Category: Heaven-Hell

Heaven and Hell are two sides to the same coin. They only exist in an imaginary world that we create ourselves.

Ours is an existence of duality.

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The Unconscious Life – The Dreamer and the Dreamed

 

For many of us, life as we now know it is the dream, a dream in the sense that who we really are is unknown to us and sleeps soundly amidst the noise, hustle and bustle of everyday life, and egocentric conversation.  Occasionally, as we dream, our level of consciousness is raised to a level of awareness that reminds us, as we sleep, that we are asleep.  That something or someone long forgotten is there beneath the noise, quiet and calm, but ever present and sometimes only aware as through a fog or mist.  Occasionally, we sense another self and wish we could know it in a way that we know other things in our typical dream world.

We are often reminded that we are something else, completely different from that which we manifest in the dream.  At times, it is as if the part of us that is asleep and the part that is the dream become simultaneously and vaguely aware of the other’s existence, but also know that being in the presence of the other is intolerable.  It is a parallel awareness that is often fleeting, but nonetheless powerful and jarring to all of our senses.  At these times, we become thoughtful and contemplative and wonder “Who Am I?”, or we may ask other deep questions such as “Where did I come from?” and “Where am I going?”  It is almost as if the sudden awareness of that sleeping self is a haunting, a calling out from another part of ourselves that is eerily familiar but distant and unknown as well.

The feeling is not unlike déjà vu.  Sometimes we may ask, “What was that?”  We may become quiet and subdued and contemplative as we try to put into our own three-dimensional terms what we know, but don’t know!  Our contemplation may take us back through our history to recapitulate defining events in our lives that shaped us but drain us of our energy.  Some of those past memories may trigger sorrow, joy, sadness, happiness or any number of other emotions or feelings that seem to cause us to retract into another place of meaning, discovery, and knowing that we struggle to understand.  “Where did I go?” we may ask as we try to bring forward into present time that seemingly lost soul we thought we knew and actually did know sometime before.  Locked inside that knowing, we struggle to identify who it was that was hidden away and forgotten, only to be thought of in these rarest of moments when, for whatever reason, the dreamer tries to awaken from that deep unknowing sleep.

It is as if the dreamer dreams and the dreams themselves live.  They do, in fact, seem so real that we are lost to the illusion on display before us and rarely do we ever escape it. Life for most of us is the dream of one who fell asleep long, long ago, perhaps as children. The process of falling asleep begins at birth when everyone in our newly awakened life takes on the responsibility of convincing us that what they see is all that is there. Every institution we are exposed to in life from our birth to our death is the magic dust that keeps us asleep.

What we call ‘reality’ really is the illusion, the dream, the life played out as the dreamer sleeps.  The dreamer, aware of the other reality being played out but frozen in the dream, tries to awaken or call out as if to cry, “Stop! That is the dream.  True reality can only appear when I awaken.  I am the only way to true reality and the answers you seek. Be still and you will find me, for I am always here” the voice of the dreamer whispers. Sometimes we almost awaken and know that we have been dreaming and our hearts fill with a wanderlust and exhilaration as we catch a glimpse of the true reality outside the dream. We struggle inside the dream to awaken fully to this distant knowing, long ago tucked away in the bright lights of the illusion we now experience.

Sadly, for most of us, the dream overwhelms the dreamer because the language of the dreamer cannot be understood in the language of the dream.  The dream is action and drama, movement and suspense.  The dreamer is still and quiet and falls again and again back into the deep sleep where the dream lies safe and protected from any onslaught of true reality.

It really is like watching a movie.  The events are unreal but we attach ourselves to them emotionally as if they were.  We let ourselves get drawn into the action as if we were really a part of the fictional events taking place.  So lost in the movie do we become that we lose all awareness that we are sitting in a theater watching unreal events as if they were real, believing they are real!

We have coined new terminology that accepts non-reality as good enough to be reality.  We call it ‘virtual reality.’  Virtual reality might be thought of as the reality of non-reality, if that could possibly make any sense.  Think about non-reality becoming more real.  As non-reality becomes more real, reality becomes less real.  The less real reality becomes, the more difficult finding and knowing the dreamer becomes.  In other words, virtual reality is “the dream becoming the dreamed.”  There is no longer a dreamer!

The language already exists that makes the ego lord over all.  It is the language that states, “We can feed you non-reality that is so real, you have no need for real reality”.  That is the language of ego serving every need of man to the exclusion of an inner knowing of the I am that dreams it all. Wake up, dreamer, and know thyself!

The unconscious life is the life of the dreamer never waking from the dream.  It is succumbing to the actual dream – the illusion that plays out as the life we live. Somehow, we must awaken from the sleep that dreams the dream we accept as reality, for everything we see or perceive as the dreamer sleeps is illusion.  All of it is illusion if not perceived by the awakened dreamer, the I am, that is one with all things great and small. The dreamer is he, who in those brief moments of insight or awakening, is the non identity we seek that is interconnected to everything in existence. Sometimes our reckoning with this insight is so overwhelming that we lose all sense of our identity and we simply breathe in all of life and our oneness with it. We no longer see it as something that lies before us; rather, we are it and it is us! We are quickened, as it were, and the dreamer outside the dream is aware of nothing but oneness with all that is–the unidentifiable I Am that always is revealed to our knowing! Not our language but our true inner knowing, the knowing that cannot be known at the physical sense level other than a burst of insight and exhilaration we feel all over.

Gods have no identity, other than the ones we give them, and neither should we since we, too, are gods. Our identities, which we are so attached to, tie us to the dream and give us place within it, adding to the virtual drama being played out day in and day out.

When Moses was commanded to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he asked God, “Who should I tell them has sent me?” to which God replied “Tell them I am has sent you.” Who is the “I Am” God was speaking of that would be recognizable to the house of Israel? How do we identify with “I Am” when we are specifically looking for something to identify ourselves with? “I Am” is not an identity but a state of being. It is not a who but a what!

Moses asked for an identity and he received a state of being instead.  “I am has sent you.” Gods do not need an identity.  Look at the different identities and ways we have tried to describe God through the ages.  We say He is all knowing, mysterious, everywhere and nowhere, all powerful, the same yesterday, today and forever, so small He can dwell in your heart and so large He fills the universe, mindful of the least of these, but vengeful and jealous, kind and full of grace, perfect.

All of these descriptive terms are an unidentifiable way of identifying someone or something, and yet God in answering Moses’ inquiry, rather than giving him an identifiable name to use, provided a state of being.   In reality, it is useless to try to identify God as anything outside of I Am.  Gods simply are and when you strip away the illusion of ego and still the chattering mind, so are we.  So, to the unidentified, nothing need be identifiable.  It simply is a part of one universal and infinite I am, none greater than or less than.  All things sharing a common I am-ness that makes all things, including us, are equal.  We are, as is everything, infinite awareness.  Simply I am that I am.  We are existence!

When we awaken and begin living that reality, the illusion we once lived, the dream recedes into quiet background that only serves to give us a context with those who never reach the same awareness.  In other words, we know the reality in which they live, and can access them, live with them in every way, even though we have moved beyond that reality.  In this way, we can exist in a reality we know does not exist as anything other than an illusion or the dreams of many dreamers. It is “being in the world but not of it.”

Once we reach this state of being or awareness, things and people as we once knew them no longer need identification.  Histories and stories are no longer necessary.  Identifiers of any kind are no longer adequate in describing anything nor are they necessary.  All the baggage of knowing differences, placements, and time lines are no longer important and are no longer necessary as we perceive that everything in existence is energy radiating in every direction and mingling with our own.  Our new perception, or new seeing, takes on beauty that no three- dimensional sensing can comprehend.

Rare is the dreamer who wakes from the dream, and yet it is from the dream we must awaken in order to know the “I Am” within. That is where our true power lies and all the mysteries of heaven and earth come from that place, a place deep within. We are all gods, but for most of us, God sleeps. The noise of ego keeps the divine self at bay and our virtual reasoning convinces us over and over again that the illusion we all live in is the reality. All of our institutions support that and convince us ever more that the dream is anything but a dream.

