Be Normal - Spiritual and Personal Development 101

Giving back by teaching

2012-01-25T12:21:00.000-05:00

If you have ever read Luke Cullen's book, Growing Up With Draja Mickaharic, about his escapades as a student of the famous spiritual teacher and cultist, definitely give it a try. It is a quick read. A long time ago, Luke was a friend and confidant of mine, and we were both fellow students of Draja. The difference between us is that Luke had the balls to write about it. I don't, mainly because of the lunacy of it all, or at least how I see it as lunacy looking back on it. Nevertheless, I learned an immense amount of things during those days that I still use as a foundation.... just not the things I thought I would be using today when asked about it back then.

In those days, things were quite hierarchical. Draja was the teacher. We were the students. Not only was this the physical arrangement, but in Draja's view this was ordained by God, if you will. He was a "Spiritual Teacher", meaning that was his divine Function in life. To be his student was to obey, because that was the Order of the Universe. If you obeyed, you would prosper or learn something. If you disobeyed, you would not gain the benefit of his teaching, and obey we did.

Looking back on it, it seems so alien to me. With the framework of Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics that I have been reading about, I can see exactly what was going on. All of us involved in those teaching interactions back then were living out the Red and Blue vMemes or core value systems. In Red, someone has power and you don't, or maybe you do have power and you lord it over others. Either way, there's a power structure and a system of haves and have-nots. In Blue, there is some ultimate Absolute Truth ordained by a Higher Power, and when an agent of that Higher Power says something, that's it. No discussion. Also in Blue there exists a hierarchy and the notion of Functions. People have Functions that stay with them for their whole lives. This person is a "Teacher". That person is a "Merchant". That other person is a "Priest", and next to them stands a "Slave". Draja Mickaharic taught about these four types of Functions in particular, as if they were permanent divinely ordained things.

Years later, I have to say that my experience has shown the real world to be much more complex than this. I do think there are Functions, but not in the same vein that Draja taught Luke and I. Functions are dynamic and ever-changing. The important thing is the Present Moment and your consciousness of it and your Oneness with all things, and whatever you are doing in that Present Moment is your Function. It is the ultimate thing that you are put here to do. In another moment, past or future, you will have some other ultimate thing you are put here to do, but that does not matter: only Now matters.

Do not get me wrong: I am not saying we should throw out everything that Red and Blue teaches us, nor am I saying they are in some way bad or wrong. I am merely saying that they are not the whole picture, even though they have their time when they work well. I teach graduate students at the University level. In moments when I am doing that, I am the Teacher and they are the Students. That is my Function during class time, and yes, there is a hierarchy at that time. My Faculty ID Card from the University and my Adjunct Contract say so. In order for the Students to learn something in my classes, they need to acknowledge that I know something that I can teach them. That acknowledgement is not for ME, but it is for THEM. Without it, they probably won't learn. In cases like this, a Red-Blue scenario works, and is "real". However, to carry that notion through to every scenario in life is misguided and is not taking into account the rest of the bigger picture.

Response to "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus"

2012-01-21T20:40:00.001-05:00

There is a viral video circulating right now on the Interwebs called "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus". Here is a link to it:

Why I hate Religion, but love Jesus

What struck me about this video was that it displayed a mature Blue vMeme outlook, as per Dr. Clare Graves' scheme on Spiral Dynamics. Briefly, the "Blue" core set of values says that life is ruled by some form of Absolute Truth, and all other things that profess to disagree with this Truth are evil or wrong. It also talks about the need for rules, hierarchies, and some form of system to enforce these.

Traditional religion is just that. The man in this video is professing what he sees as an Absolute Truth, versus something that is against that Truth. It is black and white.

Then there's this video:

I hate Religion, and Jesus too

Here we see an Orange vMeme. Orange is about hard logic. It points out the hypocrisy of blind belief and the failures of hierarchical systems and Absolute Truths based on Mythology. The man in this video does just that.

The next stage of complexity on the Spiral is Green, and here is an example of that:

Why I dislike your poem, but love God

Hard logic gives way to compassion. Green insists that all viewpoints are equally valid, and Truth is not Absolute, but Relative. "Why can't we all just get along, and believe what we believe but leave each other alone, or better yet, live together in peace?"

Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding a Yellow vMeme response. They are harder to come by because a smaller percentage of the population is at that stage.

But if there was one, here is what I think it would say to the video:

This debate is taking place exactly as it should be. The debate sparked by it is precisely what will lead to a communally derived outcome which will work out for the best. Religion has its drawbacks, as the original video said. However, Religion also serves a purpose for those who need to partake of it. That is not a bad thing. Similarly, "Non-Religion" or simply following Jesus in the manner described by the man in the video also serves a purpose. The two sides of the debate are SUPPOSED to interact because they comprise a SYSTEM, much like predator and prey, the sun and planets, and any other symbiotic entity. In the end, the conflict is what leads us to grow as the human race, not the winning or the losing, but the learning. That is the point.

So to the followers of Religion I say, you fight your good fight. Keep making your points and your arguments, but be open to the responses. I say the same to the other side of the debate as well. To both, I would warn this: do not lose site of empathy and compassion as you debate, for that will not help anyone.

A Yellow Meme Perspective

2011-11-30T18:39:00.001-05:00

Lately I've sort of been feeling like things aren't quite right with my world view. The nice neat little explanations and passions I had for topics just start to seem wrong somehow. As I gain more perspective on things, they just seem too narrow, like something is missing. My world view was really based on my background: a person who grew up with no monetary wealth and a loving family and made it through his halfway decent childhood to get a huge education and an increase in socioeconomic status from where he started.... through his own hard work, seemingly. Coupled with a vaguely strange religious upbringing and an early 20's period of fairly loose morals, I found myself emulating a Fiscally Conservative and Socially Liberal mindset. So what did I do? I spoke out for those topics: gays should be able to marry, the government should not run our lives, people need to make their own livings without help (like I did), hard work and sacrifice will get you anywhere, abortion is a choice (but not one I would make, but who am I to tell you?), religion must absolutely be separate from the State and ideally it should really be invisible to society, guns don't kill people, etc. On the whole, the grand theme of that mish-mosh of positions is individualism. Even now I still have staunch individualistic tendencies. I had a problem with "one for the good of all" concepts. That Green stuff never resonated with me, and never will. But that's when the eerie disconcerting doubts set in. I had some experiences that showed me clearly that although we are in fact individuals, we are DEPENDENT on others. All of us are. When I got back from a trip to India not too long ago, my family was unable to pick me up from the airport, so in my annoyance I said, "Oh well, I will just get home myself." I gathered up my luggage like a pack mule and took the 4-hour train ride home. (Normally the drive is an hour and a half.) During that trip I had a major epiphany: I WASN'T doing it myself. There were literally armies of people that needed to do their jobs that day in order for me to get home: the train engineer, the conductor, the people switching the tracks, the people who trained those people, etc. For a simple train ride home, there were probably thousands of people and things that had to come together for something so simple. I realized honestly that there' really no way in hell I could ever do anything myself. Anything I do requires work from others who came before. Unless I decide to become a hunter-gatherer, this is the truth. That led me firmly to understand that everyone is connected to everyone else. We are all in this Life together and no one gets out alive! This wasn't just lip service that day. It was right in front of my face, clear as day. I knew it and understood it. Some people might take an experience like this and move directly into the Green Meme, i.e. Post-Modernism, but I didn't. I'm speaking of naming designations by a psychologist named Dr. Clare Graves and his colleagues, as well as the modern day philosopher, Ken Wilber. The memes basically go like this: 1st TierBeige (Archaic) - You only care about bodily functions and food, warmth, sex, comfort, safety. Basically, an animal. Purple (Magic)- You exist in a tribal organization where your world revolves around the band you are with and its leader. Everything is for the good of your small group. Red (Mature Magic)- You exist for power. You better get them before they get you first. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Blue (Mythic)- You adhere to a creed, belief system, religion or other form of TRUTH, because it is the only One way there is, and all other ways are false. Orange (Rational)- You are put here to succeed. He who dies with the most toys wins. Go get 'em, Tiger! The world is full of opportunity, and you can make it if you work hard. Everything is ruled by logic. Green (Post-Modern)- Greed and success are the failings of society. We are here to love each other, enrich our relationships, and care for the environment above all. 2nd TierYellow (Pre-Integral)- The world contains people of all colors/Memes, and they are here for a reason: all Memes are the product of life conditions, and they comprise a system. The idea is to run the system, not eliminate parts of it so that all people benefit, at no one's expense. All Memes are parts of the Whole. Turquoise (Inegral)- Not only is it a system, but we are all part of a single super-being/ecology/family/tribe. This is the equivalent of Purple, but this time there are Mega-Tribes, Mega-Groups, Mega-Bands that include the whole world. Countries, groups, systems, are really part of a larger thing. More eloquent explanations than the ones I give here can be found all over the web. Notice that the colors alternate between individualistic and pluralistic. Beige, Red, Orange, and Yellow are individualistic in scope, while Purple, Blue, Green, and Turquoise are pluralistic. I admit I have always had a problem with ALL of the pluralistic colors. What this experience and others like it did for me was make me really resonate with the Yellow. All this stuff about Conservative vs. Liberal, East vs. West, This vs. That, is starting to seem really silly. No one is going to win. You cannot eliminate one side or the other. It's not possible in a global society. You have to live with the fact that there are others who believe differently, but that's not a bad thing! You can use that! Instead, think of it with an analogy: In your body, you have a circulatory system, a skeletal system, a nervous system, a renin-angiotensin system, and lots of other systems. What would happen if one of them decided it was going to dominate by killing off all of the others. That would sort of be like a cancer, wouldn't it? Ultimately it would kill the person. Beliefs and ideologies are just like that. They are parts of the whole. They are systems within a larger host, i.e the world. Like it or not, they are all dependent on each other no matter how annoying one of them may be at a given moment. Example: Green Meme is great for humane thinking. In today's Orange/blue dominated society, if there was no green, poor people would be rotting in the streets with no one to give a damn. It is the Green folks that prevent that from happening by pushing the Orange/blue folks to do the right thing. By contrast, if Green were allowed to take over completely, we'd be in a lot of trouble also. We'd go broke, for one thing, because Green Meme tends to be horrible with money compared to Orange, which is all about it. Plus, we'd also likely get pushed around (maybe physically) by other Blue countries (think extremists of any religion) who mean us harm, because Green is also not so good about realizing that people can in fact be hostile. It is our Orange/blue and Blue/orange contingent that helps prevent that. All of these "culture wars" are happening for a reason. They are leading somewhere, and where they lead will depend on outside conditions as well as inside ones. We may regress to earlier Memes, or we may move forward. Who knows? Every Meme contains all the other previous Memes within it. They are not levels on a ladder. They are concentric circles. A true open-minded Green would understand Orange and Blue because they were once there, just like Yellow understands Green. I wish all this stuff gave me an idea of what the hell to do to make this place better, but I still don't know.

Evangelicals and missions

2011-07-25T10:56:00.005-04:00

I'm writing in regards to this article:

Click Here - www.cnn.com

Briefly, an ex-missionary shares his experience and realization about trying to convert people to Christianity. He realizes that people view evangelists in one of two distinct ways: heroes of the faith who lead exemplary lives, or destroyers of culture and bringers of division and grief. There really isn't much in between. He goes on to realize that maybe these red mythological types (to paraphrase some Integral Theory jargon) would be a whole lot more successful if they stopped trying to get people to convert but rather instead focused on trying to get people to be more conscious and aware, period. (He couches it in Christian terminology, i.e. "to become more like Jesus", which is fine and still accurate. Jesus is an example of a conscious and aware individual that we would not be amiss in seeking to emulate.)

I think this is a great example of a rational person who is beginning to break into the post-modern way of thinking. He seems to be realizing that it's not the wrapper on the candy but the sweetness of what's inside that counts. Religions, doctrines, dogma, creeds are all wrappers. The mythology of each one is different, but the truths in most religions are universal if you dig deep enough.

To take this a step further, a large number of people on the planet take the mythology to be "true". For example, people will believe that the whole mthology of heaven, hell, the bible, and the events that occur within them actually happened, and they will do this sometimes (unfortunately) to the exclusion of what's inside the wrapper: that we should all seek to develop on a personal, familial, national, racial, and world-wide level. Sometimes they forget that things like dogma and the bible are actually TOOLS for developing yourself. Instead they focus on proving historical validity.

I do not want to come across as condescending to those who do believe in the mythology. The people who do believe it are doing it because that's where they are at. I respect them. They are not "wrong" or "bad". It just is what it is, and it is a necessary, needed, and integral part of the whole of Creation to have people who are at that point right now. The gift that these people bring to the world is that they realize that people DO need to follow a set of rules in order to make this planet a more bearable place to live. (They just disagree on what the rules are.) Nevertheless, the need for rules is real. Society is real. Life is real. That is the gift of Stage 3, and it remains useful in further stages.

Feelings vs. Thoughts: Aftermath of Osama

2011-05-03T08:53:00.001-04:00

I think aside from all the obvious political ramifications of Osama Bin Laden's death (finally), there are some interesting lessons I'm seeing here. There are plenty of opportunities to learn right now. So pay attention.

As I watch my Facebook stream flow and echo with the thoughts of my friends list, there is a clear contrast between those who are unabashedly happy about today's events versus those who are glad but guilty or downright angry about the celebratory comments from some.

"What does Christianity or (insert religion here) teach about the death of an enemy?" --- from my more religious brothers and sisters....

"Boooyah!!!!" -- from my more honest and less guilty friends

"Why are you celebrating the death of a human being, you animals??" -- from my compassionate, and also honest, but perhaps in some cases 'holier than thou' companions

I am sure there are also those, like me, who are feeling all three things. Perhaps we all are. I admit to it, at least.

Here's the lesson: All of those positions are valid. All of those people feel justified in what they are saying and feeling. All of those positions have aspects that both create unity among us and divide us.

In my personal view, the Conscious thing to do here is accept that all of these points exist and are valid, and not try to eliminate any one of them by shouting or creating MORE division, but rather to understand that everyone who takes one or more of these positions has got reasons for doing so. Then look at the person and try to understand what reasons they have. A new picture might emerge, enabling true compassion for what that person is saying or feeling, and at that point their actual position may not matter anymore, because you have now increased your view of the terrain, so to speak.

Also let's remember that we can't really control what emotions we feel, but we CAN control our actions in regard to those emotions. I feel pretty darn happy right now, but I think it might sit the wrong way in my own conscience if I go out to crack open a few bottles of champaign. I don't begrudge anyone who does, because.... I'm sure they have reasons.... but for me, that's not what I feel is right.

Doing the best you can with what you've got

2011-04-24T10:30:00.003-04:00

In a recent conversation with my father, I got some information that grabbed my attention. It's one of those things that we have probably talked about a hundred times, in one form or another, but I never heard it until now. Amazing how people can be told and shown things but never actually hear or acknowledge them until they are ready.

For a while I have generally held that religions should be allowed to flourish, but separately. After all, for many individuals, religions serve a real purpose. They provide a form of organization and rules for living life. They provide a code of ethics and morals to those who are unsure of things. They even provide a kind of emotional sustenance and fulfillment. These things are real. People really feel and believe. Good for them!

Of course, no two religions agree on everything, or else they would be the same religion. (No two people within each religion agree on everything, but I digress!) These disagreements can range from minor to outright terrorist attacks. For that reason, I have held that they need to be separated. "You go over there and do your religion, and I'll go over here and do mine." I also believe (and still might believe) that religions should be private.... like underwear. We know you got it. We just don't want to see it in public. (I even made bumper stickers with this saying on them once.) Expressing religion in public invites discord.

However, something else is arising in my thinking right now based on the conversation with my father. Everyone is given a set of tools in life. Each person is given his or her own unique capacity for Consciousness. Why fault anyone for only doing what they know or only what they have the capacity to do? Instead, shouldn't we nurture and have compassion? Shouldn't we give people space to use their tools and grow? Shouldn't we go so far as even to aid each other in our practices even though they may be wildly different? If everyone is using what they know in order to grow, why not do that?

Of course this should all be tempered with another tool: Reason. I don't advocate helping someone to blow up a building because their religion says so. Things that divide and things that increase hatred in the world work counter to what I am talking about here: lifting the illusion of separation. When it comes to that, I don't think things are relative.

Arising from "nothing"

2011-04-12T15:26:00.002-04:00

You may have heard the expression that life is a theater and all the world is a stage. The analogy often goes on to express that people are actors on that stage, like characters in a movie.

In many ways, this analogy is an expression of what ails us. Any particular actor on that stage swears that he or she is the only one, and that all the other actors are just characters that set the scene and offer interaction. When the interaction goes badly the actor forgets about being an actor and really thinks that something awful is happening, and that the results will mean something horrible... like death. So what does the actor do? He acts. He tries to beg and plead his way out of the plot, even though the script is already written. It's all quite unfortunate.

Step 2

2011-01-19T09:46:00.003-05:00

I've done a lot of "Step 1". People always talk about it. They always say that Step 1 is becoming aware of a problem. "Once you are aware of it, you can begin to work on it!", they say. If there was ever a "spiritual cliche", that would be one. Alright, it IS a cliche, but cliches are the way they are because they can often be handy.

So what is Step 2?

Ah, the little-known and elusive Step 2! A place we rarely see. Most people who figure out Step 1 either think they are done, or they wander off as if they have some kind of mystical ADD.

Becoming aware of a problem must be followed by observation. I tend to believe that wrestling with a problem and forcing yourself to "tackle" it and "solve" it, as if some kind of bright idea can end it, is not the way it goes most times. Think about it: most of the time your mind is wrestling with things anyway. It believes that by churning around and around it can solve things and find peace. So it churns some more, but it never quite gets anywhere. It is the same thing with "solving" a problem that you have just become aware of. Forcing yourself to think about it or forcing yourself to change your behavior drastically overnight takes a lot of will power, and will power eventually runs out for all of us. It's like going on a diet. Eventually, even though it might take years, you will come off the diet and be back again.

Observation is Step 2. Once you have found the problem in Step 1, you have to face it in Step 2. That involves figuratively going nose to nose with it and looking it in the eye, and doing nothing else. It's harder than you might think. Our brains are wired to solve problems or complain about them. Holding in your mind something you don't like about yourself and just allowing it to exist without judgment or action is not easy, but it is Step 2.

Why is that helpful? Observing something, giving it space, and allowing it to be separates you from it. Before Step 2, you are one with the problem, but you do not know it. It is an unconscious and harmful oneness. Before you re-identify with the problem in an enlightened fashion (in Step 3), you need to have a healthy dis-identification with it first.

IF changing something is the right thing to do about that particular problem, the changes you need to make will become evident as you face it. Not only that, they will also become easier to enact and they will have a higher chance of sticking. Alternatively, you may then find yourself able to accept the issue and move on, without having it impede you any longer.

Some correction and expansion

2010-10-16T01:00:00.003-04:00

My thoughts in my previous post need one major correction, taking into account the Integral perspective pioneered by Ken Wilber. When I said that things that are not experienced as Oneness are "fake", that is actually not true. In Integral thought, all things are Real, and all viewpoints have some grain of validity. The Universe is just that big. All of existence is One, but within that Oneness is everything, and it is all Real.

The difference really comes down to paying attention. If you are paying attention to the conflict and forgetting the other parts of existence, you are not as fully aware as you could be in that moment.

Of course that begs the question, "if this conflict is indeed Real, what is there to do about it?" Honestly, I think we should leave that question to the folks who are aware enough to deal with it, and NOT the politicians, soldiers, terrorists, talking head pundits, or fanatics of any kind, unless of course they are playing their roles from a truly Conscious perspective.

In other words, my best guess is that the large majority of us should simply stop focusing on "winning" or "being right" or "sticking it to the other guy", and instead think about what is in our power to do to help and serve on multiple levels, starting with your own self, then your family, then your country or ethnic group, then the world.

The ultimate goal on this case is to be "world-centric", i.e thinking of things in terms of their effects on the entire world, or even the Universe and beyond. However, I do not think that is a readily achievable thing on a large scale just yet for most people. I'd be much happier is people who are "ego-centric" could simply learn to concentrate on their next level up, from wherever they are at the time. In other words, if a person is selfish, he or she should focus on learning how to take care of family. If a person is a great provider for family, that person should look to learn about contributing to the community, and so on.

I do not think that any of these actions should really be about religion, politics, or anything like that when serving, but rather just serving.... doing whatever needs to be done in that moment for the object of focus. Thus, I still advocate a "leaving the conflict" scenario, as well as Observation. I especially think Observation is critically important, but now that I come to think of it, I also think that highly focused care, concern, compassion, and service at whatever level a person is aware of is the key, and that should be done INSTEAD OF participation in the never-ending back and forth of today's Left vs. Right conflicts.

Distractions and missing the point

2010-09-19T12:36:00.008-04:00

There is a lot of division nowadays. Right vs. Left. Conservative vs. Liberal. Democrat vs. Republican. Muslim vs. Everyone Else. You name it. There are even factions caught somewhere in the middle. Moderate ________'s, where the blank could be the name of a political party, religion, or nothing at all.

The whole thing is a twisted mess of fights within fights, conflict within conflict. People with advanced degrees in Political Science, Economics, Psychology, and even the Sciences and Engineering cannot sort it out, let alone people without that level of knowledge.

Some people give me hope, however, though I will not say who. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed to hear a supposedly "spiritual" man the other day giving a talk and essentially taking sides in these conflicts. He happened to be siding with the "liberal elites" or the so-called "enlightened" Left, which is a fact, but not the point. The point is he took a side, and that disheartened me.

See, here's what I really think of all these conflicts: on the highest level of awareness, they are fake. Worse than that, they are a distraction. At best, however, they are an opportunity to become aware.

When you focus on Oneness, none of these things are an issue. Religion, economy, and philosophy do not exist. There is only the Eternal, which does not change and encompasses everything there ever was, is, or will be in its cloak of space and silence. The POINT of all these conflicts in the world is not to WIN or LOSE, but to show us that they CANNOT be won or lost. No one will ever prevail in the conventional sense, and even if someone did, they would fall again soon thereafter, just like every Empire, political system, or philosophy has so far.

That's because these things are not Real. They are there to show us that the way to win the fight is to leave the fight all together. However, it is not a typical kind of leaving I describe. What I am advocating here is Observation. If enough people could pay attention to the part of all of us that is One, and allow enough other people to find that part also, then a critical mass could be achieved whereby the conflicts just stop.

Now, I am not stupid. In the meantime, people who cannot find this part of themselves are going to rage and fight, and die a lot. Things are going to get "bad", or worse depending on your point of view. However, there is nothing that can be DONE about that which would have any lasting effect, and death is just as fake as the conflicts anyway. The wars which produces victories and defeats are only bandaids on the problem that mask the symptoms of a sickness we all have, the sickness of forgetting our common True selves.

