do say so myself. Fortunately for me, "fixing" is a never ending task.

But is it really possible to fix anything or am I just imposing my sense of order on something that is and always has been part of some “Great Perfection” that merely occurs to me at the moment to be broken.

The notion that something needs fixing assumes somehow that something is broken or imperfect. When I examine this notion closer I find that it is totally unfounded. It is not necessary for something to be viewed as broken or imperfect as a prerequisite for my taking action.

Most of us have things in our lives that we believe need fixing. But the attitude we bring to the task is not one of excitement and adventure but one of drudgery or obligation.

What if instead, we brought an attitude of "changing" or "rearranging" rather than "fixing". Then fixing up the house can become a matter of "changing" the color of the bedroom. Fixing the toilet can become a matter of "rearranging" the parts in the tank so that it doesn't run in between flushes.

I think the most depressing notions that we hold are those around "fixing" other people or, heaven forbid, fixing ourselves. What is depressing of course is that we, or someone else we care about, is seen as "broken". Does something have to be broken or wrong in order to change or evolve? I say, certainly not. It is the notion that something is imperfect that adds the onerous angst to the activities we choose to engage.

Taoism tells us that we are part of a great unfolding that happens both with and without us necessarily doing anything. Everything that we do is a part of that unfolding. There is nothing perfect or imperfect about the world as it is or about what it is becoming. In as much as we are a part of the world, there is nothing perfect or imperfect about ourselves or others either.

Therefore, it is ourselves that bring the judgment into our perception. And along with those judgments we bring the angst, dissatisfaction and suffering. The Tao is perfect in every moment, just as it is and as it is not as is our part in the Tao. Ironically, it is also part of that perfection that we suffer until we learn how to be in our lives without suffering. In the space of seeing that nothing is wrong or broken we can begin to play in our world and with each other with the sense that life is a gift and not a chore or a burden.

What Taoism is showing us is that it is not what we do in life but the attitude we bring that controls our sense of life's quality. When we are in the Tao, like being in the "zone", we float with the river of experience with curiosity and awe. We ride the horse in the direction it is already going, gently guiding, working with the forces that are already present accepting and experiencing what is as part of the process that we are at the same time creating.

When the Student is Ready

2009-03-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

"When the student is ready the teacher will appear". This is a familiar adage that we almost everyone has heard. I thought I would take a look at what it really means for me. As I look back on my life I find I have never been without teachers. The teachers were not always people and I did not always enjoy or understand the lessons but I really get now that I could not go on to the next until the lesson I was experiencing was complete.

This process is delightfully illustrated by the following story.

Swami Muktananda tells a story about a seeker who went to a Guru and asked him for instruction in the Truth. The Guru was a very simple, straightforward person, and when the seeker told him what he had come for, the Guru said, "Everything is Consciousness, and thou art That. That is the Truth.” “Is that all?” I the seeker asked. “Can't you say anything more?” “That is all I have to teach,” the Guru said. “If you want something else, you'll have to go to another Guru.”

The seeker left and eventually found his way to another Guru, who had a large ashram and many disciples. The seeker came to him and said, “I want to know the Truth. Please instruct me.”

With a glance, the Guru understood what kind of seeker he was. Have you been to see anyone else?" he asked.

The seeker named the other Guru. “All right," the Guru said,” I will give you instruction. But first you will have to serve me for twelve years." The Guru called his manager and asked him, “Have we any work for this seeker?” The manager replied, “Every job in the ashram is filled except for one. We need someone to pick up cow dung in the cowshed." Will you do that job?" the Guru asked. The seeker agreed to do it, and so for the next twelve years he lived in the Guru's ashram, picking up cow dung in the cowshed.”

At the end of twelve years, he went to the Guru and said, “Twelve years are over. Please instruct me." “Very good,” said the Guru. “Here is my teaching:

Everything is Consciousness, and thou art That."

Immediately the seeker fell into a deep samadhi. When he returned to his normal state, he said wonderingly, “But that was exactly what the other Guru told me twelve years ago!” “Of course,” said the Guru. “The Truth hasn't changed in twelve years.” “But why did I have to spend twelve years picking up cow dung?” “Because your mind was too dense to understand it,” said the Guru.

The great English poet William Blake explained the process more succinctly in this way.

“The fool who persists in his folly will [eventually] become wise.”

Years ago when I first read this quote I was filled with resentment because what Blake is pointing out is that we learn just as much and as often, if not more so, from our so-called failures as we do from our so-called successes. My thought was that life should not be like that.

How does this process work in my life? Well for instance, as I look back on my life I find that I had many teachers, people who taught me lessons that were very hard for me to get at the time but once I had gotten the lesson a new teacher appeared and I moved on. I stayed in many jobs and relationships that I thought were serving me just to find that they were just teaching me what I needed to know so I could move on. Often these situations only taught me to recognize what was difficult for me or made me uncomfortable.

I see now that new lessons and new teachers came along all the time and I just didn’t recognize them yet because I had not completed the lesson I was experiencing. Even when I asked for something new or “better” I would not recognize it when it came. Because in order to recognize what was next for me, I needed to complete my current lesson, which was a prerequisite.

When I look at my life in this way, it no longer occurs as a series of unfulfilled expectations, or a frustrating struggle. Looking back at my life, I was never a victim of my circumstances; I just had lessons to learn. Looking at my life as a series of lessons I can let go of any regrets that I have had. From this point of view my life was meant to be just the way it was and the way it was not. I can be grateful for the life I had and all the opportunities to learn. But best of all I can be grateful for the teachers.

I have often wondered why people seek out Gurus or Zen Masters who purposely make learning frustrating and difficult. I think I have finally found the answer. Some seek Gurus; some of us choose to learn directly form life. There is always something to be learned even if it is just to be at peace and accept this process. Ultimately the lesson is, and has always been, that we always make the perfect choice regardless of who or what we have chosen to be our teachers.

The Serendipity Prayer

2009-03-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

God grant me the openness and curiosity; to recognize and receive the precious gifts that I could not have imagined myself; the conviction to avoid things and ways of being that I know will not serve me;and the discernment to know the difference.

Nirvana Can Wait

2009-02-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

Bodhisattva, have you forgotten? It is no accident that you are here. Remember, you chose freely of your own will to be here now. Nirvana was always too dull for you.

Oh, only one eternity you ask, hardly enough time to attend to so many souls! But if there was any other reward than the job itself, it wouldn’t have appealed so much to you. Yes, it is a messy job, but someone has to do it.

So, strap on your sword and take up your shield and back into the fray. Nirvana can wait, there are sentient beings to be saved.

My Life as a Meditation

2009-01-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

Zazen (sitting meditation) was never my forte. Yes, I know it is at the center as a practice for most eastern religions. Yes, I did try and I had some interesting out-of-body like experiences.

But, by far, my most cherished meditative moments have happened when I was not even setting out to experience anything of the sort. For many years is would run 5 miles or more every day. After a while I began to notice that time was disappearing during these hours while I was gone and yet I could remember perfectly every step. For me an hour seemed to have been compressed into a few minutes.

I am always gratified when spiritual teachers point out that doing chores like washing dishes provides an opportunity to be in a meditation as this has been my experience.

In this moment-to-moment waking meditation, the sights and sounds that make up my experience are not intrusions into my private space but an integral part of all that is. In this state of consciousness I too become part of this intricate tapestry of experience that unfolds anew out of nothing into existence each moment.

As my attachment to the belief that I can know and control the future dissolves away, my feelings of fear and concern are replaced by wonder and awe at the vast limitlessness that I am. Seen as part of eternity, no concerns are worth dwelling upon, no moments need be spent in dread or upset. It is only my belief that the future is determined by the past that has anything persist in my reality.

For the eternal present moment is the only place where I can truly be alive. It is the only place where you and I can truly meet.

As with any meditation practice, my mind will wander, not just for minutes or seconds, but also for days or even months as fears and doubts creep in and I insist on having life be the way I want it instead of accepting it the way it is. I will need to gently, and with love, put myself back on the path, come back to re-experience the I AM-ness that dispels the darkness and the illusion of separateness.

This is what my life looks like as a meditation.

Strays

2009-01-16T20:16:00.001-08:00

January is a very cold month in the Appalachian Mountains where I attended university. It was my 3rd year and I had moved off campus to a trailer park about a mile out of town where I had rented a small trailer that semester. My girlfriend had dropped out of her first year of university after Christmas and come to live with me there.

The temperatures had been getting down to near zero Fahrenheit each night and there was at least a couple of feet of snow accumulated on the ground. Each night a bitter wind whipped the snow into drifts at the front door and it often howled as if it might lift the trailer from its rests and blow it down the road like a tin can.

We often sat in the front of the trailer listening to music but this particular night I was reading when Mary asked, “Did you hear that? It sounded like a cat.” I had never owned a cat and maybe my ears were not accustomed to such cries but Mary was very much in tune with animals so we both listened carefully and sure enough we both heard the unmistakable sound of some animal just outside the door.

As we opened the door we saw in the snowdrift covering the step there was the almost lifeless body of a fairly large cat. The cat must have been attracted to the light at the door. Only its eyes indicated that the slightest presence of life that was left in the motionless torso. The fur was matted and tipped with ice and snow. It was as if the last remnants of life had been consumed in making those bleating cries that had attracted our attention. Now , this desperate visitor seemed to be commending the fate of this 9th life to strangers. Nevertheless there was something feral and menacing in the frozen expression on the tortured feline face.

“What should we do?” I ask. “We have to bring him in.” She answered. I did not really see what harm there could be. After all, there was a good chance the cat would not survive even if we tried to save it. So I carefully put both hands under the limp body and lifted it inside half expecting to be attack at any moment but the cat seemed almost comatose.

I laid it down on a folded towel near a source of warm air from the furnace. Mary opened a tin of tuna and placed it near its face in hopes the smell might revive the cat but there was no response. More than an hour went by and we decided to turn in for the night. The trailer was small and the bedroom was only a few steps away so if the cat awoke we felt we would surely hear it and be able to respond.

It must have been less than an hour when we were awakened to the sound of scratching and growling. As turned on the light the cat let out a blood curdling screech and began scurrying about the room. It was as though it had been possessed by a demon. It was ripping and tearing at everything it touched as it bounded from one piece of furniture to the next. I fumbled in the closet for the broom and managed to fling open the door. On the next pass I ushered the ball of fury out into the cold night from whence it had come. We watched as it streaked down the road in the moonlight then turned into the woods and disappeared into one of the snow drifts. Stunned by the ordeal, we collapsed on the sofa and sat in quiet reverie for a few moments. We never saw the cat again.

A few weeks went by. Some of the snow had melted. The dirt road into the park was muddy and rutted. Mary had begun to become moody. When I would ask her what I could do, she would become irritable and sullen. It was obvious that I had no cure for cabin fever. One day she met me at the door as I returned home. Her one small bag was packed. As I watched the cab disappear down at the end of the road turning onto the highway, in a moment of anguish, I called out her name. I never saw her again.

Answering the Call

2008-11-18T17:36:00.000-08:00

Joseph Campbell speaks of “answering the call” as part of the archetypal “Hero’s Journey” that unmistakably calls to us all at some point in our lifetime. It is the call that will ask us to put aside our ordinary life and embark on our own custom made hero’s journey that will ultimately allow us to claim the honor of being the hero of our own lives.

Whether or not we answer the call and begin our hero’s journey will set the tone for the rest of our lives.

Once begun, all manner of previously unforeseen and unimagined circumstances will come to the fore to speed us on our journey and aid us along our way. We must trust that this will be the case because though there is no doubt that we are called, there will be uncertainty, trepidation and reluctance in our minds.

We will return from our hero’s journey to a world that is decidedly but not obviously different than when we began our journey because it is ourselves, not the world that will have been transformed.

In May of 2007 I asked the universe to show me my purpose. I ask only that it be something so irresistible, so joyful and so fulfilling that it would be undeniably and obviously the call to my hero’s journey. In June of that year I got and answered the call.

I will leave you with this quote by Ken Wilber that provided the first step in my hero’s journey.

“And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls [they] must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout from the heart--perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakeable public example--but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.”