We are gods and we all somehow know it when we awaken from the dream state most of us dwell in. Recognition of our godlike nature will never happen while we remain trapped in the illusion of our dreamlike state. The projection of life, the illusion we have accepted through years of egocentric conditioning, lacks the ability to comprehend the true power we all possess.  We will never know it living the illusion and watching what most of us call ‘life’ play itself out. After all it is only a dream!

How do we know we are in the dream? The dream or illusion is finite. Anything upon which we put finite limits is illusion! That which is finite has a beginning and an ending and carries a finite description as to what it is in three dimensional terms. Ego needs finality-a right or wrong or absolute answers to questions that have no answers when speaking of the infinite. When we look out at anything and see only what we have been conditioned to see we can describe it in very finite terms. In other words “the tree is a tree” or more specifically “the tree is an oak tree.” Illusion comes with description and details-identifiers that make it perceptible in our three dimensional terms and limited to that description.

Life, true life, is infinite. Without beginning or ending. It is so much more vast than any dream. In fact, in three dimensional terms, it is incomprehensible. It can only be comprehended through the eyes of the dreamer who is typically asleep-unconscious to what is really going on around him. The inner self, the dreamer, as it were, has the eyes to see but will rarely see. Most dreamers sleep comfortably, some fitfully, in the noise of illusion and the egoic drama that plays on and on. The non-identity, the I Am, always still, always quiet awaits the dreamer to become again as a child and awaken anew into the fullness of life and the acceptance of all that is! Children know this until we who sleep put them to sleep making them a part of the same dream we dream only now we have added more dreamers to the virtual reality we accept as reality.

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Cosmic Train

Kindile book cover OHBThis is the first chapter from my book “On Human Being – Loving and Living Without Purpose.”  I apologize for it’s length but hope you enjoy it in any case.

Earth life is a vacation from the cosmic train we all ride on through our infinite existence.  It is a unique experience all of us who choose to visit get to enjoy, if we accept that the only reason we are here is to enjoy.  It may seem erroneous to consider that we are here to experience three dimensional reality as a vacation or as something we should enjoy when we see so much pain, suffering and sorrow in the world.  The reality of existence here on earth is that it is nothing in comparison to our existence in eternity.  We are no less infinite on earth than we are in eternity.

While aboard the cosmic train, a few of us have gotten off here at earth and as we pass through the gates of birth, we enter a new kind of awareness that overwhelms everything else we once knew.  The old awareness gets tucked away but is always there.  We sense that there is more to us, but in the new earthly awareness, it is difficult to hold onto and pull it into this reality.  Some do and we see them as mysterious and unique, but never allow that, we too, are just as they are.  Earthly awareness is so tactile and sensory. The stimuli we take in through our earthly senses overwhelms us in a sea of experience and richness that is difficult to separate from the reality of who we truly are.  So we are driven to find answers in this reality to that mysterious knowing we have about ourselves that is bigger than our means of communication can express.  We look for meaning and purpose in terms of what we see and in the expressions we communicate, but even with all of that, we are sometimes left empty.  The search continues.  The purposes of life are explored and examined but the answers we seek lay hidden.

There really is no purpose in this life other than to experience reality as only humans can.  Every aspect of life should be embraced and we should revel in every minute of it regardless of whether we judge the experience good or bad.  Our purpose, if there is any purpose, is to live and live abundantly in the richness of sensory experiences our human existence allows.  Our existence “is” the meaning of life!  Living “it” is its only purpose.  However, it is ours to choose how we let the sensory awareness of this life be measured.  We can choose to embrace it and enjoy all its ups and downs, or we can be miserable as we slog our way through it to our death, or the entrance back on the cosmic train we disembarked from.  We make it what it is and we can blame no one for our experience.  Sure, our innate nature has been masked, but it is not unknowable.  We live according to our awareness and that is as it should be.  That is what we came here for; therefore, every minute of earthly awareness should be basked in for its wonderful and delicious sensory experience.

The search for a greater meaning or purpose to life is in some ways its own problem.  It suggests that we cannot be here for any other reason than to embrace and enjoy everything about life.  It leads us to question our lives and the experience we have as meaningful in ways that they are not meant to be.  It adds seriousness to our existence that drives us to meanings that can only make sense in this reality but do not begin to address our own innate knowing that we are so much more than what we sense in this existence, or than what language will allow us to describe.  That is a lot about what this existence is about – coming to grips with the limitations of awareness and communication we otherwise have as gods.  There is no way we can describe our divine nature in the languages of humans, but we are not supposed to.  Remember we are on vacation and compared to our divine nature, the pace here on earth is slowed down considerably.  Our infinite state is a quickened state in which our awareness is of things incomprehensible in this life…  earth life is seriously slowed down.  In fact, our own human-ness slows us down even more.

For instance, it has been proven scientifically that our bodies, including what we call our physical senses, take in sensory input, several billion bits of information every second, and yet what we are capable of being conscious of is in the range of twenty to thirty bits per second.  Something about this experience as humans filters out so much of what goes on that what we are conscious of is infinitesimal to what is really happening.  When we consider our divine or spiritual natures, the information we receive is even greater than what we experience on the human level.  In fact, our spiritual sensitivity is so finely tuned it is barely detectable and in most scientific circles, it is nonexistent simply because we do not have the three dimensional means to detect it.  What is not detectable in this reality is usually left to speculation, theory or is just relegated as non-existent.  Even though most of us at one time or another have felt something in ourselves that is more far-reaching than we can articulate, if we cannot define it, or measure it, it cannot be, or so says our science.

Human consciousness or sub consciousness is not the extent of our experience.  We have built in conditions and filters that sift through the enormous amount of information, bombarding us every second, which screen out the majority of our experience.  This is what I mean when I refer to life as an illusion in my book On Being God.  What makes it into our conscious awareness is what we have been conditioned or programmed to know and accept.  Most of us have heard that when the Spanish ships appeared on the horizon upon discovering the “New World”, the inhabitants could not see them.  There was nothing in their conditioning that could explain what they saw and yet intuitively they saw something.  Their programming simply could not identify it and nothing in their experience, other than clouds, could the ships on the horizon be compared to.

We know it took the shamans of those native people several days to come up with a description they could then convey to the rest of the people.  Only then could they identify this new phenomenon and only then could they put this new description into their own language and make it part of their experience.  Consider how much is going by us if in every second of life, billions and billions of images, sounds, smells, tastes, touches and any number of sensory inputs we can’t possibly remember get discarded by processes we barely understand.  Life goes on around us at light speed but we only sense it at a snail’s pace.  And the civilizing of ourselves, as we refer to it, is only slowing it down even more.  Think about what is passing us by.

In the early 1990’s, I worked for a telecommunications company whose products helped optimize the available bandwidth of copper phone lines around the world.  Cellular technology was in its infancy as was fiber optics, so maximizing the available telephone bandwidth was of major importance because there were only so many copper lines available to an ever increasing population of telephone users.  The product we developed was a device that would convert an analog voice signal to a digital signal, remove any extraneous noise such as the static or ambient noise one often heard on a telephone land line, and then packetize the cleaned up digital signal into small packets that would be sent across the line to another device that would assemble the packets, convert the digital signal to an analog signal and, wonder of wonder, a voice was heard speaking just as on any phone call.

What was so unique about this product, for the time, was that in processing calls in such a way and by eliminating all the extraneous noise, we could put sixteen voice conversations across a telephone line that up to that time could only carry one, representing a huge savings to businesses who were paying for multiple lines at great cost as well as a serious improvement to the usage of the available bandwidth. One of the interesting facets of developing this technology was the idea that the extraneous noise in normal telephone conversations carried no useful information and could be removed without any affect to those speaking and those listening.  Little did our developers know that the noise did provide one very important piece of information.

