Wisdom Everywhere

Becoming Silence

2010-12-06T15:04:00.001-06:00

"And as we stray further from love we multiply the words. Had we remained together we could have become a silence."

-- Yehuda Amichai

The Ephemeral Nature of Thought

2010-12-06T14:40:00.005-06:00

"Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness, like the imprint of a bird in the sky."

-- The Sadhana of Mahamudra

Words of wisdom are a lot like pissing in the wind. You may get a little blow back, you may nourish a few flowers, but ultimately they don't amount to doodley squat.

That's OK. As long as were not seduced into believing that the words themselves can embody truth. They can't. They can at best point the way towards it. But even though the map is not the territory, it sure as hell helps sometimes to have one!

So, though all these wise thoughts will vanish eventually, that doesn't mean that we can't use them now to help guide our way through life. Many times the remembrance of a particular pithy phrase has saved my bacon when I've been distraught, mislead, or just plain stupid. I hope at least some of these quotations have the same effect upon you.

But on an even deeper level, when we begin to assimilate and live the wisdom we read about, our entire lives change. We may not become richer, more successful or more handsome, but we experience life differently, more completely. And so it's harder to truly become wiser without becoming happier.

Thanks for traveling with me for a short way. No matter where you are now in life, no matter where you may go, may wisdom and happiness permeate your soul!

As If I Were Great

2010-12-06T14:14:00.006-06:00

"I am going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man... I'm going to concentrate my life on the biggest ideals and ideas I can handle."

-- James Michener

James sounds like a charter member of the As If Club. Club. Motto: Fake It 'Till You Make It! Anyone can join at anytime -- all it takes is a change of attitude.

Most of us, however, spend our lives "playing small," as Marianne Williamson so famously put it. Instead of concentrating on the biggest and grandest parts of life, instead of owning our own greatness, we get by. We live in the shadows of the mountain top of human potential with our brethren who have silently agreed with us not to transcend the normal neurosis that passes for human life. Too bad.

Whether we are as successful as Michener was in the journey he chose to undertake, we really have nothing to lose, except our own limitations. If he had written one hundred books and none of them had become best sellers, he still would have been richer for the experience of having written them.

But your thing may not be writing. No matter. Their are thousands of ways to pursue the major ideas and the cosmic ideals. You must find your own path up the mountain, and it will, most likely, be very different from that of James Michener, or anyone else.

Michener made the above pronouncement at age 40, before he had written a single book. Whatever your age, it is never too late to live as if you were great. It is never too late to focus upon the biggest ideas and ideals you can handle. There is really only one perfect time to do anything -- now.

The Truth Ain't Sexy!

2010-12-06T13:00:00.007-06:00

"Truth is as poor as Job, as barren as the desert sand, and as boring as an old second-hand bookseller.

-- Hjalmar Soderberg

No wonder the truth has so few friends! It's redeeming qualities are hidden, and it's got no voluptuousness or virileness to attract people to it. The truth stands alone.

As well it should. The truth has not entered a popularity contest. The very fact that most people coldly ignore it, is, to paraphrase the Tao Te Ching, a sort of proof that it is indeed the truth!

Seekers of the truth, and to an even larger degree, speakers of the truth, are reviled, laughed at, and even pitied in most cultures. Dreamers philosophers and mystics, are assumed to be effete and less involved in life than your average Joe Six Pack. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To engage life at its deepest levels, the levels where ultimate truth resides, requires a certain spiritual musculature that makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look downright wimpy. The truth both requires and elicits strength, even more so because it has no natural sex appeal. Seeing truth is like seeing the incredible beauty in the homely girl at the high school dance rather than merely being dazzled by some Barbiesque bimbo and her silicone sisters.

So, don't expect truth to find truth standing provocatively on the street corner whispering, "Hey philosopher, want a date?" The corner is home to all flash and no substance.

Truth will never seduce you; you must seek it out with both insight and perspicacity. And in your search you'll fall asleep reading, fall in love with illusion, and fall for demigods and drag queens. Just keep on keeping on. Somewhere, hidden in the poverty, bareness, and boredom, truth will indeed be found.

Conspicuous Consumption

2010-12-06T09:29:00.005-06:00

"We are encouraged to spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, to create impressions that don't last, on people we don't care about."

-- Tim Jackson

It's funny. I posted this quotation as a status update on Facebook, and within minutes three of my friends responded with comments that basically said "not me." Well, I'm glad that my friends are so economically and psychologically enlightened, but I think we've all been guilty of at least some of what Tim points out above.

But to take a step back, he is not pointing fingers at any specific consumer, per se. What he's saying is that retailers, advertisers, and even our national economic policy encourages people to spend beyond their means. And any time you're buying stuff on credit you are literally spending beyond your current means.

The fact that retailers and advertisers encourage this is expected and nearly universally accepted. But the fact that our economic health as a nation is based upon people buying crap they don't really need with money they don't really have is a national disgrace. Better for the economy to crash and burn (which it will do eventually in on way or another, anyway) than to continue to prop it up with conspicuous consumption!

Back to my friends. As enlightened as they, and we, like to see ourselves, if we look around our homes (many of which are, in and of themselves, too freakin' big) we'll find all kinds of stuff we don't need. Why we bought it, whether it was to impress others or not, is a question we can sort out with our therapists, but the fact is we are all complicit victims with both Madison avenue and Wall Street.

What to do? Divest! Get rid of all that crap you don't need. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Or get rid of it all and start over. Hopefully with more consciousness and less acquisitiveness.

Then you can invest your time and money in more important things. Like creativity, helping others, caring for the planet, finding joy within and sharing it.

Life is so much more than just consumption. And it's so much more enjoyable when you're not ruled by the marketplace. Move beyond the current economic system and explore the alternatives. In all kinds of unexpected ways, the Universe will thank you.

Liking Overcomes Judgement

2010-12-03T08:09:00.005-06:00

"My father says I'm a lazy son of a bitch and a disgrace to my heredity, but I don't care because I like him too much."

-- Clement Greenberg

People will judge you. No matter. Though it seems to be part of our nature to be judgmental, you don't have to judge them back. Instead, you can choose to focus upon what is good about them and simply like them regardless of their judgments of you.

It's not always easy to take the high road, but, as has been said many times, it's a lot less crowded! Many people go through life as if their only purpose is to generate opinions and make judgments. In other words, they waste a large portion of their time adding nothing of value to the world. And, even more absurdly, their opinions and judgments actually decrease, rather than increase, their own happiness!

Don't try and change them. It doesn't work. Don't fight fire with fire. Instead us the power of liking. Everybody (yes everybody!) has some stellar qualities. It's up to you, as a "relationship archeologist" to unearth those qualities no matter how hidden and moldy they may be.

Why? Because it's a helluva lot more fun than getting stuck in the judgmental cycle. Liking feels so much better than judging -- just give it a try!

Criticism Versus Self-Improvement

2010-12-02T08:44:00.004-06:00

"Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Damn it's fun to criticize other people! And it's not like they don't deserve it. The problem is that no matter how good it makes your ego feel, criticizing others is a total waste of your time. Rarely do people willingly and joyfully accept your criticism, and even less rarely do they actually change as a result of it.

Self-improvement, on the other hand, always pays dividends. No matter what the world does, no matter what other people do, you will more empowered to face the future if you practice self-improvement today.

What does that look like? It may mean going for a run rather than sitting in the coffee shop gossiping, or meditating instead of watching some inane show on TV, or developing a new skill instead of buying more useless crap from China at the mall. Self-improvement is anything that

expands your choices, skills, and consciousness. It is your way to become more fully you.

And others? They're really none of your business. Their shortcomings will never be remedied by your criticism but only through their own efforts at self-improvement. You can encourage them to do so, but don't let your so-called encouragement be merely criticism in drag. Focus upon yourself, and you'll be amazed how other people magically improve as well, whether they actually change or not!

Creative Darkness

2010-12-02T07:45:00.004-06:00

"All creation emerges from darkness."

-- Michael Meade

We seem to have a natural aversion to darkness. When the days grow shorter so many people become depressed that there is now a medical name for it -- Seasonal Affective Disorder. When we face similar dark periods in our personal lives and relationships, we either push the darkness away, run towards the light, or attempt to ignore it. And our culture's attitude towards death, what many consider the ultimate darkness, is perhaps best epitomized by Dylan Thomas' poetic injunction "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

And yet, nearly every scientific theory and religious mythology has the Universe beginning in darkness. More great literature, music, and art have been inspired by periods of darkness than by all the happy times put together. And where would country music be without alcoholism, divorce, prison, and heartbreak -- all major manifestations of darkness?

So, instead of pushing away the darkness, bemoaning it, or slapping on a smiley face and pretending it doesn't exist, what if we embraced it, snuggled into it, explored its every nook and cranny? What might we find? What might we create? What might we redeem?

There's no way of knowing without going there personally. Second hand reports of darkness, while entertaining, can never replace first hand experience in terms of sparking creativity. Because that's what creativity is -- a spark in the dark. It's not even a small flame at first, much less a conflagration. It's a tiny spark in a large dark expanse, a spark so small that if you're not paying attention you miss it altogether.

But the tiny spark is where it all begins. Enflamed by idea, intuition and passion, it is the mini-spark that grows to burn away both the darkness and its causative factors. Each new creation brings a bit more light into the world. It does not permanently destroy the darkness, but it does give the world one more of those thousand points of light.

If you avoid the darkness, no new sparks are created. You can run toward the light, but you won't be adding to it. You will at best be one of those people who just seem a bit too happy to be real, who fill their lives with light that others have created in hopes of avoiding their own darkness.

Don't do that. Share your light with everyone. Enter the collective darkness, enter your personal darkness, emerge with a new spark and watch all our eyes shine!

Something to Be Enthusiastic About

2010-11-24T08:52:00.004-06:00

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about."

-- Charles Kingsley

I've never experienced much luxury in my life, but I grew up with parents who were prime believers in the Gospel of Comfort. Everything was done to make life as comfortable as possible, even though that goal went largely unacknowledged.

Enthusiasm, on the other hand, was met with a bit of skepticism. If you were too enthusiastic about something, anything, you violated the other twin pillar of my parents hidden religion -- moderation. Moderately comfortable was what they were aiming for. Not mansions and yachts or even the biggest TV on the block, but nice everything.

The problem is it's hard to get very enthusiastic about "nice." Enthusiasm, which comes from the Greek en theos, i.e., God within, is about passion excitement and internal fire. Nice just doesn't quite cut it.

For most of us, it's hard to get very jazzed about the idea of living a nice life. We need something more. We need something to both draw energy from, and invest energy in, something that makes us really want to get up in the morning.

If we have that, as Chuck points out, we're happy. We're happy to be alive. We're happy to live another day and do that thing, or pursue that goal, that really sets us ablaze with the energy of life.

So, forget trying to make your life one giant La-Z-Boy showroom. It's OK to be comfortable, but don't make the pursuit of comfort your number one goal in life. And luxury should receive even less of your attention. It is in fact totally unnecessary and a waste of planetary resources to fill your life with luxuries. And, even more important -- those yachts, mansions and Mazarattis won't really make you happy.

Instead find something to be enthusiastic about -- one thing or many things -- and pour yourself into it or them. Give whatever you love, all you've got, and lo and behold, happiness will be your blessed byproduct. The God within transforms both your external world and you at the very same time.

Attachment = Suffering

2010-11-24T05:25:00.004-06:00

"Suffering is a natural alarm, warning us that we're attaching to a thought; when we don't listen, we come to accept this suffering as an inevitable part of life. It's not."

-- Stephen Mitchell

Pain is part of life. You stub your toe, you break your wrist, you grow old and infirm. Pains, basically physical in nature, will find you sooner or later, as long as you have a body in which they can take root.

Suffering, however, is another matter entirely. Pain is a given; suffering is optional. Suffering comes from not accepting reality, not accepting pain, disappointment, and unfulfilled desires as a part and parcel of life. Suffering, as well known religious scholar Stevie M points out, comes from our attachment to our thoughts, i.e. the way we think life should be.

Normally we think of our attachments as being to people, like lovers, family or friends, or to things, like our home, car, or the latest and greatest techno-gadget. But in reality our attachment is to our thoughts about these people and things, and especially our fears of losing them.

Attachment is by its very nature based on fear and desire. We want life to turn out a certain way, and we're attached to those preferred results. The reason attachment produces inevitable suffering is that we never have complete control over those results, so we are always plagued by the ghosts of fear.

In our culture, most people mistake attachment for love. They think that without attachment, we would be cold, emotionless drones. Nothing could be further from the truth. The detached life is a joyful life because you can revel in the pleasures of each moment without worrying about sustaining them. You know that they will inevitably pass, and you're fine with that.

Anytime you start to suffer, you know attachment has crept back into your cranium. By releasing your desire to play God, your desire to have the world fulfill your wants and assuage your fears, you align yourself with reality, with what is. Reality may include pain but never suffering. Suffering always lies between your ears.

So, enjoy all the nouns -- all the people, places, things, and events in your life. Let them be exactly who and what they are. Let go of your mental images of what should be. Reality is fine just the way it is. The sooner you can accept that, the easier it will be for both you and it to change.

Unconscious Do Gooders

2010-11-23T12:13:00.009-06:00

"We must be one of those who do good unconsciously."

-- Marcus Aurelius

Choosing to be a do-gooder doesn't really do anybody much good in the long run. Sure, some people will happily accept your assistance, and you might even get that warm little ego glow that sometimes accompanies volitional altruism. But in the end any ego-based act will produce as least as many negative consequences as positive ones.

Why? Because egoic action is never done purely -- it always has an ulterior motive, and that motive queers the whole deal. It perverts our natural altruistic tendencies and twists them in the service of the ego. Sure, the homeless dude gets a buck in his cup, but it isn't because we really want to help the homeless dude, it's because we'll feel shitty about ourselves if we don't live up to our own self-image as a giving, caring individual.

True generosity, on the other hand, is spontaneous -- unconscious as Marcus calls it. There's no intermediate idea of personal gain or of maintaining a positive persona. Unconscious do-gooders don't consider themselves to be particularly virtuous. Hell, they don't consider themselves at all!

Somewhere deep inside you know what actions to take to be in alignment with the Universe and with universal good. When you allow those actions to manifest through, you without premeditating or taking credit for them, you are indeed doing God's work. Because you operate from a deeper level of selflessness, your acts are not creating opposing forces, and the results are just what they are, with no attachment on your part.

You can't volitionally choose to be an unconscious do-gooder. All you can do is open to the Universe and move as the Spirt moves you. When you do that, nothing else matters.

Buttonhole Fame

2010-11-23T10:58:00.005-06:00

"I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do."

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

What can you do? What can you do enjoyably and well? It may never get you on Dancing With the Stars, or the cover of Time Magazine or in the web's newest viral video, but who cares? If you do what you do for fame and fortune, you've already missed the boat. Don't "keep your eye on the prize," keep it on the task at hand -- that's where the real action is.

Naomi knows this. Pulleys and buttonholes trump new media sensations, fifteen minutes of famers, and shallow celebrities. You can count on pulleys and button holes and thousands of other little things to do what they're suppose to do every time without complaint. Can the same be said about you?

We are conditioned to want to be on the silver screen, in the NFL, running a multi-national corporation, or winning the inane contests seen on so-called "reality TV." We are then sold products designed to fill the holes left in our psyches when those absurd vocational dreams are left unfulfilled.

Don't fall for it. If fame comes to you, let it come for some really outstanding work you've done and not merely because you've become the media darling du jour. If you're lucky, it won't come your way at all. And you'll go button holing and pullying along your merry way. Providing an essential service way out of the spotlight, you can be you, do your thing and prosper. Sounds like a fine life to me.

Attention Promotes Satisfaction

2010-11-23T10:25:00.008-06:00

"Gaining control of our attention -- the ability to put it where we want it, and keep it there for a sustained period of time -- is a prerequisite to a satisfying life."

-- Tony Schwartz

We all seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) to some degree. And for many of us, thanks to the increased information overload provided by the new technologies, our condition continues to worsen.

No matter what the current jargon says, you cannot really "multi-task." What you do is switch quickly between activities, thus never giving any activity your complete attention for long. Studies show that it in so doing you are in fact taking more time to do these activities than if you did each one of them separately!

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that your attention muscle is becoming both skittish and flabby. You are teaching yourself how not to concentrate. And without concentration the sustained effort required to produce significant results of any kind becomes damn near impossible!

The spiritual practices of concentration, meditation, and contemplation, no matter from what tradition they are derived, are attention-training devices. They helps us focus upon what is most important in life. And only by developing this focus can we have a satisfying, meaningful, authentic life.