My solution is let them fight. Defend yourself in your own limited physical space as best you can, and be aware as best you can, for as much time during the day as you can. Then if you get pretty good at that, try to awaken others. While doing that, try to look out for people and not let them get hurt, if you can. Care for those who are sick and injured without judging them, and have compassion on them not just because they are hurt, but because they are still learning how to access the One and All, just like we all are.

Reminders and symbols

2010-07-28T21:57:00.005-04:00

Sometimes, you just get out of whack. You forget your true nature. You drown in life's barrage of emotional attacks and curveballs. Wouldn't it be wonderful to constantly have touch with that calm still centered space deep within you 100% of the time, so all the tumult arises around you and dissipates without striking that inner ocean?

Maybe you are there. I am not. However, for those of us in the same boat as I am, there can be some sort of reminder... a trigger if you will, to get you back to that state if you find you have been washed out to sea in the storm of life's hardships.

For me, it's birds. Let me explain. I am not the first contemplating soul to remark that all things evolve and can achieve perfected form. Rocks have a type of consciousness, for instance.... maybe not like yours or mine, but they have one in their own way. They know they are rocks. When that knowing becomes perfected, what you have is a gem. Gems are perfected rocks. Just like flowers are evolved plants.

Birds, if you are catching my drift, are highly evolved reptiles. Some people like gems. Some like flowers. They feel moved by them. For me, it's birds.

A bird can do something of which I am a bit envious: fly. When flying way up in the sky, the bird is surrounded by space... pure space. That space contains everything: objects, light, sound, the bird itself. No matter what that bird does while flying, the space can contain it. The bird can chirp, flap, poop, screech, whatever. Anything it does gets swallowed up lovingly by the endless sky.

That fact is analogous, in my mind, to existence. We exist in pure Being, which can be interpreted loosely as pure space, pure silence, pure stillness, or their pure opposites. Sitting back and being swallowed up by those things can be done in order to reconnect with the core of a person's true self. I wish I could live there all the time, but alas, I cannot. Whenever I see a bird flying in the sky, I am reminded of that space, however, and I think, "Oh yeah, silly, you shouldn't be letting your mind wander off in all these directions causing you distress... it's all FAKE. But the space.... the space is Real." Just breath and be in it.

This kind of stuff is tough to put into words. I am not a Dan Millman, Ken Wilber, or Eckhart Tolle, but I thought I would simply get it out there anyway.

Size matters not

2010-05-30T21:56:00.002-04:00

It's neat how much good meditation you can get done on an airplane. You're basically trapped in your seat for a few hours with little to do. Even the laziest spiritual practitioner would be tempted at the opportunities there.

Aside from the captivity, there's a lot of perspective available on an airplane high in the sky.

At the level of "The Witness", when you are paying attention to that part of yourself, it's not that things are Big or Small. It's that size becomes irrelevant. The Oneness that exists behind everything does not have a size. Size is not an issue at all. Rather, size is something expressed by that Oneness as it wraps around itself and forgets itself, giving birth to what most people think of as the real world.

Thus, it does not matter if you are meditating in a 5' x 5' room, looking at a blank wall, or whether you are in an airplane looking at the entire 200 mi coast of New Jersey. It's all the same.

This is what some Buddhist circles refer to as being able "to drink the entire ocean in one gulp".

One and the same...

2010-05-04T09:08:00.003-04:00

Sometimes when I drive to work on a nice day, I listen to the birds chirping outside.

Life is much like a single bird chirp.... a fleeting trill absorbed by a bright quiet morning.

A simple thought

2010-03-14T19:25:00.005-04:00

Time and again, the Dalai Lama refers to himself as "a simple monk", yet he is a person at the forefront of changing the world. As influential as he is, he sees himself as just a simple guy in a monastery, living his life.

Isn't it funny how the rest of us, who are FAR less influential than him, all want to be "something" or "change the world"?

Perhaps it is time to rethink our goals. Greatness isn't a single big action, and people who seek greatness don't usually find it. If they did, there would be a heck of a lot more "Great" people on the planet. Those who are Great are that way because of many little actions, and they usually performed those actions for other reasons than simply becoming great.

In your face

2009-11-18T21:56:00.002-05:00

Here's a big clue on how the universe works. It is a no-brainer, really. You may have seen this happen to you millions of times, and when I point it out it should seem obvious.

If you have a lesson to learn, and you ignore it, you might get away with it for a while. However, if you keep ignoring it, eventually it will get in your face so much that it becomes impossible to ignore. That's really just the way it works. Duh.

Evolutionary units

2009-10-01T15:23:00.002-04:00

It has been a while since I have had anything to write. Life has been going at break-neck speeds, and I have just sort of surrendered to it, along with all the things that go with that. They say that learning goes in waves, and for a while I have sort of been at the bottom of a wave, stagnant, just using what I know and doing what I do. It's no big deal.

One thing that occurred to me upon reflection recently is that evolution is not just about the individual. People "work on their development" and "strive", or they do the other thing and "be"... It does not matter how you view it or where you are at in that regard. The point is that those are all individual terms. The ultimate Oneness is being viewed through the colored-glasses of the individual. Of course that is fine, and many people do this with great results. That is all "1st Quadrant" stuff, or "I" stuff.

However, there is an other aspect... looking at it from the 2nd Quadrant, the quadrant of "We". If you have a group of people, let's say a family, the group has a collective state of consciousness or level of awareness as well. The level of awareness is essentially the average level of awareness of all the members of the group. If you are a member of the family, you could raise that either by working on your own awareness, or helping other members with theirs.

If I have a wife and children, there is a collective awareness there equal to the average of our individual awarenesses. If mine goes up, the collective goes up. If the children's awareness is brought up through child-rearing, the collective goes up. I'm told the opposite is also true, where the collective awareness can bring up the awareness of an individual, if the group's level is at a higher state than the individual in question.

That makes sense, in light of some previous posts, where I talk about teachers and the concept of Bracha and how it rubs off on the student.

The whole 2nd Quadrant is about expanding the area of concern from individual, to family, to race, to nation, to world. So everything here applies to those larger groups as well.

Dan Millman on Saving the Earth

2009-06-25T09:05:00.004-04:00

On Dan Millman's blog there is a great post on his take for "saving the earth".

Wow! He put into words what I have been trying to say, but have been too angry at the environmentalist-tree-hugger types to express.

In a nutshell, the notion that we should all go back to living like cavemen or natives in teepees is bunk. That's not to say that we humans do not put strain on the environment, sometimes more than we have to, and sometimes we humans have little regard for the big picture. That's all true.

However, fixing that is not about going back to the "good old days." In the "good old days", no one seems to remember that the average life expectancy was 40-something.... even as little as a century ago. No one also seems to remember that people who were not related to each other that met randomly in the wilderness would try to kill each other, simply to control resources and take slaves or new breeding stock. Many environmentalists romanticize these eras, and forget the brutality that we have actually left behind in those years.

Things are better today than they were. People live longer, if nothing else, yet even if we humans never redeem ourselves and wind up destroying our own race, from the Earth's perspective.... Who cares?

The "Big Picture" is bigger than us. The Earth will go on whether we are here or not. Environmental damage can conceivably repair itself, certainly over millions after our extinction. From the Earth's perspective, it really does not matter what we do. Longer-lived species than us have died off before.

Nevertheless, there is still something to be learned from environmentalism.... if it can be done with awareness. The pollution and over zealous negativity that we humans put out into the world is a reflection of our mental disease. The more chatter we have in our brains.... the more we get sucked into our own emotional dramas.... the more we lose ourselves in the pursuit of excess.... the more the Earth becomes clouded with our garbage.

Environmentalism is not about cleaning up garbage. It is about curing our disease by becoming aware and learning to observe our mental chatter and emotional outbursts. You will never manually put a stop to the chatter or the emotions. You are not supposed to. However, you CAN learn to observe them without judgment and just allow them to be.

When that happens, the environment will improve on its own because human behavior will automatically change.

So....

2009-04-11T23:49:00.003-04:00

Sometimes there's these awkward pauses in a conversation with someone, especially someone you don't know well. Ever have those? People are uncomfortable with silence. They think they have to fill it. Or, more correctly, their egos think it must be filled.

In actuality, the silence contains Reality, and egos are scared shitless of Reality. By becoming aware of the silent presence that lingers over and throughout everything, you can become aware of the Present Moment, the Now, You..... and it's scary at first! The awkwardness covers up the fear.

So too it is with writing. Recently, I have found myself a little guilty about not having any compunction to write more on this blog. But you know what? There's nothing to write sometimes! That's just how it is. I want to make sure that this blog only gets things written that need to be written, rather than filling it up with my own chatter. That probably means sometimes I will not have much to say!

I've been scooped!!

2009-03-27T19:44:00.006-04:00

I mentioned in a post a long time ago that I would love to write a book about my experiences with Draja Mickaharic as a kid and teenager. Well! I haven't! The honor instead goes to my close friend, Luke Cullen, who hung out with Draja and learned with me for quite some time. Good one, Luke! I would've done it myself, but.... excuses abound.

Luke, you are the Deepak Chopra to my Love Guru. Best of luck.

To check out Luke's book and purchase a copy, Click Here.

The cover art is pretty sweet too:

Nitty Gritty Everyday-ness

2009-03-13T09:11:00.002-04:00

There seems to be an underlying belief or feeling that once someone achieves some degree of spiritual accomplishment or awareness that his or her life will suddenly become perfect and free of "problems". Once in a while, I even catch myself believing this. However, it's really not true... It never happens.

When it comes down to it, evolving spiritually is ALL ABOUT problems, albeit not the problems themselves, but rather how you deal with them. Life continually tests us. What does it test us on? It tests our ability to maintain some level of attention on our True Selves while going through all the pain of life.

The pain and the problems are the teachers. You may be able to sit down and meditate in a quiet room and connect with the Oneness of all things, because you've spent years practicing, and that certainly is a pursuit that will increase your access to States, particularly the meditative State. But can you maintain any awareness of Oneness while you are in the middle of a fight with your partner or spouse about your impending financial ruin and the inevitable death of a close family member, all the while tending a sick child or three? Or does all your awareness go out the window while you revert back to believing your True Self is a big ball of emotional wreckage?

Being able to sit quietly and touch the quiet space within and around you is essential, but it is only a first step. After that, it gets harder because you need to be able to do it while living your life normally. The world was not made to function with all of us sitting on cushions meditating in forests. It was meant for us to be mindful beings aware of our divinity who go out and do what they gotta do despite that fact.

Ah, to be a hypocrite

2009-02-23T11:25:00.006-05:00

Over the last couple months, I have been dealing with a family move and one or two family emergencies. That stuff is still ongoing. Luckily today, I have some time to write, and I want a short interlude from the Integral stuff for now.

Life is really your greatest teacher. You may or may not have a person guiding you spiritually in life, but you always have Life to teach you, for as long as, well, you're alive.

Self-examination is one way of gleaning lessons from Life. Idries Shah and other famous sufis often talk about self-examination of behavior, or even simply being able to examine yourself. Most people are not capable of stepping back and looking at their own behavior on deep levels. Consequently, there are a lot of "hypocrites" out there. Idries Shah often used that word in his writings to describe people who are out of touch with their own behavior and wind up doing the very things that they preach against. Pretty much everyone falls into that category at some point or another, more often than not.

Hell, I've done it.

If you look around and do some digging on the Internet, you can find all kinds of people who believe in "manifestation" or "magic", or "magick", however you like to spell it. There are many other terms to cover the same thing, even the term "prayer" is used often. The underlying basis of all these things is changing your life to be something other than what it is right now. At a deep level, they are all exactly the same things with exactly the same arrays of mechanisms.

Of course, change is not always such a bad thing. You have a right to try to change your situation if you do not like the way it is going. However, sometimes it is easy to forget that there is an overarching Reality that does not change. This Reality filters down through the levels of existence and has a way of communicating things to us. Sometimes, the communication is, "Tough crap, buddy. You ain't changing this."

My attitude has generally been to trust in Reality and let it do whatever it does. Many years ago, I gave up all esoteric attempts to fiddle with Reality. I saw no point to it. Play the cards you are dealt and shut up. If you work hard and be smart, you increase your odds of having an "easy" life, but the ease of life is more your perception than anything else, so work on that perception instead, if you feel like working on something.

That right there, folks, is some hypocrisy. Good example.

Years ago I gave up trying to change the world through esoteric means, but I never gave up trying to change it through conventional means, which is even worse! Trying to change Reality even when it says, "No way, buddy" is a useless exercise. That's true whether you do it by magic, prayer, or good ole fashioned hard labor. At times when Reality will not allow you to change it, the point is to accept what IS.

When the time comes to get up off your accepting ass and move, Reality will let you know. Have no fear in that, but until that time, the best thing to do is to hang out in the Present and chill, or not chill, as the case may be in a hard situation. Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is to do nothing but wait. Other times, waiting will get you killed. The trick to telling the difference is to have some insight into what the universe is trying to tell you.

It all boils down to self-observation. Lots of lessons to be learned in that exercise.

Lurking shadows

2009-02-07T09:45:00.002-05:00

When the Shadow is ignored, it becomes insistent about popping up in your life. If you do not acknowledge that you do indeed think and feel some "awful" things sometimes, those thoughts will show themselves in subtle ways. You might lose your temper when someone does something to you that seems petty or inconsequential. You might sabotage your own business deals for seemingly no reason. Every person has a hundred things that he or she does to mess things up sometimes, and later these people kick themselves for it. Ever have that experience?

For a while, I have been trying to figure out an answer to one of my questions I posted a while back. The question was: Which is correct? Should we actively do Inner Self work and try to clear out our emotional baggage, like my former teacher, Draja Mickaharic, says? Or should we not worry about that at all and simply become aware of our baggage and give it the space to exist in the light of Consciousness, like Eckhart Tolle says?

After exploring some of this material on Integral Philosophy, I think the answer is both.

If we only take Eckhart's approach, we will certainly become more aware, but our baggage will still be there. In the grand scheme of things, it certainly does not matter whether it is there or not, however, Ken Wilber's teachings stress that we are not just Consciousness, we are all things on all levels. That means we are our baggage too. So from that perspective, by doing Shadow work or Inner Self work or whatever you want to call it, we are in a way lubricating our path towards becoming more aware.

Mucking things up with your Shadow

2009-02-06T13:53:00.004-05:00

In Psychology research there is a lot of study on the concept of the "Shadow Personality" or Shadow.

A quick glance at the Internet reveals Jung's definition: "According to Carl Jung, the shadow is that part of the personality one chooses not to see. Usually of a vulgar, shameful, or corrupt nature, the shadow is comprised of whatever one cannot uphold in one’s idea of oneself. Not being integrated or even acknowledged by conscious mind, the shadow sits and waits in the unconscious."

Ken Wilber's Integral Philosophy borrows heavily from this concept.

Explaining this in my own words, I would say that the Shadow is a subset of your Inner Self, a piece of it. It is a part of your emotional makeup that you generally do not want to deal with, but it is there nonetheless.

Ever have an "evil thought" about someone? Ever wish someone ill? Ever say to yourself, "If I wasn't such a nice person, I would...."?

Those are pieces of your Shadow breaking through. Ken Wilber's work says that in addition to doing all of these exercises to increase your access to States, and to move up the Stages, you also have to work on integrating your Shadow. That is to say, you have to learn to contact and accept your Shadow as a part of yourself.

Keep in mind, that is not to say that you have to conquer or kill the Shadow, or even solve its problems. All you have to do is face it. Integrate it. Make it a known part of yourself. Become aware of it.

Interestingly, if you do that, the Shadow's influence and tendencies to pop up at inopportune times diminishes.

Not working on your Shadow can present problems. There are huge numbers of "spiritual" people that meditate for hours per day, practice compassion for human beings, give to charity, and then go home and beat their kids. These people have great access to all kinds of States, and they can even operate at high Stages, but they are assholes nonetheless. Why? Their Shadows still have not been integrated.

More on this later....

Raising kids and training doctors

2009-01-30T10:33:00.003-05:00

When you raise a child, the subject of religion comes up pretty early usually. For most people steeped in a nice Mythic tradition, this is not a hard discussion. They tell the kid how things are, and the kid believes. Hopefully, later in life, the kid figures out more stuff on its own too.

How would you raise a child to adopt an Integral approach to spirituality though?

Can you imagine talking to a three-year old about Oneness and ego and living in the Now? Not gonna happen...

The interesting thing about the spiritual line of development is that EVERY human being must pass through each stage. We are all born at Stage 1, an infant that does not know the difference between itself and its surroundings. From there, we ALL go through a period where the world is magical to us. Many of us then get into the doctrine and mythology of it afterwards, as we proceed to the Mythic stage. Hopefully, people then go on from there to Rational, Pluralistic, Integral, etc.

When raising a child, each approach and each stage must be taught at the appropriate time. Even into adulthood you proceed through stages, if you do not get stuck at one of them. It is a lot like the regular development of a human from infancy, to childhood, to adolescence, to young adulthood, to adulthood, to middle age, to old age.

On the other hand, training people to be doctors is not like that.

Can you imagine going in on your first day of medical school and learning about bloodletting, leaches, and the Four Humors? Then as you proceed through your four years you eventually get to complex clinical diagnosis and treatment? Not gonna happen...

In this line of development you do not need to start out learning what doctors learned 1000 years ago. In fact, doing that can make for a really crappy doctor!

Most lines of development that deal with information seem to be like this. It helps to get information that is useful to your population during your current time period. Religious and spiritual information is not like this for some reason.

Putting some of this together

2009-01-26T11:01:00.004-05:00

Hopefully, I have simplified some of this complicated material to the point where someone can see that it is extremely useful. Believe me, when I read all of this for myself, which I still am in the process of doing, it is not so simple to comprehend. It takes a bit of time to digest.

I have talked about States and Stages according to the Integral take on them. Now I want to convey how States and Stages go together according to this scheme.

All States are accessible in each Stage. In English, that means if you are a bible beater stuck at the Mythic stage, you can still be awake, dreaming, having a dreamless sleep, or even a non-dual experience of Oneness. Those things correspond to the gross, subtle, causal, and non-dual States. You could also have other states as a bible beater, such as meditation, drunkenness, and an LSD trip.

It really does not matter what Stage you are at. You can always access these States, though some are easier than others. A tribal commoner in the back jungles of Africa that worships the Earth can have an experience of peace and Oneness every bit as much as the Zen Buddhist monk sitting in a monastery in sunny California. The differences between these two are how they would [i]interpret[/i] the experience, based on their cultural and religious upbringings, as well as the perspective they would take on the experience. The tribesman would talk about how he merged with his deity and walked together with him everywhere, whereas the monk would talk about a complete cessation of experience dissolving into an inexplicable nothingness.

So, if there are at least seven Stages and there are at least 4 States at every stage, that means you could have at least 28 different kinds of spiritual experiences. Youch!

This layout is called the "Wilber-Combs Matrix", which shows how at each Stage you can have four States.

A hat tip goes to Kelly Sosan Bearer at her blog for the image.

On a political note...

2009-01-21T08:47:00.004-05:00

I thought I would say something briefly now that President Obama has been sworn in.

As Robb Smith over at Integral Life has said, I sincerely hope that Obama is something of an enigma in politics: an evolved person. So far in his transition, there are signs that he is. He seems to have an ability to connect with all sides of the spectrum, not by surrendering, or by completely accepting their garbage, but by including. He is able to disagree wholeheartedly with portions of the beliefs espoused by various political and social entities, yet he does not hate them, or even disdain them strongly. Instead, he stresses the commonalities and areas where the real truth seems to lie, and tries to bring those relationships forward in a spirit of "mutual interest and respect."

That's a pretty important characteristic of an Integral person, and an Integral network of societies. Every race, religion, tribe, family, individual has issues. Every one of them has portions of their belief systems and practices that are not conducive to development. However, every one of them ALSO has unique and important pieces of information that ARE essential for development. The trick is to sort out the useful from the useless.

In the world today, there are a lot of Stage 3 (Mythic) societies and people that conflict with Stage 4 (Rational) people. What we are seeing here is a world where Religion is stuck at Mythic and Science is stuck at Rational. It's a nightmare situation, because Science holds back Religion and keeps it down, preventing it from evolving to the point where tolerance develops. Conversely, Religion holds Science back by constantly keeping it on the defensive, sapping all the energy it would normally take to move itself forward.

Islamic extremism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish nationalism... all of these are examples of Mythic societies that are stuck. Multiculturalism, relativism, extreme "scientism"... these are examples of entities stuck in the Rational. The point is to move forward to Pluralistic, Integral, and stages beyond.

I hope Obama can contribute to that by helping to thread everyone together. He won't change billions of people and suddenly make them Integral-level beings. His task is hard: creating harmony between a huge spread of Stages, but I pray that he succeeds somehow, whatever success is in this case.

Anyway... now for the last quadrant

2009-01-14T08:51:00.002-05:00

Hello, folks. Sorry about the long delay between posts. Since the New Year hit, I've been busy with a new baby and starting proceedings for moving into a new place. That leaves little time to write.

I'd like to pick up again on the discussion on quadrants. Remember, the Upper Left quadrant is the "I" quadrant,dealing with personal internal development, and it represents all viewpoints of the world that stem from that perspective. The Upper Right quadrant is the "It" quadrant, dealing with the forms that "I" takes. It is the realm of hard core physics and science. Then we had the Lower Left quadrant which is the "We" quadrant. It represents the internal part of the collective. Whenever you are taking the perspective of "I, you and them" or "all of us", you are looking at things from this quadrant.

The last quadrant, the Lower Right, is the form that the "We" takes. In other words, this quadrant represents all societal constructions: houses, villages, towns, cities, national infrastructures, space stations, etc. It also encompasses whatever forms institutions take.

If you are the kind of person that believes that all reality can be represented by societal constructions, and that everything we experience is nothing but man-made institutions and objects, then you are looking at the world from this standpoint.

Now that we understand all four quadrants, it is important to reiterate some things. ALL of these quadrants make up reality. ALL philosophies, both personal and formal, fall into one or more of these areas, and some concentrate wholly on certain quadrants more than others. The point of Integral thinking is to realize that not focusing on all 4 quadrants makes for an incomplete accounting of Reality.

The other great thing about this is that it means that EVERY viewpoint is valid from a certain point of view, i.e. from a certain quadrant. Viewpoints are not often "wrong". They are however very often limited, primitive, and incomplete.

How enlightened are you? A test!

2009-01-14T08:49:00.002-05:00

This comes from Dan Millman's latest news letter... a classic.

"How Enlightened Are You? A Test:

Well. . .

