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.

The Tree of Knowledge

The fruit and the sap of a tree nourish our bodies, the leaves of the tree purify the atmosphere and the wood of the tree provides shelter for our bodies. Understanding these things is the beginning of the journey. This nourishment and shelter providing object is sufficient in itself to the common man, interested only in what is it and what does it do for him. Having found nourishment and shelter for his body, and cleansing for his atmosphere, his journey is complete.

The Scientist goes one step beyond the ‘what’ to the, ‘how’. The man of science must seek the answer to how this is accomplished, how the tree provides the fruit, the leaves, the bark, and the wood. Because in knowing this it can insure that earth will be sustained. So, the scientist digs down into the earth and finds roots then following the root system it discovers that the tree is nourished through the soil where it derives its nutrients and water supply. Now science is done, it has accomplished its task and explained how. The material world can be sustained.

Yet there is more to the tree and to the world than what is physical. To truly understand the tree we must venture to the next level. Here the seeker searches beyond what is physical to what is metaphysical, and beyond how it works, to, ‘what is its source?’ The seeker must search for the seed, the unseen, because the seed cannot be seen, only the roots, the tree, the leaves and the fruit can. The seed is no longer visible as a seed. It is now only visible as a tree; for it has transformed itself into a tree so it could grow to become that which could feed the fire that warms, and produce the fruit that nourishes, the leaves that cleanse, and the wood that shelters. Finally it will return to the soil as thousands of other seeds which will begin their journeys nourished by all of the experiences that it has completed. In this knowledge the Seeker is satisfied, knowing the Source.

The Mystic seeks the answer to why the seed, already containing the tree within itself, desires to journey at all. In his journey he finds that the Source is all that it creates, and multiplies itself through its creations. Like a candle whose light is not diminished regardless of how many other candles it lights, the seed that was one, has become thousands and always remained one. It experiences itself as it multiplies, it nourishes itself with its experiences and it returns to itself with increasing brilliance. In this knowledge, the circle of benefit is complete and the Mystic is satisfied.

God’s Bible, is as simple as a tree.

Relationships and Irreconcilable Differences

Irreconcilable differences begin to accrue as soon as a person forgets that being entrusted with someone’s trust, love, self-esteem, growth, and happiness is a privilege and not a birthright. It is a precious gift to love and be loved.

Once we give something a name, we have given it a definition. Once we have defined it, it no longer has room to grow. What we call a relationship and what we call marriage must grow to meet who we have evolved into. When my first husband and I returned home from our marriage I did not recognize him. He had become a ‘husband’, which bore no resemblance to the man that I had been engaged to. I, on the other hand, did not know how to become a ‘wife’. And, I have to add that the husband he became was his father, a man that I would never have married. So even if I had known how to become a wife, I would have had to become his mother to make the institution function. We did not form a relationship, we entered an institution with strictly defined roles, at least, the ones that worked for my husband.

When two people enter into a committed relationship they create an extension of themselves, a midpoint where they unite. So, the relationship is not a thing, or an institution as marriage is called, but a place where lovers join, share, love and grow together. It is the third entity. It is the form of the bond through which their love flows, through which they share themselves and experience each others growth from that sharing and that bonding. This does not describe most relationships and it does not describe most marriages. The reason begins in childhood.

Children have their first and most important lessons in relationships in their family homes. They learn by watching their parents with each other, they learn by watching their parents with themselves and their siblings, and they learn through their interaction with their siblings. One of the first challenges that we are faced with when we enter into an adult relationship is that it is destructible. The relationship with our parents and siblings is indestructible, for better or for worse – they are always there. Even if we run away, they are still always there till death do we part. The relationship between parents and children is the only relationship that is relatively certain to be till death. Yet, somewhere in our subconscious minds we form, and act based upon a belief that a few words repeated before an official creates the same unbreakable bond. It does not and it has not for a very long time.

Divorce statistics show that eighty percent of marriages that end in divorce do so because of irreconcilable differences. Any relationship, including marriage will last as long as the needs of those involved are being met. This makes sense, but understanding those needs, grasping the importance of those needs and realizing how the survival of a marriage can hinge on the smallest thing is a little more difficult. This is because the smallest slight, or cruel word said in a fight never leaves the relationship. It never leaves the memory of the one who was slighted – never – ever, no matter what the person says. Put a person under hypnosis and you will find that throughout that person’s entire life there was not a leaf that blew by that is not remembered. We are, for better or for worse, memory keepers. No one knows for sure where all of the memories go, but what is a fact is that if the incident is repeated, the original one flies out to meet it and grow.