All of us who have used the old land line telephones always had a sense that our call was viable because we could hear the noise of the connection during breaks in the conversation.  The information carried by the noise was that the call was still connected.  Even though the noise adds nothing to the words spoken or heard, it did add to the assurance that in between words spoken and words heard the line was still connected.  When we removed that assurance, sure enough, people who used the new technology complained that during the breaks in a conversation, the line went so silent they couldn’t tell if the connection was still intact.  The familiar noise of land line conversations was a carrier of information that, like so much in our reality, is taken for granted but missed if it is gone.

We are missing more and more in our reality due to the stripping away of the noise of life that civilization, culture, and upbringing filters out, and the absence of it is causing us to be aware of less but to seek more.  In other words, we are starving ourselves of the richness of life in all its forms and replacing it with the illusions of culture and civilization that have been drained of nutrients necessary to the soul.  Our aloneness in the world stems not from the isolation we feel from our brothers and sisters.  It stems from the filtering of life that has isolated us from our own god-ness and that of everyone else.  That is what we seek in life – not human connection, but divine connection.    Individually and societally, we are crying out more and more for something to fill our satiated souls, and more and more civilization devises empty stimulation to keep us in control – in check from venturing away from the illusion we know.

The illusion we live, like the processed foods we eat, have been stripped of those things that would enrich and nourish us and replaced with fillers and synthetic nutrients that satisfy temporarily but do not fill us.  Our connections to nature have been replaced with television, radio, internet and other civilized forms of media that have been carefully engineered to play to an illusory beat we have all been taken in by.  Like the packetizing of small pieces of digitized voice from a telephone call, information is carefully fed to us at a rate not to exceed our ability to pay attention.  So much of the information is stripped away that we only get teased with what is really happening and before we have a chance to try to figure out what information has been stripped away, we are hit with another perfectly timed, perfectly sized packet of seriously reduced information.

The illusion is so complete that we, as participators in it, have accepted slogans such as “give them what they want” believing that what we want is what we are being given.  Meanwhile, for those who search for greater awareness, getting outside of the illusion is extremely difficult and so they search in vain among the institutions of civilization for the soul nourishment they crave.

What was intended to be a stopping off point, a vacation from other awareness has now become a desperate struggle to somehow survive natural forces that, while once were so much a part of us, have now become the enemy.  Our illusion of what this reality is has become so synthesized that we have replaced what was always intended – enjoyment, enrichment, tranquility and nourishment – with a struggle fraught with peril, tragedy and synthetic stimulation.  Our cosmic vacation has become so empty, so stressful that we now look for ways to vacation from the vacation!  And where do we go?  To those places with as little civilization as possible.  We go to those places where we can rest, soak up the sun, or be inspired by the beauty of a natural wonder such as a mountain, a river, the ocean or a canyon.  We sometimes go to the civilized, manmade attractions but, while fun and stimulating; they often leave us empty and un-refreshed.

The oldest among us recall fondly the quieter and less hectic times they grew up in and the freedoms they enjoyed then that are so distant now.  The youngest of us cannot even conceive of these things they describe.  The sterilizing manner of civilization removes the adventure and connectedness to the world whose intention it was all along to enrich us and enliven us from an infinite “other world” reality.  Our souls came here for enrichment, not our bodies, and yet it is our bodies that our civilized world caters to.  The experience of life has become a race, a competition to find purpose and meaning by indulging the senses in every possible way, such that the soul is lost completely to the gratification of the physical or three dimensional aspect of our lives.  We hear the statement that “we are spiritual beings having a physical experience”.  Yes, we are having a physical experience, but not to the extent that we completely overshadow our spiritual nature.

In the Old Testament, there is a story of the man Job whom most have heard of in some form or another.  The story of Job is the story of a man who has everything this life can offer.  He is a man of great wealth, influence and notable character.  He is God-fearing and righteous and is blessed with a large family, creature comforts, as we call them and the respect of everyone in his country.  Job’s story takes a bizarre twist as Satan convinces God to let him break Job and show God that if he were to lose all the things in life he possesses, that Job would lose his faith and curse God.  God allows Satan to literally take everything from Job including his family, wealth, and good fortune.  Satan is even allowed to cause great scourges and illness to come upon Job, but Job, while physically broken in every way, never forsakes his faith, nor does he turn against God.  Job does, however, question why one as righteous as he, is treated so poorly by the God he worships.  He even asks God to take his life and end his misery.  Job suffers all that is thrown at him, but never accepts that he is evil or that God is punishing him for some act he has committed.  Job does seek for answers to his suffering and requests to speak to God face to face.  God grants Job’s request and appears to him as a whirlwind.

It is extremely interesting God’s response to Job and very relevant to our experience here in this life.  Instead of speaking in any way to Job about his suffering, God directs Job to look all around and take in all the beauty and wonder he is surrounded by.  God covers every aspect of creation and life on this earth and not once addresses Job as a sinful man or in a way Job desires.  All manner of creatures are mentioned as well as the wind, rain, water, snow, hail and frost.  It can be taken that God rules over everything and is greater than all things but it is as if God is trying to show Job that the things that are naturally here on earth are what is important in life.  All of it is here for the good of our souls and yet our so called civilizing or taming of nature is not unlike that of Job questioning God why he is made to suffer.

How is it that we can suppose that the egoic cravings of humans can nourish our starving souls when any of it has no comparison, whatsoever, to the beauty, majesty and abundance of this earth?  The treasures of life are not found in the creations of man.  They are found in the raw creative beauty of which we are all a part.  When we see that eagle soar high above and we gasp for breath as we watch, “we” are every bit as breath-taking and none of it is because we have created our cities, monuments, and wonders.  It is because our souls, like the eagles, soar above everything we believe important and look down on something so vast and wonderful.  Nothing in our creative imagining comes close to its splendor.

We are the recipients of this splendor.  No act or outcome in this life will change the nature of our soul in the eternities.  Nothing we do here matters, so all that we need do here is embrace everything that goes on, every experience, every accomplishment, and every aspect of the life we live should be embraced in every possible way as another part of our vacation. None of us should ever feel we are victims of circumstance when we step back on to that cosmic train.  We should be refreshed, invigorated, uplifted and alive from a richness of experience we may never know again, and while in infinite terms the experience is a blip on the cosmic screen, every part of this experience should leave us absolutely vibrating.  What a gift it is to be here and to experience the incredible highs and lows of humankind.  We should relish every moment of it.

Too many can’t wait, like Job of old, to get out of life and back on board the train.  Life has not been the pleasure trip it was meant to be, but that is only because in the egoic life we live and try to fit into, we lose sight of why we are here.  As God spoke to Job and asked him to identify one thing in his experience that remotely compared to the splendor of this planet and everything on it, Job shrank before Him and could not.  The reason is that there is no manmade thing that compares to anything on earth and in infinite terms, nothing on earth including earth itself compares to our lives in eternity.

In the last chapter of Job, the epitaph, Job is restored to his health, position, and stature that he knew before Satan physically broke him.  In fact, it was greater than before.  The story of Job is a metaphor for us here on earth living life that regardless of our circumstances or how we view our life experience, in the end we are restored to our unique and divine situation.  If we learn to see this life, our experience, as God instructed Job to view it, nothing else matters.  Nothing we do or accomplish in this life will ever surpass just being a part of life here on earth in whatever form it takes.  The cosmic train leaves no one behind regardless of how the earth experience went for them.  Like Job, we are all restored back to that infinite reality we all exist in.  We won’t be looking back as in infinity, all things blend together into one big whole, and it is wondrous.  All of it is wondrous!

Life and living are the only reason we are here and all of it is to be enjoyed, but only as you choose.  We cannot fail at life! There really are no illusions, only the ones we choose to accept as our condition.  We can change everything in our experience here in this life and we should because we get back onboard the cosmic train all too soon.

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Stream of Life

This is the last chapter in my book: “On Human Being – Loving & Living without Purpose.”