If you can live without caffeine or nicotine;

If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;

If you can resist complaining;

If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you any time;

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;

If you can ignore friends' limited educations and never correct them;

If you can treat the rich and poor alike;

If you can face the world without lies or deceit;

If you can conquer tension without medical help;

If you can relax without liquor;

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs;

If you can have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender, sexual preference, or politics —

— then you have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog."

hahahah!!! I love it.

What's this "we" stuff, fanboy?

2008-12-30T22:54:00.003-05:00

So, if you have been looking at these quadrants in the AQAL model, you should now realize that the left-side quadrants are internal parts of Being and the right-side quadrants are external parts of Being. The Upper Left, or "I" Quadrant, is the inside of the individual, while the Upper Right Quadrant, the "It' Quadrant, is the outside of the individual.

Let's take that further. The Upper quadrants are the individual. The Lower quadrants are the collective, i.e. not just you, but everyone with you.

So, the Lower Left Quadrant is the "We" quadrant. It is the internal side of the collective.

What does that mean in English?

You do not exist alone. There are many other individuals out there with you. Whenever you come into contact with some other person or group, there is a relationship that sets itself up. That relationship can be thought of as an entity in itself, really.

When you date someone, or marry them later on, you have your identity. Your partner has his or her identity. The both of you also have your fused identity together. There's three identities there. In a healthy relationship, all of them are cared for. In unhealthy ones, one or more of those identities gets out of balance.

That fused identity with your partner is not the only fused one you have. If you have children, you also have a fused family identity, or collective. If you work for a company, you are a member of that company's collective identity. If you are on a sports team or in a class, the same thing applies, and so on.

Identities can be short-lived or more or less permanent. When you are on an airplane, you are part of the "We are all on this plane together now" identity, until the trip ends and that collective disperses.

If you can open yourself up to this, you can feel the collective identity around you. In ancient times, these identities were worshiped as household deities, or saints, or ancestors. They can be felt and maintained, and they can be screwed with.

Just like everything else, "We" entities grow and evolve and unfold. You may identify with yourself early in life. Then you get a family and you identify with them. Perhaps, you are part of a tribe or a national group that you identify with. Tribes and national groups are a larger sphere of concern than families, so becoming concerned with members outside your immediate household represents an unfolding or advancement along a line of development in the "We" quadrant. Ultimately, your care can extend to "All of us", or the world's population as a whole. People at that Stage in this developmental line think of themselves not as a "Smith" or as "an American" or a "European", but as a "member of the human race on Earth".

Perhaps as time goes on, even that identity will expand, somehow.

In any case, reality in this quadrant is not about some supreme individual being, or a concrete physical existence, but rather it's about the understanding that all beings and individuals are one Entity.

Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." That has a lot of meanings along this line of development. In the early Stages, it is literal: be nice to your neighbor even if he's mean to you. Later, as you develop along this line, you understand it to mean "Love your neighbor because you ARE your neighbor."

The Concrete Quadrant

2008-12-21T11:00:00.002-05:00

Let's take a look at the Upper Right quadrant in the AQAL model given in the last post. (AQAL stands for "All Quadrants, All Levels, All Lines, All States, All Types", or just "All Quadrants, All levels" for short. This is the short hand name for Ken Wilber's Integral Operating System (IOS), which is the name of this philosophical system.)

Quadrants are all about what you believe is real. What do you believe is real?

If you believe that reality can be reduced to nothing but a bunch of atoms, molecules, and electrical impulses zipping around, then you are right! If you believe that all manifestations or feelings or knowledge of God or the Universe or Oneness is nothing other than what your biological brain is capable of experiencing, then you are right!

The Upper Right quadrant says that reality is a concrete scientifically knowable existence. Just like in the other quadrants, there are Stages here too. Quarks make up protons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons make up atoms, along with electrons. Atoms make up molecules. Molecules make up substances which in turn make up all kinds of stuff as we know it. Planets are in solar systems. Solar Systems are in galaxies, galaxies are in universes. Hell, in today's science there are even theories about clusters of universes! Those are Stages.

The Upper Right quadrant is the exact opposite of the Upper Left, or "I" quadrant. If instead you believe that reality is truly some unknowable mystical existence and that all physical things are really an illusion manifested by this unmanifest reality, then you are looking at it from the perspective of the Upper Left quadrant.

Here's the thing... All the quadrants are right.

Reality (with a capital "R") is made up of all four perspectives simultaneously. However, most people only come from one perspective. That does not make them wrong. That only means they have a part of the whole.

So those "science people" who are extreme in their views of reality and don't believe in any "mystical hoopla" are right. However, they are only partially right. By the same token, the ones who believe that science is a "trick of God to test our faith in what is true" are also right, but again, they are only partially right.

There's 4 sides to this story....

2008-12-12T19:35:00.008-05:00

So we talked about the development of a single individual along a spiritual line. But wait a minute.... isn't that a bit self-centered? All about "me", "myself", and "I"? You bet! Don't you think there's more to the story than that? Like what about the rest of the world's existence and development?

This is where the term "quadrants" come in. It is a basic principle in Integral philosophy or an integral approach to anything.

When you talk about yourself, or "I", that is one perspective. There's words to describe yourself in most languages, e.g. "I", "me", "mine", "myself"... etc. There are also words to describe the person you are talking to, right? Languages use words like "you", "your", "yours", "yourself" for that. "I" is first person, and "you" is second person.

So right there, there's another possible perspective.

Then of course, you can talk about "us". If you and I are speaking, then "We" understand each other, and "we" feel this way about something. There is a collective plural "we" happening there. In other words, "you" + "I" equals "We". "We" is first person plural.

It's trivial, but stay with me.

Finally, "We" can talk about some other object or person, a third person "it". The third person "it" can also be plural, i.e. "them" or "a bunch of its".

So, in all, there are four perspectives to everything. There are four facets to existence.

The four perspectives, "I", "It", "We", and "Its" can be laid out in four quadrants, like below:

So, thinking back, the spiritual line of development is a line that only exists in the Upper Left quadrant, the "I" quadrant. It's only part of the story! The Upper Left quadrant only deals with interior things inside the individual.

I'll spend a little bit of time talking about each of the other quadrants now. If you look on the diagram, you will notice that the "I" and "It" quadrants deal with the individual, and the "We" and "Its" quadrants deal with the collective. Also, the left side deals with internal things, inside of people, and the right side deals with external things, i.e. outside of people.

Thanks to wisdomspace.net for the graphic on quadrants.

To infinity and beyond!

2008-12-08T22:17:00.004-05:00

Beyond Stage 5, there are other stages, but they are hardly worth thinking about at this point.... if thinking about them is even possible, really. Suffice it to say that once this pull towards Oneness begins, it continues. People who are in Stage 5 and passing into the higher stages will gradually pass from an ethnocentric to a world-centric view of things. Their main areas of concern will encompass more than just themselves and their immediate cultures/nations/surroundings.

One thing is important to point out on that journey: expansion of concern, compassion, and capacity for suffering are not feelings, they are experiences and deep understandings/knowings/beings. (There really is not a word for it, exactly. Picture being able to grok the experience of Oneness, rather than just theorizing about it or feeling it emotionally.) Instead of feeling concern for all beings in the world at this stage, you ARE all beings in the world, and you know it.

I am sure there are a lot of other aspects of this that I do not even touch on because I am not able to. Alas, all I can do about these stages is theorize.

Nevertheless, that spiritual line of development is only a teeny tiny portion of spiritual development itself! It's about 1/4th of it to be exact.

Now that we've described a single line of development in detail.... let's blow the doors off this thing.

Postmodernism and other complicated words

2008-12-07T14:54:00.005-05:00

As rational thought and logic come to the fore in Stage 4, lots of interesting advances in technology and other areas of study come into being. As we are seeing today, there is an explosion of both positive developments and negative ones which threaten to destroy everything. Religion, which is seen by Stage 4 people as an annoying and deadly relic of the past, tries to make a few last gasps at preserving itself, and the rational Stage 4 opponents fight to crush it even more.

It is almost like there are two arcs of spirituality dueling there. There is a pre-personal arc, or magic/mythic arc, where people maintain that reality is some concrete magical existence run by mythical beings. Then, there is a rational arc, or personal arc, which sees reality as a concrete physical existence grounded in logic and reason. The media absolutely loves this shit too. The "conservatives" fight to advance their magic/mythic arc, while the "liberals" fight for their logical one. Then occasionally they throw in the New Age nutcases who are basically Stage 2'ers masquerading as something that is neither.

In all that fray, the third arc is completely lost, and as Stage 5 emerges, people start to find it. The third arc of human spiritual/psychological development begins with Stage 5, and in this part of the developmental path you start seeing Reality as grounded in a timeless eternal nondual reality. The mythology of the early stages seems silly and literal, while the rationality of Stage 4 seems empty and without meaning. In fact, I can remember clearly what the boundary between Stage 4 and Stage 5 feels like: all physical things are a crock, and nonduality is perfect already, so what's the point of anything?

Stage 5 often contains folks that claim to be "spiritual but not religious", and that is a phrase that typifies this stage. Dogma no longer makes sense, and rationality is not quite enough. However, some of the ideas in the dogma of the lower stages, like being a productive member of society and taking care of your family while getting along with others, are extremely useful for a happy life. Moreover, the level-headedness of the rational stages is useful for solving problems without violence and destruction. In that regard, the lower stages are transcended and included in Stage 5.

In another way of looking at it, Stage 5 starts to regard most religious practices as valid means of developing. The stage includes them all. In Stage 5, Reality is very BIG. It is so large, in fact, that it cannot be encompassed with a single faith, and people in Stage 5 start to wonder whether all faiths are simply looking at the same thing from a different angle, but getting wrapped up in the emotional garbage.

Reb Zalman Schacter once gave the analogy of the "Circle of Truth". Reality is a circle. For most of human history, we've known about a 5-degree arc on that circle. The rest of Reality was unknown to us. Over time, people and religions have explored more of Reality and uncovered more of the circle, and right now in our history, we are getting past that 180-degree arc point, so we are beginning to see points on the circle that are directly opposite to each other but BOTH true. "This is True... but.... this opposite is also True." One of my senseis, who was probably quoting another Buddhist somewhere was fond of telling me "Everything and its opposite is True, Josh."

In Stage 5, logic is only part of the pie. Your capacity for understanding Reality reaches beyond logic and dogma, and you are able to experience the truth of opposites.

Logic is Spock's religion...

2008-12-05T13:26:00.004-05:00

After the Mythic stage of development comes the Rational stage. Eventually, people start to see some issues with worshiping and relying on magic, spirits, deities, etc. Namely, their prayers or spells usually do not seem to work. So what do they do? Sometimes, they explain it with a crutch, like a misused definition of "Faith", or they wave their hands and say that it is all part of the higher being's(s') plans. The response to this is an argument, and the argument soon recruits logic and rationale as weapons.

Eventually, some people progress to the "show me" stage, where they believe only things that they can see, or make sense of. They will say things like:

"I do not mean to say God doesn't exist. I just haven't seen evidence."

"Why do you believe in things blindly, without being shown the reason?"

Contrary to the belief of most Stage 3 individuals, people in the Rational stage are not all discounting the existence of the entities in the lower stages. They are simply saying that if those things do exist, there needs to be some explanation. Not only that, they wonder how others can abide the contradictions in the dogma of the first three stages. Examples of contradictions are how multiple Stage 3 religions can claim to be the true one, and how any beings like the one they describe would allow multiple false faiths to exist if that was the case. For instance, the largest faith in the world contains 2.5 Billion members. According to them, 3.5 Billion people are wrong, and some higher power hates or looks down on all the 3.5 Billion non-believers. How can that be true, wonder the Stage 4 folks?

Pretty much all members of the Rational stage of development would admit that they might believe in some sort of dogma if it could be proven. Once again, this stage does not do away with previous stages, it just includes them and looks at them from a higher perspective.

Myth Thumpers

2008-12-04T08:49:00.005-05:00

The next stage is called the Mythic stage, associated with the color amber in Ken Wilber's and other literature. Somewhere around 80% or more of the world today is at this stage.

In the Mythic stage, the spirits of the previous two stages coalesce into some kind of extremely organized mythology. No more are they thought of as random entities running around performing mischief at their own whim. Instead, they are seen as intelligent beings with human qualities that participate in daily life, and have infinite knowledge and wisdom, not to mention power. Moreover, followers in this stage profess (and insist on) belief in their chosen mythology as the one true one. "Non-believers" are in big trouble, according to them.

Sometimes, as you all know, there is only one entity worshiped. All of the spirits are seen as subservient to, or part of, an over-deity that reigns everything. If you think about it, that is a piece of evidence that this line of spiritual evolution is moving towards something. If the ultimate goal is realization of Oneness with all things, and the ultimate acknowledgement of what is in each moment, and the subsequent realization of eternity.... then it makes a lot of sense that this line of development progresses towards a theme of "One". At this point, in Stage 3, it manifests as the thought of one God, but the big thing to notice in this stage is that the one God is still separate from the people it rules.

If all this sounds familiar to you, it is. Most followers of the Judeo-Christian religions, and even the Hindu, Shinto, and Zoroastrian faiths resonate with this theme.Notice again how this stage does not countermand the stages below it. It enfolds them and includes them. Of course, individuals in this stage, especially evangelical or fanatical types, may at times strike out in favor of their belief system as the one true faith, and that can be extremely dangerous... to put it mildly... no disrespect to the millions of people who have died for such reasons over the last millenium.

Sad as that may be, you can derive a lot of understanding from this observation.There is nothing you can do to convince anyone at this stage that he or she is only seeing part of the picture. Not only that, you should not try, because the people at this stage are not necessarily WRONG. They are simply taking in the world at their capacity. When their time comes to move past this stage, they will, and maybe not even in this lifetime.... and they may even destroy themselves (and us) in the process. Nevertheless, eventually they will tire of it, and humanity as a whole will statistically progress to Stage 4. It is already in process, and if we survive, it should be interesting.

Baby, it's Magic

2008-12-03T10:37:00.006-05:00

At the next level along the line of spiritual development, the hapless and chaotic spirits that possess everything become interactive. Instead of feeling helpless about their plight, people begin to bargain with the forces of nature and the universe. They start to believe and realize that the universe operates like a machine, and that by pushing certain buttons they can get it to do things. Sometimes this button pushing amounts to no more than the random thumping of a chimp on a typewriter, but other times people in this stage figure out what a couple of the buttons do and start using them over and over.

In today's world, these are the "shamanic" or tribal religions. Mainstream examples of religions that occupy this stage would be Santeria and Voodoo.

Commonly, adherents in this stage see the world as a place of conflict, in which they occupy one side, i.e. Good or Evil. Their actions are thought to further their perceived nature of either good or evil, whichever they favor at the time.

Notice something, however. This stage does not do away with anything in the stage before it. Instead, this stage represents a flowering or unfolding of the Preconventional stage. In the first stage, there are spirits. They are still there in the second stage, even though they may grouped together or renamed as other spirits.

That makes this a good example of how Stages work in Integral Philosophy. Each successive stage enfolds and includes the one before it.

Ye Olde Stage

2008-12-02T08:43:00.003-05:00

The archaic stage of development is fairly easy to point out to anyone living today. Think back to ancient religion.... not ancient, like Egyptian.... ancient like caveman. This is a lot like the Stage 1 God that I described in an earlier post.

At the archaic level, everything is a complete mystery. People at this stage believe that all creatures and objects have living spirits inside them, and that these spirits are able to influence life in different ways. Things like weather, disease, crop yield, etc. are all influenced by these spirits. The spirits themselves may or may not be intelligent, and people at this stage may not even differentiate at all between the objects and spirits. They may not even admit the presence or existence of the spirits, so much as the mystery of life itself.

Keep in mind here that I am not saying anything about specific cultures or religious faiths. All of these stages can be "colored" by any religious flavor. I am only talking in general terms.

Spiritual line of development

2008-11-30T19:02:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned in the last post, any skill or intelligence can be gauged with a line of development. The line of development labels are a tool that's there to help you understand where you are at, and where you can be going. The "spiritual line" of development is a hot topic of study in psychology as well. James Fowler's work is often quoted by Ken Wilber and the people in his organization. It's actually a pretty complicated layout.

Before I give levels based on that system, first remember that this is not a ranking method. "High" levels are not somehow "better" than "low" levels. Unlike a caste system, where lower levels are oppressed and looked down upon, in this system, lower levels are encompassed and included in the levels above, much like molecules include atoms which in turn include even smaller particles.

Also remember that I am describing Stages here, not States. These are permanently attained positions of awareness.

So... first the labels:

Stage 0: Preverbal, predifferentiated , Archaic (Infrared)

Stage 1: Magic (Red)

Stage 2: Mythic (Amber)

Stage 3: Rational (Orange)

Stage 4: Pluralistic (Green)

Stage 5: Integral (Turquoise)

Stage 6: Transpersonal, Non-dual, Stages beyond... (Violet, Ultra-Violet, Clear light)

Over the next few posts, I'd like to take time to talk a little about each level individually.

It's a fine line

2008-11-23T12:16:00.002-05:00

Before laying out stages of spiritual growth, which is actually only a small part of the "Integral Operating System" or IOS, which is the term used to describe this philosophy, it is important to talk about lines of development.

Everyone is good at some things and not at others. Moreover, you have skill sets that you can practice, or forget. Your skill sets are not just manual labor things, or computer things, but also personal things, like your skill with relating to other people, for instance. You also have things that you develop over your life that aren't exactly skill sets, like your morality and sexuality.

All of these things progress through stages. Each of these skill sets or abilities is referred to as a line. For example, if you can read this, you have skill in reading, but you did not always. Your reading skill went through stages. As a child, you learned to recognize letters and recite the alphabet. In elementary school, you learned to sound out the letters and make words. By the time you hit third grade, you were reading easy paragraphs. By high school, you were able to read just about anything, though understanding it all was another matter. Even today, as you read more, you experience more words and learn more things, which make understanding easier.

Your reading stages were probably defined by "grade level". Stages are given names by people who create systems to name them. However, in reality they are all arbitrarily defined.

Nevertheless, the stages are there, and any skill or ability line you can think of has stages. Of particular interest are the lines in morality, cognitive skill, interpersonal relations, emotional maturity, and psychosexual development. Everybody is at different stages in each one. You may be at Stage 2 morality, Stage 3 cognitive, Stage 1 interpersonal, Stage 1 emotional, and Stage 3 psychosexual, for example. A person like that would be extremely rational or intellectually developed, but not too understanding of matters outside their own emotions or personal internal relationship... though for some reason they'd be a pistol in bed.

The number of stages, as I said, is arbitrary. One way to look at it is to use a 3-stage system. Take morality for example. Stage 1 morality would be the egocentric stage, or "me" stage. Your concern would center around fulfilling your own personal physical needs above anything else. In stage 2, you would progress to the "us" stage, where you are now ethnocentric. You realize that there is benefit to fulfilling the needs of yourself AND the people immediately around you in your own family, clan, tribe, or what have you. Upon reaching stage three, you would be at the "all of us" stage, where you are now world-centric. You realize that your tribe is connected to many others, and that all of them are dependent on each other in some way. Your primary concern would be doing what's best for all groups, tribes, clans, etc.

There are, of course, other ways to define those particular moral stages. IOS literature does not tell you what stages to use, only that there are stages, and it suggests some possible stages you could use, based on decades of psychology research.

Now, think of a line for spiritual development.... What stages do you think it would have?

A state for all stages

2008-11-22T19:46:00.004-05:00

In Integral philosophy there are some core concepts: states, stages, lines, quadrants, and types. It will take a while to define these, but lets start with states.

You are already familiar with states. You have three major ones that happen every day: Waking, Dreaming sleep, Deep dreamless sleep. The thing that is common to all of these states is that they are temporary. You are not always awake, nor are you always asleep. Not only that, but the kind of sleep you are getting changes during the night, or from night to night.

So, states are the temporary form of your current consciousness. Their temporary, non-permanent, nature is important to remember.

Of course, there are not just 3 possible states. There are zillions. You can be in a state of meditation. Moreover, there are many different kinds of meditation that put you into different kinds of meditative states. You can be in a drug high, which is also a state. You can be in a state of depression, or elation. I am sure if you think about it, you can come up with many more types of states. Again, their unifying concept is that they are all temporary.

So, let me ask you a question.... If you take peyote and have a massively spiritual experience and see God or whatever your upbringing suggests you'd see, does that mean you are now at a high stage of spiritual evolution?

No!

Know why? The drug effects are a state, and they are temporary! Anyone can have a spiritual experience, through drugs or other means, but how do we tell apart those who are at different stages of spiritual evolution in the permanent sense?

The answer is in the question: Stages

Let's talk about physical objects to show this. Think of an atom. An atom is a stage of matter. Atoms can get together and form molecules. Molecules include atoms. The atoms get together and form something greater than themselves alone, and usually the molecule that they form is reasonably permanent. The molecule is the next stage of matter.

Molecules can form objects, like cells, if you have enough of them. Cells can form organs. Organs can form systems. Systems can form organisms.

These are stages of matter. They are manifestations of increasing complexity, and they are relatively permanent.

Evolution of consciousness, which people seem to equate with someone's "level of spiritual evolution" also has stages. Unlike states, once you reach a new stage of consciousness, it is permanent.

We'll talk more about these later.

Integral philosophy

2008-11-21T09:04:00.004-05:00

If you have not noticed yet in some previous posts, I am fond of systems that explain the universe, both physical and non-physical. I just am! For the most part, it's my personality. I like to look at how things work, and the universe qualifies as the biggest "thing" there really is. So hey.

One of the biggest problems in the world is the fact that there are so many systems and beliefs on how the universe works that it causes mass conflict and destruction repeatedly in our history. The bottom line of all these conflicts is a fight over what is the truth.

"My god can beat up your god."

"My way is the only way."

"Your way is evil. My way is good."

How many millions of people have died over those ideas? Yet, none of the warring religions or philosophies have EVER won once and for all.

What if they were all right? What if there was some overarching structure or principle that could unite all religions and philosophies, whether they acknowledged it or not?

They are, and there is.

Over the next batch of posts, I'm going to talk about Integral Philosophy, which was pioneered by Ken Wilber. This is a belief system, like any other, so all the disclaimers apply. However, as far as belief systems go, it is the most encompassing one I have ever seen, and it is able to literally explain anything with regard to religion or spirituality, but also physical objects, emotions, life.... everything.

When I started looking at this system, and I am still a novice, I was fascinated at how it did not do away with any of my current beliefs or practices at all. Rather, it encompassed them, validated them. It showed where tweaks are needed, but it did not in any way tell me what I should or should not do or believe. It is not dogma, and it is not new agey crap.

It is also not relativism, by the way. Relativism only gets part of the picture by stating that all actions can be viewed as good or bad depending on how you look at them. While this is true, relativism does not account for the witnessing oneness behind everything, to which there is no opposite.

