Monday, November 03, 2008

One Day We Will Worship the Life Of Jesus and not the Death

Why are there day and night? Why did God create the Sun and Moon? It is the same reason that He created male and female, up and down, in and out, left and right, fire and water, air and earth and all opposites. The first reason is that without interaction, the self cannot know itself. If the self does not know what it is, it has no understanding of what it can become.

A more accurate translation of Genesis does not limit creation to a one time action; it is more accurately an ongoing process. So, we need to know that we are a self or an actor. To understand more clearly what we are, we must first know what we are not. For example, the only way to know that one is tall, is to know what is not tall. The way to know what a man is, we must know what a man is not. In this world of ours, it is through opposition that we understand the world that we live in and who we are. Light would have no meaning without dark, good would have no meaning with bad, nor joy without sorrow. It may be that “I think therefore I am”, but what I am requires a process of elimination.

It has been said that this is the only one of God’s schools that has ‘free will’. Immediately we know that if we have free will, then we must have choices. For those choices to make any difference in our evolution as souls, we must have within our makeup a part of ourselves that is attracted to one category of choices and another part of ourselves that is attracted to another. So, we are each born with an ego, which is materially directed. It is like the soul of the body. It would worship the things of the earth, if it came to feeling good, then it would choose things that appealed to the five senses. It would seek love in the form of attention and admiration from another or many others. Its god would be whatever the most powerful force in the world was. And it sees itself as alone and so seeks what is best for the self.

On the other side sits the spirit. This is our connection to God. The spirit knows God and seeks the joy that comes from God. It knows that we are all one and it finds its joy in giving and sharing with others. It is selfless and seeks the food that nourishes the spirit and brings us closer to God. So here the soul sits between the two voices and impulses. We live with the desire for God on one side and the desire for the things of the world on the other. Being in the physical body on the earth the easier voice to listen to is the voice of the ego. It is the soul, through the journey from life to life that learns to listen less to one and more to the other. It is the soul that learns through the choices made in deference to the ego or to the spirit. That choice, to choose between the two opposite pulls - that represents the souls free will on earth.

When the sages speak of the “dead”, in reality they are referring to the soul entering the body which exists for such a short time it is considered dead, just like when a person is on death row and walking to the execution they say, “Dead man walking”. From the moment that we are born into this body we are walking towards the death of the body, in essence, we are dead men walking. When the spirit leaves the tomb of the body it is resurrected and returns to the spiritual plane that it emerged from, and the ego returns to the material world from which it came. It is difficult for the spirit to live on the material plane as it would be difficult for the ego to live on the spiritual plane. The ego would experience Heaven as hell, just as the spirit experiences the earth as hell.

These twins, the ego and the spirit are bound together because the soul cannot expel the ego. It is the engine that drives the vehicle that we use on earth. It cannot expel the spirit because the spirit is what supports the driver (soul) while it is the body (vehicle) on earth. The soul is the reason for the existence of both and our lives on earth are possible because of both.

There is no such thing as evil, because all that exists is God and all that is God is good. But let us digress for a moment. In my youth I was considered attractive. Men were initially drawn to my looks or my sexuality. The things that were on the surface, superficial, are still a part of me. I related to myself on the inside, my soul, my spirit, my heart. I felt that part of myself, my inner being as the greater part of who I was eternally. I did not feel loved, in fact I was not loved when men claimed love for me based upon what they saw on the outside, how I looked, or what I had. Those things were temporary, my looks would change – age, my financial status would fluctuate, they were of me, but they were not me. In the same sense, all of the things in the material world are of God, simply because there is no such thing as outside of God. But they are the temporary, transient things of God, not the true eternal parts of God.

The eternal parts of God have no form, and give to the heart and soul and not to the body or the ego. So the ego is tempted by what it can experience with its senses.

We depict Jesus the Christ as aesthetically beautiful, there is no way that he could have ever looked like the pictures that we see of him based upon his lineage and the fact that he and his family were able to hide in Egypt at the time that they did. He would have been very dark skinned with curly hair, there was no intermarriage at the time because there was no great migration from continent to continent. This image of Jesus aids the ability of many to worship him. Yet what I find the most disturbing is that most of the people who claim to love Jesus, love him because they believe that he died on the cross to erase their sins. To God, this is a sign of idol worship. To God, worshipping an act is no different than worshipping a statue. If we truly loved and believed in Jesus, we would live our lives as he lived his. The Buddhists love and believe in Buddha, and so they live their lives like the Buddha. If Christians truly loved, believed in and worshipped Jesus the Christ, the world would be a different place, there would be no inquisition, no crusades, no witch trials, no slavery, no judgment, to economic disparity, no withholding of healthcare, no prejudice and no poverty. The more wealth a Christian society had, the more it would have to give to the people. We do not worship Jesus as the Son of God, we do not worship Jesus, we worship the sacrifice that we interpret as having saved us from having to live the life of Jesus.

Satan saw this in Job. When God called together the Sons of God and Satan to show what an exemplary human being Job was, Satan immediately saw that Job loved and worshipped God because of the wonderful life that God had given him. Job followed the laws and did all of the things that were expected of him, but there was something in his love that was lacking. God gave Satan permission, in increments, to test Job until finally Job did turn on God. Eventually, after God spoke to Job, Job went from a superficial worship based upon what God did for him and fear of what God could do to him, to a deep love and awe of God with no hope or desire for God to give him what he had lost or do anything for him other than to be God in all of His Majesty. Once Job was filled with the love of God without need of anything else, God rewarded him with more than he had to begin with, however, now, nothing that God could give him would ever be of more importance to him than God.

I know many people who love Jesus, and do not believe that he died for their sins; they love Jesus for the same reason that the Buddhists love the Buddha; it is for the divine measure of their love and compassion for all of God’s creatures.

In the Old Testament Satan is not the enemy of God, but the adversary of man, the tester. Satan tests our love for God, believing that if nothing else that we do is perfect, our love for God should be without equal, uncompromising. Jesus proved His to be. Satan tempted Jesus just as he tempts all of us, with money, power, status – envy, hatred, prejudice, and judgment, all of the things that fuel the ego and deplete the spirit. Satan tests us because he is the last gate to pass through before God. He guards God against those whose love is not true. Religion is one of Satan’s biggest tricks, because it can be used to divide and distract. Some religions cause us to be so devoutly protective of our division, that we forget the One God we are supposed to be giving our devotion to.

There will be a new Christianity for the twenty-first century. It will be a religion that will carry us to the end of time. It will be made up of true Christians who have or will sell off all that they do not need to live in modest comfort and given the excess to the poor. They will follow the Christ just as the Buddhists follow the Buddha, and there will be no discrepancy between the words of Jesus and actions of those who follow in his name. It could be called, “The Followers of the Living Christ”. This will be a religion that unites instead of dividing and embraces instead of excluding. It will be one that is defined by the love, understanding, faith, forgiveness, humility and compassion that defined the Christ himself.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Faith




Watch Happiness is found in Faith - short version in Faith Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Monday, October 27, 2008

God is Outside The Box

We speak about thinking outside of the box, but what we don’t think about is that there is no amount of “Outside of the box” that is outside of God. When we have an idea – it is God’s idea. When we think of a new form of worship – it is God’s thought. Regardless of what we do or what we think of – ultimately, it comes from God. Even war was not a product of man but of God. There are many paths to becoming one with God. Most of these paths have nothing to do with religion, they have to do with gaining understanding, and faith. One path is fear – through fear we learn that there is nothing to fear in God. Through the path of loss we learn that there is nothing that can be lost because all is One in God. Through hatred – we learn that there is nothing and no one to hate because we are all One in God. Through war and killing we learn the value of life and living. Through prejudice we learn acceptance. Through betrayal we learn forgiveness. All of these paths are paths and lessons created by God with the only intention that we find our way to the truth of what we are and what we have always been.

Once there were two villages that had established a very prosperous trade between themselves each growing the crops that the other needed. They were wealthy villages because they had the benefit of an abundant stream of water. Yet, with time both villages began to get greedy, charging higher and higher prices for their goods each trying to outdo the other. After time passed and this greed escalated, crime ensued. Each village began hating the other and refusing to sell to them. This hurt both villages because they needed what the other had, but their pride had grown too great.

They did not notice that while they were entrenched in the battle over their egos, the stream was drying up. Soon the crops that could be grown could barely feed the people, let alone the livestock and it seemed that all were destined to die out. After generations of only the water that could be caught from the little rain that fell was now taken by a total drought. One night as the leader of each village slept, there appeared to each, an angel. The angel told each of the leaders that there was a miraculous healing stream only seven miles from their villages. Each was told to journey to the stream early because the stream only filled with water at a certain time.

