Awakening to Numinous Joy

Conscious Evolution

2009-05-09T13:46:00.004-05:00

Welcome back to my blog. I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything here. My goal is to post something new once a week.

I am fascinated by the concepts of personal growth, inner evolution, spiritual development, awakening, and the human potential movement. Perhaps this looks like a lot of different words, but to me they are saying the same thing -- the essence of our existence is to realize our highest potential within our lifetime, and this potential is realized in an ongoing process of evolution.

When I use the term “evolution” I’m not talking about Darwin’s theory or about scientific materialism or about the creationism debate. By evolution I’m talking about one’s inner process of growth or development, our potential to reach higher states and stages of consciousness, which is at the heart of any esoteric understanding of the Gospels or any other spiritual tradition. Evolution occurs within us intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and so on, through many different aspects of our humanity and consciousness. Every living being, and even societies and groupings of things, goes through stages of development. The seed does not remain a seed forever.

Evolution rarely follows a straight line. How often do we set goals for ourselves only to immediately fall out of our discipline and struggle to get back on our path? How easy is it to fall into a stagnant state of inner and outer lethargy if we do not constantly learn new things or challenge ourselves to keep growing, evolving, and thinking in new ways?

In the past three or four months it has become even more apparent to me how powerful the human mind is in creating one’s perception of reality, one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Much of who we think we are has already been programmed or ingrained into us during our childhood, before we were consciously aware of what was happening to us; before we could make a conscious decision whether such programming was constructive for our future well-being or not. I believe part of one’s process of inner evolution absolutely requires that we take a deep look at the way our mind operates, what it focuses on, believes, values, creates, and so on. If we do not truly examine ourselves and begin to consciously think on our own, then we risk going through life as mindless robots, automatons, programmed to keep repeating the same mistakes and sufferings over and over again, within our own life and over generations. We are not truly free or autonomous in such a situation. We become an automatic response mechanism prodded by external events and circumstances, blaming the outside world for our sufferings when really the problem begins within our own minds. We are asleep and will continue to remain asleep until we consciously decide (or allow ourselves) to open our consciousness to new avenues of growth and potential. We must take responsibility for ourselves and for what our mind creates. In spiritual terms, our old self must die in order that a new, greater self can be born. This is evolution in the deepest sense.

But what a struggle it is to find a way to kill our ego (our false sense of self) or to surrender and allow our old self to die! Our egos are greatly attached to the illusions of what we ‘think’ is important, much of which may not even be our authentic thoughts or beliefs anyway, but just programming. We think we feel a sense of safety by holding on to what we know, even though it is not healthy for us to continue living in that way; we end up holding ourselves back, blocking our own way from our greatest potential. We become like the seed that has fallen on rocky ground, starved for nourishment. The spiritual teacher, G.I. Gurdjieff writes:

[Man] is attached to everything in his life; attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his suffering -- possibly to his suffering more than anything else. He must first free himself from attachment. Attachment to things, identification with things keeps alive a thousand I’s in a man. These I’s must die in order that the big I may be born. But how can they be made to die?... It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue. To awaken means to realize one’s nothingness, that is, to realize one’s complete and absolute mechanicalness, and one’s complete and absolute helplessness... So long as a man is not horrified at himself, he knows nothing about himself.

We have enormous power to create the life we want, if only we wake up to it in time. It is possible to consciously choose, decide, and take responsibility for our own lives, beginning with how we use our minds. But it must start with becoming consciously aware of our own thoughts, emotions, behaviors, opinions, etc. We need to become "horrified" by our false self so much that we are forced to change. We must step back from ourselves in our own minds and observe how our minds operate. Question everything. Question whether your thoughts or opinions are really your own. Question why certain ideas, people, or events make you upset or why others satisfy you. It IS possible to change yourself once you become aware of how your mind works. You are not a slave to it unless you remain unconscious. Take it apart and find out what’s there. Observe your own thoughts and feelings without judgment. Discard anything that holds you back from your highest potential. Focus on what you truly want.

When you take on this responsibility and challenge of delving into your own mind you begin to take an active part in the process of your own evolution as well as the unfoldment of Spirit itself. This is the gateway to true development and growth and the heart of any spiritual path to your greatest Self.

As the Catholic priest and Zen master, Willigis Jager, wrote in Mysticism for Modern Times:

Mysticism says, “The world is born anew in each moment.” It assumes that this ever-new creation is not achieved through the hand of a creator standing outside of evolution. It occurs by itself, following its own impulse. In the view of mystical or evolutionary theology, God is not the initiator of evolution, acting from outside. Evolution is God unfolding himself.

Teilhard de Chardin

2008-11-18T20:24:00.006-06:00

The Catholic Tradition has such immense depth and beauty! There are not enough lifetimes to really study and learn from all of the saints, theologians, writers, Desert Fathers and Mothers, not to mention the Bible itself, with its layers of esoteric meaning and symbolism.

Since I'm in the mood of finding my true self (easier said than done), here is a quote from Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) that I found to fit in well with my earlier post on soul searching. I found this quote in George Maloney's Mysticism and the New Age. Originally, the quote is from Teilhard's The Divine Milieu (confused yet? Sounds like a meta-quote, a quote inside of a quote!):

We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides. Let us try, patiently, to perceive the ocean of forces to which we are subjected and in which our growth is, as it were, steeped... I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seemed clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet... At that moment... I felt the distress characteristic of a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and stars. And if someone saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel... speaking to me, from the depth of the night: It is I, be not afraid.

Makes me think of Russian nesting dolls or the chrysalis that transforms into a butterfly. Could it be that we are made up of many selves, layers of selves, like layers inside an onion? As we go through life, through many stages of growth, we become something a little new and different at each higher stage. We could look back to when we were 20 years old, or 10 years old, or 3 years old, and at each phase we were different, but yet, paradoxically, the same. So, too, spiritually: we have our external outer form, our body, our appearance, and we have our inner world, our interior life, perceptions, memories, and experience. Inner and outer forms change over time, yet what we are deep down, inside our depths, is that which is eternal, our God within.

In the quote above, Teilhard says, "I took the lamp and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seemed clear, I went down into my inmost self." This reminds me of St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, a famous poem and commentary you can read online that describes the journey of the soul towards God. The "lamp" could symbolize the "light of the senses," our physical senses which we use to perceive the world; Teilhard has metaphorically turned the light away from the outer, external world, to find an inner light into his inner abyss. St. John of the Cross also talks about going into the abyss within, "Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart."

It is said in many different spiritual traditions, that at some point one must stop relying on one's physical senses so as to be able to turn inward. Our physical senses are useful and necessary, but they can distract us from discovering the immense universe we have within our own souls. Here is Chapter 12 from the Taoist classic, The Tao Te Ching (translation by Feng/English):

The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.

In esoteric Christianity, there is a correspondence between the five senses and the Five Wounds of Christ. Our five senses bring us our experience of the outer world, linking us with its joys and sufferings. The symbolic death of our senses is, then, a sort of gateway, an interior resurrection, that unites us with Christ and our own true self.

Soul Searching

2008-11-16T21:52:00.002-06:00

A Gangaji quote, from The Diamond in Your Pocket, relevant to my life at the moment:

In its power and simplicity, the question Who am I? throws the mind back to the root of personal identification, the basic assumption, "I am somebody." Rather than automatically taking that assumption as the truth, you can investigate deeper.

It is not difficult to see that this initial thought, "I am somebody," leads to all kinds of strategies: to be a better somebody, a more protected somebody, a somebody with more pleasure, more comfort, and more attainment. But when this very basic thought is questioned, the mind encounters the I that is assumed to be separate from what it has been seeking. This is called self-inquiry. This most basic question, Who am I? is the one that is the most overlooked. We spend most of our days telling ourselves or others we are someone important, someone unimportant, someone big, someone little, someone young, or someone old, never truly questioning this most basic assumption.

Who are you, really? How do you know that is who you are? Is that true? Really? If you say you are a person, you know that because you have been taught that. If you say you are good or bad, ignorant or enlightened, these are all just concepts in the mind.

I've reached a place in my life where I am starting to question some of the most basic labels that have been attached to me (whether by myself, by others, or learned through conditioning) to define who I am. I am questioning all of my goals and dreams, wondering how I decided that these were "my" goals and "my" dreams. Who is the "I" that chose them? What if the goals and dreams were changed to something else? Would it matter? Who creates the meaning, or decides which goal or dream is better or worse than another one?

An interesting conversation came up in my life recently about whether my comfortable, non-challenging, non-threatening, middle-class existence really boils down to a life of mediocrity. Is there such a thing as a life that is too easy, too simple, and too comfortable? Does this lead to sleep-walking through life? Can even one's spiritual life, in such a lifestyle, become a mediocrity as well; a hobby to be pursued in one's spare time like everything else? What would an extraordinary life look like, as opposed to a mediocre one?

Certainly there are examples throughout history of people who've awakened in their lives, stepping out of mediocrity into something else. The Buddha comes to mind, walking away from a carefree, sheltered existence in search of essential, naked truths. Yet for you and me, ordinary people working 9-to-5 jobs to pay the mortgage and buy groceries, it is hard to imagine dropping everything - literally everything - and running off to live in a hut on a mountainside, turning one's life upside down in order to get shocked out of complacency. Is it necessary? Is it required before one can truly, radically, evolve? What is the difference between an outer shock (radically changing one's physical life in the world) versus an inner shock (radically changing one's mind, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs)? Do we, those of us who live lives of seeming mediocrity, fool ourselves when we believe we can transform ourselves solely through internal means?

My husband, George, gave me a real Gangaji-moment last week when he asked me: What if, right now in this moment, you had attained all of the goals you had imagined for your life? What if you had a PhD, if you had written many books, composed lots of music, and so on? How would you feel right now? What would that change about you? How would you be different? -- And in all honesty I realized that nothing at all would change about me. Even if I had accomplished all of these things that I thought I had cared about, none of these things ultimately matter! My true self is not about accomplishments or goals or "my story" of what I have done or not done with my life. This was such a gigantic realization for me - how insidious our ego behaves, convincing us that there is always "one more goal" that needs to be finished before we can feel at peace or complete about our lives. We identify ourselves, our self worth, so much through what we do, but ultimately it is all illusory. Our "story," which makes us think that we are "a somebody," is yet another mask we wear to cover up our fears of emptiness and meaninglessness. We're afraid to really look inside and discover that we are not who we thought we were.

If we are not our story or our thoughts, then who are we?

Seeking by Not Seeking

2008-09-20T13:14:00.005-05:00

Again and again I keep coming back to one fundamental mysterious theme about life: the idea that life as we think we know it, as we think and believe we experience it as individual personalities, is ultimately an illusion. Behind our beliefs and thoughts and attachment to our little individual ego-self, there is a vast hidden reality - the infinite reality of God-consciousness. Between our ego-self and that reality is a veil obscuring our comprehension of that reality.

I believe the ultimate purpose in life must be to cut through that veil to the other side and realize the full truth of who we are (this is what is meant by "waking up"). But the ultimate-ultimate truth behind even that concept, is the truth that there is really no veil at all and never has been. What we are is really not separate from God-consciousness. We, asleep in our ego-self that experiences life as a separate personality, have created that veil. This veil helps to keep us in the illusion of our separate-self inside this world and universe of material forms.

Our experience as an individual ego-self is really the story of the Prodigal Son: we are God's child, gone off on a journey (pilgrimage) to a seemingly distant place (the universe/world of form) to come to know what it is like to have the experience of being an individual self. The underlying reality is that we are still and always have been One with God. We are not separate forms. We are Consciousness evolving and coming into Being. God is coming into Being in and through us, experiencing Himself in you and me and in each and every form, experiencing birth and death and birth again, endlessly. We are the eternally infinite experiencing a finite changing universe. Eventually our form will come to an end, bringing us back, Face to Face with the Father, with our True Self.

But what joy if we can realize this truth while being on the journey, inside the dream! To know that you ARE the Prodigal Son and that it is possible, at any moment, to know, realize, experience, that you and the Father are One? That is the big dilemma and paradox! We seek after this reality not realizing that to seek is to lose what you seek. To seek by not seeking. How can we do it?

Here's a profound quotation from Gangaji in her book, YOU ARE THAT! It's in the form of a dialog, with the student's words italicized:

I know in my mind that these formulations, this body, all these things that I do, are not the truth of who I am. Why--

Knowing this intellectually is insufficient.

I know that!

Stop knowing anything. Stop the search for intellectual understanding. Stop asking why. Every time why arises, it only takes you deeper into intellect. The only answer for why is why not?

You are being called to that which is beyond mental knowledge. You are being called to direct experience. You are hungry for direct experience, and direct experience is not found in any formulation of intellect.

Be still, and then more still, and even more still.

Be still beyond belief. Then that which cannot be known reveals itself, both fresh and ancient, beyond any polarity of knowing or not knowing.

What is needed in stillness?

What survives stillness?

Stay here. Let stillness dissolve belief in any substantiality of independent existence.

Then there is no way to really know, because if you know, your mind is interpreting what consciousness is.

There is pure being, which is where individual being gets its power. There is pure consciousness, which is where limited, individual consciousness gets its power. Pure knowing is not known, nor is it storable, because it is bigger than what can be known from past memory or categories. It is immaculate. It leaves no tracks. It is what space is in, so it is even subtler than space.

And here is a quote about Gurdjieff's ideas, written by Jacob Needleman, from the Introduction to The Inner Journey (an excellent anthology on the Gurdjieff Work by PARABOLA magazine):

Man, Gurdieff taught, is an unfinished creation. He is not fully Man, in the sense of a cosmically unique being whose intelligence and power of action mirror the energies of the source of life itself. On the contrary, man, as he is, is an automaton. Our thoughts, feelings, and deeds are little more than mechanical reactions to external and internal stimuli. In Gurdjieff's terms, we cannot do anything. In and around us, everything "happens" without the participation of an authentic consciousness. But human beings are ignorant of this state of affairs because of the pervasive and deeply internalized influence of culture and education, which engrave in us the illusion of autonomous conscious selves. In short, man is asleep. There is no authentic I am in his presence, but only a fractured egoism which masquerades as the authentic self, and whose machinations poorly imitate the normal human functions of thought, feeling, and will.

It sounds very dualistic - life comes down to whether we realize we have the potential to wake up, and then do what we can to achieve it (seeking by not seeking), or whether we will go through life asleep, an automaton, mechanically reacting to stimuli, mistaking this dream-world and dream-self as reality.

Incremental Growth

2008-08-01T16:35:00.003-05:00

July was a weird month for me. Half of it was spent being knocked down by a nasty flu, with much exhaustion; and the rest of the month was a lot of tumultuous running around and busy-ness and hectic stressful feelings.

I am amazed, yet again, at the human tendency to fall back into old patterns and dysfunctional ways of behaving and thinking. Eckhart Tolle refers to "conditioned thought patterns" -- those ingrained old ways of thinking and behaving that were learned in the past as part of one's coping mechanism. Such patterns can stick around for a very long time and inhibit us from growing into the person we were meant to be. Melody Beattie refers to this backward movement as "recycling" and as a necessary part of a recovery process. She states in Beyond Codependency:

Recycling is a chance to do our recovery work. It's a way to discover what we need to work on and work through. It's one way we figure out what we haven't yet learned, so we can start to learn that. It's a way to solidify what we've already learned, so we continue to know that. Recycling is about learning our lessons so we can move forward on our journey.

Recycling, or regression back into old patterns we thought we had conquered, can feel like banging one's head against a wall over and over and over again. Falling in and out of an exercise routine is but one example. Life should be a process towards self-development and improvement and perfection. Yet there are times when it seems like we're just spinning our wheels, falling backwards along our path. Growth can take place when we catch ourselves in these recycling patterns, learn from what happened, and then move forward. We may fall backwards a little bit, for a little while, but there is still growth, even if only incremental growth.

I am dedicating the month of August to getting back on track, learning from my mistakes and focusing on accomplishing a few key goals. I am determined to observe myself with greater awareness; to become proactive rather than reactive.

As Jack Canfield and others have stated: Take 100% responsibility for your life, your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors.

Here's a nice quote from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Reactive people are affected by their social environment, by the "social weather." When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values -- carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that harms us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

Disidentifying from Thoughts

2008-06-27T22:21:00.011-05:00

For the past month or so I have enormously enjoyed and benefited from the recorded discussions between Eckhart Tolle and Oprah. More than a dozen hours of discussion can be found for free on Oprah's web site, focused on Tolle's new book, A New Earth. You can download mp3 audio files, watch videos, or read the PDF transcripts of the discussions. I highly recommend checking it out! Usually I do not follow the adventures of Oprah or the topics on her TV show. I haven't owned a television for years. But recently I learned she was following a 21-day vegan diet, and that really piqued my interest. If Oprah can enlighten the mainstream masses towards a more compassionate diet and promote a higher state of consciousness, then I am all for it! Gives me a glimmer of hope for humanity's future.