Texting while driving is not going to make you happy. Returning emails while talking on the phone is not going to make you fulfilled. And talking while your mouth is full is just plain bad manners!

Slow down to get ahead. Do one thing, completely and well. It may have been awhile since you've done that, but give it a try and see what happens. It may surprise you that life in the slow lane is deeper, calmer, and more satisfying than the chaotic and hyperactive dance that so often passes for productivity.

Informal Freedom

2010-11-23T09:27:00.005-06:00

"What we do formally we freeze.

What we do informally we free."

-- Paul Reps

The word "amateur" comes from the same French root as amore -- to love. Amateurs do what they do because they love it. They're not in it for the money, the ego gratification, or the power, but simply because they love doing the activity itself.

And in their love, they are free. Free from coercion, free from structure, free from policies, and SOP's, free from the chase for the almighty dollar. In essence, they're free from form. They get to create, out of their love, their own form. And they can alter it whenever they wish. There's no formality in the heart of the amateur.

Compare this with IRS regulations or the policies of the Catholic Church -- byzantine structures that definitely freeze the heart rather than free it! Formal clothes, as beautiful as they may look, are uncomfortable and constricting. Give me the aloha shirts, the sloppy sweaters, the crocs and jeans any day. Look at artists -- no formal dress there, especially when they're in the midst of creating.

So, if you value your freedom, if you love an activity, or even a person, keep your interactions as informal as possible. Which may actually, at times, be harder than slipping into formalized, calcified patterns, like 9-5 jobs and marriage.

The security implied by formality is a lie. It's not security you feel, it's the slow death of creativity, the demise of freedom. Go out into the world today and live in a wild, amateurish informal manner. Free don't freeze. Your soul will thank you.

Friction Love

2010-11-22T08:50:00.005-06:00

"Love is kindled through friction."

-- Michael Berg

If you've been around the block more than once, even if you were still riding your tricycle, you know that you can love somebody, even when you don't necessarily like them or approve of their behavior. Love and like are not like two different temperature ranges but more like two distinct animals. An elephant isn't just a major mouse, nor a mouse merely a puny elephant. Liking is one thing, loving another, and as illogical as it sounds, not liking can sometimes lead to love.

Everytime you and a loved one overcome an obstacle together, make amends with each other, or find new mutual ground, you can deepen your love and take your relationships to a higher level. Finding ways to honor each other's differences while still reveling in your unity expands your love. Skillfully resolving and living through the so-called "bad times" just makes the good times gooder!

So, never turn down your love light in the name of just getting along. Never wish the people you love were just like you and that conflict would never rear its cantankerous head. Wishing against reality is always a losing proposition! Instead, as corny as it sounds, choose to see conflict as opportunity -- an opportunity to strengthen, deepen, and expand your love, to love more even as you temporarily like less.

Life is a friction dance. Sometimes there's a thin line between being really turned on and being rubbed raw, but it's a dance nonetheless. A dance of love. Through passion and chafing, through watusi and waltz, through ballroom and break dancing, your best choice is simply to dance on, dance on , dance on...

Teachers, Teachers Everywhere

2010-11-22T08:20:00.004-06:00

"When you really pay attention, everything is your teacher."

-- Ezra Bayda

Having a guru is so 20th century! To undertake a student-teacher relationship with just one human being is so limiting that it's nearly a type of psychological/spiritual slavery. Spirit exists everywhere, in everyone and everything, and Spirit is the ultimate teacher.

That doesn't mean that you can't learn specific skills (like woodworking), specific practices (like sitting meditation) or certain knowledge (like the history of the Catholic Church) from specific teachers. You can, obviously. And even though the Internet can provide you, with just a click of a mouse, the most human knowledge ever-assembled, there are still very good reasons to take face-to-face classes, engage in discussion, labs, apprenticeships, etc. But never, ever turn your spiritual life or human development over to any one teacher or system.

The downsides of guru-teacher relationships are well documented, especially here in post-modern Western culture. And the bottom line is that these traditional teaching relationships are no longer necessary in this, the third age of spirituality, the Age of the Holy Spirit. And this is simply because Spirit, as mentioned above, is available always and everywhere, even in its ultimate secret hiding place -- deep inside you.

So, learn from every teacher you can. Respect them, honor both their knowledge and their good character, but don't become their spiritual lackey. Surrender your attachment to your ego, surrender it on a daily basis. Just make sure you surrender it to Spirit, Itself, and not to some middleman, even if that middleman is seemingly well meaning.

No more second hand God! That's the ticket. God within, God without -- everywhere you look, you are surrounded by Spirit manifesting as teachers. Welcome to the School of Life...

Impermanence Is Us

2010-11-21T10:53:00.003-06:00

"All spiritual life begins with the shock of impermanence."

-- David Guy

You're going to die. And everything and everyone you see, know, or can imagine will pass away as well. And that's the good news! Impermanence is not to be avoided, resisted, or mourned -- it is ridiculous to fight the inevitable. Instead, seeing the beauty in both creation and destruction, we can experience Spirit in this moment, right now. And, as Guy points out, that is just the beginning.

But middle and end of spiritual life are much the same as the beginning -- marked by the recognition of the sacred ineffableness of each and every moment. Nothing is forever, nothing lasts. That's OK. That's as it should be. How do we know that's how it should be? Simple -- that's how it is. Reality trumps all shoulds. And reality's defining characteristics is that it is ever changing.

So what? So, why "rage, rage against the dying of the light?" It matters not whether that death be of the physical body, of a once luscious relationship, or of an ideal job. None of them will ever last. Get over it already!

Enjoy the now. Yeah, I know, everybody says that. And you know why they say it, even if they can't live it? Because it's true! Trite sayings are deep truths, popularized and diluted. These forms of bumper sticker wisdom too shall pass.

Today it's enough to recognize that. Tomorrow it will be enough to see it anew. Impermanence on and on for as far as the mind's eye can see. And you riding the waves of change with a big shit-eating grin on your face. At least for now....

Just to Be

2010-11-21T10:00:00.004-06:00

"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."

-- Abraham Heschel

We live in a culture of achievers. We are expected to keep busy, dammit! And it's even better if that busyness produces some sort of tangible results. It doesn't seem to matter to most people whether their busyness or productivity is enjoyable or not. Work is not supposed to be fun! And it's all about the work. How in the hell else can you achieve your full potential?

What we forget is that being is the bedrock of existence; being precedes doing. There are alot of people running around doing a whole lot of stuff who can't just be to save their soul. They define themselves by what they do, by what they achieve, and even by what they fail to do. Being doesn't even cross their minds because how can you stand out and differentiate yourself merely by being? Damned if I know.

Doing feeds your ego, but no matter what you do it doesn't change your Spirit one iota. Spirit is about being and living, not about doing, succeeding, or achieving. When you recognize the holiness of life, the wholeness of life, just being is enough. That doesn't mean that you stop all doing, merely that doing becomes a spontaneous expression of being rather than a means to a desired end. Awash in the blessing of being, you happily live rather than do this or that in a desperate attempt to be happy.

Almost every legitimate spiritual path recommends that you begin each day with being rather than jumping right into doing. Meditation, contemplation, prayer, tai chi, yoga -- all are ways of helping you access deeper levels of being before you undertake surface level doing. By coming out of being, both your mind and your doing are transformed.

But it's a noisy, cacophonous world. Tuning into being requires awareness and conscious effort. Being who you are is both completely natural and extremely difficult. You must wake up to life's holiness again, again, and again. A good time to start is now.

Salvation Begins

2010-11-17T08:16:00.004-06:00

"The knowledge of our errors is the beginning of our salvation."

-- Epicurus

I don't know about you, but I'm a fuck up. I've fucked up so many times that I quit counting long ago. I do try, however, to be aware of my errors as soon as possible after I make them. And if I can, I rectify them.

I'm a long way from salvation. A really, really long way. You can't even actually see it from here, but rumor has it, it's out there (or in here) somewhere. And as far as I know, the only road to it is the Avenue of Errors.

The Path of Perfection is an illusion. To even think you're walking it is itself an error! Ain't no perfect people, or else we're all perfect, which is probably a subject for another post. From the perspective of our ancient buddy Epicurus, self-knowledge, especially as it pertains to our mistakes, is the first step on that thousand mile journey to enlightenment.

And so we precede with eyes wide open. Not playing phony holy, or ignoring our pimples and calling them dimples. We look in the mirror in the light of high noon. And while we don't always like what we see, we accept it and continue our reclamation project.

Fuck ups of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our blindness, ignorance, and self-deception.

Keep Dancing!

2010-11-17T08:02:00.004-06:00

"I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing."

-- Hillel

Hillel's journey parallels our own exactly. Except that some of us whine "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up," even when we can. And many more of us get up, but have long ago quit dancing.

Falling down is a given. Getting up, while not mandatory, is a damn good idea. Lying there bemoaning your fate never got anyone anywhere.

But dancing, dancing's the key! While the falling down and getting up are a part and parcel of life, it's dancing that makes life worth living; it's boogying your butt off that makes life fun. Give up dancing, and you've given up truly living.

So dance with a partner or dance alone. Dance the steps you learned when young, or do that whirling, hippie, free form dancing that you see at jam band shows.

No matter. It's not a contest. It's not something inane, like Dancing With the Stars. It's life. And it's meant to be a celebration, a party.

Dance on and on and on.......

Beyond Death

2010-11-17T07:51:00.003-06:00

"Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean."

-- David Sedaris

I don't know what happens after we die, and neither do you. Sure, you can tell me what you believe, but, quite frankly, I don't want to hear it. Belief has nothing to do with death.

Mystery is what death is all about. It's the biggest, friggin' mystery there is! And it can't be solved, unravelled, or believed away. All you can do is accept your ignorance and continue to live. Until you don't. And then you'll find out.

While we're still here, there's a whole lot to do that is far more interesting than speculating on what happens next. Living in the present is one awesome, or awe-full, surprise after another. That's where our attention needs to be, not on the other shore. We'll each arrive there soone enough.

Meet you on the other side! Or, maybe not....

Transcending Experts

2010-11-17T07:23:00.003-06:00

"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it."

-- Robert Heinlein

Experts know the past. They know what was probable when they became experts. They're betting with the house, but as every gamble knows, the house doesn't always win.

Experts are a great form of motivation. Nothing feels much better than proving the experts wrong. Their forte is trouble shooting. They can show you all the possible pitfalls, sinkholes, and swamps that lay ahead, even before you even take the first step on your journey. And then you can choose altenrative route.

Every new discovery, every creation, every innovation proves the experts wrong and places a fissure in the monolith of tradition that passes for wisdom. If you're the creative type, it's your job to crack their world wide open, and send the experts scurrying into retirement. Just be careful: Don't become the new, petrified, calcified expert yourself!

The Wisdom of Cher

2010-11-16T14:16:00.002-06:00

"Romance and work are great diversions to keep you from dealing with yourself."

-- Cher

Romance grabs your heart. Work infiltrates your head. And between them they can take you completely away from yourself. After all, your work is so important, and your relationships so compelling that working on yourself pales in comparison. The problem is that if you don't take time to get your own house in order, work becomes boring or overwhelming and romance a continuous melodrama. That's where stress enters the picture.

What is "dealing with yourself?" It is noticing and letting go of all your dysfunctional patterns. It is finding balance between loving yourself and still call yourself on your bullshit. Dealing with yourself includes finding, embracing, and coming from your best self, instead of just reacting to the random stimuli of the world.

Call it dealing with yourself, or working on yourself, or self-realization -- the label doesn't matter. What matters is that you don't let life's manifestations distract you from life's essence, from your essence.

Today's a great day to recommit to being your best you, to refocusing your attention and energy on self growth. No one but you can grow yourself.

Two Tragedies

2010-11-14T09:35:00.007-06:00

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

-- Oscar Wilde

Fulfilled desire and unfulfilled desire are two sides of the same coin. The problem is the coin is counterfeit. It pretends to be the currency of happiness, but as our man Oscar points out, it is the stuff of which tragedy is made.

The problem lies both with desire itself, and with our attachment to our desires. Minimal desire is natural. We all desire life's basics -- food, clothing, shelter, sex, friendship, etc. And if we're lucky enough to be born into a reasonably affluent and healthy culture, those minimal desires are not so hard to achieve.

The desires that cause most of our problems are the Madison Avenue created desires, the ego-based wants that go far beyond needs, and are usually thinly-veiled attempts to use having to compensate for a lack of being. These are the desires for more, better, faster, newer everything! They are artificially-induced by those wishing to make a profit off our discontent, discontent that they help manufacture and foster!

Secondarily, the tragedies are based on our attachment to our desires. Artificial desires, like thoughts, arise and pass away. That is, if we don't continue to feed them. We really don't need to get our shorts all in a knot over our desires. Some of them will be fulfilled, some of them won't, but if we base our happiness on our batting average in fulfilling our desires, most of us are in for some major league disappointment!

To minimize life's two tragedies,the seat of our happiness must be where desire cannot touch it, it must be within. If we bring happiness to life instead of expecting to get happiness from life, we find life to be a much happier experience. We appreciate the beauties of nature, the comforts of friendship, the mind-expanding capacity of a good book, the energizing nature of basic human interaction. If we spend more time appreciating what we have instead of worrying about, or pursuing, what we don't, it's hard for tragedy to touch us.

Awareness, acceptance, and appreciation are tragedy's natural enemies. And with them, desires become merely passing clouds in life's brilliant, blue sky.

Anonymous and Invisible

2010-11-14T07:59:00.007-06:00

"And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible."

-- Doris Lessing

I'm sitting in a cafe at a small table by the window. It's a quiet Sunday morning, people, mostly senior citizens, though a few parents with young kids, either quickly come and go, or linger awhile in small groups over a cup of coffee and conversation. Nobody knows me. I can sit here and type and think and sip my coffee sans interruption because I'm just some old fart in the corner.

If I was a young, beautiful woman, or a muscled, handsome man I'm sure I'd be getting interrupting stares. Still people probably wouldn't say much -- this is the 21st century, afterall, we don't talk to strangers! But, at the risk of sounding all Californicated, their energy would interrupt me and intrude on my cone of silence. Doris is right -- being an invisible, old ninja has its advantages.

We might think of it as a preparation for death. Wait -- that's not as dreary as it sounds! If we live the first half of our lives in attempts to construct a strong, independent ego, why not live the second transcending that self-constructed prison? And since it is the ego strokes of others that does the most to reinforce the walls of our limited identities, the withdrawal of that ego-enhancing energy is a gentle, though unexpected, form of deconstruction. Anonymity as a form of release.

No, at middle-age and beyond, you do not become a ghost. You can still crank up the juice when you really want to get noticed, but you find fewer and fewer reasons to bother. You do more of what you want without worrying so much about how others will view it, because, hell, they're probably not watching anyway! And when you do interact with others, you can do it with a greater sense of presence because your energy has not been frittered away in superficial interactions.

So, celebrate your invisibility! Use your cone of solitude as a ring of power. And if you're still young enough to be the object of attention, celebrate that as well. It too shall pass, so enjoy it while you can.

Each stage of life brings its own challenges, and its own rewards. Today let the rewards eclipse the challenges, and enjoy being exactly who you are, exactly where you are. It's a wonder-full life!

To Be a Friend

2010-11-12T07:18:00.003-06:00

"To be a friend is to step into the stream of another's life."

-- Todd May

Facebook friends, work friends, old high school friends, friends with benefits -- there are all kinds of friends out there. Some merely stick their big toe into the stream of your life; others jump right in and cause a big splash.

We need all kinds, but perhaps the best, the most important friends, are the ones willing to be there in the thick of things with us, no matter what. They're not location-specific, or time-bound. They're not just your friends because you happen to work together or live next door to each other. They don't show up in an instant and fade out the next. They are with us for the long haul. Not only do they step into the stream of our lives, they let our streams co-mingle so that our lives nourish and impact each other.

One of the reasons that these soul friends are so important is that they are so rare. Most of us can count their number on one hand. That's OK. Three to five really good, lifelong friends is plenty -- we've each got a stream, not an ocean! You know who they are; they know who you are, without either of you having to say a damn thing about it. (OK, except maybe when you're both really drunk, and you get them in a headlock and slur, "I love you, buddy!").

But just because you don't talk about it, doesn't mean that you don't recognize the richness that these relationships bring to your life. One of the most wonderful things about these soul friendships is that you don't have to try to maintain them -- they are a given. That doesn't mean, though, that you should take them for granted.

Is there a true friend out there that you've not paid much attention to lately? If so, today is a great day to consciously reach out, give back, or show some form of appreciation. Go wade into the stream of their life for awhile, or invite them to sashay into yours. Hell, if they're really good friends, invite them to leap in, skinny dip and do the backstroke!