Each man protested to the angel saying that there had been no water in that stream for generations it was now mo more than a barren waterbed. The angel told the men that God had heard the prayers of the villagers and answered them by filling the waterbed with a healing stream that would not only heal the people, but would provide such nutrition to the fields that their crops and livestock would grow beyond anything ever seen before.

Early the next morning, unbeknownst to the other, each man began his journey to the stream. As the stream came into sight, each man watched in awe as the water quickly filled the once barren bed to the brim. Yet, the water was murky and did not look fit for crops, and in no way did it seem fit to drink. Even worse than that, when they finally reached the stream, they were astounded to see the water already draining back into the ground through the same opening that it had entered. Seeing the other, each man ran back to his village to gather the villagers so that they would arrive before the other and be ready to fetch all what they needed before the other village could take all of the water.

However, the peasants from both villages arrived at the same time and as the water began to fill the stream, a fight broke out over the water with the inhabitants of each village pushing, shoving and hitting the other. By the time they noticed the water again, the last drops were already draining from the streambed. Filled with anger and frustration, the villagers returned home with their buckets and their hopes empty.

That night, the angel returned to the dreams of the village leaders. This time the angel told them that instead of pushing and shoving each other they should throw stones. The angel told them that God had placed stones on their side of the stream. The next morning as the villagers once again reached the stream as it was filling up, they looked down, each saw the stones at their feet and began to hurl them at the other villagers. To their surprise, the stones never hit anyone but all seemed to land in the stream.

When there were no more stones to throw, the exhausted villagers noticed that the water had become so clear that they could see every stone lying on the bottom of the stream. Even more miraculous than this, was the fact that water no longer emptied. Just then a little boy from one of the villages cried out, “Mommy, mommy, the stones…they look like hearts”. And just at that moment all of the villagers felt their anger, and their hatred drain from their souls. They each drew from the stream all of the water that they needed and resumed their trading and sharing of resources with a new sense of gratitude.




http://www2.blogger.com/layout?blogID=28146313

Friday, October 10, 2008

Different Is Special

Press link under screen to load document

I AM GREAT

press the rectangle on the upper right hand corner to expand the viewing screen.


Wednesday, October 08, 2008

The Growing Field - The Book

Here is the Growing Field - The Book
Press the rectangle in the upper right hand corner of the viewer to read it full screen.


Saturday, July 05, 2008

This Blog Has Moved

This Blog Has Moved to: http://thepowerofbeing.net

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Good Vs Evil

Good and Evil
We have evolved in many ways since the days when the major religions were founded. We live in a world that is now explainable in ways that our ancestors could never have understood. We no longer fear the darkening of the sun, because we understand the science of eclipses. Religion used the mysteries of nature to prove their validity. Now, we understand the forces of nature and although we cannot control them, they are no longer a mystery. It is a different world. We have evolved by leaps and bounds intellectually, now in order for us to continue to live on and be sustained by the earth that we have come to understand scientifically, we must evolve, we must mature spiritually and “put away childish things”. We have access to great Spiritual knowledge; we must make the spiritual leap.
Before we can understand good and evil, we must be able to stand mentally and emotionally firmly in the understanding that we are not these bodies or these lives, we are souls experiencing these bodies and these lives for a great purpose. We are energy and energy seeks to expand, we are the stuff that God is made of, and as we expand so does God. Thinking logically, the earth is not the only game in town. Ours is not the only dimension in town, and we are far from the only intelligent species in town. I believe that the earth is a unique school, one in which a soul can study the most diversified subjects and master the most diversified abilities. We are all creators, this is part of expansion, and the earth provides so many different mediums to learn to create within. There is the earth itself, there is the body, the emotions, the intellect, so many areas to perfect, and so many opportunities to grow.
Then there are those difficult courses, such as overcoming temptation, overcoming greed, selfishness, fear, hatred, prejudice – what we call the seven deadly sins are actually the seven challenges that we must overcome in order to graduate from this cycle. This is a very difficult topic because it seems to easy to declare one person evil and one person good, one act evil and one act good, but spiritually there just is no evil.
To say that a lie is evil causes most of us to immediately put up a defensive wall, against hearing anything else. The ego becomes angry and prepared for this attack on its goodness. Yet, this is not meant as a judgment of goodness. It is mean to help us to question our concept of evil.
In a belief built world, good and evil are concepts that arise out of perception. When we life in Maya, illusion, we are already living in a world built in the sky so to speak. Like those castles so readily attributed to neurotics. But what grounds that illusion, what connects it with God is the heart. The heart is where we find the doorway to God. So we can say that what we believe in our hearts, whatever we believe to be the truth, is as good as it gets.
The illusion, the Maya into which we are born is ultimately created by God for the purpose of teaching the soul its own value, its own essence which is God. Man once understood this and so created initiations for the purpose of changing the boy into the man, the boy into the warrior, or the shaman. The boy at a certain age would be sent away from the tribe to some place where he was totally unfamiliar, a place that was wrought with peril so that he could confront the many challenges that would force him to reach deeper and deeper within his being until he was in contact with the source of his power, God, which would then guide him through the dangers. He would then be led back home changed, clear, the illusions of childhood replaced with the knowledge of the true self. Just like Jesus truly became the Christ not merely at the baptism but when he went away for those forty days to confront his last temptation.
This is symbolic of mans time on earth. We must confront the ego which controls our little minds, with its wiles, its rationalizations, it justifications, its cunning and its judgments, which are, in fact, all different types of lies.
Evil is merely an illusion created in the mind of man. It is only “bad” because it takes us further away from our Source, which is connected to the heart. Good is anything that is truth, which originates from the heart and leads us to our Source. Look at it this way, if take one letter, the “o” out of good, you have God, they are connected. If you take one letter the “v” out of evil, you have lie they too are connected. Anything that is a lie, is not good, not of the heart.
When we hear the word evil we immediately seem some red horned figure, or some darkly cloaked sinister shadow lurking somewhere in a corner. Evil is in merely that which points us away from the truth which is that path to God. It is a sign that has been turned in the wrong direction, intentionally, for whatever reason. It is ultimately not in the best interest of anyone if it is away from God.
Am I saying that understanding this will put an end to conflict…an end to war? No, I am not. In a world that is built on a foundation of illusion, which is inhabited by souls who are all on different levels of evolutionary progress, there are bound to be different truths. Those truths will be defended or not based upon the age of the soul, its understanding and its inherent nature. But while the ego seeks domination and adherence at all costs to its beliefs, the heart seeks understanding and acceptance. What I am saying is that coming from the heart, living in truth, even if it is a very personal truth, will put an end to weapons of mass destruction. The heart, every heart, contains the essence of God, and even within the illusion the heart can never justify the death of one innocent being as “acceptable collateral damage”.
The ends do not justify the means in the heart only in the mind. And so a man or woman might very well see that the only way to defend what he or she believes in their hearts is to defend it with their lives. But, at no time will the heart defend its truth with someone else’s life. A noble battle is fought with honor by the one whose belief is being defended. Jesus did not send anyone else to the cross for him. And so, although we will not end conflict by coming from our hearts, we will end dishonor, and find our way to God. We will all emerge from the wilderness with the heart of a true warrior.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Journey's End is the Only Cause of Death

And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts the sickle, because the harvest has come”. The Gospel of Mark, Parables 4:26-29

Everything grows; a dream grows towards becoming a reality. A journey grows towards its destination. A project grows towards completion and a search grows towards the finding. Everything alive seeks to reach higher, a plant and a tree grow towards the sun, their source of life. The body grows towards the sun, its source of life. The ego grows towards the soul its source of life. The soul grows towards God, or The Source, its life.

It is that growth which pushes us. It is an aching, the aching of the seed, the aching of the plant, and the aching of every life on earth. We seek growth in everything that we do. We challenge our bodies through sports, and through weights. We challenge our minds through puzzles and through overcoming obstacles, finding a new way. We challenge our souls through the obstacles and sorrows that we place before ourselves in life.

What is the reason for growth? It is to unite with our Source, become one with it. Our dreams grow to unite with reality. Our ideas grow to unite with form. Once the light is reached the journey is over. The process is complete. When that is achieved, the seeker becomes that which was sought. The journey becomes the destination. The being becomes its purpose for being. Everything grows to reach its light because it is that light which gives it life. We exist to seek the light, the light enlightens our way, and the light is the force within us that motivates our journey.

