No One to Blame

"Take your life into your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."

-- Erica Jong

I'm almost tempted to let Erica's insight stand alone without commentary. She pretty much says it all. The only thing I might change is the word "terrible" to awful. I really don't think that it's so terrible that we have no one to blame. Instead I find it freeing, empowering, exciting.

Awful, meaning full of awe, seems to capture that condition much better than terrible. Sure, there's some terror involved. The terror of self-responsibility. But mostly, no one to blame, is awesome. Because the flip side of no one to blame is no one to restrict you either. You see that your life is all of your own making.

That doesn't mean that everything is all hearts, smiley faces, and unicorns jumping over rainbows. Who, other than a tween girl, would want a life like that anyway? Stuff that you don't like still happens once you take your life into your own hands, but how you respond to that stuff changes. You no longer play the victim. Instead you choose to use that stuff to create a soulful life. No blame, no shame.

Today's a perfect day to quit playing the Blame Game. Take a scrupulous self-inventory: Who are you still blaming for the life you currently live? Release them, release yourself, all by letting go of blame. Take back your responsibility, take back your power, take back your fun! Your life is your creation. You are the Michaelangelo of your own life! Create, share, enjoy.

Enjoy It While You Can!

"A person will be called to account on judgement day for every permissible thing that they might have enjoyed but did not."

-- The Jerusalem Talmud

I love this sentiment! Life is to be enjoyed! And if you ain't enjoying it, you got some splainin' to do!

As far as permissible things go, The Talmud's definition might be a bit stricter than mine. It probably frowns on pork tenderloins as big as your head, for example, while, even though personally I'm a vegetarian, I say go right ahead and eat that fried piggy. To me, everything is permissible as long as no one else is being intentionally hurt in the process. That includes two (or more) consenting adults doing whatever those consenting adults want to do.

The important issue here is that enjoyable nouns (people, places, things, and experiences) are everywhere, and we continually miss them. We don't enjoy even one percent of what is out there to enjoy. It's simply about being present and aware, about showing up for our own lives, and then giving ourselves permission to enjoy it.

Contrary to the Protestant work ethic, and what you see on Jerry Springer, life is not meant to be a struggle. It's meant to be a celebration! A celebration of diversity and unity, of togetherness and individuality, of every little sacred thing that populates it. Life is a celebration of life!

Each day, your marching orders, nee your dancing orders, are the same -- go forth and enjoy!

Creating Joy!

"The affirmation of one's essential being in spite of desires and anxieties creates joy."

-- Paul Tillich

Fears and desires -- we all have them. The question is: How much do we attach to, and identify with, them? Do we cling tightly to our fears and desires, like a starving man to the world's last known pork chop? Or, do we let those mental-emotional constellations pass through us like clouds in a Japanese sky?

Attachment and identification leave us no energy to affirm our "essential being." When our attention is captured by what we are avoiding, what we are chasing, or both, our essential being is obscured, Spirit is a mere word, rather than an ongoing, everyday experience.

As crazy and paradoxical as it sounds, you affirm your essential being by just being. Nothing to do but observe as the fears subside, as the desires, fade. When that happens, what remains is reality, what remains is being. And you are that.

Fears and desires grow because we feed them with our attached and unconscious attention. They are soul suckers. When we move from knee jerk reaction to amused observation, we witness the beginning of a transformation. Worry, clinging, attachment, and suffering, give way to joy.

Whether we create the joy, as Tillich proposes, or discover that we are joy, as the mystics put it, is little more than semantics. The fact is, that through letting go of all but our essential being, joy permeates our world. We become the embodiment of Joy to the World, and life, in all it's beauty and glory, rocks on...

The Miasma of Manifestation

"Personally, I find it much more interesting to see what the Universe is going to manifest for me than to see what I'm going to manifest for me."