The following is just one amazing quote from A New Earth:

What you may be aware of as a voice in your head that never stops speaking is the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking. When every thought absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of ego. Ego is a conglomeration of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns that are invested with a sense of I, a sense of ego. Ego arises when your sense of Beingness, of "I Am," which is formless consciousness, gets mixed up with form. This is the meaning of identification. This is forgetfulness of Being, the primary error, the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a nightmare.

So the trick is to realize that when we become so totally identified with our own thoughts, and the emotions that can arise from them, that we have lost touch with our true self, our authentic "sense of Beingness." We have confused our identity with our thoughts. Descartes' famous statement, "I think, therefore I am," really describes the ego, not the true self. As Tolle points out, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre responded with, "The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks." Tolle interprets this as, "When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness."

Any thought or opinion we hold dear can be ripe for examination. It reminds me of some wise words in the movie Fight Club:

You are not your job. You are not how much you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your khakis. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

We could add plenty of other common false identities:

You are not your health problems.
You are not your political affiliation.
You are not your prejudiced viewpoints.
You are not your religious beliefs.
You are not your mistakes.
You are not your successes.
You are not your depression/anxiety/fear.
You are not your hobbies.
You are not your lack of hobbies.
You are not your nationality/culture/race/gender.
You are not the television shows that you watch.
You are not your sense of victimhood.
You are not the ideology you think you believe in.
You are not the diet that you follow.
You are not your face/body in the mirror.
You are not the success/failure of your children.
You are not the experiences of your childhood.
You are not your family's history.
You are not your opinions.
You are not your perceptions.
You are not your feelings.

So if you're not any thing, if you're not a collection of labels or roles or accumulated experiences and conditioning, then what ARE you? As Tolle suggests, your REAL you is that which observes your thoughts. The real you is in the stillness between what your body perceives with its senses and the thoughts that arise in your mind. The real you is the sense of aliveness or Beingness that is having this experience of being a human in this body at this time and place, in this present moment.

Now, this is not to say that the items in the list are not important or that you shouldn't care about anything or not deal with your feelings, opinions, or experiences, or not make an effort to improve the world. The problem arises when you get so absorbed into your thoughts that you confuse your identity with your thoughts. If you hold an opinion so strongly that you get terribly offended or emotional when someone attacks your opinion or disagrees with it, this would be one example in which you have mistaken your opinion, your thought, and made it into your identity. Your ego has decided that your actual opinion is YOU, your identity, and to have your opinion attacked is to be attacked personally. This is an illusion and a terrible cause of much unnecessary suffering.

Become the observer, the witness, of your own thoughts and feelings and see what happens. This is the beginning of disidentification with the ego, your artificial self, the mask that hides the real you inside. This is also the beginning of "salvation" or "enlightenment" which the great religious traditions attempt to lead us towards.

Lost Christianity

2008-06-13T11:45:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading Lost Christianity by Jacob Needleman. The following is a quote from Father Sylvan, a mysterious, spiritually-advanced monk who crossed paths with Mr. Needleman. The author received the monk's journals, using them to explore the deeper levels of Christianity. From Father Sylvan's journal:

The idea of levels of Christianity may never again be known in the West. There is an intermediate level of Christianity which teaches the way that the higher level becomes distorted. We need the intermediate level. We need to observe how we lose Christianity, lose mysticism, lose the energy of God. Here lies the origin of sin and repentance, on the border between heaven and hell.

Modern people do not understand that the Christian ideals to which half the world attempts to conform comprise a description of the results of a specific inner act and inner inquiry. Mysticism is a result, a great result perhaps, of the inner inquiry; but everything is corrupted when I confuse inner work with the results of inner work.

To experience love for God or my neighbor, even for an instant, is no less a result than mystical experience. To be virtuous is a result. To have faith is a result. Similarly, wisdom and compassion are results.

All corruption of tradition begins with the confusion and mixing of inner work with the results of inner work. Jesus saw that the Judaism of his time had fallen into this confusion and that no one was practicing the inner discipline free from the expectation or assumption of results.

And another quote from Father Sylvan:

In a certain sense, the problem of Christianity is not that something has been hidden, but that not enough has stayed hidden.

Fascinating stuff! I think this connects very well with what Maurice Nicoll explores in The New Man:

The idea behind all sacred writing is to convey a higher meaning than the literal words contain, the truth of which must be seen by Man internally. This higher, concealed, inner, or esoteric, meaning, cast in the words and sense-images of ordinary usage, can only be grasped by the understanding, and it is exactly here that the first difficulty lies in conveying higher meaning to Man. A person's literal level of understanding is not necessarily equal to grasping psychological meaning.

And this, also from The New Man:

The Gospels are from beginning to end all about this possible self-evolution. They are psychological documents. They are about the psychology of this possible inner development - that is, about what a man must think, feel, and do in order to reach a new level of understanding. The Gospels are not about the affairs of life, save indirectly, but about this central idea - namely, that Man internally is a seed capable of a definite growth. Man is compared with a seed capable of a definite evolution. As he is, Man is incomplete, unfinished. A man can bring about his own evolution, his own completion, individually. If he does not wish to do this he need not. He is then called grass - that is, burned up as useless. This is the teaching of the Gospels. But this teaching can be given neither directly nor by external compulsion. A man must begin to understand for himself before he can receive it. You cannot make anyone understand by force, by law.

So if we take what Father Sylvan and Maurice Nicoll have said, we get an impression that what we think we know about Christianity could be only a very simplistic and superficial understanding, maybe even a grossly distorted understanding. The depth of truth concealed in the Gospels has probably been beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of humanity for centuries, let alone much of the hierarchy of the Church which has tried to convey those truths. Contrast this with Ken Wilber's concepts of the states and stages of development in Integral Theory. Western civilization has only recently started to emerge from the mythic/ethnocentric stage of development in the past century or two (perhaps as much as 70% of humanity is still at the mythic stage today). If the Gospels are read and comprehended from a mythic, ethnocentric stage of consciousness, then it would make sense why much of humanity has failed to grasp the deeper meaning of the Gospels. This is not to criticize people at the mythic stage. All humans and societies and civilizations progress through stages of development, from lower to higher. But what do we do with this situation, if anything? How do we help that 70% move up to a higher stage of consciousness? Should they be helped or not? Can the "lost Christianity" be rediscovered and be a catalyst for humanity's spiritual development?

Eudaimonia

2008-06-05T12:59:00.005-05:00

There's a wonderful little article on the Oprah web site about five traits of happy people. Here is a quote from the article:

Cobbled from the Greek eu ("good") and daimon ("spirit" or "deity"), eudaimonia means striving toward excellence based on one's unique talents and potential—Aristotle considered it to be the noblest goal in life. In his time, the Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon embodying the highest possible expression of his or her nature. One way they envisioned the daimon was as a golden figurine that would be revealed by cracking away an outer layer of cheap pottery (the person's baser exterior). The effort to know and realize one's most golden self—"personal growth," in today's lingo—is now the central concept of eudaimonia, which has also come to include continually taking on new challenges and fulfilling one's sense of purpose in life.

I think this is such a wonderful concept! I hadn't heard of eudaimonia before but it really resonates with me as encapsulating something I have been seeking since childhood. I think part of the path of becoming a fully conscious and enlightened human being involves this innate drive towards perfection and fulfillment; of striving towards the best that you can be and fulfilling your life's purpose.

The idea of the "baser exterior" that hides "one's most golden self" can also refer to the way in which our ego, desires, appetites, and attachments, can obscure and block us from getting to know our true inner self (part of the classic conflict between the animal nature versus the rational mind). It makes sense that if you begin to crack apart that false outer layer that you start to tune into that authenticity of knowing your true self, which in turns directs you toward following your life's purpose, which in turn brings real happiness. I am reminded again of Joseph Campbell's famous statement, "Follow your bliss."

Eudaimonia might also correspond to one of the major ideals in Freemasonry, represented by the metaphorical stone of one's self. Through inner work and right conduct the stone is transformed and perfected. What was raw, wild, and unfocused, given to us as a gift by God and nature to carve into being, becomes something beautiful, real, and perfected. The challenge and the path for all human beings is to recognize that this work needs to be done. To leave one's stone, one's self, undeveloped and unknown is to abandon the great potential that we have been given. To only see the "outer layer of cheap pottery" and to mistake it as our true self is to waste our potential and only live within a superficial experience of being.

Goal & Activity Log

2008-05-30T15:04:00.005-05:00

The above image is a snippet of a spreadsheet I use to keep track of my progress on certain goals. The overall purpose is NOT to try and accomplish each goal every single day. Instead, it is an observation tool to see how much balance I'm creating in my life. Making a little bit of progress each day on a few goals is better than very sporadic or infrequent progress or no progress at all. Consciousness and awareness of one's actions is key. After a period of time the chart shows me if I have neglected any goals or if I have spent too much time on certain goals but not on others. A balanced life leads to fulfillment.

A summary explanation of the goals:

Exercise - about 10 minutes of bicycle and then some strength training and back exercises.

Holosync - my meditation program on audio CDs. Usually a half hour or hour long.

Journal - keeping my handwritten diary up to date.

Catholic Formation - this includes going to church, studying with a private tutor to become a Catholic, spiritual reading, learning, and prayer. There are some really great online study groups at CCEL.

Big Mind or Shadow - these are practices from Integral Life Practice. You could say that the Big Mind meditation helps you experience god-consciousness. Shadow work (i.e. the 3-2-1 Process) involves dealing with difficult people, emotions, memories, situations, etc.

ACIM Lesson - study of one of the daily workbook lessons from A Course in Miracles.

Learning - listening to audio or viewing videos from the Integral web sites, Gnosis.org, Theosophical Society, Speaking of Faith, Eckhart Tolle with Oprah, LibriVox.org, and anything else I find interesting that adds to my knowledge. It helps to use my pocket MP3 player so I can listen and do chores at the same time. The Internet is really a treasure trove for learning!

Write my book - progress towards writing my book on esoteric Christianity.

Compose music - progress on writing about 20 minutes of music for a small string ensemble.

Blog post - writing posts for my blog, like this one!

Morse Code - now that I've got my ham license, I want to learn the code before I get on the air. I'm still mastering the alphabet.

Special Projects - this relates to a list of various special chores around the house, such as organizing all my photographs into albums, cleaning out closets, redecorating, etc.

Volunteering - time spent helping my condo association; and eventually I would like to volunteer at a nearby hospital.

Friends & Family - hanging out with people.

Dining out - not necessarily something I want to do too much, as it can get very expensive very fast. By monitoring my activity I can help to avoid excessive spending.

Library, Park, Museum - free fun activities that get me out of the house. With 6 months off from a day job it could be easy for me to become a hermit at home. I have to watch that I make sure to get outdoors, enjoy the weather, and socialize.

Mindfulness

2008-05-29T19:42:00.004-05:00

The older I get, the more I find that my level of mindfulness determines my level of happiness. I would also include related qualities, such as having clearly defined goals, self-discipline, mental clarity and concentration. Without mindfulness (i.e. the awareness of one's own thoughts, feelings, and actions), the mind can just wander off all over the place, skipping from one association to the next, one fear or memory after another, a tendency that Buddhists vividly refer to as "monkey mind". Without mindfulness you can feel as if your life is passing you by, as if you have no control and time is being "stolen" out from under you. And everything starts with the mind first - if the mind is a mess, then the feelings and actions that result will also be a mess (and vice versa).

When I was a teenager and had unlimited free time during summer vacations, I found that if occupied myself with working on my goals and interests that time would just fly by very joyfully. My mind would be so wrapped up in accomplishing goals or learning something new that I didn't wander off into other thoughts or concerns. My mind kicked into gear and focused on one thing and that was the happiest time of all. Such experiences are often described as being in a state of "flow".

But why is it so hard to maintain mindfulness? Without self-discipline to put mindfulness into practice, one can fall into a lesser passive state - sitting for hours watching TV, browsing the Internet, playing video games, drinking alcohol, etc. After wallowing in the passive state you can end up feeling like you didn't accomplish anything. The time flew by with little or no benefit and you might as well have been asleep! Now, this is not to say that mindless leisure and relaxation do not have a valuable purpose. I am all in favor of a little daydreaming or mindless fun activities once in a while to recharge my energy level. The problem comes when you realize that copious amounts of time escaped into nothingness! Weeks, months, years!

Here are a couple of nice quotes from Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

To control attention means to control experience, and therefore the quality of life. Information reaches consciousness only when we attend to it. Attention acts as a filter between outside events and our experience of them. How much stress we experience depends more on how well we control attention, than on what happens to us. The effect of physical pain, of a monetary loss, of a social snub depends on how much attention we pay to it, how much room we allow for it in consciousness. The more psychic energy we invest in a painful event, the more real it becomes, and the more entropy it introduces in consciousness.

And this:

The only way to take over the ownership of life is by learning to direct psychic energy in line with our own intentions.

And this fits in well with another life-changing book I love, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. A quote from the very first chapter:

If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health, and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings - everything!

One part of my daily mindfulness practice now includes a spreadsheet in which I monitor the status of my current goals. Every day I check off whether or not I spent some time working towards each goal. This has really helped me tremendously to see where my time has been going! In the past I would create "to-do" lists or schedules, which invariably always seemed to fail. I would not do what I told myself to do, leading to guilty feelings and further procrastination; a vicious feedback loop of failure. But this is different! It is simple self-observation of one's actions and use of time. If you can simply observe yourself, without judgment, you can see what you have been doing with your time and then make adjustments or changes as you go along. It helps to create balance in your use of time, which in turn helps to facilitate the "flow" experience, leading to a higher quality of experiencing life itself.

Tomorrow I will share with you a screen shot of my spreadsheet chart and goals.

Gratitude of Former Paid Employment

2008-05-09T20:18:00.007-05:00

Today was the last day of the “day job” and it still doesn’t seem real. Maybe because it has been yet another week of sleep deprivation, making me feel like a zombie (a lamentable condition of unreality). It feels like I have been going to the day job, day after day after day, since forever. Hard to believe that when Monday morning comes along I will not have to get up before the crack of dawn, jump on a bus, hike many a block of Minneapolis skyway to fill a chair in a cube farm, and stare, glassy-eyed, at a computer monitor for 9 hours straight. Now I have the leisure to stay at home and stare at my own monitor for as many hours, days, and weeks on end as I can tolerate (hopefully NOT – I am getting tired being chained to computers! Especially with the tantalizing edge of summer emblazoning the sky with warmth and electrifying the grass in hues of vivid green!).

I am so grateful to have met my coworkers. Lots of really excellent people, and the best supervisor anyone could possibly ever imagine. I feel a twinge of regret that even after spending about a year and a half with these people that there always remained a few fascinating characters that I never really got to know at all; and even the ones I thought I knew, still left me wondering how much more was hidden in their hearts that I would never know. Our lives intersected these many months and now I am moving on to other things; and, in turn, each one of them will be moving on and inhabiting their own realities as well, going about living their individual lives, intersecting with other people in an infinite web of connections. It is so true that you don’t realize what you have until you’ve lost it. Now that I contemplate this latest turning point in my life, I feel immense gratitude that my life intersected with all of these beautiful, genuine people. I hope I can keep in touch with them in the future, or at least keep them in my thoughts and prayers from time to time, wondering where they are, what they are doing. Bless them all!

If only life were long enough and deep enough that we could know other human beings in more authentic ways, in their souls. How many times do we pass by our co-workers, people with whom we spend an enormous portion of our waking life, making idle chat that only touches the surface of lived experience, when each person holds within himself or herself an unfathomable world of consciousness, memories, perceptions, and potential greatness? It is impossible for any of us to know what it is like to be another person, to be inside their eyes and minds and perceive the outer and inner worlds from their unique viewpoint, as well as vice versa. When I think about this, I am awestruck by the immensity of life! Each human being a self-contained universe, known only unto itself! Such a wonder!

I passed the test

2008-05-03T14:30:00.003-05:00

A shiny new copy of a Morse code key, similar to one used by my great-grandfather as a telegraph operator for Western Union. This is the famous Vibroplex "bug".

I took the exam for the Technician class license of Amateur radio this morning. I passed it! In about 15 days I should be able to find out my callsign from an FCC website. This is so exciting! I've been thinking about joining Ham Radio since I was a kid. Getting a callsign will be like getting a new name or identity.