The light is the beginning, and the end, the alpha and the omega. To reach the light is the culmination, the highest point that we can achieve, and yet, at the same time the light is the death. It is the end. It is where we begin, our purpose for the journey and the end of it. To die is not to end it is to finally become. The seed dies to become the tree, the caterpillar dies to become the butterfly, the idea dies to become the creation, the dream dies to become the reality. It is a never ending process of birth, death and resurrection. There is no end. We leave one life when it is done. We are born at the moment that God destines our journey to begin in this life, and we die when God destines that it is over. My birth might be called a fluke, my mother could not go into labor, she had already lost one child for that reason. My father stayed out all night, one of many all nighters that he pulled. This night, she decided that he would not spend the next day resting up in bed as was his habit after an all nighter. This night, she decided that he would suffer. So, the next day when he came home she told him that she was in labor and he had to take her to the hospital. To her surprise, the umbilical cord was strangling me and she had to have an immediate emergency C-Section.

The body of the baby dies to become the toddler. The body of the toddler dies to become the child. The body of the child dies to become the teenager. Look at pictures, each resembles the other but each does not share the same body of the other. We die most deaths without know it anymore than we notice the birth of the toddler, or of the adolescent or adult. At the end of each life, there is simply no more script to read, no more lines for our character, it doesn’t matter how old or how young we leave this incarnation, some souls choose to accomplish a great deal in a short time. If a baby survives for only a minute, that baby has still changed the life of the mother who carried it into the world and the family that waited for its arrival. A life touches others for as long as it is written into the play. God allows the soul to choose the length of its stay. And the purpose that it is here to accomplish. We arrive on time and leave on time. The way that we leave is the way our plot ends. It completes the story, the story we chose, and the one chosen for us. They are one in the same. No one causes the death of another as no one causes the birth of another.

The Bhagavad-Gita is a spiritual epic about life, death and our relationship with God in between. As is so very appropriate today, it is the story of Arjuna, a warrior at a time when each person had a role to fill, teacher, ruler, warrior, etc. It is a story of a great battle lasting between warring families and the kingdoms that are their allies. Because of his birth, Arjuna is forced to fight in this battle. Before the battle begins, he asks his charioteer, Krishna, to drive him into the center of the battlefield so that he can see clearly who he will be fighting. He sees that he will be fighting those closest to him, his family members, teachers, mentors, brothers and father-in-law. He is overcome with grief at the prospect of fighting those he loves dearly.

"Arjuna said: My dear Krishna, seeing my friends and relatives present before me in such a fighting spirit, I feel the limbs of my body quivering and my mouth drying up." "I am now unable to stand here any longer. I am forgetting myself, and my mind is reeling. I see only causes of misfortune, O Krishna, killer of the Keshi demon." "I do not see how any good can come from killing my own kinsmen in this battle, nor can I, my dear Krishna, desire any subsequent victory, kingdom, or happiness." "O Govinda, of what avail to us are a kingdom, happiness or even life itself when all those for whom we may desire them are now arrayed on this battlefield? O Madhusudana, when teachers, fathers, sons, grandfathers, maternal uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law and other relatives are ready to give up their lives and properties and are standing before me, why should I wish to kill them, even though they might otherwise kill me? O maintainer of all living entities, I am not prepared to fight with them even in exchange for the three worlds, let alone this earth. What pleasure will we derive from killing the sons of Dhritarashtra?"… "Better for me if the sons of Dhritarashtra, weapons in hand, were to kill me unarmed and unresisting on the battlefield." "It would be better to live in this world by begging than to live at the cost of the lives of great souls who are my teachers. Even though desiring worldly gain, they are superiors. If they are killed, everything we enjoy will be tainted with blood."

I didn’t know, when I read this years ago, why it felt so important to me. It was not only the message, but the context of war and the inner conflict that any good hearted man or woman must struggle with that stayed with me. Arjuna is a warrior, battle is not his conflict but with whom he must fight. In his argument laments the fact that although the perpetrators of the war are only fighting out of greed, why must he kill, knowing that it is wrong. He cannot understand how in killing those he loves, knowing it is wrong, he is not equally as sinful as those who do not care who they who kill.

The soldiers know that we support them, but not the war that they are fighting. We have learned from Vietnam not to fault the soldiers, but to love them, pray for them and support them. Yet, it does not matter to the soldiers that we support them, because we are supporting them without really knowing what they are doing that we are supporting. If you tell me that you believe in me, but I cannot tell you what I am really doing, or that I cannot believe in myself for doing it – I gain no comfort from your support. Most Americans do not really know, or really want to know what our soldiers must do and must see. There is no way to erase images that are emotionally or traumatically imprinted on the mind. But what can be done to in some way help those who are suffering loss, or are struggling with the guilt and or shame of feeling responsible for causing the death of another is to help them open up to the possibility of accepting that what we see as death, is a transition, and not one that man, regardless of his actions is capable of causing. The moment of our birth and the moment of our departure from the body are two moments more fated than any other in our lives. As Krishna told Arjuna:

"As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change."… "That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul."…“ One man believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. Realizing that which is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can you slay or cause another to be slain?
As a man abandons his worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within. The Self cannot be pierced with weapons or burned with fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundation of eternity. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this, you should not grieve.”
( Bhagavad Gita 2.19-25)

When all of the pieces come together we become complete. To become is to die as we were. We die as that which seeks fullness, and are reborn as that which is full. We die as the question and are reborn as the answer. We change into the form that we seek.

Death is not the end of life; it is the end of a form, the end of an experience. It is the completion of a quest, our search for the Pearl. We each go out into the world for a reason, and when we have found what we were looking for or done what we went out to do, we all return home. We wear the garments appropriate for our journey. When we return home, we remove them. This is as it should be. It is when we return home that we are truly together.

Our lives that were once so connected with each other will die. We each go on to build new lives in new places and regardless of how much we loved each other while we were together; the time comes to move on. This is death. It is not the ending of a life; it is the ending of an experience. The act of dying is simply the ceremony, the ritual attached to that moving on, to that removal of our outerwear. Death comes much more peacefully than birth. There are many old souls who would rather die a thousand deaths than be born once more.

I was sitting with a friend of mine at the New Jersey shore, when she told me about a man who had been standing in the bay fishing when a helicopter fell out of the sky and landed on him. Needless to say, he died. She then remarked that there was no doubt that it was his time. We all have our time it is that moment when we have completed all that we came here to do. It does not matter where we are when our time comes because when it comes we will leave. The means of our departure is part of our journey but not the cause of its end.

We establish, before we incarnate all of the things that we are going to accomplish while here. In some lives there are many major events that we need in order to complete our mission, and our lessons. For others the lessons are very few, sometimes everything we experience in our lives is only to support one lesson. Sometimes we just come in to help another soul that we are close to, as in the case of many children who die very young. It is not for themselves that they come; it is to help their families with a lesson and sometimes to effect the whole society as in the case of Ryan White. The length of years that we spend here is not the issue. There are times when in order to connect with all of the souls that we have agreed to connect with we must spend many years on the earth. There are times when it is but a few hours.

Often the time of death is chosen in order to fit in with lessons of those close to us. Perhaps the experience of our dying is a group experience. Or perhaps it is a part of a lesson for those closest to us. So the time when this can best be accomplished will be our time, that time when we graduate to the next level or need to move to another life for our next set of lessons.
When it is our time there is no reason for our soul to stay incarnate. This has nothing to do with our ego attachment to being here, the ego does not rule the lesson, and it is only one of the tests. Often we will place other points in our lives where we may or may not die and although these points do not mark the end of our lesson here in this life, they still mark points where we may end our time here if our souls are ready. We are given the choice. These are times when things like prayer are very important. These are times when we are able to build our faith. We are brought to the edge and allowed a miracle to bring us back. We are able to make a permanent connection with our spirit and see it manifest in our lives. This is a gift to us.

Sometimes we need to come close to death in order to prepare for the next step in our lives. In other cases we need to be brought to the point of choice so that we can make a conscious decision to be here. Once in a while a soul just cannot appreciate being here because he or she may feel that it was not their choice. If that person has a near death experience and makes a choice to return, life then has a different value. When we die it is always our time, it is a time that has been predetermined and agreed upon by all of our soul family. It is a time appointed by God. It is the right time. It happens in the right way, and we are grateful for what it brings to our souls through the experience. It is a completion, a graduation. When someone we love departs from the physical body, we can always feel their presence if we open ourselves to it.

It is important to understand that when someone leaves his or her body, the connection that they had with the souls left behind does not end. The work that we came together to do must be completed. We have to accept that everything in the physical world has a beginning and an end. Yet the end is in effect a merging with a new beginning. Any guilt or regret should be redirected to positive changes for future situations. Nothing is left unfinished, we may not like the conclusion, but death is the period at the end of our sentence on earth, but by no means the end of our story.