The other thing is that this system is quite technical. Whenever I read these books, my brain hurts because it's like reading a graduate level philosophy text, which I don't like much. Luckily, I plan to present it in layman's terms, so anyone can understand it, because when it comes down to practicality, living this system is not hard at all.

Funakoshi wrapup

2008-11-19T22:03:00.002-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #20: Always think and devise ways to live the precepts every day.

Well, we made it. We got through all 20 Funakoshi principles. The 20th principle is a bit of a wrapup, or a reminder to.... what else?..... pay attention! Live your life in such a way that it becomes an exercise. See it as a test. See problems as opportunities to get stronger and grow.

The really crazy thing about all this spiritual stuff is that there isn't much to know. Hundreds of books are written. Zillions of methods are given. Scads of information is memorized. If you read enough books, talk to enough teachers, and do enough personal work, it all starts to sound like the same thing over and over again... because it IS, once you recognize it. There really isn't a whole lot to being happy.

Yet, all in all, it is all done this way because people are a bit thick-headed and need to be told things in many different ways in the off chance that they will understand "it". Once you understand "it", you too can write lots of books that say the same repetitious things as everyone else! It's like knowing the source of a mathematical formula that lets you derive all other formulas on your own.

Wisdom is no trick. It's just about getting "it", and then spewing your own assortment of derivatives or angle on it.

Ebb and flow

2008-11-19T09:21:00.004-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #19: Do not forget to correctly apply: strength and weakness of power, stretching and contraction of the body and slowness and speed of techniques.

On a physical level, or an ego level, people tends towards doing things as hard as they can, or as fast as they can. Something in the strength and speed makes them feel powerful or skillful. Of course, what younger practitioners often encounter when speeding along through their brute strength is a big fat brick wall that is a lot harder and stronger than they are. Ouch! Naturally, this is not limited to newer practitioners or even to martial arts. It happens all the time in life.

People love to speed through things or barrel their way into situations. This principle points out what should be an obvious fact: sometimes doing things slowly or with softness works better.

If you are going through an intersection and a train is coming, do you barrel through without looking because you think that getting hit by a train could never happen to you? Sometimes, like in this situation, it pays to take a moment to look around and assess the environment before going over the tracks.

There are myriads of examples like this, but the point is that you can accomplish many things with softness and a well-placed lack of action, just as you can accomplish some things with force and speed too.

Heads or tails?

2008-11-15T18:31:00.004-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #18: Practicing kata is one thing, engaging in a real fight is another.

For those that are not familiar with martial arts jargon, a "kata" is a series of choreographed techniques that are always done the same way, in the same pattern. Martial arts students do these forms over and over again in order to train their "muscle memory", which is a way of saying that the forms are made to ingrain the movements into the subconscious. Funakoshi was a big proponent of kata as a way of developing skill and character, i.e. spiritual practice. His detractors criticized this method because they said that doing kata does not have much effect on whether or not a person can fight in real life against a real opponent.

My opinion is that Funakoshi really did believe that kata was enough on its own to teach you how to fight for real. In my opinion, I also think the real answer lies somewhere in between. People who want to learn how to fight for real, and need to learn it fast, should engage in some basic training in form, but 90% of what they should do is spar against others and get the crap kicked outta them. They should also do as much as possible to build up their muscles and aerobic endurance. For pure fighting, that's basically what you need to do.

On the other hand, students who only practice kata will learn other things. They might be able to fight a little bit, but probably not very well against someone who only spars, yet they will gain some serious insight into themselves that the fighter will not.

A kata is basically a spiritual exercise. ANY action you do with repetition and intention will teach you things and become a spiritual exercise.

So when it comes down to it, why do you practice what you practice? Are you in it for fighting, or are you in it to grow spiritually?

This is true with things that have nothing to do with martial arts too.

Do you work your job to make money and become rich? Or do you do it for fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment or belonging?

Do you spend time with your family so your wife or mother doesn't yell at you? Or do you do it with the intention of helping your family members and spending valuable moments with them?

Do you engage in sports to be cool and make people like you? Or do you do it to learn about teamwork and dealing with people?

In all cases here, the same action has two sides to it and the only thing that separates them is intention. By the way, intention does not necessarily equate with pleasure or liking something. You can hate playing sports, but do it anyway with the intention of teaching yourself about teamwork, for example. Liking or disliking the action has nothing to do with whether or not you can grow from it.

On the down lo

2008-11-11T09:29:00.003-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #17: Beginners must master low stance and posture, natural body positions are for the advanced.

I've always been fascinated by this subject. In Funakoshi's style of martial art, Shotokhan, and related styles like Wado Ryu, students are always taught deep stances that are low to the ground and very wide. The stances stress form and balance, as well as leg muscle strength. Naturally, if you were a trained fighter, you would look at these stances and think, "Wtf?" They don't exactly look practical because they slow you down and make it tougher for you to evade. On the other hand, they root you to the ground and make you a little tougher to knock over.

As people advance in those arts, their stances start to get a bit higher, lighter, and more mobile. However, since the person spent his or her early years training deep stances, their legs are now strong, and they have the same sense of balance when they are high up in a stance as they did when they were low in a stance. The key is to retain the feeling and mechanics of the low stance when you become advanced enough to do the high stance.

Somebody who starts out in high stances when training will not have this advantage, or will need to learn it another way. A lot of other styles never do deep stances, for example, tai quan do, Issyn Ryu, kickboxing, and many others.

Hell, Funakoshi also believed that you should not practice with weapons until you were already good with your bare hands, and many other martial arts schools believe that too. Then there's martial arts schools that put weapons into the hands of 3-year olds or teenage girls who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. (Ok, I admit this irks the hell out of me when schools do this, because I come from the school of thought that you need to be able to punch and kick before you worry about using an implement as an extension of yourself, but it is certainly possible to do it the completely opposite way: going from weapon to empty hand at the advanced levels. Look at escrima.)

So what's the deal here? Funakoshi is obviously not preaching anything absolute because so many other groups are doing the exact opposite and they're doing fine.

The essence of this Funakoshi principle is that when you begin to learn something, you need to stick to the basics.... whatever they are. You start out being unconsciously incompetent. By sticking to the basics, you realize what you don't know and you become consciously incompetent. With more practice, you become good, i.e. consciously competent.

Once you are consciously competent, you go even further until you can just let go of the basics and allow them to happen on their own... you become unconsciously competent. This is a basic sequence of learning for most things:

unconscious incompetence --> conscious incompetence --> conscious competence --> unconscious competence

Think about it.

The lesson here is not to think that you know something when you really don't! The first stage of learning is to know that you don't know. That enables you to grow.

Still paying attention?

2008-11-07T09:09:00.005-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #16: Be aware at all times that you have millions of potential opponents

This is yet another repetitious example of paying attention. The use of the word "opponent" tends to bring up images of a competitor working against you or a killer trying to end your life. That may be true in the sense of the Japanese used in the saying, but this can be expanded to include everyone: both those working with and against us.

In other words, be aware at all times of all your possible interactions with all people and things around you.

Slice and Dice

2008-11-05T09:50:00.005-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #15: Think of your hands and feet as swords.

For most martial artists, the meaning of this precept should be pretty clear. Your hands and feet, which do all the punching and kicking, are seamlessly integrated with you, obviously. They do all the work in a fight.

On a deeper level, this talks about awareness of your own body. When you use a weapon, it becomes an extension of yourself. Similarly, when you are using your bare hands, they are at one with your thoughts and feelings. There is no thinking "ok, here I go. I'm throwing a punch. Now, here comes a kick." When you have been doing martial arts for a while, this all happens with "mu shin", no mind. So, to be aware of your own body while moving is to be at one with it.

Much like some of the last precepts which talking about merging yourself with others, this one focuses on the individual, but says the same thing. Be aware. Be conscious. Be One.

How do you get there? Practice! Learning to move seems like the most obvious thing. Anyone with an intact spine and a limb or four can move. However, moving with intention and awareness is not immediately evident.

Try this. Look at your hand. As you look at it feel the inside of your hand. Try to sense the blood flowing through it, if you can As you do this, you might start to feel it tingle and get lighter, or even heavier depending. You've just got a glimpse of what it is like to put awareness into a body part. Over time, by doing that and learning to move that part with awareness, you can eventually do it without thinking.

Hey, move it!

2008-11-04T14:02:00.004-05:00

Funakoshi Principle #14: Move according to your opponent.

It seems like there are a lot of different translations to this one, but the one I go by is "move according to your opponent".

On a bare surface level, this means when your opponent punches, you block. When your opponent moves fast, you move fast. When your opponent is escalating, you are keeping pace, or even setting the pace if you are in control of the opponent in that moment.

On a deeper level, this is about merging with your opponent. When you move according to your opponent, you are blending with him or her. When you blend with an opponent, you merge with an opponent. Merging is both on a motion level, i.e. physical, but also on an emotional, mental, and spiritual one.

In effect, this dictum is a statement about how you should treat everyone: as if they are part of you. "Opponent" is anyone who is working against you. To work against someone is to be separate from them. Being separate from them is the opposite of merging consciousness. Thus, for everyone who is separate from you, treat them as if they are not. That in itself is a powerful tool for bringing out the best in your situation.

The Dalai Lama, in his book "The Art of Happiness At Work", reminds us that everyone we meet is dependent on us, and we are dependent on them. If you think about your job, everyone at your workplace is dependent on the work you do, or else they may not get their paycheck. The same goes for the work they do and your paycheck. This sort of thing is easy to see in small companies, but it is also true in large ones. So if you are dependent on all these people for your liveliehood, why in the world would you ever treat them with rudeness?

Mano a mano

2008-10-31T10:33:00.005-04:00

I'm back from my travels and posting again...

Funakoshi Principle #13: Victory depends on your ability to distinguish vulnerable points from invulnerable ones.

The other way I have seen this listed is "Respond in accordance with your opponent." Japenese language is funny like that. One set of symbols can mean two completely different things, although the deeper meanings of them can hold surprising similiarities.

Once again this whole thing goes back to perception, except this time it's perception of people. Not only is it seeing people, such as, "Oh look, there's some dude.", but also it refers to seeing inside people and understanding what is going on in real time in their minds and emotions.

In a fighting situation, such as a martial arts sparring match, this is a pretty clear-cut statement. You will win if you punch them in the ding ding. If you do not know where a ding ding is located, you better hit them somewhere else that hurts, or you lose.

However, think about it this way: Life is about interactions of all kinds, not just fights. Sometimes you may NOT want to hit somebody where they are vulnerable. In this case, it could be an effort to not hurt them emotionally, not just physically. You may want to spare someone's feelings or other parts of their being in your interaction with them, or you may not.

All that takes a lot of skill and awareness, and.... you guessed it... paying attention. "Victory" comes from knowing how to handle people. It comes from knowing when to spare their vulnerabilities when necessary, and to not spare them when necessary too. It also comes from knowing how those vulnerable points come and go, and to be able to detect the strong and weak points, as well as the emotions and sentiments, of people as they interact with you.

A quick recap

2008-10-26T00:05:00.004-04:00

To anyone just joining us, we are a little more than half way through looking at some principles by a man named Gichin Funakoshi, who is reputed by some to be the man that made karate popular in the United States.

I am doing this as part of a general discussion on some basic spiritual principles, and using karate as an example of how living your normal life, in a normal way, IS a profound spiritual practice. You just need to consistently see it that way for it to be so, and life will take it from there.

Remember that as we go through all this, you can easily substitute your favorite activity in every place where I talk about karate or martial arts.

Don't be a loser

2008-10-25T10:04:00.003-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #12: Do not think that you have to win, rather think that you do not have to lose.

I'm in the middle of a flurry of business trips back and forth from Minneapolis, so I haven't been around to write.

Anyway! This is an interesting principle. On its barest level, it talks about sportsmanship. For example, when you are sparring someone in martial arts, you should remember that winning isn't everything. It's whether or not you did your best that matters. Winning is generally a "nice to have" in physical tournaments, but it is not everything.

Looking at this deeper, however, it becomes more interesting than that.

What happens when all you think about is winning?

What does that do to your attitude? What does that do to your focus? Some would say it increases it, and in physical sports the "killer instinct" is necessary for winning. That's probably true. However, take a look at most (professional) athletes. What are they like?

Their focus on winning tends to concentrate their awareness on themselves, namely, their own emotions and egos and how to go about satisfying those things. This is essentially the feeding of a "false self".

Too much concentration on winning does that. It can strengthen and feed your ego and bring you away from being aware of the aspects of yourself that are closer to Consciousness. Funakoshi is saying all you have to do is concentrate on not losing. In other words, it is ok to take care of yourself and provide yourself some measure of comfort and sustenance. You should not deny those needs because their basic fulfillment is just as much a part of spirituality as any other exercise, more even.

You don't have to "lose" by not worrying about your needs at all, or even denying them completely and letting everyone else walk all over you. Concentrating on "not losing" is striking a balance between your needs and egoic desires.

Keep on burnin'

2008-10-21T09:01:00.003-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #11: Karate is like boiling water. If you do not heat it constantly, it will cool.

In one way of looking at it, this principle says the same thing I mentioned already about the value of training and working hard on things, i.e. the point of it is to increase your baseline, or Stage, to use a Ken Wilber term.

Along those same lines, this principle can also express the importance of meditation or prayer (which technically are the same thing, if you understand how they work.) Meditation and prayer are like lifting weights, and all the basic ideas apply. If you do it more, you get more focused and centered, along with some other good side effects. If you stop, the effects diminish.

The same is also true on a physical level, as I said before, with regards to karate or any sport.

The Tenth Insight

2008-10-18T10:36:00.002-04:00

No, it's not a cheesy book! It's the next Funakoshi principle:

Funakoshi Principle #10: Put your everyday living into karate, and you will find the subtle secrets.

Anyone seeing a pattern here? Like any good teacher, Funakoshi has an underlying principle emerging. Moreover, that underlying principle rings true, and is recognizable as being his own way of saying the same thing everyone else is saying when they teach about Reality.

In my own words, I'm asserting the same thing he is: Pay attention!

When you pay attention long enough, you start to realize that life is constantly giving you clues to things, answers even. The problem is that these clues and answers are so subtle that if your attention lags for even a moment, you could miss out.

"Putting your everyday living into karate" does not necessarily mean opening soup cans with shuto strikes, or breaking frozen meat with a bare fist. (Please, never try that.) Putting your everyday living into karate means applying the principles of attention, chi, centered-ness, and awareness into your life. Training in a dojo is a good way to work on these things, but if you don't have a dojo (like me at the moment), you are still fine! You have life!

Here's a trick to show this principle of how the universe gives clues. Think of a question in your mind, something that is general and about your life. Then open a book, any book, preferably not a technical manual for an air cleaning system, but if that floats your boat, then sure. Read a passage out of that book with your question in mind. See if the text has any relevance after you think about it. Often you will find it does.

That's a little trick that forces the issue a bit, but if you just pay attention to what's going on in your life in a particular moment, with a question in mind, you will often see something that gives you a clue. Try it.

In it for life

2008-10-17T13:32:00.004-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #9: Karate is a life-long pursuit.

In today's world of ADD kids and ADD adults, people rarely actually stick with something for long. Interests come and go and before you know it, your kid (or the parent) is onto something else. Personally, I think that the overload of information we see from technology and society today perpetuates our scatter-brained tendency.

Karate classes are just a casualty of this phenomenon. I've seen more people come and go in class than are enrolled in the class at any given time. I have put fairly high level belts on people who have earned them every bit, only to never see them again after that. Life calls.

Funakoshi would probably not be too happy with today's state of karate and martial arts in that respect.

However, hold on a minute!

Maybe not everyone is meant to be in a karate class his or her whole life? Maybe people are meant to get what they need and then move on? Perhaps all that is needed sometimes is several months of lessons to drive home some important point in life, at which step the person then moves onward?

I believe that is closer to the truth. So does this contradict Funakoshi? No. I don't think it does.

Instead of the word "karate", substitute "spiritual practice". Spiritual practice is a lifelong pursuit. That is true. A student might leave a karate class, but the student's spiritual practice goes on afterward, hopefully.

Remember, training, exercises, thrills.... these are not necessarily spiritual practice, or lifelong pursuits. However, Life is a lifelong pursuit. There is only one way out, eh? Every-day events are your teacher, and every-day actions are your spiritual practice.

I believe that Funakoshi probably equated karate with spirituality, and understood the importance of using life as your teacher. That is what he meant by the principle.

Small break from Funakoshi

2008-10-14T22:46:00.003-04:00

Just felt like diverting....

When I die, say this for me...

If you feel sad for me, feel sad.
If you are moved to cry for me, cry.
But do not let your grief for me pull you way for even one second from doing what must be done in this present moment.
Do not allow your sadness to make you sink into the past, reminiscing of me
for when you are in the past, I am not there, and you are moving away from me.
Instead, be with me in the Present.
In this moment, I never was, and never will be again, but I am here now as much as I was before, and more.
I am the memories in your mind.
I am the air in your lungs.
I am the beauty you can see in all things.
I am YOU.
So when this moment is passed and drifts to the next, know that I am here always eternally, with you, and join me in my greatest and final realization.

Cutting class

2008-10-14T09:29:00.005-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #8: Do not think that karate is only practiced in the dojo.

I dare say that this principle is akin to the things I have been noting on this blog for a while now. Life is a spiritual practice. There are times when we do "formal exercises" or training to sharpen parts of ourselves, such as practicing martial arts, but when you leave the classroom the learning does not need to stop. Life is your main teacher. By paying attention to the things around you, there are lessons everywhere.

I don't want to repeat this so much if it can be gleaned from past posts. Let me take another aspect of this principle.

In a sense, taking a martial arts class is the same exact thing as playing baseball, lifting weights, or joining a quiz game league: the more you practice something, the better you get... until you stop practicing. As long as you remain in the classroom, you will get better or maintain your skills. When you get out of the classroom, your skills can get rusty. So what's the point of ever really being in class, if its effects are not permanent and they only work so long as you stay in it for the rest of your life? Shouldn't the things that we can do in our everyday life and practice count for more?

As an example, why lift weights if as soon as I stop lifting weights I will almost immediately revert back to my baseline strength? I either have to lift weights for the rest of my life, or be happy with what I've got. If you like to lift weights, then that's great. It's about pleasure at that point. If you don't like lifting weights, why do it?

Ok, now that I've played Devil's advocate....

That's not to say that classrooms do not have a purpose. A sensei of mine used to say, "The worst you ever do in class is the best you will ever do on the street. The point of class is to work on your worst, and make it better."

What you do in a class over a long period of time affects your baseline. A few months of class will move up your baseline a tiny bit. A few years of class will move it up noticeably, but barely. A few decades will move it up a lot. Your baseline is what matters, not the limits of your skills in class.

Ken Wilber refers to this concept as "States" and "Stages".

A State is a temporary frame of mind or consciousness. When you practice karate in class, and you are having a good day, or a good year, you are in a very high State of practice, or a high state of proficiency. States come and go, however. Once you leave class temporarily, or for good, the State goes away, or you can revert to a lower State.

Stages are your baseline. Stages are permanent, and do not go downward easily. If you stop practicing forever, your baseline level of skill in karate is your Stage. Stages take a long time to advance. Moving up your baseline to a new level is a slow and arduous process that can take years or decades in the case of martial arts.

Stages can advance through normal activity in your life, not just class. That's the essence of what Funakoshi is saying. However, actively working on a Stage in a classroom setting can advance it faster.

A final disclaimer: This is yet another toolbox, a belief system. It is a series of labels I have put onto things that are not describable with words. Keep in mind things I've said on the blog about Oneness and a lack of advancement or striving.

Ooops

2008-10-13T09:16:00.004-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #7: Accidents arise from negligence.

Another way of wording this is inattention and neglect cause misfortune. Once again, on the surface this physically means pay attention. If you are careless in practicing martial arts, someone could get hurt, and people do get hurt. So pay attention!

The deeper meaning of this principle is... Pay attention! Yet again, here we have what is really my own personal basic guiding principle in life, paying attention.

The Japanese have a concept called "satori", which can roughly translate as "excellence", but what satori really means is attentive focus and readiness. In his book Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman's teacher, Socrates, shows him what satori feels like. He pulls out a knife and tells Dan to catch the knife when he throws it at hm. Naturally, Dan was scared half to death, but he figured he better damn well pay attention or he was about to get skewered. He might be getting skewered anyway...

Socrates never threw the knife, but Dan realized that the lesson was about how he felt when he thought Socrates was going to throw the knife. He went into a state of satori. Think about how you'd feel if someone told you they were about to throw a knife and you had to catch it.

Granted, we can't all pay attention like this all the time. Sales of headache medications would go through the roof, and Pfizer's stock would be a lot higher than it is now. However, there are other kinds of attention too, ones that take less effort. In our martial arts school, the Kodo School of Karate, we call one of them "Mind of Water". This state of consciousness is a quiet and relaxed readiness. You are not in satori, where you are trying to catch daggers, but you are attentive and awake, alert too, but not tense. Although you are not noticing every single detail of every little thing, you are tuned into the main flow of things and you understand what's happening around you as it happens.

Should anything arise that requires more attention, BANG. You switch into satori, and you focus on it. We call that "Mind of Mirror".

There is also a "Mind of Moon" where you are usually in Mind of Water, but with an added focus on trying to see everything at once in more detail. Mind of Moon talks more about noticing things with your senses: sight, sound, touch, intuition, whereas Mind of Water is a state of consciousness and may or may not deal with senses at any given time.

Neglecting to have at least one of these states active can result in accidents. Accidents mean that you missed something and it caused you to make a mistake.

Release the mind

2008-10-08T08:47:00.005-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #6: Always be ready to release your mind.

I'll admit. There are some Funakoshi principles that are more physical than others, and some can be tough to find the deeper meaning behind them. This is not one of them.

In a strict martial arts sense, when you have practiced the physical moves for a long time they become ingrained in you, and when it comes time to do them for real (or practice) you can do them without thinking. There is a state of "no mind", or in Japanese, mu-shin. That state of no mind, where you are at one with the present moment and you just act as needed, is one of the biggest side effects of practicing martial arts. When you do it in class, it starts to spill out into your life for some things.

When you first start to get into this, it sort of comes on when it wants to. The state of no-mind in newer black belts tends to only come out under situations of extreme endurance or stress, but as they progress, it becomes easier to get to it, and eventually it can come at will. Holding it for long periods of time is another matter.

In this state, which is not just good for martial arts, but for a lot of other things too, you are not putting up any mental barriers or labels between you and the things you are looking at. Normally when you look at something, your mental chatter labels it. "Book"... "Pen"..... "Monitor"... etc. What you are therefore perceiving most of the time is your mental label of things rather than the things themselves, which have no names. When you look at something without a mental label, it can be surprising because you become aware that the thing is literally bursting into creation, in a fit of ecstasy even.