It was a little awkward (and funny) for me at the testing site. I was the only female in a room full of about 30 or 40 middle-aged white guys, and probably one of the few under the age of 40. Once we were allowed to begin our tests, I zipped through mine in about 2 or 3 minutes at most, raised my hand, and had my test graded and reviewed by the examiners. One examiner made a humorous glance at another, bugging his eyes out, and then later giving me the thumbs up signal that I had passed. I was the first to finish my test. I didn't stick around to see how long the others took. Taking a zillion practice tests on this site made a big difference, but I already knew most of it just from playing with shortwave radios over the years. Plus the Technician exam is super easy anyway.

Now my next goal is to master the code this summer and save up for a key, antenna, and HF rig by the end of the year. The Vibroplex bugs look cool, and would certainly be nostalgic for me to connect with my great-grandfather, but I'm thinking an iambic key would be easier to use. These keys look pretty spiffy and are expertly-crafted works of art.

Theosophy & Morse Code

2008-04-30T22:47:00.004-05:00

The past few weeks have been so hectic! Yet also so rich with possibilities and glimmers of joy and a vision for greater potential and endeavors in the next few months. May 9th will be my last day at "the day job," with six glorious months of freedom to pursue some old and new dreams.

This Saturday, May 3rd, I will take the exam to get my first Ham radio license. This has been a dream of mine since probably the age of 9 or so, when my Grandpa Martin gave me his old Zenith Trans-Oceanic shortwave radio and a clunky old crystal-powered police scanner. Ever since then I have been hooked to shortwave radio, scanner radio, CB radio, and amateur ("Ham") radio (with offshoots into astronomy and playing with electronic kits). For years and years I was either too desperately shy to pursue the Ham license or too busy wandering off into other hobbies (Taoism & Chinese, anyone?). One of my goals this summer is to master Morse Code thanks to a really nice guy's excellent resource, so I can chat with people around the world and exchange QSL cards. Sure, people are chatting 24 hours a day on the Internet, but there is still just something magical about stringing up some flimsy little piece of wire and tapping out an esoteric language through the atmosphere on a few watts of power. It is miraculous!

Speaking of esoteric, I have also joined the Theosophical Society and look forward to attending my first local meeting in a few weeks. I feel a greater urgency to expand my search after the deeper truths in life, something that can't simply be found from sitting around at home reading books all day. You can have lots of nice thoughts and philosophical musings, but a genuine, deeply lived experience of the Divine is the ultimate goal in life. I sense an inner expansion of awareness, a desire to get out and find fellow-seekers on the path to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Life is so much more than what we perceive so superficially with our physical senses. I'm not talking about psychic powers or auras or flying through the air or things of that nature (not that I'm against such beliefs; but such things really don't resonate with me). I'm referring instead to an inner knowing, a divine spark in which you just know, deep down in an intuitive-heart way, that there is so much more to life beneath the surface. As William Blake famously said,

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

In a way there is an overlap between the mystical vision, of seeing the world, everyone and everything, with a new perception, and using Morse Code to communicate through our globe's invisible atmosphere, zipping at the speed of light across continents. Both require a new awareness, a mental clarity or vision. Both are like a newfound world, a new language, a new sense of self and other. Damn, isn't life so kickass fantastic and exciting?! Let's live every moment!

What makes you excited about life? Do you ever wonder that if you should die tomorrow whether you had truly lived? Life is always here, right now, in this present moment. The question is whether we can wake up to it in the now-moment or whether time will run out before we can fully realize it. I believe that is why we exist - to seek and find that answer.

Time & Interiority

2008-04-16T16:28:00.005-05:00

Our time is hungry in spirit. In some unnoticed way we have managed to inflict severe surgery on ourselves. We have separated soul from experience, become utterly taken up with the outside world and allowed the interior life to shrink. Like a stream that disappears underground, there remains on the surface only the slightest trickle. When we devote no time to the inner life, we lose the habit of soul. We become accustomed to keeping things at surface level. The deeper questions about who we are and what we are here for visit us less and less. If we allow time for soul, we will come to sense its dark and luminous depth. If we fail to acquaint ourselves with soul, we will remain strangers in our own lives.

- John O'Donohue, from his book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

I am starving for free time; for simple, basic, unstructured and open-ended free time that allows the mind to wander into secret uncharted territories. Our society is too obsessed with keeping busy and doing rather than being. Every minute has to be somehow "productive," as if we are our own mini factories of industriousness. Even after all these years without a television to devour my few free hours, I'm still catching myself being a slave to the clock and judging my use of time. There should be a law against the 40-hour work week. Supposedly the people of the Medieval ages could get by just fine working for 20 hours a week to sustain life. How is it we have become so much more uncivilized today than those people back in the "Dark Ages"?

Silence, daydreaming, and stillness. These things are as vital to me as air and water. If I go along for too many days, whisked away into busyness and socializing and chores, without a chance for my spirit to catch its breath and my mind to find stillness, my inner sense of sanity starts to crumble. I get anxious and frantic, like a trapped animal. It is hard for me to imagine how others can constantly be on the move, or socialize for hours day after day, or find quiet alone-time to be lonely and scary. If I could get away with living as a hermit in some far remote place I think I could do just fine.

Here is a tip from Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

The essence of mindfulness in daily life is to make every moment you have your own. Even if you are hurrying, which is sometimes necessary, then at least hurry mindfully. Be aware of your breathing, of the need to move fast, and do it with awareness until you don't have to hurry anymore and then let go and relax intentionally. If you find your mind making lists and compelling you to get every last thing on them done, then bring awareness to your body and the mental and physical tension that may be mounting and remind yourself that some of it can probably wait. If you get really close to the edge, stop completely and ask yourself, "Is it worth dying for?" or "Who is running where?"

View of Catholicism

2008-04-03T18:17:00.003-05:00

I submitted a response to a survey from the NPR program, Speaking of Faith, on a potential future radio program on "The Humanness of Catholic Identity." Here were the questions they asked:

If you are or were Catholic, we'd like to hear your perspectives on what anchors and unsettles you in this vast tradition. We're also interested in the hopes and concerns you have for the church, now and into the future. What do you take solace in and find beautiful about this faith of nearly two millennia and more than 1.3 billion members spanning all the cultures of the globe? What hopes, questions, and concerns are on your mind as you ponder the state of the Catholic Church and its future?

Any my response:

I find solace and beauty in the esoteric dimension of Catholicism. The focus by the media, and the overall public perception, seems almost exclusively centered on the external, dogmatic aspects of the Church (i.e. prescriptions on behavior, morality, arguing over "right" versus "wrong", etc.). There is a place for dogma and rules, but, to me, the heart of Catholicism is experienced in its inner truth, its mysticism, esotericism, and contemplative practices; it is about coming to the realization of a genuine, lived experience, within one's own being, of God or Christ-consciousness, an experience far beyond following rules or commandments on pieces of paper. I find solace and beauty in the Liturgy, contemplative prayer, Gregorian Chant, the rosary, architecture, and art. I find solace and beauty in the saints and writers like St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Teilhard de Chardin, Meister Eckhart, the Desert Fathers, as well as contemporary theologians like Thomas Keating and Willgis Jager. Through centuries of tradition I find a deeply profound connection to my European cultural background and ancestors; I can participate in the Mass and experience a realization that I am part of something larger than myself; a connection to Spirit that binds me to God and to my human family in the past, present, and future.

Yes, there are both good and bad aspects to the Church. Yes, there has been much evil done in its name, all of which should be recognized and atoned for and learned from by the Church’s members and leadership. Like a family, there have been and always will be segments of the Church that don’t get along, with skeletons hiding in closets, and areas begging for reform or healing. Yet somehow the Church keeps going strong, accepting and integrating diversity, differing cultures, and differences of opinion. I find beauty and solace in the miracle that such an institution has lasted for two millennia. My hope is that the Church, in moving forward into the future, will be able to look at itself honestly and address any neglected issues it needs to face.

We live in an age that is terribly polarized, and that polarization has infected the Church as well. My hope for the Church is that we will find the patience and wisdom to step back and examine ourselves deeply; to look at where we have come from and where we are going. In the words of the American philosopher, Ken Wilber, the Church might find a way to move forward by "transcending and including" those aspects of itself that have become polarized or marginalized. We can include and integrate the liberal and conservative expressions of Catholicism while still recognizing and validating those differences. We can include and integrate the rational and mystical minds, finding value and meaning in both, moving forward holding both. My hope is to one day see a healthy, holistic, "integral" Catholic Church, comfortable in both its dogmatic and mystical aspects. A Church that is proud of its traditions, practices, and cultural expressions, yet mature and honest enough to learn from its mistakes, take what is good, true, and beautiful, and throw out what does not serve Christ’s ultimate message of "love one another as I have loved you."

Looking Ahead

2008-04-01T20:29:00.002-05:00

Time is flying by so fast but I'm looking forward to a carefree 6 month period to do anything I want, hopefully starting in a month or so. Creativity requires complete and total uninterrupted time; complete and total time for contemplation and spiritual exploration. My two main goals are to (1) write a non-fiction book in the overall area of spirituality/philosophy/self-help, and (2) compose enough music to fill an entire audio CD of around 60 to 70 minutes (yes, of course quality should be more important than quantity, but I feel I am really lacking in the quantity area for the past decade).

Sorry for this short post! I leave you with a quote from one of my all-time favorite books, The Outsider, by Colin Wilson:

We can summarize [William] Blake's argument briefly: All men should possess a 'visionary faculty'. Men do not, because they live wrongly. They live tensely, under too much strain, 'getting and spending'. But this loss of the visionary faculty is not entirely man's fault, it is partly the fault of the world he lives in, that demands that men should spend a certain amount of their time 'getting and spending' to stay alive.

The visionary faculty comes naturally to all men. When they are relaxed enough, every leaf of every tree in the world, every speck of dust, is a separate world capable of producing infinite pleasure. If these fail to do so, it is man's own fault for wasting his time and energy on trivialities. The ideal is the contemplative poet, the 'sage', who cares about having only enough money and food to keep him alive, and never 'takes thought for the morrow'. This is a way of thought that comes more easily to the Eastern than to the Western mind.

Restless

2008-03-09T21:37:00.002-05:00

The past month or so has been very inwardly tumultuous for me. I am restless and anxious. I feel like I'm on the edge of some important and necessary changes in my life; a period of chaos before I can evolve to a higher stage of development. Sometimes I catch myself feeling so joyous and excited about life! There is so much I want to do with my life! And then there are always a million things to worry about, the chores to maintain one's life, the day job, etc. the basic stuff of life that can be rather boring. There is always the constant struggle between one's mundane life and the desire for an extraordinary life. I feel I am getting closer and closer to "following my bliss" or even that I might have found it already and have been living in it for a while and wasn't consciously aware of it. I am so grateful and amazed about life!

A recap of what I've been doing and thinking lately. It has been a whirlwind period:

I've been working on some music I'm really excited about. As soon as I have it completed (hopefully in a month or two) I will post a link here.

Books I've been reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, The Life We are Given by Leonard & Murphy, Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and The Spiritual Guide by Michael Molinos. Soon I will read A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber, and A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher.

Saw the film, Into Great Silence. Amazing, real, beautiful, and deeply lived lives. The guys in this monastery probably have a deeper experience of life in one year than most of us do in a lifetime! This reminds me I need to get back and pay a visit down south to this place. Stunning! If only we could all live our lives with such focus and intensity.

Visited the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and focused intensely on three rooms full of Medieval and early Renaissance art. I've been spending some time learning about the Middle Ages, its art and history. I didn't really know much at all about these subjects. I hope to make future trips to the museum, ideally once every couple of months. It is so worthwhile and meaningful to learn new subjects and really spend a lot of time learning and thinking. It is so easy to get stuck with a few interests or hobbies. I need to break out into new territories of learning.

I experienced a terrible phone call at my day job a month ago. It really disturbed me and shook my foundation. I need to do some shadow work on it. I will share my writings on that in the future. It is still percolating and reverberating in my psyche.

I've decided I want to write a book! I am currently brainstorming topics I'd like to write about before narrowing it down into something specific, with chapter contents and a main title. I've wanted to write a book for years and years. Life is short and isn't going to stop for me to get my act together! Now is the time.
Continuing to make progress with my ILP Kit. Almost daily exercise and meditation are now part of my routine, even after a week with a nasty flu. If I go a day or two without exercise I really start to miss it, a feeling I never had before. And I can tell how much of an impact exercise has had in rehabilitating my back from the herniated disc. I have had absolutely no lower back or leg pain since early February! It is miraculous!
I'm really excited about the whole idea of an integral life! There is something great about pursuing and applying an integral approach to life and living. One of my biggest goals in life has always been to live life to the fullest and cultivate myself to my highest potential. Why else are we here on this Earth? Is life not a fantastic opportunity?

Gratitude & Surrender

2008-02-12T05:54:00.000-06:00

I am again amazed at life. A month ago was another trial of pain, infirmity, and uncertainty. Even after the facet block procedure, I was not sure I would ever feel normal again or stand up straight. Things like going bowling or learning how to dance seemed like pretty unrealistic activities for the foreseeable future. But now, after ten consecutive days of consistent, intensive exercise, I almost feel as good as new, maybe even stronger than before. It is miraculous that one day you can wake up and barely move or walk without pain, and on another day feel like nothing happened, as if the past few months were just a bad dream or a little annoyance. The pain is almost 100% gone, and the stiff muscles have almost entirely disappeared as well. I have gone from feeling bent and broken, to feeling fluid motion and strength and vibrancy. So strange! And I'm not complaining, of course! Just very amazed at how quickly things can change! I am very grateful!

What am I to make of this overall experience? Certainly I do not want to take good health for granted. There is no guarantee that I shall not have relapses in the future. And on the other hand, I don't want to forget what I went through either. I believe there was real value in the entire experience. It was a doorway to different states of being and perceiving. It has forced me to take better care of my physical health (not that I really neglected it; I just hadn't paid much attention to my body or made consistent effort to exercise regularly), and even to realize there is a spiritual dimension to one's body. There are the so-called divisions of body, mind, and spirit, but I am starting to realize more and more that these three realities co-exist integrally, in an inter-dependent way. The body is not just an organism or collection of biological systems, separate from mind and spirit; it is, instead, the intersection or crossroads of the mind and spirit united together. The body is the material, visible manifestation of mind and spirit. Outward and inner work together.

The mind is really the most powerful tool we have in this life. I truly believe that if I had had a very different attitude about my experiences with back pain (such as anger, or a sense of powerless victimhood), I would still be struggling to walk to work every morning, or jumping out of my skin every time I coughed. I think we, as a society, really underestimate the power of our minds to create (or destroy) our health. The power of our minds must also extend into everything else, our perceptions of reality, our perceptions of each other, other cultures, other nations, other religions, and globally, towards the environment and the planet.

Lately I have also grown to appreciate the spiritual notion of surrender. By spiritual, I am referring to the positive sense of the term. I think there is some confusion that leads most people to assume that it ONLY means to give up, or accept things as they are (and usually counter to one's desires), to stop trying to make things different; it usually has a defeatist connotation, which I believe is missing the point of the deeper meaning.

Surrendering can be practiced in different ways, outwardly versus inwardly. To me, "to surrender" can refer to one's mental and spiritual attitude, as an inner state, separate from one's outward behavior or external actions. In the positive sense, I can surrender my attachment to a certain outcome, rather than getting upset that life isn't going the way I want it to. I can surrender my definitions of what is "right" and what is "wrong", and rest in the acceptance of the present moment; I can just allow everything to be as it is, observing it, witnessing it, without needing to attach labels or judgments on experiences, people, or events.

In the case of my back pain, I really tried hard to stop wanting or wishing for any different outcome other than what I was experiencing in the moment. Now, this does NOT mean that I also stopped trying to change the situation outwardly. Outwardly I still went to the doctor, the physical therapist, and added more exercise, healthier foods, and so on. Outwardly, I made every possible effort to remedy the situation. Yet, inwardly, I surrendered my desires and attachments to specific outcomes. I rested my mind and heart and energy. I rested in the mystery of life and God. Since I didn't really know what was going to happen, one way or the other, I found it much easier, inwardly, to rest in a state of not knowing, not attaching and not desiring. It's like the weather - you could be caught out in a sudden torrential rainstorm - does it change anything to curse the rain, or wish for it to stop? The rain just is, it exists, it's happening in this present moment. It is neither good or bad, unless we attach a label to it. Inwardly, to surrender to the rain is to accept the fact that it is raining and just let it be itself; yet outwardly one can calmly and peacefully grab an umbrella or step into a building. We can do what we need to do without the mental agonizing of unfulfilled wishes. A clear, uncluttered mental and spiritual attitude can make it easier for our actions and behaviors to flow naturally and seamlessly. Life is only difficult when we add our mental baggage into the mix.