When we leave this earth plane and look back on our time here, it is neither the pain nor the joy that we remember, it is the fullness, the richness of all of both pain and joy combined. It is the roller coaster ride that is life that we long to return to. Birth, death, and the time in-between are all points on the circle, which is life. There is really no beginning and no end, those are just illusions. There is just life, continuous, changing and yet always remaining the same, Life.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

THE POWER OF CHOICE


All that we need to be in control of our lives is to know that we have choices. We do not even have to exercise them so long as we own them.


Our lives are not determined by the situations that confront us, but by the choices that we make when confronted. If I am born into a poor family I can accept my lot and make the best of it, I can work hard to overcome it, or I can become a thief, or a drug dealer. We are not victims of the situations that life puts us in, we are victims of the choices that we make within those situations. It is vital to living a full life that we accept this fact.

I knew a woman who began with every advantage and ending up on welfare. I saw my daughter reacting to life in the same way and it worried me. I feared that if my daughter saw through the same lens she might end up same way. My daughter’s response to my fears was, “Don’t worry I won’t end up like her”. That statement had such an impact on me, because I knew that no one decides to destroy their lives. Our lives follow the paths determined by our choices and those choices are made one at a time. When we perceive that a choice we made was not right, we should then try to make a choice that is right for where we are now. Instead, most of us lose sight of where we wanted to be and instead focus our choices on making our initial choice right. Each choice is taking us in one direction or another. If we are not aware that we are making choices, we will not look around for options. The path that my friend was on was not the path that she thought that she had chosen it was the path that she took because she believed she had no other choice.

When we are in a place that is not where we had planned to be, we feel unhappy; either with ourselves or with the circumstances we hold responsible for putting us there. Usually we prefer to believe that it is anything other than our own choices that put us where we are. It is generally a partnership, life presented the choices and we made them. Acknowledging that we made the choices helps us to be more aware of the choices available to us in the future. It helps us to stand back when things seem bleak and see other options, and other ways. If we feel like victims, we react without assessing our possibilities, if there is a turn – we miss it because we are not looking. We continue on the path that has caused us suffering since our initial choice. What we can do is we can choose to dig ourselves out instead of choosing to dig ourselves in deeper.

My childhood was very difficult and I felt that I was a victim. I got involved in drugs, tried to kill myself, and I married for the wrong reasons. I married to escape the pain at home. As victims do, I sought escape from the suffering of my life, rather than a better life altogether. I exited through the only door that I could see simply because I was not aware that there could be others. I was not living in choice. I married the first man who asked. I felt very sorry for myself. Each choice that we make out of a feeling of helplessness places us in a situation that increases our helplessness. All of my limits, fears and pain simply changed form but remained consistent with my belief that I was a victim. I continued to make choices dictated by my perception of the situation rather than dictated by what I wanted, or who I was or where I wanted to be.

One day during therapy the therapist asked me why I chose to take drugs. I came from a town where taking drugs was the accepted means of dealing with our pain. However when I had to explain it as a choice, something changed. I never thought of anything that I had done as a choice; I just did what I believed I had to do. This covered anything, I had to react, I never thought that I could choose to act. Suddenly it dawned on me that I had made a choice and it was one of many choices that I could have made.

When we are children we do not have many obvious choices, we can fight, we can hide but we cannot change our situation. We actually have very little apparent power. Within that context I did not see myself as making choices I simply reacted.

I accept the choices that I made then; I accept my reaction to that environment because I did not see at the time that I had choices. I could never look back and blame myself for walking through a door that seemed to me to be the only one open. It was the door according to my belief system, but not the only one according to who I was and what I really wanted. Victims are always blind to where they are going because they live their lives running from instead of going to. They never plan a future – only an escape. Yet knowing even after the fact that I did have choices gave me the power that I needed to move on. I finally realized that each step along the way in my life I did make a choice for which I alone, not my parents, not my life, and not my situation, was responsible and one hundred percent accountable. I made the only choice that I could see, and that was fine, because a person who owns the power of choice owns his life. A person who makes choices, regardless of the outcome of those choices, is a person with a future to live, a life ahead of them rather than merely an expanding prison cell. I may have made choices that did not turn out as I planned, but those choices were mine. This freed me.

The fact that my life is made up of my choices has given me my wings. Nothing could stop me but I myself, and that was fine. I knew that in my life I may reach many dead ends, but if I built the road that reached them, I could build the road that would take me around them.

We suffer not because of what happens to us in our lives but because of the choices that we make in reaction to what happens. Each moment we live, we are making a choice, and that choice will determine the next experience. There is no choice is our last choice until we take our last breath.

We cannot assess our worth based upon one choice. Rather we must assess ourselves based upon our willingness to accept responsibility for each choice. If we do this, it will drive us to make each choice responsibly. Remember that so long as we have another breath we have another choice. Sometimes we are meant to make what we believe to be the wrong choice so that we can arrive at the right destination. When a situation is painful it is not working. If we cannot find a way to make it work there probably is no way. Here is where we have to make a choice. If we stay that is our choice and if we keep moving that too is our choice. The controlling factor is not the situation it is the choice that we make.

If I want my partner, but only if he or she fits into a certain image that I hold, I really want the image and not the person. I should look elsewhere or change the mold. If I need a job but I will only work under certain conditions, I cannot complain that I cannot get a job. I just have to choose what I want more and follow my choice. It does not matter what we do or do not do, we are making choices. What happens to us is and will always be a result of those choices not ever a result of the reason that we made those choices.

There is a person with one leg who chooses to play tennis and live a full life and joyful life. Then there is the person with one leg who chooses to sit in a room lonely and bitter feeling that life has given him nothing but pain. Both choices are understandable. The former is the choice of one whose choices are founded in a belief in challenges and not limits. The latter is the choice of one whose choices are founded in limits, a victim. Why should we sit and make ourselves miserable over those things that we cannot control? The time that we are wasting, and that pain that we are suffering is due to our choices, and not due to our situations. Difficult and painful things happen in our lives, but how we choose to deal with them will affect our entire lives. When we find ourselves facing an ocean of suffering we can choose to swim through it, facing only the far shore, or drown in it.

It used to anger me when every time I said that I could not do something because it was too hard, or even impossible to accomplish someone else did it. Someone would come along with less going for them than I thought that I had and do what I thought that I couldn’t. But I chose to let that help me grow. I could have said that that person was lucky, I chose to look at that as a sign that it could be done. When I took responsibility for my choices I had to examine their foundation. My choices were founded on my belief that my life held only a lose lose potential. Those who accomplished what I chose not to even attempt chose based on a belief that anything is possible.

I once would have decided that they must have been better or luckier than I. That way of thinking was once a choice that validated my self-pity. Instead I now choose to allow the accomplishments of others to empower me, and to make it more difficult for me to say, “I can’t”. We have to take responsibility for our choices, and embrace our ability to choose.

Some souls have chosen a more difficult road than others, yet however difficult or easy the road may be, we have all come here with everything that we need to reach our own destination. The pot of gold is behind one of the doors. All that we have to do is to find it. And we find it by choosing doors. Life is a treasure hunt, each experience gives us something, a direction, a tool, or a clue to the next door until we have it all.

The key is not to give up if it is not behind door number one. We have to keep in mind that the goal is just to find the treasure not to be right. First we find the treasure and then we know where it is, we do not have anyway of knowing where it is before we find it, so we should not expect that of ourselves. God knows where it is and He will lead us to it so long as we choose to seek it. Life does not force us ever to give up, that is a choice, sometimes it is the wise one, but in any event it still is a choice.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Choosing Our Own Way

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Viktor Frankl

Often, we decide what the right direction is for us based on what it is for others. Then we find that we are stuck with a goal without the necessary desire to reach it. A person may decide to go into his own business because he does not like authority. He does not consider how much he hates paperwork, long hours, paying people from money that he has not yet earned, and that he can't do it all by himself. Instead of looking within to find what the real problems are and what the personal solutions might be —he looks outside to see what others had done.

This is the kind of confusion that we are faced with when we try to follow guidance from outside, and not of from within. When this choice becomes difficult, instead of seeking a different solution, most people just stick with the plan but find any number of obstacles to place in their paths to prevent its completion. They tell themselves and others that it is not that they won't do it; it is just that there are too many things going on which currently stand in their way. What is really in their way is that it is not their goal. They do not have the passion to walk the chosen path. If we have no passion for what we do with our lives, we cannot do those things well or for long without getting sick, or off balance in some way.

This causes us to consciously face a direction that we are unconsciously running away from. This results in deadlock. I have seen many people in this position one way or another. They complain that everyone else gets opportunities except them; something always gets in their way. Or it is their karma to fail. That is just not true. What they are doing is building their lives from the plans of others. They are making choices based upon the successes of others. It is easier to walk the beaten path than to pave ones own. There was a time when that it worked for most people. Now, we are in an age of individuality. Difficult as it may seem, we are being forced from an inner need for satisfaction from a constant lack of external reinforcement to forge our own path to our own goal.