 

Follow a stream from its highest point, whether it is a spring releasing water from an unknown source or from the snows of winter melting and giving their life giving waters to everything below.  As the stream finds its way down from its heights, it passes by or over many obstacles along its way, but it always seems to find a way.  Its course often seems impossible, but as it runs into obstacles, it finds the path of least resistance which sometimes means going around obstacles or perhaps it waits patiently to fill a certain low spot that will allow its waters to eventually flow over its would-be obstruction.  As we follow the stream, it will sometimes rush in great torrents down steep hillsides or spill over high cliffs into pristine pools below.  Sometimes it will meander through large open meadows where beautiful alpine flowers bloom and fill the landscape with color, fragrance and brilliance.  Perhaps the stream splits off and fills the meadow with small tributaries that merge back together.

 

The sounds of the stream also tell us something about its travels in that it will gurgle as it meanders through unobstructed fields and meadows, but it rushes and roars as it surges over cliffs, down steep canyons filled with large boulders and other obstructions.  As we continue our journey following the waters, we might see another stream joining ours, increasing its size and power.  Still, the waters push forward, twisting and turning as needed to work its way around the landscape as effortlessly as possible.  In fact, as we observe this stream, it never occurs to us that the waters are fighting their way downward.  It all seems so effortless and easy.  Even in those places where the river has cut its way through rocks and cliffs that, when looking at, simply does not look possible.

 

The stream weaves its way through a tapestry of life introducing us to all manner of trees, shrubs, plant life, and animal and insect life of all kinds.  Some of the places the stream takes us are shaded from the sunlight and are cool and dark, even forbidding, while other places are sunlit and brilliant and the shadows cast on the moving water make it look different, even mesmerizing.  There are places on its journey where it shoots through cracks in the rock and we see rainbows cast so close, we can touch them or we feel the cool mist on our faces.  Everything about this journey is peaceful and calm and the constant rushing of the river soothes us and at times we may even find ourselves talking to the waters as if they could hear.  They can! Never do we sense, as we journey alongside the stream, that it struggles to get where it is going.  It moves effortlessly, inexorably passing by all the wonders of its long journey to get to its destination which, by the way, does not exist.  As it passes by life, it gives life by giving of itself so that all is refreshed, nourished and uplifted.  It is a relaxed life that looks for peace wherever it goes, and it goes where it goes simply because that is where it goes.  We may find evidence along the way when it changed course or with the help of natural forces it moves out of one bed and into another.  Still, it matters not.  The stream is not choosing a path to follow.  It is simply flowing and as it flows, the path opens up, and with each new opening, new adventure, new beauty and wonder lies before it and it brushes up against all of it, content to take it all in and give back what it can in the form of life giving water.   Onward, ever onward, it moves through hills and valleys, forest and fields.  Taking in but giving back.

 

The stream gives life, but is given to life as life is given to it.  Its course is never straight nor is it narrow or wide.  We cannot map its exact course because a map of the stream’s journey could never account for every detail the stream encounters on its way down the mountain. The stream does not choose this way or that.  It simply flows where the grade of the mountain (life) takes it and it embraces and gives back to everything it encounters on its way.  Every aspect of the journey is just that – part of the journey. There is no purpose other than to serve as that part of the journey.  That incredible moment is as the water passes by all that matters and all is uplifted and better for the experience.  No great crossroads or turning points in this encounter or that one.  Just life giving of itself for all to marvel at and enjoy.  The stream moves on, as do we.

 

There are no perfect geometric patterns in life as we all would like to believe there is, or as our math and science teachers say.  The straight path does not exist except in our imagined lives.  There is no straight way to any purpose we consider to be our very own.  Life is a stream!  We are taught from a very early age that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but no part of our life on earth is a straight line.  In life, the shortest distance between two points is the one that took you from point A to point B regardless of what distance you traveled or the time it took. Ego looks at life in a finite way, and in so doing, it must find order and structure that was never intended to be there.   Our true life is an infinite experience and every twist and turn, the ebbs and flows, as we call them, are never consistent with what our egos expect.  This is the cause of suffering in individuals as well as in society.  Ego constructs a true and ordered life and even uses sacred writings and ancient wisdom to reason with us that if we follow the prescribed path it reasons is the correct one, life will work out and flow effortlessly to the end.

 

Those who rigidly follow their ego’s prescribed course often find themselves in turmoil and needless suffering because they followed the rules and they didn’t get where they were supposed to.   Life is full of Monday morning quarterbacks looking back at what went wrong with their plan or what they could have done differently to achieve the pre-planned outcome.  We see this second guessing, questioning in every aspect of our lives including religion, academics, and occupations.  We might hear someone exclaim, “I followed God’s laws as I have been taught them”, or “I worked hard and did everything I was supposed to, but why was I not protected or spared an outcome I was sure could not happen if I obeyed all the rules.”   Unlike the natural flow of the stream which always finds its way, many will push against the natural course of life.  They will push against it and question their misfortune.  You can almost see them standing in the stream facing upward with clenched fist defying the direction of flow as if challenging it to reverse its direction and go where they command it.  All it does, however, is move forward, following its natural course, either moving around you as you fight against it, or sweeping you up in its current.  Life does not care about the choices we make.  Life, like the river, flows on, embracing everything in its path, and giving back every step of the way. If we could see our lives as a river or stream and simply flow with it, our journey would be so much more pleasant and our expectations would not get mixed up or confused with the twists and turns in life we could not see coming.

 

The grand part of life we can all enjoy is the pure experience of it.  A river has no purpose other than to flow where it will, and it is the same for us.  Life flows on whether we resist it or not.  Why not enjoy it? Human ego is so busy finding or giving meaning to the process of life and finding justification and cause for everything that happens that we miss much of its inherent beauty.  We pass by the works of man or nature and never see them because our focus is on understanding life rather than living it.  In trying to understand it or analyze it, we miss it or it passes us by.  Every bend in the stream, every change in direction is an opportunity to experience life in a new and incredible way, and particularly from our own unique perspective.   Maybe we won’t experience things as others might, but what we do experience is uniquely ours and the only enrichment we need take from any experience is our own to appreciate and fully embrace.  “What happens; happens.”  Not because we have control over life by the choices we make, but because there are no wrong choices, which is the same as saying there are no choices at all.  If we participate in life without the mental anguish of deciding the better of all our various choices then anything we do, any path we follow will be good and right and un-judge-worthy. This type of participation in life removes the resistance we feel as well.

 

I used to tell my daughter, who would work so hard to get cast in school plays, or achieve academic success only to be disappointed over and over, that life was not fair.  I would tell her that she would encounter situations throughout her life that would prove that life was unfair and that she would be mistreated along the way, even though she worked harder and harder to achieve her objectives.  How naïve I was and, unfortunately, the message I imparted to her was completely wrong.  Not only is life fair, but it is completely honest.  Life is truth therefore it cannot be dishonest.  The only dishonesty in life is our own dishonesty which culminates deep within the egoic structures of the mind.   Our egoic identity is the only thing on this planet that resists the natural flow of life, to the point that what we have come to believe about ourselves and what we are is the only dishonest thing in life.  Ego-constructed reality and reality are diametrically opposed to each other and we get caught up in the game of life that convinces us that life is hard and not always just or fair.  Ego is always swimming against the current of life, trying to offer another kind of reasoning for the ebb and flow that doesn’t always seem so pleasant.   Life is always honest and it always finds the way to bear that out.  How hard we sometimes struggle to keep what we know about ourselves from ever seeing the light of day, and so we bring dishonesty to the light of life.  Our lies, our dishonesty dims the light of life, and compounds our struggle against the stream that, if we would only let go of everything we hold so tightly to, would all drift out of sight and our lives would freely and effortlessly blend together with the flow of life never to be consumed in worry, doubt or the endless game of making ourselves “other” than ourselves.