Hodge Podge of an Update

2008-02-04T13:57:00.000-06:00

All sorts of things going on with me lately. Here is a breakdown of various things:

My back pain has improved considerably. The facet block procedure worked to a large extent, erasing the pain from my lower back. Still some minor aches and constricted muscles, but at least it is manageable to live with. I'm continuing to do exercises recommended by my physical therapist, plus I have added 10 minutes of exercise bike daily.
For the last couple of weeks my husband and I have been steeping ourselves in the Integral Approach of Ken Wilber. I got a bunch of his books, joined Integral Naked and Integral Spiritual Center, plus started listening to 12 hours of an interview with Wilber on audio CDs. We can hardly wait each evening to sit down and listen to the next installment! Integral theory is so fantastic! I really think it is the new frontier for making sense of ourselves and of humanity. It provides a multi-dimensional map for charting growth, development and evolution from an individual, societal, and global perspective. It is really amazing. I will write more on integral in future posts. Check out this Wiki page on Ken Wilber. For beginners, read A Brief History of Everything.
Speaking of integral, we're continuing to use our Integral Life Practice kit, renewing commitments to exercise, meditate, and eat healthier. Despite the day job, I am using Holosync much more consistently. There really is increased mental clarity and focus from regular listening to Holosync.
I've been composing more music lately, as well as cultivating a more intuitive, spiritual approach to composition. More on that later.
Wednesday is already the start of Lent. I'm still trying to figure out what extra spiritual practices I want to add into my life. I'm exciting to participate more fully this year.
Books I've been reading lately:
- a translation of Meister Eckhart by Matthew Fox
- Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber
- Swami Nijananda's commentary on Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence

More later on the Integral Approach!

Transcending the self for the Self

2008-01-25T12:25:00.000-06:00

The following quotes are so exciting! I came across the technique of "witnessing" many months ago through the work of Bill Harris, of Holosync and Centerpointe. The following exercise and quotes, however, are from Ken Wilber, in his book, No Boundary. Basically, there is the idea that our true "Self" (as opposed to "self" with a small letter 's'), is who we really are, our eternal soul, which ultimately is part of, or one with, God (look up the concept of panentheism, as opposed to pantheism). The small-letter "self" is our ego-identified self, the self we've created and grown attached to. We get attached to that "self" and think that it's the only reality. Our ego-self masks who we really are. If you can get in touch with your authentic, eternal Self, you will ultimately see that there is nothing to fear and that there is no loss, no death, and no separation. Our ego-self is an illusion, masking our oneness with God and with every one and every thing.

Through the witnessing technique, you take the perspective of your Transcendent "Self", observing your small-letter "self".

The "Witnessing" Technique for Experiencing your Transcendent Self:

I have a body, but I am not my body. I can see and feel my body, and what can be seen and felt is not the true Seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a body, but I am not my body.

I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through my awareness, but they do not affect my inward I. I have desires but I am not desires.

I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions but I am not emotions.

I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts.
[End of Exercise; additional Wilber quotes follow]

Thus, any emotion, sensation, thought, memory, or experience that disturbs you is simply one with which you have exclusively identified yourself, and the ultimate resolution of the disturbance is simply to disidentify with it. You cleanly let all of them drop away by realizing that they are not you -- since you can see them, they cannot be the true Seer and Subject. Since they are not your real self, there is no reason whatsoever for you to identify with them, hold on to them, or allow your self to be bound by them.

Thus, your personal mind-and-body may be in pain, or humiliation, or fear, but as long as you abide as the witness of these affairs, as if from on high, they no longer threaten you, and thus you are no longer moved to manipulate them, wrestle with them, or subdue them.

To witness these states is to transcend them.

Thus, we can understand why Patanjali, the codifier of yoga in India, said that ignorance is the identification of the Seer with the instruments of seeing.
If you are at all successful in developing this type of detached witnessing (it does take time), you will be able to look upon the events occurring in your mind-and-body with the very same impartiality that you would look upon clouds floating through the sky, water rushing in a stream, rain cascading on a roof, or any other objects in your field of awareness. In other words, your relationship to your mind-and-body becomes the same as your relationship to all other objects.

Transcendence in and through Pain

2008-01-20T17:56:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I had a pain relapse from my herniated disc. It returned to the debilitating state as it was when it all started in October 2007, and for a few days I could barely move or go to work. So on Thursday, January 10th, I had a minor medical procedure called "facet blocks" to cauterize some nerves along five sets of vertebrae that were channeling pain signals to my brain from the "slipped" disc. Mercifully, that procedure was largely successful, as the worst of the sharpest, stabbing pain was greatly reduced or eliminated. I don't feel 100% perfect now, but at least the situation can be endured and I can go to work and do some regular activities.

Not a day has gone by since October when I have not thought about pain, how to respond to it, how to fix it, and how to make sense of it. I have certainly had my days of frustration and anger and sadness. More and more I am getting the impression that Western medicine really doesn't have all the answers, or a quick fix (other than pills), and many of my experiences with doctors have been quite negative. Not only do treatment recommendations differ from one doctor to the next, but most doctors I have met (so far) were complete jerks (to put it mildly!), lacking even an ounce of compassion or humanity. Over and over again, I have also run into people who have dealt with back pain through surgeries, medication, and all the other usual Western methods, and it seems like one horror story after another. Many times the treatment only serves to make the condition and pain worse, or leaving the patient a veritable drug addict. I am currently really at a fork in the road when it comes to knowing where to go from here. My faith in Western medicine has never been lower (not that I'm not thankful for the facet block procedure, which was really minor and the least invasive action I could take, but it seems like my options from now on could lead to a lifelong quagmire of surgeries or experimental guesswork). Ultimately I think it rests on me to keep a positive attitude and cultivate a larger, spiritual meaning to make sense of this experience and to live with it. There must be a way to endure this positively and constructively. I do believe in the power of the mind to heal the body. I do believe things happen for a reason and that there is much for me to learn from this pain.

From a spiritual standpoint, I have found some new and beautiful ways for understanding pain. The following is a quote by Hazrat Inayay Khan, a Sufi mystic and author, from his book The Unity of Religious Ideals:

In reality God is within you, and as He is within you, you are the instrument of God and through you God experiences the external world and you are the best instrument of conveying yourself to God.

I also found a similar perspective from reading Willigis Jager: the idea that not only is God within us, but He is living through us and experiencing our lives in and through us. God is living through this pain with me; I am not alone in enduring it. It is like the idea of Christ's cross: that we each have a cross to bear in this world, but that it is imbued with even more significance if we can see it through Christ's sufferings. The experience of Christ is a mirror image of our own. If we can follow in His footsteps, pain can really become something that helps us evolve to a higher state of being and consciousness.

The Buddhist concept of karma also adds another dimension of meaning, and I really think it is not much different than the Christian idea of surrendering to divine providence. The following is an amazing quote from Ken Wilber:

I’ve dealt extensively elsewhere with the concept of karma and illness—in Grace and Grit, for example, and more recently in Excerpt A of volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy. But it remains one of the most confused areas of understanding imaginable. I’m not going to get into it at any length here, but just let me make a few very brief points. Many people hear of situations like this, or perhaps suffer similar ones themselves, and imagine it must somehow be retribution for some horrendous crime in one’s past. But keep in mind that karma doesn’t mean that what happened earlier in this life is finally catching up with you; the orthodox doctrine of karma actually means something that happened to you in a previous life. According to the doctrine of karma, in this life you are reading a book that you wrote in a previous life. Many people draw the erroneous conclusion that because, e.g., they used to yell at their spouses, they now have throat cancer—but that’s just not the way it works.

As a matter of fact, from at least one angle, the “bad things” that are happening to you now actually indicate a good fruition—it means your system is finally strong enough to digest the past karmic causes that led to your present rebirth. So if you were reborn—that is, if you are alive in a body right now—then you have already horrifically sinned, and unless you work it off in this lifetime, guess what? You’re coming back. Illness itself does not cause more karma; your attitude towards illness, however, does. Therefore, if you are undergoing some extremely difficult circumstances right now, and you can meet those difficulties with equanimity, wisdom, and virtue, then you are doubly lucky—the causes that led to your being reborn now are starting to surface and burn off, and you’re not generating any new karma while you burn them (as long as you meet them with equanimity and awareness).

I only mention this because all too often, people undergoing difficult circumstances of one variety or another add a type of New Age guilt or blame to an already difficult enough circumstance, and truly, that’s not only inappropriate, it’s inaccurate. If you would like to pursue some of these concepts in this more integral fashion, please check out Excerpt A. In the meantime, if you’re undergoing some sort of truly difficult or even horrific circumstances, please don’t kick yourself when you’re down. That, indeed, would create bad karma. The good news is that you are finally ready and able to burn off the karma that led to this rebirth, and this is good news indeed—if you meet it with love and openness and a smile.

From this perspective, the endurance of pain and suffering, and one's positive response to it, can become a very noble action, setting things right in the world, making corrections for past wrongs, turning a negative into a positive. This also seems to be the same message one gets from reading the lives of saints, Catholic or otherwise. Pain and suffering are facts of life and ultimately unavoidable. It's how we respond to it and make constructive use of it that make all the difference. We could either see ourselves as helpless victims of random chance, bad luck, or fate, or we could see it as a great opportunity given to us by God for a reason.

I will have much more to say on all of this in later posts. I am currently reading an analysis of Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence.

Jager on Religion, Spirituality & Esotericism

2008-01-07T06:30:00.000-06:00

The following quotes are from Benedictine monk and Zen master, Willigis Jager, from his book, Search for the Meaning of Life.

On spirituality versus religion:

I make a distinction between spirituality and religion. Spirituality teaches a path into experience and deals with what is experienced. Religion, by contrast, is instruction that has evolved into dogmatic theology. These dogmas do, in fact, derive from experience, but they have been absolutized, and only a few believers understand them in an experiential fashion. In esotericism there is instruction but no dogma. "Dogma" here relates to traveling a path to come to one's own experience.

These thoughts might give rise to the misunderstanding that esotericism could subsist all by itself. Not so. Religion needs the two pillars of esotericism and exotericism, otherwise it can easily fail to reach its goal.

A definition of "esotericism":

Ultimately esotericism is concerned with a new experiencing and grasping of reality. The true esoteric paths don't lead out of this world, but into the heart of the moment, into life. The point is to feel not contempt for the world, but an entirely new form of love for it. And with that we come to the essence of mysticism in both the East and the West: religion is life, and life is religion. When I experience the fact that my rising in the morning and putting on my slippers is a profoundly religious act, then I have recognized what religion is. But this is simply not possible without deep experience. In the Eucharist we solemnly proclaim that this is not just bread (in other words, not just form) but the essence of divinity appearing in this form. In the Eucharist we solemnly proclaim that nothing exists that is not God, which means that we actually ought to experience even our breakfast as one more way the Divine expresses itself. It is a sacred action to live one's life here and now. In the final analysis, the sacrament of the moment is nothing else but "living in the will of God." That is the way to happiness.

Profound Holosync Experience

2008-01-06T09:28:00.000-06:00

Over the last couple of weeks I have been pretty successful at returning to a regular daily meditation with my Holosync meditation CDs. I originally started Holosync around May 2006 and managed to listen almost daily for six months. Then with a change of job, and an addition of a commute, my listening became sporadic; maybe only a handful of sessions per month. I always longed for a way to get back into my Holosync and see the same sorts of growth and peak experiences that I had had in those first six months. I could really feel and see positive changes from Holosync, which I believe have lasted up to the present time. Those first six months were really amazing, and brought so much positive change, mental clarity, and emotional equilibrium.

So this morning's session was very nice. I've been listening to Awakening Level 1, Disc 4, for the past two weeks, half an hour per day, as recommended by the instructions. Today's session was so beautiful that I continued on for the full hour. During the end of the first half hour I experienced the sensation that my body just disappeared. It was like my mind was falling down into itself and my body just melted away and became a subtle, pulsing wave sensation. It was really incredibly beautiful and blissful; a feeling of just pure being-ness or wave-like energy. Perhaps it was a taste of the void or nothingness. It lasted for several minutes, into the second half hour. A few times I would catch myself observing myself, thinking, "Hey, this is cool! Let's keep this sensation going!"

I also observed, as usual, my thoughts wandering all over the place (from remembering certain chores I need to take care of today, to random thoughts, worries, and memories). Every time I would catch myself wandering, I would bring my focus back to a mantra, usually just the beginning phrase of the Rosary, "Hail Mary, Full of Grace". I've found that when I get focused on repeating a mantra while listening to Holosync that it can increase or maintain the blissed out feeling that Holosync creates. I think there is real potential for combining Holosync with other mental exercises for intensified growth.

Then as the hour of Holosync was gently fading away, I could hear the Sunday morning church bells softly pealing outside my window (I live near some churches). It was so beautiful and amazing! Today's Holosync meditation was truly exquisite.

10 Questions Video

2007-12-30T15:40:00.000-06:00

My brother sent me the following link and asked me what I thought. Here's the YouTube video:

10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer

This was my response:

Thanks for the video! I used to ask exactly the same sorts of questions about 6 or 7 years ago, and would get very angry with Christianity, until I learned that there are higher states of consciousness, awareness, perception, and interpretation. There are many ways to see and comprehend our existence and many ways to explain why life exists. This topic (i.e. the credibility of faith, religion, believing in God, etc.) is HUGE and would be very interesting to discuss in person over some delicious wine or other beverages. :-)

Before I point out a few things, I would just like to say that I do not have any agenda. I am not interested in proving that I am right and you are wrong, or that everybody should convert to Catholicism. I am still and always have been very open-minded and tolerant. I used to call myself an atheist. I dabbled in Buddhism and Taoism. I see value in all spiritual paths and even the path of no path. I'm just going to try and explain a little bit where I'm at spiritually these days, and how I would respond to such questions as are in the video.

Again, the topic is so huge that I really cannot convey, in an e-mail, all of the ways of looking at religion, or Christianity in particular. But here are a few points to think about:

The video is clearly coming from a very rationalistic, scientific point of view. There is nothing wrong with that, but that's not the only way of comprehending reality. We in the Western world, since the time of the philosopher Descartes (who came up with the concept of "I think, therefore I am" which put a very powerful mental dividing line between body and soul, matter and spirit), have stopped seeing the world from a unified spiritual or transcendent perspective. Instead, we are all taught to dissect and explain everything with a rational, scientific mindset. People in our society are concerned with proving that something is true or false. This also, in turn, leads people to read the Bible literally (and actually that was the kind of response that created Christian fundamentalism: some Christians got scared of science but ironically ended up applying the scientific ("prove it to me") mindset onto the Bible itself to prove, in the terms of science, that the Bible is true; the same can be said in radical Islam - fundamentalism is a radical rejection of scientific materialism and modernity).

The mistake in all of this is that you cannot take the Bible, God, faith, spirituality, etc., literally. Of course you cannot prove there are such things as miracles or that God exists. Of course God is not going to regrow an amputee's arm or give you a raise rather than feed the starving children. God is not some fairytale creature who magically dispenses healing or rains down punishment (the "angry Father" type of God of the Old Testament is a primitive projection, showing the stage of development of the people who wrote it at the time). That is taking the miracle stories literally, which misses the point of religion and leads people to ask the wrong kinds of questions.

Certainly it is fine to read the Bible on the literal level or as poetry or as a piece of literature; but there are many more levels than that (which, by the way, Freemasonry, leads you to experience). Virtually all spiritual texts, as far as I know, contain an inner (esoteric) truth and an outer (exoteric) truth. Remember watching Joseph Campbell? The same is true in mythology (and yes, Christianity is a mythology, too; mythology contains truth, especially inner truth). The outer truth is what everybody is getting hung up on. The outer truth is to take the words of the Bible literally, or to apply blanket black-and-white thinking like "My God is the right one and yours is an idol" or "Gays are going to Hell", etc. People love to argue at this level, and many think that that is the only level there is in religion. The outer level is also where most of the arguing about morality and ethics takes place.

But it is the inner truth that people should really be concerned with. If you read the Bible in the mindset of that inner esoteric truth you will find that concepts like "miracles" are referring to an interior state of consciousness. Take any story in the Bible, whether it is the birth of Christ, Noah's ark, the tower of Babel, whatever it is - these things are not necessarily literally true (they may or may not be - that's not the point and it's actually not really that important!!), the key is that they point to an INNER truth. You apply these stories inwardly, to your spirit, heart, or mind. It is about your inner development as a human being, realizing your divine nature and oneness with all that is. It is NOT about proving whether there really was a Noah or not, or even a real Jesus. The purpose of religion is to guide you, your mind, heart and spirit, into a greater awareness of the divine nature in you and in all of creation. It is to learn, experience, and apply a transcendent form of love that includes all beings. This is a transcendent awareness or consciousness. This is what God is really all about - that experience of oneness, that is true reality.