Most people can't live like this all the time, but a good substitute for that is to be able to switch into that state for little bits of time whenever you get the chance. Always being ready to release your mind means being able to do that, both in times of stress and in times of calm.

Doing this on a regular basis is a powerful exercise and spiritual practice.

We interrupt this bloggin'

2008-10-07T08:57:00.002-04:00

Usually towards the beginning of each month I like to remind everyone who is new here that sometimes it's easier to start reading this blog from the beginning instead of picking up the most recent posts first. Lately that's not quite as true because I have been doing various topics, but for the earlier stuff there definitely is a progression.

Also, we now have a "followers" widget on the right sidebar, if you look over there. Pretty cool.

It's not what you say or do...

2008-10-07T08:44:00.002-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #5: Spirit first, technique second.

Technique is a mechanical thing. The word "technical" is part of the word "technique". Doing a technique in a technically perfect way is great, if it is even possible.

However, it is your spirit that allows the technique to accomplish its goal. Beyond that, if you can develop and focus your spirit, you can even let go of the technique, from a technical standpoint.

Confused yet?

Let's say someone throws a punch at you, and you block it.

If your technique is perfect, you might have enough speed and power to actually block that punch. You might even have enough power to break their arm as it punches, if you wish. But what are you going to DO to that person in terms of the overall fight? Are you going to scare them? Are you going to surprise them? Are you going to make them laugh? Are you going to make them your friend?

It is the spirit behind the technique that conveys its intention. If you block the punch and burn your eyes into the person, they may realize it's not a good idea to try a second punch. If you had relied only on technique, that may not be the case. They may have thought you simply got lucky and they might try again.

What about life?

Ever hear the phrase "it's not what you say, but how you say it"? Someone's language "technique" could be great, but their personality or intentions can be completely off and they can rub people the wrong way. Actually, people make a lot of problems for themselves because they are insensitive to what is behind their language technique. Your ability to not only use good wording but also to convey the proper message that you intend without creating undesired reactions in other people is what is known as people skills.

Beyond words, actions are the same. You can go to work every day as a matter of technical course. It's just what you do, and you do it by habit. OR, you can go to work every day as an exercise. See it as a test. See it as a kata. Simply see it as fun, even if it is not initially what you think of as fun!

Remember you make your reality through your thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and feelings, i.e. your spirit. The technique is what it is, whether it's throwing a punch, talking to your teacher, or going to work. The spirit is what makes that technique work the way you wish to manifest it.

Control, you must learn control

2008-10-05T01:45:00.003-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #4: First control yourself before attempting to control others.

Control.... this is a pretty profound concept in my mind, certainly not a trivial thing to talk about. It is something I have wrestled with in my own life since I was a kid and I could probably write volumes on it, but maybe it is best to start simply.

Technique..... The first thing anyone needs to be able to do is control the body. You do this as an infant learning to walk (not to mention the hundreds of other motions you learn before even attempting to walk.) You also do this in karate. When you first start out, you cannot control your body in such a way to do "good techniques", whatever they may be.

Ever look at a white belt doing a stance next to a brown belt? They are both doing a stance, but they look different. Same technique, and aside from personal differences between their body types, the difference in the way they look is control. A brown belt has been around long enough to know how to control his or her body to do a good stance. A white belt is still trying to figure out the mechanics of it.

Now what about the deeper physical aspects of control beyond motor skills? Senseis sometimes say you should "move from your center." This is the element of controlling yourself physically. Move from your center. It is not as easy as you think, and you actually spend a good deal of your early (and late) belt ranks figuring out how to move from your center.

Jujitsu has developed this concept even more highly. First you learn to control your center. Then you learn to control someone else's center (through throws and holds and other stuff). Then you learn to control the center between you and your opponent.

In karate, you are going to have a lot of trouble managing the techniques thrown at you by your opponent if you are still trying to figure out the basics of how to block or punch. You need to know how to move before you can begin to deal with stuff coming at you effectively. Once you do learn this, having an opponent trying to strike you becomes less of an issue.

So this begs some of the deeper questions about control. What is it?

Here's my definition:

Control is the identification of "self" with one's True Self, as opposed to one's desires and animal nature.

Once you do this, the wants and desires of your Animal Self (food, warmth, sex, sleep, safety) and your Inner Self (acceptance, revenge, friendship, romance, and more) can be seen for what they really are. The illusions behind them are broken and you become "free" of them. You have control. This does not mean they go away. They will always be there as long as you are human. However, when you can "control yourself", you are able to do what needs to be done at the moment, rather than what these lesser natures are telling you to do.

After doing this for a while, a funny thing happens. You realize that there is really no difference between the "self" that is you and the "self" that is someone else. It's the same Self. Once you become free of it, you contribute to all humans' abilities to become free of it as well. At that point, there is no need to "control" others forcefully or otherwise, because you understand things as they happen and are able to do what needs to be done despite the obstacles presented by someone else's desire and animal natures.

For great justice!

2008-10-03T08:51:00.002-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #3: Karate is an aide to justice.

Alternatively, this could be translated as "Karate stands on the side of justice."

First, what the heck is justice? Second, are we supposed to be dressing up in capes and tights and going out to save people from evil villains?

I really doubt Funakoshi wanted us to don our gis and belts and go out to save little Okinawan damsels in distress, fun as it might be. As for Justice, we can bring up a lot of arguments about whether or not it even exists in life at all.

So what in the world is this principle talking about? Karate is an aid to justice??

One thing that comes to my mind when thinking about this over the years is that Justice has a lot to do with Balance.

If instead of thinking about legal matters we think about karate as an aid to Balance, then it all becomes more clear. Using the word "Justice" may just mean that we are talking about Balance as it pertains to events outside of ourselves. Balance can be an internal or external thing, but I see Justice as a purely external thing that relates to interactions between two or more things. BUT, what you do on the inside reflects what you do on the outside, so there's really no difference between the two.

So there you have it. Karate is an aid to the Balance within ourselves and between ourselves and others.

This means that if you work your technique and your awareness, you will bring Balance to your internal self, and from there that Balance will rub off on others besides you. It will rub off on situations in which you involve yourself. It will rub off on tasks that you do and things that you make.

In other words, karate is a tool, i.e. an aid. In itself, it is not Balance or Justice. It is a way of obtaining them within yourself and others. Remember also that "karate" can be substituted with any personal spiritual practice. Your practice is what balances you.

Also keep in mind that sometimes doing nothing can be balancing. By observing and "being" you can lend your energy to the balance of the world, and therefore the "justice" of the world is aided by it.

No First Strike

2008-10-02T08:27:00.005-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #2: There is no first attack in karate.

On a surface level, this is a pretty good observation. Karate is for defense. You do not use karate to walk into a bar and rough people up. You do not use karate to oppress your little brother or sister. etc...

All katas in Wado Ryu and Shotokan begin with a block or an evasion of some sort. In the story of the kata, you are not the attacker. You are the defender.

But all of these examples talk about technique. You can "use" karate without having to throw a technique. Using karate can be keeping your awareness on the street at a high level so you cross the road when that gang of shady-looking people is coming your way. Using karate can be burning your eyes into that mugger to make him think twice about attacking you. Using karate can be accommodating an annoying coworker in a business meeting to let them get something they really need despite the fact it stings your ego a bit. Using karate can be enforcing a boundary on your kid without instilling fear in them to do it.

We can think of many more examples.

Where does this principle apply in the non-technique examples?

To understand this, we need to realize that an "attack" is not always something physical. You can attack with words, looks, attitudes, body language, and other things.

This principle's deeper meaning is that you should be aware enough of yourself to NOT throw these kinds of attacks first. Doing that takes a tremendous amount of self-awareness because a lot of us throw these kinds of attacks unknowingly or out of habit. How many times have you found yourself in a situation where someone irked you and you just had to shoot a verbal barb at them, which wound up starting an argument? If you would have just left it alone, there would not have been a useless confrontation, right? Have you ever kicked yourself for doing that?

If you have, then you are on the right track. Becoming aware of the attacks you make against people is a first step. Catching them after the fact is progress. Catching them before you are about to do them is where you want to be.

Courtesy

2008-09-26T08:55:00.005-04:00

Funakoshi Principle #1: Karate begins and ends with courtesy.

Alternatively, this can read, "Karate begins and ends with a bow."

Either way the meaning is clear. Courtesy is something the martial arts values, but why?

What I have learned over the years is that Consciousness has many aspects, and we generally cannot perceive all aspects of Consciousness simultaneously. It's too much for our minds to process all at once. Thus, we tend to break it up.

One aspect of Consciousness is compassion and kindness. From one vantage point, you might perceive that Consciousness "radiates" compassion, love, and kindness. It's definitely one way of looking at it. Another way would be to say that Consciousness IS the compassion, love, and kindness. All of these are ways of trying to say something that words cannot say.

When you go through the motions of courtesy, you are in effect capturing a tiny piece of this part of Consciousness and bringing it into your awareness. When most people are courteous, they are just doing it by rote. There is generally no intention behind it. If you go your whole life doing that, you will be well-liked but you won't get far in terms of expanding your awareness.

However, this principle of Funakoshi forces us to be courteous, with intention.

Ever hear of the principle of "Fake it 'till you make it"? It's absolutely a good method. If someone does not know how to tap into that compassionate loving aspect of Consciousness, one way to eventually learn how to do that is to FAKE being compassionate and loving with intention, and one day the true value and ability will become clear.

Interactions begin and end with courtesy. Be courteous with the intention that one day you will learn to become aware of that which is the source of courtesy.

Why do you do what you do?

2008-09-25T08:40:00.007-04:00

Continuing from my last post, martial arts is one of my personal spiritual practices, and has been for a long time. It is a good example, but not the only example, of something that is seemingly "normal" that can be made into a tremendous opportunity to evolve yourself and grow. As I talk about martial arts over the next few posts, substitute your own activity into all the spaces where I put the words "martial arts", and you will see that the concepts I'm giving are the same for your activity too.

It's all about the intention behind your actions.

Draja Mickaharic once gave me an analogy. He said life is like treading water in a really deep dark pool. At the bottom of the pool is a priceless diamond, and everyone knows that getting the diamond would be a good thing. The problem is that the diamond is too deep to get it. A person cannot hold his or her breath long enough to swim down that far. Most people struggle to get the diamond but never do, and in their despair they give up and drown. They think that since they could not get the diamond, they've "lost" the game. However, there are other people who view the whole scenario as a test to better themselves. They realize that they can't get the diamond, but that doesn't matter to them. The game is actually about learning how to hold their breath longer so they can swim deeper and deeper each time, and one day maybe eventually they will be able to get the diamond. The act of bettering themselves and the journey of working towards that diamond is what matters to them.

Both the people who drown and the people who view it as a test are doing the same actions: they are trying to get the diamond. The ONLY difference between them is how they view the situation, and what their intentions are.

Intentions change everything.

So goes the same for martial arts. Why do people do martial arts? There are all kinds of reasons. Some people want to learn to boot some head. Some people want to learn to break as many bricks as they can, with their head. Some people want to learn self-defense or street smarts. Some people want to get lots of exercise. Some people want to be sports champions and get lots of trophies.

All these things are fine. They all represent different intentions behind doing the same set of tasks. My intention was to learn about my own body, emotions, mind, and spirit. I was lucky to have a class that focused on that aspect. Few of them ever do.

The style I practiced was mostly composed of Wado Ryu, which is an Okinawan style of karate. Later on I got into other things, and before that I had done Goju Ryu, an Okinawan style with some similarities, as well as several years of fencing. On the side, I did a lot of full-contact medieval combat with historical re-enactment groups, but that was not for spiritual purposes. That was purely for booting some head. (I too like to boot head once in a while!)

The father of Wado Ryu, or more correctly, Shotokan karate, was a man named Gichin Funakoshi. Though he was the father of Okinawan karate in the United States, he was also the person who brought the idea of karate as a spiritual practice into the mainstream of thought. Before that time, karate was for life and death. You needed it to survive on Okinawa in the 1700 and 1800's. In the 20th century, however, things cooled down a lot over there, comparatively, and other reasons for practicing karate became more noticeable. Particularly, this man was fairly enlightened to the aspects of doing karate to build character and uncovering your connection to Oneness.

Funakoshi came up with 20 precepts.

"Normal" Spiritual Practice

2008-09-24T08:49:00.006-04:00

If you browse through some of my posts, I have this specific concept of "normal" with regards to spiritual practices and things, if you will. In general, the concept focuses on doing what you have to do spiritually without letting it interfere with your everyday life or your relationships with people in ways that exclude you, set you apart, or make you seem different in a showy sort of way.

Why this concept? Well, in my travels, I've met a lot of people who declare themselves as "spiritual", "psychic", "special" or what have you. Many of them were indeed psychic or special, just ask them! :) However, they were not what I call normal at all. Some of these people were so wrapped up in their games that they had trouble paying their bills, making friends, finishing their education, and a whole host of other "normal" things. They would tell me that they do not need these things because they have some "higher purpose"... as they begin proceedings for eviction from their houses, or as they get abused by their boyfriends, or as they simply forget to feed themselves.

Let me tell you something. There is nothing more "spiritual" than just living your life with mindfulness. If you do that, the changes that come will be natural, i.e. normal, and they will not set you apart or make you fail to survive in the physical world.

"But we must do these cool exercises to evolve, Josh!"

Exercises do have their place. They train your mind, emotions, and body how to pull out of your ego-induced coma that you live in. But why do exercises have to be flashy? Ask yourself that. Maybe you want them to be flashy so other people know you are doing them? That's an ego trap.

The most effective exercises are the ones that people never know you are doing. The most effective things in general are the things that do not call attention.

I also know people that have been working quite hard to train spiritually, and they have friends/relatives who have known them for 10, 20, even 30+ years that NEVER KNEW.

Those people are normal! :)

Ok, so I want to spend some time now on this blog going deeply into an example of a "normal" spiritual practice: Martial Arts.

Let's assume that martial arts is a normal activity. You know people that do them. There's a lot of increased popularity lately especially for something called Mixed Martial Arts or MMA. In essence, this is a sport. Martial arts is every bit a sport as football, and in fact it's not just one sport, it's a family of sports.

So what's spiritual about martial arts? A whole lot! I've spent the better part of 27 years now learning that side of it, and I'd like to share some insights in the next few posts.

Keep in mind that this can be a parallel to any activity of your choice. When I point out the spiritual aspects of martial arts, look for the same aspects in whatever it is you do.

Another close one

2008-09-19T09:07:00.005-04:00

Here's another song that I really like, where the artist got really close to some interesting revelations. My comments are the bolded ones.

Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer <---awesome realization... fear drives people and he's realizing it's driving him
It's driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal <-- remarking on the seductive nature of fear
But lately I'm beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel <-- Beautiful analogy for being in the Now! Take the wheel.

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there <-- Oh so close! It's about Now, not tomorrow. I would have used the phrase "Whatever the moment brings, I'll be there."
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive? <-- Will I choose to zone out into my own mind or be here now?
It's driven me before
And it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around <-- Realizing that most people are asleep
But lately I'm beginning to find that
When I drive myself my light is found

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

Would you choose water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

This is a beautiful song for showing some analogies between living in the Present and living in times other than Now. When people start to "wake up", they often have these experiences that this singer is talking about. They go through brief moments where they feel like they've been asleep, and that all the things that they thought mattered a whole lot are really in their head. For brief seconds, they can see what is right in front of them, and it's so obvious that it's sometimes able to make them laugh about it.

That's what I would refer to as a "glimmer" of Consciousness in this blog. Occasionally you get rays of light shining through that dirty window of the Inner Self and you can catch a brief inkling of what is beyond. Fact is that "beyond" is right here, right in front of us, and we have our eyes shut.

Here's a link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zN9vd9WUiA

Insanity is the word for it

2008-09-16T09:13:00.004-04:00

If you read my last entry, it demonstrates an important pattern in human behavior: insanity. Of course, I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist and I am probably not using the exact correct definition of what they would call insanity. However, I do mean something specific by it.

Eckhart Tolle uses the term "insane" to describe a person (or the whole human race) as someone overtaken by and wrapped up in the ego. I like that definition because I think it can be useful in describing things.

For example, when I was in my state of worry over money, I had absolutely no awareness of what was really happening in that moment: I was driving in my car with little or no traffic. Good music was playing. The weather was nice. I was healthy, and nothing was wrong. The only thing that was "wrong" in that moment was my bout of worry about a future time which doesn't exist and may never exist. The worry existed only in my brain. Outside my skin, there was no problem with anything.

That's insanity: making pain for yourself when there is really none to be had.

There are also many different levels of insanity. What happened there in the car was a moment of minor insanity, a minor and fleeting loss of awareness Consciousness, also called unconsciousness.

There is also deep insanity, or deep unconsciousness. Let's say you have an average man who just finds out that his wife cheated on him. Certainly, he will become angry. Most people would, and that's the normal reaction to it. You can be angry and conscious at the same time. However, a "normal" person would have a really tough time being conscious in that situation. Most people would become unconsious and get into an argument with the betraying wife. Fine. However, a small minority of people would become deeply unconscious. They would lose so much touch with their true nature and become so absorbed by their ego that even their mental faculties would be completely gone, and they would perpetuate violence against the women. This is how you explain the presence of dysfunctional people in a simple way, without all the subclassifications of psycology.

Individual people are not the only things that can be insane. Groups also get insane. So do nations, races, religions, and any other types of associations among people. All you have to do to see a demonstation of that is read a newspaper or news blog.

Any time you take up a position on something, either by yourself or along with your group, and you are investing yourself into that position, that is the ego fooling you into thinking that something is real, when it isn't. The same is true if you take up a position against something too, remember! Railing against something because you think it is wrong can be the same as rallying for what you think is right, if it's done with an investment of your identity into it.

Every group and every individual has a connection to Consciousness. These people and associations can be aware of that Oneness or unaware of it, and they can act accordingly.

Hysterical

2008-09-15T08:51:00.007-04:00

One day not long ago I was driving to work, and I was worrying about money. It happens to the best of us, as they say! In my head, I was churning around the possibilities of what I can do with the money I have, and how I could possibly get more, because, as you may not be surprised to hear, I feel like I do not have enough money.

Then my cell phone rang. I put the call through to my car speakers via my swanky Bluetooth interface in my luxury car (whose payments are one reason why I worry whether I have enough money or not), and the person on the other end was an old friend of mine from my old job. She needed me to do some consulting work for her, just a few hours on a Saturday. Eureka! Money! At $150/hr, a few hours on a Saturday was going to be pretty decent extra cash.

So, after hanging up with her my mind went right back to work spending that money that I might be getting but did not actually have yet. It was not long before I realized that even those measly few hundred dollars was not going to make a difference in my finances. The amount of money from that work compared to the amount of debt I am in was not significant. In fact, someone could give me ten times that amount and although it would make a decent dent in my debt, it would not end it, and my daily rat race would not change at all. I would be right onto the next gig, hoping to make another score. My mood began to spiral downward.

Then I was struck by something in all of that!

My life was not going to change at all from receiving that money for the consulting work. Financially speaking, my life would be the same before and after: I would be looking for ways to get money to pay the debt. So really there was no point to getting this money. It was not going to change a thing. In fact, to really change my lifestyle in a tangible way, it would take a whole lot of money which was not likely as far as I could see. So why was I beating myself up over this?

Good question.

Then I was struck by a vision of sorts. I sort of split into two and had a conversation with myself:

Self 1: If someone paid all my debts, what would I be doing right now?
Self 2: Investing!! Putting my money to work for me instead of chasing debt!
Self 1: Ok, great. What would that get me?
Self 2: More money!! A positive net worth!
Self 1: True, and what would I do with that extra money?
Self 2: Upgrade my lifestyle, maybe go back into a little debt even?
Self 1: *Laughing* Ok, fine. How long would it take to get enough money invested to actually change my lifestyle?
Self 2: A long time. Years.
Self 1: Years?! So, ok, if I had no debt and a bunch of money in the bank, what would I be doing differently RIGHT NOW, TODAY?
Self 2: Nothing. You'd be driving to work just like this.

It was an astonishing revelation. For a few moments afterwards, I pretended that all my debts were gone and I had a bunch of money in the bank, and I felt no different. I was still in my car driving to work. I was still right here, right now.

What you've just seen here is a perfect example of someone being overtaken by ego. When you step back and look at it, all of that stuff was in my head. None of it was real. Money, debt, all those types of things are numbers, especially nowadays in the Age of Information. Money is less real now than it ever was: it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's encoded as electrical impulses. So why do we get beat up about it? It happens because the ego loves an opportunity to draw you out of the Present Moment.

If you ever realize this happening to you, stop. Ask yourself what the logical conclusion of your desires is. If you follow the logic long enough, you will start to see the emptiness and flaws in it.

Go a step further. Close your eyes and spend time pretending you have what you want. Or, more importantly, open your eyes and pretend you have everything you want already and really be honest about how that would change your Present. Would it really?

Use this as an exercise to get yourself into the Present Moment. In the end, Now is all there is.

Practice makes perfect

2008-09-11T11:14:00.004-04:00

Hey look it's a double header today!

When I was just starting out learning an Okinawan karate style at age 16, I practiced a lot. Usually, I would practice in my room at night with the door shut, going through all the techniques I was taught, over and over. Over the next couple years afterwards, I did not practice as much. Instead of every night, I probably did it every couple nights or every few nights, and I felt guilty about it.

So one night I went to a sensei and asked, "Sensei, how often do you practice?"

"All the time." he said.

"Huh?" I asked. "All the time? How? Right now you aren't practicing, at least. You're talking to me. So that can't be true. "

He smiled at me, "Oh, but it is true. See, you need to understand something. 'Practicing' does not necessarily mean doing kicks and punches for hours on end. 'Practicing' could be doing your breathing while walking down the street, or working on your awareness and training your mind. By doing these things, you are training too."

It was an interesting revelation. What is a spiritual exercise?

Is it some kind of funky task that you hate? Is it some hugely magical undertaking every night at a precise time? Not necessarily!!

The most potent spiritual exercises are the ones you do all the time, but do not seem like exercises. They seem like normal activity.

Are you sitting in a chair right now? How's your breathing? How's your posture? What noises are there in the background? How are the moods of the people around you? What is your own emotional state? Why is it that way? What do you need to do right now despite how you feel? What are you doing instead of that?

You can run through all those things in your head at ANY time without anyone knowing you are doing it, and that is a spiritual exercise.

Not sitting down? What are you doing? Sorting mail? Then sort the mail!! Sort the mail without thinking about anything else but that mail and how you can best sort it. Enjoy the energy in the task. Enjoy the repetitive motion. Sail through the motion smoothly and easily without effort. Get better at doing it gracefully with each repetition.