Zen

2008-10-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

Zen is not a form of philosophy, religion or mysticism. Alan Watts likened it to psychology. For me it is an experience of consciousness which has implications for my life.

The "Middle Way", how to live in the world with the consciousness that the world is an illusion. It is a kind of schizophrenic existence of dreaming and awakening, of forgetting and remembering, of suffering and rejoicing.

I have always had this sense of "Zen". It is a consciousness that haunts my waking life and aches in my soul when I deny its presence. Decades of my life were spent in a desert thirsting for its quenching relief from separation and aloneness, always knowing of the existence of the Self beyond the self, the Creator beyond the creation, the Watcher beyond the actor and doer.

As close as the note to the chime, this consciousness and I are One, where time and space are collapsed into the eternal Singularity. Then in the twinkling of an eye I am drawn back into my separateness from where I find my self struggling with the illusion de jour. I am once again caught on the ropes. Am I ready to let go, ready to release this body and mind? I hear the bell signifying the end of another round. I realize again, that I and I alone, control the clock and the bell. In my mind I hold the hammer that punctuates the illusion of struggle and suffering.

Attached to Nothing

2008-10-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

It is so frustrating when life doesn’t go the way I want it to. There is this feeling that there is so much to do and I have to be so intensely focused or things will get even more out of control than they already are. Of course, there are always some things I try to convince my self aren’t so serious. But it seems like more and more really important things are getting out of control no matter how much effort I make.

It is like I am sitting behind the wheel and I began to notice that I am drifting to the right so I have turn the wheel to the left in order to get back to the direction I want life to go. And then I begin to notice that I am drifting to the other way so I have turn the wheel in the opposite direction in order to correct my course again.

This was so tiring that eventually I decided to try something new. I decided that when I begin to notice that life is taking me in one direction or the other I would just gently turn the wheel in the direction that life is taking me.

At first it seemed crazy, but then, pretty soon, I began to notice that my life was becoming easier and less frustrating. Most of the awful things I thought would happen if I did not control them, just never seemed to materialize and the ones that did, so what.

Also, I noticed that I was going down some unfamiliar roads that took me to some new and interesting places where I would never have gone before. Despite all my previous concerns about things getting out of control, eventually I had to admit my trip through life was getting more and more pleasant and exciting. I realized, that before, I had been so attached to the way things “should” be that I couldn’t just enjoy the ride.

It was then I noticed something really odd. I could take my hands completely off the wheel and begin to just watch as my life unfolded before me. At first it seemed as if I had no say whatsoever in the way my life was going. A lot of people in my life were certain I had lost my mind and maybe they were right. I began to notice that not only was I still going to new and interesting places, but also, now something absolutely inexplicable was happening. I had begun to trust that I am being taken care of and realize that my job is really just to be open to infinite possibility and enjoy the ride.

Many of the details that I had previously thought were so important just disappeared from my consciousness. I have finally begun to travel through a new kind of territory in my life.

Before me now there appears a landscape that is continuously created by the love and joy I feel in my heart, rather than a landscape that must be tediously navigated by a steering wheel that has always been attached to nothing.

Speaking As the Light

2008-10-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

It was an intimate group of only ten participants. I had promised that by the completion, each of them would come to know themselves not as their bodies or their minds but as One mind, not with just those present but with everyone and everything. What I promise is to glimpse the Buddha Mind or “True Self”, the Universal Consciousness, the consciousness that I have come to call “I AM”.

A young woman sat on the second row. As the exercise progressed she was eager to participate, speaking as the various aspects of the ego, the small “s” self that we all “have” and commonly believe to be who we are. These voices are the ofttimes out of control personalities we allow to run our lives unconsciously.

But near the end, when I asked to speak to the voice of I AM, the young woman immediately fell into speaking as her “self” describing this universal consciousness (in the second person) rather than being and speaking as the voice of I AM.

Several other participants began to faithfully describe their experience of being I AM, with its vastness and its timelessness. But the young woman persisted in her “descriptions” of this experience as though she were referring to something far away and inaccessible. Several times I asked her to speak as the Consciousness she was describing.

Finally she told me that what she saw was a great light but the light was hidden behind a curtain like stars in a dark sky, with pinpricks of light showing through. I ask her to point out to me where she was in the picture she had described.

“I am just one of those tiny pinpricks of light” she explained.

I then asked if she would “Speak as that light that creates all those other points of light” and she said she would.

“Is there anywhere in the universe that you do not shine? How big are you? When did you begin?”, I asked.

I felt the energy in the room shift as her consciousness expanded to fill the universe. I watched as her face reflected a peace and knowing that she was not bound by time or space.

Then I asked. “Speaking as this infinite light what is your relationship with the small pinprick of light that you previously identified as your self?”

“We are the same, that small light is a part of me.” she said.

“And when "she" is feeling small, alone, separate and is seeking comfort, as the infinite light, what do you want to say to her?”, I ask.

“I want to tell her that you are part of me and I am always right here.” she replied.

I felt the tears well up in my eyes as I felt profound gratitude for the opportunity, once again, to be in the presence of God.

Dances with Men

2008-09-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

This month I attended the annual Men’s Gathering at Beautiful Shalom Mountain Retreat Center in Livingston Manor New York.

Before attending the gathering I noted a reluctance and skepticism in my attitude about the value of being there. After all, I did all the kind of things that goes on at Shalom back in the 80’s. For much of my life I have regarded this feeling of reluctance as a valid reason for avoidance.

But that was a long time ago and as Heraclitus, the Greek Philosopher who was known for his doctrine of change reminds us that, "You cannot step twice in the same river." Indeed I am not the same man I was 25 years ago and Shalom is not the same river.

But, as the river is still a river, Shalom Mountain is still a place to go to practice loving others, be they men or women. Shalom Mountain is a place where I can go that will elucidate all the obstacles that I have created in my life that stops me from loving.

I know now that my mind will manufacture reasons for avoidance to cover up what is just simple fear. Some fears are of course natural and welcome warnings of real dangers. But others are reflections of a belief system that has long since stopped serving me, if it ever did. My job now has become to find the wisdom to tell the difference. But to do that, there must be a willingness to challenge the fear, to test its usefulness by transforming the fear into excitement and curiosity.

When I discover what is in my belief system that keeps me from loving the men in my life, both past and present, I will have discovered what lies at the root of many of the conflicts in my life and on the planet.

Shalom Mountain is a sacred place where all limiting beliefs are exposed for exactly what they are, limiting. A place where men and women alike are challenged to reinvent those belief systems to be empowering instaed of limiting, not through confrontation but through communion and the celebration of life.

It has been at least 20 years since I attended such a gathering as this. Now I know that back then, I really didn't get it. Maybe when I first stepped into that river more than 20 years ago I refused to allow myself to get wet. Dances with men brought me to a connection with the dance of life itself that stems from the sheer joy of dancing, dancing without sexuality, dancing without shame, dancing for no other purpose but to be in the joy of the dance. What a pleasure it was to return to all the people in my life with this gift, especially the women.

My thanks goes out to everyone at Shalom Mountain who made this gathering possible and all who attended. My gratitude wells up in me to fill the universe as a healing energy that brings us all closer together in the consciousness that we all are, and have always been, connected.

Afraid of Nothing

2008-08-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

What is this feeling I have? Am I afraid to let the silence be [silence]? Am I afraid that that maybe silence is all there really is?

God breathing in -- God breathing out. What of that brief moment in between? Where was God before time was if not in this in-between moment? What did God feel in this moment, experiencing the singularity of all there is before there was time and space for the universe to expand into?

Have I forgotten that with each breath I re-experience that in-between moment as I choose again and again to re-create all there is, just as it is and as it is not. Have I forgotten that I choose to re-create the illusion of time and space with each breath? Have I forgotten that I create each moment by coming from nothing? Have I forgotten that "nothing" is just the other side of all that is? Have I become afraid of nothing, afraid of the silence?

Only when I can be with nothing can I truly be with all that is. Nothing is just there in each moment to remind me that I AM that I AM. Being okay with nothing, being okay with the silence is the place from which I create everything. Out of being afraid to be with nothing I only create fear of everything.

I Don’t Remember but My Hands Do

2008-05-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

As we walked along she bent down to pick a blade of grass. “I used to be able to do this” she said as she blew on the blade of grass held between her thumbs, but no sound came.

I remembered that trick, making the call of a crow with a blade of grass held between the thumbs. I remembered how to hold it but I could not explain how to stretch it tight enough.

Decades had passed since I had tried this trick with a blade of grass. “Watch my hands” I said as I saw my hands grasp the blade of grass tightly between my left forefinger and thumb and stretched it, trapping it tightly with my other hand.

As I blew and heard the sound I remembered my father who had first shown me this trick so long ago. For just that moment he had returned to me to fill my whole body with his presence and his love.

I realized that imbedded in every cell of my body there was recorded every event and every experience of my life that had long left my memory and consciousness but were as real as the moment they transpired. I could immediately become that child again and experience the wonder and joy of any moment or I could at once be overcome with the very real but irrational fears of a five year old that would limit me as an adult.

Suddenly it’s clear, how easily I could be overcome with fear or upset that was stored in the cells of my body. I was left aware that so often events or people had triggered these stored memories. Now I could just observe them as they replay and choose which ones to let occupy my present consciousness.

What do I have to do to get an "A"?

2008-03-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

I attended a workshop over the weekend to help me develop skills in group dynamics and collaboration. As part of the workshop we were asked to do an exercise in listening. One of the aspects of good listening is of course "reflection", the ability to listen to what another person has to say such that you can repeat back to them either verbatim or in such words that they get that they have really been heard. To do this exercise we split into small groups of two or three people.

It was my turn to go first and describe some aspect of my life that was "bugging" me while one of the other participants listened. My partner in the exercise was a woman who had worked as a consultant for many years. I was really quite impressed with her ability to virtually memorize everything I said and repeat it back to me flawlessly. As part of the exercise I was required to give her feedback about how well I felt she had listened. As I began to relate my experience I got that she had no idea what a masterful job she had actually done. So after I finished my glowing praise of her I told her I was giving her a B+.

Astonished, at the apparent contradiction in what I had said, she asked me, "What do I have to do to get an A?". I told her that the only thing that I saw that was missing was her ability to see and acknowledge the perfection in herself. I told her that all she had to do to get an "A" was to simply accept herself exactly as she is and see the perfection in all that she does and that would be reflected in how she was being with the people in her life.

When it became her turn to talk about something that was "bugging" her in her life, she shared with us that she had not at first been able to think of anything to speak about but after my feedback she realized that this area of being critical of herself had been with her all her life. So as she got a chance to talk about how this had driven her in her life, she told us that she had always felt that no matter how many courses she took it always felt like it was "never enough".

I am so gratified to have been part of, and witness to this "ah ha" moment. I have come to realize that this lifetime I am an epiphany addict. I not only enjoy having an epiphany myself but also am gratified when others have them too.

Part of getting that perfect score, that is the "A", is getting that we are already perfect just as we are, there is nothing we lack and that we are always in the perfect place right now in the present moment. Life is already filled with tests and people who test and evaluate us and it is a good thing that life is ordered in this way because it keeps us striving for more [life]. It is only when we give ourselves a failing grade that we have lost sight of who we really are behind all the judgments we have about ourselves.

We all need to have people in our lives who love and accept us just as we are and as we are not. These people will remind us to see the perfection in ourselves. It is easy to get caught up in a world of judgments, to inadvertently surround ourselves with people who insist that there is always something wrong. It is no wonder we begin to think this way about ourselves. The truth is that it is not necessary for something to be wrong or missing for us to desire to reach beyond where ever we may be at any moment. In fact, I believe that a sense of perfection is the most ideal place to create from. This is the paradox and the irony. Our most creative moments and impulses come when there is a sense that there is nothing to do and nowhere to get to.

I believe we all deserve an "A" just for having the courage to show up in life. Give yourself an "A" right now by just getting that what ever is happening is perfect, that you are perfect just as you are, that the universe has a perfect plan for you (that frequently differs form your plan) and that everything that happens reflects an unfolding that is beyond understanding.

What is Enlightenment?

