Observations that dive deep into life and come up with treasures for all

Yesterday I found myself watching the history of Star Wars, and there it was in mythic proportions: control (the empire) vs. chaos (the empire’s perception of the people and reality). Darth Vader was the personification of control and the power needed to exercise it completely.

And what defeated Vader? The force did him in, as personified by Luke Skywalker and the Jedi Knights. This was a battle between will power and surrender to an invisible but all encompassing power. One could say that Star Wars was a mythic blueprint for stress removal on a cosmic scale. Star Wars was about man’s individual and collective attempt and failure to control his existence. We all have to try, and we all, sooner or later, must learn to surrender to the Force.

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Last night we watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a 1998 Johnny Depp movie about drugs and the collapse of the chemical utopia of the drug culture that rose and crested in the 1960s. The movie was like a bad drug trip, frankly, but now that I look back on the experience and I can find some value in it. Just as I look back on the wave of consciousness that rose in the 60s and the dirty foam and fragmented minds that it became as it washed over our land in the 70s, I can find some value in it. A brutal war, both at home and abroad, cracked the cultural egg in the 60s, to be sure, but through that crack came a light of freedom and unlimited potential that shook our sense of reality. Something real had hold of us. For those who felt lifted by the wave, there was no turning back; we had to ride it. Some surrendered completely, some partially, and some stayed on the shore and watched. Hearts opened and minds closed as steel went to war against flowers.

For many the late 60s was a spiritual awakening, but the American way has always been enlightenment now, why work for it. So drugs fit this bill, to be sure. Spirituality was confused with out of the box experience, and the culture was hooked, and it still is. We will and go anywhere to escape the suffering and violence of our minds.

Spirituality got confused with escape and avoidance, and this is what was new in our culture, not the escapism, but a spirituality divorced from orthodox religion. Drugs have always been around; pot and cocaine and heroine could be found, especially in the music culture. But the 60s made it hip and sanctioned by God, in fact, drugs became God, a communion with something beyond the limitations of one’s karma—karma being what your are given to work with. So with drugs you didn’t have to work with yourself in the world, you could avoid yourself and touch the limitless sky. Life became a chemical amusement part.

So now we have come down from the ride and the spiritual teachings that first bloomed in the 60s with the importation of eastern masters, some real and some fake, have taken root. Serious work has now begun. Just go to the Internet or notice the fresh sprouts of yoga in almost every strip mall. People are working on themselves, and now we are beginning to work on the planet. We are beginning to understand that the world, our world is what we have made of it, and that we are co-creators in this world and as such have a choice about what kind of a world we want to live in, both personally and collectively.

The 60s worked the soil for the planting of the spiritual seeds, but first we had to recognize the weeds and then begin the slow process of pulling them. Each of us is our own garden—our family, our jobs, and our play—and it is here that we must nourish our consciousness with meditation and compassion and become friends with out world. After all, it is the only world we’ve got.

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A client here for a way out of stress suddenly remembered—after I had asked her if anything interesting happened in the last week—that she had lost her camera/computer[ chord and experienced a mini-panic in the search until she just let it go and did some deep breathing. Suddenly she knew where it was and went right to the place where she had looked unsuccessfully before. “I just knew where it was,” she said.

We talked about this little drama being her whole life in a single moment. When we feel a loss of control—like when we lose something and go in circles over the same ground—we create a pair of opposites in our mind/body. On one side we have control, safety, continuity, and on the other we have loss of control, chaos, and death. The more we struggle for control—finding the keys or whatever—the greater the fear of loss of control. These two opposites are like a dance couple that spins faster and faster as the music of fear grows. This yin/yang is one energy that the mind divides into two parts and then believes one side can defeat the other. But at the root beneath the surface of thought, there is only one energy, and the only way out is not through struggle but surrender and forgiveness.

Then when we give up our need for control and just quit the fight, saying, “Okay, I accept the situation,” there is a background of awareness that rises in that space of acceptance—that hole between the opposites—and says, “I know where it is.” That background, that ground of consciousness is who you really are, I told her.

Our true and original self is always here beneath the storm, beneath the wars of control vs. chaos, waiting to come forth and say, “Hey, there is no problem. I know.” So lets get smart.

