Look For the Union Label on Everything!

The nature of the human experience is a pretty insular one. It's easy for us to have an obsessive awareness about everything that's immediately around us – touching us, pressuring us, jumping up on our phones and laptop screens. Because of this unconscious self-centeredness that comes to us so naturally, it's easy to imagine ourselves as being separate from everybody else. We may not even feel attached to the natural world – which we're so obviously a part of, and is clearly part of us, considering the process of birth, growth, decline, death (and rebirth) that we experience along with every other form of life here on Earth.

 To a human, life on Earth can be experienced as a set of outside forces imposing themselves on our private 10'x10' world, when in fact our most important perceptions and processing is really happen on the inside. It's how we are responding internally to the external world that defines our life experience, that gives us the sense of what's good or bad, right or wrong, something we desire, or something we fear – so our world is really a function of the way we think and feel.

"Just as a fire is hidden by smoke...knowledge is hidden by selfish desire...this unquenchable fire for self-satisfaction...Selfish desire is found in the senses, mind, and intellect...burying the understanding in delusion."

                                        The Bhagavad Gita, 3:39-40 

These misperceptions can lead us to pay a heavy price for what otherwise could be the free and joyful experience of Life. These are "the wages of sin"...the sin in this case being human Pride – the chief ingredient of that feeling of being separate. When we engage in Life in that automatically self-centered fashion, Life becomes something that happens to us, not something that happens for us. 

That's because we're often reacting to external life experiences with our awareness being dictated by our Ego – the source of our biblical "sins" of Pride, Anger, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, and Sloth. Those are the overripe "fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" that create a sense of separation in us, leading to the fearful self-centeredness that's such a natural default of the human condition. Believe me, I know all about it, and it very frequently makes me very uncomfortable too.

So what's a good way out of that unconscious corner we so willingly paint ourselves into, without tracking more wet and selfish intentions around?  Where's the key to the gate that slammed shut behind us when we were "cast out of The Garden?" Well, here's a hint: It's right under something close. You're not gonna find it by looking out there somewhere...

"The Kingdom of Heaven is not real estate."  and  "Our job is to recognize The Eternal in one another."

Joseph Campbell

Buddhists talk about looking on everybody you encounter as "a Buddha in the making," and of using "Big Mind" to recognize the "Buddha Nature" in all things. Indigenous people perceive the world as one living thing, energized and enlivened by a Great Spirit. If we "modern thinkers" use our all-important intellects – scientific reason in this case – it's clear that our sharing elements and DNA almost entirely with everything else on Earth is evidence that all of life on this planet truly is one unified thing.  Closer to home, in terms of our own species, that means that human experience is a completely shared state of being. We just need to get over our own little selves to see it.

The next time you're in a cashier's line that's moving way too slowly, realize this – if you could hear the thoughts of everyone else in line, it would sound like a chorus of people chanting in unison: "Why are they talking so long? Doesn't that cashier know what they're doing? Why does this person get such special treatment? Can't they see how long the line is? Unless this gets moving, I'm going to be late!"

That externally inspired voice is the standard-issue, default self-centeredness that drowns out the realization of our common good.  Go inside yourself for a moment, and with everyone you see, just think to yourself: All of these people are me – just trying to get it right.  In one simple word, it's empathy. With another, it's empathy and compassion. And in two more, it's empathy, compassion, and open-heartedness. 

Make an effort not to judge other people based on whether your immediate external reactions make you think that they're good or bad, right or wrong. Don't look on the outside for what separates us from one another – instead look inside, and you'll quickly discover how very much alike we all are. You'll find a few very beneficial extras too – acceptance, generosity, and the even inspiration to live life in a new way, coming from some unusual sources.

"Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me, and I will become them, and what was hidden from them will be revealed."

The Gospel of Thomas, 108

Then you may want to use those inner discoveries to extend your greater shared self outward, and immediately start gaining awareness of the real wrongs we're all facing, namely –  the unconscious destruction of Life on Earth. Don't just look for that union label in the people you're closest to, but in everyone and every "thing."
All of Life on Earth is sacred. All of Life on Earth is Divine. You wouldn't kill someone just because they may taste good – that's barbaric. You wouldn't want to destroy a natural wonder to build an empty mansion. You wouldn't want to burn the Earth's beauty for power when untold energy is bathing us in every instant.

It may be by our outer natures that we experience the challenges of our life and death, but it's by our inner natures  that we can recognize that Buddha Nature, the Great Spirit – that we can recognize The Eternal in everyone and everything. Then, if each of us can get out of our own (and each other's) way, and reveal our view of the freedom and magically joyful experience that Life is meant to be, we will know in our hearts where the lines of right and wrong are truly drawn.