2008-02-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

At first I thought it might be a little presumptuous of me to attempt to address the question of enlightenment. However, what I realized was that all human beings are in touch with this experience at some level. The presumptuous part is thinking I can actually describe something that defies description. The fact is we are all "enlightened", we just don't experience it or know it most of the time. We are all too busy thinking we are unenlightened to notice when we and others are experiencing enlightenment or acting from an enlightened place. I am hoping maybe I can throw a little "light" on the subject here.

So, what is enlightenment? Here is my two cents on the subject. Enlightenment is discovering that you already have everything you need, that there is nowhere you need to get to because right where you are at any moment is where you need to be. Enlightenment is realizing that this is not only so now but it has always been this way.

Enlightenment happens in one and only one moment, the eternal now. It must be this way because we cannot know the future and the past no longer matters. In this eternal moment of now we know we lack nothing because we feel and are alive. We can remember the past and we can imagine the future but we can live in neither; we can only live in the now.

When we feel the power of now we become fully alive and present, we are enlightened, we are filled with light. All the so-called mistakes and failures of the past melt away and the fear of the future ceases to exist and we are filled with the joy of feeling eternal and without bound.

But alas, enlightenment turns out to be a temporary state because we must renew it every moment. We must remember and trust that we can do this and we simply forget. When we experience enlightenment we know we are more than our bodies and even more than our thoughts. Indeed, when we focus our being on our bodies or thoughts the experience of enlightenment immediately eludes us.

Enlightenment is being "The Watcher". As the watcher we stand watch with our being. We see and experience everything without judgment and without the need to act. From this place, our choices of action are infinite. When we choose to act from this place our actions are without deliberation or analysis and with a sense of absolute determination and commitment. We may later conclude that our action must have been instinctual or based on an intuition because this is how we explain away the power of something as unfamiliar and radical as taking an action from a place of pure choice and free will. Making these kind of choices is an enlightened way of being and acting.

Often enlightenment occurs to us spontaneously out of seemingly ordinary circumstances such as a walk in nature on a spring morning. Many people have reported a shift in consciousness when they first view the Grand Canyon. In these circumstances we immediately identify with the vastness of the universe that spreads out before us and at once experience a profound sense of being minuscule and insignificant at the same time. No wonder at this experience defies description, leaving us standing mute and in awe. We desperately want to hold onto these enlightened moments but it is that very feeling of desperation that pulls us away because the desire to hold on takes us out of the moment. To experience the now we must look with the eyes of a child, without thought, not understanding where the experience stops and we begin. Indeed, in this state, we are one with all that is; we are enlightened.

When we operate from the past or with consideration for the future we put ourselves in a state of stress. This is not a bad thing per se but a fact that needs to be considered in relation to our happiness. There is no question that science, which operates typically with rigor, has given us much. But existentially we are responsible for making the choices that create our lives individually and collectively. We like to pretend this is not so and blame or circumstances and others for limiting our choices. When we make choices based on the past we get the results that we got in the past. There is nothing wrong with that but we cannot legitimately expect something new when we allow the past two create our future. When we make choices thinking we can consistently predict the future it becomes quickly obvious that this is not only false but stressful. Neither of these approaches to life are enlightening or uplifting.

Nevertheless, the fact is, we do have to live in this world and science tells us that the past is a pretty good predictor of the future. But this is only so because we collectively believe that it is so. The trick is in the choosing. We can choose to live from an enlightened place, a place in the moment without fear and without expectations being ever excited about what life will show us next. This is a delightful non-stressful way of being, going with the flow, rolling with the punches. The question is, will we remain awake to the fact that we always have this choice and began to live our lives from this powerful place rather than allowing circumstances or the will of others to control our lives?

So, enlightenment is not about knowing anything. It is about experiencing who we already are and always have been. Indeed what we "know" actually interferes with our ability to be in an enlightened state. We were born into an enlightened state and we slowly begin to talk each other out of it. Eventually we all agree that only certain "enlightened beings" have access to this rare way of being which is virtually unattainable for ordinary people. Nothing could be further from the truth. To add insult to injury, we, as a society, then proceed to spend billions of dollars on books, videos, guru's and I'll include churches to get something we already have.

We all know what it is to feel enlightened. We know how it feels to act from that place. What we have forgotten is how to be in the moment. We always have the choice to act from an enlightened place. We have forgotten and denied that we have this choice. We owe it to ourselves to remember. We have a moral obligation to remind each other that we are all enlightened beings. We have the ability to re-create our world for ourselves, for our children and for all sentient beings if we would but remember and choose to do so.

Impermanence

2008-02-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

I recently looked back at my life and I saw how I had agonized over so many decisions, trying to make the "right" decision. The lesson for me was to learn about "impermanence". This is a term Genpo Roshi uses to describe the way reality is. I was treating all of my decisions like they were carved in stone. Granted some decisions have long-term consequences but I was treating all of my decisions as though they were "permanent" and I had huge concerns that they would be the "right" decisions forever. I finally got that this is a recipe for unhappiness and ultimately a life of misery. So why did I do this? Well there were a number of dumb reasons; the biggest was that I just wanted to be "right”. Another reason had to do with "looking good" to others.

So what if I take a contract that doesn't work out? All I need to do is just do my best and move on, learning what there is to learn. Forget about what others think. This is not a failure. To my huge surprise, when I take responsibility regardless of the outcome and have done my best people love and respect me for it.

So what if I start a relationship that only lasts a few months or weeks or even days? Again, here too, all I have to do is be honest about who I am and take responsibility for what I do. I get now that there is so much value in every experience. When I offer to be in relationship with you, I am just offering to do my best in every moment I spend with you. I don't know what the outcome will be. I know there is something valuable in the experience of relating to you if we are willing to put having that experience beyond looking for the "right" result and accept life, as it truly is, "impermanent".

You Can't Get There from Here

2008-01-28T07:19:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in an airport in New York waiting for my plane. I struck up a conversation with a man who told me he wanted to restart his life. He was from Minnesota and was headed for a job interview in Alaska. He and his wife had split and he had been estranged from her and the children for several years. He told me he would like to relocate to somewhere that was warm but there didn't seem to be any call for what he did in warm areas.

I casually suggested that he could start a new career and work somewhere like Texas. At that point he launched into a long explanation providing tall the reasons why he was ready for everything in his life to change but his career. After five or ten minutes it was all that I could do to keep from nodding off. I realized that all the reasons he had must have made sense to him but they all related to things that had happened in his past. I couldn't see how his past should control what could happen right now.

I listened for several minutes more not really understanding much of anything about his reasons why he had to relocate to Alaska and then I just asked him "Why would anything in your past affect anything that you want to do right now?". I pointed out that he had told me he wanted to go somewhere warm but instead was going to Alaska. It was as though he had told me that even though he was in an airport with flights to anywhere in the world, he could not get to Texas because of where he had come from. He had just made up some rule for himself that said, "I can't go to Texas from here because I am from Minnesota".

We sat quietly for a few minutes and then there was an announcement over the public address system that his flight to Alaska had been canceled due to weather conditions. The man asked me to watch his carry on luggage and went over to the ticket window of his airline. He came back in a few minutes and sat down. There was an animation and excitement about him that I had not seen previously. His whole countenance and demeanor had changed.

He had been carrying a heavy leather coat. "I want you to have this coat he said, I won't be needing it where I am going". He held up the ticket in his right and so that I could read it. It was a one-way ticket to Houston.

Everything is Nothing

2007-11-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

I am three weeks into the annual month-long “Big Mind” retreat at the Zen Center in Salt Lake City with Genpo Roshi. I am enjoying being here and I am learning a lot but I also get that there is something happening to me that is hard to explain or put my finger on, some subtle change in how I am being.

Last night Genpo Roshi asked to speak to the voice of the Spiritually Enlightened One. As people began speaking from this voice it was obvious that also present was the shadow of the Spiritually Enlightened One, the Spiritually Un-Enlightened One(s) and the Spiritually not yet Enlightened One(s).

As we sat with the voices we felt the tension that arises out of the duality of considering ourselves Spiritually Enlightened and Spiritually un-Enlightened. We felt the tension of considering ourselves superior to some and inferior to others. We simultaneously held the joy and satisfaction of the experience of having achieved Spiritual Enlightenment and the shame and feelings of inadequacy from not having achieved it.

As we sat with this duality it became clear to me that every thought or idea that I attach myself to, no matter how lofty I may consider it to be, is just another way that I separate myself from my true nature and from others.

Later that evening as I made my way back to my dormitory I decided to call a friend. I have not known her very long and we have only briefly spoken about my interest in “spiritual” pursuits.

She asked me how my meditation was going and I told her I was practicing a new technique of seeing thoughts as “just thoughts” that pass through my mind and not the truth. Suddenly it was if some great weight had been lifted from her and said “Holy cow, everything is just nothing!”. I watched my mind as I tried to analyze what she had said and fathom how she could have come to this understanding and then I just stopped and said “Yes, everything is nothing”.

We said good night with a sense of completion and well being. All that was there to say had been said.

Gratitude

2007-10-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Do you remember having one of those moments when you were just overcome with gratitude? Maybe your child was lost or a loved one was possibly injured or killed in an accident. How did you feel when they were found safe? How did it feel to see them and hold them in your arms again?

Where has all the gratitude gone that it takes an emergency to get us back in touch with what there is to be grateful for? What things are we given every day for which we have forgotten to be grateful?

We take so much for granted. What is missing when we do that is the feeling of gratitude. That great swell of emotion that reminds us that all is well, that welling up of tears in our eyes and that lump in our throats. As the tears flow it washes away all the doubt and fear that has collected in our bodies.

Gratitude is not something we must save for an appropriate occasion it is a choice we have in any moment. We have chosen not to feel gratitude for all we have been given that surrounds us in every moment.

Look around and take some moments every day to find things for which to be grateful. Feel gratitude for the sunrise and sunset. Feel gratitude your friends and loved ones. Feel gratitude for your life.

Just On Loan

2007-09-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

Everything I have is borrowed. All I have is just on loan. I have no desire to possess, to indenture, or to own.

I share with you the sky, the sun, the ocean and the earth. I offer only what is truly mine, my presence, my love, my time, for all they’re worth.

My soul, it has been spoken for, ‘twas never mine to give. One day it will return to whence it came, forever there to live.

As I take your hand, I acknowledge we are One. Thereby, we create our world, but we will have just begun.

You can cage the Songbird, but not the song. You can hold a moonbeam in your hand, but not for long.

I have no desire to own your soul; what would I do with two? Give me your love and share your heart, that’s all there is to do.

One day I will turn in this body, well used and well worn, and meet you on the other side again, re-born.

Holding Alice

2007-09-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

I had a friend named Tom many years ago. He and I used to just hang out and talk. It was the 60’s and people did that then. Tom had a two room flat with a shared bathroom. I would often talk for hours with Tom reclining on his bed and me sitting in and old cloth easy chair with ragged arms. There was something welcoming about Tom that I never really tried to put my finger on. We were both just kids but we felt like we were “king of the world” then.

One day I was visiting and talking with Tom and a knock came at the door. It was a girl about our age or younger. She was petite with a round face and dimples. She had shoulder length hair with beautiful curls that hung down in ringlets.

She said not a word but it was obvious she and Tom were acquainted. Without a greeting or introduction Tom lay back down on the bed and she lay beside him with her head on his chest and her face almost obscured by her chestnut brown curls.

I was surprised when Tom restarted the conversation exactly where we had left off without verbally acknowledging his additional guest. We continued to talk for nearly an hour as she lay there in Tom’s arms. Then, as abruptly as she had arrived, she got up and left without a word.

Of course I was filled with curiosity but had been too uncomfortable to ask. “Who was that and what did she want?” I asked as Tom shut the door behind her. “Oh, that was Alice, she came to be held.” Tom always had a succinct way of describing things and I knew there was no point in further probing.

I have long lost track of Tom and I don’t remember ever seeing Alice again but every once in a while I think about that day when Alice came to be held. I had come for conversation and Alice had come to be held. Sometimes things are just that simple.

Turning Over Turtles

2007-08-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Where I grew up the summers were long and hot. Life seemed slower then. Our family moved around a lot but I always lived within walking distance of fields of corn or wheat and forests with trees so large I couldn't get my arms around some of them. There were always creeks to wade in with crayfish underneath the stones in their beds. There were ponds with tall rushes that concealed an asylum choir of croaking frogs.