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Last night we watched a beautiful movie called August Rush, which is about a boy who can hear music in the streets, in the fields, in the house, and believes that it is the “music of the spheres” that will bring his lost parents home to him. He leaves the orphanage to find them, making music as he goes through his adventures like a modern day Mozart. He just writes down what the universe sings to him and then plays it back, he says when amazed human ask his how he does it.

Ah, but what came through to me like a symphonic orchestra is the joy, the pure joy of his being connected to sound beneath the labels and thinking of the mind. The boy never judged anything. He just watched and listened and responded with his joy. Everything was music, everything was joy.

We can practice August Rush anytime by just listening to sounds that carpet our interior world beneath the heavy feet of thought. Listen to the sound of the spoon in the tea cup, of the water in the sink, of the keys on the lap top, or the water in the fountain, but listen without naming the sounds, listen to the energy of the sound that has no name and therefore is totally present.

When we listen with presence, we are present. Sound is a portal to our ground of being and our freedom from the known. it is through sound that we can touch God. We live in a world that is all mapped out, all discovered, and very predictable. But sound, unlabeled, unplugged sound is always the unknown. Sound just is. Once we name a sound it has a purpose and a meaning and it is known and put in its prepared place in the mind. “What’s next,” the mind says, already bored. But with sound, with pure music, there is no next. There is just what is. And in that acceptance, in that rest, there is true freedom and joy. What a rush!

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Here is a movie you should see; Michael Clayton is a movie about morality and truth in today’s mad, mad world. The question that we moderns are asking, that we have to ask, is this: Is there an alternative to the choice between chaos and control? We live in a world that is obsessed with control: control over our environment, our mind, our body, our family, our neighbors, other countries, the planet and even space. Basically, we want to control the future and make it safe for the continuation of our ego-idea. We want to make the future safe for me.

Michael-Clayton is about corporate control over our world and the madness of everyone who plays the game of winning at all costs. George Clooney is our hero who discovers there is another choice other than chaos or control, and that a life based on fear is no life at all.

There is a moment is our individual movie—we’re all heroes of our own stories—that being reaches out and touches us, when we are nudged by the universe itself and all our previous thoughts and fears crumble and fall to the earth like dust. Suddenly, we are real! Powerfully, beyond thought and doubt, God is alive! And we are that aliveness!

And out of that moment comes the realization that the universe is an orderly place, that chaos is only a place in our mind and that control is as absurd as trying to calm the waves of the ocean with one’s hand.

When you discover that you are real—that before you were unreal, but now you are alive—there is no future because you are now. And when you are here, there is no fear of tomorrow; chaos and the need to control cease to exist.

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There is nothing to do this Memorial Day Sunday here in New Bern but read, enjoy insights, and write. So here is another thought about Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (see previous post). The movie ends with the usual Spielberg special effects where awe is induced in the mind of the viewer. And before the eye of awe can close the question is asked: where is the Crystal Skull for us everyday Indiana Joneses?

The answer for all of the Jones series is as stated in the movie: In the space between the spaces in the mind. And just a few moment ago, reading a line from the Indian mystic Malarepa an additional clue was added to the treasure map the movie leaves with us: “In the gap between thoughts nonconceptual wisdom shines continuously.”So for all those Indiana Jones wanna be’s, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Eye of Shiva, and the Crystal Skull is not out there in time and space, but in there in the gaps in time and space, in the gaps between thoughts. The clues are out there; go find them.As a wise of guru once told me: “God dwells within you as you.”

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Go see the fourth Indiana Jones and ride a motorcycle through city streets, escape man eating ants, fall down not one but three waterfalls, dodge bullets, poison darts, even an atomic bomb, and hunt for the mystery of the Crystal Skull.

We have been on many great pilgrimages with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. We’ve chased after the Ark of the Covenant, the eye of Shiva, and the Holy Grail. And in this movie we are after omniscience, the knowledge of God, the Crystal Skull. Of course, in our quest we have had to contend with a host of Nazis, temple cultists, and (in the fourth one) a crazed dominatrix who wants the knowledge of God so Russia can get a trump card on the Americans who think their atom bomb is the winning hand.