Doing that is a whole lot more enjoyable than cursing your job in the mail room, no?!

Whatever you are doing is spiritual. Everything. The only difference is whether you do it with or without awareness to that fact.

Oh, so close!

2008-09-11T09:26:00.009-04:00

Most of the music out there is great and all, but it's generally been degraded into the realm of emotion and ego. I guess I don't need to demonstrate that when you look at all the bands that are put together to churn out tunes to the masses in such a way that is optimized to demographic and music sales. However, music, like all other art, can also reflect a piece of Consciousness. Put another way, Consciousness can inspire music in such a way that it does not get clouded by mental and emotional barriers that hide the presence of Consciousness. An artist, or musician, that is inspired in this way gets glimpses of Reality without a mental filter in place that labels everything. When the artist expresses that unfiltered Reality in a non-egotistical way, the result is always something beautiful and breathtaking, like a sunset. Viewing or listening to it will stop your mental chatter in its tracks, and for a brief second, you too will see things without your filter.

Sometimes, artists are expressing their emotional crap, and most of the time it's nonsense, like most emotional crap. However, occasionally, once in a blue moon, you get an artist that's expressing something emotional which is just on the verge of a breakthrough, or a lessening of the ego, or a glimpse of Consciousness.

I want to give an example. This is a song that I really like, by Stacie Orrico, with my comments in bold:

I've got it all, but I feel so deprived
I go up, I come down and I'm emptier inside <-- Starting to realize that there's a "rat race"
Tell me what is this thing that I feel like I'm missing <-- It's your undeniable pull towards things that are Real!
And why can't I let it go

CHORUS:
There's gotta be more to life...
Than chasing down every temporary high to satisfy me <-- Damn right!
Cause the more that I'm...
Trippin' out thinkin' there must be more to life
Well it's life, but I'm sure... There's gotta be more

(Than wanting more) <--So close!

I've got the time and I'm wasting it slowly
Here in this moment I'm half-way out the door <-- Great line! She's realizing that there's this thing called Presence, though she hasn't figured out how to pay attention to it yet
Onto the next thing, I'm searching for something that's missing

I'm wanting more

I'm always waiting on something other than this <-- And you always will, until you learn to disidentify with the wanting
Why am I feelin' like there's something I missed.... <-- What you're missing is right in front of you!
Always... Always...

More to life
There's gotta be more to life (more to life)
There's gotta be more to life (more)
More to my life

I think that's such a beautiful song because it expresses so perfectly the people that are just figuring out that maybe this whole game of "getting stuff" and "being somebody" is just that: a game, but worse, an unwinnable and unending game.

As long as you try to get and you try to win, you will never be happy and you will never win.

The secret is to let go of the game. Be in it, not of it. Play it, but realize the whole time that the game is not the point. Being there in the first place is the point.

By the way, here's the video to the song:

Live, dammit!!

2008-09-08T11:13:00.005-04:00

Someone approached me today asking indirectly how they could save someone who was dying. My initial reaction was to try to tell them how the person could be saved, even though I knew almost immediately that doing that sort of thing when uneducated fully in the situation was hazardous, or worse, useless. Then I pulled back a step and realized something as I read the information about the dying man. He doesn't want to live!

The people who were trying to save the man were not saving the man for his own benefit. They were trying to keep him around for their benefit.

Ok, I can respect that. People feel that way when their loved ones are getting close to passing away. They just do.

However, what was not present in this situation was any awareness at all about whether or not this dying man had any true reason to be kept around. There were lots of emotional reasons, certainly. There were also lots of mental ones. But was there any spiritual reason?

I don't know the answer to that.

What I do know is that people often get wrapped up in their own emotional and mental images of a situation which blinds them to the real situation. Do any of these people in this dying man's family realize that he doesn't want to live? Do any of the people who are trying to save him realize he doesn't want to be saved? Do any of them realize anything that's going on outside of their own internal struggles?

When Draja gave me my first lesson, "pay attention", I thought he meant I had to notice every physical detail around me, and while that did help at the time, it was not the true essence of what he asked me to do. To pay attention also means to be able to detect your own emotional and mental walls that you put up between yourself and Reality, and to also see those walls when they are put up by others.

Enlightenment, meet Laziness

2008-09-06T09:42:00.005-04:00

One of the things I have always found to be hard to do is be content. When I say "content" what do you think about?

I'm guessing everyone will say that content means being happy with what you have and wanting nothing more, and that is true for the most part. But wait a minute. If someone is truly content and wanted nothing more, why would they do anything at all? Why not just say, "No thanks, I am not going to go for that promotion." or "I know that I tend to live outside the present moment, but I am not going to work on training my mind at all" because you are content with what you have?

Or worse, what if a person says, "My family is barely scraping by and that's enough for me. I'm going to just chill and do nothing."

Or even worse, "I know my house is a mess and there is garbage all over the place, but I'm content with that and do not see the need to clean it up."

What if you just wind up being unemployed and sitting on a couch all day because you are content? Is that something "spiritual"?

The answer is no.

The Dalai Lama says, "Do not confuse contentment with complacency." in his book "The Art of Happiness at Work".

Contentment is a feeling that exists in the Present Moment. If you are present, and you are paying attention to that underlying Oneness or Consciousness in the background of everything, you can feel content. You can even rationalize contentment by looking at all the "good" things you have or have achieved. Contentment is a form of Acceptance, and Acceptance is one manifestation that Consciousness can take in the Present. According to Eckhart Tolle, the other two are Enthusiasm and Enjoyment.

However, even when you are content, there is still an unexplainable current that pulls your mind forward in time. In the realm of time, PEOPLE DO THINGS. They just do. Most of the time, they do things driven by their egos and animal selves, but even if the ego could be eliminated completely, people would still do things because that's what people do in the realm of time! Things!

Complacency is ignoring the simple functional fact that people do things. You can picture time like the current of a river. You are swimming in that river. That really leaves you two choices if you are going to stay in the river: you can let the current carry you, or you can swim against the current. People who are complacent are swimming against the river. People who are content let the river carry them wherever it may, and they are trusting of the process that pulls them along.

So should you get that better job? Should you feed your family filet mignon instead of ground chuck? Should you vacuum your house today?

The answer is yes.

The caveat is that as you do those things, make sure you do them for the simple fact that this is what people do, rather than getting your identity mixed up in those things which causes your ego to trap you.

To the new visitors here...

2008-09-04T09:11:00.000-04:00

I usually try to say this at the beginning of every month, because as I make more posts, this information tends to move down into the archives where nobody can see it.

Anyway, as I've mentioned, this blog is best read from beginning to end. If you are just joining us and you start to read the most recent posts first, you might be a bit confused because a lot of what I say builds on older info.

That's about all for now.

In other news, I am about 3/4ths of the way through writing a small book on my experiences training with Draja Mickaharic as a kid. The tentative title, which I'm sure Draja would approve of, is "Growing Up With Draja Mickaharic". I should be done with writing in a month or two, and however long editing takes will determine when I can get it out. I will attempt to self-publish it.

Over the hill

2008-09-02T10:29:00.004-04:00

Movement is a curious thing when taken in perspective of Consciousness and the Present Moment. Normally, movement is just that: a change in position. You go from one place to another. That could be going from one time to another time as you watch the seconds tick by on the clock, or it could be going for a job around your neighborhood, watching the houses and picket white fences rush by you. In that "normal" state of consciousness, movement means change, or at least it means something.

Often the problem with this is that after we get to where we are going, we either want more movement, or we become disappointed because we now feel like we haven't really moved anywhere.

Those moments and movement itself are key to pointing your way towards the Present.

Consciousness occupies everything. It is fullness and form, and simultaneously it is emptiness and space. The Asian traditions refer to fullness as yang and emptiness as yin. At first it is tough to grasp both fullness and emptiness simultaneously. Often you can just settle for one of them in a particular moment, but it does not matter. Either way, Consciousness is just there, in all its fullness and/or emptiness. When you pay attention to this awareness, you realize something: the awareness is still... ultimate stillness and calm.

Movement still exists! But it is contained within the stillness. When you are jogging through that neighborhood, your space is stationary. The neighborhood moves around you, but at the same time, the neighborhood is also contained within your stationary space.

Time is the same thing. In the passing of time, there is a stationary moment that does not move. Time moves around that moment, but also within it simultaneously. There really is no "inside" or "outside" of the moment.

This stuff gets difficult to explain with words.

Still, if it is difficult to internalize what I just wrote, understand at least then the pitfalls when it is not being internalized.

Do you ever expect to get somewhere?

Do you ever get disappointed when time passes and you don't get the results you wanted on something?

Do you ever get to where you are going and feel unfulfilled?

This is part of the illusion that the ego sets up, and is in turn always disenchanted by it. The thought that something other than here or now is necessary and you must get there or feel some sense of failure if you do not is a trick used by the ego, once again, for self-preservation. The ego has problems with the Present, because in the Present it does not exist. It can only exist as long as it can fool you about putting your mind and emotions into some time or place other than here and now.

A sensei once told me, "Without expectation, there can be no disappointment."

This sounds like a cynical phrase when applied to some things, but it really is about a deeper meaning. The ego expects things and is disappointed when they don't turn out as expected. When you anticipate something and identify with that anticipation and expectation, you will be disappointed invariably.

Ideally, feelings of expectations can arise in you as normal things happen in your life, but instead of identifying with them, you watch them happen as an observer. Then later, when the results do not match the expectation, you can watch that too. Even if there is a feeling of disappointment there, you will not be identified with it.

Odds and ends

2008-08-31T13:23:00.004-04:00

Reading back over some of my recent posts, I wanted to tie up some loose ends.

Remember what Idries Shah said in a few of his books, particularly Learning How To Learn, "Truth has no form." He goes on to say that it is sometimes useful to give things form so we can describe parts or portions of Truth, but really by definition these are all approximations, and inaccurate ones at that. So, when you want to take up a position on something, or even talk about it matter of factly, you need to define which what level you are speaking on. Another way of saying this is, how close to Truth are you discussing the matter? On the level of formless Truth, there are no discussions. Everything just is, and isn't simultaneously. Below that, so to speak, you can break out pieces of the whole and talk about them separately.

Discussions can be completely different depending on which level of God or Consciousness you are trying to talk about. (See the previous two posts on the seven different levels of perceiving God.)

Here's an example. If an Evangelical Christian came to me and asked, "Do you accept Jesus as the Messiah?" I would say "NO".

However, if Eckhart Tolle came to me and asked, "Do you accept Jesus as the Messiah?" I would say, "That's the dumbest question I ever heard. Of course I do."

What's the difference? The Evangelical is operating on a literal level. The questioner is literally asking me if I believe some man-made entity is the sole holder of some made-up position on the planet, which is not in my belief structure at all. The question relies on a Level 1 or Level 2 version of God, and on those levels, I do not believe that.

However, if the question came from Mr. Tolle, it would mean something totally different. Tolle defines Jesus as a synonym for Consciousness. In his definition, Jesus is a name for the Oneness behind all things. Not only that, but "messiah" has a totally different definition as well. When you are in the Present moment, without ties to past or future, and you accept the Now as it is, with all its perfection, THAT is a definition of the messiah. In that moment, the messiah comes, so to speak. The messiah, in this definition, is not a person or living being at all, but rather a state of conscious alertness and presence.

So the question "Do you accept Jesus as the Messiah?" really translates to "Do you accept that Consciousness comes into awareness when you focus and pay attention to the Present moment?"

Well, duh! That question is almost redundant, and would probably never be asked.

A good piece of advice when answering questions is to think beyond yourself and try to understand the level of the questioner. You cannot relate to people by talking down to them. Rather, you must go to where they are and relate to them on whatever level they happen to be at, and then slowly and gradually see if you can up the level a bit.

OMG: Book II

2008-08-28T09:06:00.004-04:00

So, continuing on with stages, one other thing that the first three stages have in common is some idea of karma. In each of those stages, people believe that their actions have some kind of effect on what happens to them in the future, or that their past actions have some kind of effect on what is happening to them now. Interpretations of this are different depending on whether it's stage one, two, or three. In stages one and two, these interpretations are more literal: "If I am bad, I will be punished." In stage three, it's more vague: "There isn't really good or bad, per se, but there are definitely things I am supposed to do so I don't conflict with God. If I conflict with God, my life might get tougher, but I'm not sure."

Keep this all in mind as we go to:

Stage 4: In this stage, God is somewhat amorphous, but by no means inactive. Actually, it is quite the opposite. People in this stage realize that everything is connected to everything else. Your thoughts and actions affect everything around you, and nothing happens by chance. In this stage, coincidences disappear. Nothing is a coincidence because it is all brought about by God, who has infinite organizing power and intelligence, although not in the conventional human sense. Karma also disappears. There is no "good" or "bad" thing you can be punished for because even the so-called punishment is there for a reason, to teach you something and to bring about other events later on that may not be so bad. In this stage, God is a nurturing, guiding, and compassionate presence that will respond to you. Qualities of this God, therefore are: Compassionate, Nurturing, Intelligent

Stage 5: In this stage, people realize that God is not only active, but is acting through everything in the world. Specifically, God is a part of the world rather than an outside observer. Physical objects are part of God just as much as non-physical ones. Moreover, every object is constantly being created and re-created from moment to moment. There is not only no such thing as coincidence, but people in this stage start to realize that they understand a tiny bit about how things DO come about, and that manifesting those things to the benefit of themselves and others is not just possible, but is a reality. It becomes clear that people have functions, and those functions involve creation, along with God. In a sense, we are co-creators with God in this stage. Qualities of this God are: Creative, Abundant, Energetic

Stage 6: In this stage, conventional wisdom on what is "self" and what is "other" starts to break down. In stages four and five, people realize that everything is connected to God, and to all other things. In this stage, everything in humanity is not just connected, it is one big thing. The concept of "self" increases to encompass not just the worshiper, but all living things. All living things are in communion with this God on a constant basis. The universe consists of this "self" and of God only. The two are in total harmony. In that sense, the creative urges of stage 5 are still there, but they are understood in a higher context: creation is something that happens on its own, but in fact, everything that should be already is. Qualities of this God are: Sacred, Intimate, Ecstatic

Stage 7: In the final stage, the concepts of "self" and "other" break down completely. The self and the God are One. Everything just is, and that is-ness is God. Furthermore, that's all there is!

As I usually add, this information is really a belief system. Your mileage may vary, and as with all people, your beliefs make your reality. What I have put here is a guide, and the credit goes to Deepak Chopra for laying it out this way. My hope is that my re-wording and shortening of this material acts as a helpful pointer to those who require some information to become a tad more aware.

OMG

2008-08-27T08:42:00.006-04:00

When talking with people, I notice that there are many who are concerned with "truth". They want a definitive answer on what is true. This can be truth about any number of things, especially things surrounding the nature of God, Consciousness, Oneness, or whatever you want to call it. People seem to believe that there is somebody or something out there that can give them a definitive answer on this. My question is, even if someone did give you a definitive answer, would you believe them? Jesus himself could come down and declare the Messianic Era, and all that would happen would be a media storm of criticism and a slew of tabloid articles churned out by the papparazi that would follow him around waiting for him to get drunk and show some skin. People think they want answers, but what they often want are arguments. Answers, arguments, agreement... a Jedi craves not these things. :)

But... There is a framework for figuring out on your own what you hold to be true, at least in regards to God. This is straight out of a book called "How to Know God" by Deepak Chopra, so it's not my material. I am only paraphrasing below, as usual.

Your ability to know god is limited by the electrical impulses in your brain and nervous system. (Keep in mind that Deepak Chopra is also a physician.) Every physical sensation, and even every non-physical sensation, comes from impulses or lack of impulses in certain parts of your brain. When you look at it that way, there are basically seven different possible types of perceptions (or stages) in your brain to that thing we call God. I'll talk about some here. Keep in mind that even though I am giving these stages in a certain order, it does not mean that one is better than another or that it is somehow beyond another. They all just are as they are.

Stage 1: In this stage, God is some awesome and incomprehensible force that does things you do not understand. Your relationship with this God is based on fear and appeasement. Common examples would be those civilizations who depended on rain for crops and had no idea about the theories or principles behind rain. They were at the mercy of this terrible force for their survival. If God is angry, it won't rain. If God is appeased, it will rain. This God has qualities that echo these principles: Vengeful, Jealous, Oppressive -- Think of Yaweh in the early parts of the Bible.

Stage 2: I call this the "Get Ahead God". In this stage, God is not so scary or vengeful, but can be reasoned with. This God watches over you and judges your actions as "good" or "bad" according to its principles. If you are "good", you are rewarded with things like money, health, and cool stuff. If you are "bad", you are punished with things like poverty, bad fortune, and genital herpes. From this perspective, it makes sense to have a good relationship with this God. People who are in this stage believe in following principles to the letter so they can stand the best chance of reward. They firmly accept that this God has a genuine care and stake in the person's life. Qualities of this God are generally: Judgmental, Personable -- Think of most of today's modern Judeo-Christian religions.

Stage 3: In this stage, the character and nature of God changes. Instead of seeing God as a human-like entity that has thoughts, feelings, cares, etc., people start seeing God as some type of force. In this stage, God is no longer anthropomorphic. People who are part of this stage envision God as some kind of formless thing in the background someplace, a silent witness to everything that is going on. This silent witness watches everything, but does not interact with it because it does not relate to things in any sort of human way. It does not "care" or "have emotions", so it cannot get angry, mad, happy, or sad. Those who are in this stage are not really sure what God does at all, if anything. They know that this God exists because part of them can truly feel it and experience that presence first hand, but all it is is a presence, little more. Qualities of this God are generally: Passive, Accepting, Non-Judgemental.

Four more stages to go! Stay tuned!

Get out of your own way

2008-08-25T19:07:00.002-04:00

For people that attempt to grow spiritually on purpose, either by deliberately following some path or listening to some teacher, one common theme can be self criticism. You may be a self-critical spiritual seeker if:

You have berated yourself for missing exercises, or not doing them at all.

You have wished you could study in a monastery someplace, instead of wherever you are now.

You constantly scold yourself for letting your mind or thoughts drift.

You wish you were doing anything to evolve spiritually, other than whatever you are doing now.

Have you ever done any of those things or similar things? If you have, or if you are right now, don't stop.

That's right! I said don't stop.

Let me explain. Whenever you do one of these things, or similar things that involve criticizing yourself, you are getting lost in your own thoughts and emotions. You are forgetting who you are, i.e. Consciousness. Instead of identifying with all that there is, you are identifying with the argument or criticism inside your head. All of this noise inside your head originates from resisting what IS. When you put up resistance to what is, you create one of these thought patterns or emotional responses.

But here's the kicker, a piece of wisdom given to me my one of my karate Senseis: Don't resist resistance.

If you resist resistance, you are still resisting!

You cannot stop the argument in your head by out arguing it. You cannot stop resistance by putting up greater force against it. All you will do in that case is increase the argument and the noise inside you and ultimately you will wind up identifying MORE with the part of you that resists, i.e. ego.

So what do you do? Pay attention. Observe the resistance.

Here's an example of resisting resistance:

"Oh, look, here I go again letting my mind wander. I really should keep my mind silent. Ok, let's try to do this. Let's try to be silent in our mind. Meditation... yeah, that's it...."

Instead of doing that, let the mind say whatever it wants in this case. While it is doing that, put your mind into your hand, as they say in martial arts. Look at your hand and feel the skin over you palm and the opposite side. Feel the air flowing around your fingers. Feel the blood flowing through the whole thing.

Past this point, I personally cannot say what to do next. For me, it is a click that happens somewhere I can't define. Keep trying this and you are sure to have some experiences of your own. Just don't fall for the old mind trick of luring yourself into a fight with you.

Slice of time

2008-08-15T09:29:00.004-04:00

A lot of misunderstandings arise from misconceptions about time.

"We will all be saved at the end of time."

"In the next kingdom, we will be blah blah blah..."

"The messiah will come."

These misunderstandings are not limited to religions. They can be about anything else:

"Someday I will be happy."

"Eventually I will get rich (so I can be happy.)"

If you go back in this blog and visit the video I posted on the nature of dimensions, including time you'll see what I mean.

Time is like a 4th dimension.

The video I just linked to talks about a theoretical creature that exists in two dimensions. Basically, a flat sheet of paper with no thickness would be its world. It can go across the paper, or up the paper, but it cannot come out of the page. The video then talks about what a three dimensional being would look like if it passed through that paper. The two-dimensional creature would only see a two-dimensional slice of the three-dimensional creature, like looking at an MRI or a CT scan, if you've ever done that. Check out some MRI or CT scans on the internet and you'll see exactly what I mean. That's how a three-dimensional creature would look to a "flat lander".

Our minds see three dimensions, but there are more than that. Time is a 4th dimension. Your whole timeline exists all at once. The whole timeline of the entire universe exists all at once. However, your mind can only see one time at a time! Your mind flows down the timeline, instant by instant, which produces a moving three-dimensional slice that you take to be your life.

Theoretically, if you could move your mind or other parts of your spiritual anatomy to other parts of this timeline, you can witness other times, although that's not such a big deal now that you think about it in this light. These are in fact the bases for time travel in the astral and mental bodies. The mind and the emotions are what witness time, and you think they are attached to your body in one particular instant. If these restrictions (which are merely based on belief) are lifted, you can look around at other spots.

However, aside from the tittilating prospects, there's a bigger message here. You are not a single moment. You are all moments. The Real You is actually a being that exists in more than 4 dimensions, but you can only get your mind to see 3. The Real You is the whole timeline. The fact that your mind only rides along a small portion of it at a time is a side effect that we deal with.

In that light, why struggle? Why beat yourself up over future times, when time is not the point at all? Why not just acknowledge that you are the whole timeline and be that knowing?

The one big argument that will always arise to this is Predestination. "If everything is already determined then... {insert rest of argument}"

No, everything is not determined. Yes, timelines are completely whole and set out. Sound contradictory? That's where the other dimensions come in, the 5th, 6th, and higher dimensions. You aren't just one timeline. You are an infinite number of timelines. Your mind can only move through one time and one timeline at a time. Your mind chooses which timeline to move down, but all timelines exist and they are all part of you. So, it's not contradictory.

Go and take some more asprin.

I will be on vacation for the next whole week! Expect some posts after August 21st.

If I am what I am, then what's the point?

2008-08-13T09:33:00.003-04:00

I am still laughing from that last PupetJi video. It's so funny and so true. If you have not watched it, go ahead and see it now.

At one point in the video, he talks about how we are unable to know what we truly are because it is unknowable. In the terminology of this blog, you cannot know the thing that is Conscious. Consciousness is there, and it has a source, but that source is unknowable in much the same way that you can't know your own eye color without looking into a mirror or having someone tell you about it. Furthermore, since that source is the source of everything, and it already has everything and is everything, there really isn't anything to do. There is no grand plan to fulfill. There is no advancement that can take us somewhere. Everything just is as it is: perfectly expressed the way it is expressed by Consciousness. Thoughts to the contrary are made by the ego in an attempt to preserve itself.