In the tall rushes in the shallows of the pond there lived small amphibious turtles called terrapin that grew to be about the size of a man's open hand. Often by the banks of the pond or along a Forest Path I would find the remains of one of these turtles. Inevitably they would be drawn into their shell that was tightly closed. Not long after their death the soft parts of their bodies would be completely consumed by parasites, leaving only their shell and their bones inside that rattled mysteriously went shook.

Occasionally and I would find a turtle shell tightly closed, not in the upright position but lying upside-down with the round portion of the shell resting on the ground. Invariably the bones would rattle about inside when I shook the shell.

One of my favorite ponds deep in the woods had a large rock shelf at the shoreline were I would sit and skip stones. At the edge of the shelf rushes grew in the shallows that were teaming with life. Above the shelf there was a grassy embankment with an abrupt drop-off of only a few inches. As I approached I noticed a turtle lying on his back on the rocky shelf where he had landed after apparently having fallen from the grassy embankment. He didn't see me as I watched while he struggled in a frantic attempt to right himself by extending his legs backwards toward the smooth rocky surface below him just out of his reach. I watched several minutes as he struggled in the hot sun first thrusting with one leg, then with another. He would rest for several minutes and then the struggling would start again. Finally I approached. Aware of my presence, he retracted his head and limbs into his shell closing it tightly.

I knew by the next time I visited the pond, assuming some animal did not find and eat him; his body would be turned into a rattle like the others I had found. I reached down and picked up his motionless body and carefully placed him right side up on the rock shelf. I stepped back and waited several minutes while he remained tight in his shell apparently startled by my intervention.

Suddenly his shell opened and his head popped out followed quickly by his legs. Oblivious to my presence and without the slightest hesitation he scrambled quickly into the shallows of the pond amongst the rushes and disappeared.

I sat there on the rocky shelf for a few minutes gazing at the shimmering water below with the blue sky above watching the rushes bending in the wind. In that moment I was filled with that sense of peace that comes from feeling that all is right with the world.

Seeing the Perfection

2007-06-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to see the perfection in your life? How can we see the perfection in all the “bad” things that happen?

As human beings we are thinkers, planners and dreamers. We have our version of how life should be or how things should go. But as fate would have it, some of our best plans fail to manifest in the way we imagine they should. Then, how easy it is to convince ourselves we should never have bothered planning in the first place and setting ourselves up for disappointment. What is missing in this picture is seeing the perfection in what is and our role in being part of that perfection. Then from that place of acceptance of what is, we can live our lives knowing that we are part of a larger plan that is for our greater good.

The timeline of our life is like a puzzle and every piece fits but we don't always see how, and that brings up a lot of suffering and upset about the way things SHOULD be. We get caught up looking at a piece of our life in isolation; often a fear that something dreadful that happened in the past could happen again. When we see the perfection in what is, the perfection of the way puzzle fits together, each piece having its place, the suffering goes away.

Sometimes an event happens which forces us to look at the whole [timeline] of our lives. Fifteen years ago I developed severe angina [chest pain]. I was awakened in the night with a pain that has been described by some as having an “elephant sitting on your chest”. I was certain that it was my last minute in my body. As if by magic I began to review my life. I began to see that I had had a great life. I saw that I had done and experienced much. I forgave myself and everyone in my life of all transgressions that I was holding on to and put aside all my regrets about what had, and had not, been. I saw the perfection of my life and I was grateful. I felt complete about my life just the way it was and the way it was not.

As I sat up in the darkness the pain began to subside and I lay back in the bed but I was forever changed by that moment.

I see my life now as a gift and I am in the bonus round. I needed that event and what led up to it to see that my life is, and always has been, a precious gift and to remember to see the perfection in every moment of every day.

In My Utopia

2007-05-11T04:54:00.000-07:00

The word Utopia comes from Greek and means literally “no place” or "place that does not exist". Just because a place doesen’t exist that doesen’t mean it can’t exist so I thought it might be an interesting exercise to create such a place. Here is what it looks like in my Utopia.

In my Utopia no one ever lacks the necessities of life.

In my Utopia people get to create the life they want as long as it does not hurt others or infringe on their right to do likewise.

In my Utopia people don’t want to own or control others but instead create interwoven network of love and acceptance.

In my Utopia people accept others as they are instead of expecting or hoping that they will change to suit what they want or expect.

In my Utopia people freely mesh with each other’s lives learning the lessons they need to learn with each other’s blessing.

In my Utopia friends are forever and your friends always remember your birthday.

In my Utopia people delight in each other’s differences.

In my Utopia everyone always has time to be present for others.

In my Utopia no one need ever feel lonely or unloved.

In my Utopia people only work at what they love.

In my Utopia people always bring out the best in each other.

In my Utopia you can eat all you want and never gain weight.

People have to die in my Utopia, but only once [per lifetime].

In my Utopia when people think of past relationships they only remember the love.

In my Utopia people always listen to each other such that everyone always feels heard (especially children).

People cry in my Utopia but mostly from tears of joy.

In my Utopia there is no fear, no guilt, no jealousy, no regret, no envy, no blame, no judgment of others, no deception, no hate and no wars.

There is always a second chance in my Utopia and the first chance doesn’t count.

It rains in my Utopia but never on weekends.

That is a pretty good start on my Utopia. It will keep me busy for quite a while. I may have to refine my Utopia from time to time but that is ok because my Utopia is a work in progress.

Chances are you don’t want to create the same Utopia as I described and that’s ok. I’ll listen and help you create your Utopia in whatever ways I can.

Ok, it’s your turn; tell me about your Utopia.

The Left-Handed Gloves

2007-05-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

It was a bright spring morning. I had arrived early at the flea market to get in on the bargains. After a half hour or so of poking around, I noticed a woman at a table selling reconditioned industrial tools. In front of her table there was a barrel with a sign above it that read “Gloves $2.00 each”. I looked in the barrel and saw that it was filled to the top with brand new heavy black rubber industrial gloves, the kind that cost $20.00 to $40.00 a pair in a store. I picked up one of the gloves and put it on my left hand. It was a perfect fit. It came all the way to my elbow. I dug around in the barrel for its mate but I soon discovered that all the gloves in the barrel were left-handed. Now I understood why no one was buying them even though they were so reasonably priced.

The woman at the booth must have been watching people try on a glove, take it off and walk away over and over again that morning. I needed these gloves badly. I had intended to buy several pairs at this bargain price of $4.00 a pair. Desperate not to be beaten out of my find so easily, I grabbed the left-handed glove at the elbow. Closing my fist, I pulled off the glove turning it inside out in the process. Suddenly the glove had been transformed into a perfect right-handed heavy-duty rubber glove. I slipped it on my right hand just to make sure. As I completed the pair with another left handed glove from the barrel, I stood in front of the sales woman wearing a perfect pair of expensive industrial rubber gloves. The look on the woman’s face had turned to one of absolute astonishment.

I quickly bought 4 pairs at the bargain price of $4.00 a pair. As I walked away with my treasure I turned to notice the woman had changed the sign to read, “Gloves $16.00 a Pair” and was busily turning gloves inside out.

When You're Smiling

2007-04-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

Newsflash!

“Scientists demonstrate clear evidence that we control our reality! We even control the weather with our minds.”

Is there something false about the above statement? Is it untrue that we create what happens in the world by what we believe and feel? No, that part is true! The false part is that scientists are interested our having and using this knowledge.

Here are the real facts! Three songwriters discovered this phenomenon in 1928. It was finally brought to the attention of the public one-year later by a singer named Louis Armstrong.

However, since then this ancient knowledge has been suppressed by mainstream science. After all, if it got out that we create our experience we would not need scientists to explain things to us scientists and weather forecasters could be out of a job.

Through the magic of television and radio it was easy to convince the general public that this notion was just a silly song. After all, what do songwriters know about the nature of reality anyway?

If you still don’t believe it, research it for yourself. The evidence is clear, documented and copyrighted.

When you're smiling
When you're smiling
The whole world smiles with you
When you're laughing
When you're laughing the sun comes shining through
But when you're crying You bring on the rain
Stop your cryin' and be happy again
When you're smiling keep on smiling
And the whole world smiles with you
But when you're crying you bring on the rain
Stop your cryin' and be happy again
When you're smiling keep on smiling
And the whole world smiles with you

Words & Music by Mark Fisher, Joe Goodwin & Larry Shay, 1928
Recorded by Louis Armstrong, 1929

What is the Purpose of a Rose?

2007-04-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Only human beings entertain these kinds of questions as though there is value in the answer. Only human beings presume to judge what is beautiful and what is offensive. What rose attaches value or lack of value to its form? A rose does not choose to be a rose. A rose does not see itself as more or less beautiful than other flowers. A rose will not find an excuse for being or not being a rose. A rose does not need to find justification for its existence.

As human beings we search for justification for our existence outside of ourselves. We hope to make our lives mean something beyond the beautiful expression of life we already are. When we choose to live in a world of right and wrong, we are as likely as not to fall short in the judgments of others or ourselves and decide not to be the expression of life we are. Will we spend the precious moments of our lives comparing ourselves to others and subjugating our lives or theirs based on our judgments? Or instead will we focus on being the expression of life we are and enjoying the contribution of all of creation to the garden of life?

Ask and It Has Already Been Given

2007-04-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

I was speaking with some friends the other day when I expressed that I would like to live in a world where people felt safe to just come out and play with each other, the world we lived in before we learned that playing and being who we really are is not safe. I remember as a child of thirteen telling my friends that one-day space aliens would come and take me to their world. Decades later I am still here and I get that it is up to me to create the kind of world I want.

Later that evening I was making a midnight run to my local video store. The store was surprisingly busy for that time of night. I quickly grabbed three movies from the documentary section and proceeded through checkout. As I was going out the door I heard a voice behind me ask "what did you get"? I turned expecting to see a couple of people behind me in conversation but there was only a middle-aged East Indian man with large ears and a big smile on his face. When he saw me turn he repeated again "what did you get"? The next thing I know, right there in the dark in front of the video store on a cold April night we are opening our bags like to kids coming out of a candy store to show each other what we got. After a brief conversation about the movies and a couple of other recommendations for other movies he gives me that great smile again and extends his hand and wishes me "Happy Easter".

I sat in my car for a moment as I watched him drive away then suddenly, I got it. Goose bumps swept over my body. The tears welled up in my eyes and I was filled with gratitude. The universe had shown me that the kind of world I had asked for was already given and happening all around me. All I had to do was ask and be ready to receive it regardless whatever form it may take.

Do You Want the Truth

2007-03-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

Can you handle the truth? What if all the things that you think are true is just your current view of how things are and not the truth at all? Does that make your current views less valuable in this moment? What if what others believe is just their current view and not the truth? Does that make them less valuable as human beings?

What if the truth is that there is no TRUTH? Can you handle that? What if it is more important to be interested in what others believe and why they feel the way they do than to be critical and contradictory of them and their views.

What would the world look like if there were no “right” answers just different ways of seeing things? When we express that others have a right to their opinion, do we really mean it?

In one world you get to be “right” and hold that other people are “wrong”. Maybe you need to punish them, ridicule them, cajole them, deceive them, battle them, sue them, shun them, hate them, oppose them, fear them, rebuke them, discredit them, defile them, defeat them or even annihilate them. In this world you arm yourself, defend yourself, protect yourself, hide yourself, segregate yourself, disguise yourself and limit yourself.

In another world other people just have a different point of view or way of living. You get to accept them, play with them, communicate with them, respect them, honor them, learn from them and love them.

Which kind of world are you living in and creating? Who is responsible for the kind of world you live in and create? Can you handle the truth?

You Are at Cause in the Matter of Your Life

2007-02-24T07:44:00.000-08:00

The depth and extent to which you accept, understand and believe this determines the power you have over all that happens in your life.

Consider the alternative. Would you rather see yourself as a helpless, hapless victim blown hither and thither at the capriciousness of circumstances and the whim of others. How does that thought make you feel? Maybe this is how you already see yourself. Have you always felt this way? Were you born feeling this way? I doubt it.

So what happened, when did you forget who and what you are? When and why did you decide you were limited? The fact is, it doesn't matter. You can start to remember right now that you create your life. You have always created your life just as it is, and just as it is not.