They say God is in the details, well, a relationship is strengthened or weakened by the details, the little tiny details and sometimes no one is aware of its condition until it snaps. One partner says, “What did I do”, the other partner says, “I don’t know, just a lot of things”. It is just a lot of little things. So many people think that the work ends when you say “I do”. This may be when we stop working, but it is also the time when the things that must be worked on begin to accumulate.

From the beginning of any relationship, we need to understand that if we have, ‘fallen in love’, then we are under the influence of a heavy intoxicant, maybe the heaviest. We are not in our right minds. The more that we struggle to see beyond our need for the next fix of the other person’s energy, the better chance we have at success. Clarity is the most important thing in having a successful relationship, make your needs clear – especially to yourself. My hand is a zillion times more mine than my husband will ever be. When it comes to another human being, we can’t take the word ‘mine’ too literally. No one abandons a relationship that makes them happy. No one cheats on a relationship that fulfils his or her needs. No one can be held down, held back, or controlled indefinitely. The only way to guarantee that the one you love is going to be there is to seek to make that person feel important, appreciated, loved, and most of all respected.

There are always two complete individuals and the relationship. The part of you that enters the relationship is the part of you who thinks first of the other – first my love, then us, then me. If you do this there will be times when you sacrifice what you want for your partner, but there will be equal times when your partner does the same for you. You don’t need to be in a relationship to worry about yourself, you can do that alone.

Forget about being right and never even consider winning. In a relationship if one person wins the fight, both lose the war. Sometimes we want our partners to think the same way as we do about everything. Only, if they really begin to do that we begin to feel that the person we fell in love with has been possessed by a member of the Stepford community. And sometimes if they don’t, we fear that we will lose our partner to someone who thinks the way that he or she does. If you are on opposing sides of an issue, respect the other’s right to see things from a different perspective than yours. If you have left your ego, and your baggage outside, an explanation, or saying, “These are the reasons that I feel this way…” may or may not convert the other person, but at least that person will have an understanding of why your beliefs are what they are and understanding in itself should make honoring your right to your beliefs easier.

Some beliefs, often religious or political are never going to become one. However, they are deeply charged with emotion and should not be criticized, discussed perhaps, but never critically. If there are little things that your partner needs that to you seem ridiculous – honor them. You will have you own share of ridiculous needs to be honored.

At some point in a relationship we realize that we do not want to continue without the other person. Not too long after that we have our first fight and realize that this unbelievable, one of a kind, made in heaven relationship is not indestructible. This causes that monster fear to raise its head. We become possessive, and jealous. At which point we remarkably do everything possible to alienate the person that we feel we can’t live without. We forget the most important thing, for some reason that can be articulated, this other person decided that he or she wanted to commit to us. What is important here is that whatever made that person, come to that decision was something about who we were, and what we did. It was never a specific thing, it was a mode of behavior, a way of being – what comes from the heart that beats inside of us. If you love someone and want to keep that person by your side till death do you part, be who you were when that person fell in love with you, and even more, when that person chose you to commit to.

We want to go to heaven but we don’t want to die. We want a guarantee that our partner will never leave us, but we don’t want to do the work to make them stay. If you are not sure as to what you should do, or if you have been fighting for so long that you have forgotten, ask your partner this, “What was it that made you want to spend your life with me?” “What can I do to make you want a life with me as badly as you did in the beginning?” This is not asking who else you should become, or, who else you should act like, it is asking what part of who you are that you have not been lately, or you could be more of.

A Little Story

They stood at the edge, all of them this time, staring at Him, in awe, in wonder, in pain, and asked, "Why?" This is not the why of a mother, who lost her child, or the why of a grieving lover, or even the why of a dying man before his last breath, but the why of mankind lost, the why of mankind hopeless, and He answered:

When I lay dying on the cross, you watched, in pain, in horror perhaps, but you watched, what did you learn? Perhaps many things to pass down in words, that became no more than words recited in many different tongues, in many different ways not but lived? Did you live those words? No, you did not. And how many chances did you have to act, how many chances did you have to change? Do you remember the greatest sins?