So the video then goes on with some common responses to these ideas:

If we are already there, what's the point of doing anything at all?

Why do we get out of bed every day?

Why don't we just grab a gun and start shooting people?

And so on...

The point is there is no point to anything at all. Answering these questions is not the point either, because the questions are coming from the ego in yet another attempt at self preservation. If there is even remotely a point to anything, the point would be to observe the questions without feeling obligated to answer them. Allow the questions to float there unanswered. Doing that will really piss your ego off. Try it. Observe the pissy-ness. Be the space around the struggle, and realize that this space is You.

I can put this another way.

My father is friends with a high level Zen Buddhist monk, Sensei Sejaku. If you know anything about their practice, you will know that they get up every single day at around 3am to do their meditations and devotions. Day in day out, without fail, these monks are doing this. One day my father asked Sensei Sejaku, "You know as well as I do that there really is no point to actions when seen in relation to the Oneness of all things. So why do you do what you do? Why do you get up every morning at oppressively early hours and do the same thing over and over again, even though it has no point?"

Sensei's answer was enlightening. He said, "Because that's what monks do."

So there you have it! The answer to why you should do what you do is "just because". Any other reason signifies some intervention of the ego. There can certainly be feelings behind this "just because". In other words, "I do this just because, and I happen to be enthusiastic about it." or "I do this just because, and it really sucks." Note how that is different than, "I do this because I will get promoted over that other sonofabitch." or "I do this because I will get laid." Those are driven by ego.

So the next time you are doing something, whatever it is, pay attention to it. (There we go with paying attention again. Lesson 1 is the most important.) Do it for its own sake, and do it as well as you can from start to finish.

Who am I?

2008-08-12T11:04:00.003-04:00

OMG this is hysterical!

Props go to Ethereal Warrior for pointing it out.

Anything wrong?

2008-08-12T10:23:00.005-04:00

Though I am not sure how easy it is to decipher, there is a message in the title of this blog, "Be Normal". What do I mean by that?

I can tell you what I don't mean. I am not talking about any judgments on how people decide to live their lives. If there are people that are weirdos, whatever that means, that is their business. Instead, when I say "be normal" I mean something specific.

When I was training with Draja, the curriculum involved a lot of things. Generally, it involved working out my own internal crap, reading various texts, learning various forms of magic, and interfacing with various other levels of existence. All of these things had one thing in common: they required tremendous striving, work, and sacrifice. The things I did incurred costs, at times.

After some years of this, I eventually ran out of gas, so to speak, and began to doubt my need for all this stuff. After going through a period of limbo after breaking with Draja, I soon stumbled on another way: Let it all go. Be here now. If you ignore all these spirits, magical spells being casted by so-and-so, etc. They all go away! They have little or no bearing on 99.999% of the stuff that happens in your daily existence, and most of the time that 0.001% of stuff can still be attended to by so-called conventional means.

And so, my little phrase was born: Be normal.

Consciousness is ever-present in the Now. It's there. There is nothing to do. Nothing to feel. In fact, feeling and doing can block your perception of Consciousness if you lose yourself in them and mistake them for being You. Since Consciousness just Is, there really isn't anything to DO. The silent witness behind everything is complete. It wants nothing. It needs nothing.

When I started hitting these experiences, I realized, "Why in the world would anyone ever want to do magic?" Magic, as I was taught, is generally there to get things that you want, or to get things that someone else wants. But if that thing that is doing the wanting is not You, it's your ego, then from the perspective of your True Self, why would you ever want to change WHAT IS?

The same could be said for striving. Why strive to get somewhere when you are already there? Why strive to be perfect when your True Self already is?

Egos are imperfect. Egos need to do more, be more. Although True Selves move on their own to wherever it is they appear to go within the realm of time, usually towards betterment of some sort, there is no striving behind it. That movement is different from egoic striving. That movement happens innately without being powered by desire. It can be powered by enthusiasm and passion, which have equivalent expressions in Consciousness, but not by egoic wanting.

So, that's what I mean by being normal. There are people that buy into all kinds of hoopla and hoodoo, and there are people that just live their lives and exist. People who live their lives and just exist, but do it with intention and attention to Consciousness are what I would describe with the word normal.

A corollary: Draja did a ton of magic in his day, but he did it for a reason: earning a living. Draja did magic like a plumber does plumbing. When you look at it from that perspective, the perspective of making financial ends meet, then it is different. The striving is not for obtaining some mystical goal of enlightenment. It's not striving at all. It's plumbing!

Boot Camp of Doom

2008-08-10T10:16:00.004-04:00

For a while now, I've felt like writing a certain short story, but I have not yet been able to put it properly into words. The story would involve two soldiers in some unknown army at some unknown time, located in a gigantic training camp. Somewhere in that story, the two soldiers would be partnered up for an exercise where they had to do a certain drill with their swords against a wooden post that was meant to represent an enemy. In the hot sun of the open dusty training field, the soldiers would methodically swing through their drill... ONE... TWO... ONE... TWO... etc. Eventually after hours of this same drill, one soldier would become frustrated and say to the other, "I am tired of all this drilling. When do we get to do the real thing? I don't know how much longer I can take ONE...TWO... ONE... TWO" The last words were said in unison with the drill instructor, of course. Then, the other soldier would turn to him and say, "What do you mean? This isn't a drill." Suddenly, the first soldier would look around and notice that for the first time, they were not actually in the training field at all, but they were in the middle of a raging battle. As the enemies came in, the soldier swung his sword... ONE...TWO...ONE...TWO.. and four enemies fell in front of him. Then, shortly after that, he looked around and he was back in the training camp, swinging at wooden posts again.

The story is not fully formed, but the point I would try to make with it is that there are no drills. Life is the real thing. A lot of people spend their time preparing or striving for something that will come in the future, when there really is no guarantee about any future at all. They miss out on the most important thing when they do that: the Present. Everything you do, you do NOW. You either do it well, or you don't, but there is no second chance. The current Present moment is all there is.

All the exercises you can do, and all of the books you can read are of no help to any time but right now. That is somewhat liberating. It means that life is a school, and at the same time a real arena, just like in the story above. All you have to do is make the Present moment the best quality it can be, and not allow your thoughts of future moments to mess up what you are doing now.

To take this further, every single action you perform is a spiritual exercise. Those same actions are also the "Real thing". In other words, they are what counts. There is nothing to train for at some future time. A side effect of living your moments effectively is that moments will tend to have a higher quality about them, but the person who lives a perfect string of high quality moments up to the Present is absolutely no different than the person who lives only the single Present moment in high quality.

Here in heaven

2008-08-08T14:27:00.005-04:00

...and we're back!

I've noticed that for some people, the transition away from identifiying with false selves (i.e. the IS, OS, ego, etc.) is difficult because they think that this new belief structure requires doing away with a few key core beliefs they might have. Granted, if you are able to control your beliefs to the point where you can mix and match them or simply do away with them, that is helpful in developing yourself and it can accelerate the events that lead you to disidentify with your ego. On the other hand, most people have a tough time with this and attach themselves quite strongly to some core beliefs.

Particularly, there is one good example in this regard: the belief in heaven and hell. All this fuzzy stuff loosely based on Buddhist philosophy that I've been talking about is great and all, but if you want a real test to observe your own attachment to a belief, ask yourself if right now you could suddenly give up on the idea that after you die you will go to some puffy cloud haven in the sky, or some rocky firey pit if you were "bad". Some may laugh, but a lot of people who read this may not. Which one are you?

Seriously, try it. How revolted or defensive do you get when someone challenges this belief? The actual answer to whether or not there is a heaven or hell does not matter nearly as much as having you be able to monitor and observe your own reaction to this challenge. So how do you feel when you think about this? Do you get offended? Do you start trying to reason around it? Do you take up some other position about the subject?

Your heritage, upbringing, history, and background make up the things that constitute your belief system, to start out with at least.

As for heaven and hell, I will say one thing. There are even some Catholic bishops who even think that the fuzzy cloud vision of heaven is not true. For the rest of my personal answer on this, just read this whole blog and see. The answer is there.

In any case, the answer is not important. Again, your reaction is what's important. The thing that takes up a position, for or against the idea, is not you. That is your ego. The ego operates on the idea that if someone diminishes one of its theories or beliefs, then that thing is a threat. When the ego is threatened, it does all kinds of things to defend itself. It can get defensive. It can make arguments. It can get violent, or other things.

That WILL happen to you, and it's normal. If it doesn't happen when somebody challenges your belief in heaven/hell, it will happen when other beliefs get challenged. Do not worry about winning or losing the argument. Just watch. Know that you are not the argument, and be the knowing behind it. That is the Real You, and on that level of awareness, the actual arguments are not relevant to what you are.

Would you be any less if you were proven wrong? Would you be any more if you were proven right? Your emotions would go up or down, but what's the Real effect on the thing behind all that? Absolutely nothing.

Lego my ego

2008-08-04T09:50:00.005-04:00

It feels like more needs to be said continuing on from that last post on functions in life. This time, however, I want to focus more on ego.

One of the major distortions that happens in religions and "spiritual systems" or paths is that they wind up thinking the ego needs to be subverted, destroyed, or denied in some fashion. Over the centuries, these distortions turn into bloated dharma on sex, morals, and all kinds of other things. Granted, some rules are good to have so that society can function. In this case I am mainly talking instead about rules that make personal life overly oppressive, when a person is not out in the real world. Aside from all the theological arguments for these rules, my point is that these rules are put in place to try and curb the ego. (Understand that I'm not trying to pass judgment on the rules either. I am just pointing out their existence as a fact.)

How useful are these rules for spiritual development? And what is the real deal with the ego as far as the old struggle of good and evil goes?

Well, I've made clear my views on good and evil, so the views on the existence of the ego go with them. The ego exists. It is. Like everything else, the ego is arising out of Consciousness, and like all other objects and concepts, the ego is another expression of Consciousness. Joseph Campbell points this out in his book "The Power of Myth" and even goes so far to point out that the ego and all the pain that it causes is just as divine as everything else.

So is the ego "good"? Is it "ok"? No. It's neither. It just is. The judgments you place on it are the ego trying to categorize itself. If you can be aware of that judgment and that desire to categorize, and then become aware that this is not the Real You, then you've discovered one path to the Present Moment. The thing that is judging is not you. The thing that is watching the judging is You.

Nevertheless, even if you are not aware of this, the ego is still an expression of Consciousness. The difference lies in the awareness, but the difference is whether or not Consciousness is aware of itself, not whether Consciousness exists or not.

So what do you do about the ego? Deny it? Stamp it out? No. You embrace it. You give it space to Be. The infinite space of Consciousness is infinitely more than enough space to contain your ego, and it does. No matter how much ego you can throw at it, it can be contained by the One. Again, the difference is whether you know this or not. Awakened people have egos, some larger than others. However, even the ones with the large egos are able to have egoic episodes and at the same time Be Present, i.e. they are able to rest as the silent witness to the ego while it is happening, and they are able to watch it happen from there.

I'm not really sure about this, but my intuition and some clues from Eckhart Tolle tell me that after enough witnessing of the ego in this fashion, it WILL start to diminish on its own, without any active doing on your part. So just know when the ego is acting, and be the knowing, not the acting.

There is another way. But it is extremely hard. Probably this way is the closest thing in real life to what you'd call the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars. Essentially, in this other way, instead of trying to let the ego be and then to disassociate from it in order to dissolve it slowly, you do the opposite. You associate with the ego. You feed it. You inflate it as much as possible, and you identify with it intensely. After a long time of doing this (perhaps lifetimes??) eventually the ego gets so incredibly large that it cannot sustain itself. There simply isn't enough energy in the body, or the world for that matter. The pain and suffering caused by the constant feeding and maintenance of the ego becomes too much, and the entire egoic structure comes crashing down. It shatters. Of course, what is left after that is the same thing that is left after doing it the easy way: little or no ego, and a sense of Consciousness.

There are systems that embrace this route, like The Church of Satan, for example. Their teachings lie exactly along this plane, but I'm not sure if they know about the positive ending. Their ultimate stated goal in their bible is to keep the ego around even after death, so it can go out and do stuff, i.e. as a spirit. (The Satanic Bible is an interesting read for this.)

However, again, this way is not easy. Human beings are inherently drawn towards the easy way, i.e. the Light Side of the Force, if you will. :) In order to follow the Dark Side, you would have to go out of your way to do unenjoyable things, and you would suffer all along the way, since the basic result of egoic episodes is suffering. So, unlike Star Wars, the Dark Side is NOT quicker and easier, but it is still more seductive. :)

I'll be out on a business trip for the next three days, so hang in there.

To those who are new here...

2008-08-01T11:48:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned earlier, the posts on this blog build on each other at times. It's possible that if you start reading somewhere near the latest posts you'll be confused by the terms and concepts that I seem to breeze through. Thus, I recommend highly that you don't worry about reading up on the latest posts so much as starting near the beginning and working your way through the material like it was a book. Perhaps if I build up enough material, I'll actually publish, but I'm not too worried about that right now.

Enjoy.

Dawn

2008-07-31T08:41:00.004-04:00

I just finished reading a novel by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight. It was your average angsty vampire novel (which I like sometimes when I'm in the mood), and it contains tons of crunchy and delicious bits for an Inner Self to chomp on, so it was quite pleasurable in that sense. The novel generally deals with vampires from the point of view of a high school girl, which was a bit tiresome in a 90210 sort of way, but as I was reading through it, I was struck by a question on the mental level... This novel makes it seem cool to be a vampire, and this girl wants nothing more than to be like the vampires she meets in the story. All throughout the book, these beings are glorified and they act as the protagonists, and naturally kids today will eat that stuff up. Where are the novels that cast the awakened beings as protagonists?

What if you had an equivalent novel to that, where instead of vampires, there was this group of kids that was Conscious? Just like the vampires, people would sort of stay away from them, yet not hate them because they couldn't quite figure them out well enough to make a decision either way. The antagonists in the story could be kids that are the opposite and instead were enticed into egoic fantasies and began playing with black magic and all kinds of other stuff.

What if this book made it seem cool to awaken?

Potentially, I know the answer, or at least part of it. Thousands of kids might read the book, and most will probably ignore it, which is fine. You'll probably also wind up with a few assholes (to use Draja's term) who thought they got it, and then maybe, just maybe, you'll inspire three or four kids who needed to hear it. In the end, I think it would be a game of statistics, but don't you think that might be worth it?

I wonder where these novels are. This is a genre that needs to be born, IMO. Dan Millman's The Journey's of Socrates is one novel that already exists along these lines but there should be more. If I was a better writer (and had time), I'd take a crack at that.

The Four Worlds

2008-07-30T08:44:00.006-04:00

Before I go into this, one warning.... this is yet another tool. In terms of Reality, all this stuff below is wrong because it does not accurately describe what cannot be described in words. However, it is still useful information to be used as a pointer to the things that cannot be described. So read on.

Creation exists on four basic levels: the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. All four of these things make up everything that we can interact with. In actuality, these four levels are the product and the basis of our interaction with Consciousness. (I'll clarify that another time.)

One way to think about these levels is to describe them as separate existences. Borrowing a term from Kaballah, I call them the Four Worlds.

The physical world, for example, is the one we are all familiar with. It has solid objects, laws of physics, finite boundaries and rules, etc. It can also be described by scientific experiments, although the actual number crunching and logic of science takes place in the mental world.

The emotional world is a step above that. By "above" I mean it is closer to Consciousness, and therefore it can be seen as holier or more real, however you like to define it. Picture the source of Consciousness pouring itself into the world of form. As this liquid trickles down, it gets further and further away from the source. As it does that, it changes and becomes less and less like the source. The final destination is the physical level, and thus that level is least like the source. The emotional level is just before that, so it's a tiny bit more like the source.

This emotional world contains, well, your emotions. Everything that is emotional has its roots there. As a level by itself in isolation, it contains other things you may have heard of, like the Astral, the Ethereal, and other stuff. This is because even though I'm describing only four worlds here, in fact, each one of the four has subsets. As you go up in levels, you don't just tick suddenly from one to the next. Each level gradually blends into the next, like the different layers of earth's atmosphere do as you go up in a space craft.

Probably about half the "nasties" that you've heard about in myth exist on the emotional level, i.e. ghosts, demons, egos, etc. Most of the other half exists on the mental level. Humans are special because they exist on all four levels simultaneously, and not many other beings do that. In fact, I can't think of any right now. Angels come close, but I don't think they can do all four simultaneously. I think they pick one at a time. However, suffice it to say, most of this crap exists in the imagination, except that the imagination exists on the emotional and mental levels and in some senses is therefore closer to the source than your physical parts.

In any case, the mental level is where you do all your number crunching, like I mentioned before. This is the realm of logic and reason. However, it is also a very creative realm because you can think of lots of things that certainly aren't logical or reasonable, can't you? Most of the things that exist here are called "thought forms", and they are entities in and of themselves, sometimes created by us, i.e. by our thoughts. Thought forms will usually dissipate quickly, but they can be fed and nurtured and take on life of their own if given enough energy. People fall prey to these all the time when their persistent obsessive thoughts move them to do irrational or violent things.

Then finally there is the spiritual level. If going up the levels is like changing channels on a TV set, flipping from the physical channel, to the emotional, to the mental, then when you get to the spiritual channel, the channel disappears. The TV disappears too. Everything goes silent and still and just is. This is the level that is closest to Consciousness. When things first emanate out of Consciousness, they go through here.

So if you think about it, this lays out the process of creating something. First, Consciousness conceives of the thing. Then that conception filters down to the spiritual level and inspires you. Then, you have an idea. The light bulb goes off and a mental picture forms in your head of what you want to make. Then you get excited about it. You become enthusiastic and driven emotionally to create this thing. Then you do it. That's creation.

Function in life

2008-07-29T08:29:00.006-04:00

I've had a couple days of computer problems, but we should be back in business.

So let's ask some questions. What's your function in life? What are life functions anyway, especially in the grand scheme of things?

Eckhart Tolle has a good explanation for these questions. Essentially, you have two kinds of functions: ones that stem from whatever you are doing outwardly, and the other kind, which there is only one, i.e. to realize your Oneness with Being. Being aware of your connection to all that there is is your primary function, and it is common to all human beings. On the other hand, outward functions vary from person to person, and even from moment to moment.

For example, right now, you are reading this post. At this point in time, that is your outward function. Nothing else exists right now except you, the screen, and any noises or other activities going on in the background. When you get up to walk away from the computer, or you click to the next website, that walking or clicking now becomes your outward purpose.

Perhaps in your mind right now you are protesting what I just wrote? Listen in on the protests if they are there. What do they say?

"Clearly I have another function. I am a _______." (Insert your own answer there.)

"Surely looking at this screen is not my entire purpose. I have all these things that I've done and all these things I have to do next week."

"There is no way that MY purpose is that insignificant. I am going to be a somebody. I am going to get somewhere, and reading a screen is a means to that end, but it is not the purpose itself."

Are any of your own protests similar? The reason for this is that the ego desires to be separate from the whole. It believes that by being separate it can preserve itself. Giving in to the Present and allowing itself to be dissolved into existence equates with death for it. All of those pitfalls I posed above deal either with asserting separateness or escaping the Present by attaching to the past or future. Every one of these things inhibits awareness of Consciousness.

One day, years ago, I was walking by myself on Busch Campus at Rutgers University. Most people who know me have heard that I suffer a minor case of agoraphobia, i.e. fear of open spaces, the opposite of claustrophobia. Thus, walking in some areas on Busch Campus is a bit hard for me because they are open fields, but one day I decided to push myself and I took a stroll across a wide open field of grass heading away from the stadium.

As the usual panic started to grip me, I stepped back from it and observed. That didn't end the panic at all, but I was at least not associating with the panic. I was disidentifying from it and watching it like it was on a TV screen happening to someone else. As the fear and terror engulfed me even further, and the usual feelings of falling and dizziness swept by, I started to become even more aware of the silence and calmness behind all of the panic. Suddenly, I wasn't "me" anymore. In the middle of the field, I think I stopped walking. As I did that, I looked down at a single blade of grass in the wide open grassy expanse, and I realized that the blade of grass and I were one. I became the blade of grass.... small, insignificant.

Then the experience went further. Suddenly, I realized that that blade of grass was consciously connected to all of the blades of grass in the field. I expanded with that realization to include the whole field. I wasn't just one blade of grass anymore. I was all of them. Millions of them. There was a peace like none other when this feeling happened.

Then another realization came. That first blade of grass that I melded with seemed to point something out to me, wordlessly. It basically said, "How limiting is that? To think that you're just one blade of grass? When you could be ALL blades of grass in the field, or even the world?" I realized that this was a metaphor for me, as a human. How limiting is it to think that you are just this one individual? It all seemed comical in that instant, that I should cling to being a tiny blade of grass. I pictured a blade of grass waving around in the wind saying, "I am going to BE somebody! I am great! I have a bigger purpose!" I think I roared with laughter at that, and then the experience ended. For a few minutes after that, I was no longer scared of the open space and I was able to walk out of there fearlessly.

When you are conscious in the moment and not stressing about the future or regretting the past, you are whole. When you are Present, all those things become irrelevant and for that brief second, you are fulfilling your purpose. Doing everything in the Present to the best of your ability and to the highest quality is what we are here to do. The actual content of your work is not as important as whether you are doing it with awareness or not. When I was a child, before Draja had started to train me, another spiritual teacher once told me to prepare for what's coming by washing dishes. Naturally, I turned up my nose at that. What could washing dishes possibly have to do with spirituality or spiritual growth? However, now it is obvious. If you can wash dishes while being Present and accepting it as your purpose, you will go far. Anything you do to that effect is a spiritual exercise.

Can this stuff rub off on me?

2008-07-24T09:07:00.003-04:00

A long time ago there were two students who were studying with a master. The only problem was that they never got to actually talk to the man. All the other students would get to sit in on these wonderful discussions and teaching sessions, and these two students were always left to do menial servile tasks. They would clean up after the master's dishes when he ate, and wash his clothes and linens before placing them out for him in the morning, etc.

One of the students really hoped that if he did enough he would eventually be allowed into the "inner circle" of students so he too could participate in all the cool discussions that were going on, and to actually LEARN something. The other student accepted his tasks and just did them.

This went on for a couple of years. Finally, the first student began to think that he would never be allowed to do the special stuff, so he left. The other student stayed.

20 years later, the first student returned from his journeys and found his old mate in charge of the whole place! He was astonished, and he asked, "What happened? How long did it take you to get into that inner circle of students and learn from the master directly?"

The new master answered, "I never got in there. One day, the master got ill and before he died he declared that I was now the teacher."