The Goodness of Gossip

2010-11-08T09:30:00.005-06:00

"Gossip isn't scandal and isn't malicious. It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same."

-- Phyllis McGinley

We all love stories. And we love talk about each other. It's a natural human trait. As long as we're not slandering another person with vile lies, we're just sharing specific reports on the human condition, and these reports can help us to both recognize our commonalities and celebrate our differences.

I didn't know Phyllis, but she was one of my grandmother's favorite writers, so I doubt that she was a nattering, old bitty who enjoyed verbally stabbing people in the back. I'll bet she, like most of us who are not too jaded or crusty to admit it, was a lover of the human race, a writer who relished hearing, and talking about, those few hundred humans she knew.

Just think: There are billions of people on the planet. And we know less than a handful. But those handful represent for us the entire human race. All our first hand knowledge about humanity comes through our relationships to this paltry, random cross section of individuals.

The other day on Facebook I saw an update that said "I'm glad I know so many weird, strange, different, wonderful, beautiful, marvelous individuals." I'm guessing that this woman also hears alot of really cool gossip! The more diverse the set of people you know, the larger your potential pool of knowledge about the human race. While all stories may embody some common themes and archetypes, the difference in the details is endless!

So, today gossip about your friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and family members alike. Don't discriminate -- be an equal opportunity gossip. And, if you have the time, go one step farther, and meet somebody new. Tomorrow, you'll be able to gossip about them, too!

Unconditional Love

2010-11-08T04:01:00.008-06:00

"You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a state of oneness with all that is."

-- Stephen Levine

I'm tempted to say that Stephen has said it all -- no commentary or explanation is needed. And yet, if love is just that simple, why is it the subject of such monumental misunderstanding?

Love, true love, is not about romance, or sex, or even relationship -- it's about identity. To love truly, deeply, and unconditionally we must identify ourselves as love, nothing less. It's not me over here and you over there and somehow we conjure up some emotional resonance between us. It is, as Stephen says, about unity, about recognizing our oneness not just with each other but with all others, with the entire universe.

I know, that's a tall order. Sometimes I don't even like my partner. Hell, sometimes I don't even like myself! How can I experience love for the entire universe? Only through Being, not through doing. Letting go of your limited identity, not trying to expand upon it.

Falling in love is a pretty accurate description, even though the phrase is almost entirely misused. To truly be unconditional love, we must let go, we must fall into it because it is the pure ground of being, the substratum of all our existence.

Falling in love with another person is a step. In its purest sense this type of romantic love is you and another free falling into that space of love together. Where we get confused, though, is in our attachment to the other person. As beautiful, nice, sexy, and wonderful as they are, they are neither necessary nor sufficient to our experience of love. At best they are a catalyst that helps us recognize that the state of love is always there patiently waiting to be discovered.

Attachment is the enemy of unconditional love. By becoming attached we attempt to put conditions upon love. Love will have none of it. Your attachments will only lead to your demise. Love is completely unfettered and for you to be love, you must be, too.

It's both the simplest thing and the hardest thing in life -- to love unconditionally. It is our primal nature, our true calling, and yet it is obscured beneath a gobzillion layers of conditioning. Today, see if you can at least put a small crack, a fissure, in that conditioning. Love for no reason. Be what you are.

Too Much Awesome

2010-10-21T08:17:00.003-05:00

"Frankly, I get a little bored -- and annoyed and suspicious -- when someone is sharing too much awesome."

-- Colleen Wainwright

We're all awesome! And we're all assholes. Awesome assholes is our natural state. Whether you belong to the other AA or not, you belong to this one just by virtue of your birth.

Like Colleen, I get really p.o.'ed, and highly skeptical, when someone over emphasizes the awesome end of the spectrum. Seems like a pathetic attempt to avoid their own assholishness, and obscure the yin/yang polarities of existence.

Hey, I really love to hear positive news, happy stories, and tales of success. It's just that not everything in life is great, awesome, or sweet.

I used to work with a guy named Ray. Ray had been to one too many power of positive thinking seminars. Every time I passed Ray in the hall and said "How's it going Ray?" he always answered with the same two words, "Never better!" That's what he'd been taught to say, that's what he wanted to believe, and even if coyotes just chewed off Ray's right foot, he was going to answer "Never better!"

The thing is, Ray was always walking in a somewhat contorted manner that, even though he wasn't disabled, seemed to connote some level of physical or psychological pain. When he said "Never better!" he said it through clenched teeth and with a jaw so tight you could use it as a vise. Either Ray was being honest, things were indeed "never better," i.e., they always sucked, or Ray was being inauthentic in a misguided attempt to be positive.

Better to be real than falsely positive. Things ain't always awesome. "Never better" is a lie.

Granted, when most people ask "How you doing?" they really don't want to know. But when you're telling the stories of your life, remember that every steak you've eaten was not "to die for," every sunset not "the most beautiful ever," and every third rate band "awesome."

Honesty and authenticity trump hype and spin, everyday.

Compassionate Neglect

2010-10-13T03:46:00.003-05:00

"Compassion simply stated is leaving other people alone... You are available to another human being to provide what they need to the extent that they ask."

-- Ram Dass

Attention do-gooders: You maybe doing more harm than good! Every action has so many repercussions -- both positive and negative -- that it is impossible to be aware of them all. Even if we do the best we can, we are undoubtedly creating unforseen results. And yet, we can't just do nothing, can we?

One way to look it is that there are three kinds of business -- my business, your business, and God's business. My attention should be exclusively focused on my business. That is what I'm responsible for; that is what I can do something about.

Keeping my nose out of your business is really a form of faith, trust and compassion. It shows that I have faith in you to do whatever is right for you, that I trust you to figure it out, and I have enough compassion to not get involved and muck it up.

God's business is all that stuff that neither you, I, nor anyone else can control, or even influence, so we might as well leave it alone. Stuff like the weather, and fate, and whether the Cubs will ever win the World Series again.

So, one side of the coin of compassion is loving and trusting you enough to leave you alone. The other side of the coin, though, is being there to help and assist you when asked. And making that willingness known to you ahead of time so that you don't hesitate to call upon me in tough times.

Compassion is being a non-pushy resource person. It's TCB coupled with TLC. I don't try and tell you what to do and how to live, but if there's something that you need and ask for that I can provide, I'll be Johnny on the friggin' spot with it!

And, if you do the same thing, what a wonderful world this would be!

Alienation & Anxiety Be Gone!

2010-10-11T07:28:00.004-05:00

"It is the loss of living spiritual experience in daily life that, more than anything, breeds the alienation and anxiety that plague modern life."

-- Laurence Boldt

We go through life as if walking in a dream. Following our routines, going through the motions, doing what needs to be done and what's expected of us, we are civilization's good, little soldiers, so why do we feel out-of-sorts so much of the time? Depression, bipolar disorder, cutting, eating disorders, and even suicide run rampant through our culture. Why should a people who have the highest standard of living ever seen on this planet be so damn unhappy?

Larry nails is -- it's because we live on the surface of life, disconnected from the Spirit, the elan vital, the essence that makes life worth living. We go days, weeks, whole lifetimes without experiencing the essential Unity of existence. Hell, we even go whole lifetimes disconnected from our true selves!

And so we're anxious about today, tomorrow, and life in general. And we're alienated from ourselves, from others, from the planet, from Spirit. Without the regular and ongoing experience of Spirt we revert to narrow beliefs and dry religious rituals. We choose up sides and argue my doctrine against yours, all the time missing the beautiful Spirit that runs between us and within us.

We don't need to try harder, we need to relax. We need to let go of our striving for superiority and perfection, even our striving for survival, and just be. We will survive. And we will survive much better together than we ever can apart.

The essential experience of Spirit, of life, is the experience of Unity. We are all One. The planet, the people, the plants, and animals -- all manifestations of one essence, all permutations of one energy. And it's that overwhelming experience of Oneness that obliterates boundaries, melts anxiety, eradicates alienation.

If we can operate daily from that level of experience, our lives will be joyous and stress free. We will remove our egos from the equation and let Spirit move through us. When we recognize our oneness in Spirit, there is nothing, and no one, to be alienated from. When we experience the sunlight of Unity, anxiety burns away like so much morning dew.

If each day we make our primary focus this experience of life's deepest core, we will find that everything else just unfolds before us. Anxiety and alienation will no longer plague us. Life will be or ally, not or adversary. And we, we will shine like never before!

Used Up

2010-10-08T08:29:00.004-05:00

"You use up everything you've got trying to give everybody what they want."

-- Nina Simone

The Delphic Oracle said, "Know thyself." Billy the Bard took it one step further with "This above all, to thine own self be true." And then Nina Simone completed the cycle with the above bon mot of wisdom.

Life is all about self. Not in a selfish sense, but in the sense of a starting point, a touchstone, an identity. Giving of yourself is fine -- right up to the point where you totally deplete yourself, and then you're no good to anybody. As they say during the safety announcements on the airplane -- "Put on your own mask first before assisting other passengers."

You can always find people who will want you to give endlessly, people who will take and take and take. And the better you become at what you do, the more they will want you to do it for them. It's OK. It's nice to be wanted. But remember you can just enjoy being wanted without having to do anything about it. You can nourish yourself on desire without giving into its demands. To do so is a type of psychological alchemy -- transforming the base metal weakness of others into personal, golden strength.

What you give is up to you. And it should be motivated not just by the needs or desires of others, but also by your own inner promptings, by the movements of soul and Spirit. For only you really know what you can afford to give, how much is healthy and loving, and where depletion and co-dependence set in.

Honor your body, honor your limits, honor your intuition. Most of all, honor your self. Do what you can do with ease and grace. Simply let the rest go.

The Laughter We Crave

2010-10-06T04:35:00.007-05:00

"People crave laughter as if it were an essential amino acid. I believe that fun is as important as love."

-- Patch Adams

The Beach Boys knew it. Whether Daddy takes the T-bird away or not, it's still essential to have fun, fun, fun! LMAO is more than Internet shorthand, it is a wise and joyous approach to life.

But we're faced with wars, recessions, foreclosures, violence, and looming eco-disasters, not too mention the rising price of lattes at Starbucks -- what's to laugh about, you ask?

Everything! The absurdity of it all! And most of all the absurdity that we get caught up in it all and take it all seriously. Every negative in our world can easily be traced to the fact that we take ourselves too damn seriously!

If you wait for fun to find you, you might as well be waiting for Godot. Fun is not found as much as it is made. It is made by a mind that takes itself and the world around it with a whole friggin' mine full of salt. Fun is made by participating in the world as a dance, not as a life or death proposition.

Make no mistake about it, you're going to die. The only question is to do you want to have some fun before you do, or do you want to walk around gritting your teeth, clenching your sphincter and taking everything short of death so damn seriously that you forget to really live?

When you wake up laughing and got to bed laughing, you'll know you have arrived. Arrived at a perspective on life that cannot be dimmed by external events or things outside of your control. Because really, the only thing within your control is you. Whether you choose to laugh and have fun or not is completely up to you.

What you got to lose? Yep, your stress, depression, and misery. Your boredom, ennui, and suffering. Hmm... misery or fun, what should I choose?

I hope you choose guffaws and grins and buttloads of merriment. I hope you choose good times, happy thoughts, and light, love and laughter. I hope you make everyday a LMAO day!

Experiencing Being

2010-10-06T03:57:00.005-05:00

"Nothing is easier than to experience life as 'one damn thing after another,' to live permanently under the pressure to meet induced needs and imposed standards. Nothing is easier than to forget ourselves. Simply to experience myself as being is to feel the being of all there is, the mystery that being is. And no one who has ever had this experience will ask what is the use of it."

-- Sebastian Moore

Being is core, is prime, is sacred. All comes out of being. And yet, we get lost in the all. As the Tao Te Ching says we abandon the Tao and get mired in "the ten thousand things."

Returning to being is both a return to our true selves and a return to our primal unity. My being and your being are merely different shades, different permutations of Being, itself. `

Being is useless. It cannot be used to get anything because it is at the heart of everything. It cannot be manipulated to be a means to any end. It is both the beginning and the end of all that is.

The ten thousand things will always be with us. Seeing them as "one damn thing after another" is to lose touch with their true being, with our true being, with the mysterious core and essential unity of life.

Out of unity comes duality and then multiplicity. When we return to unity, multiplicity loses its sting. It is no longer confusing, no longer pressure-packed or overwhelming.

When we live from being, we live out the mystery. We no longer feel a need to make sense of it all, much less to manage or control it all. We are in it, we are it. No separation, no battles, no stress.

Being, alone, is enough. Doing and having happen, but let's not confuse them with who we are. We are the mystery of all. Long live the mystery.

Natural Contribution

2010-10-01T08:28:00.004-05:00

"We make a contribution to the world just by being ourselves in every moment."

-- Shakti Gawain

Sounds simple enough. What could be easier than being yourself?

Look again. How much time do you spend trying to be who you think you should be, a better version of you, you 2.0? And then, how much time do you spend trying to be who you think someone else wants you to be -- be they your partner, parent, boss, or friend?

Being you may seem simple, but it's not necessarily easy.

What makes it so important, though, is that no one else can be you, no one else can make your contribution to this crazy, beautiful, mixed-up world. Just being yourself brings a new random element, an innovative energy into the universal mix. Never before, and never again, will the contribution you make her and now be possible. You yourself won't even be able to make it because who you will be tomorrow is not who you are today. Who you will be an hour from now will even be different from who you are in this unique moment in time.

So, for God's sake, don't strive for consistency! Let yourself change and grow, and as you change and grow, so will your contribution. Being yourself is not a stagnant state of affairs in which you put your beliefs and behaviors in lockdown mode and attempt to operate from that self-created prison of consistency for the rest of your life.

Being yourself is being wild and free, being open and alive to this moment and every moment and letting the opportunities to contribute to the world emerge from your direct interaction with reality.

You don't have to win the Nobel Peace Prize to contribute. You don't have to cure cancer, become a philanthropist, or make the world's best pizza. All you have to do is what you love, and what is placed before you with love. The rest will take care of itself.

Thinking is Highly Overrated

2010-09-23T09:27:00.004-05:00

"It's not healthy to be thinking all the time. Thinking is intended for acquiring knowledge or applying it. It is not essential to living."

-- Ernest Wood

If Descartes is right, and you think therefore you are, who are you when you're not thinking? I do believe what we've got here is a Western philosophical koan. And as anyone with just a smattering of knowledge about Zen knows, koans never have just one right answer.

As "Woody" points out above, thinking is at times just a bad habit. Granted, it's useful for problem solving, planning and the like. But what about when you're just hanging out, just being? Too much thinking just gets in the way. It's hard to simply groove on living when your mind is filled with roof brain chatter.

The cool thing is that life can be lived at a deeper level than thinking. Descartes got it backwards -- being precedes thinking, it doesn't follow it. Being is primary. You can live from a deep, intuitive level of being if you're willing to let go of thinking-as-usual and allow life to emerge and engage you on its own terms. It will anyway, so why drive yourself crazy thinking about it?

And then you will find out, in an up close and personal way, who you are when you're not thinking. Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Nothing Works!

2010-09-21T07:01:00.005-05:00

"Nothing you do will do. Now what will you do?"

-- Shin'ichi Hisamatsu

Have you ever felt like you've tried everything and you're still not getting the results you want? You may be looking relentlessly for a job, but you get no offers, or even interviews. Or maybe you're trying to save, or spark, a relationship and the other person is indifferent, aloof, and cold. Or maybe you're really trying to make your whole life work on multiple levels and no matter what you do it just isn't working! Now what do you do?

Nothing. Sit down, shut up, and watch your wild and crazy mind spit-out all sorts of hare-brained thoughts. Just watch it. Don't attempt to guide it, control it, or repress it. Merely observe. Let things calm down internally, and they will begin to calm down externally. Because when you've done it all and none of it works, surrender is the only logical path.

Surrender your manic mind. Surrender your dreams and schemes. Surrender, most of all, your fears and desires, the two driving forces behind most of our frustration and craziness. Sooner or later, you'll see that when nothing works, nothing works!

Yes, the only thing that works is nothing because from the vast emptiness of nothingness, new possibilities emerge. Possibilities that have nothing to do with your old way of thinking. Possibilities that may even have nothing to do with your old idea of you.

When you move from nothingness, you don't move at all. The Universe moves through you. and the Universe always works. Maybe not the way the old you wanted it to, or anticipated it would, but the Universe always works.

Many people never realize that nothing they do will do. They keep banging their heads against the walls of reality until it comes time to "rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Others realize their personal powerlessness and sink into deep depression, ennui, or the bottom of a bottle.

Lucky are the few who can unclench the tight fist of ego long enough to let the Universe work through them. They know nothing works. And they celebrate that fact everyday.