"They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart."

The Bhagavad Gita, 2:55 

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct or online; and 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 them it at your local bookstore!

Call it Sanity; Call it Being; Call it Bliss

There's a jackhammer in the distance, outside my window. My darkened smartphone makes watery drip tones each time an e-mail wants me to look at it. I hear big trucks pulling up in front of the corner supermarket to unload shrink-wrapped palettes of canned black beans. There's an ambulance siren on the horizon, wending its way to King's County Hospital. The Q train downstairs is running on time. Something awful is going on out there...

I suppose that pipe in the street needed to be fixed. I was waiting for an e-mail (just not that one). I love those beans. I hope that person on their way to King's County will be alright. Later, I'll just miss the Q train into Manhattan...good things and bad things are always happening, here and now.

Our world is a hugely complex, elaborately interconnected place, driven in a loosely syncopated way by needs and desires, options and inventions. If we allow it, it can feel like it's driven by our fears...but then those are inventions too. Look at it quietly, and what becomes obvious is the profound underlying effectiveness of our cooperative shared Being. The understanding and appreciation of each other's lives, of our interconnectedness; of one another's common Reality.

With this simple, stripped-down worldview, it becomes ap-parent how well everything works when left to the sweat and intention of the great majority of humankind. Do you need any-thing? Is there something that I can help you with? More people all the time resonate with this simple impulse, whether they let it be their main source of motivation or not. Everywhere you go everyone is in some stage of realizing it.

As unique as we all are, we are all the same thing here in this place; and that awareness is steadily, and rather gracefully crystallizing our world now, without any big fuss. And it's only this growing presence of shared Being, the impetus of unifying con-sciousness, that can change so huge and complicated a mecha-nism as our collective life has become – and change it relatively quickly. Ironically, it starts at the very simplest, smallest level; at the level of each of our understandings.

"Without an inner change [humankind] can no longer cope with the gigantic development of the outer life."

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Predictably, corporate media will continue to insist that people identify with an obviously unsustainable system, even when people plainly know better. By limiting coverage of expanding global awareness, they suggest that even when we join forces to effect change (Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring) we're ineffective, and that it's more practical to maintain the unworkable status quo. If we each personally buy into those messages, they'll come true (but still won't be real). If we don't, and each personally choose a sane and reasonable path, we naturally return to our increasingly cooperative state of shared Being; and merge into a real entity of immeasurable power and direction. We simply engage lightly and kindly in the chaotic machinery of life.

At that "small" level of personal understanding, we find and empower our true Reality, the authentic world rising up around us. As the delusional world of the conglomerates starts to come apart at the seams, and everything starts going wrong (like now), something very big is going right. The layer of misinformation we've been fed so long is dissolving on the surface of this rising awareness; the conscious, co-creative impulse that instant communication and sixth-sensory awareness has already been nourishing at a much deeper level. We've already crossed that threshold. The singularity is here. 

We know we can't continue in this fossil-fuel based world, wasting half the food we produce, poisoning fresh water, funneling wealth and resources to a few tortured individuals. It simply won't last. It will have to change.

When the systems used to manage the anachronisms (crony capitalism, television, corrupt politics) break down, they only serve to starkly define the true nature of the problem – the destructive backwardness of a selfish minority; and to enhance and solidify the unification of conscious Being arising in the world. 

Could it really be – that rising honesty and ethics will defuse the fearful urgencies of the corporate elite? What would happen if they were all suddenly brought back down to Earth (kicking and screaming)? Not much, really. We'd merge right back into that un-derlying force of cooperative Being that's growing so powerfully through our our selves, our communities, and our world. Nothing would erupt in total chaos. We wouldn't be at all lost without their leadership. The world would simply become a more cooperative place, whether they like it or not (and they won't); where we re-cognize unconscious entitlement as being incompatible with our authentic nature.

Honestly, isn't everything actually being dictated to us all on a much larger scale, by systems that we're only a relatively small part of? Something far greater than any of our changing institutions or desires. It's obviously not this horizontal materialistic delusion (what Hindus call maya), where we feel constantly coerced to reach outward for solutions – it's a multi-dimensional Reality that's available to everyone from the inside out; that each of us can realize by simply living one another's life, humbly and compassionately. That's what being human is so good for.

Twenty years from now we could just as easily be using liberated Tesla designs, thorium reactors, tidal turbines, and solar energy. We could be conserving irreplaceable resources; eli-minating food waste; stewarding the environment and wildlife; making war obsolete (oops! –it already is...). We're capable of Being all that, and if we can keep our head above water, we probably will be sooner than later.

