Tales: Through a Glass Darkly...Ouch!

"The Meaning of Life is to embody compassion. Anyone can discover this. When you discover this and live it, you discover your truest nature and share its joy."

The Dalai Lama

This form our spirits assume, this changing body/mind we occupy on Earth from our birth to our death, is a miraculous combination of the magical quantum/electrochemical exchange of matter and energy, and equally amazing mechanics. The material "reality" of our flesh and bone bodies, bumping around this world. Our attitudes and beliefs; our genes and chromosomes; our focus and intention; our psyches and our Karma, shape the physical "realities" of our lives.

We intuitively know about this stuff, and more and more, Science is confirming the magical relationship between all these aspects of being; but it's confusing. How does the system work exactly? To bring our wants, our purpose into physical reality?

Confusing the issue are programs like The Secret, a difficult combination of the magical nature of intention and power of Love's creative force, and the occult power of Ego – man's will for self-enhancement through acquisition and "mastery" over Nature. "The Dark Side."  It's the difference between being naturally aligned with Source (God and Love, if you will), and open-heartedly receiving all that you require for peace and fulfillment (success); and the separation from Source into your Ego Self (dark side) – an entity that through force of will manipulates the energies of the world to achieve sensory rewards, which are elusive and momentary (everything except Love is.)  Putting it simply, both you and your Ego Self want a nice girlfriend or boyfriend, but your Ego Self still won't be happy when it gets one.

We look through this prism of our perceptions – Through a Glass Darkly, to try to find the way to at-one-ment, the unification of purpose and lifestyle. But so much seems to stand in the way.  Julian Schnabel's wonderful film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the book written by stroke victim Jean-Dominique Bauby, does a brilliant job of describing the obstructive quality of our bodily forms. The subtle yet powerfully destructive nature of the Ego Self. Bauby's story demonstrates the nature of what's really important, beyond considering our self as just a body and mind.

Of course, the answer is Love. The mechanism it empowers for attaining real success lies in our attitudes, beliefs, and actions.  An uncompromising attitude of Love and compassion towards all (no matter how challenging that may be at the moment!).  An unshakable understanding of the oneness – the interdependence of everything, and the belief that every expression of Nature is Divine and requires proper care and respect. Living these attitudes and beliefs will intuitively guide you in the right direction. Your actions will have a path to follow. Your purpose will become clear. 

Meanwhile, going about that in these clunky and obscure "rides" we inhabit can be pretty challenging. Why is my hair falling out? We need to sit in meditation to touch the energizing light of Love, and sort through our psychic baggage objectively. If a piece of semi-conscious luggage pops up on your meditation screen, or rides your mind day-to-day, don't let it weigh down your serenity – take care of it!   Investigate, illuminate, resolve. That way, it won't be in the way when it comes time to help someone else. Compassion is the path to purpose. It's not just a tree hugger's dream, it's a real strategy for success.

While you're trying this strategy out by being as compassionate as possible, don't forget the most important person, without whom no success can be attained – yourself.  It's the nature of the beast that our Ego Self (judgement, comparison) is hard on our True Self (Love, compassion), for being imperfect. For not measuring up to the material scale it measures success by. So every time you hear that critical voice within, simply forgive yourself.  Have compassion for you.  Quietly get in touch with your inner nature, with your True Self, and you'll immediately know that you're doing the best you can – especially tricky for a subtle, expansive spirit of light stuck in an imperfect form.

Associate with this inner, spiritual self more and more, and less and less with your body, with it's aches and pains. With how you look. Less with your five senses and the momentary gratifications of this world.  For example: Meat isn't worth the killing because it tastes good for a couple minutes. Associate less with the ceaseless, sequential demands of your intellect, and the willful need to figure everything out. In short, relax into your being.

Make an effort to relate to this world using your sixth sense – your magical, intuitive sense – which you can connect to through the practice of meditation. Then the actions you're led to through Love and compassion for others will show you your path to all forms of real success. Even the tough parts (ouch!) of being here in this doggone body will become easier to deal with. You still have to look out through that glass...but it will look a lot clearer.

