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

In preparation for Halloween we watched Practical Magic last night, a fun romance about witches and curses and looking for true love. One line sticks with me this morning when a little girl was told by her mother how to avoid the curse of love—you know, when we fall in love so blindly that we lose our connection with the real, and then the curse comes in and takes our love away.

“When you spin around and around,” she said, “always keep your eyes one something still or your will fall down.” And there you have it, the wisdom pill for the art of life. We, us humans, have fallen in love with form, so much so that we identify our very selves with our love objects—our relationships, our jobs, our cars, our stories, any form positive or negative will do, as long as it is form.

And not matter what we love, it will leave us sooner or later, and we will suffer loss, the curse of love. So what to do?

Always keep your eyes on something still as you spin around in the world of form. And what is still, you ask, since everything is form and is spinning?

That stillness, that one thing that is not a thing, that doesn’t move and will not suffer death, that absolute and that emptiness is what we are all looking for in this world of form that keeps changing no matter how fierce we hold on to it.

The mystic sages call it the Self, God, or Atman, The Kingdom of Heaven or Nirvana, but whatever names it is called, it has no name because it is formless. It can’t be in time because time changes. We can sense it, but we can’t grab it. We can’t be aware of it as an object because it is awareness itself. We can’t know it, but we can be it.

When all form is taken away, when all that we cling to is gone, what is left but our present awareness, our deep sense of I AM. Focus on That say all the wisdom teachers, who can spin without falling down.

Posted under up lifting

Every few years Mac users are enlivened by the call of a new jungle cat, the always fantastic wonderful must have operating system, this time called Leopard. I hear that call now and it won’t be very long before I’m heading to the Apple store at Short Pump to get one of these cats for my computer. Steve Jobs must have gotten this cats idea from Exxon’s Put a Tiger in Your Tank promotion.

(Okay, I’m back from the Apple Store with my new operating system, and I have a few thoughts to share while it’s installing.)

We love computers because they are such perfect reflections of our mind. But everything we do on the computer depends on the operating system; it is the engine that both empowers and limits us at the same time. The OS is a perfect metaphor for our ego-I, because whatever we experience as our world is shaped by our ego structure—it both empowers us and limits us.

And as with all operating systems, it doesn’t take too long before we reach the limits of the system: with computers maybe a day or two; with our ego system, maybe 20-30 years before we start wondering if there isn’t something more to life, something that we are missing.

With computers all we have to do is wait for a new operating system to remove the bugs and limitations from the previous one; but with the ego mind, who do we call? Who made this ego system we have to live in and rely on to interpret the world for us as if it were the Pope? Most think we just have to suffer with the bugs and the limitations, the fragmentation and the inadequate power. Even prayers don’t seem to help us replace our ego operating system—because it is the system that is making the prayers, so whatever errors are in the system are also in the prayers.

But there is relief. Ego operating systems can be transcended; they can be optimized, and they can be reinvented. What’s the first step, you ask? Realize that you created your ego-system, that’s all. See directly that you are not that ego-system, and by that very act of knowing you transcend your operating system and create an expanded one . Believe me, you’ll feel like a Leopard!

Posted under up lifting

Why is letting go so hard to do? Whenever we are stuck to something, a problem that just keeps on getting worse, we are often advised to just let go. If you can’t fix something, let it go. That’s what my 96-year old mother says concerning her health. “If I can fix it, I accept it.”

Letting go and accepting are the same thing when you scrape away the syntax. If I let go, I surrender all effort to change. Letting go is letting go of effort, not the object we think we are holding onto. And accepting an object or situation is also letting go of our effort to change it into an acceptable form. Therefore, letting go, accepting, and surrender are the same thing, a non-action.

Here is where the difficulty comes in. How does one not perform action and act at the same time? How can we make an effort to not make an effort? This is the root puzzle of the human mind.

Why is letting go so difficult? To our ego-I letting go of the form it is attached to is death. True surrender is dieing to the form from which the ego-I derives it’s identity, and to the ego-I objects in consciousness are all there is. Without an object, the subject cannot exist. So the subject can’t let go of its object without also letting go of itself. But is that self real or an illusion? You can’t find out unless you let go.

Be something, be somebody, our culture says—but to surrender and be free is to be nobody.

Posted under meditation help, up lifting

Have you ever noticed how we run from the empty spaces? There is something about empty spaces in the physical or mental realms that make us want to fill them up. If there is an empty coffee table top, we fill it up with magazines and whatnots.

But it is the mental spaces that are the most interesting, yet the most difficult to see. Whatever object we see in the mind, we don’t allow it to be empty and reveal itself to us, we fill it in with what we already know about the object. Imagine what it would be like inside the mind if empty space were allowed to remain. What would it be like to look without judgment, without the past coming in with its conceptions of what reality is and painting the moment with yesterday’s colors?

But before you fill in the blanks here with some comments or opinions, just allow your mind to be empty of all thought reactions. How long could you sit in this empty space before thought rushed in and started talking?