You have ears, but refuse to hear, and you have eyes but refuse to see? You learned nothing. You learned nothing through plagues. You learned nothing through holocausts. You have learned nothing through every suffering body that I have inhabited since the cross, you chose not to see, you have decided that you are not your brother's keeper, you are selfish, you limit love by how it limits you. I hear not your cries for you heed neither my works, nor my suffering, my love does not touch you, do not ask now why God has forsaken you, ask why you have forsaken God. Should this Day of Judgment come? Is there a need for these admonitions? Look around you, look within your hearts - covered with indifference. Were I to say that I grant you one more chance, what would you then do? I tell you now, that you would forget this moment and go back to your selfish petty lives.

You would continue to praise my name, not for my words, but for my appearance. I am the homeless man on the street that you walk over. I am the AIDS victim that you scorn. I am the innocent mother and child who is murdered because I was there when you dropped a bomb. I am the child who is aborted by a mother only because you refuse to get involved and give help. Instead, you picket; you make noise, but do not inconvenience your lives to save me, to nurture me, to welcome me into your own home. When you turn away from the earth, for greed, you turn away from me, when you turn away from the hungry; you turn away from me. I am not only Love, but I am those who need love. I am not a religion – I am the Word. I am the Life that the Father has breathed into every living creature on the earth. I am the Blood that runs through the veins, and the heart that beats with the sounds of life in all beings. I am neither to be worshipped, nor to be preached. I am to be lived – as I lived and died for you. Why should you be saved? When I said on the cross, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do", I sought forgiveness for your ignorance - that ignorance, is a luxury, that you no longer have.

There is enough food on this planet for all to be fed. There is enough money on this planet for all to have shelter and abundance. Why is there starvation? Why is there hunger? Surely, it is not because God does not give. It is because no sooner can God provide than the greedy consume. What do you need? How can you measure your worth by the money in the bank, the millions that you may amass? Do you know what you are amassing?

It is not money that you amass, no, it is the bodies of the starving children, for whom that money was intended by God to feed. Perhaps if poverty were as visible to you, as it is to God, it would cause you as much pain as it does Him. Yet, you move to neighborhoods where you do not have to see, and where you do not have to hear. God does not have that luxury. In Gods neighborhood, all suffering is seen, and all cries are heard. How much is enough for you? No one deserves more than another does; no one earns more than another in the eyes of the Lord. There is no extra until not one child goes hungry. Keep your money in your bank, and keep your time for yourself, but do not look to God to cure the ills of your world. The only ill in your world is your greed.

There will not be salvation for you until you stop blaming, stop judging, and begin pointing the finger at yourselves. Search within for the courage to Love at any cost, to accept that yes, you are not only your brothers keeper, but you are your brother, for your brother and you are God.

Save yourselves, save your souls for this day will surely come, and not by God's doing, but by your own. Remember it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Do as you choose, this is the planet of choice, but take responsibility for what you do. Fool yourself, but do not try to fool the Lord. God created man in His own image, stop trying to recreate God in yours.

Lessons Not Learned

“Look at yourself, Look at what you are and measure it against what you imagine you are and what your conscience tells you, you must be. Be shocked, America! Be stunned, be overwhelmed by what you see, and feel at the center of your being the purifying fire of remorse.” Frederick Douglass

This is a small world. And perhaps it is the shrinking of the world that will ultimately bring us the era of peace that has been prophesied; it is, after all, this small world which has brought us to the entrance of war.

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?” Frederick Douglass

You see, this shrinking world, has dragged the poor, the slaves, and the under privileged into the ‘grand illuminated temple of ‘liberty’, a temple into which they may only enter carrying a tray of food to serve, a broom to sweep, a new brick to lay, or through the medium of television. While the wealthy are spared constant images of poverty flashing into their homes over the airwaves —the poor are not afforded the same courtesy. The wealthy have claimed ownership of the world’s resources. Lush fruit trees grow in the back yards of the poor but they may only labor in the fields collecting the harvest, they may not eat of it. The poor go hungry and children die of starvation even in the wealthiest country in the world.

The ability to communicate and to see what goes on in every country affords the oppressed a view of lives which they would not have otherwise known, and it is through those images of wealth that the poor are faced with the clear reflection of their own poverty. The world is overburdened by mans inequity and mans psyche is overburdened with pain. People see that there are opportunities they do not share, and yet, those opportunities are advertised as basic human rights. They see that all they need to advance in life is a good education, but they will almost never be afforded that education.