"As is a man's meditation, so is his feeling of love;

As is his feeling of love, so is his gain;

and faith is the root of all."

Sri Ramakrishna

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 12: Finding Simple Religion

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy...

our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

The Dalai Lama

It was no coincidence that the first time I became open to religious experience in my life was when I first fell in love. (The medium of spiritual connection is Love) She was a beautiful Mormon girl who lived about as close as you could in our spread-out canyon community. I became interested in her religion. And while I do believe the true search for religious meaning is a search to find love, to find connectedness, the truth is that I really wanted to impress the girl.

I'm sure that my parents probably intended for me to get the basic values that people often find attending a church, but their limited and unsatisfactory experiences with organized religion apparently didn't inspire them to pass along any kind of spirituality, or even dogma, to their kids. My father had grown up a left-handed Catholic, which is to say persecuted and defiant. He quit the church at his first opportunity. My mother never went to church, and didn't have much to say about religion, except that it was probably a good thing for some people. I recall her suggesting that it may be a good thing for me, but she wasn't sure which church I should go to. She did offer to drive me to which ever one I picked out.

I had my own spiritual inspirations of a sort from the stars and canyons- that sense of a native experience with the land, perhaps my Kickapoo blood arising. My gung fu teacher had shown me a mysterious invisible force called ch'i, and given me some eastern wisdom and some western philosophy. And then way back there had been those strange, other-worldly moments I'd felt in my early childhood accompanying my Czech grandmother to Catholic mass.

In those days, the mass was performed in Latin by elaborately-robed priests who kept their backs turned to you. There was rich, gilded ornamentation lavished in the huge space with it's towering vaulted ceilings, huge oil paintings and tapestries. Smoke clouds of burning incense and eerie chanting. It was almost spooky, and I was (as intended) transported into a strange, alien dimension. But all the hoopla only led me to believe that religion was something awesome and unattainable, and without any preparation or repetition, the Catholic faith could gain no purchase in my little boy's heart. Even as a small child, I couldn't trust a life-discipline based on guilt and mortification that weren't of my own creation. Besides, something didn't sit right about it. Why would I pray in a Roman church to the image of a guy being executed by Romans?

...A Vonnegut, circa 1975.

Reading had given me something of a set of beliefs by the time I reached puberty. My library was pilfered from my college-aged brother and sister, and was rich in philosophical prose. From my brother I copped Kafka, Sartre, and Mark Twain. He could keep those Russians – they were just too intimidatingly thick. From my sister I "borrowed" John Steinbeck, whose ghost I would later stalk (from King City to Monterrey); Henry Miller, who wrote about sex! And my teenage literary hero and default guru, Kurt Vonnegut, whose funny and pointedly nonsensical morality plays made perfect sense in my tiny nation of one. God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. Years later, I'd go to see Vonnegut on stage with Art Buchwald and Lewis Lapham, discussing the betrayals of the second Bush administration. He was beautifully wise and cranky, and full of love. Within just a couple months, both he and Buchwald would shuffle off this mortal coil, and Lapham would retire from the editorship of Harper's, which for me was also akin to a small death in the family.

I mixed all this heady literature up with the latest Marvel Comics, particularly The Mighty Thor, and The Sub Mariner, completely failing to equate the psychic sufferings of the Existentialists with my favorite quasi-mythic comic book idols. Marvel Comics were existential, and I, as a mere visitor to this planet myself, could identify with all those displaced anti-protagonists completely.

Adding to it all at just the right moment, my high school teacher assigned us the option of reading a book called Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl. I read it. All my strident inner-dependence and resistance to embrace an absurd reality whose beauty could only be grasped in brief, unpredictable moments, suddenly dissolved in my young psyche in just such a moment. I was just here. It didn't have to make any sense. I was a visitor whose chief occupation was making the most of a poorly-planned vacation on a beautiful, but messed-up planet. I only had to do. To be. So it goes.

"This world is a bridge. Pass over it, but do not build your dwelling there."

'Isa, (Jesus in Islam), from an inscription at the mosque in Fatepuhr Sikri, India

How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is now available from Llewellyn Worldwide, and can be ordered online; and the first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere too – but ask for them it at your local bookstore!