If you think this is a magical impossibility, may I point out to you (again and always) that we're all floating on a planet in outer space, engaged in a simultaneous realization of the magical nature of our reality.

So call it sanity. Call it unified consciousness. Call it spiritual evolution. Call it Sat (Being), Chit (Awareness), Ananda (Bliss). Call it what you like – it's still just the same impulse that makes a wildflower grow and blossom, right up between the tracks of the Q train.

"Our present world is conditioned by our present mode of consciousness; only when that consciousness passes from its present dualistic mode...will the new creation appear, which is the external reality of which our world is a mirror."

Bede Griffiths

......................................................................read more about maya

The latest book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide can be ordered direct on this page or online; and 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 them it at your local bookstore!

We Are All Plastic (In a Very Real Way...)

....................................................................we're all a little bit plastic

Now and then (when we're not being particularly kind) we might refer to a person as being "plastic," meaning that they don't seem to be very authentic, or that they're overly concerned with surface ap-pearances. While we usually mean it in a mildly derisive way, it's really an entirely accurate description, not of just some people, but of everyone, and in fact, of every thing too. As an adjective, as a con-cise description, the whole world is plastic.

It's plenty easy to see in ourselves, these crazy viscous, cellular bodies we ride around in are always changing. Regenerating, re-arranging, building up, breaking down. Aging. Ripening. Come to think of it, I'm getting pretty ripe myself. I'm being rearranged in ways I never really wanted.

"As you think, so you are." The Buddha

The truth is, that like most physical conditions and material cir-cumstances; even life events, attitudes, and emotional states, I can change my state of being. Mold it – like plastic. Our acceptance of this concept is obvious in the language we commonly use, usually when we describe the potential in things. You can "make something of yourself," or "make a mess of your life." You can make a promise to get in shape (promises, promises). No one has much of a problem with this concept of malleability, based on our focus, our intention, our possibilities, and of course, our actions. But what if we take a closer look, beneath that superficial sense of plasticity?

Look at a time-lapse film of a big city the next chance you get, and you'll see a constant flux of matter coming into the picture, coming into being, and then going out of it. Buildings pile up and wear down like sandcastles. People flock and file by, suddenly accumulate, and then vanish, like raindrops evaporating in the sun. Those were important places. They were important people. Where does it all come from, where does it all go?

Past mystics called it "the ether." Buddhists call it emptiness. A physicist might call it the Quantum, or Higgs Field. Whatever you call it, it is an ocean of invisible fluctuating energies from which and into which everything we see and know precipitates, takes form, and exists "here," at least for a little while until it returns back. I plan on doing that very thing myself.

"The fact that the mass of a particle is equivalent to a certain amount of energy means that the particle...has to be conceived as a dynamic pattern, a process involving the energy which manifests itself as the particle's mass."

Fritjof Capra

Before I really get personal with it, let's consider this plasticity on a geological time scale, like an archaeologist might. Over what seem to be great expanses of time in our perception, these energies manifest themselves in broad cultural movements, and massive re-arrangements of man-made stuff. A lot of people all suddenly seek and find the same solutions for their life needs, and they swarm, like those great, organic flocks of birds undulating through the sky. They get busy, like ants. The plastic surface of the planet evolves – waves of biospheric change spread, peeling over the Earth's surface, re-forming entire continents. For example, lots of people once lived in the green region that is now the Sahara Desert. Human actions are adding to these processes as we speak.

If we just allow our evolving consciousness to lift us to an adequate vantage point, where we can gain a perspective on this change, we can see ourselves not just as a part of it, but of even determining it through our participation. So our participation has direction, and creates our constantly shifting state of being. If we can manage this big mind, we can see the direction we want to be going collectively, and focus our own plasticity in accord. Now it's getting more personal.

Have you ever walked into a room or a space, and just not felt right? Or experienced a "weird" day, when you, and everyone you came in contact with all noticed something off. What you're experiencing are real perceptions that our expanding consciousness gives us. An awareness of the invisible fluctuating energies I'm talking about. Tuning in to these energies changes and informs all aspects of your personal life, and reconnects us to the world in a less self-centered way. We engage in a more external way, and by doing so, engage ourselves with that greater underlying energy.

Then you might suddenly see that things aren't going great for anybody. Or that someone isn't really being a jerk – they're suffering. Or, more importantly, that you can contribute to changing those states of being in yourself and others, those plastic attitudes and directions, by just exercising your awareness, adjusting your focus, aiming your intention, and taking the right actions.