The choice is yours -- keep on keeping on, doing what doesn't work, or do nothing and see.

You're Not Fine

2010-09-17T08:33:00.006-05:00

"Because I know myself very well, it is difficult to say who I am."

-- Taiso Eko (Second Zen Patriarch)

Walking down the street you encounter a friend.

"How are you? they ask.

"Fine," you say, "how about you?"

"Fine," they reply.

And the conversation moves on to other topics. Or you both walk on with barely a hitch in your stride.

Harmless social banter, you say. Perhaps. But beneath the surface there maybe a whole lot more going on. In fact you may not feel "fine" at all at that moment, but you know that nobody really wants to hear a play-by-play description of your lousy day. "How are you?" is not meant to be taken literally.

But what if you did take it literally and deeply, how would you answer? If you know yourself as well as Taiso knew himself, the question "How are you?" might be as difficult to answer as "Who are you?" They both call upon you to boil down a massive amount of information into a short, verbal description.

We say we are "fine." We say we are a mother or a father, a student or an attorney, a blogger or a singer. We have all kinds of words to label and describe ourselves, but the better we know ourselves the more inadequate they all seem.

Sometimes when people ask me "How are you?" I want to say "I don't have the foggiest idea." Or when I'm at a networking event and a new acquaintance asks me "What do you do?" I want to say "Just a bunch of random crazy shit."

The fault really lies in the questions themselves. They really are not rational. They ask us to put into words what can only be experienced. Sure, they're well meaning, or at least semi-functional, but in reality they're meaning-less. And, worst of all, they condition us to think that we really can describe ourselves or our current state of consciousness with a well chosen assortment of nouns or adjectives.

Face it -- the better you know yourself, the less you can describe yourself. The more you understand the changing nature of thoughts, felling, and emotions, the less willing you are to describe your current state because you know that at any given moment it can change.

Who are you?

Hell if I know.

How are you?

Don't have a clue.

Welcome to reality.

Worth the Suffering

2010-09-06T04:24:00.006-05:00

"Truth is everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."

-- Bob Marley

No one lives up to all your expectations. No one treats you exactly the way you'd like to be treated 100% of the time. It's called reality. And it hurts.

It hurts when people don't love you, when they let you down, when they ignore you, and when they don't accept you for who you are. You're hurt even by (especially by) those you love the most. And yet, somehow, it's all worth it.

It's worth it because your suffering redeems both them and you. It's worth it because through hurt comes transformation and transcendence. It's worth it because hurt fully felt, rips you wide open and allows you to give and receive love from new-found depths.

Who are the ones worth suffering for? Most of us start with our families, especially our children. Sometimes friends, spouses and partners are added to the list. It's the rare person who will suffer for an acquaintance or a stranger, much less for all of humanity.

Rumor has it, Jesus was one of that rare breed. No, I don't think he was the only one, but he was shining example. And has been said many a time -- we all have our cross to bear. We all have our own unique suffering through which we may be saved.

So, don't expect perfection in others, or in yourself. Suffer not just the little children but everyone. At the deepest level, all are worth it. None are unworthy of our suffering.

But wait -- all is not bleak! Golden moments arise. Moments of pure grace. Moments when all suffering is forgotten and light shines from one and all. These moments arise because of, and in spite of, all suffering. They arise on the far side of pain. They arise through our willingness to suffer and embrace it all. All. Each and everyone, each and every moment.

All will suffer. All are worthy. All are love.

Did You Not Live?

2010-04-29T11:08:00.005-05:00

"I did nothing today. What? Did you not live? That is not only the most fundamental but also the most illustrious of your occupations."

-- Montaigne

Damn, we're busy, little beavers! We're always doing, running, going. And to what avail? So we can go deeper into debt to buy more crap we don't really need?

What if we changed our definition of success? What if we no longer thought of it as doing the most, having the most, achieving the most? What if we redefine success as enjoyment of life?

As Montaigne so forthrightly points out, our numero uno vocation is simply to live. All the rest is icing on the cake. And while I like icing as much as the next guy, we've got it piled on so thick and deep that we can no longer taste the natural sweetness of life itself. It's all frosting all the time, and as we all know frosting's got no damn nutrients whatsoever!

Have you forgotten about the joys of breathing, of moving, of perceiving? Do you miss the most fundamental bliss of being alive?

Well, it's hard to miss something you can't even remember experiencing. So think back to your childhood. Specifically, remember the long, luxurious summer days of your youth when just being outside and being alive made your blood pulse with excitement.

Ford used to to use the tagline "Quality is job 1." And they were right, it is. Quality of life is always your number one job, today and everyday. Are you experiencing it? Or are you chasing the golden ring with such intensity that your quality of life has gone straight down the crapper?

You live today. And if you live fully, openly, whole-heartedly, that, alone, is enough.

The Desire-Thought Connection

2010-04-29T10:39:00.003-05:00

"It is desire that engenders thought."

-- Plotinus

Thought is obviously very useful. At least we think it is! But what about consciousness beyond thought, consciousness without an object? In most spiritual traditions it is the transcendence of thought, not the refinement of thought, that is seen as the highest stage of human development.

Why? I think a lot of it has to do with the desire-thought link that Plotinus observes. All thought is rooted in desire, and every desire is divisive. Desire divides the world into what is versus what you want it to be. In that primal division Unity is lost, dissension arises, and people holding competing desires are pitted against one another.

The Buddha, as well as many other spiritual teachers, observed that life is much smoother once you give up desire. Acceptance of what is leads to peace of mind. And that peace is a calm, smooth, mental lake without tumultuous ripples of thought to disturb it.

So, should we all walk around like thoughtless zombies? Hardly. There is a time and place for thought, but the time is not 24/7 and the place is not everywhere. Don't worry, you won't lose your capacity to think if you succeed in spending time in a desireless, thought-free state. In fact, you will probably find that your thinking is both sharper and deeper if you take regular cognitive vacations.

Action that grows out of a desireless state is action that works for the benefit of all and is at harmony with the Universe. It proceeds spontaneously from a deep intuitive level rather than being a product of the internal war of thought and emotion. And as such, it produces better results.

Releasing desire automatically reduces thought. You observe, you perceive, but you feel no need to ruminate about what is or change it to work for your personal benefit. Today try living in the space between thoughts, in the moments devoid of desire. Try it and see what happens.

No Waiting

2010-04-27T10:37:00.005-05:00

"We need not wait for big events and others decisions to determine who we are. The opportunity to become who we want to become lies in this very moment's behavior."

-- David Reynolds

Please don't wait for opportunity to knock. That son-of-a-bitch is knocking all the time! It's just that most of us are lost in the shuffling of our Ipods or too engrossed in the latest episode of Survivor to even hear the tap, tap, tap of possibility.

Each moment, every little choice, every minute behavior is the window of opportunity for which you so vainly wait. You don't need to graduate from college first, or get married, (or get divorced), or earn a six figure income, or get enlightened to get on with becoming the person you want to be. Your character is fashioned not by major rites of passage but by small, everyday actions that float just below your threshold of importance.

And others decisions, while they may seem to facilitate your growth and development, are at best supportive of your own efforts. No one else can decide who you will become. All men are self-made men. And all women, too.

I'm usually not one to recommend cheesy affirmations, but, what the hell, in this case one can't hurt. To keep focused on the power of your own self-creation, use this grammatically appalling phrase: Who I be is up to me!

Revolutionize Yourself

2010-04-27T10:13:00.005-05:00

"The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you earn the right to overthrow the rest of us."

-- Rob Brezsny

It's always amazing to me how many people piss, moan, and complain about the nature of politics, the state of the world, and the condition of the universe, who can't even keep their own little house in order. Change yourself, change your own little world, and then you've got the cred to begin to change the rest of us and the world as a whole. Until then, nose to the grindstone of self-improvement, my friend.

And change, remember is a process, not an event. Sudden enlightenment is about as likely as winning the Powerball jackpot. You transcend and transform each and every self you create, over and over again until either no-self, or only Self, is left. Then it makes sense to take the Bodhisattva Vows. Up until then you're just mouthing the words; you might as well be saying The Lord's Prayer or telling a litany of knock-knock jokes.

Again and again you surprise you by surpassing you, by mutating you, by becoming both more You and less you simultaneously. Conscious evolution is a pretty wicked trip, an amazing ride. Much more fun than just emerging from the primordial slime and trading some fins for arms, some gills for lungs.

The revolution begins with evolution. It begins on your meditation cushion, not in the streets. The revolution begins within.

Spontaneous Action

2010-04-26T08:07:00.004-05:00

"Having overcome the obstacles to the comprehension of life as it really is, we manifest spontaneous, unmotivated action completely appropriate to the present moment."

-- Claude Whitmyer

Wu wei. That's what the classical Taoists call it. Spontaneous, non-volitional action, action that doesn't originate from the ego. And, no, I'm not talking about mindless, knee jerk re-action. As Claude reminds us, the action we are referring to here is always appropriate for the time, place and situation.

The key to performing such action, to allowing such action to be manifest through you, is direct and unmediated comprehension of reality. No beliefs, no shoulds, no theories, no emotional coloring -- just pure perception, total acceptance and deep understanding.

Did I say "just?" It's a tall order to see the world as it is without the distortions of socialization, beliefs, feelings, and cognitions. Most of the time we don't even realize that the world we think we "see" is not really the world as it is. Our conditioning is so deep and unconscious that we have a hard time seeing the world except through the filters that have become our second nature.

But when "the doors of perception are cleansed," as Blake said, and Huxley echoed, everything stands clear and undisguised. In that clearing, action happens, without us having to decide what action to take. True spontaneity rules and we act in harmony with what is, whatever what is may be.

That's our goal. Not to have to ruminate and speculate and struggle. To move easily, effortlessly and enjoyable through life. At one with it all, and yet each unique in our own way.

Wu wei. Doing nothing. And yet nothing remaining undone.

Daily Re-Creation

2010-04-26T07:23:00.003-05:00

"What endures needs to be created daily in different ways for people to be aware that it is always there."

-- Carol Hendrickson

We have really short memories. Especially concerning the ultimate and important stuff in life. Sure, we can usually remember the name of our favorite beer or the lyrics to a song we loved in high school, but we forget the BIG things, like we're all One, God is love, and each moment of each day is unique and irreplaceable.

There is a whole lot of redundancy in the wisdom shared on these pages -- planned redundancy. A few major themes, a few huge truths are repeated over and over because they're extremely important and they tend to get buried by the minutiae of life.

On a personal level, each of us needs to recreate our connection to, and expression of the love that always lies dormant deep in our hearts. We need to sit in silence and reconnect. We need to discover and grow new ways to express that love to others and to the world. The love endures at the core of life, but we need to remind both ourself and others, on a daily basis, that it is indeed always still there.

And that is our charge, our mission -- to let our true Self shine through our unique, individual selves. To create acts, expressions, and vehicles for love and wisdom to enter people's consciousness again and again and again.

And if you're really present, really living in the now, it never gets old, never seems boring or stale. Truth blossoms anew every day, in each moment in a different way. And you are reincarnated in each expression of these loving truths. No need to wait for death. Reincarnation is real and now. You both new and eternal -- all ways.

The Only Game in Town

2010-04-22T14:43:00.007-05:00

"To take what there is and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived -- to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that -- this doubtless is the right way to live."

-- Henry James

Life doesn't present itself the way you want it to. It has this really nasty, disconcerting habit of not paying any attention to your most exquisite plans. Life just happens.

And, so, you have a choice. You can bewail the fact that life doesn't live up to your wishes, dreams, and desires; you can wait impatiently for things to change for the better; or you can dive right into the big, icky, sticky mess in front of you and go for it!

It's all just raw material, anyway. Every event, happening, circumstance, and experience is just the raw material you need to build your own unique, crazy, idiosyncratic life. And it's given to you gratis. That's a helluva deal! Who are you to be looking this gift horse called Life in the mouth?

And you, too, are raw material -- material that can be molded into a reasonable facsimile of a great human being. But you gotta work with what you got -- both internally and externally. So what if you didn't get born with Barbie doll looks, Einsteinian brains, and Bill Gates dough? You got what you got, and you move forward from there.

Because if you ain't moving forward, you're sliding down, devolving into the primordial ooze from whence we came. Feel your feet turning into fins, your tongue flicking for flies? That's your reptilian brain starting to take over. That's you waiting vainly for perfection to happen.

Don't wait for the preferable, work with the actual. It's all you've got. It's the only game in town.

Ill-Minded Persons

2010-04-21T14:36:00.005-05:00

"Ask thyself, daily, to how many ill-minded persons thou hast shown a kind disposition."

-- Marcus Antonius

It's easy to be nice to nice people. It's almost impossible not to be kind to grieving widows, cute, cuddly babies, and earnest, young seekers. But what about the mean, nasty, ugly sons-of-bitches out there? What have you done for them lately?

I didn't say you had to take one to lunch. As far as I know it isn't International Take a Son-of-a-Bitch to Lunch Week. But you might, as Marcus suggests, audit your own behavior when it comes to how you treat the mean-spirited, ill-tempered, and hard-hearted amongst us. Obviously, the're the ones who need your love the most!

After all, it's just a matter of degree, isn't it? Who among us hasn't been in a foul, nasty mood at one time or another? And at those times wouldn't it have been great to receive a kind word, a gentle touch, a friendly smile? Of course it would. Even if you wouldn't have appreciated it in the moment, in retrospect it would have meant something.

So, now it's your turn. How would you like to be Saint for a Day? Doesn't sound like much fun? Give it a try, you may be surprised. Make it your mission, just for today, to brighten the day of every miserable bastard and bat chit crazy bitch you encounter. Maybe even shine on the slightly out-of-sorts ones, too.

Just try it for one day and see what happens. You can surely go back to being a miserable sinner tomorrow -- that option is always open. Or a happy-go-lucky, unconscious, normally neurotic citizen. But today, dig a little deeper, give the ill-minded person a little cheer. You may even find that you also cheer up yourself!

Turning Within

2010-04-20T11:21:00.003-05:00

"When a person turns inside towards that true self, the necessity of any scriptures and scientific theories will never arise for that person."

-- Ramana Maharshi

Scriptures are statements of belief. Scientific theories are educated guesses. For the spiritual aspirant, the mystic-in-training, beliefs and speculations, no longer hold any appeal. Divine ignorance is seen as a a gateway to realization, as well as a state of grace.

All that we can really know in the physical world are facts and names, anyway. The exact temperature at this moment, the 33rd president of the United States, the name of the flowering bush across the street. Neither beliefs not theories are really knowledge, though many people mistake them for such.

Turning within we enter the realm of intuitive understanding. The dictionary defines intuition as "a non-cognitive way of knowing." This mean you know that you know, you just don't know how the hell you know! The intuitions granted the spiritual seeker are neither beliefs nor theories nor facts. They are, instead, deeper understandings of Reality. When you begin to be graced with those intuitions, beliefs seem like child's play and speculations adolescent infatuations.

Identifying with the "true self" rather than with the physical body, social persona, or psychological and emotional states, is what opens you to these intuitive whispers from the Divine. When you give up attachment to the egoic sense of self, all the beliefs and speculations that the ego held so tightly as truth begin to naturally unravel. You are no longer bound by them. And in that new state of freedom, Divine ignorance and intuitive knowing peacefully coexist in an emotional milieu of awe and appreciation.

It's a process described in every spiritual tradition. But descriptions are merely signposts pointing the way. They can bolster your courage and make you realize that you are really not alone, but the journey you must take is all your own. And the journey, while uniquely yours, is always in the same direction -- within.

The Most Dangerous Man

2010-04-16T12:04:00.004-05:00

"The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice, but he will not listen to other men."

-- Thomas Merton

Not listening to others is usually seen as the height of egotism. And it is, when all you listen to is your own ego. For crying out loud, at least listen to some other egos!

But the interior voice that Merton mentions is not the voice of ego but rather the voice of soul, the voice of intuition. It transcends the cacophonous din created by the voices of egos, whether separately or together.

The person who listens to this internal voice is dangerous because the voice nearly always calls for radical actions that defy social convention and leave the powers that be, and their assorted minions, feeling angry, or, at best, uneasy.

The voice heard by the contemplative cuts through the suggestions, pronouncements, and demands of others. The contemplative's visions moves him or her beyond the mundane sights glimpsed by physical eyes alone.

And yet, as dangerous as they are, the contemplatives are our teachers and saviors. They show us a deeper, more encompassing view of life, life without the phony borders and barriers of social convention and small-minded provincialism. Life without the ego edging God out.

But true contemplatives are hard to find these days. Our colleges and universities turn out more mortgage bankers than mystics. And so, it's up to you. More likely than not, you will have to be the first one on your block to see visions and hear inner voices, to step outside consensus reality and head straight for the real thing.