How do you start to remember that you are cause in the matter of your life? How do you start to forget that you a hapless victim of circumstances?

First you must accept, accept the possibility that you are the creator of your life. Accept that, just maybe, that in some way, who you have been being in the face of the circumstances and people in your life that you have sold out, you have given up your dreams and that little by little, day by day, dream by dream, your belief in yourself as the steward of your fate has eroded away. Accept that just maybe, your life is just a bad dream of your own creation and you can just WAKE UP, wake up and find yourself in a life where you are the master of your destiny.

Then begin to understand, understand how you have indeed sold out. How you have traded your birthright, the right to create the story of your life in the way you want it to be, for something else, something outside yourself, something temporary, something you allowed others to convince you was valuable for something you know deep inside yourself is all that really matters.

Understand how you have traded all you have that is truly valuable for something which will ultimately become worthless. You have traded away your dignity, your sovereignty, your freedom and your right to self determination for the promise that you can drive a new car for a while or live in a new house as long as you are willing or able to pay the price. You have followed the masses in search of what you had all the time.

How did this happen? How do you get back what what you have given away. The good news is unlike all the temporary things, you still have all the things that are truly valuable, they were and are always there, you just allowed yourself to temporarily forget that you already have everything you need to be fulfilled and that the things outside yourself yourself are just nice to have but not worth selling your soul for!

Finally you must come to believe, believe it is so that you are at cause in the matter of your life. You must find a way to begin to realize again that true happiness comes not from what is outside yourself but from having the courage to hold on to those things that have always been yours and cannot be lost. Believing at this point is a matter of faith and willingness to trust, to know in your heart that lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. You must acquire the courage to seek out those who have not sold out and trust that they see your true worth as a sovereign and capable human being and that they rejoice in your being who you truly are and wish for you to be all you can be. You must stop believing in the lie that you are incomplete and that others have what you lack, even as they encourage you to sell out as they have done.

You must begin to exercise, no matter how atrophied, the muscle of autonomy, sovereignty and self actualization until you can again walk upright with dignity and the confidence that you need nothing that requires you to give up your birthright. You must join with others who celebrate and exercise these values. For as you create your life, we together create the world we live in.

Now you may ask then, how do I get all the things that this life has to offer. I will leave you with the words of a great teacher. I paraphrase here. Seek first that which lies within [yourself] and all the [other] things that you truly need will be provided you.

Discovering Your Purpose

2006-08-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

There is, without a doubt, a purpose for your life. There is a reason why you are here. There are things you were meant to do and be in this lifetime.

You are connected with everyone and everything that has stood for that purpose that has ever been or ever will be. It is an awesome responsibility. Discovering and fulfilling your purpose is the most important task you have in this life. This task is involved with every person and circumstance you encounter.

Your purpose has always been, is and always will be your purpose. We do not choose our purpose, our purpose is already part of who we are. Your task is to discover your purpose then choose to “be” your purpose (or not). Being your purpose means choosing to embrace your purpose, to create your life such that every thought action and word is in alignment with our purpose.

How do we discover our purpose? It may whisper to us with a quiet still voice in the night. It may speak to us one day from a burning bush. It may appear to us in a moment of desperation.

We are born into a world filled with delusion. Every day we are bombarded by a deluge of purposes to choose from. Purpose is promoted on every TV channel, it's in the message from well-meaning friends and family members. But why would we leave such an important aspect as discovering our purpose in life up to others?

On the surface it sounds absurd but ironically most of us look outside of ourselves to find our purpose. Many of us find ourselves stuck in lives that we feel we haven't chosen, doing things that we don't understand or derive joy from. Most of us have allowed our parents, our religion and our culture to define our purpose for us regardless of who we really are. Sometimes something wakes us up. One day things just don't feel right. Some of us have an epiphany, a spiritual awakening. Some of us will come face-to-face with our conscience while others will continue to execute the tasks we have been given like machines while our souls silently suffer.

Some of us are sleepwalking through life. What will it take for us to finally get that our life should not happen by default? A life that happens by default is, at best, a life some well meaning parents set out for us and, at worst, a never ending nightmare existence on a treadmill requiring great effort but goes nowhere. Why do we continually look for our purpose outside of ourselves? We believe that by doing that we can have the happiness we want. We fail to realize that happiness is a state of being, not doing or having. We refuse to believe that we can be happy at any moment just by realizing that regardless of what is happening around us we are indeed fulfilling our purpose.

We will find our purpose by looking inward, by getting in touch with that which fulfills us and feels right. Our allies in this process are those that encourage us to look within, to look at our lives both past and present in terms of who we were and are being at any moment.

When your life feels oppressive or stagnant an adjustment needs to be made. Life is not intended to be difficult. Even when there is work to be done, when that work is in alignment with your true purpose it can be done with joy. Imagine you are traveling along an unfamiliar road. At some point the road becomes difficult. You feel that you have made a wrong turn somewhere. You continue to travel into the darkness. Every mile is oppressive. None of the signposts make any sense. Something is telling you you've lost your way but you travel on. Finally you meet a stranger in the darkness along the road. The stranger tells you that you have gone ten miles in the wrong direction. You remember the point where you went astray. You turn around and begin the journey back. Immediately you're journey becomes a joy again because you are no longer lost, you know where you are and where you're going.

You have been traveling down that dark road for a long time now. You meet a stranger along the road who tells you to look within and trust what you find there and that your purpose and direction have always been there waiting for you to trust, waiting for you to fully embrace what you have always known and who you have always been. Maybe you have just been following the crowd, doing what everyone else is doing because it seems safe. Maybe you are just doing what is expected of you by your friends or family. Maybe you have a huge investment in a career that is no longer fulfilling. Do you have the courage to give it all up to claim/reclaim the joy in your life that is your birthright? Maybe you have gone so far down this road that you have finally hit a dead end and there is nowhere else to go.

There came a day in my life that I found myself, lost, on that dark road questioning every decision I had made that had brought me there, feeling like my real purpose had eluded me all my life, believing that other choices would have saved me from being the failure that I felt I was. I felt misunderstood and unlovable. I felt like lashing out at those around me and blaming them for my predicament. Then, on the streets of Manhattan a small miracle happened. I found myself with two acquaintances that had lost their way in a city of over 8 million people. Vehemently they rejected my attempts to direct them in the appropriate direction. Finally with anger and resentment, I left them to their foolishness. But I had hardly gone ten steps before I felt sadness and remorse in my heart for having left them to an uncertain fate. I whirled around and ran to intercept them once more. Enlisting the aid of a native New Yorker on the street I was finally able to convince them to trust in my sense of direction. To their astonishment in a few minutes we arrived safely back at our destination. But my life had been forever changed by this incident.

I reviewed with horror a lifetime of incidents where I had given up on people consigning them to the garbage bin of life. It was in that moment that I discovered that it was not them who had suffered the greatest transgression but myself. That in every instance where I had abandoned others I had abandoned myself, I had failed to be who I truly was. It was in that moment that my purpose became clear. It became clear to me that when I violate others I violate myself. I had to face the truth of who I am, that at the core of me, I love people and want them to find their way successfully on their journey through their lives.

I looked back at my life and discovered that the real source of all my suffering throughout my life had come not from what had transpired but who I was being in the face of it. Indeed, my suffering had come from my not truly accepting who I was and embracing the purpose of my life. It had come from those moments when I doubted myself and was gripped by fear and trepidation. But the fact was, regardless of what I had believed, as I looked back, despite all the fear, my purpose was becoming clear. Why had I chosen to be a champion of civil rights in dangerous times? Why had I chosen to sacrifice my way of life to stop a war machine and save thousands of lives? Why had I chosen to become a stepfather in the face of insurmountable hardship for a small boy whose father was just not ready for the task? These kind of questions had haunted me all of my life. Now I finally had the answer. I had done it all because I love people and I want them to find their way successfully on their journey through their lives.

Now that my purpose is clear I need no longer suffer in fear and doubt. Every moment is an opportunity to be who I am, every situation a new challenge, I have given up suffering, my life is an adventure. No matter what challenges may come I can meet them with grace and ease.

I entreat you now to look back at your own life and to accept that despite all the suffering, that you too have fulfilled your purpose in this life to this moment. And as you look back at your life I trust that a clear pattern of your purpose will begin to emerge as well those moments when you sold out on who you are and suffered the consequences.

Now is the time to begin to live your life anew, to cast out the fear and doubt about who you are and to begin to live your life mindful of your purpose. I can't promise that there won't be challenges and hardships. As a matter of fact I will promise that there will be. But I will also promise that as much as you strive to be truly who you are in the face of those hardships you will meet them with grace and ease.

Will you love me forever?

2006-08-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Mainstream science is finally beginning to confirm what the mystics have been telling us for ages, that time and space are an illusion.

Forever is a long long time and when we ask of each other or ourselves to do or be something forever, it occurs to us as a daunting task. Are we asking the impossible? Does forever exist, or like time, is it just an illusion that takes us away from experiencing the love that exists in the moment?

Would you be satisfied if I told you that I will love you tomorrow but not in this moment? Would you trade away the love in this moment for the promise of love for a thousand tomorrows? I think not, for we cannot know what tomorrow will bring.

How often do we tell those we love that, right now, we are too busy to be present for them? What lessons are our children learning from us? What lessons are we failing to learn from our children? We have made it acceptable to avoid being intimate with others by relegating our feelings of love and intimacy to a time that never comes, tomorrow.

Will I love you forever? I can only promise that I will love you in this moment as you have never been loved before. And as we string those moments together, like pearls forming a necklace, they will trace our lifetime, and we will re-create the feeling of a love that will last forever in each and every moment.

Loving Yourself

2006-06-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Part of loving others is discovering that you yourself are a wondrous being that has something valuable to share. And that without this understanding of the value of who you are and the value of being who you are, your ability to "be" for others is thereby restricted or diminished.

We have all heard it said that you cannot love others unless you love yourself. What I have found is that you can love others but only to the extent and depth that you have learned to love yourself. It is only when you begin to experience the abundance of love that is naturally available from the universe that you will begin to see that this abundance is there for everyone. Then and only then will you truly be able to feel this love for others. Until you, yourself feel the abundance of love that is available you will treat love as a scarce commodity to be coveted and rationed. You will fear others and regard them as rivals. You will feel possessive toward those in your life who express love for you and try to restrict their lives. You will restrict yourself in unnatural ways in order to insure others will continue to love you. Who better to give this love to yourself but yourself? The ironic paradox is that the more you love yourself, the more you can love others.

Love is a verb as well as a noun. It is a feeling and a practice that can be enhanced with exercise to become a way of being with everyone in your life including yourself.

When I began to love myself I discovered a depth of love that I had never experienced before. Because I had never experienced this depth of love myself previously I had no idea of what was possible. Now that I know that it is possible and I know it is possible for everyone. I know now that non judgmental unconditional love, that we all seek and hopefully learned from our parents, is possible not only for myself but for everyone. This is the love that is really worth experiencing and sharing.

Whenever I hear the words "unconditional love" now, I think, "duh". Is there really such a thing as conditional love? For me it is an oxymoron. No one really wants conditional love because we realize that if the conditions change the love will be withdrawn.

By learning to love ourselves unconditionally we learn to love others unconditionally as well because we are expierencing love which does not depend on circumstances or conditions. Our love for ourself and others is unconditional simply because we say so.

What does loving yourself look like. Sometimes it looks like saying “No”. It looks like taking care of yourself first, then attending to others. It looks like taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others as well. I doesen’t need to look like taking care of others instead of yourself.

One reason we feel the need to take care of others is to help them succeed in their lives. Realize that to help others you must be strong and capable. You yourself, need to feel loved. You can’t give others what you don’t have yourself.

What is it like to experience unconditional love? Did you experience unconditional love from your parents? How do you find out what it would be like? Do you have to wait or find someone to love you unconditionally? No, that person is as close as your next breath, it is yourself.

I Am A Work in Progress

2006-05-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Please pardon my appearance and my behavior (or lack thereof), I am a work in progress. Please accept and enjoy me as I am while celebrating the process of my becoming all that is possible for me. Please join me in this process of re-creating myself every day in every way. Your contribution to my growing and becoming is always welcome.