We have traveled far from that sacred connection to our true selves. Instead of deciding at which place we want to arrive, we first need to decide what inner satisfaction awaits us there, how much we are willing to sacrifice, and most importantly, before we follow another’s path, we must be certain that where others have gone holds the same treasure for us. Once we know the price we are willing to pay, and what it is that we really expect for that price, we have something that we are capable of working with. There really are two different soul paths: those for whom the destination justifies the journey and those for whom the journey is the destination.

It is not a question of one being the right way, and one being the wrong way. It is a question of which way is right for each individual. Some of us become workaholics because we want more and more; we do it for the prize at the end. Others become workaholics because their joy comes from the work they do. Again, neither is right nor wrong. To try to develop the attitude that others say is right, or to attempt to see the truth as others see it, can only lead to miserable and unfulfilled lives, if it is not our own way. There is a difference between what feels right and what others say is right. In these times, we are being asked to find that difference for ourselves.

Those who live their lives based on what works for others cannot remain committed to what they do. Who we are is what dictates what we can do well. We can only do well and for a sustained period of time, that which is in alignment with who we are. Otherwise self-esteem suffers; either we feel like failures, or we feel unsatisfied which leads us to feeling that we are defective because we are missing what we have been told is the obvious.

This is a time when personal truth, rather than conformity is needed for our own inner well-being and for the wellbeing of the whole, every aspect of our living must reflect the inner self. The Native American names such as: Lone Eagle, Running Bear, Night Watcher, are given based on the persons own unique qualities. They are invited to live their lives in fulfillment of those names. There was a time when we all took names that mirrored who we were. We were once in touch with ourselves and with our environment. We are being asked by our souls to return to that ancient spiritual center. We are being called from within to live who we are, to love who we are, and to do what reflects who we are. This is the dawning of a new age, an age of truth. We neither find happiness, nor satisfaction in living anyone else's life. No one ever stands in the way of those who know where they are going. We have to go where we know from within.
When the world was disconnected, and there were such a things as distant shores, the structure of society was much stronger. The strength of a society or a religion to influence its members or followers rests strongly on the limitations of outside information that could otherwise be an influence or create choices that do not exist within the structure. The rules worked, not because they were right but because they were the only rules and pertained to everyone.

Since the end of WWII, slowly but consistently distant shores have become neighbors. Members of completely different societies have been unable to prevent the exchange of information. The world of yellow and the separate world of blue remain intact and self-fulfilling so long as yellow remains separate from blue. The rules of right and wrong, and even cause and effect work for all members of the yellow society or religion as they do for the blue although they may be in total contradiction with each other. However, when the members of the blue group and the members of the yellow group begin to mingle and share beliefs and information, a new green group emerges which inevitably destroys both the yellow and the blue. It does this because suddenly there exists and option, a choice, a way not previously known to either yellow or blue. In actuality it does not destroy the two separate groups but instead it is what they become, the product of their evolution.

The internet has completed the erasure of true borders, the world has now become a melting pot, and so, we can no longer look to any external governing principal for our lives, and how we live them or the direction that will work. We must now look within. There are too many truths ‘out there’ to find the one that will work; we must now journey deep into our own hearts and our own souls to find the truth that supersedes contradiction. This is the inner truth.

Mankind has mastered the lessons of leadership and brute force in the Age of Aries; it mastered the lessons of the herd mentality, the pain, suffering and fear of standing outside of the group, and the manipulations of power in the age of Pisces. It has now entered the school of equality through individuality. In this course, pain and suffering will come from inside when we feel our sense of self diminished. These are the ultimate challenges and lessons of the Age of Aquarius. It is not the energy of the individual merging and losing itself into the group but rather the group growing and becoming greater through the distinctly unique contribution of each individual. We are beginning to suffer depression and illness – not from being isolated from the group, but from being isolated from the self. Many of us think to ourselves, ‘I have what everyone says that I should have, I do what everyone says I should do, my life contains all of the pieces that everyone says should make me happy, yet, the pieces will not fit and I am slowly dying’.

Most people are too embarrassed to admit the panic and confusion that overtakes them when someone says, “Just be yourself”. The truth is, very few people know how to do that, or who that self is. So our first step in finding a fulfilling direction is finding the self that is seeking fulfillment and becoming an expression of that true and unique self living within each of us.


Monday, May 19, 2008

IS FREE WILL AN ILLUSION?


One of the phrases that we hear and say a great deal in metaphysical circles in “This is all an illusion”. Although it sounds good, it is not something that we are able to really incorporate into our consciousness because it is so fundamentally opposed to our experience. And though we may be temporarily soothed by the idea of it, the feeling vanishes the moment we bump into a part of that illusion, like a wall, and get a concussion on another part of the illusion – our heads. For most of us the idea that our experience is “all an illusion” is filed away somewhere with God, another idea that, for most of us, is firmly implanted in our belief system but very much disconnected from the reality of our daily lives.

If this is an illusion, why does it hurt so much or feel so real? Why can’t we just affirm it away? In a movie, which is for all intents and purposes an illusion, when one of the characters – another illusion is shot by a bullet – another illusion, the character dies – another illusion. There are two layers here. There is the layer of the actors or the soul who is assuming the role of the character – the illusion who dies. Within the movie, nothing is an illusion. When the actor – the soul – steps out of the movie, or the life in our case, it was all an illusion. A good actor will feel the pain of the character; he will feel the joy of the character which is what makes his performance believable. A good actor is very sensitive, just as a soul is. When the actor leaves the role, he has to re-enter his own life - his own role in the greater movie that is life. This reorientation often takes time. When a soul leaves a life, that soul too has to re-enter its essence, after absorbing all of the experiences of the life that it has just left. A character in a movie or in a play follows a plot, acts or reacts in a way written by someone else. So, in order to react naturally the actor must inhabit the part. We souls inhabit our personalities and so we are able to act and react according to the character that we come to play.

An actor becomes the character, so convincingly. that we are able to anticipate what he will do or say next because we believe him. We may know that the actor is acting and that the words have been written by someone else, the cues given by someone else, yet we feel and experience what the characters are going through. Although the choices that each character is making have been predetermined by the writer, we know that those are the choices that this character would make. Even when the character surprises us, if the actor did his job and writer did his, we can review the movie and see how this unexpected action could have been predicted. This is free will. These characters are predictable because we understand how they are motivated. Yet, does our ability to predict their choices deny the freedom of their choices? No, they are free to choose. What is predetermined is the point from which they view the world at the time that God or the Universe places the choice on their path. How often do we say, “I did that based on what I knew then”, or “If I only knew then what I know now”, or, “The person I am today would never have done that”.

Imagine being in a room, facing a wall and from your position, you can see the wall in front of you and from your peripheral vision you can make out the walls on each side, right and left of your position. But from where you stand, there is no door. Now, the position that you are in places you on a wheel, like a clock gear, that will slowly turn you around. However, right now you only see walls. You are facing twelve o’clock. There is a door at the six o’clock position, but you won’t see it for six hours. Now a voice enters the room and says, “You are free to go”. Is it an illusion that you are free to go? No, there is a door. But from where you stand, there is none. In a story, the character has free will and, we can anticipate that characters actions. We have free will, and our choices are predetermined. They are predetermined because our visibility of available options is really limited to one, at the time that the Universe presents the choice. There may be ten puzzle pieces lined up before us to choose from, yet, the experiences, the beliefs, the impressions of the world that we have accumulated up to that moment sees only one perfect fit. Because there is only one, it is the one that our soul has chosen to best experience the lessons we need to learn.
We have to remember that we come here to learn and to grow. In order to do this, we have to set up a lesson plan.

