The Real Rapture: Holiday Protests, Compassionate Consciousness, and Spiritual Evolution

We're a lot like moss on a rock, our humanity here on Earth – a simple, opportunistic colony of life, clinging to something alive that gives us Life. In the same way that any collective life form experiences stress when conditions for it's survival begin to change, our world is changing, and we're experiencing the stress. For all of us looking for solutions, wondering what to do, the answers are in front of us already in the simple intuitive need to adapt consciously – in that rapidly rising awareness that's showing us the way. The simple, clear truth of things.

Our corporate culture has wrongly modeled itself on misconstrued Darwinism. It's not about "Survival of the Fittest," it's about survival of what adapts in the most cooperative way. The triumph of which ideas benefit the most people all the time, without putting the whole at risk. So we really require only the simplest reliable human mechanisms to carry us through these tough times, mechanisms like Love, compassion, and cooperation. Like the shared vision of what's actually possible here on Earth that so many of us, all around the world, can plainly see.

It's an altogether different definition of success. A different definition of "fitness." A success based on the shared success of the human species. A fitness comprised of spiritual consciousness – the very kind that we can feel coalescing around and within us, right now.

The qualities and dogma associated with "Power," "Economics," and "Science" are dangerously anachronistic in the face of what's humanly possible, and what's humanly impossible. We simply can't successfully allow our present systems of commerce, governance, and resource management to continue on their present course, or to continue to deny the physical changes affecting our planet, and expect anything but catastrophe. Our reality is clearly changing.

For example: Aspects of Capitalism work very well to achieve certain goals, but the bottom line is that it's a mechanism that now serves money (and those most interested in it), not humanity or sane governance. Old Science is in denial of New Science, and strongly resembles a Flat Earth Society, of sorts. Our political system is too nearly completely compromised by corrupt capitalists to be effective for the vast majority of people.

All of us, red and blue, know these truths. It's an awareness born of our human spiritual evolution, of our progression. So our institutions of Power are losing their power. They all resemble pyramid schemes, slash and burn, where the earliest in and out thumb their noses at all the rest. Today there are ethical, spiritually conscious barbarians at their gates, and of course – they are us.

Something has happened…is happening. Human Beings are percolating together, re-configuring our world on the basis of what's real and necessary for life. Conscious humans are inspired by an awareness of what managing Earth's abundance actually entails; and understanding what science is really telling them – all with a profound [and beautiful] kind of non-violent presence, that suddenly seems most practical. It's the inheritance of Gandhi's ahimsa. It is a rebirth of the human spirit, the awakenings of Heaven on Earth.

In an irreversible way, a kind of "Rapture" is actually taking place now amongst those awakened to this consciousness in the world. Many people are having hard times, falling through the same cracks in The Wall Street of 'Rome' that allow spiritual evolution to enter; the fractures in the falseness of materialistic consumerism, and science in denial. As patriotic humans, this consciousness inspires a profound dis-identification with the corrupt media, political, scientific, and legal structures that clearly only serve a small, pathologically ego-driven minority.

Lifting us up is a new evolutionary cooperation – a reality based on the spiritual unification of humankind, facilitated by instantaneous global communication. A tsunami of racial and sexual tolerance, and of unity and community. An understanding of our new scientific realities, including the urgent need for clean technology, and free, clean power; the impetus for universal human rights; the reuse and recycling movement, and invigorated environmentalism; local food production; greater animal awareness; social support systems of all kinds – and the public momentum to institute these ethical concepts by means of a truer form of democracy. It is arising everywhere.

And it's all based on a simple spiritual mechanism we haven't seen enough of for a while, humility. The kind that engenders real sanity and responsibility. The Christ Spirit that has returned isn't the iconic bearded redhead with all the answers – it's this spirit of ethics, cooperation, compassion, and humility that is the answer. It's the profoundly practical spirit of Love – for ourselves, each other, and our blessed Mother Earth.

