Excuse me, sir. Are you qualified for this position?

If all goes well in this blog, I will be putting out a lot of information on what I have learned about personal development in general. So who am I to do that?

Well, this would be a good time to use a Karate analogy. If we're talking about "Spiritual Karate", I would say that I am nowhere near a black belt. However, if you have ever gone into any martial arts class, you might have noticed that black belts do not do all the teaching. It doesn't take a black belt to teach a white belt! All it takes to teach a white belt is someone who is not a white belt. So there you have it. Karateka, read on!

Everyone is a teacher, and everyone is a learner. That means that anyone can teach you something, even the grocery store clerk on a rainy Sunday night. Similarly, anyone can learn something if the conditions are right.

How do you tell how "evolved" or how "advanced" someone is?

Here is where I want to end the analogy. In fact, I want to blow it completely out of the water, by saying the the entire concept of evolution/advancement is hogwash. Pretty provocative statement, eh? Not really!

In Reality, we are all One. The way our consciousness is laid out makes us perceive that we are many different people running around, but in actuality, on the highest levels, we are all one big thing. (More on that later on, or just read about Buddhist philosophy.) The ONLY spiritual difference between you, me, and the Dalai Lama of Tibet are that some of us Pay Attention to that Oneness more than others. Even Ken Wilber says that you cannot possibly avoid the One that is here. All you can do is decide whether or not to pay attention to it in this moment.

So, you see, there is no ladder to climb, no goal to strive for. We're all already there. The One is already there. However, paying attention is not so easy for some. There are things you can do to learn how to pay attention, and to be in the moment, and those things will enable you to detect this Oneness.

Those specific things are the subject of other posts, but for now at least pay attention in the conventional sense. What are you doing? How is your posture? Are you breathing correctly? Does anything hurt?