Have you ever had a flurry of synchronicitous events take place in your life? Coincidences that really couldn't be completely coincidental, usually guiding you towards positive connections, places you need to be, people you need to meet? Those situations are opportunities to join with this source dimension that you access by accepting this invisible spiritual mechanism. This is the definition of faith as "the evidence of things unseen."

Coincidentally, when you become willing to allow your normally constrained perceptions to expand into the shared "field of being" that lives right under the surface of things, the actions you'll intuitively want to take will contribute to the spiritual evolution of all Life on Earth, and you'll become part of the collective conscious co-creation of a positive, abundant, sustainable future. You'll become part of our greater solution.

"When you make the two into One, you will be a Son of Man,

and when you say: Mountain move! It will move."

Logion 106, The Gospel of Thomas

All you need to recognize, to become fully aware of, is that the two most powerful of all the underlying energies – the ones you want directing all of your important decisions (and unimportant ones),  are Love and Truth. Then try to occupy these two ideals as the medium of your life, the very best way you can.

"Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other"

doesn't make any sense."

Rumi

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!

Tales: Why We Should Never Eat the Easter Bunny

Each Easter, we have the opportunity to observe the intricate mythology of the Jesus of Nazareth story in it's full flower, but the nature of the myth will never be the same in the wake of the Nag Hammadi and Qumran discoveries, whose effect these many years later, is still just beginning to percolate through Christian consciousness. Through layers of dense imagination and irrevocable deception.

One of the great beauties of memory is it's editing and art direction. Important memories are seldom pale, seldom lacking in romantic significance. The tremendous power of the Jesus myth comes from a powerful fleshing-out of such romantic, spiritual ideas, on an incredibly personal level. The idea that one pure, com-passionate soul can serve as a stand-in for every human experience - innate understanding and forgiveness; utter humiliation and defeat; glorious transcendence, and victory beyond imagination - is a brilliant, though most probably, accidental construction on the part of the early church fathers, who were led to their form of the myth by popular opinion, and unscrupulous intentions.

As consciousness, and information accrues in our world of ever-more detailed discovery, a number of different mythologies can emerge from the same set of limited facts. So, as long as we're allowing our imaginations to take over, which we are always doing when it comes to "The Greatest Story Ever Told," I'd like to try one on you myself. It's why we should never eat the Easter Bunny.

There were three branches of the Hebrew faith during the period of the second Temple of Herod in Jerusalem: The Pharisees and the Saduccees occupied the center of political power. The Essenes occupied the political fringe, being too sincerely spiritual to take part in the power struggles, misinterpretation of basic scripture, or schedule of incessant brutal sacrifices. The Essenes were the Christians before Christianity, believing in "Thou Shalt Not Kill" without exception, as well as social equality, compassionate sharing, and most all the other characteristics ascribed as principles of Christianity.

Yeshua Ben Yosef, the Essene teacher most likely at the heart of the Jesus myth, was not from Nazareth, there was no Nazareth – it was formed later, when members of the Nazarene branch of Essenes settled in that area. Yeshua himself was most likely from the area near Galillee, spent some childhood between Jerusalem and northern Judea, possibly coming under the influence of the Theraputae branch of Essenes at Mt. Carmel. As a youth, he was very likely relocated from the regional control of the "corrupt" Temple in Jerusalem by his parents to the Essene settlements in the Nile Delta of Egypt, near the temple there, where he would have been influenced by the cultural crossroads of Alexandria, and possibly learned about Theravedic Buddhism from the nearby mission. It was there, near Lake Mareotis, where the practice of baptism originated, that the young Yeshua may have developed his unique synthesis of pragmatic, mystical spirituality, grounded in the Tanakh, and that regions particular branch of Essene Hebraism, which was steeped in Theravedic Buddhism. 

The extent of his travels are unknown, but it is known that in middle life, the Rabbi returned to Galillee to teach, setting off the possible course of events roughly described in the narrative gospels. If we consider this possible origin of Yeshua, and believe the narratives to be fundamentally true, then a further re-interpretation might make sense too:

His awareness of East Asian philosophy would contribute a great deal to his unique teachings, particularly as described in the non-narrative "Gospel of St, Thomas," unearthed at Nag Hammadi in the 1940's, after nearly 2,000 years of suppression. The principles of the Essenes also mesh perfectly with the thoroughly pacifistic notions of basic Buddhism, including complete temperance in the ingesting of intoxicants, the rejection of pagan rituals of sacrifice, and the strong tendency to vegetarianism, which was a strict Essene practice; though to Yeshua, same as the Buddha, it was somewhat dependent on what a mendicant could find to eat, as long as the killing wasn't intended solely for their consumption.