The real extremists, ironically called conservative, and the self-entitled religious, financial, and militaristic radicals, are dividing themselves off from the whole. Those who suffer the delusion of superiority and entitlement, who think they can will the world (even the weather) to be what they want, are being "Left Behind" in a spiritual morass – drunk on piety, greed, and destructive self-will. They don't have to stay back while the blessed ascend to Heaven, they are living in a fearful hell already. That's why they're grasping, arming-up; why they're consolidating. They actually constitute a very small part of the world's total population. They, too can be "saved," through what I like to call Compassionate Consciousness– the realization that we all share, and are responsibly for adding to, the Consciousness of the Planet Earth.

All the scary storms and politics and economics we're witnessing are actually bringing us together, cementing the understanding of our changing world, connecting us to each other in the most important ways. They're terrible times, yes, but they're breaking through the stupor of fearful apartness that so many people experience in their lives. They bring us to our true purpose, which is to love and help one another; and to appropriately manage the changing resources of the Earth, which are still and always boundless. In this way, Life is getting better, as it's getting worse!

In each of our lives, we've all experienced a little Heaven at one time or another. That's because Heaven is here. Heaven is here already, has always been here, and has always been meant to be here, right now.

The personal role we can all play is to reject willful ego, and recognize it in one another as the single most destructive disease of humanity – a spiritual disease that threatens to kill Mother Earth as we know her (…and would you, red or blue, allow someone to kill your mother?).

The balance is returning – as it will and must, and if you intuitively want to be part of it, what really matters is showing up for the change (like supporting the protesters), and embracing it! Personally become part of the solution. What's important is what each and every one of us keeps in their heart, as long as it's the intention and power of Compassionate Consciousness.

"For so [humanity] moves towards the infinity of the Truth by the ex-perience of its variety; so [consciousness] helps to build, change, destroy what [has been] built, and prepares a new construction, in a word, to progress, grow, enlarge in self-knowledge and world-knowledge, and their works."

Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle

(This is a special holiday blog, revisited and updated)

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Reading and Discussion at Namaste Book Shop

"How to Survive Life (and Death)" with Robert Kopecky, Namaste Bookshop, NYC

From this three time 'Near Death Experiencer," an introduction and reading of his lively, well-received...

An International Association of Near Death Studies (IANDS) Interview

"Believe me, it was worth the wait. Reading it reminded me of nothing less that Ram Dass' famous book "Be Here Now," but without all the references to LSD." Lee Witting, International Association of Near Death Studies. 

Listen to Lee's excellent interview, on Talkzone: How To Survive Life And Death, A Guide to Happiness in This World and Beyond, #NDE Radio

Talkzone: How To Survive Life And Death

www.talkzone.com

Author Robert Kopecky shares his three unique near death experiences

Flocks, Schools, and Spiritual Evolution (It's a Revolution)

Have you ever looked up in the sky and seen a flock of birds in flight, undulating as though they were a single living organism? Separate yet solid. Shifting fluidly, like  living expressions inside of a dynamically divine Lava Lamp.

There's something fascinating going on there that we all recognize from way down in our subliminal cellars clear up to our archetypal attics – a cooperative organization and movement, issuing from an invisible intelligence. Science has its explanations for these orders and arrangements of the natural world, but their explanations are always an effort to frame the miraculous and justify a sense of understanding and control over something that's far more beautiful to witness than it could ever be to explain.

Beneath it all though, lies that unifying intuitive understanding of our basic natural relationship to the Earth; an ever-evolving expression, being eternally expressed. We, like those birds, are doing it too. That's the reason why, even in the face of our impending catastrophe, we have so much hope–because we can always have faith in the fact that our forms are constantly rediscovering and rearranging the Self into a timeless, working whole. (Ours is the only design that isn't intelligent). But bringing the promise of that faith into reality, requires that we follow those natural, intuitive impulses of our own group.