It takes strength, but not pride, to be the neighborhood mystic. Robes are not required, however. Neither is sermonizing to the birds. Simply listen within, not just without. See with inner eyes, not just external ones.

It begins with sitting down in a quiet place, closing your eyes, and shutting up. The rest you will have to discover on your own. Bon voyage!

Talking About Goodness Is Not Goodness

2010-04-16T11:35:00.005-05:00

"So when people start talking a lot about 'Goodness,' you know something is wrong. Run the other way."

-- Michael LaFargue (his interpretation of a line from the Tao Te Ching)

True goodness doesn't need a PR agent singing its praise. It shines forth with its own light. When a person proclaims goodness for an idea, a religion, a political party, another person, or most especially for him or her self, you can be sure that true goodness has caught the last train to Clarksville. And you should, too.

"This is so good, you should give me some money for it," is the underlying (the emphasis is on the lying) message of advertisers, charity fundraisers and televangelists alike. When something really embodies goodness people notice, they don't need to be told. They can then make their own decision on whether, or how, they want to support the good thing.

Better to save your money until a person, cause, or event really touches your heart. Then give what feels intuitively correct. Without expectation of recompense, brownie points, or a tax deduction. Natural, organic assistance is given as easily and sweetly as a flower gives its scent. It is never a burden or a should. Nobody browbeats, scares, or guilt-trips a flower into sharing its aroma with one and all.

Talking of goodness is not goodness. You know goodness when you see it, when you feel it, when it presents itself beautifully and unpretentiously. And here's the real secret: It's around you, and within you, all the time! Don't talk it, be it.

Goodness abides.

Growing Through Dilemmas

2010-04-16T10:00:00.003-05:00

"Wherever the great dilemma exists is where the growth is, too."

-- Anne Lamott

Petty annoyances are just that -- petty. Best to deal with them quickly, streamline your life to minimize them, or just outright avoid them. Great dilemmas, however, are to be explored, savored and appreciated because at their core lies grace and transformation.

So much of the time we spend our lives ignoring or hiding from our great dilemmas, pretending that they don't exist. "How you doing?" we're asked. "Fine," is our knee jerk reply. We never say, "I'm stuck on the horns of a great dilemma!" That would be weird. And while saying it to a casual acquaintance might be a social faux pas, acknowledging it to ourself is the first step towards growth and transcendence.

Some great dilemmas involve relationships, some involve vocation or calling, some revolve around aging, change or death, all are rooted in the self. The great dilemma is the worthy adversary, the competition that provokes excellence, the opportunity disguised as a giant pain in the ass. We need to move beyond judgement to engagement if we want to use dilemmas as crucibles for growth.

Take a look at your life. What is the numero uno dilemma that you currently face? Jump into it. Wrestle with it, observe it, deconstruct it. embrace it. Use it. Use it for the insight it brings, use it to build your problem solving muscles, use it as a springboard for growth.

And be thankful. Life gives you challenge to incite triumph. Growth without end. Amen.

Everything Keeps Changing!

2010-04-07T09:03:00.003-05:00

"All disquiet springs from a search for quiet. And so the best way to cultivate inner peace is to learn to love the way everything keeps changing."

-- Rumi

Have you noticed how everything keeps changing? People, ideas, the environment, music, clothing styles, literally everything keeps changing! And just when you think you've got it all figured out, it changes again!

If your peace of mind is based on things remaining the same, you will never have peace of mind for more than a nanosecond. Way back in the 60's Bob Dylan noted "the times they are a changin'," and they ain't stopped yet. And they never will.

So, if peace of mind is your goal, acceptance best be your method. Acceptance of what is. And what is never remains the same for long. Can you learn to love this constant change? Begin with acceptance. Love is merely unconditional, whole-hearted acceptance, acceptance to the nth degree. No resistance, no denial, no struggle.

It's like surfing -- mind surfing, heart surfing, soul surfing. Riding the waves of change, you not only avoid drowning, you actually enjoy it!

Let Rumi be your surf instructor. Quit trying to make everything stable, quiet and serene. You can't surf on placid waters. Give up control and flow. You alone can be stable, quiet and serene -- in the deepest part of your being. The external world will never be that way.

The waves break all around you, and you keep your head above the surf. Even when you wipe out, you bob to the surface laughing. And you're at peace because you love it. You love the way everything keeps changing.

Surf on dudes and dudettes!

Beyond Indoctrination

2010-04-06T10:51:00.004-05:00

"There can be no greater task than to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination."

-- Noam Chomsky

Indoctrination is inescapable. We are indoctrinated not just by governments or political parties, but by religions, parents, teachers, advertisers and friends. Everybody's got an agenda, and they'd all like us to buy into theirs.

And we do, mostly on an unconscious level. That's why it's so important to understand the "mechanisms and practices" as Chomsky calls them. But you don't need a PhD in brain washing, or even an in-depth study of psychology or sociology. What you need is to pay attention.

Attention is our number one indoctrination-fighting tool. As mentioned earlier, most indoctrination is accepted unconsciously. When we're spacing out, or future tripping, or reminiscing, our minds and hearts are open to influence and manipulation. If we are totally and fully present to what is happening in our lives, indoctrination stands out like a turd in a punch bowl.

The mere act of being aware of attempted indoctrination robs the mechanisms and practices of their power. When you know how a trick is performed, it's no longer magic -- it's merely slight of hand. And, perhaps the most interesting thing is that, if you really pay attention, you will see others attempting to get you to buy into their belief systems when they don't even know they are doing it! You become more aware than the manipulator of what he or she is doing!

One warning, though: If you have your own agenda, if you are engaging in an indoctrinational war, you will get caught up in a power struggle, and only deepen the beliefs that have been foisted upon you previously. In other words, the only way to be protected against another's agenda is to have no agenda of your own, to transcend indoctrination altogether.

It's a tall order. But it's the only way to find the real you, the you that resides beyond dichotomies and beliefs. Don't accept indoctrination, don't project indoctrination. Move beyond beliefs to Reality.

Sacred Idleness

2010-04-01T12:04:00.003-05:00

"Work is not always required of man. There is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected."

-- George Macdonald

We work our asses off. Many of us put in way more than 40 hours a week. And to what avail? So we can buy more fast food, McMansions, overpriced cars and useless crap from China?

Work and idleness can both be sacred when each is undertaken at the the right time and kept in the proper balance. Work is not intrinsically more sacred than idleness, it's just different. Work exercises the mind and body. Idleness nourishes the soul. Doing nothing is, in and of itself, something that is very important to do.

And yet, as George so aptly points out, we neglect relaxation and overemphasize action, movement, and busyness. Doing something, anything, is better than doing nothing according to an unspoken assumption in our culture. So unspoken in fact that we hardly ever question it.

Even vacations are packed with activities -- whether at Disney World, on a cruise, or touring Europe, it's all about how much you can see and do. Hardly anyone, when asked what they're going to do on their vacation responds with "lay back and groove."

A case could easily be made that much of our non-stop activity is more addictive than pleasurable. We do, do, do, and go, go, go because we don't know how not to.

So, today's assignment is simple -- don't just do something, sit there. While away a few hours floating free as a feather in the breeze. Don't plan your activity, just relax and let time unwind. Learn to love leisure, and you'll find you truly can get something out of nothing.

Doing Nothing

2010-02-17T09:02:00.003-06:00

"It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing."

-- Gertrude Stein

We're a culture obsessed with doing. Doing this, doing that, grabbing every new experience, and doing it all fast! But any moron can do. Doing is the easiest thing in the world. What is difficult is not to do.

Doing nothing, just Being, puts most people to sleep. Or drives them crazy. But it is only in doing nothing that new ways of seeing emerge.

That's all that genius is, really -- seeing the same things that all of us see in new and different ways, seeing the world through eyes unfiltered by cultural assumptions and unconsciously shared beliefs. Doing nothing allows a new way of seeing to emerge from a deeper part of ourselves, from a space that has not been conditioned, programmed and cajoled to accept consensus reality.

The thing is, the terms we usually apply to people who do nothing are pejorative, not complimentary. We call them lazy, shiftless, bums, rather than budding geniuses. We try and shame them into taking action, any action, in part to make ourselves feel better about our endless busyness. If we're always on the run they should be, too, dammit!

There are no wimpy geniuses. It takes real strength to resist doing for doing sake. Sometimes it just easier to do something, even if only to get others off your back! Choosing not doing when appropriate, (i.e. much of the time) takes a willingness to ignore the opinions of others and instead look deeper into yourself. It takes a person who can break unconscious behavior patterns and violate culture norms without laying a hug guilt trip on them self.

But here's the thing -- we all have a bit of genius, or at least potential genius, within is. We just need to quit trying so damn hard! Do nothing. Let genius emerge. Sit around on the patio, in the Lazy Boy recliner, in the bathtub, or under a shade tree. Sit and Be. Be the genius you were meant to be. Don't "Just do it!" Just Be it.

Choose Love Over Enchantment

2010-02-17T04:03:00.004-06:00

"God loves all men but is enchanted by none."

-- Isaac Asimov

It's hard for many people to see that love is truly a totally impersonal phenomena. Love does not pick and choose. Love comes in unbidden, unexpected moments, grabs the soul and embraces the heart, and won't let go.

Most of us have this amazing experience rarely. And when we do it is very localized -- we love one person to the exclusion of others, or more than we love others. God, on the other hand, doesn't play favorites. Contrary to popular belief, He doesn't love the saint more than the sinner, and He isn't partial to members of one particular religion or believers in any specific mythology.

God loves. God is love. It's as simple as that. And we, too, are love, in essence. Put for most of us, most of the time, our love is not pure and steadfast. It is love mixed with fear, tainted by desire. And so, we become enchanted by a particular person, and we mistake this enchantment for love.

Here's a simple way to tell the difference. If your overwhelming urge is to have the other person in your life, it's enchantment. If you want what is best for them, regardless of whether it includes you or not, it's love.

So, our task, our curriculum in this life, is to become more like God, to give up fear and desire and replace it with true, universal love. Seems like one hell of a bargain to me!

But it takes awareness, discernment and opening. And it takes understanding that you don't have to like a person to love them. Their looks, their behavior, their belief systems, are irrelevant. What is relevant is that they're alive, that in essence they, too, are you, are God, are love. See that and the loving comes naturally. Try and make yourself love someone without seeing their divine spark and you're merely wasting your time.

So, today your assignment is to be a soul detective. Look deeply into the sacred center of each person you encounter. See beyond and beneath their human disguise to their divine core. When you do, it will be easy to give up fear and desire and allow yourself to love. Love will be the most completely natural expression of who you are -- God beyond enchantment, God in one and all.

Soul Kiss

2010-02-10T08:53:00.005-06:00

"The personality will, we are continually amazed, kiss any required part of the anatomy to rise in the world; the soul refuses to kiss anything but life itself, and then, as Blake says, only as it flies."

-- David Whyte

As I write this I'm sitting in a Panera overhearing a guy playing a video on his laptop in an attempt to recruit some young woman into a multi-level, pyramid marketing scheme. He wants to convince her that she can get rich recruiting other people to recruit other people to recruit other people ad infinitum to eventually sell overpriced shit nobody really needs through an adamantine quagmire of a system that's all based on ass kissing. And, yes, as David Whyte notes, I'm continually amazed that people (i.e., the personality) falls for this crap!

It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to know the difference between kissing ass and kissing life as it flies by. Kissing life is a soul kiss, deep and satisfying in the moment with no promise of future reward. Kissing ass is all about future reward. It is all about doing something, slimy, and soul-slaying in the moment in hopes of achieving something that will make you happy later. If you're even minimally in touch with your feelings and visceral reactions, you know the difference immediately.

And yet, the mind, filled with desire and fear, takes over. It overrides both our instinct and intuition and tells us that the end justifies the means. A little ass-smooching now, leads to all the things you really want and need later, says the rationalizing mind. Bullshit!

That's what your soul says. And it's right. Kissing ass not only leaves a bad taste in your mouth now, it fills you with guilt and remorse later when the shame of selling your soul for a few pieces of gold kicks in. And, make no mistake, it will kick in. On your death bed, if not before.

So, be picky. Don't be an ass kissing whore! Flirt with life, kiss it, and let it go. Dance with it as a partner, a friend. No need to be a corporate shill, a greedy pyramid schemer, or a Craigslist call girl. Selling your soul is never a good idea. Kissing from the soul always is.

Seeing

2010-02-10T08:27:00.007-06:00

"The whole of life lies in the verb seeing."

-- Teilhard de Chardin

You can think until your brain cramps up. You can emote until you work yourself into a total tizzy. You can pontificate until your tongue falls off. But the only thing that really matters is seeing.

Seeing Reality as it is. Seeing what is happening right here, right now, in this moment. Perception and presence are how we connect to life. All the other stuff, all the second hand judgments, interpretations, reaction, opinions,etc. are merely overlays on the core experience of being alive.

Seeing both the surface and the depth. Seeing the manifestation, and the energy behind the manifestation. Seeing all the way up to the door of mystery. And then letting go of even seeing.

You don't need New Year's resolutions, strategic plans, goals up the wazoo, or vision boards. You just need to see, and then you will know what to do. Doing that grows out of true seeing is always appropriate. Doing what is driven by cognition or emotion is at best once removed from Reality because it is mediated by the fears and desires of ego.

Seeing evokes intuition. And intuition, a non-cognitive way of knowing, is unerringly accurate. It's accuracy is based on its holism. By transcending dualism, intuition taps into the unitive heart of existence. And from there action flows easily, effortlessly and enjoyably.

But to act impeccably, to know non-cognitively, you must first see completely, comprehensively. Seeing is all.

Pools of Generosity

2009-12-03T11:26:00.002-06:00

"People who express gratitude create pools of generosity in the world around them."

-- Martha Beck

Damn, we've got a lot to be grateful for! Starting with the fact that I've got the capacity to write this, and you have the capacity to read and understand it, and then moving right on out from there into the entire rest of our lives. Call me "psychic," but I'm just betting that you have at least an adequate place to live, good food to eat, some clothes to wear, friends to hang out with, and computer access. And I'm just scratching the surface.

So, the Gobzillion Dollar Question is: Since we've got so much for which to be thankful, why don't we feel and express gratitude more? You may have your own individual reasons, but let me touch upon some of the major societal ones. First we are jaded. We've got it so good that we don't even realize how good we've got it! Two, we compare ourselves to others. Let me clue you in -- there will always be someone (actually many someones) richer, smarter, better looking, more spiritually advanced, and with an overall better life than you. Get over it. Third, we're out of the gratitude habit. Except for Thanksgiving, and maybe a quick, rote prayer before a meal, we don't set aside time each day to be thankful.

Sure, there are probably many other reasons, as well, that you, me and most of God's children aren't grateful. The good news is, though, that we can change that. Just by writing down five things each day for which you are grateful, not only will you strengthen your gratitude muscles, you will also begin to create those "pools of generosity" to which Martha refers.

How does it work? Hell, I don't know how it works, but here's one analogy. When you don't express thanks, the Universe assumes you don't give a rat's ass, that you don't appreciate the bounty that you receive, and so it channels the goodies to someone who is more grateful and demonstrative. Start expanding your attitude of gratitude and the Universe says, "Hey, that dude, or dudette, really appreciates things, let send him or her a little more juice.

And so it goes. Gratitude begets generosity. And generosity flows from many sources, sometimes even from the places you least expect it. But it all begins with you. Right here, right now write down five "things" for which you are grateful. Take a moment or two to think on these things and really feel the gratitude. Don't look now, but pools are already forming...

Quality Attention

2009-12-03T11:08:00.003-06:00

"It's the quality of your attention in the moment that will determine your outcome."

-- Deepak Chopra

"Keep your eyes on the prize," they tell you. Nothing could be further from the truth! Your focus should never be on some external goal, much less on any reward you will receive when that goal is reched. Your focus, your attention should be placed squarely upon the task at hand, upon what you are doing right here and right now, in this very moment.

If you attend to your current activity with clarity, concentration and power, you have a much better chance of producing positive outcomes than if you trip of into the future or sink back into the past.

The quality of your attention is also determined by the paradoxical characteristics of passion and detachment. Wimpy, mamby-pamby attention produces mediocre results, at best. Teeth-gritting, and sphincter-clenching doesn't do any better. High quality attention is fueled by passion and kept clean and clear by detachment. An imbalance in either direction will negatively impact your outcomes.

So, focus clearly and powerfully on what is before you. Don't worry about results; let the results take care of themselves. You job is to continually upgrade the quality of your attention, and to expand your capacity to attend to whatever the Universe brings into your life.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Don't Let The Mind Drive

2009-12-01T07:31:00.003-06:00

"Letting your mind control your life is like letting an eight-year-old drive your car."