You have moments like this when we are struck with wonder, but the empty space never stays open because thought comes rushing in like a tidal wave and begins talking about what your just saw—as if thought was the seer. Even people looking at the Grand Canyon will begin trying to fill it in with their expert thought.

So it is thought that doesn’t’ like empty spaces. Not you. Notice that it is only in the empty spaces between thoughts that you experience love, beauty, wonder, joy, and truth. But, no, thought can’t stand to let you enjoy your life. It has to come in and let you know what it thinks, and, you know, thought never says anything new. All thought has in its bag is past information.

What’s really new is always creative and that can only happen in the empty spaces of the present moment. Thought can never be creative because thought is always the past projecting into the future. When an insight comes up in the empty space, thought comes in and claims it as its own, taking the credit so you will think how important thought is.

Check this out. Don’t just think about what I’m saying. Stop thinking right now and watch what thought begins to do. Like a child told to sit still, the pressure of emptiness will cause thought to erupt in a spasm pent up energy and just say anything to fill in the space.

And why is that? Thought can’t sit still because you believe you are your thought, and if you stop thinking, your conceptual self-identity dies. But is the thought you have about you the real you? Or is it just a story you have made up? If you can be aware of your thought, you must not be your thought. Are there two selves?

So, who are you? Will the real you please stand up. If you think you know who you are, then notice that it is just a thought that is standing up.

Posted under meditation help, up lifting

Watched Mission Impossible III last night (our Friday night at the home movies), and this morning my mind is still seeing flash backs of its intense action scenes. I remember feeling half way through violence of the movie, “I can’t take much more of this.”

Action movies today are virtual roller coaster rides that slowly take you up and then plunge you straight down in a full-throated scream towards death, and then at the last possible moment, as Tom Cruise pulls up just before the explosion, you are saved. It’s like water board torture where you are almost drowned, then given a single breath of life, only to be plunged back into the terror.

And we will pay anything for this exquisite torture, what with our huge home movie screen, sound effects, and demand for more realistic special effects. Is this an addiction, or what? Why do we need this? And why do we feel good after being dunked in death over and over again? Had enough? No!

The Mission Impossible story is about a team of daredevils who are addicted to dancing with death. Our hero lives in suburbia, a normal person like us, but he keeps getting called to the dance, and he can’t refuse, even though he longs for a normal life with family and continuity. Death makes him feel alive, present, and complete. He can’t refuse the dance, and neither can we. When does Mission Impossible IV come out?

Posted under reviews

As the TV news reports on the burning of the rich in California and compares it to the drowning of the poor in New Orleans, I am suddenly struck by the deeper meaning of this “attack” on us humans by fire and water—which, obviously, we now know, doesn’t discriminate.

As far as our news is concerned, it’s all about the loss of possessions, the pain of that loss, and the vicarious pleasure we viewers derive from being thankful it isn’t us. Suffering and being a victim sells news stories.

But what if life, nature, God, and the universe—actually these are all one—were a spiritual master, and we went to this Guru for self-realization or enlightenment. The Guru would inform us that we were misinformed if we thought enlightenment was attaining something and having more added to us. Instead of getting more content added to the mind, more stuff, more possessions, self-realization means stilling the mind and becoming completely empty of all attachments and the mental content we identify with.

“Here, let me show you what I mean,” the Guru says. POOF! Suddenly all your possessions and all your attachments that you thought were so necessary for your identity and purpose in life are gone in a puff of smoke or a wave of water. In a flash of realization you see that all form is impermanent and that only your Self as pure consciousness is real and deathless. The emptiness of loss becomes the fullness of realization and being.

As we watch the victims on TV cry and the angry voices asking why, we should bow at the feet of the Master and realize that in time we are all going to lose the content of our minds and the forms that we hold so dear. Loss is a time-release capsule of destruction that we mistakenly perceive as the enemy. When we are born, we swallow this pill and then spend the rest of our lives fighting its liberating wisdom.

One-way or another, either willingly or unwillingly, we are going to lose everything. That is the lesson of life and the Master.

Loss—for those who are willing to accept it with equanimity and without grievance—is the only path to freedom. Loss is the crucifixion and the resurrection. Or it could just be a terrible disaster.

Posted under current events

The workshops at the primary school are approved and this is the copy for the flyer that will be sent out to parents for the workshop on stress management.

Is STRESS making you irritable, tired, ill, and unhappy?

Then you need to find your Peace Place.

Sign up for the first two-session workshop on stress management
in which you will learn:

1.    What your Peace Place feels like as you experience deep
relaxation through guided instruction.

2.    Simple techniques to relax the mind and body at home and at work so you can find your Peace Place whenever you need to.

3.    How to identify and remove stress before it destroys your Peace Place.

4.    How to make your Peace Place a source of well being that can transform your whole family.

Posted under General Observations

No matter what I did mistakes kept happening in a print order last week, and each mistake appeared in a new form, so I couldn’t “learn from my mistakes.” The customer—who was becoming my friend as we kept finding new mistakes and having to reprint the job—was actually enjoying the show because I was not getting stressed or frustrated. In fact, it was almost like a TV skit, what with the laughing and carrying on.