 

Nothing in our three dimensional awareness can account for what is really happening and therein lies the greatest lie we tell ourselves.  The more precise and defined we become, the less aware we are; and the more we convince ourselves that we are precise and defined, the more of our true selves we trample under foot, and the greater our lie becomes. The lack of awareness culminates in the denial of the stream of life we all follow.  It is to convince ourselves that we can make the stream of life straight and exact according to geometric rules that only hold in a manmade reality.  We convince ourselves that within the sterile structure of manmade forms is the answer to who we are if we but push science to find the one simple equation that defines everything we will ever need to know.   Only the ego could have created such a lie.  Only ego could convince us that straight lines can be found in nature and that a formula can be derived that will be able to predict everything we can expect for the future and give an explanation for everything that has happened in the past.  Conscious awareness is a very limited awareness because of its ability to dump so much information so quickly we cannot even sense that it is happening.

 

As we meander or tumble through life, we tend to miss the incredible sights along the way as they are happening, but we know they were there because we think back upon them. Sometimes we look forward to the horizon out yonder and think that when we get there, things will be so much better, or all our questions will be answered.  We easily look forward and backward because those are the places we can most freely and successfully lie about.  In the conversation we have with ourselves, we can reminisce how much better things were “back then” or how much better they will be in some future “when”.   Now, the present moment we exist in right now, is an honest moment that is pure and untainted by any thought for yesterday or tomorrow until our egoic reaction to it poisons it with untruth.  Facing the present is our most daunting challenge because of its purity.  In our un-pure state, we have difficulty facing the purity of present reality because being present forces us to look at ourselves without the ideological masks that we have created to shield us from the glare of present reality.  Being present strips us clean of all the false definition we use to demonstrate ourselves to the world.  It is a scary place for the ego.  In fact, it is a place the ego cannot exist in because ego is anything but honest.   Ego needs identity.  That is why it always reminds us and everyone else of its past accomplishments or projected future achievements.  These are its cover; a safe haven from something that cannot be explained in its terms, its language.

 

The stream of life is infinite.  The egoic life is finite.  The two cannot co-exist.  They cancel each other out.  Either we are in the flow and completely truthful or we are in illusion and living a lie.  The stream of life is enjoined with the world and nothing is missed along the way.  The largest of egos and the highest degrees of knowledge and education cannot describe what the stream knows.   Its world is the whole world and it is one with it.  It knows the terrain, the hills, valley and rocks along the way and is never fooled by images condensed and printed on a map that the ego provides.   It feels everything and reaches out to everything, as it gives to life, its “own” life. Consciousness cuts away so much of life while ego tries so hard to convince us that what we are conscious of is the real nuts and bolts of life.  It works hard to convince us that its view of the world “is” the world.  Its view is always looking backward or forward, but never does it acknowledge the present with its billions and billions of pieces of information discernible right now to a quiet non-egoic soul.

 

We are in the stream of life whether the egoic self believes it or not, and the stream always moves ahead, even if we fight against the current.  Our experience is an unfolding. The more we flow with life, the more a part of us life becomes. Every aspect of the terrain we pass through is our guide, our map and our journey becomes an infinite stream of intuition and awareness that consciousness no longer blots out.   Our intuition and our wonderful bodies are sensory instruments available to all of us to navigate and enjoy our life experience here on planet earth.   We step off the cosmic train for a short time and we can enjoy the experience or fight against it.  We choose.  The ego created world is calculated and sterile and does everything it can to reduce the stimulation we all are equipped to comprehend.  Granted, the comprehension is not in the language of ego, which has also been stripped away of the greater part of knowing.  Our intuitive abilities need to be at the forefront of our awareness, not in the background as they often are.  Tune them in and turn on the truth of real life. Real existence! Destiny is unknown, therefore, non-existent.

 

The possibilities available to us along our journey through life are endless.  Ego wants to see and plan for the end.  It seeks a goal, an end that, when reached, is somehow a utopic conclusion to a well-planned life strategy. I was speaking with a friend one evening who was looking for a catalyst of perhaps thought or an individual such as Buddha or Jesus, who by their words and deeds could change the hearts and minds of people to live in peace.  He shared his thoughts about how the so-called age of enlightenment some 500 years earlier, which was ushered in by such great minds as Newton, Descartes, Pascal and others, had failed to provide the predicted “know how” to change a dark world into an enlightened one.  The age of enlightenment was supposed to find “mind made” solutions to all the ills of human existence, including war, poverty, education, government, and every other aspect of life.  My friend recognized the failure of the intellectual mind or so-called “enlightened mind” to accomplish anything other than to increase suffering and the carnage of war on a greater, more massive scale.   While he lamented this failure of enlightened minds to solve complex world issues, he asked me, “If the age of enlightenment is not the answer, what is the catalyst, event or individual that brings about changes the enlightenment sought but could not produce?”

 

My answer was not what he wanted to hear.  I told him that to look, in any way, to an outward cause, to an individual, or event would never bring about the changes in human existence he sought.  The only change or catalyst he could ever affect was his own.  I told him that we, as humans, are all a part of the stream of life, but that we each are our own stream as well.  Individually, we affect the larger stream, but with human reasoning, we will likely never see it.   When we become our own catalyst, our change, we become the larger stream and it becomes us and our outlook on the conditions of the world we wish were different becomes part of a compassionate whole.  When such a change takes place in us individually, everything else changes as well.  My friend listened thoughtfully, but was unable to see it.  His mind was convinced that something big and extraordinary was needed to alter things in the world as we know it.  My response to him was that an individual transformation to higher awareness is big and extraordinary, but he would not accept that as an answer.  “There must be something,” he mused. I could not help him.

 

The majority of us look for the same thing.  We look to our gods, our leaders, our parents, someone, anyone or anything that will reverse the way things are in a massive and dramatic way.  We are conditioned to be this way.  Heaven forbid we allow ourselves control of our own lives.  That is how it was in the so-called enlightenment, when highly sophisticated and educated men determined that they could figure out anything intellectually.  It continues to be a myth in the present day, yet the stream flows onward, ever onward and as long as we look for the utopic conclusion, the life strategy or catalyst that changes in a massive way those things we have determined must change we swim against the current of life.  Life is, at that point, a struggle and we will never win against it.  Despite our struggle and good intentions, we will be washed away in the inexorable flow of life that always moves forward.

 

Everyone is eventually swept away in the current of life.  Some hang on until the very end while others stop resisting and glimpse the beauty and splendor that is always there if we simply let ourselves get caught up in the flow. The stream of life simply is!  So too is life.  Life is about being in the flow, not having or fighting for or against it.  Regardless of the things we determine to be important, or the causes we choose, we struggle against or go with the stream of life but it always flows onward to an infinite destination we will never know.   But we need not know because such knowing will not add one thing to the incredible beauty, abundance and wonder of our existence.  We need only breathe life as it breathes us and go where it takes us. There is no end in infinity!  The stream of life is eternal life; so are you!

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Saviorism – Who saves you…and from what??

One of our greatest faith base deceptions and one that we all buy into in some form as humans is the mythology that something or someone is going to save us from whatever form of adversity we may face in our current experience. Throughout the ages humans have sought for outside sources to rescue us, or at least, to make fair what seems to be unfair in our existence.  Judgment day and Karma are forms of this “making fair” scenario and most of our common mythological stories are that they may save us from forces we believe are rooted in the idea of saviorism. This idea rings in every aspect of our existence including our governments, local and national leaders, religious leaders, corporate leaders, etc.

No greater deception exists in human experience then the idea that we can and will be saved by some benevolent force that possesses power greater than our own. In fact, in our government and religious institutions we willingly hand over our own power to individuals who are unable to control anything and in so doing squander our own innate ability to express our own individuality.  Did you get that?  We give our own power away – literally!

Regardless of our own individual politics, all government is seen as bad or good from the collective standpoint. Some faction sees the current leaders as their saviors while another faction sees it as doom and the cause of social problems whatever they may be. Both claim their own political saviorism as the way out of whatever dilemma they choose to embrace and blame the other as the cause for their existing problems.  It is a vicious cycle which we, collectively, will never get out of because regardless of your political view no one can save us.