Our lessons do not only come from where the choice leads us on our path, but also from which choice we make, and how we arrived at that choice. We are here to expand our view, and to learn to see from our hearts. Most actors take roles for a purpose. Many take roles which allow them to stretch, to grow. Free will is not an illusion, but in a way, the choices we make are. They are the lessons; they are the set-up for our growth. They create the plot within which the actor acts. As we learn from each choice, our view expands; our abilities grow until we are in tune with our hearts. When we are in tune with our hearts – we are in tune with our souls. When the soul has mastered the personality, its view is no longer limited. It then sees through the eyes of the creator of the path. The dreamer has mastered the dream, so it is no longer a dream; the actor now writes his part, so he is no longer limited by the existing plot. Illusion vanished and all that is left is one Will in tune with All-That-Is. To enlighten is to light the path so one may see the way. It really has never been a question of whether or not we have free will, the question is, how much we really see of what our free will is acting upon. This is where growth lies.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

AVOIDING LOVE – AVOIDING LIFE

Nothing that we avoid ever goes away, we will spend our lives avoiding it, and that will be how we live. If we don’t want to avoid something for the rest of our lives, we need to deal with it once.
Many people withdraw their feelings from each subsequent encounter being hurt. Each time that they are hurt, they withhold more and more of themselves from being vulnerable to feeling. As time goes on they give less and less of themselves to life and to their relationships. Those parts of themselves that they have pulled away are stored in a void, a place of emptiness. Feelings are the food that the soul exists upon, pain as well as joy. When we hide our souls from experience, deprive it of what it needs to grow, to expand. Sooner or later the pain that we are avoiding pales in contrast to the emptiness that we are feeling. It is the avoidance that causes us our suffering.
We feel an absence of joy in our lives, but we don’t understand why. When we avoid emotional experiences we not only lock away our souls, but we forget where they are, or how to release them. We deprive our souls the very food that sustains them, which is feeling. We allow them to atrophy. We lose our connection with them. Even when we enter a relationship, we do not permit our souls involvement. We handle it all on the ego level. The other person involved feels that nothing is being shared. There is no soul-to-soul connection, only ego to soul.
We make impossible demands of those with whom we are involved to guarantee our feeling of security, and in doing so we drain our partners until they pull away. We are left still hungry, still longing and still in pain. Although we are unable to give of ourselves we are still looking to receive. Yet since we are leading with our ego, we cannot receive. We believe that if we do not open ourselves we will not be exposed. We measure what we give, to convince ourselves that we are loving, but we are not giving, we are merely demonstrating because our heart is not involved, we are not letting anyone in, and we are not giving freely. Our partner sees that we appear to love but the feeling of openness is not there. Our partners sense that they are being tested and that acceptance is constantly conditional. A loving relationship requires a presumption of trust. Without the presumption of trust there can be no freedom and without freedom to be oneself, there can be no exchange of love. When we are protecting ourselves from being hurt, or being betrayed, we are never being there, never present in the moment or in the relationship because we are always watching for signs. Always ready to run or to attack first. So we can’t feel that the other person loves us, not because they don’t, but because we don’t trust being loved and so, we do not allow ourselves to experience it.
Love when true comes from a place that is open and vulnerable. It comes from the soul. This is the place that we do not let anyone or any feelings near. Love cannot flow in if we are not open. So our emptiness just keeps on growing and since we are giving nothing comes from us that is not measured and noted on our ledger, nothing given to us is allowed any closer to our hearts than the balancing column on our ledger. Our hearts remain empty and we tell ourselves and others that is because we are not loved. We remain empty. Only need flows from emptiness. Although need feels like love to those who are needy, it only feels like a drain to those in to whom it is flowing. Love gives to its object – need drains from its object. When we allow the pain of our past to be program that guides our lives, what we will continuously get is the same outcome. It means that our automatic pilot says love hurts. Regardless of the mantras or affirmations we repeat, the program is the program, don’t give until you are certain, don’t open up until you have a guarantee, don’t give more than you receive, and above all, don’t let down your guard. It does not matter what our conscious mind is saying, or what we think that we are giving, the moment that we feel vulnerable – the program runs and end result will be pain, caused not by the other person, but by our programmed belief that it is inevitable. So long as we believe in our subconscious that loving equals betrayal, or pain – our subconscious will ensure that we create this outcome. To feel joy and love we must be vulnerable and to be vulnerable means that we may also feel pain. The secret is that absence of feeling is as painful as any hurt that can be inflicted by others.
There is no way to avoid being hurt as long as we live. When we refuse to open ourselves for fear of more hurt, we are also locking the hurt that we have already experienced inside. This hurt is locked in the darkness and as anything positive flourishes in the light, anything negative flourishes in the dark. So we are not protecting ourselves only hurting ourselves. Pain can only be healed by love and forgiveness. As long as we live we will be trapped with our pain inside and the cure outside. There is no avoiding this. We can avoid loving but we cannot avoid living. Life does not allow us to hide; it finds us wherever we are.
It is imperative that we experience life with every fiber of our being. We must embrace every chance that we are given to feel. What we can do is avoid expectations of life, or of love. Each time something comes into our lives that has the ability to bring us an emotional experience we must embrace it. We have to understand that it will enrich us and increase our capacity for love. However, we cannot hold on to it. Allow the experience to be lived for the moment without strings attached to it or expectations of tomorrow. If it is still there and it is still good tomorrow, we should experience it all over again. If it is not there anymore we cannot think in terms of what we lost, only in terms of what we have had. The love that we give becomes a part of the giver; it becomes a part of the fiber of our being. It is ours forever.
I have been loved, I have been left, and I have lost and found again. Yet my life would not be as rich as it is has been had I not been open to the possibilities of being hurt as well as being loved.
We are here to experience. As long as we live we will experience all sides of all things. To everything there is a season under Heaven. While we are here we are to experience all of the seasons in our lives. These experiences are what living is all about. Each person, each situation that comes into our lives is a gift as well as a lesson. Who we are today is the sum total of these gifts and lessons. These experiences make up our colors.
Yet what we must understand at all times is that it is all experience, and all part of our journey. I am who I am, that I am, regardless of how someone else experiences me. If I make a mistake, I experience that mistake, I never become that mistake and I must never be afraid to start again because we are made as much from the times that we fall as from the times that we get up.
We all need love, and to avoid it because we are afraid of getting hurt is sentencing ourselves to a lifetime of pain. We must immerse ourselves in each experience, but detach ourselves from the outcome. It does not matter whether or not something will last, we must be grateful that it is here now. We don’t even know how long we will want to stay. What matters is that something is giving our lives extra color and extra meaning today.
There is no such thing as failure. We do not have the information to determine if traveling this path that we choose was meant to lead to our destination, or if the traveling of it is the destination. We will always be rewarded, sometimes the pot of gold is not on the other side of the rainbow – sometimes it is the rainbow. Somehow, we have to except that it is all right, every direction is the right direction. We always end up where we are supposed to, and with what we are supposed to have. The thing is that unless we are open and our hearts are available, we usually miss the best views and overlook the greatest gifts. It is like the joke about the man whose house was flooded, who believed that his faith was in God. A police boat came by to rescue him, and he refused because he was waiting for God. Neighbors on a raft came by to rescue him and he refused because he was waiting for God, finally a helicopter came by to rescue him and again he refused because he was waiting for God. When he ultimately died, and faced God with the burning question of why God did not save him, God replied, “I sent a boat, a raft, and a helicopter – what more could you ask for?
We must open to each day as it comes, not as a continuation of the last, but as a new beginning pregnant with new possibilities that we must be open to take advantage of. We are co-creators with the Universe by its’ design. If we do our part, the Universe will do its part. If we do nothing the Universe will not stop throwing us balls, but if we treat them all as bombs and duck – we will never know what we could have.
Remember that it does not matter what happens to us in our lives, or even what we experience, we are always passersby. For example, when someone succeeds they may be called a success by the world, but they do not become a success. We are always in the process of succeeding sometimes we are on the top and sometimes we are on the bottom, but as long as we keep moving we are succeeding. Therefore if one fails, they do not become a failure, for most every person who has succeeded has also failed. Yet we immediately identify ourselves with outcome of each experience. The sentence of our lives ends where we place the period. We can place it where we fell, or where we rose. Or, we can know that there will never be a period, only an occasional comma so long as we are open to life.
We see ourselves and many times each other not as who we really are but as the product of our last experience. So long as we do this we withdraw from life for fear of being a failure of losing our success or losing a love, but in truth, there never is a last experience.
I lose almost everything that I put my hands on, that does not make me a loser, it simply means that I am learning, maybe the hard way, that what can be lost is not worth holding on to. I could give up, but life has too many surprises for me to do that. And so, I try harder, and often lose harder, but I feel like a great success because my only responsibility, my only success lies in my doing, in my effort, in my willingness to be the product of this moment and not of the past. If God wanted me to catch the ball, I would catch it – so God must want me to reach for it, and as long as I do, I am fulfilling my purpose successfully. And I know that God did not put me on the earth to be loved, I came from God and so my cup is already full, I know that my challenge is to see how much of that eternal fountain of love placed within my heart I can spread in the world. Being hurt is one of the most important parts of living. Pain expands our capacity to feel, to be filled with love, not from man but from God. The more we are filled the more we can give and the more we give the more we are filled. We find, in the end, that we can never be hurt because we loved too much, only because we expected too much. Love with all of your heart and all of your soul, and expect nothing. Give live the best that you have, and better that best each time, and expect nothing. Live life in this way, and you will never suffer. But you will also never be empty but always full, always a success, and always satisfied. We can describe life spiritually in many ways, but in the end, we are here to learn one thing and that is to love, and we learn that by facing reasons and challenges to our willingness to love. If we can love through all of the hurt that life throws at us, then we rise above hurt protected, not by the love given to us by others, but by the love given to all by ourselves.
And so, when all else fails, love, love with abandon, love without condition, love so much that it fills your entire life. You will not only change our own life, but you will be a part of changing the world.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

BECOMING COMFORTABLE WITH CHANGE


Change has neither thought nor action, because it is in the state of absolute quiet and inactivity, and when acted on, it immediately penetrates all things. If it were not the most spirit-like thing in the world, how can it take part in this universal transformation? (Confucianism. I Ching, Great Commentary 1.10.4)


To be prepared for life is to be comfortable with change. It isn’t change itself that makes us uncomfortable. We are not afraid when we decide to change our homes, or change our minds. The change that we are afraid of is the change that comes from outside of us. It is not change that we fear it is the loss control over our lives.