I always thought this was an interesting story because it demonstrates a principle. That is, Consciousness spreads a bit like fire going from one candle flame to another. The student who stayed with the teacher for 20 years and cleaned up his mess was able to develop more Presence than any of the other people in the school. Why? Because he was simply in the teacher's Presence. Simply by being there and doing his tasks he got somewhere. It really didn't matter what his tasks were, so long as he was there, and that he had the conscious intent to evolve.

This was a common occurrence in ancient schools, and it still works today.

When you are near someone who is Present, their Presence brings out your Presence. You are able to be more Present when you are in their Presence. That's what I mean by "Consciousness spreads a bit like fire." There really is no grand plan or schedule of things you must DO to become Present. You either do it or you don't, but being near others who are Present can accelerate it.

I think this is what Eckhart Tolle is getting at when he talks about people who are ready to awaken and people who are not. Let me explain.

Today is a little different than ancient times. There were relatively few awakened beings, so the process of spreading Consciousness by simply having awakened beings stand next to unawakened ones was extremely inefficient. It was done, but it was a slow process. Thus, maybe back then there were some things that people needed to do to push themselves towards the point where they would awaken without necessarily being around lots of other awakened individuals.

Nowadays, there are many individuals that are in touch with their true natures, and more every day. Therefore, it is much easier to enact this process today. Perhaps that is why Eckhart does not seem to advocate preparation for awakening via getting in touch with the emotions, i.e. that first method of training I explained. Perhaps most people don't need to do formal exercises anymore? Perhaps we've reached a critical mass where all they have to do is stick around on the planet and get there eventually on their own?

Whatever the case, one thing is clear. Awakened individuals have an obligation to be Present around others, so that Consciousness may continue to find itself.

Sticks in the mud

2008-07-23T09:00:00.008-04:00

It's got a light side and a dark side and it binds the galaxy together... no, not The Force... no, not duct tape.. love. Actually, there is so much confusion around this term that the human race has spent the better part of the last million years figuring it out. Over the years, some have shown insights and others have failed miserably, albeit spectacularly. So what's the deal here?

As usual, there is a conventional explanation and a conscious one. From the conventional side of things, there are a bizillion books about love (which I'm designating with a lower case "l" here.) The scientific side of it can also be found in those books, and it's actually quite interesting! The feelings we associate with love cause our bodies to release endorphins which activate the same receptors in the brain that addictive drugs like morphine and heroine activate! In fact, do you know how the word "endorphin" came to be? The person who discovered endorphins is Candace Pert, who is also now a spiritual teacher and an interesting read, and she came up with the term "endorphin" as a combination of two words: endogenous morphine. Basically, endorphins are the body's naturally made morphine. So hell yeah it feels good!!

When you fall for someone in this way, you are actually addicted to them just like a drug, because seeing them gives you that high in the same biological way that a drug like morphine or heroine would. Unfortunately, there are some side effects to all drugs, especially this one.

Eventually your body builds up a tolerance. Seeing that person will eventually produce less and less of a high, and this is totally natural. It doesn't mean that you don't "love" them anymore. Actually, from a biological standpoint, other hormones begin to get released after the endorphins go away, and these hormones are responsible for feelings of security and stability.

However, sometimes people get addicted to an image of a person, and not the person's true nature. Often this is the case. When you do that, you build up a mental image of the person and you associate with the mental image rather than the person. The mental image you have of the person is idealized, and when you are addicted to that image, you have no idea what the real substance behind it is. So the old scenario tends to play out: You move in with the person while addicted, or worse, you marry them. Then the addiction wears off. You still associate with the mental image of the person, but mysteriously that person does not live up to the image anymore, and you begin to get annoyed with them on a regular basis... you start to fight a lot, or worse. Violence erupts.

Keep in mind that the other person may also be going through the same thing. Their addiction is ending and they are associating with a mental image of you rather than the real you. That makes two egos fighting the battle.

Aw well that just SUCKS!! What's the point of love then?? *sarcasm there* (Right now everyone reading this is probably hating me, especially female readers!)

I've been though this, like most people. During one of the summers when I was training with Draja, I experienced a big breakup. I went through the regular stages of grief, but my habit of holding things inside and hiding feelings made my expression of grief incomplete. It wasn't until the NEXT summer, a year later that I had this conversation with Draja one night during our session:

"It's been a year and I'm still hurting. This really sucks. I'm so sick of it all. Not only is this happening, but my parents are also divorcing. It's all so dumb: love. What's the point? All it does is cause pain and suffering. What IS love, Draja? I don't get this."

Draja handed me a tissue because I was sobbing like a baby and began, "Love (as experienced by the ego) is the palest reflection of what a being feels for its creator. Your true self doesn't really desire anything except to realize its union with the Creator, with the One, with Consciousness. "

"So all these warm and fuzzy feelings are just that, bullshit?" I asked.

"Well it depends on what you mean by bullshit. Are they beyond the ego, meaning are they real? No. Conventional love is generated by the ego. Your ego doesn't really understand that even it is inexplicably pulled towards union with Consciousness, and it thinks that this love is the ultimate thing, when really it's just a poor substitute." he answered.

This made me a little angry, and I responded, "That's tough to believe. All these feelings and these wonderful things are really just our egos barking up the wrong tree? There's GOT to be something Real about all this. Love MUST have some purpose."

He smiled and countered with, "Josh, egos cling to things. Egos defend things, and they demand purposes. There IS such thing as True Love. You know what it is? True Love is acceptance of what Is Right Now In The Present Moment. When you enter the Present, and you accept everything and everyone just as it is, without letting your desires to change or control get in the way, then you experience Love. You experience the Love that Consciousness has for itself, for the Real You."

Take a while and think about all this.

Do a thought experiment. What is the logical or emotional conclusion to love? Union.

Males: What do you tend to want out of any love interest? A great round of sex, or ten. What is the end result of good sexual experiences? Orgasms. What do you feel after an orgasm? Ultimate release, complete stillness, even for only a few seconds. Union.

Females: What do you tend to want out of any love interest? A soul mate, and an emotional counterpart. What could be the physical conclusion of that? A fabulous dinner in a fantastically romantic location, where you wind up staring into his eyes or snuggling in his arms for eternity... maybe even sex too, but at the end of all that, what do you feel? Ultimate buildup to ultimate comfort and bliss, complete stillness, even for only a few seconds. Union.

So even our experiences of love in the world of form are trying to point us in the direction of Oneness. The problem is that we let our egos run them and this always leads to suffering.

Normal life

2008-07-21T09:45:00.003-04:00

When awakening starts to occur, it's sort of a funny experience. You begin to pull away from your own emotions and become the observer, or the witness. The same goes for your thoughts. Depending on whether you are a male or a female, you may have more thoughts than emotions, on average, but many exceptions exist. Either way, you pull away.

You might find there are times when the world starts to look phony, like you are waking up from a dream. Ever see that move, The Matrix? That's a great analogy! In this movie, the world is really just a computer program created by robots who took over humanity long ago. The human beings are placed into incubators for their entire lives, so the robots can mine heat energy from them to power their gadgets. In order to keep the humans imprisoned, the humans' minds are put into the Matrix, which is a virtual reality copy of the world in the early 21st century. The premise of the movie is that some of these humans wake up from the Matrix and pull themselves out of it into the real world, and they then begin a mission to awaken everyone else.

In one particular scene in the movie, the main character, Neo, has been newly awakened and is going on his first mission back into the Matrix for some information. As he looks around at the streets where he used to "live", he is seeing them for the first time for the illusions that they are. Part of him is sad, and part of him is amazed. All of him is awake.

I call these "Matrix moments", and they happen frequently to those who are waking up, because that movie really is a perfect analogy for it. In the real case, the robots symbolize the collective Human ego, which is keeping all of us prisoner in its dreamlike state.

Drawing a blank...

2008-07-18T08:31:00.009-04:00

One of the biggest barriers to realization of Consciousness is the chatter inside our heads. We all have it: that voice in your mind that never shuts up from the moment you wake until way after you fall asleep. The root of this voice is really one thing: fear. People's minds fear that if they shut up they will cease to exist. That is exactly what the ego does. It tries to preserve its existence by constantly reminding itself, "Hello, I'm here!"

Can this voice be stopped? Is there a point to stopping this voice? What can you really expect to do in the Present moment about this?

When I was living with Draja and training as his student, we would spend the days fixing up his house and running errands and the evenings doing exercises. Constant 24/7 training, basically. On one evening we went down into the classroom for our nightly session, and this time we were working on blanking that voice in our heads:

Draja opened up the discussion, "Josh, great power lies with those who can blank their minds for ten minutes. Can you do that?"

"Hellll no." I answered. "I think I can do it for maybe a second or two, and then it comes back no matter how hard I try to keep it away."

He nodded and smiled, "Ah, there's your problem. You are trying. By trying to blank your mind, you are guaranteed NOT to succeed."

I flashed him my usual confused look that I had been giving him for the last decade since that day when he sat me down at age 12.

"There's an old Zen saying. 'You cannot stop your own mind any more than you can look into your own eyes or bite your own teeth.' By trying to stop your mind, you are using your mind, and that takes thought. Therefore, your mind is not stopped. You may just simply be thinking, 'I'm not thinking right now. nyah nyah' To stop your thoughts, you have to observe them. Then after observing them for a while, you gradually realize that you are not the thoughts, but rather you are the thing that is witnessing the thoughts."

I nodded pensively and said, "Kinda like a silent witness, huh?"

He smiled and said, "Yes! That's exactly it. Very good."

Then I got a little bit worried, "But if my mind stops, won't I fall into a big black pit of nothingness or something? Could I cease to exist? Or die even?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No. That's what your ego wants you to think. It really believes that if it stops it will not be there, but actually when it stops you are more you than you usually are. But, talking about this is just more thought. You need to blank your mind, and I'm going to help. Take this..."

Draja then pulled out a small white box, like the kind used for rings or earrings, and he opened it. Inside was a nondescript looking stone. It could have been any stone that was picked up off the street, and was maybe three quarters of an inch long by half an inch wide. He handed me the stone and said, "Hold this in both hands and close your eyes."

Sitting down in a chair, I took the stone and did as he instructed.

Suddenly everything went black... because my eyes were shut! But seriously it was even blacker than that, and moreover, everything suddenly became ultimately quiet. I cannot describe how quiet it was... quieter than the quietest room I had ever been in. Not only was it black and quiet, but there was this feeling of enormous space. The space was more vast than anything I had known, yet I was not scared, and yet the space was also very small at the same time. Man, it was a relief, like taking off a tight shoe. All the crap that I had cared about was just not an issue. It did not exist any longer.

And in that vast blackness of ultimate peace, there came a teeny tiny voice that barely even had any echo, and it said, "Holy shit. I'm still here."

Suddenly again, everything came swarming back to "normal". I realized a few seconds later that it happened because Draja took the stone out of my hands. He smiled at me and asked, "So, how was it?"

I pointed at the stone, "What the hell was THAT??"

In a pedantic tone he responded, "This stone has an interesting ability to teach people how to meditate by blanking their minds. Someone found it and gave it to me a long time ago. I use it to teach people when they are in need. The great thing now is that all you have to do to blank your mind in the future is simply remember the stone and your experience, and your thoughts will zip away."

After thanking him, I asked him a lot of questions. The main one I asked was, "When I was blanked out, there was something STILL THERE. It was a huge presence, yet not so huge. It didn't do anything except watch and hang out there in the background like a big black expanse. What was that?"

He nodded knowingly, "That's the Real you."

More later!

Good. Evil, and Relativism

2008-07-17T08:44:00.005-04:00

This is a favorite and highly charged subject for a lot of people. Pretty much everyone with an ego (which means everyone) bases a significant portion of their identity on their ideas of what is right and wrong, and they often use that basis as a means of strengthening their egos by condemning those who do not believe as they do. So, hey, why don't I light a few fires here?

Obviously, religions have the market cornered on definitions of right and wrong. Governments are a close second, and most governments are based on religion anyway.... In general, religions are about black and white takes on good and evil. They say, "THIS is good. THAT is evil. The end." The funny part is that when you look inside the religion at the people who practice it, they either don't all agree with the dogma or they have a completely different interpretation of it, yet all of them swear that there is a universal definition. Sufis call that hypocrisy.

Then you have a newer version of the definitions which is called relativism. Though relativism is probably a bit closer to Reality, it still doesn't quite hit the mark. It's missing some elements.

Relativism is a good start though, for showing where the logic of good and evil that religions talk about breaks down.

One night, Draja pulled me into a classroom he had in the basement of his house, and told me we'd be doing some inner self work that night. During this particular time, most of the IS work we were doing was based on contacting the IS's of other people and making them do things, and this night was more of the same.

"Ok, Josh, " he said. "Here is our target for tonight." He then held up a small scrap of paper with a name written on it. I studied the paper and began to contact the guy's IS as Draja lit two candles on a low table.

After I made contact, I said, "Ok, got 'im. What are we doing?"

He took a second to also make contact and then said, "We're going to make this guy impotent!"

"WHAT?! Oh come on!" I blurted. Draja just nodded in response, so I followed up, "What the fuck? Why would we want to do this? Hell, this guy must be about 60 years old. He probably doesn't get it up much at all, and we're going to take that away?"

Draja nodded. "Bad for him. True. But not bad for the lady he's raping periodically." Draja named the woman, and it was someone we knew.

Relativism is based on the thought that every action is both beneficial and harmful to someone. On a situational level, that's absolutely true, and even the most hard core religionist would have a hard time denying it. However, religionists like to explain that some higher power is directing everything and that there is some huge plan that we cannot understand, and that by doing "good", i.e. their definition of good, we can help that plan. Eh... like many things, that's another distortion.

So what's the deal?

The deal is there is no good or evil OR relativism.

Everything just is the way it is. Once you put a judgment onto it by saying it's good or bad, that judgment is a thought. Consciousness has no judgment, only acceptance of what is. The relativists and religionists both judge, albeit on different scales and with varying degrees of tolerance. But they are both judging rather than experiencing without naming.

When something happens in your life, you will eventually judge it, and that's fine. You will judge it according to your past conditioning. However, before you do that, try to take at least a second or two to just look at the thing as it is, with no words or thoughts. Taking a deep breath when you feel yourself starting to compulsively judge something will work to disrupt your thought flow for the second or two that it takes to just take a quick unobstructed view.

Fundamental(ist) response to the Oprah/Eckhart Classes

2008-07-16T08:46:00.009-04:00

I've been posting links and watching the Oprah Winfrey presentation of Eckhart Tolle and his materials, and I've also been combing the internet to look at the responses to the videos.

They are absolutely fascinating. There are those who agree and those who disagree. The response from the people who disagree goes something like this:

Plumbing Tool Expert: Oprah, I'm warning you. You are leading people astray and it is unacceptable. I am appalled at what you are promoting, and I want to give you some examples of where you are wrong:

1) You say, "The Golden Wrench is not any different than the rest of us, only that He realizes he is a tool being held by a Being that works through Him."

Nonsense! The Golden Wrench is a special wrench created directly by the Great Tool & Die Maker. Nobody can be like Him. I mean look at him, he's GOLD. You also say that he is held by some Being and that he is not actually a wrench? How can you believe that when it says clearly in the instruction manual that he is a wrench?? You are deluding people.

2) You say, "There are actually lots of different kinds of tools, and all of them can be used by people to build things, which ultimately serves a much larger entity called the Universe."

Sinner! There are only wrenches! Wrenches are the only tool! The Golden Wrench is the best of these tools and any true work that can be done can only be done with That Wrench! If these so-called Beings holding the wrenches actually do exist, which I doubt, you can bet that they are only able to use wrenches. Wrenches can build the Nice Clean Shelf that we will eventually all go to, and if I had my way, I would make everyone use wrenches and disallow any discussion of other tools.

----------------------

Like I said in an earlier post, do not become enamored with the tools we are given. Realize that you are the Presence that is holding the tool, and not the tool itself.

One of the reasons why i find these responses interesting is because they allow us to examine our own behaviors. This chatter is similar to a type of teaching story used by the Sufis, like the famous tales of Nasrudin. The point of these stories is to jolt us out of our egos and make us pay attention to what is by making us step back and look at what we are doing.

Examining your own behavior and trying to see how you are doing the very things you scream against is a powerful tool.

Catching up on re-runs

2008-07-15T14:06:00.006-04:00

I posted a link for a YouTube presentation on Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle talking about his book, A New Earth. However, that link leaves a little to be desired. There's actually ten chapters of the discusson and only the first two or three chapters are on YouTube.

So, I found a link with the whole thing:

Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey Discuss A New Earth.

Enjoy!

One thing I can say: Eckhart has a lot more presence than I! On that first chapter, Oprah wouldn't shut up! LOL I kept thinking, "Let Eckhart speak, will ya??"

I hear that she does that because of her broadcaster training, which loathes dead air. However, it also really messes up some of the silence needed during transmission of teachings in certain cases.

I haven't watched the later chapters yet, but I hear she tones it down.

One thing that I haven't figured out yet is when to use the two different schools of thought I posed in an earlier post. Remember, one school talks about tackling your emotional hangups head on to clean up that window to the IS, and the school which Eckhart is from talks about acknowledging the dirt and allowing it to be, and while being that knowing, you realize the Consciousness behind it... and the dirt becomes irrelevant.

My problem is with people who have absolutely no training whatsoever.

Eckhart would see if they are capable of stepping back and observing their emotions, and if they aren't, he simply would say they aren't ready to awaken yet. He would tell them to go off and suffer a bit more and come back when they are ready. Someone who is ready would simply be able to step back and see the silence from reading his material.

In the way I learned, there are different amounts of unconsciousness. Most people aren't ready to do what Eckhart is suggesting, and in the way I was taught, there are things you can do to get ready. There are things that can facilitate your waking up. When I was learning this stuff, we did not even TRY to pay attention to our DS until years after starting IS work. By doing that, we prepped ourselves to be able to step back from the emotions. Although not anyone could do this training, (some people are just too unconscious) a decent number of people could work on it.

So, again, I'm not certain what the best scenario is. Do we train people in the preliminary stuff in the hopes that they might awaken in this lifetime? Do we leave them alone and let the momentum of others awakening carry them? Is the training process that I spoke of an outdated method that is no longer useful?

I can't answer these questions.

Uh, can you repeat that?

2008-07-14T08:49:00.004-04:00

It is amazing how many times people can see/hear/read things and still not absorb them. I am talking about any kind of information, spiritual or not. I have been involved in many examples myself. I can't tell you how many times I have been in karate class during a training when one of my senseis would say something that would sound amazing, and I would go to them after class and say, "Hey! You never said that before! That was exactly what I needed to hear!" Invariably, the answer would be, "I've been telling you that for YEARS, dummy! You just finally HEARD me."

A lot of times, it is not the teaching or the student's inability to learn but it is often two other things:
1) The student was not ready to learn it before, and once the readiness arrives, the student learns.
2) The *way* in which the information was said was not the way in which the student needed to hear it.

Some people are better at giving information. Sometimes, people just need to hear things in a certain phrasing or tone and they get it. That is why you see a lot of different books on spirituality out there that say the same thing but say it in different ways. Everything that there is to say has already been said with regards to spiritual development! There is nothing I can say here that is new, and there is nothing that Dan Millman or Eckhart Tolle or any of those guys have written in the last few decades that is new. All that is different is the teachers, writing styles, phrasing, and accompanying anecdotes, really.

So my advice to anyone looking to read books on spirituality is to simply get guidance from someone who's been there before and ask them what books they like. Then try out a few different ones. Maybe you don't like the way Ken Wilber writes? Maybe Idries Shah is more your cup of tea? Who knows?

At the very least, I try to write things here in the way that I think of them. In a way, the things written here are a distillation of lots of other teachers. The intent is convenience.

Trying something new

2008-07-11T10:53:00.003-04:00

I learned an interesting lesson yesterday. I was watching a dialogue on Youtube between Oprah Winfrey and Eckart Tolle, and Eckart was talking about his experience with writing his first book, The Power of Now. He described how one day he was going about his business and all of a sudden he got this sense of something needing to arise out of Oneness, or as he calls it Consciousness. (I like that term.) He could not put his finger on it but he felt like something had to be born. As he sorted it out and wound up moving to the west coast of Canada and the US, he started to write the book.

The point here is that he didn't write the book. The book wrote him.

When he was in the process of writing, as time went on, he sometimes did not feel much like putting anything down. However, each day he cleared some time and space for the writing, whether he wrote or not. He said he respected the space for it to do what it needed. (I'm paraphrasing and taking liberties here.)

Interestingly, I felt similarly when deciding to start this blog. One day I got this huge feeling of things within me starting to bubble up to the surface, and I got this huge push to start bloggin' what I new about this stuff. So I started.

On some posts, however, I am writing about what *I* want to write, and I have figured out that this is probably not as useful as letting Consciousness write what it wants. So here I am. Before I started writing this today, I sat quiety at the same time I usually post here, and I asked Consciousness, "What do I write?"

The answer is this post, but also this video. Watch the whole series if you like:

Personal musings on development

2008-07-10T09:08:00.004-04:00

In many ways, I think humanity is at a crossroads right now. Eckhart Tolle repeats some views about this. A long time ago, enlightened people, i.e. people who were able to step into the Present for prolonged periods of time, were extremely rare. Everyone was caught up in the swirl of chaos that was humanity, and they didn't know the chaos was their own doing, and that it was fake. Then you start having these enlightened people popping up in rare cases. Poof! There goes Jesus! Oops, no wait, they killed him soon after. Poof! There goes Buddha! Oops, nope, he didn't have an easy time with people either. Poof! There goes... You get the idea.

These rare people that popped up suffered greatly, which was part of their evolution, and ours. Then over the centuries, something started to slowly happen: the rate of enlightened people appearing began to increase. Thomas Aquinas... Shakespeare.. Meister Eckhart... The Baal Shem Tov... and more and more people. Still, you could make a list of them if you tried. There were only maybe a thousand.

Along with that phenomena, something else happened. The rate of insanity also started to increase. I'm using Tolle's definition of insanity here, to keep things consistent: insanity is identification with the ego instead of the Real You. In other words, insanity is getting wrapped up in past and future and not being Present.

Scarily, now we have a real case of both rates speeding up exponentially in today's world. There are now probably hundreds of thousands if not a few million enlightened people of varying degrees, but there are billions of insane ones. The more the world wakes up and disidentifies from the insanity, the more the insanity fights back. It seems like for every person that finally says, "I'm done with this idiocy." there are 10 fundamentalists that spring up ready to berate that person, or even kill them sometimes.

There really isn't anything you can DO about it except be here now, and know. Being aware of the insanity dispels it. The more people that are aware of it, the more it deflates those who aren't. There really isn't any other way to "fight" it.