As much as a paradox as it may seem, I am, and have always been whole and complete while forever remaining a work in progress. How is this possible? It is possible because there's nothing right or wrong in the universe, there is only what is.

If You Never Cried

2006-05-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Did you ever experience something so inspiring you wanted to share it with the whole world?

Did you ever, in one moment, experience all the sorrows of mankind?

Did you ever hold on to a dream that never came true?

Did you finally learn to love yourself with the same depth of love you know it's possible for the world?

Did you ever cry from the sheer joy of just being alive?

If given the chance, would you live your life again, just as it was and just as it was not?

Did you ever want to hold the whole world in your hand?

Did you ever cry until you laughed?

If you had never laughed or cried, how then would your soul know that you have been alive?

Places in the Heart - A Dialogue

2006-03-28T06:36:00.000-08:00

Come journey with me to places in the heart.

What will we need to take with us on this journey?

The question is not what will we need to take with us but what it is we must set aside before we can begin.

How long will this journey take?

The journey may take a lifetime, many years or the blink of an eye.

How difficult will this journey be?

It will be as difficult as climbing the highest mountain on the earth, diving to the deepest depths of the sea or as easy as taking your next breath.

What will we find at the end of our journey?

What we will find is - all there is.

How will we know when we have arrived?

When we have arrived we will know that all there is - is love.

Now is All We Have

2006-01-24T06:33:00.000-08:00

Why do you hold yourself back? Why do you limit that which is limitless? Why do you deny that which is eternal?

If you met me in a dream will you dance barefoot with me at dusk on a warm beach by the light of a bonfire acknowledging within us the energy that creates the universe or will you still hold yourself back?

If I lay dying at your side by some twist of fate, will you hold my hand as I slip away or will still hold yourself back, not recognizing your self in me?

Who will you be for me today? How much of you will you allow me to experience? When is the time to be who you truly are, if not now? When will you lie with me and gaze up at the stars from whence we came and know that we have always been and always will be stardust?

Must you forge the present from the reverberations of the past? When will you at last trust that you know what you have always known? Where have you gone that not even your self can reach you?

Come dance with me the fleeting dance of the mayfly, for we have always been lovers and now is all we have.

The Promise I Make to Myself

2005-11-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

I promise I will adore you, respect you, admire you, support you, love you, pleasure you, play with you, inspire you, challenge you, affirm you, validate you, thrill you, surprise you and astound you.

When you forget that you are adorable, lovable and worthy of admiration, I will still adore, love and admire you. When you violate yourself by not being your word, I will still respect you for who I know you to be. I will support you when you let yourself down. I will inspire you when you are discouraged. I will affirm, validate and reassure you when you feel lost. When you feel bored I will surprise you, pleasure you, thrill and astound you.

I offer these things because of who I am. When I forget, you will remind me (with love) who I promised myself I would be.

I'm not asking that you change who you are or choose to be (or appear to be) anything other than who you are. This promise to myself does not depend on who you choose to be. My promise is unconditional because I have chosen to make it so for my own sake. The things I have promised you, I have promised myself.

These things, you have always deserved and you always will. That is your birthright. These things have always been available to you. The only requirement is that you be present to claim what has always been yours.

Epiphany for Cows

2005-07-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite Larson cartoon. I believe that the people (and cows) who are fortunate enough to experience a few of these moments in their lifetime are very fortunate indeed.

The Parachute Lady

2005-07-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine had invited me to a party. When I arrived, however, I discovered that my friend was the only person there that I knew and he was quite occupied being the host.

Determined to enjoy myself anyway, I proceeded to I approach people in hopes of finding someone with whom to strike up an interesting conversation. After several unsuccessful attempts I approached a young woman. She was considerably younger than I and at first seemed quite reticent to engage in conversation.

I finally got around to asking about her personal interests and was amazed to find she was an avid Parachutist. Although I considered myself somewhat athletic, my choice of sports had always allowed me to remain considerably closer to the ground than parachute jumping, so my first reaction was “How in the world do you do that?”

She looked directly at me and spoke the following words.

Well, when I am folding up my parachute, I say to myself “I am folding up my parachute because I am going to jump out of an airplane”.

When I am putting on my jump suit, I say to myself “I am putting on my jump suit because I am going to jump out of an airplane”.

When I am putting on my boots, I say to myself “I am putting on my boots because I am going to jump out of an airplane”.

When I am boarding the airplane, I say to myself “I am boarding this airplane because I am going to jump out”.

When I get up there, after all that, I’d feel pretty silly if I don’t jump out.

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

2005-07-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

What is it that we're looking for when we’re looking for love? We certainly spend a lot of time and energy in this activity so shouldn’t we know exactly what it is we are looking for and where to look before we start.

We look for love as though it is something someone else must give to us, and as though it‘s somehow missing or in short supply.

Is love something that we can only get from others? Is it something that people give to some but withhold from others? Is it something that is going to run out? Is there really not enough love to go around?

How is it that when people say they love us we still don't feel loved, or if we do feel loved, it never seems to be enough or to last. Why is it that no matter what people do to express their love for us there is always something missing, something more we need? How is possible that when people express their love for us instead of feeling love we can actually resent or envy them?

There are people that have thousands of people that love them, famous people, sports heroes for instance. Do they feel fulfilled because they have so much love from so many people? I don't think so. As a matter-of-fact I know that they don't. Many of them struggle with the same self-doubts and feelings of emptiness that we all do from time to time. It would seem that they would have love overflowing in their lives, after all thousands of people love them.

Could it be that we don’t really know what it is we are looking for? Could it be that we're looking in the wrong place? That could certainly explain the confusion.

Let’s start by considering that love is none of the things I mentioned above. After all, if it were, then we would feel satisfied when others express their love for us. It seems that love just doesen’t work that way.

Maybe they are not giving us anything at all but just expressing how they feel about us or even reflecting something they see in us that maybe we don't even see in ourselves.

So this is our first clue to this mystery, love is not a commodity that can be traded back and fourth. It is a feeling, an emotion.

And where is that emotion located? Well, it’s inside the person who feels it. And when others express their love for us in word or deed, where does the love go? The answer is nowhere! It stays with them. If we try to siphon off some of the essence of that emotion and give it to someone else, it just doesen’t work. No wonder we feel like we haven’t received anything, what we received was an expression of love when what we expected was to feel love (an emotion).

Emotions are personal things, we can express them but we can’t share them any more than we can share a sensation. For instance, we can order a pizza and share it with others but we can only guess at the emotions and sensations some one else may have eating his/her share. So the expression we often use, “share an experience” is unclear. We can physically be with others and have our own response to their presence and what is happening but we can’t really know or feel what another person is feeling.

Well, it should be coming clear now that our feelings albeit often inspired by others and circumstances come from inside ourselves, and in the case of love, our own heart. It should be coming clear why love is so illusive. We are just looking in the wrong place. We're looking outside of ourselves when we should be looking in our own hearts?

Love the something that we can choose to look for in others and express what we find there. When we do this, often our expression will inspire them to look in their hearts and find the love there. Love is not something that can run out because we're all capable of infinite love.

So we have narrowed down the search and found that there is only one place we need to look to find love. We need to look in our own hearts because that is where the love we feel ultimately lives. Even if a thousand people love you, you won't have that feeling. But if you love just one person for one moment in that moment you will feel love.

So what does this mean from a practical point of view? How is it possible to find love in our life by looking in our own hearts? First, start with the premise is that love is not something outside of us. It is not something that we can get from some other person or any object outside of ourselves.

When we look into our own hearts we will find the love that is and has always been there. When we express this love, this provides the catalyst for others to look in their own hearts to discover the love that is there. When two people have fallen in love they have inspired each other to look in their hearts to find the love that was already there.

When we find ourselves feeling without love we are often expecting love to come from outside of ourselves. What I am suggesting is that knowing that the love is already in our hearts, why wait for others to express their love for us. It is by tapping into the love we can inspire others to do likewise. This truth is probably behind the inspiration for the title of the 1950’s song "Everybody Loves a Lover".

So there is absolutely no reason to ever look outside of yourself for love. Instead understand that love cannot be given or taken away it can only be expressed and it lives forever in each of us.

What others can give us are expressions of their love and reflect back the love they see in us. What these expressions look like is their presence, their patience, their understanding, and their kind words. Practice giving these things to others and you will find and feel love in your heart and you will inspire others to do likewise.

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

2005-05-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

This is a quotation from a particularly interesting man, Yogi Berra. Yes, the baseball player. I find, what makes him so interesting and intriguing is that he's not trying to say anything profound or amusing but is simply being himself. He puts words together in ways that are meaningful for him but others often find his expressions quirky and odd. Among his more famous quotations we find "It Ain't Over Till It's Over", which almost everyone has heard. I know Yogie did not intend there to be hidden meetings in what he said but I find it fascinating to think about the different ways of interpreting his remarks. In a childlike naivete he has expressed that he doesn't understand why people find his expressions so unusual, "After all, I know what I meant". There is something exquisitely innocent about the way Yogie expresses what's going on in his mind. Of course, I never knew the man personally but his expressions suggest to me that he is a person who cares about people and is always delighted to share what's on his mind even though people often think he is just being zany.

The quotation above got me thinking that, in life, we all come to a lot of forks in the road. In my life I have decided to take Yogie's advice (although he didn't mean it this way). So when I come to a fork in the road, I take it. I have realized that this is the most sensible thing to do. The other alternative is to agonize over which is the "right" fork to take, to hesitate fearing the consequences of taking the "wrong" Fork. In so many cases, where the direction is not obvious, it is best just to realize that it is better to make a comitted choice rather than to get caught in the paralysis of indecision.

Although I may never eliminate entirely from my life the compulsion to be "right" and avoid making "wrong" decisions, remembering Yogie's expression helps may remember that action is usually preferable over inaction when I feel the anxiety and helplessness of indecision.

The Illusion of Reality - We Are More Than This

2005-05-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

The physicists and the mystics are more in agreement now that ever before that reality is an illusion, a construct that is more energy than substance, more malleable than solid. Yet we feel we are trapped in this maya even though psychedelic drugs and meditation give us brief glimpses and inklings that we are more than this. But in our heart of hearts we know we are more than this.

Understanding why we find ourselves tenaciously treating an illusion as real is indeed an interesting question but it is only part of the puzzle. An even more important question for me has been “how can I feel fulfilled in my life regardless of my circumstances?” Understanding that what we call reality is a construct that I am in part responsible for creating, I believe, provides access to this feeling of fulfillment. I am in hopes that my words my help shed some light on this concept.

Other questions we need to address are "how did this situation (the illusion) come about?" and as much of a cliché as it is, "What is the meaning (purpose) of life?"

When I asked this question "what is the purpose of life?", it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there is some grand plan or ultimate purpose for the existence of the universe. I believe however, as the existentialists have suggested, there is no grand purpose for life but that we give our own individual lives purpose by choosing to live them. In fact we have an opportunity every moment to declare in our lives to be what we choose to be and we can do this for absolutely no reason other than the fact that we have the power to create.

Held in this microcosm of creativity (each individual), in the absence of the need for any purpose or reason and in the presence of the ability to create from "what is" is manifested the same energy that we find in the macrocosm (all that is), the creation of which we attribute to God.

Alan Watts has given us a parable "Hide and Seek" in "the book..." which describes how the universe was created through will (The Word) and out of what is, the "one" consciousness that is all there is. What I understand from this is that we are this consciousness and that we have the power to create or recreate in every moment. And indeed this is what we do, consciously or unconsciously through our words and thoughts.

All that we experience is literally created in each moment by what we believe. In other words, reality is created in each moment by the "collective consciousness". Our belief makes everything (the illusion) reality. This includes all the mater in the universe and the laws we believe govern its behavior. This is the underlying message in the movie "What the bleep...".

Now tying this all together, it seems to me that most people believe that the universe is a threatening place that we are trapped in and that by struggle and in fear we stave off death and secure a tenuous refuge for ourselves until we die. In a world of conflict it is easy to believe we are powerless and to buy into this view of life, as depressing as it is, because it is predominately what is being created at every moment by the "collective consciousness" I spoke of.