This is what change means to us. We have come to believe that things should happen a certain way, that life should be lived a certain way. Children need consistency. Everyone needs consistency. Consistency stands for dependability. Yet the consistency that is needed is not material it is spiritual. it is truth.

Children need truth, as we all do. Sometimes the truth hurts our feelings, sometimes it makes us feel uncomfortable, but in the end it gives us something to trust. Regardless of how it feels, the truth is sturdy and strong, solid beneath our feet. It gives us a place where we can go back to, a place that we can count on in the midst of this changing world.

For so long we have lived our lives based on appearances. We have smiled though our hearts were breaking. Living our lives in houses that we could not afford to maintain appearances. Our Society has become so dependent upon these illusions that when they fail to keep their forms we become afraid. I was speaking to my stockbroker the other day and I mentioned the recent market crash. He corrected me and said that it was an adjustment. That is really true. Life is in a state of adjustment now. Things around us are not crazy they are real. The illusions that we have been so dependent upon cannot be maintained. In order to have consistency in our lives we must accept consistent change.

Life will never be as it was because it was not real. We lived our lives based not upon what was truth but upon what worked. If it worked, it was truth. If enough people believed it then it worked and if it worked it was truth. Now all of our beliefs have been questioned because nothing seems to work. Nothing working simply means that nothing is staying the same. As much as we realize that we never step into the same river twice, we still believe that there are things that can be guaranteed.

As children we all held a picture of what our lives would be like when we grew up. Reaching our teens and early twenties we either solidified this picture or developed a new one more in line with the world around us. This picture, whatever it was represented fulfillment for us. This was real. For most of us, this picture of happiness was refined as we grew older, not to a more perfect image of our own wants and needs but a more perfect image of the ideals according to our family or society. Television contributed to our picture of what reality was supposed to be.

All of those unwritten rulebooks that served the generations that lived before were burned in the sixties. The reality that existed before was torn to shreds during the sixties. The roles of men and women, the roles of government, and any form of authority were to be forever changed by the sixties generation. The rules were permanently and irrevocably destroyed. From that time on the mass consciousness could never trust those rules again. What we had accepted as real did not exist anymore. The problem for all of us living today is that the rules were never rewritten. We have since been lost, and brought into this world children who are also lost. All of us have nothing to draw from that we can trust. No consistent reality. We have lived in a world where we have nothing that we can trust. There are no rules that are proven to be trustworthy.
For us, the reality that was in place for generations is now only a fairy tale. We know what once was happiness, in terms of what we should want for our lives, but we don’t know how to get it, and if we do, we don’t know how to trust it anyway. Few of us really know what we want because the world has become hazy, foggy.

Now we must become comfortable with ourselves. The Universal agreements that were holding our facts in place are no longer working. We must find the truth within ourselves and see that it is only within that truth that we are safe. When we are flowing with life it is not moving past us. When we embrace change as growth it does not rock our worlds. Change is not sudden it is constant.

When something seems to happen suddenly it is because we have resisted its coming for so long that the pressure has built up and finally broken through. We are constantly in a state of change from moment to moment and that is evolution. Nothing stays the same that is real. However dealing with change on a personal level and on a societal level is a process. The first step in the process is to see the truth to see that things the way that they are do not work any longer. Once we see the truth we become shaken. After we are shaken, we begin to do everything in our power to recreate the lie, to hold on to the way that it was or the way that we want it to be.
The problem is that once we really know the truth we cannot maintain the lie. When the illusion falls apart for the last time we accept it. This acceptance brings peace. This peace brings power. It is the truth that does not change and the one that we must seek, that truth is our faith in God, and the workings of His Universe.

Anything that does not change does not continue. We must stop thinking of change as different than growth. There is no difference; change is only another word for growth. Embrace change, because it means that we are living. Life flows like water. What is not real will not survive. We can’t be hard on ourselves. We do not find the changes in our lives comfortable because we do not accept that change is a process, and that acceptance is also a process and the time that it takes is very individual. It never takes too long or happens too fast, it happens the way it should for each individual.

When we have a strong center, and a strong core we are not affected by change. When we have faith in God and in the Universe we have freedom and security in the material world. Change becomes flow, because we see and acknowledge and even honor its purpose. Although we live on this planet and within our own lives we are always also living above. Change becomes merely the train that we ride on in order for us to reach our ultimate destination.

Monday, May 12, 2008

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTION

There is no such thing as a fact; all that exists is a perception. Even a fact would be irrelevant in one’s life it one did not perceive it as such.

How we perceive a situation determines a different reaction and each reaction creates a different outcome. A perception can ruin our lives, and allow opportunities to pass us by. Another can take us to incredible new possibilities. No one remembers how many times we fall only how many times we rise. If we perceive ourselves as being victims we will be victimized.

Lets us say that there is, in fact, an objective reality. It would make very little difference unless it was somehow able to pierce through all subjective realities because our actions are subjectively driven. Let’s say that two people are dating and one is very jealous. The other partner goes to luncheon interview with a man in a position to offer a great employment opportunity, the opportunity of a lifetime. The lunch meeting is in a restaurant that is within a hotel. The jealous lover happens to see the two of them enter the hotel lobby, of course they are heading to the restaurant, but that is not what the jealous partner sees. The jealous partner waits outside for them to exit, and attacks the potential employer. The relationship ends and the jealous lover believes that his partner cheated on him. A person goes to a job interview and the man doing the interview has had a very difficult day, he just caught his lover cheating on him (so he believes) the first applicant enters the office and immediately assumes that the expression on the interviewer’s face means that he took an immediate dislike to him and doesn’t even attempt to sell himself because he believes that he lost the position as soon as he walked in the door. The next applicant, seeing the expression of the interviewer’s face decides to take his obvious mood as a challenge and begins his interview asking concerned questions about the interviewer’s day. Because this applicant did not perceive the interviewer’s expression as a reflection of his qualifications, he handled to interview in a way that landed him the position.

Only the Universe knows all of the facts. All that we will ever know is what we perceive to be the facts and even that perception is subject to change along with all other perceptions. Our perceptions will determine our actions or reactions to any given situation. Things appear the way the majority believes them to be. The truth, as we know it, is not based on reality it is based on consensus. An observation is relative to the perception of the observer.

Every opportunity in life is open to you if you perceive it as your opportunity. If you perceive a wall to be a dead end, you will turn back and allow it to prevent your passage. If you perceive it merely as an obstacle you will get a ladder and climb over it. Regardless of what situation you are in, there are those who will perceive it as better than theirs and those who will perceive it as worse. There will be those who perceive a situation as a beginning and those who perceive it as an end. If we want to change our lives we have to change our perception of them.

There is a story about a man who had two sons. One son was always happy one was never happy. So the father decided one Christmas to give the son who was never happy every possible toy imaginable. The other son he gave nothing but horse manure. When he went into the room of the son who was never happy, he found the boy sitting on the floor looking very sad. When he asked why the boy said that with so many toys there would never be enough room to play. When he went into the room of the son with the horse manure, he found the boy smiling and singing with a shovel in his hand just shoveling away. When the father asked his son why he was so happy he said, “With all of this manure there must to be a pony.”

People, who are truly happy, seem to illuminate peace. We may find that they have nothing more to be happy about than we have. On the surface it may seem that they have even less. Sometimes it may seem to us that they live in a fool’s paradise, but how foolish can one be who lives in paradise? I have had many losses and disappointments in my life. I have a friend who was constantly telling me that I am lucky. I believed that she was saying that because somehow she chose not to acknowledge all of the obstacles that I had to overcome. But finally she explained to me that she saw me as lucky because I faced each obstacle as an opportunity and so I was able to flow with life without so much suffering. I always said that if this is where I am, it is where I am meant to be, and there is something here for me to receive.