-- Adyashanti

Manifestation is a power that we all have within us. In India it would be called a siddhi, a type of power that comes through certain yogic practices. Siddhis are never the goal of a true spiritual path; they are at most an amusing side effect. But siddhis are very seductive to the ego. They can fool the spiritual aspirant into believing that their mere appearance denotes progress. Psychic progress, possibly, spiritual progress, not at all. In fact, there's no such thing as spiritual progress, only spiritual realization. 

Books like The Secret attempt to recast manifestation in a spiritual light. Adyashanti asks: What's the difference between working really hard to earn alot of money to buy a bunch of things that won't bring you true  happiness and manifesting a bunch of things that won't bring you true happiness? Nothing really. Both approaches lack insight and are desperate attempts by the ego to preserve its supposed-separateness and bogus power.

Better to let the Universe do the manifesting -- that's It's job, not yours. Yours is to return to the One, to see/experience the unity of it all, and to treat each and every person as the unique manifestation of God that they truly are. That, my friend, is a full time job. You really don't have anytime to pursue the "hobby" of manifestation. 

Simply let the Universe be. Let it produce what it produces. Gratefully accept what is given and share. What could be easier? It's definitely a helluva lot easier than chasing after more stuff, whether through hard work or personal manifestation. Stuff is useful, that's all. It's not the conveyer of real happiness. Let is come, let it go. Detachment, not manifestation, is the true sign of realization.

Choose Love!

"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spirit works through strength. Your strength -- to do whatever is necessary, to meet each challenge that life brings, to let the Divine work through you, even when you're tired, doubtful, or confused. 

Not that you won't be scared. We're all scared. Anyone who tells you that they're never scared is either enlightened, or as dumb as a post, and I'm betting on the latter. Do what Susan Jeffers recommends right there in the title of her book -- Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway! And amazingly, in the combination of feeling and doing, the fear begins to recede. 

As The Course in Miracles says, there are really only two emotions -- love and fear. Each day, each minute, each moment, the choice is the same -- we can choose love or choose fear. Obviously, God's way is the way of love. The coward's way is the way of fear. Our challenge, on a daily basis, is to become less coward and more God.

You're scared, I'm scared, all God's children are scared, and yet, still, even in the face of massive fear, we are encoded,  empowered and emboldened to choose love. And each time we do, our love muscle is strengthened and fear subsides a bit.

It's as simple as that, but it ain't easy. Time after time after time, choosing love over fear, making the loving comment, partaking in the loving act. And as you do, more and more of God's work is manifest through you. More and more of God is manifest as you. 

A path that consists of one simple choice made over and over again. Each choice the same, each situation different. The path from coward to Divine, one step at a time.

Just to Be Alive

"Sometimes just to be alive is enough."

-- Suzuki Roshi

We spend alot of  life trying. Trying to achieve success, trying to overcome obstacles, trying to make money, trying to be happy, trying, trying, trying... Perhaps if we put less emphasis on trying, and more on just being, some of those things that we've tried so hard to make happen would just happen of their own accord. Or they wouldn't. And either way, it would be OK.

Just being alive has its own joys, its own rewards. There is both a wild exuberance and a calm centeredness that comes from accepting and enjoying the mere act of existence. Breathing, walking, sitting, smiling are appreciated like never before. As aliveness pulses through us, we know "enoughness," perhaps for the first time.

Today I received an email from a friend about the death of one of our high school classmates. I didn't know the guy well, and I probably hadn't seen him since high school, but his passing made me glad "just to be alive" all the more. You know, we are born with no agenda; there is nothing that we have to do while we're here. And yet, we miss the aliveness of so many days pursuing desires, running from fears, buckling under to shoulds and ought to's, being consumed by the minor little adminsitrivia of life.

Just for today, focus on merely being alive. Make today International Alive Day! Sure, do what you think you really have to do, but even as you're doing it, don't worry about the outcome, just experience being alive. Who knows? You may actually enjoy it, and start  just being alive on a regular basis. Personally, I can think of no better way to live.