“If we could just find the original error, we could stop this rolling mistake from evolving,” I said, not realizing until this afternoon that my comment was actually pointing to the quest for the original error that has occupied the mind of man since its dawning.

The Bible calls it original sin and the psychiatrist call it a complex, but whatever you call it, the tree of error and suffering grows from this acorn, but only a few actually try to get to the root of all suffering. Most just keep pruning the tree.

The trouble is that we just don’t have many self-realized beings that have cut this taproot and left a set of directions. Well, maybe we do have enough masters, but we just don’t believe salvation, liberation, or whatever,  is possible, to actually be one with life and free. We like our sin. We like our original error, because it is the error that gives us our personal identity—and who wants to give up being a separate I-ego? Our whole civilization is built on this error, this separate sense of individuality that suffers and buys more stuff to remove the suffering.

I found one master who cut the taproot of suffering, Ramana Maharshi, one of India’s most revered spiritual masters, and his directions are simple, straight, and instantaneous—if you really follow them, that is.

The path he teaches is self-enquiry into the source of the I-thought through meditation. Keep stepping back from every identification with a thought object—not this, not this—until you come to the original I-thought. Put all your attention on the I-thought until it—for lack of an object for its subject—dissolves into pure awareness. What remains is I AM, your original face before you were born as a separate conceptual identity.

Take away the I in “I am suffering” and there is no suffering. No sin either!

Posted under General Observations

There is a reason, I think, why the most powerful spiritual and psychological  That principle or law is Forgiveness.

I always thought that forgiveness was to be used when someone hurt you, and you said, “That’s okay. You don’t have to feel guilty. I forgive you.” But that is a very narrow meaning of forgiveness.

The true meaning of forgiveness is acceptance. When I forgive someone, I accept him or her. I affirm them in spite of their behavior. In fact, I no longer see their “bad” behavior. But forgiveness shouldn’t be confined to people who have rubbed us the wrong way.

Forgiveness must be used in every moment—not as a means to an end, but as the end itself. Forgiveness is a relationship to the world that is always open and accepting. The state of forgiveness is the state of humility or innocence, where one welcomes and affirms the world in whatever form it chooses to take this moment.   Forgiveness is being friendly with what is. This doesn’t mean we can’t fix things; it just means we fix it with joy instead of irritation.

Suffering is non-acceptance of what is. You can see non-acceptance in the simplest things. While you are reading these words a child may yell in the house. Notice how a thought rises saying the child should be quiet and not disturb you. Then, an irritation comes up riding that thought. Then you yell at the child, and there is some more noise, and you get up and find the child and yell some more, maybe making the child go to his or her room screaming. Now, what were you reading? Oh, you were reading about accepting what is. Yes, that would be nice. “I’ll try that,” you say to yourself, while the back of your mind is listening to see if that kid comes out of his room and what you’re going to do to him next.

Forgiveness begins with being aware (without judgment) that the mind is resisting what is. Acceptance doesn’t mean one allows the children to run through the house making noise. Acceptance means not having a grievance with the universe for not being good, i.e., the way it is supposed to be according to your pleasures.

Taking this line of thought one step further: when you forgive (accept) the universe for being what it is, you are putting yourself in alignment with the universe or life. You can also say that the universe is God’s will or intelligence. So forgiveness is the second sentence in the Lord’s Prayer: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Thy Will be done means allowing God’s Will to be done as it is in this moment. It doesn’t mean in the future. God is already and always now.

The act of forgiving God for being God is the same act as forgiving ourselves for being ourselves. We just can’t be other than who we are in this moment. Those who try are the Unforgiven.

Posted under up lifting

This picture of Christ caught my eye at a friend’s house, so I took a picture of it and waited for it to tell me what to write. A few days have past and suddenly the words come as I thought that the picture looked like Moses parting the sea. But instead of water, the waves are time, and Christ stands in the middle holding the past and the future apart for us to pass through into our true eternal life and realization of God, not as a belief, mind you, but as our essential Self.

What we know in our hearts to be true, we cannot say or even think because words and thought cannot speak of things like the absolute or non-dual presence. The mind works in the framework of time, but Christ, the Self, and God are like the background to the mind, as the screen is background to the movie. How can the movie address the screen it plays on? So how can the mind think of God and the Self as being one: how can we even imagine Christ consciousness, if we are just images on the face of God.

My thoughts can’t know the thinker; my ego-I can’t know my Creator as an object of thought. So in frustration, the mind puts God and Christ either in the past or in the future, in time, where the mind can think about the absolute in the words of the relative.

The picture portrays two types of people, those who live in the present eternal moment at one with Christ, and those who live in time. We live in time if we live in thought. Living in thought is believing that we are a limited personal ego separate and against the world, a world that is never as it should be. We believe the world will get better in time. But we wait in a state of suffering and separation.

The painting, to me,  is a portrayal of the moment when our thinking mind suddenly stops and the healing grace of our divine being pours though the space between our thoughts. Christ is our own true but forgotten self, and God is our own true but forgotten Being. We are the only begotten Son.

Posted under up lifting