What would have been certain though, would be the utter disgust an Essene teacher would experience returning to the Jerusalem Temple to find it's outer yards filled with animals being traded for sacrificial slaughter. As the temple devotee would find upon arrival, their sacrificial animals did not meet rigid temple requirements and would have to be traded, at a fee, for ready-to-sacrifice animals. Hence the "money changers," changing animals for money. The sacrificial firepits were huge barbeques, where cooked meat was used as payola to buy allegiances, and reward the elite. Animals were treated ruthlessly, as many "devout" people continue to treat them today. The whole place was run by a conspiracy of Hebrews and Romans. An Essene activist could get pretty upset by such a scene, as did many observant Hebrews.

An alternative explanation for the true meaning of The Eucharist comes about from this re-telling also. While it was a strict Essene practice to ritually share meals communally, it is extremely unlikely that a humble, Eastern-influenced mystic Rabbi would resort to pagan quasi-cannibalistic ritual to commemorate himself as being "God on Earth," while it is quite likely that in the context I suggest, he would hold up a piece of bread and say: "This is my flesh," meaning not that bread was to serve as a stand-in for the body of a man who clearly did not wish to be deified, but was meant as a vegetarian's replacement for [corrupt] meat like that from the barbaric temple rituals. (Essenes didn't drink wine, so the "blood drinking" is highly unlikely as well). This may just be conjecture, but in reality, every other retelling is too.

It would also explain why the closest followers and companions of Yeshua in the wake of his departure, the Ebionites, were absolute vegetarians: Yeshua was very likely a vegetarian Buddhist Hebrew. That's why we should never eat the Easter Bunny, or any other animal. Thou shalt not kill is as hard and fast a rule to a Buddhist, as it was to an Essene.

I'll save the alternative story of resurrection for next Easter, as long as we'll be  making things up then too.

"The Kingdom is inside you, and it is outside you."

Logion 3, The Gospel of Thomas

Tales: How do Angels Walk Around?

Have you ever seen the beautiful Wim Wender's film, Wings of Desire? It's the story of angels who walk the Earth, providing compassion to human beings in need of it, yet experiencing no human sensation themselves. The world is black and white to them, and while no person they're near actually feels their touch, they can sense the presence of their Love and Compassion. I won't tell more of the plot, so that you can see it for yourself. It's a perfect renter for a rainy Sunday.

In the film, the angels can hear your thoughts. They know you for who you actually are, because your outsides are inconsequential to them. The contents of your thoughts, driven or drifting, wistful, willful, insecure, clever or crazy, are available to them without your outward filter of "self" – your presentation to others. The result is an intensely identifiable, often rather sad experience of life-in-the-moment, experienced with the thoughts of each person they listen in on. We identify with both, the mortal's thinking-as-an-overlying-process, and the angel's penetrating compassion and understanding. It makes you realize how "thinking like an angel" might create an experience of Love out of any moment.

If, when we listen to someone speak, at work, at play, or whenever, and we release the need to label them and what they say – their clothes, their opinions, their worries, and the like, we begin to have an amazingly angelic experience, like in the movie. Just let go of whether you think you like someone or don't; of whether you think they're quite brilliant, or talking a bunch of baloney. Release every bit of judgement and comparison that our minds spontaneously create by default; gain just that moment's bit of control over your thinking-as-an-overlying-process, and notice how your perception of that person changes.

You may suddenly see them as a child. Or as an old man or woman. They may appear to have had a difficult childhood, or a happy one; maybe including specific perceptions of their surroundings, like that they're from a small town, from the country, a gritty big city, and the like. This understanding may arise without you actually knowing anything about them. 

 As "intuitive intelligence" expands into the moment, you'll suddenly become able to almost see under the surface of other people. All external distinctions and definitions that your mind wants to impose on them will start to disappear. Then before you, you will perceive the true person – no designer labels, or nice hair, or bad attitude – full of all the experiences of a life, very much like yours, pouring out of them in every sentence, and in every gesture. You'll see into what causes made them the expression (of God) before you.

Then, you can know them. You'll know them for being who they are – very much who you are. And you'll feel that Angel's absolute compassion and understanding. Nothing that might normally bother you about them will bother you at all anymore. In fact, the person will become clear in your heart, and almost luminous and outwardly beautiful, regardless of what their appearance and demeanor might suggest otherwise.

And then, without ever actually touching them, they will sense the presence of your Love and Compassion.

"When you make the two into One,

when you make the inner like the outer

and the high like the low...

then you will enter into the Kingdom."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 22




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!