Now, the technological advances that have turned an entire planet into a neighborhood where to wealthy unknowingly parade their wealth before their neighbors who have nothing. Every revolution on the planet has been seeded by this. I have heard many people who had grown up poor, before the world became so small, say that they did not feel poor or feel badly about being poor because everyone else was in the same position. It is when the poor must endure not only their suffering but the constant exposure to those who are greedy and wasteful that the poor, feeling a loss of value, rebel against those who hoard the wealth. Without a sense of self-worth, without a sense of value, man finds little left to live for and often is vulnerable or unconsciously seeks out a cause to die for that in some way will give value to their having lived.

We live in a world of uncomfortable neighbors who, were it not for technology, would not be so forced into acknowledging the circumstance of the other. Along with creating animosity that had not existed before, between nations and people who really would not have known each other in such intimate terms, it has also created a way to kill each other with a minimum of effort and a maximum of emotional detachment. Yet, there is something else, something much more important that the shrinking world has made manifest. It has forced mankind to come face to face with its own hypocrisy. This hypocrisy is no less evident in a country whose Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This country can state this in its declaration of independence while at the same time supporting slavery and the annihilation of its native peoples. In an industrialized and technologically advanced world it is necessary to have a workforce that is at least minimally educated. Because of this necessity, those who once suffered oppression without the education which would awaken their awareness of being oppressed, are now informed of the inequity in which they exist.

The ignorance which once shielded the division of classes is being technologically erased and so society can no longer sustain the division. We live in the information age, the age of knowledge and knowledge breeds discontent. What you know can hurt everyone. Without ignorance, the hypocrisy of inequality is exposed. Without knowledge, those with vision can only dream, but, with knowledge, those with vision can and do change the world. Ignorance veils the truth, but once exposed, the truth does set us free.

"We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world." Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is an inevitable truth that whatever we use to selfishly build ourselves up, will one day be used to tear us down. At whatever moment we make the choice to use any of God’s gifts to advance one over another, we have secured the weapon of our own demise. What goes around comes around, what is sent out will return. The technology that the few have used to covet the resources of the earth which belong to all is that same technology which is exposing this misuse and forcing mankind to look at what we are, as Frederick Douglass said, and measure it against what we imagine ourselves to be.

Technology has made secrets more difficult to keep and it will slowly but surely make abuses profitless. Those who we have elected to govern us, have used our trust to place themselves in positions that change them from representatives of the people to representatives of only themselves. Ours has declined into a government that represents the interests of those that govern and not those who are governed. If those in congress voted for the people to have the same rights to health insurance and pensions that they themselves enjoy, then we would have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. At present, in the United States, we have a government of those in power, by those in power and for those in power.

We study history so that we do not repeat it. And yet, repeating it is all that we ever do - new set same play. When will we come to the understanding that we own nothing, we are entitled to nothing above that which every other human being on the planet is entitled. We are permitted the use of the earth’s resources so long as we understand and accept the responsibility of that use. When resources are limited they must be equally shared. History has shown us over thousands of years of wars, revolutions, and natural disasters that what we do not share will inevitably be taken away.

When AIDS was used to judge the lifestyles of homosexuals, it was loosed upon those who judged. We are waiting for Judgment Day, unable to see that it has been here for many years. The world looks more and more like a comic in the New Yorker magazine depicting Big fat pigs with cigars stepping on little ant sized people. Those who are the guiltiest of the injustices that are inherent in greed are distorting religion, particularly Christianity to justify their actions. How can anyone call themselves Christians and not live as Jesus Christ lived?

During his 40 days in the wilderness he was given a test. It is a test we are all given, particularly in the country. He could have had mansions and servants traveling the world in luxury but that was not the wealth that he chose, who could choose that wealth today and call themselves a Christian, maybe a Christian wanabe in some lifetime, but not a Christian. The basic tenet upon which almost every religion is built is that we are to love our brothers as ourselves, do unto other as we would have others do unto us. I have to believe that only by losing everything will those who hoard everything ever learn. That they do not see what they are doing because if they saw, they might change only to save what they have and not learn the lesson of giving.