Quantum coherence and emergent self-organization aren't confined to particles or waves, or to anthills either. Nor are they unrelated to 'magic,' or the miraculous – they're just more finely drawn evidence of it. We are all psychically connected at a profound level–at least the level of survival. That comes as no shock, does it? We're sharing enough consciousness for to all of us to know that truth. Our being 'entangled' in non-ordinary ways, sharing a 'non-local' source, and joined by an "acausal connecting principle" is obvious in our contracting reality – blossoming into global consciousness through our simultaneous personal realizations. A collective déjà vu of growing intensity. We have had to change this way before.

Those entrancing performances of flocking birds and schooling fish illustrate our own emergent human properties–not just as strategies for survival, but for our physical and spiritual evolution as well. The energy that animates those collective expressions of divine purpose – to move beautifully and harmoniously as one – insists that we now embrace our collective intelligence, and change course.

Occupation movements; the impulse to maintain internet neutrality; personal participation in the power grid; rapidly deepening ecological awareness across the generations are all examples of this movement, which, out of the mainstream, finds its  identity in a kind of modern shamanic mythology that seeks to reconnect us to Mother Earth. In our mainstream culture, it's expressed as the profoundly progressive consciousness that elected the first African-American president, or that embraces the full rights of all sexual orientations. It's a recognition of humanity – grounded in altruism, activism, spiritual evolution, and personal responsibility.

Who leads this flock of birds? Where does the order to form this expression come from? The order to behave sensibly, as birds should; to cohere to the greater energies at play in the Universe, and within each and every individual? Simply put, it's beyond us, and between us. Recognizing it within oneself, and allowing ourselves to belong to the horizontal hierarchy that this undeniable impulse organizes itself within, brings us into balance with our emergent global consciousness, and gives us our true direction. 

"There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of [flying in the noisy flock, and] being the noise...Close both eyes to see with the other eye...Open your hands, if you want to be held...Sit down in this circle."

Rumi

These emergent qualities we share are finding a rising media voice too – from the comforting spirituality of Oprah, the late Louise Hay and Wayne Dyer; to the (more 'serious') science-based ideas of Ray Kurzweil or Bruce Lipton; to the 'in-your-face' progressive moxie of Russell Brand and Daniel Pinchbeck. All of these voices represent our intuitively shifting dynamic, which is totally at odds with the destructive financial elite – stuck in it's cultural amber – that's leading us in a top-down line to global disaster.

What are our means to directly access and join this collective shift? Well, we each carry those means in our willingness to participate with humility and honesty; in the Love alive in our hearts.

Nowhere have I found a guide for following this calling, in a totally practical way, expressed as wonderfully as in the brilliant Ervin Laszlo's "Ten Commandments of a Timely Vision" (from Quantum Shift in the Global Brain, Inner Traditions, 2008). It's a beautifully usable template, which (with apologies to Mr. Laszlo) I'll try to synopsize for the sake of brevity:

1. Live in ways that enable others to live, without detracting from their chances.

2. Live in ways that respect the [absolute] right to life and economic and cultural development of all people.

3. Live in ways that safeguard the intrinsic right to life and a supportive environment.

4. Pursue happiness, freedom, and fulfillment in harmony with nature, and with consideration for others.

5. Require that your government relates to all peoples peacefully, and in a spirit of healthy cooperation.

6. Require your enterprises to accept responsibility for their effect on markets and environments, free from exploitative intentions.

7. Require (or create) the public media to provide reliable information crucial to informed decision-making.

8. Help those less privileged to live a life of dignity.

9. Encourage young and open-minded people to evolve spiritually.

10. Work with like-minded people to to preserve, restore, and maintain the balance of your neighborhood, country, and global biosphere.

Here then is the path–drawn-out–towards the great shift we all know we must take; the practically involuntary course we are already taking towards our survival and spiritual evolution. It's nothing short of the conscious suppression of the destructive values of materialism, and the recognition of all life of the planet as sacred. It isn't just an evolution I'm talking about, but will have to be a revolution of humanity, from the unnecessary waste and despair we experience now, towards its highest order. 