Tales: Too Much, Not Enough?

We are all subject to the increasing speed with which "material consciousness" floods into our life plane. It can be confusing, disorienting. How can anyone expect to know so much new information so quickly? Depending upon the media that creates this flood for guidance in the face of it all is like asking for a drink of water from a tsunami. The intent is to submerge you, to convince you that all this buffeting you is your connection to life; and that you are not keeping up with the pace required to stay afloat on this sea of information and access to material success. You are supposed to feel like you've fallen behind. That way, you'll have to buy stuff to catch up. More technology. The latest fashion. Political propaganda. Controlling the media message is an occult art - and there are some very effective artists around these days...

Of course it's probably true that this week there are a couple new programs on the market that have rendered your expertise obsolete. There are always people younger than you somewhere out there, hungry for your job, who know these new programs already. That's possibly all true. But would it surprise you to know that life in our Western Culture has always felt this way? (It's starting to feel like that in The East too- our gift to the world)

Merchants in ancient Rome suffered from increased "global" competition. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, thousands and thousands of craftsmen and laborers lost their life's work. So how does that knowledge help you in the face of impending disaster? Here the simple, positive, life-affirming solution; the strategy for dealing with this onslaught:

Stop paying attention to it! Put away your checkbook! It's only a disaster in the path of that tidal wave of "material consciousness." In the surrounding, underlying, enfolding, energizing sea of "Spiritual Consciousness" that all Life exists in, it's only Change - the most predictable, and inevitable part of Life. If you simply just switch the consciousness that you live in, from "Material" to "Spiritual," then you will immediately become aware that good things come with Change. Just turn off the TV and talk radio, close up the online news site, focus on yourself for a moment, and feel Life surging through you. Experience the joy of Love that provides a real energizing direction in your life any time you choose to pay attention to it! Don't worry about not knowing all the latest programs, and your intuitive spiritual intelligence will direct you to whatever you need to get by with ease. Gracefully. It's a completely different type of success than having a lot of apps on your I-Pad, or a job working for a soulless corporation. More profound. More lasting.

But could it really be that easy? Of course not - it requires a sort of vigilance. You have to live by the highest principles you can possibly muster. You have to try your best not to do anything you know to be wrong in your heart. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a little hard work at times, but the payoff is huge.

Aim high. Show up. Be kind. Be generous with your time and resources. Help others. Everything will begin to work in your Life in a way that "keeping up with the I-Joneses" could never allow. You'll find your real connection and purpose. And once you're living that way, you won't have to be trying to get somewhere else. You can "make the road home be home."

Check out this wonderful little talk about why we need to believe in each other by Viktor Frankl, the author of "Man's Search for Meaning." When you aim high, you have to take into account the speed of the wind, and the rotation of the Earth, but even if you're a little off, you'll land much closer to where you want to be.

"Why do you wash the outside of the cup?

Do you not understand that

the one who made the outside

also made the inside?"

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 89

"Clay is molded to form a cup

yet only the space within

allows the cup to hold water."

The Tao te Ching, 11

Tales: A Look at Looking

Let's start by looking at a bunch of quotes...

The great Tao flows everywhere

It fills everything to the left

and to the right

All things owe their existence to it

and it cannot deny any one of them

Tao te Ching, 34

"I am the light that shines on everyone

I am the All.

The All came forth from me

and the All came into me.

Split the wood and I am there.

Turn over the stone,

and you will find me."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 77

"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

"To God belongs the East and the West;

and wherever you turn,

there is the face of God."

The Qu'ran, Surah 2

Surfaces create a great many of this world's problems, with the suggestions that they are the most important and compelling part of life, being the most visible, and what we interact with the most; none of which is true. 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 eyes to see into the whirring masses of sub-atomic particles all dancing inside our supposedly "solid" world. There is an exponential relationship of the outside to the inside of everything.

When we are confronted by surfaces: appearances, behaviors, "final results," we can't compare our insides to those outsides, but only what we don't know of the insides of each. By what we can identify with.

This occupation by spirit is as mysterious as it is miraculous, and it is the most important, the most evident, interactive, and compelling whether we can see past the surface or not. We can see that dance plainly, if we allow ourselves to. So pay as little attention to the surface as possible. Practice seeing the spirit arising as often as you can manage.

All of these quotes from all of these wisdom sources are saying the same thing, aren't they? We display our ignorance by relying on some visible affirmation, when we know that every surface changes, that the mystery within alone remains Eternal. And everything we witness with our minds, and our eyes, and our hearts is actually the proof of our shared composition, the substance of our source and ineffable connection. The "Face of God."