-- Shiva Rea

I know you love our mind. You love it so much because you mistake it for you. You believe that you are your thoughts. Nothing could be further from the truth. You might as well believe that you are Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or Tiger Woods.

The truth is that you are Spirit. The One, the Only. Since you've got a body, you also get to have a mind. And that mind just happens to be filled with thoughts, many of which are mediocre at best, most of which are just recycled drivel from yesterday.

The intelligence of Spirit makes your mind look like that drunken hillbilly in the infield at a NASCAR race. "Yee hah! Show us your boobies," your mind keeps yelling. Do you really want that goober running your life?

So, what to do? Watch your mind. Don't oppose it, that just strengthens it. Resistance creates persistence. Merely watch the seemingly endless parade of thoughts that march through your mind. Let them go, let them flow. Sooner or later they will begin to slow down a bit. Sooner or later a small gap or two will appear.

Fall into the gap. The gap is where Spirit dwells. The gap is where your true intelligence surfaces in the form of intuition. Let that deep intelligence run your life. Let your mind serve a greater master -- Spirit. I guarantee you, it will make for a much smoother ride.

After Midnight

2009-08-13T05:26:00.003-05:00

"If you don't get it by midnight, chances are you ain't gonna get it; and if you do, it ain't worth it."

-- Casey Stengal

You got to know when to fish, and when to cut bait. Playing the odds is much smarter than continuing to pursue a dream once the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in. And that's just what Casey's saying here, in his own colorful, slightly bawdy way.

Many times in life, we are blinded, not by the light, but by our own desires. We continue to chase those desires long after any reasonable chance for fulfillment has past. Buddha knew that in spades. He said that desire is the cause of all suffering. Casey may not be a full-fledged Buddhist, but he at least believes that after-midnight desires cause nothing but suffering. And you can't hit a curve ball worth a damn the next day, even if those nocturnal longings are fulfilled!

The question of the day is simple: What desires are you blindly pursuing? And, secondarily, how can you use the time spent in hot pursuit, in more enjoyable and/or productive ways? If you take these questions seriously, you'll be amazed at how easy it is to both reduce frustration and free up time in your life.

The clock is striking 12 -- do you know where your energy is going?

Power

2009-08-03T04:18:00.002-05:00

"Freedom from mental distraction equals power."

-- Dan Millman

It's all about concentration of energy. If your mind is all over the friggin' place, like a schizoid, ADHD rabbit on crank, your power is spread all over hell's half acre. Spread yourself too thin, your mind too thin, and your power is thinned accordingly.

On the other hand, calming, centering, focusing leads to a massive concentration of personal power. You can actually feel the energy build in your body, in your mind, even in your sphere of influence.

What does this mean in practical terms? Quit multi-tasking. Practice meditation. Set aside a certain amount of time each day to focus upon one important thing. You build your power by building your mind's capacity to concentrate. It's as simple as that.

No One to Blame

2009-07-22T06:23:00.004-05:00

"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!

2009-07-20T06:32:00.006-05:00

"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!

2009-07-14T05:54:00.005-05:00

"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

2009-07-08T05:42:00.005-05:00

"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!

2009-07-05T06:55:00.004-05:00

"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

2009-07-01T06:00:00.005-05:00

"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.

Beyond Soul Abandonment

2009-06-27T06:07:00.008-05:00

"Aiming toward the future we sacrifice the present. By looking outside ourselves for what is missing, we subject ourselves, our souls, to the pain of abandonment."

-- A.H. Almaas

What if someone were to tell you that you don't need anything, that you don't need to go anywhere, that you don't need to improve yourself, make any changes, or be saved to be wildly and joyfully free right here, right now -- would you believe them? Because really, that's what old A.H. is saying. And that's what every holy man worth his loin cloth, every saint worth her halo has been saying for millenniums now.

This is it. This moment. Right here, right now. Everything else, both past and future, is just a fantasy. You are it. At the deepest level, you and the Divine are one. No need to go on some sort of spiritual scavenger hunt, all you need is within you.

I know, I know, it's kind of hard to believe, especially when you're having a really crappy day. But crappy days are just waves on the surface of a deep, calm ocean. No matter how big the waves, the true nature of the sea doesn't change. That's why meditation, contemplation, and "just sitting" are recommended by so many spiritual teachers and traditions -- to calm the waves of your oceanic mind and see to its depths.

So, today's advice is simple -- don't just do something, sit there! Sit quietly for at least a small portion of your day, perhaps even for multiple small portions, and begin to see, to feel the all-rightness of the now, the prefect completeness of your self. Don't "chase what matters;" let what matters quietly reveal itself to you.

And it will. And when it does, soul, self, time and place will be as one. One perfect moment in a series of perfect moments that make up your life. Perfectly you, perfectly present in joy!

The Door to God

2009-06-20T04:04:00.005-05:00

"Where is the door to God?

In the sound of a barking dog

In the ring of a hammer

In a drop of rain

In the face of Everyone I see."

-- Hafiz

Hafiz nails it! He might just as easily have asked "Where is there not a door to God?" Just a moment of reflection will show us that every person, every experience, every element, every being is a portal to the Divine.

Somehow, though, we miss so many of these passageways into Light. We curse the rain, bewail the noise of the barking dog, ignore the hammer, and blur the faces. We blindly go through life as if the doors to God do not exist.

It's our loss. We wrap ourselves in petty woes while all around us doors swing open, and on the other side God patiently awaits. God is not looking for our praise, obedience or sacrifice, merely recognition. Once we recognize the Divine as the sum and substance of life, all of life changes. We swim in a sea of Spirit, ride the waves of change, splash in the surf of presence, even as we drive watery metaphors into the ground!

The challenge is simply the same everyday -- see God everywhere and in everyone. Enter every door. Now and now and now... forever. Amen.

Beyond Hypocrisy

2009-06-17T05:28:00.006-05:00

"Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you really love."

-- Butch Hancock

What are we teaching our children? Butch's experience is not unique. Too many kids, growing up in supposedly good, God-fearing households, are indoctrinated with the same crap that Butch was. Maybe "God-fearing" is part of the problem.

Let's make it real simple. First, give up all this talk about God. Or at least don't turn Spirit into a cartoon character God through some sick and misguided anthropomorphizing. There ain't no big daddy in the sky being the Top Genital Cop and monitoring everyone's sexual behavior just to have an excuse to smote them. God, in the usual sense of the word, is a fantasy on par with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Next, drop the hell nonsense. No one knows what happens after you die. Not you, not your favorite preacher, priest, rabbi or swami. Not even Oprah or Dr. Phil. No one. If you get your twisted jollys fantasizing about eternal fire and damnation, go right ahead, but please keep it to yourself!

Now onto sex. Why is it so hard to be sex positive? Everybody likes it. Hell, everybody loves it! It's better than a summer picnic with good friends, cold beer and fresh sweet corn! To teach kids that sex is anything less than beautiful and awesome is just downright hypocritical. And all this "saving it for one person" is patently ridiculous. Something that good needs to be shared!

Let's grow up people! Let's give up childish religious fantasies, honestly align our words with our actions, embrace the natural joys of life and quit sewing the seeds of fear. Life is good, sex is good, love is good. We don't need to make up super natural beings or after death destinations to appreciate these things. We just need to be good to each other and enjoy life's bounty.

Simple and uncomplicated. All of us in this together. One world, one people, on love.

A Pretty World

2009-06-15T05:29:00.006-05:00

"Great mother of big apples it is a pretty world."

-- Kenneth Patchen

It's easy to miss the world's beauty. We're so busy, we rush everywhere, we've got so much to do. Who's got time for beauty? The world doesn't care. It just keeps on being beautiful whether we're paying attention or not. And we keep on missing it.

Then comes your vacation, and you head off somewhere that's suppose to be incredibly beautiful -- Hawaii, Alaska, the Grand Canyon -- somewhere where the beauty is so friggin' awesome that there's no way you can miss it! We need extreme pretty, or we so no pretty at all. We need a coat-of-many-colors sunset on the beach in Bali to awaken us from our internal mental chatter and our aesthetic stupor. Maybe the fancy drink with the little umbrella helps, too.

And then you're back home, and the beauty gets posted on Facebook, and that's pretty much that.

What you forget is that it's beautiful wherever you are today. The only question is: Do you have a mind beautiful enough to see it? Mr. Rogers was right -- "it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood" every damn day! No matter what your neighborhood. No matter which day. It's that old "beauty is in the eye of the beholder thing," and like most bumper sticker wisdom, it still rings true.

The challenge is simple -- see beauty. See pretty. See it everywhere, everyday. Right here, right now. Big apples and all. And appreciate it. See it in the dandelion that blooms through the crack in the sidewalk, in the thunder clouds that roll in from the west, in every wild and free outburst of nature that outshines the neon, that buckles the concrete, that hides in the shadows of an inky, dark night.

It's there, even when at first you don't see it. Nature is one aspect of it, your soul is another. Beauty, both skin deep, and deeper and deeper on into infinity. Not to be missed. Not for one day. You've missed way too much already. Sleepers awake! A pretty world awaits.

What Insults Your Soul?

2009-06-14T05:18:00.005-05:00

"Re-examine everything you've been told. Dismiss what insults your soul."

-- Walt Whitman

Following old Uncle Walt's advice sure simplifies life. It simplifies it so because at least 90% of what we're told these days is pure, unadulterated crap! You can dismiss most advertising, television, political rhetoric and commentary, Internet content, gossip, popular music, and religious diatribe as essentially soul-insulting.

What's left? Not much. And that's a good thing. The static has been removed. The sounds of nature, of intimacy, of joy and of wisdom can finally, once again, be heard.

Most of what we are told comes out of an ulterior motive. Someone wants to sell you something, or convince you of something, or get you to do something, and so they spin things in a way that they think will get results. Or they speak merely to boost their own ego, to feel better about the unspeakable. Either way the content insults your soul.

You're nice. You don't say, "Quit with the soul-insulting shit, already!" You smile and nod and maybe even insult their soul right back! And pretty soon we forget that we're all just bullshitting each other non-stop. Enough already! Not only do we need to dismiss the soul-insulting stuff others tell us, but we also need to jettison the same verbal crapola from our own lexicon.

Living for various periods of time in simple silence is not a bad thing. It may be a bit disconcerting at first, but you'll get used to it. And when you do, you'll hear birds sing, babies coo, lovers sigh, children question, and angels weep. You'll hear the natural soul-nourishing sounds of life. The cacophony will be gone; you will no longer bleed life force from the soul holes produced by the verbal violence that passes for communication in our post-modern world.

Your soul knows. Accept no insults. Be true to it, and life will be true to you.

Is life serious?

2009-06-12T05:40:00.006-05:00

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."

-- Brendan Gill

Life demands so little of us. We must drink some water, eat some food, and, of course, keep breathing. That's about it. Everything else is optional. And yet, we continue to place all sorts of crazy-ass demands upon ourselves in the name of life. We take something (life) that is by it's very nature neutral at worst, joyous at best, and we turn it into something that is oh so serious.

Why? No one knows. It's what we are taught. It's based on fear, possibly, and the misguided notion, that if we don't take life seriously, we will either have "wasted it," or life itself (or God as life's agent) will get pissed off and bite us on the ass. As Brendan points out, even though these erroneous beliefs may be unthinkingly held by most of us, most of the time, there is not one iota of evidence to support the "life is serious" proposition. Life just is. Serious is our own little add-on.

So, let's say we decide not to subscribe to the seriousness theory, what does that do? First and foremost, it frees us. If life is not serious, we can enjoy it, play with it, accept it, be with it just as it presents itself. We can be outrageous, idiosyncratic, individualistic, and just plain silly without offending the supposed seriousness of life. We can be naturally ourselves, in a natural world unburdened by notions of should, have to, and you better.

But don't take Brendan's or my word for it. Try a little personal experiment. Approach the day without the serious tag attached. Relax into it. Do what needs to be done, enjoy it as much as you can, but don't make it all mean so damn much. Everything that happens is merely a life or death matter. That's all. People say "It's not a life or death matter," meaning it's not that serious. In reality it's all a life or death matter, and none of it is serious!

You see, what we call life and death are merely two ways that nature expresses itself, two modes of being. No big deal. Totally sacred, never serious. All of it. You included. Life is for living. Nothing else. Just live it. Or let it live you. And when you do, my guess is, you'll feel an amazing inner smile!

Eating Uncertainty for Breakfast

2009-06-11T06:03:00.005-05:00

"If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity."

-- Eckhart Tolle

If you're not uncertain about damn near everything you're asleep at the wheel! The sin qua non of life is uncertainty. In other words, certainty is a myth on par with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and compassionate conservatives. It is found nowhere in nature, and it is not a component, or quality, of reality. Hard, bold fact: There's no certainty in life. Get it?

What there is is change. Perpetual, ubiquitous change. And that's a good thing, it keeps the juices flowing, keeps entropy at bay, keeps life interesting. Our role, first and foremost, in this whole process is not to become "agents of change," but to accept the uncertainty that comes hand-in-hand with natural, perpetual change. I ain't saying you have to love it (yet), but you do have to accept it, or you're stuck in the mud of resistance.

And it's not just uncertainty and change that require your acceptance -- it's all and everything. Acceptance of what is is the only sane response to reality and, joy of joys, the cognitive precursor to love.

What's love got to do with it? Everything. Love is the Great Redeemer of both you and the world. By all external standards, the world's a friggin' mess! A mess just aching for love. Not unlike your own messy heart. Acceptance is the first step -- accept it today, love it tomorrow, or perhaps many tomorrows down the road, but with acceptance at least you're on the road and no longer stuck in the ditch of resistance and despair.

Huh? Just try it. Each time you start to feel anxious and uncertain today, banish the anxiety by letting the uncertainty be. Be a Beatle, and "let it be." Accept it. And then see if Eckhart is right. Do you feel increasingly alive, alert and creative? If not, relax into an even deeper level of acceptance. Embrace the uncertainty, merge with it, let it permeate your being, and see.

It's the Great Acceptance Experiment, and you're part of it everyday. You, the magical alchemist, transforming the dross of uncertainty into the gold of love with one simple, little ingredient -- acceptance.

Opening the Wisdom Eye

2009-06-09T05:29:00.004-05:00

"When we open our wisdom eye, we don't necessarily get to choose what we see. It's just what is."

-- Lama Surya Das

The world of wisdom is not about flash and glitz. It's not The Wisdom Circus, or some Vegas psychic playing in the lounge at Caesar's Palace. Wisdom is "merely" a deeper understanding of reality. It is a clear and unobstructed view of what is.

People have all kinds of erroneous notions. They think that in opening the wisdom eye they will become psychic and thus able to predict stock prices, do card tricks, channel disembodied spirits from far off planets, and talk to Aunt Tilly on "the other side."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Wisdom shuns parlor tricks. Even when some so-called paranormal powers do accrue, the wise person refuses to exploit them. Instead, he or she lets them come, lets them go, maintaining a bemused watchfulness and a focus upon what is.

Wisdom is the slayer of fantasy. Especially spiritual fantasy. Reality is never what you imagine it to be. It is always greater, higher, deeper, more all encompassing, more mind blowing. And that's the whole point -- wisdom blows the circuits of the discursive mind and melts our fantasy desires in the light of truth.

We don't get to choose what we see. Wisdom is not all rainbows and unicorns like some tween girl's fantasy. Neither is it necessarily a Moses coming down from the mountaintop type experience. It may be more like the burning off of a particularly thick morning fog. Or it may not. As they say in all the weight loss ads, "Individual results may vary."

Our only choice is to be open to opening. Wisdom comes when we let go of how we think life ought to be, should be, has to be. Wisdom comes when we accept life as it is. What could be simpler?

Opened By Wonder

2009-06-08T05:29:00.007-05:00

"I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief."

-- Gerry Spence

Wonder-full things happen everyday. The challenge is in seeing them. We are so quick to judge, organize and categorize, that many of the wonderful occurrences in our lives are given short shift, and their eye-opening beauty and mystery is missed entirely.

You see, belief is extraneous. You are not required to believe anything, and you're probably better off if you believe nothing. Belief is merely a comforting device, a pacifier for the brain, a cognitive binky, that keeps us calm and docile. Instead of seeing life as it is (full of wonder!), we see it through the filter of our beliefs. We are quick to judge and slow to awe.

Furthermore, beliefs separate. They especially separate us from those who hold different beliefs, thus creating the illusion that this faux separateness is real. In cleaving to beliefs, we close our minds, not only to other people and ideas, but to the heart of mystery which is life itself. Beliefs murder mystery, assassinate wonder. And while they make us feel so certain and righteous, they also remove us from the world of open experience and direct response.