So, for what it's worth (humbly and honestly), I too am following the indescribable urge that's calling for revolution–a recognition of our spiritual nature; and the requirement that a just and humane respect be shown to the Earth and all it's occupants, enforced by whatever means our Intelligent Design determines us to follow...and it's not even my idea at all.

"To the knowing, all of life is a movement towards perfection; so what need have they for the excessive, the extravagant, or the extreme?"

Tao te Ching, 29

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore! 

A How to Survive Life (and Death) NYC Book Event

Join me as I'm hosted by the beautiful Namaste Bookshop, Friday, October 17th, 6:30pm, when I read selections from my unusually fun and philosophical self-help how-to book about living well (and dying well); inspired by a very varied life, my three "near death experiences," and the wisdom of the ages. Thought-provoking selections will be intermingled with a congenial Q&A and conversation, followed by a book signing opportunity. It's your chance to peek behind the curtain with me at some of life's deepest mysteries – in a (seriously) light-hearted way.

https://www.facebook.com/events/280828878790468/

Stick With the Love Group – "The Secret" To How It Saves Worlds

If you know me, you know I'm a pretty regular guy. I like baseball, and westerns, and swordfight movies. A big thick seitan steak, hot off the grill. Why, I even spit, occasionally. So why is it that, like some romantic schoolgirl, I always want to talk about Love? Well, it's because of what happened in here (he says, pointing to his heart).

In all of my very varied experiences, even to Hell and back, you might say, I have never, in all of my life, known a force to be even a fraction as powerful as Love. It's absolute. It's all-encompassing. Not only is it:  a) the purposeful power that animates every experience, interest, and expression of value in our lives;  b) the eternal, trans-dimensional quantum field of creation and communication; but it's even  c) the clearest, simplest solution to every misdirected ill and injury ever perpetrated on our planet (and beyond). Not bad, eh?

Think of your life (think of anyones life), and you'll find there isn't an episode of deep significance that wasn't created in the search to express Love – or in the struggle caused by a lack of it. Its presence, or absence is what drives, and has driven, every great accomplishment, and every sad passage in the roller coaster history of humanity. It's the truth of our lives – our families and friendships, art and culture, successful careers, unimaginable feats – all inspired by the search, or scarcity, of Love.

So what does that mean to us, really? It means you can quit overlooking the simple fact that Love is the foundation of everything. You can honestly acknowledge that solid bond in your heart, that unshakeable understanding that everything you do is really a means to find it, express it, experience it. Every encounter is an opportunity to engage, and depend on that energy. You can just start living that way.

"The love that you share is the only thing you need to know. It is the green place from which all good things grow and spread into every part of your life. That is where God lives and constantly cares for you, so that all your worries may disappear."

                                             Anne 

Do you believe in guardian angels, the spirits of your ancestors, or the Sweet Hereafter? Do you believe that by holding the focus of a dream in your heart, you can bring it into reality in your life? It doesn't matter, really, whether you believe those things or not, they're still real. If you need proof, if you want science, then you could consider the first law of thermodynamics – that energy is never lost, it only changes form. That's the energy of your ancestors' spirits, or the energy you put into making your dreams come true (hint: they're the same energy). Love is the source and channel of that creative focus; and the bridge between life and "death."

You can actually talk to your angels and ancestors – extra-dimensionally – but only if you've engaged them via the field of Love. Only if you believe in, and utilize the technology of the heart, that gives us access to that deep channel of communication, flowing through everything. Love provides the pathway to the light, like opening a gate, or like tuning it in, station-to-station. Carefully, too, Love can open the channel into the darkness, where curative mysteries lay suppressed – in which case, it is essential to be thoroughly grounded in Love, and use it as a kind of secure platform, or as a shield.