The Indiana Jones series, however, is more than just a roller coaster ride of near escapes. Spielberg has mapped for us and then hidden that map—just like treasure maps are always hidden—in the folds of his movies for us to discover. To find the map we have to look at the formula instead of the content that each movie provides. Like Indiana, we have to use our creative insight in order to unravel the mystery of the quest for God. And like Indiana, we have to be willing to go beyond the expected, to reach behind the obvious—in other words, to drop the thinking bound mind and leap into the unknown.

The dance of these movies is between Indiana (the soul) and the self-interested ego. You can’t have one without the other. And if you notice, the evil ego is always stronger than Indiana, and it is the will of the ego that drives the movie to its conclusion—which (and it’s always a surprise to the ego) is the self-destruction of the ego. Indiana never destroys the ego; the greedy one always gets what it wants, and it is that desire that destroys the ego. Ego is a death wish. The soul is the life wish. And in the Spielberg movies, the soul of life always wins.

So what is the lesson of Indiana Jones? First, always be ready for the quest. If your heart hungers for the living experience of God, then you are ready. God will come knocking on the door of his devotees. Oh, and don’t worry, your ego will come along. Remember, you are dance partners in the quest.Okay, now some stranger has given you a mysterious package, or you may have read a powerful book, or you suffered some terrible loss, whatever it is, something out of the ordinary expectations of your life has awakened something in your heart. Something has moved within and you suddenly feel alive!

Now here are the two motivating drives in your quest; your ego wants to be special, to arrive at something or some state of joy and peace, and to have credentials. Your soul wants above all else balance with existence. To the soul balance is knowledge of existence. You have to let your ego drive the quest because souls have no power in the flesh. But your soul has something ego doesn’t possess: Wisdom and transcendental awareness. If you don’t want to end up like the villains in the movies, your soul will have to be there when ego reaches for the prize; you will have to be awake and separate—like a space capsule leaving its booster—from the grasping hand and say, “Let it be.”

The quest for God is a story of divorce. The soul must learn how to separate itself from the dominion of ego. And this separation can only occur through the dance of the eqo’s quest for dominion.So all through the quest, your soul will be gaining strength in the dance with ego. As in the movie, soul’s only strength is its balance with natural forces. It grabs a tree limb just at the right moment, it jumps and a rock appears under the foot. The soul learns how to trust the universe to support it. Notice how Indiana escapes the ego’s grasp at every turn through this powerful trust. Indiana trusts his actions. Even when he makes a mistake, it is the right action. Indiana, as the soul, has already arrived at the knowledge of God, but he doesn’t know it. Indiana is the knowledge of God in action.

But the ego thinks it doesn’t have the knowledge of God, so it wants it. The ego wants what the soul already has, but the soul can’t know it. All the soul can do is BE it. When ego thinks it knows, it doesn’t. You see the game here?And Indiana Jones ends with the restoration of balance to the universe. Ego has been defeated and the quest for the knowledge of God was like a dream. We never needed it in the first place because we always already had it! But we can’t know this until we try to find what we never lost.

The quest movies of Indiana Jones are most likely done now, but the search for God is never over. God is the search and God is the finding, and He is all the moves in between. This is the greatest story ever told.

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We finally got around to watching No Country for Old Men last night when the Fleegers, a couple who sold their house and moved into an RV, came to visit. As if preparing the set, they talked about their trip through West Texas to the sunny camping grounds of Arizona as being the most desolate place they had ever seen. Then we watched the movie. If you haven’t seen it, then you should just go to west Texas and stop the car, watch the movie, or just meditate on our human condition. Any of these will do.

I read a few reviews of the movie, all raves as the movie won best picture, yet I was not satisfied, because I wanted to know, if knowing is possible, what the movie was saying about me. After all, that’s why we go to movies that connect us to our long lost feeling of awe and terror; we want to be led to the edge of our consciousness and peer into the darkness, the bleakness that surrounds our little wagon train of civilization.

The setting is the old/new west where the myth of the Lone Star Marshal is now mixed and just about killed by the drug wars and the senseless killings that dot the sands where once gun fighters fought duels for notches and credits.