Watchfulness, attention is the key. As you go through your day keep an eye open for the times that belief arises to stamp out wonder, to obscure reality. I think you'll be amazed to find that even the sharpest of minds (like yours, of course) are mostly mired in belief and closed to wonder. We operate in the world on thought patterns of unconscious belief, both personal and societal. Nobody wonders about much anymore, we just don't have the time.

Perhaps it's time to change all that, to resurrect wonder to its rightful, preeminent status. Shed belief, embrace wonder! See the world anew. See what happens. They'll be a short quiz on Friday. Until then, may your life be wonder-full!

God's Thoughts

2009-06-07T04:09:00.003-05:00

"I want to know God's thoughts; all the rest are just details."

-- Albert Einstein

I wish the Cubs would stop losing so many games! What's for dinner? I hope this new book is good. Do these pants make my butt look big? Our usual everyday thoughts are so mundane! We recycle the same material over and over through our heads like bad summer programming on the CW network. And brainstorms? Forget 'em. We're lucky if we get a light drizzle.

Ah, but God, on the other hand, he must have some really bodacious thoughts! BIG thoughts. Not the trivial crap that our monkey minds seem to be obsessed with. What are the thoughts of God? How do we find them?

Over many centuries, millenniums even, spiritual practices have been developed to do just that. While they may differ in form, all true practices bring about a transformation of heart, of mind that allows us to see the world from the perspective of the Divine. We access God's thoughts because we realize our own divine nature and the Unity of all existence. God's thoughts become readily available and transparent to us.

So what does God think? Best if you go find out for yourself. Mystics, seers and sages of all traditions have given us some hints, though. It seems God sees Unity within diversity. God honors all with awareness and love and rejects no one. God's thoughts are all encompassing and affirming, not petty, jealous or discriminatory. God is the original big thinker and no one and nothing are left out of the embrace of his thoughts. God thinks Truth.

In one sense, all spiritual practice is about is taking some time each day to let go of our small thoughts and allow the thoughts of God to enter our consciousness. "The devil is in the details," they say. So, let the details go for now. Relax and dwell in the mind of God.

Suffering Is Optional

2009-06-04T03:29:00.005-05:00

"You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer."

-- Byron Katie

Pain is a part of life. Your back goes out, you stub your toe, bump your head or sit on a wasp's nest. Ouch! Suffering, however, is purely optional, an add on that is not part of life's original equipment. Suffering is the psychological resistance that we have to what is, especially when what is either causes physical pain or fails to live up to our personal expectations and desires. In other words, you cause your own suffering by resisting reality. That's all there is to it.

That may be all there is to it, but oh what a deeply ingrained habit it is! In a strange perverse way, we love to suffer, and we love to hear about the sufferings of others. Suffering gives life its dramatic quality, and, of course, it supposedly builds character. Personally I doubt the character building part. All generating suffering, talking suffering, and sharing suffering builds is more suffering. By indulging in it, we give up our power and legitimize the suffering-making process.

"Misery loves company," we're told. And like most old chestnuts, it seems to be true. But instead of wallowing in our misery, why don't we disconnect the whole misery-making, suffering-inducing process altogether? If suffering begins in the mind, it is in the mind that it must be dismantled.

Dismantling only takes one tool -- attention. When we pay attention to how, when and where we resist reality, we begin to see how me make ourselves suffer. We don't have to fight the suffering anymore than we have to fight any illusion. When we see that suffering doesn't exist, except between our ears, it begins to fade like a summer morning's fog.

So, when faced with suffering, don't just do something, sit there! Sit and watch. Watch as you weave your own web of suffering, and watch it unravel. Suffering disintegrates under the watchful eye of awareness. And when it does, reality, in all its beauty, shines through!

Soaring Above the Crowd

2009-06-02T03:35:00.006-05:00

"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Most people's lives are pitiful. Humdrum, boring, caught up in the day-to-day. They (we) move through life as if our feet were bound in cement shoes and our wings nowhere to be found. When someone breaks free of this earth-bound existence and begins to soar, we say "they're really out there." They're different, weird, somewhat threatening to all of us who have chosen the seemingly safe routines of so-called normal life. And the higher they fly, the harder it is for us ground dwellers to see what the hell they're up to.

It's our loss. Every time we write off another's flight as mad, irrelevant or childish, we have reduced our own likelihood of ever flying. We need to respect the pioneers of soul flight just as much as we respect Orville & Wilbur, the Apollo astronauts, and the other pioneers of physical flight. Only by giving others their due can ever hope to come into our own.

You see, the capacity for flight is within each and every one of us. The ability and desire lie dormant in even the earthiest of souls. By supporting and praising the flights of others, we are also increasing the likelihood that we, too, will one day take to the air.

And really, isn't flying, soaring what it's all about? At the height of flight the petty melodramas that consume us on a regular basis are seen as the small, inconsequential things they truly are. But even more important is the experience of flight itself, the weightless and effortless rising on the updrafts of energy that lift those who are wild and free enough to spread their wings and toss themselves into the abyss. The moment of flight, that peak experience, is worth so much more than the slow-moving hours, months, and years of drudgery that we now call life.

Now is the perfect time to enroll in flight school. Any true spiritual path will do, be it well established or idiosyncratically your own. You will need to leave the classroom soon enough anyway. Soaring cannot be accomplished within the confines of the known. Into the great wide open, wings spread, hearts on fire, let's join Nietzsche and fly!

Love the One You're With

2009-05-31T05:44:00.005-05:00

"Self-love widens into love of all that lives."

-- Miguel de Unamuno

If you can't love yourself, who can you love? No one, actually. You may think you do. You may have a strong attraction or attachment to them, but love only comes from love. Really loving yourself is, as philosophers say, both necessary and sufficient to truly loving others.

Here's what happens: In truly loving yourself, you tap into the universal pool of love. Love that begins with self eventually transcends self. It transcends self in part because you begin to realize that there is really no essential difference between yourself and others. Form fades, essence shines and the only real, honest response to essence is love.

And then a funny thing happens -- you start loving all the quirky forms, all the eccentric people, all the other crazy souls all around you. The very qualities that pissed you off earlier become endearing in the eyes of love. It's a figgin' transformation people! And "they" haven't changed, you've changed. You've finally learned to accept and love yourself, so you've finally learned to really accept and love others.

But it's all got to start sometime, somewhere and with someone. The time is now, the place is here, and that someone is you. The only thing missing is the somehow. The somehow begins within. You sit down, close your eyes, and shut up, and you begin to feel the love that you always have for yourself deep within. It may be a small trickle at first, but like a dowser of love, you find it and follow it to its source, to the deep underground springs of pure joy and compassion.

Don't start with the mirror. Don't start with the externals, you'll just scare yourself. Always begin within. As the love within you begins to grow, your attitude towards the external you will change as well. And then, perhaps even more mysteriously, the external you will begin to transform. You will automatically begin to manifest love for yourself, for others, for the world. Awesome! Truly. And I'm not the kind of guy who uses "awesome" to describe the nachos at Applebees.

So, yea, Crosby, Stills and Nash were right -- "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." And, you know, "the one you're with" is always you.

What You Must Do

2009-05-28T06:20:00.006-05:00

"I have said before and I will say it again that it really does not matter much to the rest of us what you do, so long as you don't hurt anyone. But if you don't do something that you are proud of later on, it will matter to you."

-- Richard Watson. The Philosopher's Diet, p. 103.

I like Big Dick's attitude -- do whatever the hell you want, just don't hurt anybody, and everything will be OK. At least it will be OK as far as the rest of us monkeys are concerned. But to make everything OK for yourself, you've got to do something more, you've got to do something that's going to make you feel proud, fulfilled, and real.

What is that thing that you've got to do to make yourself proud? I have no idea. And you probably have no idea what I've got to do. That's just the point -- it has nothing to do with what others think you ought to do, what well-meaning people say you should do, what your parent or spouse wants you to do, or what your counselor, priest or consultant recommends that you do.

It's you. You are the one and only final authority on what you need to do to pass the Rocking Chair Test. Imagine, if you will, it's 20, 40 or more years from now. You're sitting on the porch in your rocking chair looking back over your life. What's that one thing of which you are most proud? Got nothin'? Better get busy!

The thing that makes you proud could be one shining moment, or a lifelong passion. It could be a book you write, a relationship you nourish, a cause you support, a skill you master, a role you play impeccably. Whatever it is, it's the thing that makes all the rest of it worthwhile, that makes you use and develop your unique qualities, talents and passions. It's the thing that makes your soul sing and your heart catch fire.

Whatever it is, that's the thing you must do. That's really the only thing you must do to make sure that your life is well lived. All the rest of it, the roller coaster ride we call life, may be enjoyable, may be challenging. It may distract you or support you. Whatever. It will happen, it will unfold, and all the time it does, you still must cleave faithfully to the thing you need to do.

That's it. It's simple really. Find it. Do it. Don't hurt anyone. Make yourself proud. And, of course, enjoy the rocking chair!

How to Make Yourself Unhappy

2009-05-25T10:40:00.005-05:00

"You are unhappy because you are stuck in a self-imposed conditional statement."

-- Aliyah Marr

Huh? What's a "self-imposed conditional statement?" It's like this: You say "I'll be happy when I move into my new condo." Or when I graduate from college, or get a really good job, or find the partner of my dreams, or make a million bucks, or write the great American novel, or retire, or...

It's the "I'll be happy" when formula that's the whole damn problem. Aliyah calls it "the happiness deferred excuse." You give yourself permission to delay happiness, to be unhappy now because you'll be happy someday when certain external conditions are met. Pure unadulterated bullshit!

Anytime your happiness is conditional you're screwed. If you can't be happy until you get what you want, until someone else changes, until you achieve such and such and so and so, until the planets align in some fortuitous cosmic pattern, you ain't never going to be happy.

Oh sure, you may feel a nice, little, warm glow for short periods of time. Like that first day or week that you're behind the wheel of your shiny new car. But lasting happiness? No way. Lasting happiness, true joy only comes in one form -- unconditional.

In that sense happiness is a decision not a certain set of conditions. You decide to be happy no matter what, come that proverbial hell or high water. "Happiness now" becomes your credo, and you don't settle for a delayed gratification, you don't make yourself, or the world, jump through a bunch of crazy hoops to get it.

Not feeling it? Refocus -- either externally or internally. Make a list of all the wonderful things about your life, of all the wonderful things about life in general. Or go for a walk and look for the beautiful, the humorous, the awe-inspiring, the pleasant, the outrageous. Or read a favorite book, listen to a music that really gets you high, or call up an old friend.

Or take the inner path. Sit down, shut up and go within. Go past the thoughts and garbage and tales of "woe is me" until you come to a clearing, a space of light and love and happiness. It's always there waiting for you. It never goes away, we go away, and then we run all over hell's half acre looking for something to make us happy.

Something will never make you happy for long. Everything makes you happy, nothing makes you happy, but the conditional specific thing, never. Everything is the entire external world, the "ten thousand things" as Lao Tzu called it. It is brimming with happiness.

Nothing is truly the realm of of no-thing, the space of Spirit within. It is where you and happiness are one, where the face you had before you were born smiles at you from the mirror of your own mind.

Accept it all -- the within, the without. Embrace it all. Feel the happiness of the unconditional, of the here, of the now. Always, already happy. What could be better?

The Light of Your Own Being

2009-05-24T04:06:00.003-05:00

"I wish that I could show you when you are lonely or in the darkness, the astonishing light of your own being."

-- Hafiz

You shine! We all do. And we're all blind, at least most of the time, to the incredible light that permeates, infuses, and oozes from us.

Instead we see meat. We see bodies And we compare, and we miss the light.

The Light is always being. The Light is our Being. It shines whether we know it or not. We all need to become one-eyed people in the kingdom of the blind. The one eye being the third eye, the eye that sees the Light, that sees nothing but Light.

"This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine," the old hymn says. "Let" is the operative term here. You don't have to make it shine. You don't have to will it, or force it, or learn how to do it. Just relax and release and let the shining happen.

It will, it does. I can see it in you, when you can't see it in yourself. And you can see it in others when they are blind to it, too. Light all around us.

Perhaps all we can do is give each other reminders, give each other clues. The Light never goes out. The Light shines in you, through you, as you. You don't need Tom Bodette to "leave the light on for you." It's always on. Even in the heart of darkness, see it shine.

Perfection Not Required

2009-05-21T05:58:00.004-05:00

"Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful."

-- Annette Funicello

Wisdom sprouts in the most unexpected places. Like from the lips of former Mouseketeers. You don't need a PhD in philosophy, or ten years of psychoanalysis, to see that imperfection and wonderfulness are not mutually exclusive states. They exist side by side in each person, in every life, in this very moment.

Want to experience more of the wonderful? Look at the world (and yourself ) through the eyes of a child, rather than through the eyes of the critic. Focus on the wonderful, and either work to change the imperfections, or simply let them be. Sure, if you had the proverbial magic wand, things would be a helluva lot different around here, but since QVC isn't offering them this month, why not enjoy all the wonderful elements, moments, people and places that are a part and parcel of life?

Wrestling with imperfection saps your energy and strains your soul. The wonderful is free and ubiquitous 24/7. Help yourself.

Your Bliss Awaits

2009-05-20T04:50:00.005-05:00

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there the whole while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living."

-- Joseph Campbell

You don't need strategic plans, incremental goals, or discipline. You just need the cojones to follow your bliss. It's so simple really, but it flies in the face of much of what we have been taught by well-meaning parents, teachers, religious figures, and self-help gurus. Bliss is the homing device that brings us to where we ought to be all along.

But first, you must be quiet enough, sensitive enough, intuitive enough to find out what your bliss is. Perhaps you ask yourself one or more of the following questions:

* What would I being doing with my life if money were not an object?

* What would I do if I knew that I could not fail?

* What have I always wanted to do but am sort of embarrassed to admit?

* What do I love to do so much that it doesn't matter whether I'm paid to do it or not?

* How do I spend my free time, my alone time?

* What makes my heart sing?

And then you listen. And act upon what you hear.

Bliss is both its own rewards and a pathway to greater things. By attuning yourself to bliss your days are spent in highly enjoyable activity and the road that opens up before you is your own unique path.

But if you're like alot of people, trusting your bliss is scary. We're programmed with all this garbage about asceticism, sacrifice and original sin. Something that feels as good as bliss has just got to be bad for you, right? Bullshit!

Bliss is the litmus test. Why even think of following a path that is not blissful? Or as poet/philosopher Paul Reps said, "If it isn't fun, better left undone."

What is your bliss calling you to do?

Stop Doing Unhappy!

2009-05-18T04:09:00.004-05:00

"Then it hit me -- being unhappy was something I'd been doing, and when I stopped doing it, I reverted to my natural state, which is happy."

-- Orson Bean

Unhappiness doesn't just happen. We make it happen. We do unhappiness. How? By how we focus our attention. By focusing upon what we don't like, on what we find negative or lacking, we conjure up internal storm clouds of unhappiness. Doing unhappiness is tough mental work!

It begins with judging. We awaken. The world is as it is. For some reason, though, we feel that it is our role to judge the world and project upon it how we think it should be. If it's raining, it should be sunny dammit, and so we become unhappy. If lying in bed next to us is an imperfect person, they should be smarter, richer, prettier, better, or at least they should appreciate us more! We should all over ourselves and the world all the time, and all it does is increase our unhappiness!

The moment you stop judging, condemning, and shoulding, you start undoing unhappiness. You don't need to repeat positive affirmations. You don't need to visualize a perfect world. You don't need to channel disembodied beings of light or believe that Jesus died for your sins. Just accept what is.

Acceptance is the great slayer of the dragon of unhappiness. Or for you techie types, acceptance is the reset button that returns your mind to its original, factory setting -- a natural state of happiness. Out of acceptance grows appreciation. Once you quit arguing with reality, you begin to see that it is pretty damn cool! The rain brings the flowers, the person lying in bed next to you gets up and makes some kick ass blueberry pancakes.

Flowers and pancakes are great, but they're merely icing on the cake. True happiness begins within. Quit doing unhappiness, and lo and behold, happiness is all that's left. You happy. Or if you want to get real Zen about it -- no you, just happy. Either way, unhappy no more.

Stories, Choice and Power

2009-05-01T04:03:00.005-05:00

"Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told."

-- Carolyn Heilbrun

Events happen. Then we make up stories about what happened. Alot more happens than gets remembered. And even out of what we remember, much of it is not deemed story-worthy. And in such a way so-called reality is created, history written. Herstory, too.

When Carolyn talks of power, though, she is mostly referring to the power of the press, the power that journalists and media executives have to decide which stories are newsworthy and which aren't. The Internet has helped level that playing field tremendously. Now, damn near every story, no matter how boring, mundane or self-aggrandizing gets told by somebody. Whether anyone finds them, reads them, or cares about them is, in and of itself, "another story."