You can bring whatever you wish for, whatever you imagine, into being through Love – but not in the material way that usually leaps into mind. (There's a secret to "The Secret") You're not necessarily going to receive the obvious spoils of a material life (though they may come too), because you're not writing the story of your external life, you're forming the foundations of your inner life. You won't make a treasure appear by just thinking about it. Your most magical manifestations may not even be in a form you recognize, at first; you will have to get your material expectations out of the way. Listen to this lesson about how to use Love to get what you wish for from Krishna in The Bhagavad Gita, 7:21:

"When a person is devoted to something with complete faith, I unify [their] faith in that. Then, when [their] faith is completely unified, [they] gain the object of [their] devotion. In this way, every desire is fulfilled by me. Those whose understanding is small attain only transient satisfaction…"

Some people love the idea of something they want, then close their eyes, ball their fists, and try to will it into being – then resign themselves to disappointment when nothing comes of it. But that's not being devoted with Love. The real secret often lies in what a person already has. Love doesn't give them what they try to will into being, it has already given them the object of their deepest devotion. "The box you've been sitting on for so long actually contains your greatest treasure." Love is always providing purpose, and a deeper sanity and clarity, that empowers us to choose our path to fulfillment, in every moment. 

"None of the means employed...has a sixteenth part of the value of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness, which is freedom of the heart, absorbs them all; it glows, it shines, it blazes forth."

                                            The Buddha

And there is the solution to all the troubles of the world! The sanity and clarity that engaging the field of Love gives us, 'hidden' in plain sight, just beneath the layer of self-delusion that seems to be our deepest human [de]fault. In that clear light of Love's sanity, the insane elements of our destructive tendencies are revealed. With great wisdom and directness, Love segregates the 'evils' of willful ego, guiding each and every one of us to the proper actions we may take in our personal, and collective, lives.

For examples of the kind of boundaries Love can set, consider this: It is destructively insane to allow corporate interests to murder the most modestly powerful creatures of the world, pollinators like bees and butterflies; the base of the oceans food-chain, like krill and plankton. Love empowers you, personally, to refuse to allow it.

It is destructively insane to poison the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, when the solution is already viable and attainable. Love empowers you to support that solution, and reject the archaic (and criminal) motivations of a relatively small number of corporate profiteers.

It is insanity to continue to embrace the ignorance that limits our greatest potential – the recognition of our spiritual connection, and responsibility to our planet, and all of our fellow creatures. Love provides us the means to realize our sacred agreement – the dependence we share, and the real contributions we can make to the divine dynamic of this world, and any world we will ever inhabit.

So, when you want to make your dreams come true; or, when times get tough (and they will…), stick with the Love group – those with whom you may share the path of Love – for direction, protection, and your real life's purpose. 

"The deepest wisdom and power that Love can give you, lies in the energy you hold in your heart, and how you project it into your world." 

                                    Anne

Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

Look Beneath the Surface (and Watch the Spirit Arise)

"I am ever present to those who have realized me

in every creature. Seeing all life as my manifestation,

they are never separated from me. They worship me

in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from me.

Wherever they live, they abide in me."

                   The Bhagavad Gita, 6:30-31

With that somewhat invisible foundation in place, let's consider that it's really basing our judgements on the surfaces of what we see that creates a great many of our world's problems. They insist that by being the "visible" parts of life, they are also the most important parts—the parts we're actually interacting with all the time. But that's not really true, is it? Aren't we seeing, and more importantly feeling, the invisible parts of life, perhaps more deeply, all the time?

You can neither tell a book by it's cover, nor the content of a person's heart from the clothes they wear. It's impossible for our limited vision to see into the whirring masses of sub-atomic particles all dancing inside of our supposedly solid world. There is an inwardly exponential relationship of the outsides of everything to their insides, where the real story is told in the many pages beneath the cover.