It's just a matter of perception. Of allowing yourself to look past the surface by looking with a vision that's free of judgment and comparison, and so fully engaged by compassion. Here, a couple more quotes, that say 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

"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

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 20: Dreaming Little Pieces, Becoming Whole

With Ruth, who finally helped him become whole...

"Yeshua said: Blessed is the lion which becomes human 
when consumed by a human. 

 Cursed is the man who is consumed by the lion, 
and becomes the lion."

Logion 7, The Gospel of Thomas

In the dream he had become the Koko Lion – that is to say he had emerged from his battered chrysalis, that he'd finally broken through the exoskeleton of his damaged Ego-Self. He could stand now fresh and fragile, as a mostly unknown but nonetheless whole man. In the dream he was in a place that time had long ago covered over for him – the downstairs of his father's house, on the rocky hillside overlooking the canyons. Time had been opened up and laid still. Everything was exactly as it had been in his childhood. He was there, in a reality that concurrently ran through and beneath this one.

He looked down the long hallway that led to the rooms he and his brother shared, at the farthest end of the house. Diffuse light glowed through the bathroom louvered windows at the end of the hall, inviting him to enter the past. As he gingerly walked down the hall he noticed every little thing was just as it had always been. The linoleum floor tile with a tiny chipped corner. The cabinet door, always ajar (it never would close completely). On his left was the door to his brother's room. On his right, the door to the outside, to the patio and through the oleanders into the canyon, the rusty dirt and granite rocks covered with lichen, the foxtails and sage and scrub.

Past his brother's door was the door to his own room, a little bit open. He sensed someone inside, someone he was meant to visit. He pushed the door open and looked in, and there sitting cross-legged on the floor was a little boy, ten or eleven. The boy was drawing intently, but seemed as though he were putting together a jigsaw puzzle, searching for the lost little piece that would fit, that would make the whole thing make sense. But it wasn't there. He was trying to draw a picture of it—of that jigsaw piece—like a little Disney-map island somewhere in a turquoise sea that he could fly away to. The Island of Lost Boys.

"Hello," said Koko softly. The little boy looked up, with recognition and a little fear in his eyes. "May I come in?" The little boy said nothing, but Koko recognized him immediately, walked in behind him, and gently bent down onto one knee. The boy had stopped drawing and put his pencil down and was just sitting in his little bedroom world, drawn on the paper before him, surrounding him, spread in little pieces on the olive brown carpet. Koko put his hand on the scared little boy's shoulder, and turned him slightly to face him more.

"There's something I want to tell you," he said softly, comfortingly. The voice that came out of him was a surprise, a voice like a man should sound – like a father, or a solid big brother. He looked into the boy's sad eyes. The boy looked up at him expectantly, like he wasn't going to believe any solution this strangely familiar man had to offer.

"It's not your fault," said Koko,"you were only born here. There's nothing that you've done wrong." The boy looked like he was going to cry. "These people have to do the things they're doing. You're not to blame for any of it. You can know that in your heart, and just keep going." Tears welled up in the little boy's eyes. Koko hugged him, and the boy pressed his face into his chest. "I know it's a tall order for a little boy, but I'm always here for you, and you'll find there will be others you can ask...."

Koko knew the little boy wouldn't, that he would never ask for help, not until he absolutely had to. Not for many years – not until his jigsaw world finally fell apart completely and he was covered over by a scar tissue chrysalis of his own, that his ancestors and Angels and Love would have to help him break through. He couldn't tell the boy the whole path he had before him, the way to manage it, to survive it. He was still so freshly emerged, that he didn't know yet himself. He knew it was the child's own karma-path, and could only hope that he'd helped somehow.

The dream ended there, like that, though Koko wanted it to go on so that he could do more to protect the boy. So that he could try it again, and grow up with the little boy, and give him the hope and the sense of all things being possible that he was just beginning to learn himself. But he knew that he would—that they each would—have to find the faith to make that realization on their own: 

  To find the forgiveness that reaches right through time, that lives and brings life in every moment.

"Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World."

Black Elk

Read How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct 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!

The Third Power of Maya—Why We Can't See

The earlier posts on the Maya of Individuality, of Religion, and of Science and Media explored two of the main powers of maya, but only touched on the third...