It is a timeless condition of the human experience. “Somebody save me!” Religious institutions reflect the same kind of outward looking as well.  Jews continue to look for another king David who will rise up and put down all the enemies of Israel and save them from a world that is set upon their destruction.  At no time in history has any religious group looked more forward to a savior. Christians, too, look to the returning Jesus so save them and the world from those who do not believe in him, as their personal savior.”  The great saving device of this returning God is his swift and righteous judgment, righting all the wrongs Christians the world over have suffered.

For Muslims, Allah, will vindicate the faithful and restore the birthright they, too, believe was taken from them.  Hindu’s and Buddhists will cycle around in different forms until they have satisfied the requirements of God whose rules they subject themselves too. Their savior is time; endless time.

Religious institutions the world over whether they be large collective movements, small and localized, mystical, dogmatic, new age or old age all look to some force out there to equalize and make right what they collectively perceive as unfair or wrong.  All that is asked of the individual is to believe that the unique collective perspective will be right.   In other words, suffer now with patience and hope and ultimately you will be vindicated.  There is no difference whether the collective institution is secular or religious. They all cry, “We are right and they are wrong.”  People go to their graves with this kind of hope, believing everything they were taught was wrong will be righted!

Human history is littered with fallen saviors who came with the power of words and ideas but failed to provide any long-term solution to the plight of people or nations. In fact, history is nothing more than an endless parade of one thing not working but being overcome supposedly by something better only to fail and repeat over and over again. Winston Churchill referred to history as “just one damned thing after another.” How true.

If we can learn anything from history it is that we cannot learn from history! What we should gather from history is that nothing, no one, can or will save us. No president, political party, nation, religion, individual, philosophy or ideal can save us.  We cannot be saved because there is nothing to be saved from!

Somehow the human mind, the ego has convinced us that we all need something outside of us to make us whole and complete.  To protect us and make our lowliness or lack in the world a cause for equalization by some force that has power beyond our own. We are conditioned throughout our lives to accept some form of saviorism.  It is as if the ego is hiding from some great unknown crime for which it must pay by accepting an outside force to resolve.  It seems that the reality we all accept on some level is that guilt unworthiness, evil, etc. is the state of human awareness. It is not always aimed at our individual selves. These characteristics are often aimed at those who are not like us.  Thus the collective finger-pointing for our own collective ills.

Saviorism is dependency. It stems from the fear we are taught throughout our lives that we are to be perfect even though no one can describe perfection without their own unique judgment of it. We convince ourselves that no one can be perfect and that being the case the idea of needing saving is automatically formed. The idea is so pervasive it inserts itself into every aspect of our lives. It lies at the root of the karmic idea that “what goes around comes around.” “Sooner or later you will get yours” even if we have to wait a long time for it to happen. God, e.g. savior will make it right in the end.

Our saviors, consequently, take on many forms. They are people, places and things. Even pills and plants save us. For instance, we look for a pill to slim us down or prevent us from overeating. Heaven forbid we simply take control of our own lives and stop eating or start eating in ways that are healthier!  Instead, someone will create a pill that lets us eat anything we want and as much as we want without becoming overweight.  Perhaps the pill will come along that will motivate me to work out so I can get that body I have always dreamed of! Perhaps our savior is this new job I’ve been expecting that will launch both a new career direction and greater prosperity.

I have a friend who is partially disabled who lamented constantly that he could not be whole until his government disability was approved.  Now that his disability has come through, which was more than he anticipated; he now complains that he cannot live on the amount provided even though he does nothing to manage the money he does receive.

Can you see the subtlety of it?  My friend was saved from a story he created and now he has created a new story that the amount of disability is not enough. He is now looking for a new savior to rescue him from this latest unfairness.  After that a new unfairness will lurk into his awareness and he will turn to yet another savior.  “If I can just win the lottery it would save me from my financial burdens.”  I hold to my religious beliefs accepting fully my struggles, my faith will cause God to look favorably upon me and vindicate my lowliness.

We all do this.  The greatest saviors we look to are governments and religions because they attempt to right all the wrongs on a much larger scale but the nature of saviorism permeates every aspect of life and it affects every one of us regardless of our situation or circumstances.   The most subtle are our most benign daily wants and desires, particularly our relationships. How many times have we heard someone proclaim, “Oh I can’t live without him or her?” Or “I just won’t be able to go on if they break up with me,” etc.  As if life without someone could save us from life altogether!

So many of our individual stories and dramas are played out because of the insidious control our minds play that we must have something or someone in place that will make everything better. This is saviorism!  It even finds its way into new age thought that tells us that we can have anything we want if we put our focus and attention onto something even though the original premise is I can be saved from the lack I now have in my life by thinking about and working toward whatever it is I lack.

“Ask, and it will be given” is a common idea in our collective thought and yet at its core is that whatever it is you ask for will only come from some outside source to whom we are all beholden. That is saviorism.  In fact, the subtle implication is that all you need to do is ask and something greater than you will provide it. This thing, whatever you call it, is the kind giver of that which you do not have.  It will save you from what you do not have presently.

The only way out of this condition is to accept full responsibility for everything in your life. You create your existence and you, therefore, are your own savior should a savior ever be required, which when you take control of everything in your experience will never happen!  There is nothing to be saved from in the responsible life.  Taking responsibility for life is recognizing that nothing in human experience is personal to you even though it may seem to be.

We create our own experience and exist only as humans for a short while that will never be anything more than the experience.  When we take this kind of control over our lives we see that everything that happens is unique and wonderful even if the collective world comes to our rescue and tells us “it’s not right or good.”  It is said that “we must be the change we see in the world.”  In other words, until we decide that nothing outside our own unique existence can or need save us this idea of saviorism will haunt us for the entirety of our lives.  It never matters what the world thinks of us or how we view ourselves in it.  Nothing that happens needs outside forces to square our experience with anyone else’s or with collective thoughts and intentions.

You are the hero of your life. I am the hero of my own.  There is nothing that will save you simply because you are the hero, the savior and when we all remove our judgments of the experience we each individually enjoy something unique and special that no other can or will.  That is the beauty of discovering the divine within us.  It knows that this experience is nothing in infinity and is only to be enjoyed as only Gods can.  It also knows that there is nothing in infinity from which we can or need be saved. We literally have it all. We literally are ALL!

Adapted from the book “On Human Being – Loving & Living Without Purpose”

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The Nature of Spirituality

While working with my Sister in a village in Honduras where she had bought property and had set up a small clinic for the people of that village and surrounding areas I was able to see firsthand that spirituality is not a condition of what we possess or an arbitrary hierarchy of needs as so many of us believe.  There was every form of disease and malnutrition and every single person who came to her clinic would receive a dose of a de-worming medicine just for showing up. Parasites infested everyone because there was no infrastructure anywhere in Honduras that could provide basic needs.  Dirt floors and stick huts packed with mud were common and trips to the river were where the villagers drank, washed clothing, dishes and bathed themselves.

One day we, my sister and I, were talking about the children who always seemed to be hanging around. I observed that they all seemed so happy and asked my sister if she thought these little ones stood a chance of ever having a spiritual awareness. She exclaimed immediately that it was not possible in the least astrip 12 008 they were struggling with so many other issues that to discover their own divine nature would be impossible. I was surprised  by her response and asked, “How do you explain that they all seem so happy?” Her response was just as immediate and similarly direct. “I don’t know,” she said, “it puzzles me too because they have nothing and they have nothing to look forward to!”

I was not satisfied with this answer and pressed her a bit further on the subject of spirituality. She insisted that “basic needs” had to be served before anyone could advance to a more “enlightened” state and that outside the work she was doing to help the little ones in her village few if any had any chance of having anything other than a life of poverty and disease. I remember being saddened by her assessment of those children and pondered the sweetness in their faces and their complete exhilaration with the life they were living. Not once did I ever hear a child complain of their circumstances and everywhere I saw gratitude and acceptance, happiness and joy. In fact, when I was getting ready to leave three of the young children wrote me letters thanking me for coming to visit them and expressing how much they loved having me there with them. What moved me most, however, were their wishes for me. Each of these wonderful children wished for me to have “everything I desired” in life and to be happy.  Without having any concept of how “good” I had things in my life, how abundant and full of the things that are supposed to help us become “actualized,” these children were completely giving of themselves.  What they gave was more than all the riches in the world. They gave their love, their friendship and from the very depths of their souls they spoke to mine.