When we're confronted by surfaces—appearances, behaviors, "final outcomes"—it does us no good to compare our insides to those outward presentations, but to start by considering what we don't know about the insides of each. That's where we can find our real understanding. We've all experienced the illusion of something looking really good on the outside, only to find out that it's actually full of pain. (I've picked a lot of chocolates like that...)
So, it's our ability to witness this occupation by spirit, and the outward expression of it (as mysterious as it is miraculous,) that's the most important, truly interactive, and compellingly honest perception we can have—whether we can actually see past the physical surface of something (or someone) or not. When we don't get too wrapped-up with surface appearances, we can see that remarkable relationship pretty plainly...but we have to relax, stop labeling, and allow ourselves to. So try this sometimes—pay as little attention to the surface of things as possible. Practice looking into it (intuit); and just try to witness the spirit arising from within things and people, as often as you can. Like everything that's worth getting good at, it takes practice.

"To God belongs the East and the West;

and wherever you turn,

there is the face of God."

The Qu'ran, Surah 2

These quotes from ancient wisdom sources really say the same thing, don't they? We display a kind of silly ignorance when we rely on visible affirmations—on outside appearances—when we know that every surface changes, and that it's the mystery within that remains Eternal. Everything we witness with our minds, and our eyes, and our hearts, is actually just more proof of our shared elemental compo-sition—the substance of our Source, and our ineffable connec-tion to each other and every living thing. It's all the real "face of God."

 

So, it's just a matter of our perception, and allowing ourselves to look beneath the surface of things by looking with a vision that's free of judgment and comparison—that's the only way to be more fully, more realistically, engaged by our compassion, identifying with the insides, instead of the outsides. Heres a quote, from a wonderful egghead, that tells us the same thing:

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

Albert Einstein

And this last natural note – did you know that bald eagles have naturally "polarized" vision? They can see right past the surface reflections, past the glare, into the river, at all the fish swimming by. Life looks like a parade of candy bars to them. They sit, fully and appropriately engaged, and, once they've learned the proper technique, they swoop down and snatch up the bounty of life, whenever they want.

                 "The disciples asked him:

'When will the Kingdom come?'

Yeshua answered:

It will not come by watching for it...

The Kingdom...is spread out over the whole earth,

and people do not have eyes to see it."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 113

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore! How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide.

Fear Is Like A Giant Multi-Legged Caterpillar

This "Mechapillar" from Codename: Kids Next Door will have to do...

"Fear is a giant, ugly caterpillar that just wants to eat the grass you're hiding behind."

Why would anyone ever say such a thing, unless they were launching into hyperbolic metaphor?

It's out there, rooting around your wild perimeter, slowly tracking you down on a hundred disturbing little legs. Yep, it's fear again, though it may be dressed in some new form, like a giant multi-legged insect, an impossible deadline, or the potential discovery of one of your closely guarded secrets.

You hunker down in the grass, pressing dirt into your knees, and almost stop breathing. Perhaps it will move away, maybe pass right by you. But no, inevitably the huge waxy leaves part, and there it is! A screaming caterpillar the size of a brownstone (an apartment house east of The Rockies), waving it's creepy multitudinous arms, twitching it's bug jaws like a Cronenberg movie, and worst of all, it knows right where you're hiding!

Things look awful bad, as it raises up on it's haunches, haunches, haunches, etc., coiling itself like a cobra about to strike...and here it comes—right at you, it's pinchy jaws bearing down around you! THIS IS IT! IT'S, IT'S ...wait a minute...it stops just before it actually does any harm to you, and gently and fastidiously, begins munch munch munching all the grass around you, until you're just hunkered down, completely exposed, and completely safe. Then it happily whirrs away, leaving you standing up again, brushing the dirt off your kneecaps.

That grass will grow back you know. You'll want to hide in it again, like so many times before. But notice how good it feels to be out in the open. Honesty is a real, powerful action to take, that will deliver you to freedom you've never imagined possible before. You're fine. It wasn't real. It just had to reveal to you what you can be.