This type of consciousness is beyond rational understanding or proof by scientific means. Of course science is going to poo-poo and say this is all garbage. Science is good for explaining things within the realm of science (i.e. the material world, bodies, planets, things, physical existence). But it is a misapplication of science to try and use it to explain spirituality or the transcendent mindset of God consciousness. The West has gotten into trouble by deciding that the scientific mindset is the ONLY valid mindset, the ONLY way to interpret reality, and that it can be used to explain EVERYTHING. That is not true. Science is very limited and cannot explain everything. If we could break out of that viewpoint and see that there are higher stages of being, higher states of consciousness, awareness, perception, and interpretation, we would stop fighting over the lowest levels of consciousness (literal fundamentalism), and start to realize there are larger realities we have been missing. Science has validity in the realm in which it is concerned - science, but we shouldn't use it as our sole foundation for explaining everything.

What are your views?

Myths of Modern Times

2007-12-16T14:59:00.000-06:00

The following is a fun quote from Myth and Reality by Mircea Eliade, regarding the power of myth in our modern times:

Mythical behavior can be recognized in the obsession with "success" that is so characteristic of modern society and that expresses an obscure wish to transcend the limits of the human condition; in the exodus to Suburbia, in which we can detect the nostalgia for "primordial perfection"; in the paraphernalia and emotional intensity that characterize what has been called the "cult of the sacred automobile." As Andrew Greeley remarks, "one need merely visit the annual automobile show to realize that it is a highly ritualized religious performance. The colors, the lights, the music, the awe of the worshippers, the presence of the temple priestesses (fashion models), the pomp and splendor, the lavish waste of money, the thronging crowds - all these would represent in any other culture a clearly liturgical service... The cult of the sacred car has its adepts and initiati. No gnostic more eagerly awaited a revelation from an oracle than does an automobile worshipper await the first rumors about the new models. It is at this time of the annual seasonal cycle that the high priests of the cult - the auto dealers - take on a new importance as an anxious public eagerly expects the coming of a new form of salvation."

Interesting to contemplate! Can you think of any other myths generated by our society and consumerist culture? I think the key to personal evolution, intellectual development, and spiritual growth, requires that we stop and take a deeper look at the images and messages being fed to us. Especially in the United States, we are bombarded, practically from birth, with messages from the mass media, the government, the educational system, and corporate interests, to look, behave, conform, and consume in certain ways. If an individual doesn't stop to question the validity of such messages it would be very easy to succumb to them and develop a false sense of self, not to mention a mindless sheep mentality. We must each learn to think for ourselves, to ask critical questions, and develop our own unique identity, separate from the demands others. Life is too short to squander it by behaving as a puppet or a slave of others. We must seize our personal destinies and make the most of every second to develop ourselves to our fullest potential, to help each other, the planet, and all living things. Tune out the noise and false reality. Find your true inner self.

Your body is your thoughts

2007-12-13T19:17:00.000-06:00

Lately I have been pondering the connection between health and the mind. I have always believed, to some extent, that the human mind is very powerful and that thoughts or beliefs can affect one's health. I have seen examples with my own eyes of individuals with positive attitudes being able to overcome terrible traumas or diseases, beating the odds. And vice versa, I have seen individuals with negative attitudes die sooner than one would have expected, or suffer much more in both body and mind. The hard part for me is wondering how far one can consider the power of the mind. Could it be true that really ALL physical and mental illnesses are caused by one's thoughts? I offer a few quotations:

According to the Course [A Course in Miracles], the mind is so powerful that it is the cause of everything it feels. Our feelings are produced by our internal beliefs, not by external circumstances. Now imagine that our primary belief about ourselves is guilt, which says, "I deserve to suffer; I deserve to be unhappy." If we really do believe that (however buried that belief may be), and if our beliefs really do produce our emotional states, then what else could that belief do but produce a condition of misery? In the Course's view, all suffering is self-imposed punishment for presumed sin.
Robert Perry, Path of Light

According to the Course, sin and guilt are illusions created by our egos to reinforce our belief in separateness from God. The feeling of guilt is already deeply ingrained into our minds when we come into this world. To overcome sin and guilt we must practice forgiveness and come to the realization that our separate identities and the universe itself are illusory. This realization, a "change in perception," is what is referred to as the "miracle" in the book's title.

A few quotes from Chapter 10, "The Idols of Sickness," in A Course in Miracles:

To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack.

When a brother is sick it is because he is not asking for peace, and therefore does not know he has it. The acceptance of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness is an illusion.

The Sonship [the Course's term to describe the oneness of everything. Everything that we perceive in the universe, including every person, animal, thing, etc., is referred to as a "Son of God"] cannot be perceived as partly sick, because to perceive it that way is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is one, it is one in all respects. Oneness cannot be divided. If you perceive other gods ["other gods" refers to "idols" - believing that you are sick is the equivalent of worshiping an idol, something false] your mind is split, because it is the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will. This means it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of reason, and then the mind does become unreasonable. By defining the mind wrongly, you perceive it as functioning wrongly.

You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation, from which He cannot be separated. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer?

So what does this all mean? I can understand this logically, but the hard part is actually living this reality at the deepest level of one's being. It is easy to say, "Yeah, everything is one and there is no separation and no separate self apart from God." But how do we get to the point where one really, really believes it and lives it?

Do we really realize and comprehend how powerful our thoughts really are? And not just our conscious thoughts, but the buried thoughts, fears, and memories in the unconscious? I think it is the unconscious, our "shadow" self, where we really need to explore and find the true source of all our sufferings. I have been trying to look at my own life experiences, especially with my health problems of this year, to see if there are some deeper issues hiding in my unconscious that might be causing my physical ailments. I don't have a clear answer (since I don't yet know how to dig into my unconscious and resolve my issues - yet) but I do have some theories (which I may share in a future post).

The hardest part, however, is looking at one's self and saying, "I made myself sick with my own thoughts!" On the surface, this would seem to only pile on more guilt and blame. After all, if I am having health problems, I must have been thinking some bad thoughts to cause them! I am responsible. Yet, I think we have to realize that the primary source of the illness-inducing thoughts must be in the unconscious. At the conscious level we may not even have any clue what the issues are in the unconscious (thus, obviously, that's why it's called "the unconscious"). The mind has some powerful tricks, like denial, for making us conveniently "forget" traumas that are too much for our conscious mind to handle. If you knew what your issues were you would find a way to resolve them (usually). Instead, the issues can remain buried for years, cropping up in insidious ways, in the form of health problems, depression, projection of anger onto others, etc. You are fighting inwardly against yourself, but against a force that has no face and is basically invisible.

So this is where I'm at: where do I go from here? If I suspect I have unresolved issues causing my health problems, how do I deal with them? I have plumbed the depths of my personal history, memories, and waking consciousness through journal writing, reflection, and meditation (and continue to do so, as there is no end). But how does one tap into one's unconscious? And how can it be done carefully and cautiously so as not to cause further damage? I will keep exploring. I recently ordered Ken Wilber's Integral Life Practice kit, which does include work on the shadow. I'm hoping that could be a start. I will blog about my experiences with the kit in the future.

Finally, I would like to add a few more quotes about the mind-health connection. I read an amazing article this week. You can read it online here. Try, if you can, to suspend your judgment before reading it. Of course, on the rational-mind level, there is a lot that can be hard to swallow. Yet, my intuition is telling me that there is some real truth being expressed. I am coming to the conclusion, more and more in my life, as I get older, that one has to keep questioning everything. Don't just believe what the masses tell you, or do what people have been doing for years merely because "tradition" says you should. Question everything and come to your own conclusions.

A few quotes from Peter Ragnar:

Because I feel that we have ultimate control to the degree that we're conscious. If we are conscious enough, we can make anything happen in our body. We can preserve this body or we can kill this body.

It's very simple to see how people kill their bodies with their thoughts—it's a product of their unconsciousness of causes and effects. If we're conscious of our thoughts—I mean luminously conscious of our thoughts—those thoughts then impregnate the cellular structure of our body in a way that is very, very difficult to explain. When you have an abundance of life force inside you, it pours out of your eyes. It comes out of the palms of your hands as heat, as healing heat. It radiates as if you swallowed the sun, and you are different. Now, with that type of dynamic and powerful energy inside of you, how can you die?

I'm probably out there by myself on this one, but I feel that we do have ultimate control of our body, because our body is a thought. It's filled with frozen memories—memories that are formed by our experiences that we have already reached conclusions about, and we've emotionalized those conclusions and frozen them into our flesh. Therefore, only when we thaw it out and release, and stop holding on for dear life, can we have dear life.

All flesh is grass

2007-12-11T15:39:00.001-06:00

From today's reading of the day, Isaiah 40:

A voice commands, ‘Cry!’
and I answered, ‘What shall I cry?’”
– ‘All flesh is grass
and its beauty like the wild flower’s.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on them.
(The grass is without doubt the people.)
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God remains for ever.’

It is good to keep the eternal in mind. It is so easy to get attached to our physical, material world and especially to our bodies. We think our little ego identity is permanent, fixed, and will go on forever. When we're young and full of vitality we think our body must be indestructible. How quickly pain or suffering can remind us otherwise.

Observing My Frustrations

2007-12-07T07:41:00.000-06:00

Today is just one of those days when I wake up and it seems like nothing is going right and my life is running on an endless treadmill to satisfy the needs of others before myself. I've noticed that these feelings crop up especially after several days of sleep deprivation, combined with running around almost every evening after I get home from work. Plus work lately has been much busier than normal, adding to my exhaustion. The accumulation of exhaustion and never having a full hour or two for quiet contemplation just gets my ego fired up to scream, "This isn't fair! What about me?! You have neglected my needs!" I observe my thoughts and feelings going by. They seem pretty extreme and irrational. They are like a little child who didn't get the toy she wanted and bangs her fists on the wall in a temper tantrum. Sometimes you just realize that you don't always feel light and happy every day. Our psyches also include the shadow. And rather than repressing or denying one's feelings, sometimes it is necessary to feel our anger or frustration to the fullest; to let off the steam so it doesn't accumulate on the inside, leading to health problems or depression (i.e. anger turned against one's self).

This is not the first time I have had such feelings. It happens several times per year, followed by vows of changing my life, making lists of resolutions for self-improvement or changing my habits or schedule. The latest realization for changing my habits includes two new elements:

1. Wake up at 4:00 AM every day and go to sleep soon after I get home from work and eat a light dinner. It seems that I am most productive and alert first thing in the morning, as opposed to when I get home from work. After work I am getting tired and slowing down. I come home from work and face a bunch of chores, like cooking dinner, laundry, cleaning, etc. Only after I've done my chores do I start to think about doing the things I really enjoy (reading books, writing music, etc.), but of course I am really too tired to do everything, and end up neglecting those things I care most about. The chores get almost done (but not always, especially if I am too tired after work and feel 'entitled' to goofing off, wasting yet more time) but my music composition never really starts. My personal dreams and goals get set aside indefinitely until some 'perfect' day off from chores, or other excuses, shows up (which rarely happens).

Thus, the new idea is to wake up at 4:00 AM and get things done before work starts, when my energy level is at its peak. I would set a daily schedule that includes meditation, exercise, and a good breakfast. Chores, like laundry or grocery shopping, would be focused on certain weekday evenings so that I keep the weekend free. It seems like almost all of my weekday evenings, after I get home from work, are squandered. The time is wasted on half-ass attempts or doing nothing useful. I might as well switch my free time to the morning, before work, and start the day off knowing I accomplished some of my goals.

2. Include my goals in my calendar, too, not just my appointments or arrangements with other people. It seems I have somehow allowed my personal goals to fall into third place behind household chores and social obligations. If I really valued my goals and dreams I would at least have them on an equal footing with the other items. I would find a way to make time for my music, writing, and meditation. Life should be in a healthy balance.

This is not to imply that chores and social obligations aren't important either. There should be a way to balance every aspect in my life. The imbalance is leading to too much frustration!

I know I keep saying it over and over, but maybe that's what it takes to get it to sink into my head: I must take responsibility for my life. I must make time for things that are important to me. Change starts with me. I must stop blaming others and external circumstances for my lack of time and feelings of frustration. I create my reality and need to figure out a way to organize my time into a more harmonious flow.

Responding to Difficult People

2007-12-02T08:18:00.000-06:00

One of the first things you realize about this world, perhaps even among your very earliest memories, is that not everyone is going to like you. Or vice versa - there are some people who just get on your nerves or rub you the wrong way. There may not even be a logical reason for it; some people have annoying voices or like to argue about everything or just give off a bad vibe.

Hopefully, as you get older and wiser and gain experience and a wider perspective, it is possible to avoid ruffled feelings (most of the time), whether they are your own or others. When you realize that it is possible to control your responses and reactions to others, as well as your feelings, you can reduce a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Yet, what I have discovered after so many years of pursuing self-improvement and trying to put myself in the shoes of others, is that I still find myself getting angry or upset or irritated with other people. It sure is hard to put positive behaviors into practice ALL of the time! I have found that there must be some basic element of human nature that demands to be right at the expense of others. Or, at a minimum, demands to be right and hopes or expects that everyone else agrees.

Examples:
"I am right and you are wrong!"
"I can't believe so-and-so is so stupid and doesn't see from my perspective."
"I can't believe the masses of people voted for so-and-so!"
"I can't stand it how rude/disgusting that person is behaving on the bus!"

And on and on. I'm sure you can think of many more examples in your own life.

Just think of how many times per day or per week you get irritated by somebody. Do you stop to observe your own reaction and your thoughts? Do you take your time to form your words before you say them and catch yourself before you say something unkind or inappropriate? I challenge you to observe yourself and count how many times during a week you get irritated by others. Step back from yourself and observe your own thoughts and reactions. What is it that sets you off?

After reading things like A Course in Miracles I am well aware of the concept that everything and everyone is One with God. That we should forgive our brothers and sisters because ultimately this world of ours is illusory and if we could only see with true vision that the person pissing us off right now is really the one true Christ Himself (because everything and everyone is really Christ) we wouldn't stay so pissed off for long. But! But! How hard it is to put this into practice! How hard it is to really believe and see with true vision! Forgiveness is really the key that unlocks our heart and takes us to the next step, yet are we willing to take that step? Unfortunately, it is all too easy to fall into a perverse enjoyment of our hatred or dislike which in turn leads us to forgetting our compassion; suddenly we feel justified in our anger or hatred, and that, in turn, only leads to further attachment to one's feelings and ego and sense of justification.

On the other hand, there is also the viewpoint that one should not repress one's feelings. There are certainly occasions when it is justified to be angry or upset, especially if some injustice is involved. So I'm certainly not advocating repression of feelings or denial. However, it is usually not constructive to allow one's feelings to be swept away and become obsessed with something. There has to be a sensible middle ground. One should be able to observe one's thoughts and reactions and be able to judge an appropriate response. If you can catch yourself quick enough in the irritation phase and cut it down before it gets out of hand, I think that would be a great victory.

Lately I have turned to Catholic saints and prayers to find a positive response to difficult people. I have found that, at a minimum, if I can catch myself when I start to feel anger or severe judgment against others and respond by mentally reciting the Jesus Prayer or a few Hail Marys that it can help diffuse my negative feelings. Whatever you can do to step back from your feelings and observe where they are going can be highly constructive. Repetitive prayers, mantras, or sacred words can help to take your mind off of problems.

Here are two prayers that I have found especially helpful in response to difficult people. The first one comes from Catholic Prayer Book by Father John A. Hardon, S.J.

Teach me, my Lord, to be kind and gentle in all the events of life; in disappointments, in the thoughtlessness of others, in the insincerity of those I trusted, in the unfaithfulness of those on whom I relied.

Let me put myself aside, to think of the happiness of others, to hide my pains and heartaches, so that I may be the only one to suffer from them.

Teach me to profit by the suffering that comes across my path.

Let me so use it that it may mellow me, not harden or embitter me; that it may make me patient, not irritable; that it may make me broad in my forgiveness, not narrow, proud and overbearing.

May no one be less good for having come within my influence. No one less pure, less true, less kind, less noble for having been a fellow traveler in our journey toward eternal life.

As I go my rounds from one task to another, let me say, from time to time, a word of love to You.

May my life be lived in the supernatural, full of power for good, and strong in its purpose of sanctity. Amen.

The next prayer is by Saint Maria Faustina, one of my favorite saints:

Prayer to be Merciful

Help me Jesus, that what I ask of You (Mercy) I will give to others in word and deed.

Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge others, but always look for what is beautiful and good in other people. Help me, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to others needs, and not be indifferent to their pain.

Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak wrongly of others, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.

Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds so that I may do only good to others and always try to take upon myself the more difficult tasks.

Help me, O Lord, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist others, overcoming my own fatigue and weariness, contemplating Your love and mercy.

Help me, O Lord, to forgive and forget. This is Your greatest gift to me, and should be mine for Your sake, to all who offend me.

To forgive and forget - So easy to say but hard to do.