Now, it just death with no meaning: that is whom the psychopathic killer Chigurh is, a killing machine like Jaws, who kills methodically, but with a twist of fate. “Do you feel lucky? Flip a coin.” So death stalks us in this movie, always walking parallel to us in the night in quiet stocking feet. And then, Wham, we’re suddenly dead like a hapless steer in the slaughterhouse.

Let’s face it. We live in a slaughterhouse. We’re all marching down to the end of the fence tunnel where Chigurh is waiting with an almost amused smile. And we are always so surprised when it is our turn. And we can’t persuade him; we can’t moralize him or pray him into a change of mind. While our culture changes, death, only death stays the same. The movie doesn’t answer any questions; it just presents us with the fact. Deal with it, and through death’s just-so-ness and our acceptance of its meaninglessness be released by it.

But here is my question: if it were not for death, would life make sense? Death is that which is outside our little room of consciousness, our known world of thoughts and feelings that huddle around a shivering little me that wraps itself in a protective civilization, religion and a false sense of protection.

But the fact is, there is no protection, no insurance, and no hope. Fear of death shapes us by compressing our little light into a candle flame flickering in what we believe is the night. But this awesome darkness of empty space is our own light before we believed it was only a small candle. As long as we believe our consciousness is a little flickering candle, we can never see the sun.

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This has been a Barack Obama and basketball Sunday as the rain gives my newly fertilized lawn a surge. Not yet finished with Audacity of Hope, I couldn’t wait to jump into Dreams From My Father, and I just have about a quarter of an inch left to go.

So far the book has been like a Picasso painting as Obama tries to put the pieces of his broken story together and make sense of his identity. Written in 1995 at Harvard Law School, the book is given depth by knowing what has become of the young author as he now builds his campaign for president on this story he struggled to paint.

What comes through the book for me is the clear voice and intelligence of the painter as he remembers and gives shape to his memories and the many colored oils that have made up his palate. We are all painters, artists with a given set of oils from which to create our canvas, and our whole life’s purpose is to make our life in that painting conscious. That’s what comes through to me in Obama’s struggle with his odd mix of oils, which has given him a unique opportunity to see his story from both sides at once, like one of those paintings that when you squint your eyes you see a new picture rising from what you thought was the background.

First Obama saw no color as a child in Indonesia, then back in an American public school, he saw black, but he also saw white, and so the painting goes as he discovers that each time he thinks he knows who he is, the background shifts again and a new picture comes forth.

The question Obama asks, and we find ourselves asking as readers, is whether we are our story, or are we the author of our story and the only ones who can auathentically give our story meaning. Do we let others give us meaning or do we choose ourselves? That is the canvas we are given to paint. We have the freedom to choose what our picture means and how to live in it. We can choose to create our story or be created by it. Obviously, Obama chooses to create his own story once he went through the oils to discovers what his given colors are.

What we forget is that life is just paint; its meaning comes from our choices. There are no good or bad colors; there are just colors and a canvas. The truth Obama seeks in this book is that we, as life, are the canvas as well as the colors, and that when we identify with the canvas, we are free from color.

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Eckhart Tolle’s fourth book review lesson (a free download on Oprah.com) was a review of my whole life it seemed this morning as my wife and I watched it. The 4th chapter of The New Earth was about the roles we play and ego structure vs. ego content.

While ego content is whatever we are experiencing in this moment, ego structure is the shape of the container. When he talked about superior vs. inferior, it became so clear to me that my whole life has been riding on this wave of high followed by a low, followed by a new high as the ego gets a fresh shot of power.

Power comes from Presence or Being, and when we touch that source within (what we might call a spiritual experience or awakening or insight) that ego structure gets its license renewed for another ride and it hits the road using new content to enhance itself.

And here is the trap. It is so beautiful! When one discovers that all is vanity, even one’s great spiritual motives and good works, all the creativity and new credentials one hangs over the door, when one discovers that it was just more ego enhancement, then comes the down side and the dip into inferiority and worthlessness. Ah, so clever. The ego wins, no matter what. The meaning of the ego is not in its content but in its sense of being separate from life.

How to get out? One must see inferiority as superiority and superiority as inferiority. When the opposites merge, you are free—for the moment, that is, until the ego finds a way to get something out of that insight. Ego, ego, will you ever give up?

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