I always like to say that unless a bear is chasing you, fear isn't real. That works for tigers, and crocodiles too–God bless 'em.

And as for what you can be, the caterpillar thing works that way too. After it eats enough, it latches onto a suitable branch and forms a chrysalis around itself. Inside that bag, it turns into a chaotic mush, a complete chemical deconstruction that doesn't seem to know what it's going to be, until order begins to return, and inside it's new form finally takes shape. I know what that feels like. Everyone probably does. That confusion before it realizes what it can become...and then... 

Schmetterling, in German. Choucho, in Japanese. Mariposa, in Spanish.

A Butterfly for you.

This blog is a revisitation of a favorite topic, seen in it's original form four years ago. Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, from Llewellyn Worldwide, and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond. Both are available everywhere – but ask for them at your local bookstore!

The Mystical Way to Diet: How Swamis Stay so Slim

Do swamis like blueberry cheese croissants? I don't know, but I do. I suppose a swami will eat the occasional danish, but certainly never two in one sitting. That's probably how they stay so slim and trim. You rarely see an oversized swami. So what is it swamis know that apparently prevents overeating from becoming an issue? Is it "being one with everything" that keeps them so fit? Well, it couldn't hurt. We all know that our attitude – what we're thinking and feeling – has a great deal to do with what and how (or how often) we eat.

From The Bible to the Buddha, "what a person thinks, so they become," naturally makes real sense to everyone. Natural. Real. Sense. Let me take those three in reverse order, and backtrack on that slender swami's inner path to a slim, spiritually sexy exterior. 

If I become what I think, then if what I'm thinking about is eating both of those blueberry cheese danishes, I just may gain weight. It's a good thing my total powers of discernment don't rely entirely on what spontaneously pops up in my mind, as a result of what my senses want. Because my senses usually want a second danish.

Fortunately, we're all connected to a kind of reservoir of shared wisdom and intelligence, what we may commonly call "common sense."  My common sense tells me that I don't need the extra calories from a second danish, that one is enough for now. You see, I don't really have a weight problem, I have a wait problem. A swami, sitting in meditation, develops that healthy space in their thought process, where they can discern between their common sense and their sudden, sensory desires. When I take a minute, I realized that there are probably plenty more blueberry danishes in my future (I hope).

My spontaneous, reactive mind usually responds to my senses (and stresses), and what they demand at any given moment – predictably a demand for some kind of gratification. For something that's going to make me feel a little bit at-one-with-everything, even if it's just for one little moment of relief. Swamis talk about "withdrawing the mind from the sensory world," especially important when dealing with these potential spontaneous lapses in judgement. They compare our senses to a team of horses that can suddenly pull our thinking in a dangerous direction, if we're not minding the team –a discipline commonly called mindfulness.

We've all had hard lessons taught to us this way, lessons about overdoing it that we may have ignored and had to keep repeating. Like binges, hangovers, and regrets. Finishing the whole pie and not fitting into our jeans; or having one more margarita "to take the edge off," and waking up next to Godzilla (God bless 'im).

Swamis read the Bhagavad Gita, which is a great story where God is your chariot driver, and tells you how the world works (he also has a pretty good idea of how hard the horses have to work to pull you around).  Listen to this amazing breakdown of how we continue to do things against our own self-interests:

"When you keep thinking about sense-objects, attachment comes. Attachment breeds desire, the lust of possession that burns to anger. Anger clouds your judgement, and you can no longer learn from past mistakes. Lost is the power to choose between what is wise and what is unwise...when you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment...you live in the wisdom of the self."

Bhagavad Gita, 2:62–65

That describes the process pretty well for me. I know I want the second pastry. Then, for some reason, I suddenly decide that it's something I need, something I deserve to have. So I eat it, and immediately become angry with myself for eating it; which causes me to carry around that unresolved agitation, creating the perfect conditions for that sensory demand to repeat the whole process over the next time. 