Symbolism in "The Fall"

2007-12-01T17:53:00.000-06:00

The following list is a brief survey of the symbolic images in the myth of "The Fall," largely drawn from Inner Christianity by Richard Smoley, plus some of my own thoughts:

Adam: Not necessarily a literal ancestor of humanity. He represents "a prototype or collectivity - one enormous being in whom each individual man and woman is but a single cell." As in A Course in Miracles, Adam is like a part of God that has forgotten his true identity, fragmenting into many pieces. Every single thing in the universe, whether living or not, is some piece of that original "Adam." As it says in Corinthians 12:27, "You are Christ's body, and individually parts of it." And in Romans 12:4, "For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another." Adam represents our "fall" into a world of materiality, separation, and ego. Christ represents our spiritual evolution, our potential for what we can become, and our return to Oneness with the Father. Christ "redeems" the fallen nature of Adam, restoring the fragmentation and separation to a state of wholeness. In a sense we are both Adam and Christ. Adam represents our fallen, earthly nature, and Christ the divinization of our humanity.

The Tree of Life: A tree is a powerful visual representation of unity. "It has a single trunk yet ramifies outward in countless branches and twigs and leaves: it is the living representation of the world, which for all its multiplicity has its one life in God." For Adam and Eve before the fall, eating from the Tree of Life gave them their experience of oneness with God and a perception of static timelessness. Without duality there was no death, decay, loneliness or separation. Yet there was also no experience of different emotions, whether happiness or sadness.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: As opposed to the Tree of Life, eating of this tree's fruit "means being aware of the multiplicity while remaining oblivious to the one source from which it all arises." [...] "It represents a sense of separation and polarity: we know good only by comparing it to evil." In a way, eating of this "forbidden" fruit allowed Adam and Eve a full experience of being-ness and self-awareness, which they could not experience in the static Garden of Eden. By experiencing a world of duality it gave them the opportunity to acquire wisdom, grow and evolve. Their perception switched from unity consciousness to an ego-centered identity. It was as if the focus was no longer awareness of being one with the complete "tree of life" but more of an identity as a single, separate branch of that tree. To see only the fruit rather than comprehending the reality of the whole tree.

Loincloths of Fig Leaves: Once they had eaten fruit from the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve became conscious of their nakedness and separateness. To hide themselves they made loincloths of fig leaves. The use of plants symbolizes "that there is a part of human nature that has much in common with plants: we are born, grow, reproduce, and die. A verse in Isaiah alludes to this fact: 'All flesh is grass, and all the goodness thereof is as the flower of the field' (Isaiah 40:6)." Perhaps there is also a connection with the idea that God created man from clay, and says later on in Genesis, "For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). Taken a step further, the garden and vegetation metaphors could imply that man and woman are themselves like gardens. An individual may start out in life as raw "clay" but if one cultivates oneself, as in a fine garden, one can bear good fruit. "For a tree is known by its fruit" (Matthew 12:33).

Leather Garments: Once God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden, he made them leather garments to wear. The change from an original state of nakedness (innocence, purity, egolessness and lack of self-awareness), to the loincloths of fig leaves (affinity to the plant world), and finally to animal skins, represents, in another way, the descent into materiality. The wearing of animal skins indicates that humans "also have an animal nature: the aspect of ourselves that is concerned with dominance, status, and power." [...] "Thus the tradition is suggesting that the two 'coverings' imposed upon the consciousness of the true 'I' as it fell are the vegetable and animal levels of our own minds." Like animals, our minds and behavior include an element that is reactionary rather than rational. To behave "like an animal" implies a tendency to act on instinct, an aspect of earthly behavior, of the "passions," as opposed to a higher level of consciousness that desires to rise upwards towards a unity consciousness with God.

The Serpent & Time: Traditionally, the serpent has been equated with the Devil. Yet from an esoteric standpoint, the serpent has much greater symbolism. Even before Christianity, the serpent has been associated with the ouroboros, "which means 'tail-eater' and which depicts a circular snake swallowing its own tail." As a symbol of time, it refers to the idea "that time - or at any rate our experience of time - is a self-perpetuating ring that traps us in the realm of the Fall." Sometimes you may have experienced occasions when you've lost track of time; being absorbed in some activity or getting lost in daydreaming, ("Time flies when you're having fun"), etc. Such seemingly rare occasions of timelessness are examples of stepping out of the bounds of the ouroboros, out of the duality and dimension of time, into an experience of the present moment. In Genesis, God gives a rather long tirade against the serpent, cursing it and saying, "On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:14). According to Smoley, "This suggests that, in the fallen state, the circular serpent known as time has a horizontal dimension - and this is exactly how we experience it, as a linear sequence of moments. We do not usually think of time as the ouroboros, a self-perpetuating cycle out of which we can step if we know how."

Finally, there is a reference in Genesis to humanity's capability of stepping out of the perpetual cycle of time (as in those occasions when one loses track of time). God tells the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." There is obviously more to these words than the mere surface literal interpretation. Smoley suggests that to "strike at your head" (the head of the serpent) means "to step outside time," as in those brief moments when we truly experience the present moment. And "while you strike at his heel" refers to the serpent's (time's) power to pull humanity back into the horizontal, linear dimension of time, back to our "fallen" condition.

In a future post I will explore some of the symbolism of Christ.

Reinterpreting Original Sin

2007-11-28T13:15:00.000-06:00

Up until a few years ago I did not really understand the story of Adam and Eve and "The Fall." I just assumed that it was supposed to be taken literally since it seemed that most people did. Such a literal interpretation was always a major stumbling block for me, however, especially when I was growing up. I kept wondering how on earth anyone could take Christianity seriously with such a story. I mean, really, our world of suffering was caused when the first humans disobeyed God and ate an fruit? And this transgression deserved the severe punishment of experiencing suffering, pain, loss, loneliness, and death? How much more ridiculous could the story be? I was amazed that Christianity had lasted at all, let alone for 2000 years.

It wasn't until I read books like The New Man, by Maurice Nicoll, and A Course in Miracles, that my eyes were opened to the deeper, esoteric meaning of the Bible. It was another one of those "Ah ha!" moments when something that had been formerly hidden from me was now revealed. The Bible (and no doubt virtually all sacred texts, as well as some literature and poetry) offers multiple layers of meaning, with the literal meaning being only the most basic level.

Here is a significant quote from Search for the Meaning of Life by Willigis Jager, revealing a deeper understanding of "original sin":

All religions know about the imperfect condition of humanity. Many speak of a "fall," of "original sin." But original sin is not a fall from a higher state of consciousness into a more imperfect state. Rather, it is the emergence from a "prepersonal heaven," an awakening from the dullness of the preconscious into an ego-experience, a shift out of the state of instinct into the knowledge of good and evil, as the Scripture says. This was a great step forward in evolution, but it also brought with it the whole burden that is bound up with this ego-experience, namely, the experience of sickness, suffering, guilt, loneliness, and death.

Thus the so-called "fall" did not bring mortality, but the knowledge of mortality and the mutability of all things. Previously, humans had been living the life of flowers and animals. Hence the real sin is not eating from the tree of knowledge - that is only an image - but that in the process of becoming an ego the person gets separated from God. "They were naked," Scripture tells us. That has nothing to do with clothes; it implies that they were thrown out into the loneliness of the ego. The expulsion from paradise is stepping out into the personal condition without this experience of oneness with God. Original sin is not guilt in the real sense of the word, as we have long realized. It is a fact resulting from the development of consciousness.

I think this starts to put "The Fall" story in a whole new light. Instead of seeing ourselves as "guilty sinners" being punished by an angry father-figure type God, we can come to realize that we (humanity and ultimately every living on non-living thing in the universe - since all is ultimately one with God) have chosen to be in this world, on purpose, in order to experience "the knowledge of good and evil." We have chosen to experience duality and all of the good and bad that goes with it. We are here to find and experience wisdom and knowledge. We didn't want to stay stuck in the stasis of the Garden of Eden, where time did not exist and where we 'lived' in oneness with God. So we are here in the world to experience a journey and learn something from it. Like the Prodigal Son or the son of the king in the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, we have left the comfort and safety of our home (i.e. our oneness with God) in order to go on a journey of growth and evolution. We are divine beings clothed in bodies in a world buffeted by time and the processes that spring from duality: birth/death, male/female, good/evil, etc. Thus there is nothing to feel guilty for. We are here for a purpose, which, I believe, must ultimately return us to our source, God; yet we will have learned something along our journey (hopefully) that will make the return to God, as in the story of the Prodigal Son, all the more sweeter and beautiful.

Perhaps the notion of guilt and sin came about, as A Course in Miracles suggests, because a part of us feels guilty for being separated from God. Like the Prodigal Son we have left home and have become scared to face the Father. We're not sure how He's going to react. We imagine the worst, which translates into feelings of guilt, loneliness and separation. If we could only realize that these feelings are really a product of our ego, our attachment to the world and to our individual separate identities. As Jager writes, "One day we shall realize that God always was 'walking in the garden' with us, that we never were separated from him. Even if we don't know it now, we will experience it. Paradise lies before us. Hence we Christians call it the 'New Jerusalem.' It is the experience of oneness with God."

In my next post I will go into detail regarding the symbolism of "The Fall" story. I think you will be amazed at the deeper levels of meaning represented by the serpent, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as well as the nature of time and the five senses.

Music in Progress

2007-11-26T02:21:00.000-06:00

Well, I said I would come up with at least 25 measures of music by the evening of November 25th. Technically I succeeded and wrote my music on time; but after several hours of computer problems and struggling to integrate three different music software programs, it is now a couple of hours after midnight!

Here is what I have so far. It's just a simple theme on solo violin. The file is in MP3 format.

I don't have a title yet. The piece will be for violin, viola, oboe, and glockenspiel.

Stay tuned for further developments. Now that I've got my music software sorted out and optimized, it shouldn't take me so many hours just to record 29 measures!

Tavener Quote # 2

2007-11-20T21:31:00.000-06:00

Another great quote from The Music of Silence - A Composer's Testament:

I regard metaphysics as a fountainhead through which all music must flow, and I think the key word is 'flow.' As St Irenaeus of Lyons said, 'God will always have something more to teach man, and man will always have something more to learn from God.' I return to the key word, flow. It's not a cerebral process - it's a question of having the humility to leave oneself vulnerable and allow the Spirit to flow through one. If you go back to the great masters, the saints and certain poets like St Simeon the New Theologian, he always received his poetry as pure vision.

I am struggling to figure out how to do this in practice. Maybe "struggling" is my problem. Inspiration must come from God, from opening one's intuition and turning off the internal censor that keeps nagging "It's not good enough!" in the background.

I vow to write at least 25 measures of music between now and the end of the day on Sunday, November 25. Perhaps through a public commitment to my music I can force myself to look in the mirror and overcome my writer's block! Look for a sound clip when I have my 25 measures.

My Autobiography of Self-Transformation

2007-11-12T22:40:00.000-06:00

In the past year or so, I have heard of something called "The Law of Attraction." I believe it is from a movie called The Secret. I haven't seen the movie or read the book, so I can't really comment in detail on the law, but from what I have heard it basically means that if you focus on the things you want in your life, you will start to attract those things towards you.

The basic concept behind the law sounds too simple on the face of it. Yet, in general, the law sounds like the tiny seed that sprouted into the blossoming lifestyle I have found myself in today. I would call it basically a type of "getting your sh-t together" mentality. Of course it all starts with knowing what you want and focusing your attention; but there is a heck of a lot of work involved first and all along the way, both inside one's heart/mind/spirit, and outside in the world where one lives, one's lifestyle. It is too easy to say you can just focus on something and everything you want will magically appear out of thin air. Work! Work! There must be several ongoing layers of action before manifestation.

Here is a simple outline of my own path towards inner and outer transformation.

When I think back on who I was in the year 2000, the year I got married, I can almost not recognize myself at all. I carried so much baggage with me: years of depression, low self-esteem, dysfunctional ways of thinking and behaving, etc. I saw the world not as my oyster but as a torture chamber, set up on purpose to make me miserable. My very outlook on life itself was the biggest obstacle keeping me from living my life.

The first step that helped me move forward was to keep a journal. Since the late 1990s I started writing almost every day to record my thoughts and experiences. Through this process of inner examination, slowly learning about myself, how I was thinking, analyzing how I was interacting with others, watching myself make the same mistakes over and over until I could finally stop and catch myself, it ultimately dawned on me that through this process of writing and self-analysis I had an enormous power. Almost by accident I must have learned to harness the journal as a mighty rope to drag myself out of myself, into a new world.

In the second step, going to therapy (with an awesome middle-aged Buddhist woman), I acquired an outside objective opinion to reveal to me the deeper functioning of my thoughts and behaviors. This worked very well in conjunction with the journal writing. I was able to examine past traumas in my life, see how they were still influencing my thoughts and behaviors, and then take conscious charge to change those thoughts and behaviors to create new outcomes. By this point, late 2002(?), I had really succeeded in pulling myself out of the decades of depression and negativity that had almost swallowed me up. I was still not perfect, but I was well on the way to becoming a well-adjusted, functioning adult (around age 27!).

The third step was finding A Course in Miracles around the middle of 2003. Coming from a cynical-atheist/scientific-materialism background as a child, I still constantly hungered for spirituality and for some path that would give me deeper answers or a meaning to my life and existence. From 2000 onwards I was already slowly opening myself to the spiritual realm. I was realizing that the cynical-atheist attitude of the past 25 years was really not getting me anywhere fun in life, so I threw a question out to the universe: "What else? Show me some alternative ways of seeing!" The Course finally unlocked a door for me that my previous forays into Taoism, Buddhism, and other philosophies/spiritualities just hadn't quite achieved up to that point. I still dearly love Eastern philosophy and religion, but it was the Course that gave me that cosmic "Ah ha!" moment. It finally gave me an explanation for the world, an explanation for the existence of evil, and a great overall comprehensive picture of my own place within everything; A Course in Miracles really truly "clicked" (and does so to this day).

Meanwhile, my husband and I gradually found ourselves gravitating towards a simpler outward lifestyle. We realized we didn't really need a lot of material things to keep us happy. We were content to have a smallish (700 to 800 square foot) place to live in, one car, a bunch of books, the Internet, our friends, and our little hobbies. And then somehow, one by one, certain once formerly-critical things fell out of our life: the television broke and we decided not to replace it (what did we need that distraction and noise for?). The car got totaled when we hit a deer (we live in a city with great public transit and we were already in a position to walk a few blocks to work, school, the grocery, etc.). One by one, the TV and the car disappeared, and were exchanged by realizing, even more profoundly than before, the value of time and silence, which in turn led to further self-examination and self-improvement. (And we still get by just great today without the TV or the car!)

The fourth concrete step, again with all these things rather falling together simultaneously over a course of years, was the discovery of the book Your Money or Your Life, written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (thanks to our friend, Dave, for giving us that book!). In the middle of our gradual lifestyle simplification we discovered that we had the capability to save up our resources and eventually quit our "day jobs" if we wanted to. And not just quit our day jobs early, as in, say, by the time we got to age 50, but rather (for me) age 37! The key principle rested in realizing that money represented our "life energy." We worked 40 hours a week to trade our life energy (time) to make a resource (money). This is not just realizing the importance of money; this is not just some get-rich-quick-scheme or "save $10 a week for x number of years and you'll be fine." It is a fundamental realization of how everything is interconnected in one's life and bringing it all together in alignment; of realizing when you have reached a stabilized definition of "enough" based on your criteria for happiness. Suddenly our lifestyle was coming into alignment with our values. The inner self-transformation led to an outer simplification and focusing on what truly mattered to us most (time). We didn't need a car, lots of things, or a big house, which also meant we didn't need a million dollars to be able to reach an early retirement. By the year 2012, if all goes according to plan, we won't need to worry about the day-to-day necessity of having a day job to pay the bills. This amazing coming together of our inner and outer development, of valuing the interconnection and wise usage of time, money, and life energy, would also allow us to bring all of our other goals to fruition.

The fifth step on my self-transformation road, around May 2006, was the purchase and daily practice of Holosync in building my own meditation and spiritual practice. This has really cleared up some more mental cobwebs and given me real inner energy to accelerate the pursuit of my goals (plus it also helped give me a new inner strength to deal with the various health problems I encountered in 2007). I must really also credit Holosync with opening my spirit to God. To showing me, within myself, that there are new worlds to explore and that God is shining in there somewhere and has been all the time. It is still yet only a glimmer but I see the crack widening each day. With the step into Catholicism I am looking forward to deepening my spiritual path further. I can hardly imagine where I might be ten years from now, as at the moment I am still in my spiritual infancy.