My point here is that this so called reality is only the way it is because we believe it is and we are without power to change it. When we believe this, this is indeed what we get, both in our own lives and our own experience and collectively. Frank Zappa expressed this in one of his songs "do you love it, do you hate it, there it is the way you made it". Our experience that we have been cast out of the Garden of Eden is only a reality because we believe that this is what is the case.

I am convinced that the only real human failing is the failure to understand that we are the creators of the universe in which we live and that the purpose of life is not death or struggling or hopelessness. I also acknowledge that human consciousness is not the only consciousness or creative force at work in the universe. I believe that everything has a consciousness of sorts. For instance rocks have a kind of rock consciousness. The consensus of the collective consciousness is that rocks are hard and that is indeed how they occur to us. But we also believe that steel does not float yet through human creativity we have fashioned ships out of it! In this different paradigm that I am suggesting the universe is not what it is but what we make it. We are not victims but players.

To this end I have personally taken on revising my belief system to utilize my ability to create a universe that supports life, love and beauty. I do this not because it is right or wrong but simply for the reason that I have the ability and choose to create this even in the face of everything that I see that is telling me otherwise.

This is my quest for personal happiness in my life. Sharing with others what I have found is my contribution to changing the collective consciousness that creates this universe in every moment. This is my personal expression of life, love and beauty.

To complete, I believe the purpose of life is the expression of life itself, love in all forms and the appreciation of the beauty of all that is.

I have of course only scratched the surface in this brief dissertation about the awesome power of using personal consciousness to create the universe. What is that play here is universal and I believe that hidden within each of us is the knowledge that we have the power to create and the responsibility for what we have created. I believe the evidence for what I have discussed abounds. It is not only the focus of much of the Eastern philosophy which Alan Watts studied but also the central theme of the recent movie I referenced "what the bleep...".

One of the most coherent and concise treatments of this topic is found in the works of the mystic and Christian scientist Thomas Troward who gave a series of lectures in the early 1900s (which became books) the most famous of which is the Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.

Thomas Troward asserts that this power to create is universal and there is plenty of evidence that it can work not only to create life, love and beauty but to create the antithesis of these. This is indeed a reasonable explanation for all the misery and suffering that exists around us. A close look at my own personal life has shown me that misuse of my personal power has caused me much anguish. I have now adopted the practice of asking myself if what I am about to do is an expression of life, love or beauty. If I cannot determine unequivocally that this is the case, this is my signal to rethink what I am about to do.

Taoism, Experiencing Life

2005-05-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

I recently listened to an old audio file of Alan Watts speaking about Taoism. He suggested that in order to begin to get a feel of Taoism that we imagine ourselves as just born. All of our senses are working but we have no way of understanding what we experience, we have no words for the sensations and no way of relating them. Everything is just experience. We don't even know where the experience is located. This certainly eliminates the possibility of there being a "plot".

The analogy he gave provided me a powerful insight into how much time and energy I put into understanding, and talking about things rather than just experiencing them. Today I heard a bird singing. The experience was immediately interrupted with my mind saying "there is a bird singing, what kind of bird is it?", but then the experience of the bird singing was gone!

The plot is, if you will, "There is a bird in a tree above singing". In Taoism I simply have an experience. I hear it, as part of me, I am the sound, I am the bird, I am the tree.

When I first started thinking about what goes on with me regarding experience in contrast to talking and thinking about experience, I found my self feeling guilty. I felt I should be able to be with the experience instead allowing the experience to quickly be replaced with mind chatter. Then it came clear to me that this is a life long task and that to simply become aware that there is an experience separate from my thoughts is a significant step.

We all know what it is to be with an experience. There is a timeless effortlessness about it. Words are inadequate, even unnecessary to describe it. We are swept along by it, the way an ocean current moves us along the shore without us noticing.

Suddenly I hear my mother calling me in, there is a coolness in the air. It's getting hard to see the baseball now, I strain to read my watch, it's almost 9. My hands are dirty and I am blissfully tired. Where did the hours go, what took place? It doesn't matter. I am filled with a feeling of being whole and complete.

I Never Met A Man I Didn't Like

2005-05-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

Will Rogers is famous for his remark "I never met a man I didn't like."

How is this possible? Aren't there some people that are more likable than others? Actually the statements says more about Will Rogers than it does about people. I believe what he is saying is that it's just a waste of time and energy concerning ourselves with who is worth liking and who's not. His approach seems to be to always see the best in people regardless of who they are or what they do. I don't think this means to be naive about people. What I think it means is to always draw the best out of them. We'll always find that we seem to work better with some people than with others but that doesn't have anything to do with liking them or not.

So if we stop spending so much time thinking about who we should like or dislike, what are we left with? We are left with being, just being with others who are willing and excited to be with us.
What a blessing to live your life without sorting people into good and bad piles, without trying to figure out who is safe, who is a threat who is worth spending time with and who is not. What is life like when you stop sorting people into acceptable and unacceptable categories. Life is an adventure, you feel excited you feel the love and the connectedness.

Will Rogers was famous for his humanness. He made a difference in the lives of others by meeting every soul and accepting them as the gift they are. Most of us could learn a lot from Will Rogers about being with people.

I Am Not My Body

2005-05-11T03:42:00.000-07:00

A lot of confusing questions come up if you believe that you are your body or your mind. If you know that you are more than your body and your mind and that you will exist after those are gone then you know you are also spirit.

If you want to achieve this so called "higher consciousness” work on the idea that you are spirit (energy). You might want to rent the movie "What the Bleep..." if you haven't seen it. It will answer many of your questions. You may come to understand that we have no real certainty of what we are but I know I am not just my body. My body is just where I am focusing my spirit right now.

What we really are is energy; we are God talking to himself. Everything else is just a game we (God) invented to enjoy ourselves. If I am lucky I will have the joy of sharing a new idea with you. If I am lucky you will share a new idea or way of looking at things with me. And if we are both very lucky we will discover together something that neither of us has ever thought of or experienced before. That is the game I invented for myself. I don't meditate or take drugs. This is one way I expand my consciousness. I am an expression of God as are you. The only real relevant question is “are we willing to play in each other’s games?”

The movie "What the bleep" will show you that the experience of life is not really this or that but that it is all made up. If we create this then our experience of life is this. If we create that then that is what our experience of life is. For example if we believe (whether we admit it or not) that, for instance, "Money makes the world go 'round" then that is what we create. Money will make our world go 'round. If we believe "All we need is love" then love will be all we will need. That is how the universe was created in the first place, through thought and the word. That is still how it is created.

One of the traps that is so easy to fall into is the belief that life is something that can be figured out, or that life just is a certain way or is something that happens to you. If you believe that this is so, then this is exactly what you get, but there is no power in this way of thinking. The power lies in knowing that you get to create/re-create your life every moment with your thoughts and words.

Hope You Find It

2005-05-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

In the 1980's a popular singer from England named Howard Jones released a song entitled Hide and Seek. The song tells a story which is a kind of creation myth. I listened intently to the song as it revealed to me what I know to be the true nature of God. When I heard the words of the chorus I felt a lump from in my throat and I began to weep.

I often listen to the song and it never fails to move me to tears. However, throughout the ensuing years the importance of discovering why the song had such a profound effect on me never occurred to me. Consequently, I kept this part of me a secret.

In 2001, nearly twenty years after first hearing the song I had signed up for a weekend seminar that promised to help me discover something profound about myself. On Sunday, the third day of the seminar, in the evening, the course leader opened a large book and read a story that I immediately recognized as the creation myth Howard Jones had put to music.

According to the story (creation myth), God fills the universe step-by-step by successively adding increasingly complex organisms right up to the creation of man. However, after each step God becomes dissatisfied and bored with what he/she has created because even man, having been created out of the mind of God, is still controlled by God like a puppet or doll would be controlled by a child by being moved about and given words and thoughts. God is dissatisfied and bored because he/she knows that every move and every thought and every word are actually his own. At this point, according to the myth, God makes a momentous decision. Being God and therefore capable of anything, God creates a game and in that game he will pretend that every thought and word and deed in the universe did not originate with himself and as part of the game God will forget that he is just pretending. The result is that even though God is everywhere in the universe and in everything, this knowledge is even hidden from God. God has thus endowed man with free will and with that free will comes the same power to create as God himself possesses. But because God has chosen to forget that he has hidden himself in each of us in this way (pretending that we are separate) what we create as individuals is a complete surprise to God, thus the title of the Howard Jones song “Hide and Seek”.

Now, I wanted to know what the connection between the Howard Jones song was and the seminar I had taken twenty years later. To answer this question I asked a computer group set up to talk about Howard Jones the singer-songwriter. I put out the question asking if anyone could tell me what had inspired the song Hide and Seek. A man from England who had attended a Howard Jones concert said that Howard had revealed that the inspiration for the song was a book by an English scholar named Alan Watts.

Hot on the trail, I soon found the book by Alan Watts which is called "The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are." Sure enough right in the first chapter of the book you can find the text of the creation myth Hide and Seek.

At this point I still didn't know how the text from Alan Watt’s book had gotten into the weekend seminar that I had taken. It wasn't until several months later, in a discussion with a friend in which I was telling him about my quest, that he told me that Alan Watts had been a professor at Berkeley in California in the 1960's and that one of his students at that time was the creator of the seminars known as “est”. The students name was Werner Erhard. This seminar went on to become the course that I had taken in 2001.

I later learned that Alan Watts was a scholar of Eastern religion and philosophy and that the origin of the creation myth is rooted in ancient wisdom crossing all cultural boundaries.

In virtually all cultures there really is a taboo against knowing who we are. This knowledge is often cleverly hidden in common religious texts. The King James Bible clearly tells us that “The kingdom of God lies within”, Luke 17: 20-21.

As Howard Jones expresses in the chorus of his song (I) “hope you find it, hope you find it in everything, hope you find me in you”, he expresses the deepest longings of my heart, for us all rediscover that we are not separate but all connected, all one, and indeed, we are all God.

Re-discovering the Nihilistic Dilemma

2005-03-06T09:17:00.000-08:00

When I was twenty (in 1967), I had hand written a three-page essay on lined notepaper that I called the "Nihilistic Dilemma". This essay was a kind of secret because I never showed it to anyone. I really felt no one could understand it.

I had been reading some philosophy books and had come across Frederick Nietzsche. In the most exquisite of ironies I had concluded from the concepts of nihilism and existentialism the exact opposite of the view that is commonly held.

I am presenting this document here exactly as it was written because in 2001 I re-discovered the significance in my life of what I had written over 30 years previously. The important lesson for me in re-discovering this has been to understand that those things that have been significant even early in my life like a touchstone, still are, and always will be. In loosing touch with what I had discovered at the age of twenty, I had indeed lost touch with something I desperately needed to be constantly mindful of that had subconsciously defined my life. Re-discovering and reading the words I had written has resulted in a reaffirming and rejuvenating experience in my life. Of all the other papers from that time I could have I kept, it was this paper, and this paper alone, that I kept tucked away in the binder with my high school diploma. Somehow I knew there was something profound about what I had written. So without further ado, I give you “The Nihilistic Dilemma”.

The Nihilistic Dilemma

Let us consider for a moment the emptiness of space. Consider the concept of a void where nothing exists. We know that this condition does exist out in space just as we know that matter exists on our planet earth. We can stand here on our planet in the midst of all the matter and conceive of an entirely void universe with no matter or energy at all. It is not inconceivable. In fact it seems as probable if not more probable that the universe be empty rather than filled with matter and energy. That is, it might be easier to justify the existence of a void universe than a full one.

Consider the significance of the existence of anyone or anything. We live our lives affecting the things we touch and that touch us. When we consider the relative effect of our lives to the universe around us, we see that we affect those things close to us to the greatest degree and our affect diminishes as distance increases. If we consider our effect on life elsewhere in the universe we must admit that we have no effect on life outside that on our own planet. If there is life on some planet revolving about the nearest star to us, this is relatively unimportant to us and I suppose we to them. In fact, if we conceive of the most important and significant facet of lives, to someone somewhere else in the universe it is no significance or value at all. Realizing thus that all value and significance does not derive from some unchangeable rule but only from the relation that they hold with one another, we are left with a dilemma.