What I really need to do is to healthily disengage from my senses – to lose my senses (in a good way) and concentrate on my common sense, listen to my inner voice. Then our common sense – that small voice – can tell us how to properly, consciously practice eating. Eating slowly. Chewing food well. Thinking about the food we're enjoying, not about other things that excite or agitate us. It gives us the space in our meal to appreciate what we're eating, and to notice when we've had enough.

The "real" part is about self-honesty. It's about recognizing what is really at work in our personal world. We have to become willing to admit that there's some reason we want to eat more than we need to, or to eat things that we don't need to be eating. Swamis know how to deal with that.

If there seems to be a deeper, underlying pathology at work within our desire to eat badly, or too much (or both), we need to allow ourselves to become aware of it. We need to strip ourselves right down to the place where that compulsion originates from – the place where the truth is staring us right in the face. Then, we can educate ourselves about it, and find the way that has worked for others who have suffered from that same agitation. Our slender swami would have us meditate on that, too, to slowly and surely smooth it over. To heal the hurt that keeps demanding to be fed. Getting "real" with someone who's been there, and benefitting from their experience will help too.

Honesty, which is the fundamental starting point for any change for the better, leads us to confront another glaring dietary disaster that many of us skate right over, which is this: It is self-destructive to eat the flesh of dead animals. Modern medical science tells us that it's not good for us to eat too much (if any) meat – particularly meat that's a "product" of the modern science of corporate animal husbandry. In the mystic's sense, animals are our brothers and sisters in shared consciousness, so eating their cadavers is self destructive in the same way that cannibalism intuitively is. If you're okay with cannibalism, then usually, somebody calls the police. It's much healthier to do no harm.

Swamis have "sacred cows," that they would never dream of harming. They know that killing the cow will kill the children's milk – not to mention killing the cheese for the pizza (swamis do eat pizza, but only with whole grain crusts, and no more than two slices at a time). They know that the meat of the dead cow cobs up their energetic system; throws them out of whack. It leads to weight gain and physical and spiritual disease. 

If they must eat animal protein to survive, and they have a spiritual arrangement with the animal being sacrificed to their survival, then that is a different story – but it's not our story. So your slender swamis, for the most part, don't eat meat (...and really very little cheese). And if you think about it, you rarely see an overweight vegetarian.

The natural part of a slimming, swamis diet is pure common sense, which tells us that fresh plant protein, raw foods, whole grains, all-organic products, and homestyle preparation – with Love – are always the way to go. Swamis call these sattvic foods. Think of what the family of your heart would want for you, and your health and appearance. Calming, healthful, nutritious foods. The only family that profit-driven corporate industrial food producers bring to mind is what Orwell would call Big Brother.

Industrially prepared foods are tested on people like so many caged rats, to determine precisely what agitates and excites them to eat impulsively. Processed, packaged, sugary, white flour – a swami skips all that stuff. Sweet, gooey, deep-fried – those empty, addictive grab bites aren't even really food. They're something else – more like a drug. And speaking of drugs, alcohol is nothing but lots of empty calories, organ damage, and potential regrets. Slim swamis don't drink alcohol, in fact they stay clear of anything that will possibly undermine their common sense; their voice of reason. 

Your diet swami would always ask you to take a moment to meditate on what you would put into your body, after all, "you are what you eat." In fact, your diet swami would have you meditate on everything, regularly, because meditation brings us the balance that makes our inner wisdom possible and prevalent. That balance is what it's all about – in our life, as well as in how we look and feel. Be sensible and honest about it to yourself, because it doesn't take a swami to tell you this simple truth: Your insides will always become your outsides.

Now, I'll try to look a little more like just one blueberry cheese croissant.

Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor, from Llewellyn Worldwide, and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond. Both are available everywhere – but ask for them at your local bookstore!