The last step, which my husband and I are still in the process of perfecting and refining together, is the cultivation of true discipline. We're well on our way there in certain segments of our life. We've had our goals for a long time, kept them in the forefront, set a concrete time frame for early retirement, etc. but it's not yet 100% in motion. Not all wheels are spinning together yet. There are still aspects of ourselves that fall through the cracks and get neglected (especially, as of late, my own health). I am now working towards a more holistic, integrated vision of a lifestyle of discipline, that includes making the most of each and every day on multiple levels (spirit, mind, body, life's work). Ultimately we hope to enter retirement in the year 2012 (and I mean retirement from the "day job," not retirement from Life) ready to open another new chapter in our lives, living each moment to the fullest, not squandering a second, and awakening to our numinous joy.

Wrapping my brain around "Religion"

2007-11-11T22:04:00.000-06:00

Some more nice quotes from Willigis Jäger from Search for the Meaning of Life:

Barriers and limitations are created solely by the fact that humans want to pin down the ineffable with concepts. Such religious modes of expression are conditioned by time and hence transitory. But experience is timeless and transcends all differences in dogma. It is the common ground on which the individual religions build.

All religions agree that Ultimate Reality is ineffable, that it can only be experienced. Everything that humans say about it is already a distortion.

On the level of experience, all religions are one. But individual persons who want to speak about their experience have to be content with the forms of expression available to them from their cultural background. And thus the variety of the esoteric paths reflects the variety of cultures, but in their essence they are all one.

Lately I have come across various sources trying to peg down what humanity means by "Religion." It is such a huge concept. A giant overwrought package of baggage. And there are way too many voices arguing over what is "right" and "wrong." I have been trying to wrap my brain around it as well, and reconcile how I found myself on this road to Catholicism.

First I should clarify that by the word "Religion" I am referring to that large descriptive box attached to one of the mainline religions, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.

I have come to view religion more and more as something that must be viewed from multiple dimensions. It is too simplistic to describe Christianity as merely a literal interpretation of the Bible, or that scientific materialism pulls the covers off all religions and reveals them all to be warm, fuzzy fairytale hoaxes to help us sleep at night. There is more to religion than showing up at church every Sunday or telling other people what not to do in their bedroom.

I am seeing religion now as something that encompasses many layers, or boundaries. And as one progresses further along on their spiritual path, the layers keep expanding further and further outward. You could start at the most basic level of religion, of primitive understanding about life; identifying your bedrock place in the world and its meaning. For me, the basic level would be someone solely wrapped up in the external layer (exoteric), with concern about morality and society; of following the "dogmas" of one's faith, the external rituals that bind community. Exoteric is where everyone loves to argue about "the rules" and who is or is not following them. Then the next step would be internal (esoteric), exploring one's inner world through contemplation; observing the actions of one's mind in operation; trying to dissolve that barrier between the ego-self that says "I am" and the inner conflicting God-nature that also wants to say "I AM." Then as you keep stepping beyond, one must realize there are still more horizontal and vertical dimensions, stretching to that ineffable Ultimate Reality.

It is as I have heard or read elsewhere: religion is like a vehicle. You need both the cart and the horse to be able to get somewhere. The cart contains the dogmas of external religion, the centuries of collected knowledge, wisdom, and rules; but we also need the horse, the engine, the fuel that springs from the inner work of contemplation based on the deep spring of esoteric wisdom underlying all faiths, to propel the cart forward. You must have both knowledge/rules and practice/action. They cannot go anywhere without the other. And then ultimately what you end up with is the final, genuine lived experience; that living, breathing awareness of God-reality, the "Gnosis" of self-realization, must be the end result.

Other random thoughts:

there is the path of the intellect, the rational mind, Zen, or contemplation
there is the path of the heart, of devotion, of a blissful union with the divine; of seeing God as a nurturing Mother-figure or lover

Plus we can't leave out the cultural layer as well. Depending on one's culture or how one was raised, can have an enormous impact on how one views or experiences religion. But to a certain extent, even the cultural layer is part of the exoteric shell that encompasses "Religion." Culture, like language, has many flavors and colors. The cultural layer can give us many different words to describe God's face, yet the underlying esoteric truth is still the All-One, Ineffable.

Some other influences on my thoughts this weekend:

Father Keating on Ken Wilber's Holons site:
http://www.holons-news.com/node/71

Bill Harris' Blog from Centerpointe/Holosync:
https://www.centerpointe.com/blog/

Brainwave Technology

2007-11-09T12:24:00.000-06:00

When I was a teenager my mom had some New Age magazines lying around ("Uh oh!"). Reading them I became tantalized by advertisements for some far-out technologies that could help "Turn you into Zen monk in 30 minutes or less," and other things of that sort. Ever since, I have been fascinated with technologies that offer the potential to elevate one's consciousness to higher levels of awareness, whether the goal was to find God-consciousness or just to feel something like a cool "head trip." Certainly, there is some flaky stuff out there, but I have been willing to try new things and not been too disappointed. The technology, which has been around for decades now, is largely safe for most people (except for those with seizure disorders, pacemakers, or epilepsy; such persons might have problems and should be very careful) and it's certainly safer than ingesting chemicals into the body, like LSD, heroin, pot, alcohol, etc.

The technology I would like to focus on in particular is called "brainwave entrainment." First a brief primer on brainwaves and why you would want to "entrain" them:

Centuries ago, humans discovered that certain conditions could induce hallucinatory states or changes of consciousness in the brain. From shamans "tripping out" in front of the flickering lights of a roaring fire, or winter travelers crossing an all-white field of snow experiencing a mental "blank out," some people have just known or discovered by accident that they could change their conscious awareness. Plus there are also the assortment of herbs, drugs, gases, liquids, natural and man-made, and so on, that can be consumed for similar results.

In our present era, science has studied the human brain and come up with some explanations for why and how such changes of consciousness take place. The brain is composed of a left and right hemisphere, both sides of which include some small, natural amounts of electricity coursing through the entire structure pretty much all the time. When you hear about people who are "brain dead" it usually means that the electrical energy in their brains has ceased to move. Thus, this electricity is very important to our existence and consciousness as fully aware beings. You have electricity moving in your brain right now as you're reading this (I hope).

Depending on what state of consciousness you are in, whether sleeping, dreaming, talking, studying for a test, solving puzzles, etc. your brain is constantly moving back and forth between very calm states of awareness (deep sleep) up to very high levels of functioning (intense mental focus or concentration or highly alert awareness). This is just part of the natural ebb and flow of the brain, day in and day out. Science has been able to measure this brain activity, our naturally-occurring electricity, through high-tech imaging instruments and sensors, measuring brainwaves from the lowest to the highest ranges (i.e. frequency) and come up with the following chart:

http://www.transparentcorp.com/products/np/brainwaves.php

Once you realize the importance of what all this means, the next step is to identify optimal brainwave frequencies that you can pursue depending on the goals that you set for yourself. There is clear scientific evidence (if that's important for you) showing how certain brainwave frequency ranges are better suited for improving one's learning ability. Other brainwave frequencies can help reduce one's feelings of stress or even help calm the symptoms of addictions. Still other brainwave patterns can tap into one's deepest levels of consciousness, the subconscious mind, and dream-like states. There is a wide range of possible uses for the technology. As a therapeutic or self-development tool, it could really revolutionize humanity and treat a huge variety of problems, whether mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual. But most interesting to me is the use of such tools for the pursuit of God-consciousness, or the unitive experience of the mystic!

We live in exciting times! The technology I'm referring to is now fairly cheap and easy to get your hands on. Some types of it can even be downloaded for free from the Internet. The technology, generally called "brainwave entrainment" (or look up "binaural-beats" or "mind machines"), basically consists of a method whereby the brain is stimulated to mimic the frequency that you want to move it to. Say, for example, you're wide awake right now but you want to experience deep meditation instead. You need to slow down your brainwaves from your current waking consciousness to a slower meditative state. In order to "talk" to the brain and change the frequency, we need to stimulate it in some way, usually through the senses of hearing and/or eyesight. Thus there are devices called "light and sound machines" which use goggles delivering blinking lights to your closed eyelids and headphones creating beeping sounds in your ears. The frequency of the flashing light and beeping sound, pulsing continuously in a rhythm, actually causes your brain to mimic the frequency you are feeding it. By looking/listening into such devices from about 15 minutes to an hour, you can gradually move your brainwaves in any direction you want to go. You could speed it up or slow it down or keep it on a steady level. This mimicking effect of the brain is called the "frequency-following response." Don't worry: it is safe, trust me. Even when you're listening to your favorite music, for example, your brain is being effected by the speed of the music's rhythmic pulse, whether you were consciously aware of it or not. Your brain is constantly receiving stimulation from outside, thus explaining why some environments make you anxious or others make you feel peaceful. Just think of how much your brain experiences when watching a movie! But through the use of brainwave technology we can actively participate in directing our consciousness in any direction we want to go. We can explore our inner worlds!

Here are a few examples of the technology you can explore, from cheapest to most expensive (in US dollars). Your basic choice is between whether you want a simple, ready-made audio CD to just jump into instant meditation and brainwave exploration; or whether you want to experiment, learn how to make your own entrainment program using computer software, extra devices, teaching yourself over time, and figuring things out on your own.

BrainWave Generator (FREE)
Free download of software for building your own brainwave-entraining audio files. Probably the simplest way to get started. Few "bells and whistles," as the other following pre-packaged CDs might offer.
http://www.bwgen.com/

Center for Neuroacoustic Research ($16 and up)
A more serious, less commercial, avenue for purchasing brainwave entrainment audio CDs. I even found a box set of their CDs at a Half-Price Bookstore once for $5.00! Shop around!
http://neuroacoustic.com/

Immrama Institute ($35 and up)
I've heard good things about their Insight and Focus audio CDs. Just buy a CD and listen. The brainwave entrainment technology is embedded underneath soothing music or sounds.
http://www.immrama.org/

Transparent Corporation ($45 and up)
More advanced type of software that lets you build your own audio and/or visual entrainment experience, just using your computer. Create raw, simple binaural-beat sounds, or combine with background music or other sound effects. Integrate with light and sound machines. Teach yourself the software and the sky is the limit. It can also instantly generate entrainment programs for you, based on criteria you've given the software. I have Neuro-Programmer 2 and highly recommend it. Easy to use. Excellent help info and instructions included. Unlimited potential. Download their demo and try it. Their web site is also very informative!
http://www.transparentcorp.com/

Mind Machines ($90 and up)
Devices that provide both light and sound stimulation, or more. Some can be used in conjunction with the audio CDs and computer software listed above, to create your own sessions.
http://www.mindmachines.com/
http://www.mindmachine.com/

Holosync by Centerpointe (about $190 for first level (4-6 months); many more levels beyond)
I've had the most profound, illuminating experiences and growth with their CDs. At least order the free demo and try it out. They have a lot of slick advertising, which can be off-putting for some, but I know from experience that their technology really works. The brainwave entrainment technology is hidden behind "nature" sounds like rain, birds, and bells. Their system also provides clear guidance, support, and a path to follow. I am looking forward to about 20 years with their program and I know I will savor every second.
http://www.centerpointe.com/

Explore. Stay tuned. I will tell you about my experiences in future installments.

Unmasking the Self

2007-11-08T17:11:00.000-06:00

This is probably going to sound a little arrogant to say on my part, but I am coming to feel that this blog is helping me to unpeel the layers of my many "masks" hiding my true Self.

I have found throughout my life that I wear many "masks." You probably know what I mean (and I'm not talking about literal masks here). Depending on who I interact with, the "mask" I present to others is perceived in certain ways; the "mask" is viewed from different angles. Thus my closest family members know me in certain ways that, in contrast to my-coworkers or neighbors, outsiders could never possibly know. Likewise my husband, of course, knows me in ways that no one else on Earth will probably ever know. The "mask" for my family members comes colored with much personal history, the decades of my development from baby to child to adult. The "mask" that my co-workers see is relatively "newly formed," representing the person I've evolved into and become in the past year or so, yet based on accumulations and refinements of many previous "masks." It is the "mask" for society, the world, for fitting in with the crowd and getting along. And it could go both ways; maybe the "mask" viewed by my closest family members is not as luminous as the "mask" I'm wearing for my co-workers because my family members may have developed prejudices about me over time (not necessarily good or bad prejudices, just "stuck" opinions), based on their decades of "knowing" me. So in a way, the people who think they know me the best, may in fact be clouded by their own perceptions of what they think they know about me. I can have many "masks" but I have little control over how others are viewing or perceiving my "masks." And even within myself, my own perception of my "masks" could be totally different from how I'm imagining that others are perceiving me! "Perception creates reality" as A Course in Miracles says. So each and every one of us is living in our own unique reality, never really knowing, authentically, the experience of another's reality (perception).

So what to do with all these "masks," I wonder? Lately (well, maybe for the last five years or so), I have been trying to take them off, one by one, and examine them to see which ones are worth keeping and which ones are not. To figure out which ones are a more accurate reflection of the real me hiding on the inside. Have you ever examined your "masks" or thought about them? The funny thing about the "masks" is that they can really create false barriers when interacting with others. It's like putting up a wall of fear which can be very hard to break through. It takes courage to cut off the toughest "masks" and expose one's authentic hidden self (and ultimately, that Self-with-a-capital "S"). Courage that many people don't find until they're on their death bed and faced with the end of their existence and everything they've ever known. And I find it ironic that it is the oldest "masks" I wear, the ones clouded by my personal history, that are the hardest ones to remove; and this in turn means that sometimes the people who ought to know me the best, may actually know me the least. And the ones who "know" me within the past few years may actually "know" me in a more genuine, authentic way merely because I believe I am now showing my best, most evolved self!

I am not passing any judgment here on anyone, or saying that certain types of my "masks" are "right" or "wrong" (black-and-white thinking is such a shame); I'm merely observing something about myself, what I am, what I think I am, or what I'm becoming. It is interesting to contemplate! I have no answers. Just observations.

Have you taken a peek under your "masks" lately? Do you know who you are?

Enormous Gratitude

2007-11-07T16:24:00.000-06:00

I have so many things to be thankful for these days. My life is so full of blessings. What could have been my darkest hour has become one of my best. I am thankful for my life and for everything that has ever happened to me.

On Monday, November 5th, I finally got some pain relief for the herniated disc in my lower back. I had not had a single waking hour of pain relief (except the times I could lie motionless and flat on my back) since the pain started suddenly on October 13. After starting the new medicine on Monday, I woke up at 3 AM the next morning feeling that something big had changed in my back. Incredibly the pain was significantly reduced, almost like someone had released a giant vice that had been crushing my spine. It was truly like a literal weight had been lifted. I never had such a feeling of relief in my life. When I look back at the kidney surgery of April, that seems now like a pin prick in comparison to the back pain. I never realized how much I could tolerate until now. This sort of event can really increase your tolerance for hardship.

The past month has been such an eye-opener for me, mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I am not angry or sad about my herniated disc. I think it is a real blessing in disguise and has made me a better person in terms of feeling more compassion for the suffering of others, discovering I had some serious health issues that were hidden and needed to be addressed, and most of all realizing how many good people I have the honor to know in my life. I am surrounded by the best family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors I could ever have imagined. I have an amazing husband who has shown he will do anything for me "in sickness and in health."

I don't want to forget this moment in my life. I don't want to go back to taking anyone for granted, or taking any moment, good or bad, for granted. I don't want this feeling of gratitude to diminish or disappear. Everything that happens in life can be a lesson for learning and improving one's self. Everything must happen for a reason, but we need to be open to seeing the meaning everywhere, even in the tiniest detail. If we could only see the good in every event, rather than jumping to conclusions of victimhood, hopelessness, despair, or bad luck. I wish the whole world could find this realization, this doorway to joy.

Thank you, God, for everyone in my life. Thank you for every moment fully lived and breathed, and for opening so many new doors recently. I hope I can keep learning and growing. I hope I do not squander this opportunity. I am awash in gratitude and love. Bless the world. Realize deep inside yourself that you exist, that you live. Feel it as if you only just discovered this truth for yourself for the first time. Become numinous!

"God is the Seeker"

2007-11-06T20:00:00.000-06:00

Two of the books I got at Loome's the other day are fantastic. I'm working on The Inner Eye of Love by William Johnston, and Search for the Meaning of Life: Essays and Reflections on the Mystical Experience by Willigis Jager. Both books are written by Catholics (monks and/or priests) and delve into mysticism and esotericism; but there is also a great openness to the wisdom from the Eastern spiritual traditions like Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Jager's book even appears to mix in ideas I've seen from the works of Fritjof Capra - the intersection of quantum physics with mysticism, or the idea that science doesn't have to be anathema to spirituality. I highly recommend these books, and I've only read the first chapter of each!

