Used Up

"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 Desire-Thought Connection

"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.

Seeing

"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.

Your Bliss Awaits

"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?

Follow the Fine Silvery Stream

"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!

Karma

"Viewed correctly, karma is a learning process rather than a punitive one. We get what we need in order to grow. As long as we regard ourselves as being punished, we are missing the point."

-- Robert Allen. Zen Reflections, page 51

Karma is simple -- action begets reaction. What you do produces results, and those results are aligned with the laws, or working principles, of the Universe.

There's no white-bearded Big Daddy in the sky sending either rewards or punishments your way. Karma's not personal at all. It's just the way this system we cal life works.

And as Big Bob Allen points out, karma is there to educate you. It's all about positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Certain actions produce positive results, others produce negative repercussions. The tricky part is that we don't always see the karmic results of our actions right away, and that's why it behooves us to become karmically sensitive.

What does "karmically sensitive" mean? It means that instead of waiting for results to manifest in the physical world, we feel the results of our actions within our souls, even as we are doing them! Certain acts promote Unity, bring us into alignment with the Universe, attune us to the Tao. Other acts rip apart the sacred threads that weave us together, produce dissension, separateness and strife. When you become sensitive to these movements within, you do not have to wait for outer results to confirm the karma you have set in motion.

You can leave morals, ethics and codes of conduct out of this whole discussion. Feeling karmic implications, and learning from them, begins not as a cognitive process but as an intuitive one. You need not attempt to follow any rules and regulations, you simply guide your behavior by the instant karmic feedback that you receive on the soul level. Miss those subtle intonations, however, and, don't worry, sooner or later, much larger, external results will grab your attention. Pay attention now, or pay later. It's up to you.

When the results are positive, when you're on a roll, go with it, enjoy it, and remember what works. When the results are negative, understand the behavior that initiated those painful results, and change it -- right now, next time, or whenever you can. From a learning perspective, the worst thing you can do is to blame others, make up some quack astrological explanation, or in other ways play the victim.

It's all karma! Don't believe me, experiment and see the results. Live from a level of complete responsibility, as if it's all karma, and keep a clear eye on what unfolds. Each and every moment a learning moment. The Universe partnering with you by giving you constant feedback. A grand adventure, a great game! What could be better than that?

The Ultimate Awesome

"It is better to see God in everything than to try to figure it out."

-- Neem Karoli Baba

I don't care if you're Einstein or Stephen Hawking, or the recipient of a MacArthur genius award, you're not going to be able to figure it all out. It just ain't going to happen -- no way, no how.

So why spin your cognitive wheels in the primordial mud of existence? Why spend you're entire life trying to explain the unexplainable. Yo, there Sisyphus, just let that friggin rock go already!

Rational thought cannot explain reality. Intuition, however, can grasp what discursive thinking cannot. You can intuit the true nature of existence. And through intuition you can know and "see" God in everything.

It ain't easy. It's like looking through a pair of binoculars that keep slipping out of focus. But with practice your seeing can become more consistent. And by practice I don't mean "trying," I mean being. Being present to reality. Getting out of your thoughts, out of your emotions and, right here, right now, taking perception to a deeper level.

When it all clicks, it's amazing! God is everywhere, in everything. It's not a concept, it's an experience of the highest order, a knowing of the deepest degree, the ultimate awesome. God everywhere, in everyone, in everything -- what could be more obvious?

You may not be prone to trying to figure out the ultimate nature of existence. I bet, however, that you vex yourself unnecessarily trying to figure out why your partner does what he or she does, why your teenager is acting like that, or why your coworkers seems so clueless and lame. Forget about it! Instead, use a different part of your mind, and see God in each and every one.

God in disguise, God in drag. Behind each and every mask, behind personas one and all, hell, in personas one and all, lurks The Divine. Everyday our joyous task is the same -- see! Simply see.

Potent Giving

"Giving is the highest expression of potency."

-- Erich Fromm

True giving always arises out of strength. It is an overflowing, a flowering, an individual expression of an abundant universe.

True giving is not concerned with the attitude or gratitude of the receiver. It is not grounded in duty, guilt, or even, concern for results.

True giving is a spontaneous outpouring of trust. It is a dynamic facet of the jewel of Self, best activated and actualized by being in harmony with the One.

If there is a debate going on in your head, "Should I give? Should I not give? I don't know what to do," then don't give. True giving is never preceded by debate. Sometimes, in the process of true giving, you don't even know you gave! Only weeks, months or years later, when someone thanks you for giving of your time, energy or love, do you even recognize your actions as giving. At the time, they were just your natural, unadulterated response to whatever was arising.

But at other times, not giving is what is called for. At least not giving at the time, or in the form, that it was requested. To give or not to give is not a cognitive decision but an intuitive one. It should not be based on who has the slickest appeal, or what tugs most upon your heartstrings, but on where your energy wants to go.

So, today, just be aware. Watch yourself giving, not giving, or debating whether to give. Don't try and change anything, just watch. Feel within. Abide in your strength. See what happens.