Those of us who amass large sums of money, huge holdings in real estate, diamonds, furs, cars, all of the emblems of wealth and or fame, do so because they perceive a world in which ones value is based upon these things, without them one is nobody, worthless. Living in this perceived reality is an enormous amount of work, because one always needs more just be remain good enough because in the material world, that bar is constantly rising, today’s penthouse is tomorrows basement, and so today’s person of worth is tomorrows worthless person. This is why we do not own what we have, but what we have owns us, so long as we believe that it in any way defines us.

Regardless of what anyone says, a conscious person, in a world of suffering caused primarily because of poverty. The only reason for a person with even a modicum of compassion to cling to wealth is because it holds his identity. Today, having so much more than we need while so many have so much less than they need to survive is like walking around with a fur coat made of pelts that are still dripping blood. Only the loss of identity – which could seem like the loss of our own lives, could allow us this caveat to perceiving the suffering around us. We are able to justify even to ourselves, whatever we do or do not do, based upon the need of our egos to feel safe. And if the ego believes that wealth and power are all that keeps it safe, that perception will allow us to justify what we could never justify directly to our souls. This is the same as the man before could not just beat up a man and leave the woman who turned his world, unless, his perception justified his actions.

We move through the physical world, but we live in a world of perception. One person perceives himself or herself as poor because that person has only one bathroom. Someone else perceives that same person as rich because he or she actually has a bathroom in their home instead of an outhouse. Someone else perceives the person with the outhouse as rich because instead of an outhouse he only has a hole in the ground.

We cannot change our lives until we know exactly how we perceive them. Changing our physical world will do nothing for us because the physical world is only the backdrop against which we live our lives. Our story as well as our history is played out within our perceptions. Once we truly understand how we perceive our world we will automatically understand that there are also other ways. Each way of perceiving any situation or any experience has its own unique set of possibilities and choices.

Happy people see beauty in things that unhappy people don’t see. It is not because they would not see them as beautiful. It is because they do not see them at all. Happy people find what the Buddhist call, “the bless in the mess”. They do not notice what is lost they notice what is found. I remember a job I had that made my life so miserable that I quit. Having no job my grandmother made my home life so uncomfortable that I went out to look for a job on my birthday. Thanks to that first job ending and my grandmothers nagging, my next job lead to my eventually starting my own business making close to one million dollars a year.
I quit my job without thinking I did not take the time to feel sorry for myself. I did not allow myself the time to engage in a long period of self-pity or self-destructive behavior. I did not see the loss of my job as the end so I did not miss that opportunity. But I have to add that opportunity is a train that runs twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. It may take determination to find the station, but the only way we miss it is if we perceive it as non-existent if it is not where we expect it to be.

Christ said, Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]" (Gospel of Thomas)

We can’t change what is, but since what is has probably never been seen by the human eye, all that we have to do is change what we perceive it to be and we will change the path that lay before us, obstacles become challenges, and we no longer seek until we quit, we seek until we find. Life is a series of experiences, and whether our lives we wonderful adventures, or tortuous hell is only a matter of perception, it is a matter, not of life itself but of our experience of it. What we see, determines how we respond, and how we respond determines our life’s experience.



Thursday, May 08, 2008

How to Survive being Abandoned

The first man I fell truly, madly, deeply for was the first man who broke my heart. When I met him, I believed that I had found my forever. I would not let anyone tell me otherwise, though many tried. He saw me and loved me for who I was and that was all that mattered to me.

It began to deteriorate after about nine months. I begun compromising myself for the sake of keeping the relationship going. After a year he was not the man that I fell in love with, but what was so much more painful was that I was not the woman he fell in love with. I was not even the woman who fell in love with him.

The Answer

To why I lost you

Lies in the place

I left me.

No one ever leaves a relationship before its expiration date. I don’t care if it the immediate cause is another woman, another man, or just a better life. The relationship had already reached a point of diminishing return. Most of us have a tendency to stay in a relationship long after it has become moldy and begun to stink up our lives. We stay for many reasons, but the greatest reason is the emotional investment. It is like investing in a stock. We invest in a great stock and as it rises in value we increase our investment. Then it starts going down, little by little. We hold – knowing that it will go up again; we hope that it will go up again at least enough to break even. We don’t sell because until we sell, we don’t realize the loss.

In a relationship, the initial investment is time is very low in comparison to the enormous return of happiness. We invest our love, our dreams, our beliefs, then our trust and commitment. If it begins to lose the value that it once had, we start increasing our investment by over-compensating, giving more of ourselves, giving all of ourselves, and in the end, giving up ourselves. When that does not work, and the signs of a failed relationship begin to show to the world – we up the ante by investing our pride, and as a last resort our integrity. Then one party finds a way out – finds a way to recoup some of his or her emotional investment through another woman or man. Someone who will re-establish the value, the self worth that we feel we have lost through having over invested in a relationship that has nothing left to return. But this does not happen out of the blue, if it’s an affair, it is kept secret while the other partner still believes both are equally vested, even if they are vested in a sinking stock. Yet, it’s not equal. One partner is secretly siphoning off his share of the emotional investment and putting it into another stock. This doesn’t have to be another person, it could be a plan to see the world, join an ashram, it doesn’t matter. One partner had found a way to begin rebuilding his emotional portfolio while the other still believes they are in it together. One partner has his entire being immersed in the relationship while the other has been quietly extricating herself. Then – when the departing partner feels secure enough that the new investment will assist in recouping what was lost. He or she abruptly – in the eyes of the partner being left behind – closes the account. All of the emotional losses fall on the partner who remained.

By the time a relationship comes to an end through the actions of one of the partners, the only thing left the investment is its definition. The one who was left behind believed that, as long as there was a shell and two participants, there was hope, and, even more importantly, believed that he had nothing left to leave with – everything was spent, was invested. A relationship ends when it has stopped growing, the only reason anything stops growing is that it is dead. The only thing that happens when one party ends the relationship is, the loss is realized by the partner left behind. By the time one party leaves a relationship the only thing left to do is bury the rotting corpse. There is no bond left, there is no shared vision, no shared desire, no shared hopes - nothing left to save or to hold onto.

It is devastating to be left. This is true even if most of the time we can no longer stand to see our partner’s face, because by this time the lack of return is equal to our diminished expectations. By this time our only hope is that our partner is willing to settle for as little as we are. It hurts to be left, and when it happens we just want that person back, it doesn’t matter if they are mean to us, or abusive to us, or ignores us, or humiliate us, we just want him back. But if we stop to think about what we are willing to endure to have that person return, we will realize that the things that we are now willing to endure are things that we would never have considered suffering for anyone. Of course, those were things that we would never do when we still had self-respect. And it feels very much like that leaves with our former other half. The reason that we are willing to humiliate ourselves is not because we want that person back. It is because we want ourselves back. We don’t want the person back who left us; we just want to be unleft. We don’t want to feel like someone worthless enough to be left behind, it’s not about the one who leaves us – it’s about what we feel that we are left with.

A funny thing happened to me on my way to, “Losers Anonymous”. I heard a song that had one line in it that said, “Every cloud don’t have a silver lining”. It is funny, but that changed my life. I realized that he was, or at least had become an a—hole, and there was no silver lining in this cloud. It wasn’t the loss of him, or even of us that I was mourning so deeply, it was the belief that I could have made it work because it was workable. It was workable because every cloud has a silver lining. It was workable because I believe that ‘all you need is love’. So, if I had love then I was just the biggest loser in the world because nothing else could explain my standing here alone. But that song made me realize that if something has a limited shelf life, like my relationship had, I did not lose it, break it, mess it up, or ruin it.

I had made a huge emotional investment in the relationship. But the only way that I would be forced to realize a loss, was if I still believed that there was something left for him to offer me. And I really didn’t – we left each other long before he left the relationship. So, what I lost was the part of me that I invested in the relationship and if I could now gain insight and growth, I would not only recoup my investment, but I could turn a profit, because the stock of Me, Inc. had risen remarkably. Whenever someone walks out, they are doing us a favor because for us, there just is no more water in that well. Those we love may die, and cause us to feel a temporary sense of separation, but anyone who we truly love will never leave us in spirit. They move on to what is next for their growth, and allow us to do the same, and all in the spirit of the love that we shared.

Regardless of what we tell ourselves in the moment while we are looking at our joint plans shattered on the floor around us, we knew that we had nothing more to share with the one who left long before the door closed behind him. And after the pity party, and the hangover – comes the enlightenment of a new and stronger sense of self-worth and an even greater sense of power than we ever had before the experience.

FOUND

In pain

I found strength

In lies

I found truth

In deceit

I found trust

In being lost

I found my way

And in rejection

I found myself.

 
My Zimbio
Top Stories