Why do we treat things as though they have unquestionable value when we realize that when put in relation to other circumstances or other people they have no value at all? Why do we feel that our lives are important? Why do we feel that a full universe is any more desirable than the empty one we considered earlier? The proceeding contemplation that I have related I call the Nihilistic Dilemma. The concept is Nihilistic because nothing seems to have any intrinsic value but only relative value and a dilemma because all life seems to deny the conclusion that there is no intrinsic value in the universe.

At this point you may find yourself questioning the value of your own existence. You might like to feel that there is something intrinsically valuable about your life but it is disconcerting to realize that each of us simply occupy some relative position of value on a scale that has no top or bottom. But wait; what we have realized is a blessing in disguise. When we realize that everything in the universe has only relative value and nothing has any more real value than anything else, we then have the freedom to choose anything we like to be of value. We can’t possibly make a wrong choice. We realize of course that any choice we may make is a folly and only important because we make it so. Once we realize this we are then in control and therefore able to choose our follies with greater wisdom and insight.

We must now concede what at first appears to be a side issue will turn out to be the most significant part of this entire investigation. What we call life when we refer to ourselves I see as the existence of consciousness. This might be expressed as Descartes did who contends that he exists because he thinks. I do not intend to discuss the question of life after death but remain agnostic on this question. To our knowledge then a person who is dead no longer has the consciousness we call life. To our knowledge a person who is dead does not have the choice of life or death (at least no one has returned from death thus indicating the existence of a choice). It is also obvious that a person who is dead no longer has any choices at all. We have earlier established that all choices are relative and therefore of the same value. I contend here now that we have discovered that something that seems to lie outside the limits of the relativity that I pointed out before. It is the choice. Without life we have no choice of follies. The choice is the only thing that has any real value. Life is the only way we can have the choice. And even though life is the key to the possibility of making the choice of an infinite number of inconsequential choices, the existence of the choice lies outside the relativity of all our other choices. Life is the only choice we can make that is the key to all our other choices. We have the choice of life or death. Yes, death is a choice but as far as we know it is an irreversible choice.

1967

It's All Made Up

2005-02-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

Every day on the news we hear about people fighting and dying for what they believe to be "right". As children we are given all kinds of rules about what is right and what is wrong. If you are like me you grew up feeling like there was some great value or benefit to knowing the right answer and doing the right things. I was not allowed to ask why, I was just expected to accept what I was told as the truth.

The fact is, it's all made up! The rules don't exist somewhere in another realm outside of our reach in a big rulebook. We make up all the rules; we write all the rulebooks. We invented all the religions; we established all the laws and morals. This is what our parents didn't tell us. This is why they tell us "don't ask why". Alas, this is what they themselves have forgotten, if they ever knew. The valid answer to "why" ironically is the one we have all learned to resent. The valid and responsible answer is "because I say so". I have come to acquire new admiration and appreciation for people who are willing to take the responsibility for what they create with the rules they make up or adopt and are willing to be responsible for instead of pretending that they are somehow connected with some supreme repository of truth and "rightness".

When I first got the significance of this I was filled with a great sense of peace. Suddenly there was no right way of doing things to defend no battles to fight, no right direction to go, nothing to kill or die for. But it didn't take long to discover that if there was nothing worth dying for, the implication was that there was nothing worth living for either. It was then that I discovered a whole new way of living. This new way of living had nothing to do with being right or wrong. What it had to do with was the simplicity of the value of life itself. All the rules and the voices in my head had overshadowed and drowned out the simple truth that life needs no justification and that it is valuable in and of itself. In this understanding there came a deep sense of gratitude, love and appreciation for the sacredness and exquisite beauty of all life.

So who am I when I'm not caught up in all my judgments about the rightness or wrongness of myself and others and my circumstances? I am an expression of life, love and beauty. And what of others? They are the same.

Am I saying that all judgment is without merit? No, judgment can be a valuable tool. But it is only valuable as a tool. It's not valuable as a way of being. When I become nothing but a collection of judgments about others, my circumstances and myself, precious little space, if any, is left for me to be the expression of life, love and beauty that I was created to be.

I love People

2005-01-12T14:39:00.000-08:00

What is it about human beings that I find so awesome, so powerful and so divine that all the judgments can fall away and I am left with a feeling of connectedness that transcends space and time.

It is the certain knowledge that each of us is not our past, our future or the things that we have done or could do in the future, but that we have the ability and potential to re-create ourselves in whole or in part at any moment to be something wholly new and unique.

What does it mean to re-create oneself and what does that look like? It means to do or be something we have never been before, maybe something we told ourselves we could never do or be. It looks like a baby taking a first step. It looks like taking risks. It looks like saying yes after a thousand no's. It looks like trusting. It looks like creating something unique and beautiful. It looks like loving after a thousand disappointments. It looks like courage. It looks like being alive.

It’s Existential, My Dear Watson

2005-01-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

The original quote from Sherlock Holmes of course was "It's elementary, my dear Watson". I use this play on words to illustrate, like it or not, that the nature of reality which we as human beings face is, at its most fundamental level, existential.

Before writing this I started by looking up both the definitions of philosophy and existentialism. I found that even a word as common as philosophy has several different connotations depending on the context in which is used. For my purposes here I took the definition below.

Philosophy: A theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought.

Using this definition then, with regard to the sphere of activity or thought that we call life or existence, existentialism is a theory underlying the way life or human existence works.
Existentialism is a philosophy that I believe has earned a particularly bad rap. The average person I believe considers existentialism to be quite obscure and difficult to understand and possibly even dangerous. It has been said that some of the early exponents of existentialism actually committed suicide. However, when I looked up the definition of existentialism, I found that it was expressing something with regard to human existence that is really quite basic and fundamental to human existence. You might even say, "It's elementary". Here is the definition I found.

Existentialism: A chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for his acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad.

There are two parts to this definition to which I want to call your attention. The first part tells us that the universe is unfathomable and that any certain knowledge of right or wrong or good or bad is beyond our grasp. I can certainly see why human beings would want to reject this assertion. We human beings just love to be "right". There is something satisfying to the ego about having all the right answers. It's as though we feel that if somehow if we have the right answers we are in control. If we can convince others that we have the right answer we can exert power over them. Politicians do this all the time.

It is becoming clear now why I am contending that existentialism has gotten such a bad rap. Human beings don't want to accept that the universe could be unfathomable. And yet if we have the courage to explore this possibility logically, the evidence for it abounds.

Many years ago I came across an anecdotal dialogue between two people in which one person was telling a story. The person listening to the story responded only by making judgments and jumping to conclusions. You may have heard this anecdotal dialogue. It went something like this...

Person one: I went a plane ride.
Person two: That's good!

Person one: I jumped out of the plane.
Person two: That's bad!

Person one: No, I had a parachute.
Person two: That's good!

Person one: No, I forgot my parachute!
Person two: That's bad!

Person one: No, I landed in a haystack.
Person two: That's good!

Person one: No, there was a pitchfork in the haystack!
Person two: That's bad!

Person one: No, I missed the pitchfork.
Person two: That's good!

This anecdotal dialogue reveals the existential nature of our existence. What the existential philosophy is telling us is that we can never know how the choices that we make or the things we do will ultimately play out. And yet every day we fight battles (wars) with each other, large and small, over what we believe is right and wrong. It's no wonder existentialism is not popular. Human beings are just not ready to accept the possibility that the ultimate rightness or wrongness of anything is outside the purview of what humans can know. That great response from Jack Nicholson in the film A Few Good Men comes to mind. "You want the truth? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth." Human beings are just not ready to face the possibility that there is no ultimate truth. Maybe this is why some of the early existential philosophers supposedly committed suicide. They just didn't have the courage to live in the world where there was no ultimate right or wrong. And the rest of us prefer to live in complete denial of this possibility. What kind of a world would it be if there were no judgments? Would it be the Garden of Eden? Would it be as it had been before Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

The second part of the definition of existential philosophy that I want to investigate is the notion that we, as individuals, must assume ultimate responsibility for our acts of free will. No wonder this philosophy is so unpopular. It is telling us that we cannot blame others under any circumstances for the things that we do. If there were anything that human beings could feel more adamant about than the concept of being "right", it would be the concept that when things go so-called "wrong" it's not their fault.

Now this is where existentialism really gets interesting. Human beings typically act because they believe in the ultimate rightness or wrongness of their actions. If they believe that an action will produce a particular result and they have judged that result to be the "right" result, they will proceed with the action. On the other hand if they believe that an action will produce the so-called "wrong" result, they will refrain from that action and choose another action that they perceive will produce the "right" result. Under these circumstances if the results that they believe will occur suddenly reverse, then the human being will need to reverse the action he or she takes in response. Wow, it sounds like we are acting like puppets. We are making the result be responsible for our action. If it occurs to us that the result that will ensue from our action has changed, we then must modify our action accordingly. All this sounds quite logical but a closer look will reveal that it has absolutely nothing to do with exercising free will.

Again, although we insist we are acting out of free will we are merely reacting to circumstances as we perceive them. What I am suggesting is that free will is something quite different, something most human beings have never really exercised before. To illustrate what I mean I will use the words of a popular (or not so popular) TV personality that many of us love to hate, Dr. Phil.

On many occasions I have heard Dr. Phil point out the difference between making the "right" decision and making the decision "right". At first this sounds like just doublespeak. But hidden inside these words is the key to acting out of free will as opposed to acting based on circumstances. To illustrate I will provide an example here.

Let's say to you and your spouse decide to adopt a child. You consider all the circumstances and the possible outcomes however, there is information hidden from you that the child may develop a serious mental illness. Had you known this ahead of time you probably would not have adopted the child. You would logically feel the decision to adopt this child under the circumstances would be "wrong" and you can find a lot of people that would agree with you because there was a "good reason" for your decision. Now you can spend a lot of time blaming the adoption agency, yourself or even the child when the mental illness becomes apparent in the teenage years. Or you can exercise free will in the face of all the circumstances, you can choose to "make the decision right" by finding the courage every day to stay in touch with the love you feel for your adopted child. Now I'm going to suggest something absolutely outrageous.

Now let's go back to the time the baby was adopted but this time you are informed that there is the possibility that a serious mental illness may develop years later. But out of sheer love, determination and courage and in the face of all logic and reasons that would bode future failure and hardship you decide to adopt the child regardless.

Now we are just beginning to touch on the kind of power we have at our disposal as human beings have when we truly exercise free will.

The Epiphany

2005-01-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

If you are really lucky, at some point in your life you will discover who you truly are. You will look back at your life and everything you did and thought will immediately make sense. You will discover that your ignorance and denial of who you are has been the only real source of all your suffering. At this point the experience of your life will change so that all your choices become clear and obvious. At every juncture you will be faced with only one ultimate question, “Do I act in accordance with who I truly am or do I pretend to be ignorant, deny being who I am and sell out?” It will be clear that it is not circumstances that cause you to suffer but your failure to be who you are in the face of those circumstances. You will realize that regardless of what you thought before it has always been this way. You will know that circumstances and outcomes are beyond your control and that the only real choice you have is to just be who you are. You will no longer feel the need to alter circumstances or achieve results for you will know your role is to remain in character in the face of all the circumstances regardless of what they may be and that you are part of a drama that will play out throughout eternity that is beyond human comprehension.

You will accept who you are and trust that choosing to be who you are is the most powerful choice you have. In this certainty you will find an inner peace that you have never known before.

2005-01-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

WhenI was 35, it was a very good year.

Michael from Mountains

I Am A Seeker

2005-01-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

It was Socrates who is credited with having said "the unexamined life is not worth living". Although I cannot entirely agree because I feel that all of our lives are indeed worth living, I must admit that I personally, could not live my life content as a mere observer or passenger.

For me, examining my life gives me at least the illusion that I can understand enough to make choices that will ultimately influence the direction of my life in a way that will allow me to feel fulfilled.

I have discovered that I am (and have ever been) a seeker. But what is really important is that I have finally made peace with being a seeker. I have made peace with it because for me there is nothing (in particular) to find and nowhere to get to. Instead there is everything to find and everywhere to go.

When asked "Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?" George Mallory was quoted as saying "Because it is there." When I ask myself "Why live my life?", the answer that comes is pretty well the same.