What interests me, though, is not the press or bloggers or historians, but you. What stories do you tell yourself and others about your own life? Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you remember the facts. How do you structure them, combine them, spin them to weave them into a story? What do you choose to emphasize? What do you choose to downplay or leave out altogether? What titles do you give your stories, like when you say, "did I ever tell you the story about..."

In all spheres of life, power is simply the ability to choose. What do you choose to remember? What words do you choose to describe what you remember? What rhythm, tone, and theme do you bring to your stories? Who do you choose to share your stories with? Each choice is creative; each choice is powerful.

Lying in bed a little while ago I started thinking about a series of challenges that I've faced in my life. As I ran the stories through my head, I thought, I'm a survivor. These stories are about a survivor. And the term "survivor" brought a certain steely, triumphant, yet burdensome quality to the stories.

Then I thought, wait, these stories aren't about surviving, they're about seeking. I'm not the survivor, I'm the seeker. Immediately the tone of the stories changed from slogging through to being pulled forward, from overcoming to exploring. One word change and the meaning of this whole story cycle changed entirely.

The quality of your life is, to a large extent, made up of the stories you choose to tell, and how you choose to tell them. Everything that happens is merely raw material for your stories. In that way, you are the author of your own life. You have the power. You are a novelist and an historian, a myth-maker and a truth-teller, a poet and a reporter, all rolled into one.

It's your life. Make it epic.

The Mystery of Life

2009-04-22T05:14:00.004-05:00

"I am entirely on the side of mystery. I mean, any attempt to explain away the mystery is ridiculous. I believe in the profound and unfathomable mystery of life which has a sort of divine quality about it."

-- Aldous Huxley

Wouldn't it be great if everyone's belief system began and ended in mystery? No more divisive beliefs. No more clinging to fairy tales about virgin births, resurrections, heaven and hell. No more "My God is better than your God," competitive bullshit. Just a calm acceptance that we can't really know the answers to life's biggest questions. Life is, at its core, a mystery.

Why is that last statement, a statement that is so obviously true, so hard to live with? Why do people crave certainty, flee ambiguity, and embrace some downright crazy beliefs, in an attempt to avoid mystery? Don't they see the "sort of divine quality" to which Aldous refers?

Most people, approach mystery as a conundrum to be solved. Or at least resolved. But what if mystery is there to be marveled at, enjoyed, and embraced? No need to grapple with it, merely recognize it. "Hi, Mystery. Glad you're here." Not, "Mystery, you scary son of a bitch, I'm going to annihilate you as soon as possible."

Most beliefs divide us into warring camps -- believers versus non believers. Only the belief in mystery unites. If it's all a big, friggin' mystery, then we're all in this together, and no one has the right, or even the need, to impose their parochial ideas of God, religion, or life upon anyone else.

Awash in mystery, we relax and enjoy each other's company, enjoy life, enjoy the ride. No one knows why we're here. Let's have a beer. And toast to the people of the mystery, one and all.

Nothing to Prove

2009-04-21T05:16:00.003-05:00

"We have nothing to prove. We have been placed in the life-stream of time, and all there is to being is living naturally and authentically. No justification is needed."

-- William G. Cunningham. Empowerment: Vitalizing Personal Energy, p. 45.

Your existence needs no rationalization. You are here. That alone is proof of your right to be.

You need not be anything or anyone in particular. There is no role that you have to play, no expectation you need fulfill. Natural and authentic pretty much says it all.

And yet, as simple as "natural and authentic" sounds, it ain't necessarily easy. Other people are the problem Aren't they always!? I'm only being half facetious here. Others, especially others who have not yet learned to accept themselves, have all kinds of rules, regulations and expectations that they'd like to place upon you.

Of course, you can avoid, ignore or confront them. And each of these strategies has its place. But here's a fourth strategy, a meta-strategy, that I'd like to suggest: Love them. You know what they really need, what they really want, is love. And because they have yet to learn to accept and love themselves, they are laying all kinds of shit on you. Kind of convoluted, I know, but that's how the normally neurotic human mind works.

Just don't make love into another "should." Love is never a should, it's always a choice. And the funny thing is that you can choose to love even those people that you don't really like. That's because like comes from personality and love comes from core. You can think that a guy's a mean, rotten son-of-a-bitch, and still feel immense love for him. Granted, it's a bit confusing and disconcerting at first, but it's really quite a high expression of being natural and authentic on two levels simultaneously.

And so we've come full circle, back to you, back to your natural, authentic self. Your only real business here is to find that space of naturalness and authenticity and live from it. Day after day, each day anew. Do that, and all the rest of life will take care of itself.

Follow the Fine Silvery Stream

2009-04-19T06:23:00.007-05:00

"Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you."

-- Sheng-yen

I don't know who Sheng-yen is. Some Zen dude, I think. When he talks about "the method" I believe he's referring to the Zen practice of sitting meditation. It really doesn't matter, though, who he is or what the method is -- he's nailed it!

Every practice in every spiritual tradition follows "a fine silvery stream." It is at the same time a universal stream and a secret stream that is personal. private, and unique to you. It is as if all streams are made up of the same water, and all lead home to the same ocean, but each take a different route to get there.

It matters not whether your practice is sitting meditation, yoga, tai chi, contemplative prayer, or inner tennis. In each and every true spiritual practice is found the thread of Spirit that binds you to the Divine. There are no rigid stages of growth, no blueprints, no road maps for the journey. Trickling and meandering, the path is anything but straight. Your only real charge is to follow it.

How do you follow it? You follow it by tuning in. You follow it by being aware. You follow it by heeding the call of your heart. You forget about musts and shoulds and rules and regulations. You relax into your intuition, and you see where it encourages you to go.

You sit or you walk or you stretch or you kneel or you dance. And in the midst of it all, you wait from your silent center for the stream to pull you. And you go. You don't know where the hell you're going, but you go anyway. Grooves, cracks and crevices await.

Follow, explore, enjoy!

Be Unrealistic

2009-04-16T05:23:00.005-05:00

"Realistic people do not accomplish extraordinary things because the odds of success stymie them. The best performers ignore the odds... Great performances are, by definition, abnormal."

-- John Eliot

Playing the odds can defeat you before you begin. It's like listening to nay sayers. There are always at least a thousand reasons you won't succeed, and at least a thousand people willing to enumerate each and every reason for you. They call themselves statisticians, relatives or friends.

Ignore them. Ignoring them does not guarantee your success, but it does assure that you will not be prematurely sapped of the energy and resolve necessary to meet your goals. Paying them no never mind at least allows you to tap into the power of naivete, and sometimes that unbridled enthusiasm is all you need to fuel your extraordinary performance.

And by "extraordinary performance" I don't mean climbing Mt. Everest or winning American Idol or setting some inane record for the Guinness Book of World Records. No, true extraordinary performances are always an outgrowth of your highest loves, your deepest longings. Newspaper headlines, Nobel Prizes, and MacArthur Grants don't matter. What matters is that you do that which makes your heart sing, and that you do it to the best of your ability.

That's all -- doing your personal best at the thing you want to do most. Against all odds. In the face of all well-meaning advisers. Being statistically abnormal. Accepting that you're a mutant. Embracing your passion. Opening to grace. Performing at your peak. A fine way to live.

The Natural Capacity for Love

2009-04-15T05:11:00.003-05:00

"Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural capacity for love."

-- Wilhelm Reich

What Wilhelm calls "psychic illnesses" are what we, today, call psychological problems, emotional disturbances or neuroses. You know, craziness.

And we all have it to varying degrees. We all get upset, literally, over nothing. Nothing other than the drama that is playing out between our ears.

And what produces our way, way off Broadway dysfunctional theater? Our inability to accept, actualize, and embrace our "natural capacity for love." We temporarily lose our ability to both give and receive the most essential of all human nutrients -- love.

What I notice, personally, is that everytime I am upset, I have fallen out of touch with love. I'm either not loving the moment, not loving others, or not loving myself. And many times I'm caught up in the Not Loving Triple Whammy -- I don't love any of the three! Not loving drives us crazy!

The Crazy Cure is simple -- start loving again. Begin with the things you have a natural affinity for and work from there. Let them be the doorways into a deeper love. If you love a particular type of music, listen to some of it, sing along with it, or, better yet, get up and dance! If you can;'t immediately love the person, love the color of their sweater.

Be the Love Detective, the Miss Marple of Amore, The Sherlock Holmes of Agape. In every situation, find at least one thing you can love about it. With every person, find at least one thing you love about them. And with yourself, realize that you are in your heart of hearts a lean, mean loving machine!

Like all the really important things in life, it's simple really. Restoring our natural capacity for love begins with acceptance. And acceptance requires the relinquishing of judgments. Here you are. This is your life. It may not be the life the you imagined, the life you envisioned. You may not be your ideal you. The people all around you may fall far short of your high falutin' standards of perfection.

No matter. Here you are. On first blush, the here and now may look so tawdry, so lacking compared to your fantasies. In reality, the only thing lacking is love. Love redeems, and you, my friend are the redeemer. No messiah, no savior, no one else. The waiting is over. Love.

Earth's Axis

2009-04-14T05:48:00.007-05:00

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently as if this activity is the axis on which the whole earth revolves. Live the moment. Only this actual moment is life."

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

If we could remember just this one thought, we would be fully present for the unfolding of our lives. Living each moment as axis, we would experience each moment as the sacred center of our existence, enjoy each moment alive in its full glory.

That's all their is to life -- being present, showing up, and living each tick of the clock fully, completely, consciously. Simple really. Seemingly not so hard.

Why then do we run cognitively and emotionally all over hell's half-acre? Why are we everywhere but here, now?

Desire, bad habits, neurosis, dysfunction, sin. Call it what you will, our one real error is separating ourselves from reality, from this moment, which as Thich points out, is the only reality. Ever. This is it. Here now. One and no other. How incredibly, deliciously simple!

Breathing in, breathing out. Returning again and again to the present. Letting our perception and intuition guide us. Each day, each hour, each moment the same activity, and yet, always completely new.

You and your tea. All is right with the world.

The Virtue of Happiness

2009-04-10T04:54:00.004-05:00

"Being happy is a virtue too."

-- Ludwig Bourne

Some days you wake up beaming, ecstatic, full of light. But for me, at least, those days are the exception not the rule. More often I wake up to a clean slate, at best, a dark, cold pit, at worst. And I'm a "morning person!"

On those days when grace does not grant early morning euphoria, happiness is not a gift but a choice. We get to choose the emotional tenor of our day, and I'd like to suggest that happiness is not only the virtuous, but also the wise, choice.

Why? Because the happiness virus is positively contagious! It influences both your own health and the moods and views of the people all around you. Even on the days when happiness is not gifted to you by good genes, great grace, or the powers that be, you can choose to give the gift of happiness to your self and others. And there are two direct roads to this joyous state.

The first route is to get outside of yourself. Shun your less than cheery emotional state and look all around you for signs of hope. The beauty of nature, the laughter of children, old comedy movies or CD's, good friends, good books -- the list goes on and on. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple to find out that there are dozens, scores, perhaps even hundreds, of things to be happy about. It's all a matter of focus.

The second royal road to happiness is to go within. Deep within. Go beyond your momentary struggles, doubts, and disappointments to that clearing in your psyche where the current of life flows. In Hindu philosophy the essence of life is described as "sat-chit-ananda." Truth, consciousness, bliss. Find the blissful stream and bathe in it, let it permeate your soul and bring the healthy glow of Spirit to your eyes, to your skin.

It's like the old In & Out Burger slogan -- "In and out, in and out, that's what it's all about!" You can choose to go within yourself to the substratum of happiness that underlies all of life. Or you can choose to go outside yourself to experience the incredible manifestations of happiness that flourish all around you.

The virtue of happiness is in choosing not to stay stuck in the funk of negative emotion. The wisdom of happiness is in seeing that all unhappiness merely masks a deeper, exuberant reality. It is you, oh virtuous one, dear wise one, who holds the power. May you wield it with love.

What Is Life Asking of You?

2009-04-06T05:41:00.006-05:00

"Transformation arises from a willingness that develops very slowly over time to be what life asks of us."

-- Charlotte Jodo Beck

We are taught in Western culture that we can be whatever we want to be. And maybe we can. At least some of us. The unasked question, though, is should we? Should we use personal desire as our one guiding star to determine who we're going to be and what we're going to do?

Coming out of the Zen perspective, Charlotte offers us an alternative. The alternative is to listen to the whisperings of life. What is life asking? Are we willing to take up a larger call?

One of the problems with many so-called New Age teachings is that they focus upon "getting" from life. In the guise of spirituality, personal desire is christened as holy. The whole enterprise smacks of selfishness in drag.

Instead, how about listening to "the still, small voice within?" How about seeking to harmonize with the Universe rather than trying to put our stamp upon it? Deeper needs are met, higher purposes served, when we move beyond merely collecting more stuff, experience, or praise. In reality, the best results are produced, the most joy is uncovered, when co-creation, rather than egoic desire, is the driving force.

So, the koan du jour and the perennial question are one and the same: What is life asking of you? And, secondarily: Are you willing? Are you willing to do and be what life asks rather than continuously trying to remold life in your image?

When you are both listening and willing, that's when true transformation happens -- to you, to those around you, to the world.

Owning Things

2009-03-29T06:03:00.005-05:00

"The inner principle is that we are interdependent energy fields of great potential wisdom and compassion -- expressed in each person as a superb mind, a handsome and complex body, and the almost magical capacity of language. To these potentials and capacities, 'owning things' can add nothing to authenticity."

-- Gary Snyder

Owning things is highly overrated. Sure, there's that initial little thrill when you obtain something you've long desired, be it a shiny new car or a sweater in the perfect shade of green. And the ownership of certain things, like washing machines and laptop computers, can make life easier and more streamlined. But to make the amassing of things the goal of your life is to tragically miss the point.

Simply stated, stuff is merely a bit player, a minor character, in the overall drama of a life well lived. There are so many more interesting verbs than owning. Seeing, loving, creating, experiencing, and being, for example.

Better to think in terms of flowing than owning. Things flow into your life, and they flow out again. You use them, you enjoy them, but you neither jones for them, nor frantically cling to them. You live lightly -- both materially and psychologically.

Sharing is more natural than owning. Much more fun, too! Nature doesn't own, nature shares. And one of the best ways to harmonize with nature, as well as with others, is through sharing, cooperating, giving and receiving.

One of my alternative entrepreneurship fantasies is to live in a big Victorian house full of stuff and have all of it be for sale. Everything. You can buy the TV in the den, the beer steins in the kitchen. You can buy the chair I'm sitting on, hell, you can buy the shirt off my back. All at very reasonable prices, too, of course. A great river of stuff flowing through my life leaving in its wake only the sheer joy of complete non-attachment.

You see, who we are is not defined by what we have. Our authenticity comes from exploring, expanding and living those marvelous potentials and capacities that reside within us. Along the way stuff comes and goes. Enjoy it, play with it, pass it on. Reside in the underground river, the hidden channel of energy that flows through, over, around and beyond each and every thing.

Let that river flow through you, too. A natural baptism, a cosmic cleansing, all flow, all letting go, in the water park called Life. Exhilaration! Relaxation! The perpetual pulsing of the yin/yang rhythm. Wheeee -- it's one helluva ride!

Magical Things

2009-03-08T05:50:00.004-05:00

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

-- Eden Phillpotts

What are these magical things? I don't know, my wits aren't sharp enough to perceive them, much less tell you. I just have a feeling that they're out there (and in here)... somewhere. Thank God, they have patience because I may not stumble upon them anytime soon. If you do, please let me know.

Life's Balancing Act

2009-03-03T04:58:00.005-06:00

"Look everywhere with your eyes; but with your soul never look at many things, but one."

-- V.V. Rozanov

Be aware of your environment; be in touch with God. It's that simple. Really. Your eyes are your means of being present in the real world -- right here, right now. Your soul is your conduit to the eternal -- always here, always now.

If you feed your eyes with the phantasmagoria of life, but forget to nourish your soul, you will soon be overwhelmed by it all. If you tend to your soul, but ignore the life that blossoms before you and all around you, you will become deeply irrelevant.

As in all things, the trick is in the balance. The word that comes to mind, when I think of visually partaking in as much of the world as possible, is "wow!" When contemplating the One, the syllable that best captures the process for me is "ah." To balance, to harmonize wow and ah -- that is our challenge.

I hope your day is filled with amazing sights! I hope your soul is engulfed in underlying Unity. Today, and each day, may the dance between the many and the One unfold within you and around you, always in perfect harmony with the Uni-Verse.