The Maya of Individuality; the belief that we are separate from everyone and everything around us, is an example of the veiling, or concealing power of Maya. This is the power that prevents us from seeing the true nature and character of things—the simple fact that all life and all consciousness in our universe is connected and interdependent. In this sense we are everyone and everything, and everyone is us. It's only our Ego identification with this form—body, name, feelings, and all—that creates a false sense of separateness. These concealing aspects of our selves (like everything else in the world) are always in flux, always changing like moving targets, so they make it difficult for us to connect to one another. 
 Only our core of authentic Being—our Eternal Self—is constant, and constantly connected.

Everything I put out there will impact on me and those around me. Everything manifested in the world affects me and everything around it. I may not live near an environmental disaster, but the trauma of it on Nature affects me directly. I may walk away from treating someone badly, but it reflects in the heart of the world. The false belief that I am separate leads me to behave in ways that further separate me—to misperceive my own true experience of Life and create an imaginary (usually self-defensive or self-enhancing) story, to describe and justify my misperceptions.

Our being is obviously interdependent on many factors, beyond the microcosm of our forms. We are part of everything, something we all know intuitively, but the Veiling Power of Maya prevents us from seeing that.

"...an invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Atman. Thou art That."           Chandogya Upanishad , 6.12

The Maya of Religion, and of Science and Media—our self-defining associations with a set of cultural beliefs—are examples of the Projecting Power of Maya. It's the Ego-force that projects our comparisons and judgments, definitions and labels, and assigns us to their associated desires, identifications, and diversions. It hangs a defining filter over the world we perceive.

We identify ourselves as this or that: as Jew or Christian; as Conservative or Liberal; as a product of Intelligent Design or one of sheer random chemistry; when all these definitions are simply shifting projections of the individual and collective Ego. The truth is that we are all pretty much exactly the same thing. Yet we identify ourselves with concepts of "knowledge," of "logic," with dogma, and with cultural imperatives, and by doing so lose sight of the eternal Akashic Field that unifies the greater Consciousness we share with the Earth and all it's naturally balanced life. We can't see the living, breathing forest, for how we choose to name (and use) the trees. This is the Projecting Power of Maya.

"Though it is hidden in all things, the Self shines not forth."

Katha Upanishad, 3.12

But inherent in these realizations is hidden a third, transcendent power — the Revealing Power of Maya.

Through inward, meditative exploration; through Art and through Nature, the true qualities of being beyond the limitations of our form and the concealing projections of personal and collective Ego, become constantly apparent. 

It works like this with humans: When a person or thing is observed on it's surface, it activates the mental processes that begin to label and differentiate the observed as being separate from the observer – that's the concealing power. As those thoughts lead to judgments and opinions, they activate feelings—often fears. That's the projecting power. We unconsciously assign things that aren't true to what we see, and conclude that they are different than us, but the Earth is one small life form, really, so it simply isn't true.

However, if we simply witness people and circumstances to be what they are (without getting our panties in a bunch), we begin to see their inner truth revealed—the confluence of causes and events that form them. We begin to see them as fluid, ever-changing manifestations of Source—just like we are ourselves...just like everything is. We can begin to see a radiance of Being, shining through every person, through every event. This is helped along a great deal by turning our attention inward in meditation. Then, the revelations begin. 

 A crow caws. A truck rumbles on the Interstate. A man shouts in the distance. A fish jumps with a splash. A girlfriend unceremoniously dumps you. A forgotten relative leaves you a great deal of money. Your candidate loses the election. A cat sits in your lap, purring. All of these things are perfect expressions of our shared Source. 

At all times, everything you witness, you are becoming through your attention. Through your intention. The energy of Being starts shining through and engaging every part of you. So you become—not just as yourself, but as everything you witness—a real contributing part of all Being, a part of it that's fully connected and completely interdependent. Your thoughts, actions, and intentions influence "The All," and all of it is influencing your sense of you. This awareness of the concealing and projecting engages a gracious revelation—The Revealing Power of Maya, as a Hindu may call it.

Real Art as well—not art as ego—also suspends the processes of our intellect, our preconceived labels and judgments, and forces us to experience this pure Being. It breaks through our unconscious concept of "reality," and forces us into a moment of graceful suspension. Into the moment where we instantly perceive our connection to something greater than ourselves—this is the revelation that tied Art to ritual at it's earliest inception, and may have been the beginning of true intelligence and spirituality in the human form. The Revealing Power of Maya.

And in Nature... well, in Nature there's nothing but the Revealing Power of Maya. The membrane between our form and The Divine (our form as Nature) is just too thin not to experience the awesome connection of it all. Just look at a duck—I dare you. Or a tree, or a stream, or a wildflower, growing through the crack in the parking lot asphalt…

"The All came forth from me, and the All came into me. Split a piece of wood, and I Am there. turn over a stone, and you will find me."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 77

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.