“And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed." Isaiah 6:9-10

Many individuals on earth who share the dream of One World are joining together to reach out and aid those who are still in the dark. We are learning that our survival is intricately connected with the survival of everyone else on the planet because they are our neighbors, we are no longer a world — we are a neighborhood. One person cannot have a net worth of several billion dollars, while millions of children around the world starve to death. The world is now a neighborhood and those children are our neighbors’ children. If we do not protect our neighbors’ children, eventually it will be our children who need protecting, and we will be alone.

“A certain heathen came to Shammai and said to him, "Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Thereupon he repulsed him with the rod which was in his hand. When he went to Hillel, he said to him, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; all the rest of it is commentary; go and learn." Judaism. Talmud, Shabbat 31a

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert Einstein

Releasing our Baggage

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Empty the boat of your life, O man; when empty it will swiftly sail. (From the Dhammapada (aphorisms of the Buddha)

I was faced with a choice regarding the quality of the life that I would live. I could be unhappy; looking at the seemingly unending list of tragedies that seemed to enter my life, not to mention all of the great adversity that I myself invited. Or I could look at the fact that for every dollar I lost I found five dollars, and for every dollar that was stolen from me, I was given ten dollars. For each sadness there was greater joy. I could live the life of one who is miserable because for every win there is a loss, or as someone who is grateful because for every loss there is a win.

These are the decisions that I felt I had to make in order to turn a painful life in to a joyous one. During my dark night of the soul, my most painful time, I had to find a way to be happy and at peace regardless of the circumstances in my life or more importantly, in my history. I decided that I would not rely on life for my happiness. Basically I decided that because I had to go on through anything that came my way, for the sake of my family, I needed to take control of my present. I had to take control of the quality of my life, and the only way to do that was to refuse to allow my past experiences to dictate my living.

To take control of our lives is to begin eliminating the baggage that we carry with us from our past. It is this baggage; my sad childhood is one suitcase and within it are the complexes that were left with me from it. My bad marriage was another and within it was my feeling of being a failure as a woman. Rejection from my friends was another bag, which contained my feelings of self-loathing. All of this baggage seemed to have no bottom.

Each moment that I lived seemed to jump back into the suitcase that most resembled it. With all of that baggage, I literally could not go anywhere that I did not have clothes in my suitcases to fit. Since I carried those suitcases with me, I lived out of them. If I was looking for a man, I put on my abused woman outfit. If I was looking for a job, I put on my desperate worthless outfit. I could only venture in my life where I was equipped to go. That equipment was whatever clothes I had in my baggage. I only went into experiences; or rather I only related to experiences that I had from my past. I could dress for them. In other words I knew how to dress for them because I could relate them to my history and therefore I could relive them. In order for me to move forward, to begin fresh, I had to travel light. Let go of my past experiences and my past habits and come only with myself.

Our baggage limits us. We feel unable to avoid living out of the baggage that we carry. Only when we let it go, can we shop for new perceptions to live through. The key is to keep that wardrobe only so long as it fits where we are. When we move on, we leave it behind and take only what is necessary. What we take is us. We need to understand that each situation is different. Each situation is new. We need different perspectives, and different solutions. In order to truly realize the totality of each new experience, we need to start fresh. Once we learn to leave the past where it was appropriate, we will see each moment as it is. Our lives will be fuller because we are experiencing it as it happens. In order to truly release our past, and leave our baggage behind, we must come to terms with it. We must always close the past, not just walk away from it. We need to put it where it belongs intentionally.

We have to truly release ourselves from guilt and regret. Because when we come to the realization that perhaps, we are in some way responsible for the unhappiness that seems to follow us, we add the blame of carrying it to the other baggage that we are carrying.
So even when we read all of the steps that show us how to move forward, we add to our burdens that guilt, or the loss of self worth that we feel for not releasing those things that cause us pain. In this way we only cause ourselves more pain. It is essential to understand that everything that we did was OK. Everything is appropriate for the situation in which it was created. Our past actions and our past emotions are fine as long as we leave them where they belong.