Their “giving” to me was from the depths of someone deeply spiritual but without, even, the label of “spirituality.” They were divine and it didn’t matter if they knew what that meant or not. Life for them was a treat as was my life when I was with them.  I wept when I read the words of giving and concern for my happiness.

Spiritually speaking these were the great ones. Amidst, the squalor, disease and rampant poverty, as we in the west would define it, I witnessed majesty as I have never seen it. I stood among giants and I trembled before them. I could no longer feel any sorrow for these children as my sorrow for them turned to sorrow for myself. I had become the judge of their existence and what I had seen for them was destroyed by what they already knew about existence. In desolation, they knew more than I ever hoped to. They were humble; I was embarrassed. I was completely undressed by the “gods” of this tiny little village and I have never been the same since. My prayer since that visit has been that the children of this village never discover the labels we put on them and that their simple view of life never gives way to the noise of our, so called, “actualized” descriptions.

Surely spiritual awareness, which I had sought for so many years, is not a property of attainment, acclaim, and fulfilment of so-called basic needs.  Spiritual awareness is our very first aspect; it is the very core of our nature.  How true the New Age statement that “we are spiritual beings having aSamiel human experience”.  There is nothing we must attain in order to achieve spiritual awakening.  In fact, it might be considered an arrogant assumption that we must somehow become something we are not, nor may ever be, in order to achieve higher states of awareness.   One might ask, “What chance do the poor and infirm have of ever reaching higher states of awareness if they must rise above basic needs when such a possibility may never present itself in their lifetimes?”  We all sense a kind of hypocrisy at such a question because we know that some of our greatest spiritual icons came from such circumstances.  Some even went from incredible wealth and royalty to a life of poverty and begging as a way to find the awareness I was convinced must come some other way.

We are spiritual beings.  Our first state of existence is a spiritual one and it is the human-ness of our earthly existence that conditions us to think that the human is not the second state but the first.  The focal point of our existence, the peak of the pyramid, if you will, is our most basic knowing, and poverty and lack are equally able as is wealth and riches, or education and intellect, to drive us from or to that knowing.

Adapted from the book: On Human Being-Loving & Living Without Purpose

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What do you do to be enlightened?

I was asked these two questions about enlightnment recently and wanted to share my thoughts with each of you as well. Here is the Question:

Do you think that we can all one day become enlightened? If so, what do we need to do?

My Response:    There is no “day” in some future time that we become enlightened. There is no future at all. Each of us already is enlightened and at various points in our lives we see it. Those who do get a glimpse of it are usually pulled into it by some event, such as the death of a loved one, or something else that causes deep reflection in which no “answer” comes.  Most people who have such an experience can always recount the emotional state they felt in such times but they almost always revert back to the egoic need to explain what is going on.  Most come to some conclusion that their “prayer” was answered or that an Ahhhh Haaa came to them and they understood in a way they hadn’t before.  What gets lost in these conclusions is that in that moment where no answer existed is the only place that enlightenment occurred.

In other words, enlightenment is not some magical, mystical awareness of all the, so called, “Big Questions.”  Enlightenment is the “nothing” that
existed before the “ego” needed an explanation.  It is the sweetness of being in the presence of absolute silence and not needing an explanation
for everything.  In that place there is no fear, love, happiness, sadness or any other emotional state. There is nothing but silence and it is in that
“not knowing” that “all” is known and none of it needs definition.

What do “we” need to do?  “Be still and know that YOU are god.”  In other words, unmask who it is that occupies your body by silencing the mind.  In
this place you will experience the grand mystery of which we are all a part. It’s all you can do. There is no “we” in this unmasking. You’re own
enlightenment will enlighten others.  The “god” that you are is never invisible to the “god” that they are. Something inside us always sees the greater light but it is in the quiet of the mind.  Quiet your mind and discover the “everything” that is contained in the “nothing.”  This is your enlightenment.

This is what you can do.

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How We Create Our Own Reality?

I was recently asked this question and wanted to share my answer which I believe is relevant to any spiritual search. Let me know what you think.

We do create our own experience. When the newborn child you mentioned enters this Earth existence, it is the result of, or creation by, the spiritual being (I call it god) who will occupy that body and grow with it into whatever. What happens for all newborns is that after the initial excitement of the birth the adults in the new baby’s life begin to reprogram the child into seeing things the way they were taught to see. After about ten to fifteen years of this, the child embarks on a life that confirms and reinforces what they were previously conditioned to see, accept and/or believe.
This is why I say we live in an illusion. It does not start out that way but all the experiences, training, etc. that go into making us who we are as “humans” cancels out what, in fact, we truly are and what we were when we first got here. Newborn babies have no egoic identity whatsoever, and therefore everything in and about life is wondrous and incredible to them.

Mind based thoughts are powerful but spirit based creative powers are much more so. In fact, the suffering of most humans can be tied directly to the struggle between “what” they are (or were when they got here) and what they have been conditioned to be after they arrived. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is that in the United States (true for other western countries as well) over 70% of the working population hate what they do as a career but for most who are unhappy in their career field they were conditioned to go down this path contrary to their nature which craves something else. How sad for us!

You mention the mind being all powerful (rhetorical) but let me be very specific. We are each two individuals. The “mind” created individual and the spiritual being, or what I call god, which dwells within us. Those first few years you mention are so critical in the development of a child’s mind because what we are conditioned to believe initially will mask what we really are for the rest of our lives. Very few will break free of the conditioning they undergo and return back to the “unidentified” being they were when they came here.

Our lives here should not be about finding purpose and meaning but rather about finding who we are. In finding that, and synching the mind to our spiritual nature, life unfolds in a very un-conflicted way. “We”, that is the real “We” we were before we got here, is made manifest and life, our creation, unfolds in a way that reveals that being. There is power in our thoughts but our thoughts, as rational as we like to think they are, are anything but.

From the moment of our birth, we are taught to want and have and possess to the point that when we “get”, we completely identify ourselves to all the things we have gotten. Life becomes, in essence, a continuous pursuit of things the getting of which is what we falsely believe, make us who we are. An example is I can be “me” after I get my college education or when I get this particular job or career or when I get this particular house, etc., etc. We literally identify with “what we are not” and determine that until we get (what we are not) we are not complete. This is craziness.

Until we re-access that divine being that dwells within us we create a reality that is as wild and crazy as the one we live in now.

The beauty of the un-identified newborn baby is that in their creation everything is simply WOW! (Good article on this at: http://cbozeman.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/the-frequency-of-wow/. There are no judgments about anything and the entry into life is incredible in every way. No judgment is the key. With a mind free of judgment or identity everything just simply is. Children “act” without thinking and do so until we, as adults, condition them to judge everything. Life slowly but surely loses its Wow-ness.

Bottom line is that when a newborn comes into this life, its body is occupied with a “god” who has already created the experience of being here for no other reason than just being here. That god is thrilled and everything about the experience is exhilarating until the “human” has been conditioned to judge good and evil and place every life experience from that point on into a good or bad range. Ego identity takes over and from that point life experience becomes confused and challenging. It was never meant to be so.

In a nutshell we create our experience but it is either a mind created experience or a “spiritual being” created experience. Unless the mind experience is in synch with the spiritual experience there will always be conflict. The two typically see things in very different ways and “identify” with reality accordingly. The mind has become powerful but it is not “all powerful”. The mind is finite. The spirit is infinite. We, individually, are the purpose we seek and try to create with the mind. All we have to do is turn off the mind, dis-identify with the things it (the mind) has determined are necessary for its identity and simply enjoy the richness and wonder of this life experience. When we let go of “mind” created identity, the wonder and spectacle of life opens up in a way I cannot possibly explain here. It truly is unexplainable.