Here's some food for thought from Jager's book:

The quest for the meaning of life, the search for our true essence, or - as we Christians usually say - for God, is part of the basic principle of evolution. Actually it isn't a search at all. Rather the Divine is unfolding in us and through us. The Divine comes to consciousness in us. We think that as human beings we are on a quest for God. But we're not the ones searching for the Ultimate Reality. Rather it is the Ultimate Reality that causes the dissatisfied yearning and the search in us. God is the seeker. God awakens in us. We ourselves can't do anything; we can only let go so the Divine can unfold itself. We can only "get out of God's way," as Eckhart says. The essential nature reveals itself if only we don't prevent it. And if there is a redemption, then we are redeemed from being possessed by our ego so that our real selves can spread their wings.

Wow. "God is the seeker" and redemption from our own ego (rather than from our sins/mistakes) - these are really new ideas to me! That blew me away! I will keep reading and let you know what I'm thinking about. This is cool.

Bookstore Paradise

2007-11-04T09:17:00.001-06:00

(Click on pictures for larger views)

We rented a car for the weekend (we haven't owned a car for a few years; Twin Cities has great public transit, and until recently I could walk everywhere) since I'm pretty much crippled up and was tired of being stuck at home for days and days. So we went to Stillwater, Minnesota, for some enriching, wholesome, book therapy! Here are a few shots of Loome Theological Bookstore, an awesome spectacle and quirky place. It was formerly an old Swedish church, and still retains the stained glass windows and rickety hardwood floors. To save money (I presume) they don't heat or cool the large main part of the building, so in the winter you can see your breath while browsing! There are plenty of nooks and crannies, balconies, and narrow wooden staircases. It is a real treasure trove! You could easily spend a whole day (or two) in here. It is the largest second-hand theological bookstore in the world. Loome's also has a second store in town with a more diverse selection (which contains virtually everything else outside of Christian theological subjects).

I got some books on my usual interests: mysticism, esoteric Christianity, meditation, prayer, sacred arts, psychology, and saints. George got some real nice books on one of his favorite people: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I hadn't realized they had almost an entire bookcase on Teilhard, with many books in French or German. It was upstairs in a secluded balcony, which also included an expansive collection of the works of Evelyn Underhill, Karl Rahner, and Saints Thérèse of Lisieux and Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Merton. (Oooh, yes! All the cool people together in one area!). One reason I considered becoming Catholic had to do with Thomas Merton and Teilhard de Chardin. If these two geniuses and modern-day mystics could become Catholic, then there must be something valid to Catholicism! In my book these guys are already saints, if not Doctors of the Church. If you want to consider the idea of me - a former hard-core cynical atheist for 20+ years - becoming a Catholic, then you are welcome to use my change of heart to promote the cause for Merton and Teilhard's canonizations!

Tavener Quote # 1

2007-10-30T21:17:00.000-05:00

John Tavener (b. 1944), a British composer, is one of my favorite composers, ever. His music is deeply spiritual, metaphysical, and influenced by perennial philosophy and the Eastern Orthodox faith. His music, and the spiritual essence behind it, is a huge inspiration for me. I have dreamed of being a composer since about age 14, and when I discovered Tavener's music, many years later, I found someone who was following a path that I wanted to follow, but up until that time never knew that such a path was possible or that there were even words to describe it. Here's a quotation by Tavener, from his book, The Music of Silence - A Composer's Testament:

I think we have to go back. I think in the end intuition teaches us everything. Leave the universities of the world and go into the universities of the desert. So say the Fathers. I am, of course, talking about metaphysical intuition; the only way still unexplored by our modernist hell.

First of all, one has to say we know nothing, and from that abyss we must abandon all preconceived ideas, whether it be serialism, sonata form, development, fugue, canon, and so on, and get rid of it all, so that one has nothing left in one's mind to begin with. It feels like an abyss. This does, of course, presuppose that one believes in some kind of higher reality. But even if not, let the young composer try to forget everything he or she knows, just to see what happens. If it's just silence, then okay, it's just silence. If it's just one or two banal notes, okay, then it's just one or two banal notes. But I guarantee that if one continues with this, gradually a music starts to form inside one, and who knows, we might start to realize another kind of reality does after all exist.

Tavener's ideas, and profound music, mean so much to me. For years and years I had been concerned about "fitting in" and "following the rules" (i.e. going to a university, mastering Western theory, getting a degree in composition, becoming "legit" by Academia's standards). Yet, my gut feeling has always been telling me that there was something wrong with all of this. I was once nearly at the door of Academia, attempting to get inside; but still, something hard to define, disgusted me about it and I just felt I had to find my own way. I did not enter that door. And now, in many ways, I am so relieved.

More later...

A Powerful Formula for Living

2007-10-29T20:30:00.000-05:00

I learned the following formula fairly recently from reading The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. On the face of it, this formula seems so simple and obvious. You would think that this is common sense and that the whole world must know about it and live it. But from what I've learned from experience, and even in my own life for many, many years, this formula really seems unknown to most people. I can think of lots of people who have gone through their entire lives never realizing something like this. Here is the formula:

E + R = O

(Event + Response = Outcome)

Event: This could be anything. From getting a paper cut on your pinkie finger, to getting cut off in traffic, to finding out that your best friend totally disagrees with you on a hot-button political issue, to getting fired from your job, to learning that you have cancer.

Response: Now here is the critical element. If any of the above events happened to you, how would you respond? Would you be angry? Furious? Mildly upset? Amused? Disbelieving?

Outcome: Your outcome all depends on your response. So say somebody got cut off in traffic. One person might be terribly pissed off, honk their horn, give the finger, escalate it into road rage, etc. Somebody else might be flustered for a second and then just let it go and forget about it. Or say somebody was told that they had cancer and only had a year to live. One person might be devastated and think God was against them, become enormously depressed, and die even sooner than one year. Another person might respond by going out and doing all those things they never did, and actually living more fully in that last year than in the previous ten years combined.

So the basic point is this: you have the power to choose your response. An event is just an event. An event just is, it just happens. You decide if it is a good or bad event, or something in between. You decide how you will respond emotionally. You decide what the event means to you; the event, in itself, has no inherent meaning until you ascribe one to it. You decide whether an event is hugely important or just a fleeting little insignificant trifle. But the trick is that each one of us can have a completely different response to an event. Something that sets you off to explode in rage, might for me just be a little nuisance, or not a big deal at all. We are all different. But the point is, that it is our response that is different, not the event.

A lot of people I know, instead of examining how they respond to an event, blame the event instead. For example, suppose you've planned to go out for a picnic for a very special occasion. It's been planned for weeks and weeks, you get all the food prepared and have your basket ready and your bottle of champagne. Lately the weather has been particularly gorgeous, too, so you're really looking forward to that special day. But then the day arrives and just as you get ready to go out the door to the park a huge storm cloud appears. The sky turns pitch black and the rain just pours and pours, along with thunder and lightning. The day is a total washout. So how would you respond?

Now, I'm not saying that you wouldn't have a right to be upset in such a situation. I'm not saying that the goal, necessarily, is to be always be ecstatically-giddy-happy-lovey-dovey about every single event that ever happens to you in your life. The important thing, rather, is to notice the intensity of your response to an event. The intensity could determine the level of suffering you bring upon yourself. Through mindful awareness of your response to an event, you can control what emotion you will feel as well as the intensity of it. Is a rained out picnic, as one example of an event, worth being horribly angry and devastated? Is it the event's fault that you're upset or could choose not to be upset? Could there be a better response? Could you find an alternative outcome to turn the day around into something positive instead of letting the unexpected event (the rain) ruin your whole day?

There is no right or wrong answer. The answer is what you decide works best for you. But once you realize that you have the power and you have control over how you respond to an event, then you also have the capability to limit or determine how much suffering you bring upon yourself (and, potentially, to others). You bring the suffering upon yourself or you do not. It is ultimately your choice.

Think of events that set you off. Could you choose a different response? If you don't like the outcomes that you are getting in your life, take a look at how you are responding and try something different.

Just something interesting to think about. I often wonder what kind of world we could create if we taught children this concept from day one.

St. George & Synchronicity

2007-10-28T15:10:00.001-05:00

Years ago I purchased a poster of this painting by Kandinsky. At the time, I didn't know anything about the story of St. George or what it meant or why he was killing a dragon. It took me years to even make out the dragon's features from the rather abstract and forceful energy of the painting. I bought it only because I was drawn to the vivid colors and movement. I still have the poster to this day and it's hanging in a central place in my living room.

Recently I had a wonderful "ah ha" experience from a series of meaningful coincidences (i.e. synchronicity in action) regarding St. George.

While reading one of my favorite books in the whole world, Inner Christianity, by Richard Smoley (a book which really made a big impact on my decision to become Christian/Catholic), there is an excellent breakdown of the symbolism of St. George and the dragon. Here is what the imagery means:

The dragon represents the "force of illusion" or the "downward pull of the earth" (notice the connection with the idea from A Course in Miracles and the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl - the idea of the world as illusion; an illusion which obscures our sight of God and drags us down into the mire of materiality, ego, attachment, separation from God, etc).
The rider represents "the guidance of consciousness" or the rational mind; as a knight "he represents the Christian wearing 'the whole armor of God' (Eph. 6:13)."
The horse symbolizes the emotions, which can be somewhat unruly and energetic if left to their own devices.
The spear which pierces the dragon (i.e. which pierces our perception of the illusory world) "may be equated with what The Cloud of Unknowing calls 'the dart of longing love' that pierces the illusion and enables the spirit to reach God." Perhaps our "longing love" is our love for God, the desire to return to God and leave behind the illusion which binds us and keeps us imprisoned.

So if we bring this all together, what we have is the idea that we must bring our rational mind (the rider) and emotional life (the horse) in balance, working together, and then through the action or realization of love by our longing for God (the spear) we can pierce the veil that is this world of illusion (the dragon) and reach enlightenment - the realization of God.

Wow! Isn't that cool?!

Notice, too, that you need to have both the rider and the horse together. You must have both the rational mind and the emotions to be a complete person. If one of them dominates you are not in control, but unbalanced.

And Smoley concludes by saying, "Thus this image is attempting in another way to tell us something about the proper relationship between the different and often conflicting parts of ourselves."

And I had this poster all these years and had no idea what it was about! And this sort of thing, this search for enlightenment or self-realization, is exactly what I've been interested in for years and years, maybe since I was 8, when my mom and her parents would sit around and talk about religions or Joseph Campbell.

Of course, back then I didn't know the words "self-realization" or what they meant, but I knew there had to be much more to life than going to school, going to work, competing for success, driving a car, accumulating "stuff", and all that other garbage we're fed about being "productive members of society" (i.e. conforming ourselves into our little boxes as "consumers" in America). I always just knew that life couldn't just be an abominable waste of time for nothing, for consumption, for an endless search for happiness in material things, with suffering on top when you and all your loved ones die in the end. So what would be the point of all that?

But anyway, I digress. Back to the synchronicities:

Synchronicity # 1: I had always been drawn to the purpose of what the painting or story of St. George and the dragon represents.

Synchronicity # 2: my husband's name is George.

Then several weeks ago (after a very gradual, years-in-the-making attraction to Christianity), I decided I would become Catholic. I knew that since I had at least been baptized I already had one foot in the door. I asked my dad for the name of the church in which I was baptized, and yes, guess what:

Synchronicity # 3: the church in which I was baptized is called "St. George's Episcopal Church"!

I take this as a sign that St. George ought to be one of my favorite Saints! How many more hints do I need?

Suffering: finding a positive response

2007-10-28T13:19:00.000-05:00

This has been a year of trials for me. A kidney stone surgery in April, and as of October 13th, severe, crippling lower back pain. Never before in my life have I had to deal with so much physical suffering. Initially, when I went to the hospital for the kidney surgery, I thought I knew how to handle it. My ego was saying, “Hey! No big deal! Let’s go for it. Piece of cake. I’ve figured out life and will prove how strong I am.” I went in with a positive (yet, in retrospect, probably too arrogant) attitude. But things did not turn out as simple as I had expected. It was not at all easy and there were many unfortunate surprises, complications, and five days in the hospital. My positive attitude soon evaporated, leaving me in a blank state of shock. It took me many weeks, even months, to comprehend what I went through and how to process or internalize that experience to make sense of it. In recent years I had learned how to cultivate a positive mental attitude and heal myself from years of childhood depression and mental/emotional suffering, but physical suffering was entirely new territory for me. I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know how to respond to it or what to think. I was like a baby starting from scratch in a new world.

Now here I am again going through another physical trial. This time with a pain that is almost constant, and debilitating enough to make it hard to walk, stand up, or get out of bed. Again, my initial reaction was shock. “Why is this happening to me? Why now, so soon after the previous trauma? What if I never recover? What if I become paralyzed and ruin my husband’s life? What stupid thing did I do to myself to cause this?” Fears and anxieties and anger swirled in my head for many days. I still had not learned any lessons about pain and what to do with it. I knew there must be some better response than to feel sorry for myself. Recently I had made the decision to follow my husband and mother and convert to Catholicism. I knew the Saints and other Church writers had a lot to say about suffering, so I searched for answers, for a way to respond to my pain in a positive, meaningful way. Over the years I had also studied Buddhism, with its notions of non-attachment and non-judgmental observation of the body. I had also studied many different writers on self-improvement, spirituality and meditation. I slowly came up with a list of intentions, like an action plan for transforming my ideas about pain and suffering. Here is a list of what I have learned:

I am not my body. My identity is on the inside, in my spirit, rather than in the physical sensations of my body. I will not allow my body to dictate my emotional state, whether for good or bad. The body is a vessel, a vehicle. It is not the real me.

“Resistance is the cause of suffering.” This is a good one from Bill Harris, creator of Holosync, a meditation program. The idea is that the more I resist my pain by fighting against it or arguing that it’s not fair or that it shouldn’t be there, only results in creating more and more suffering. It sounds pretty Buddhist – so instead of fighting against the idea that the pain is there, I will just observe it without judgment or emotion. Pain is like an unwelcome guest. It’s just there and for the time being there’s not much I can do about it to get rid of it. Of course I am working to find a solution and heal my body, but until then I will let go of my resistance of the pain’s reality.

From a Catholic standpoint, I offer my pain to others with love. Any time I feel the pain start to appear I think of it as a beautiful shining bell, ringing in a clear high voice, reminding me to give my pain away as a prayer. In this way, the pain is not about me, it’s about what I can give to others. I can take my pain and create a positive energy that I can send out into the world or to someone who needs more help than I do.

Cultivating gratitude. This was already something I had started doing a couple of years ago. Keeping a journal and remembering each day all that I have to be thankful for is a powerful way to keep a positive perspective. I have realized how many blessings I have in my life. Whatever pain I may go through does not diminish all that I am grateful for.

Everything happens for a reason. For many years I scoffed at this idea and would not believe it (in fact, I was basically an atheist for at least 20+ years). Yet, at some point in the past five years or so I decided to change my thinking. Why not believe this? Why not see that there is an underlying reason to our existence and a reason for every event that happens in our lives? I think life becomes much more beautiful and grand if we can find a meaning and a higher purpose to it. In my current situation, I believe I am going through these trials to learn about pain and how to respond to it in a constructive way. I obviously did not know anything about it before, and now is my time to learn. And more importantly, it is to learn that pain is not necessarily evil. This is not my time to feel sorry for myself. I can transform this experience to make myself a better person. I can now empathize and understand something more of the suffering of others. Cultivating compassion – for every thing and every one – maybe that is what our lives really come down to.

Life is what you choose to see

2007-10-27T16:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog. This space will become a little expression of my consciousness, a collection of fragments from my inner world and what I perceive of life, love, and the layers of reality.

Too much of what we find in our present world and modern society is a junk yard of materialism, endless unsustainable consumption, selfishness, and superficiality, all of which are symptoms of a massive unhappiness and emptiness in the collective soul of humanity. Humanity is at war with itself because there is not enough looking inwards. We tear each other and the planet apart, looking for happiness or some purpose for being alive, when the only answer can be found inside the spirit.

My purpose for this blog is to intentionally seek out the goodness and beauty of existence. Everything we need to be happy can be found within ourselves, in our heart or in our spirit. What is needed is an intense focus, a heightened awareness to be open to those deeper levels of existence and feeling. I’m talking about really living life to fullest, really feeling that you are alive, that the entire world is alive, the whole universe, every stone, tree, bird, human being, and even the infinite grains of sand upon the earth, all is alive and one and beautiful and you and I are one with it.

Coming to this realization is what I would call “Awakening to Numinous Joy”. And this search is what this blog will be about. I invite you to search with me and see for yourself. Stop the ceaseless running and look inside yourself. All that you need for peace and happiness is in your own soul. And maybe one day, if each one of us can bring forward that inner joy that we all carry in our souls (even if we don’t know it or believe it) and give it out into the world through compassion, we will find that the Kingdom of Heaven will become both an inner and outer reality.