Even if we fall backwards, or take a long time to stop, that is OK too. We have not done anything wrong because we cannot do anything wrong. Even when we act out of negative emotions or negative intentions we are still learning and still teaching lessons. So long as we are here we are in progress. God will not judge where we are or what we have done until we are finished and there is no more left to do. So long as we have breath in us, we have a chance. We are learning. As a child learns to speak, and says one of those cute things that are not exactly right, it is not wrong, it is all in the process of learning. We need to release ourselves, and go even further, we need to praise ourselves for acknowledging the need to change. We should praise ourselves for making the attempt. If we intend to grow, intend to improve, and intend to become better human beings, those intentions show that we are growing. They show that we are learning and becoming who our souls are striving to become. Just as we do when we graduate to a new grade, we need to take with us the knowledge gained, the lessons learned and leave the textbooks of our struggles behind.

One Size Fits All

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The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Jung, Carl, 1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist

What is necessary for life on earth? What is the one thing that without which there could be no life? The answer is, contrast. There could be no life without contrast. There could be no physicality without non-physicality. Being could not exist without the belief in non-being. One of the primary purposes of this journey is to experience contrast. We find who we are by seeing who we are not. We find where we are by understanding where we are not. Every contrast that we experience is a way for the soul to stretch itself and grow in knowledge of itself.

It is the same as a play, a movie, or even a novel. Ideally, in a play or a movie the actors, directors, writers, designers, as well as the audience are affected by contrast of the work or the characters to their own lives. We vicariously experience our fears, our possibilities, or our dreams, reflected in the lives and experiences that are depicted. The play or book allows us to walk, for a brief time, in shoes of others.

Incarnating into all races, religions, nations and economic levels enriches each soul as a story enriches the writer, the actor and the reader or viewer. There are as many individual roles to play – shoes to walk in as there are souls on the planet. Each one teaches us something unique. This is why no two individuals are the same. It is why our world contains such diversity. We will throughout our many incarnations, all have played as many parts is takes for each soul to realized that there is only One, and that is what we are a part of. That One is called by many names, but its essence is Love. Ultimately we learn that love does not distinguish, it does not discriminate or differentiate as it is said in the Bible, 1 John 4:7 (King James Version) “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”

We live our lives here on earth through our mythology, through archetypes. For us to have a hero, there must be a villain. To have a victor, we must have a victim. For one soul to experience itself as strong, it must play against another soul who experiences itself as weak. To believe in good, we must encounter what is believed to be evil. We experience every variation on a theme.

Each grouping that separates us has something that is unique to it, some experience that is uniquely shared only by those within that group, just as each person has qualities that make that person different from any other. Through the experience of many incarnations and many different perspectives the soul comes to understand that there are three hundred and sixty different angles of perception but regardless of the view from whichever angle you are in, there is still only one truth and that truth is understood only when you combine the perceptions of every possible angle. We learn that we must incorporate not eliminate.

Each nation, each tribe, each ethnic, religious, and racial group has, through the recorded history of the world, and even before our recorded history had its day in the sun. This is the way life works. Everything exists in cycles, a nation, or a group of people may be the ruling group for hundreds of centuries.

The goal is not for us to lose our differences. The goal is for us to accept and celebrate our differences. I cannot be me if you are not you. If we are the same, then I am not different and if I am not different then I am not I. If you and I are the same in every respect, then how can I be an individual? Many of us are repulsed by the idea of losing our identity. Our fear of death, even if we believe that we do not die, but become a part of God, is just that; merging into the identity of God and losing the identity of self.

We fear loss of individuality, yet, we hate and fear those who, being different are the very ones defining our uniqueness. We have chosen the earth as our schoolhouse because of our desire to feel that we are God. We seek to experience being the creator of our own lives. And so, we constantly create. We create children, works of art, technological advances, tools, ideas and so on.

The Source created us to experience itself as Loving and being Love and receiving Love. And through its creations, it experiences being – and grows richer. Through each experience that we have, the whole experiences itself. God created every species in the universe so as to experience every aspect of itself as a whole and as an individual. This experience is a Divine Gift, wherever we are in the picture.

Besides being influenced by the intent of the soul family, each soul is influenced by the aspect of experience through which it has chosen to incarnate. There are those who choose in this life to learn to master the material world through the lower senses, their journey is to be of the world. Others choose to be master over their lower senses and to rise above the material world, to be in it but no longer of it. Whatever area of crisis we choose to work through, material, emotional, mental, religious, or a varied mixture of each our goal is to learn about the meaning of Love in all of its faces.