The god that you are “created” this experience long before you arrived here on Earth. The mind identity fights against that original purpose. Find the inner self and you will begin to recognize the awesome power of your own creation. Pretty cool!

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The Non-Gift of Giving

There is a common misconception about the act of “giving” we all tend to focus on at this time of year; likely because we hear so much about it.  We call it a time of giving and much of the speak is that “when we give we get back.”  Often we are told that our giving returns to us more than what we give. It is almost as if the idea of “getting back” is the purpose of such giving. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The human mind is always, always about finding reason for doing anything, giving, included.  It is the mind’s nature and the birth of ego is born in this idea that reasons must find their way into our existence and upon finding such we are born into an identity that supports the conceptual ideas we form our identity around.  Sometimes the idea that our “getting,” in return for our giving, is used as motivation to spur us to the action of giving. “Look beyond your means for now and you will receive as much or even more than you sacrificed in the “giving.”

In truth, like happiness, giving is our essence.  Remember that WE are Gods. Individually and uniquely, Gods.  It is our very nature at the level of the divine to give.  The Human in us says, “let there be light, so I may see” while the God that we are says, “let there be light so all may see.”  Giving is our inherent nature as the divine beings that we are and the idea that ego can out do that nature by promising to give back what is given is most absurd.  The idea that you must have returned to you what you gave is not giving; it is taking.  Think about it!

If we comprehend that our nature at the very core of our existence is “the giver” then no part of our existence looks for reasons why there must be a “payback” for our giving.  Remember the new Testament story of the old woman who gave her last penny to charity?  Jesus pointed to her and told those who had given of their abundance that she alone had given the most.  Why would He make such a statement?

We don’t know much about the old woman and her circumstances but we can assume that her ego was screaming at her to keep the penny as she herself was in as great a need for assistance as those she chose to give to.  What kept her from holding on to her last penny and giving all that she had?  She had found and accepted her true nature.  She gave without expectation because the “giver” was unmasked and could not be hidden by the “show” of giving only in quantity.  Those who gave more in quantity, still masked in an identity of receiving for their gifts, gave nothing of their true nature.  Theirs was only a gift; with the expected return.  Hers was a blessing; an act of godliness that reflected her connection to the divine within.  Hers was an act of power!

The act of giving is never about getting something in return.  All that we are, at our core essence, is never wanting or expecting anything in return.  The act of truly giving is a natural act.  It is an act of God and you are God!  Giving resonates in all of us because we have this essence already. Most of us have been taught to give of our abundance but this kind of giving only mitigates the egoic awareness that something else (inside) is the giver of all.

Do you want to know what you “get” when you give?  You get to be who you are.  In other words, you get to stop thinking about acts of giving and just “be” the giver that you inherently are. You get to shed egoic ideas of “who am I” and simply be “who you are” without any conversation at all telling you otherwise.  When we give we engage our inherent nature and that frees us from the egoic nature that is heavy and burdened.

What we feel when we are in service to others is the lightness that comes from being “who, or what we really are.”  The weight of mind created identity leaves for a short time and we feel this lightness and it feels so good we talk about it in egoic terms without really understanding what has happened.  We should all ask what is it about these acts of giving and service that makes us feel so light and happy?  The answer will almost always come back to something like, I got to shed “my stuff” and just be in this wonderfully natural state that was surprisingly without any thought.

If we must have a reason to give then let the reason be because it frees us from our “stuff” and lets us be, if only for a short space of time, the divine giver that we already are. Don’t attach reasons to the giving. Just give and the giving will engage an inherent nature that already is YOU.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Carl

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My Father Al; A Living Tribute

It may seem a bit odd to pay tribute to another human in the form of an obituary but what good are expressions about someone if they, for whom they are written, are unable to hear and know the depth of feeling a Son can have for his Father.

My Father Al came into my life after I had ruled out all adult humans as trustworthy and protective of those they were charged with caring for. My real father had left without having any contact and my life as I knew it then was forever over. I never even gave my Father Al a chance to be a friend let alone a father to whom I would look up to. He was just another Man, human if you will, who like so many others would find ways to hurt, abandon and abuse me and make my life a hell that would haunt me endlessly. I kept him at a distance but I never stopped observing his quiet, steady ways. Beyond that I never gave him much thought. He was not much more than an inconvenient intruder in my own already defective life.

As I grew older, I began to take upon myself, with great pride, the idea that having lost my biological father, I could pick and choose the men who passed through my life and take from them characteristics I admired and wanted to emulate. I prided myself on the great variety of virtues I was able to draw upon as well as the men from whom I would draw them. I threw my admiration at certain men from many walks of life and eagerly observed and adopted characteristics I felt were necessary to my own character building. Things like integrity, honesty, hard work, devotion to family, self-sacrifice, humor and love of life. As I sought these things, always, Al was in the background.

One rarely knows the “hows” of our experiences. Most of us come to a place in our lives where our own retrospection looks back on “what changed” or on “what just happened” and in silence we marvel at what we missed for so long. For me, like John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim” I travelled a long and desperate road only to circle around back to where I had started. In a moment of stark recognition I had made my way back to my original home and to that place where in my youth I had judged so harshly. The journey took me in countless directions and all that I ever sought was always right there where I had begun. The greatest of all men was there in my own backyard. He had not changed but I had. I now had eyes that could see that where I began, and where I had ended was at his feet. And in a silent moment of recognition, at one so great, I am humbled in his presence.

The light has never shined so bright as when I have been with him. My Father Al was everything I ever sought and even with the passage of time being so long before my own recognition I feel as though I have never “not” known. This is because of Him, as well. In all my travels he has never judged. He has loved as only a father could and I have felt that love and it is inexpressible. What was once the “least” to me, is the greatest!

My Father Al has gone home to a place we all know and from whence we have all come. He is with his “greatest of all possessions,” as he referred to my Mother, whom he adored every moment of his life. Another great quality of the man! We are forever drawn to the place he now enjoys but more importantly we are drawn to him. Like a fortress or a stand of trees or the inexorable pull of the moon upon the waters he will always be the force that draws us ever closer to eternity. The light in a dark place, never looking back but always looking forward. He is our guide, a sentinel, not guarding the way but protecting us along the way.

My Father holds many places in our hearts. To some he is “Al,” while to others he is “Dad,” while to some he is “Brother Yates” or “Grandpa” or just “Yates.” Some even know him as “Handsome.” Whatever the name we knew him as or the description of him we hold we are all united in our love for him and he always reciprocated by loving us. Not in grand and showy ways but quietly, completely and most of all purely.

Rest well my Father and know that in this place we celebrate the life of one so good we are all humbled to have been a part of the vast universe you created. Go in peace and know that we all love you.

I love you. God bless you my sweet Dad.

Your Son,

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Awesome Man!

Carl

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You Are Not Your Body

Jesus, dying on the cross was not about giving his life as a demonstration of power nor was it to save us from our so called sins. It was a demonstration that He was not his body or mind or anything else we all tend to identify ourselves with.

His closest disciples did not understand this either. This is why Peter came to his defense in the garden of Gethsemane and cut off the ear of the Roman soldier who was trying to apprehend Jesus. Peter wanted to defend the  “man” He thought Jesus was, not who Jesus actually was. Peter, and so many others then and now, could not see who Jesus was outside the “man” he thought him to be. He only saw the “man” and thought the “man” was endowed with special powers and that he must defend Jesus, as “the man” Peter “thought” him to be.

Jesus was never able to convince anyone that He was not his body; that He was not the “object” others had created him to be. His whole ministry was a demonstration of his own awareness that he was completely unidentified with anything in the world. His crucifixion was a profound and vivid example of that. Death did not matter to him. Not because we “rise again,” but because what WE truly are never dies! Who we are never dies and Jesus imparted that message one last time by allowing himself to be killed as a demonstration that he would continue on just as each of us will continue on.

We will never “fail” in this life because this life is not anywhere near what we are in eternity. Detach from the body, discover who resides within and nothing in human experience will ever be able to take from you anything that actually does matter.

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