Whichever mixture of challenges we choose will color the soul and its experiences here. It will color the way that each of us perceives our lives and also the experiences that we magnetize to us. The families through which we choose to enter will influence us by, imprinting on our lives and our vision the essence of the challenges we have chosen to grow through in this life and those carried over from those lives we consider as past.

Each particular mix, just like a recipe, will add a distinct flavor, a distinct aura to each individual. It makes our lives what they are in contrast to the lives of those around us. In addition to this is the joint experience that we choose to enter through race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin. Each of these elements will color our lives, but in a particular way that is unique to each us as it all combines with the particular soul qualities. Therefore even though we may contain the same ingredients as someone else, somehow when it mixes with all that we carried with us into this life, we still come out unique.

Look at the solar system and you must be immediately aware of what makes this world different. All of the colors made by the different bodies in our galaxy are joined together in our one planet. There is the blue planet, the yellow sun, the red planet, the orange planet, and then there is the earth, the planet where all shades of all colors stand brilliantly side by side, not poured into a bucket to form some single shade of mud, but together forming one planet that stands out among all the others not for its size, or its shape, but for the beauty of its uniqueness. If you were a soul floating through the galaxy passing all of the objects orbiting the sun you would have to say, “I want to go there”. It is alive with diversity. And with all of its color, and all of its diversity it still is one planet. One planet that is special because one size does not fit all.

In A Conscious Society Bling Bling Should be the New Fur

I remember walking down the street in my fur coat a few years back and having someone ask me if I knew how many minks died for my fur. I stopped wearing fur. I stopped because I did not need it, it was a luxury, it was a sign that I had made it – it was ego food. I understood the question. Now, with the world so small, and the suffering so great – so unavoidable – I wonder if we should not feel the same sense of responsibility that we feel for helpless animals, for helpless humans.

There was a time when your choices were beautiful sparkling diamonds or dull glass. It made some sense, if even in a superficial way, to want a diamond. But today, there are faux diamonds that cost a fraction of the cost and sparkle with equal brilliance – so one has to ask oneself why buy the diamond? What is it’s value in our world today? What if you have a ten thousand dollar diamond, trade it in for a one thousand dollar cubic zirconium and give the nine thousand dollars that you have left to buy mosquito nets for children in Africa? Then your diamond would have value., it would show much more than what you can afford to have, it would show what you are willing to give. Wouldn’t it be cool, rather than wearing a five thousand dollar blouse that says you are filthy rich, wearing a five-dollar tee shirt that says, “The money I planned to spend on a blouse is feeding a village in India”. How cool would you be?

Bling says to the world, “I am wearing this because I can afford it and I have nothing better to do with it than waste it on show”. Yes, it just does. No one can watch the homeless and displaced, the diseased and dying in this country and around the world and then spend thousands of dollars on things, which announce, “It’s about me”. Not today. Today we don’t need to spend thousands, millions of dollars on precious gems in order to sparkle. We can spend a fraction of that on semi-precious gems, give the rest to those in desperate need and not only sparkle from the gems, but glow from the heart. I believe that today it would be much more satisfying to wear something that doesn’t say “I have made it because I can afford to drip in diamonds” but something that says, “I have made it because I can afford to feed a village”. The oohs and ahhs are much greater today and much more long lasting when you show what you give rather than what you wear.

If our success in a profession is measured by the amount of money that we are paid, that is ok, if we understand that our true worth is measured by what we give. The point is that there is no need for bling today, it doesn’t look better than faux bling, but trading that bling in for heart does look better. We cannot outlaw bling anymore than we can outlaw fur, but it would be nice to ask someone dripping in bling, “How many children’s bellies could be filled by those earrings?” “How many villages could be educated against AIDS with that ring?” And perhaps, while we are at it, we should ask ourselves how much does it cost to make a house a home, and how many children can we give a home to for the price of a ten million dollar house?

I am not advocating ego denial. I am advocating a sense of satisfaction that not only feeds the ego but also feeds the soul. Trust me, it feels better to give to give to children in Somalia than it does to give to salespeople in Harry Winston, Proving to a child that faith has reason, God is alive and that there are angels is so much more gratifying than the stares you get from sparkling down the street in jewels. And who could honestly say that a tour of a mansion you built could hold a candle to a tour of the hospital you built in a village that has not even seen a doctor. Save a mink, don’t buy fur, Save a child, don’t buy bling.