The Trinity Withinity – Connecting Our Three Main Parts

Have you ever noticed how lots of things have three parts? Like a top, a bottom, and a middle. Or The Three Musketeers. Or Goldilocks? I mean The Three Bears...Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear.

Spiritually we see "Trinities" all over the place, like the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; or The Buddha (Unified Consciousness), The Dharma (the way, or path), and The Sangha (the community). In Hinduism, there are a few versions of it – as deities: Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), and Shiva (destroyer); or in categories ranging from the greater Self to the personal self, as Brahman (the All), Atman (the soul), and Asmita (the ego, or "I am this"). Sri Aurobindo called them The Transcendent, The Universal, and The Individual; all of which correlates as Sat (the greater Being), Chit (the vehicle of Awareness), and Ananda (the way to personal Bliss). That last, littlest part is always you, or me, and this experience we have through our human senses—our bodies, our minds, and all too often, our Egos.

In a more scientific sense these three aspects of our relationship to everything can be related to Consciousness (the sensory universe), the Right Brain (parallel processing, or quantum reality), and the Left Brain (serial processing, empirical or egoic reality).

I also think it works pretty well in terms of The Marx Brothers: Groucho (the mind of The Divine), Chico (the link to The Divine), and Harpo (the unconscious expression of the Divine).

"The common name for God used by the sages is HaMakom, "the place." God is the place of the world, the field in which all things arise and return."

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, on The Pirke Avot

When we talk about that top billing as "The Father," of course we're talking about God – The Creator, Omniscience, the Source of Every-thing, all being. Personified, this can be The Big Bearded Guy; Divine Mother; Brahma, etc., and conceptually, it's The Source, Transcendent Unified Consciousness, The Universe, or Brahman – the benevolent power that we know is the responsible for all being. It's a power that we'd like to get to know better (but often have a hard time doing it), under whose protection and care it would always be nice to live. It's the power of the Universe, like it or not. Einstein has a great quote about it:

"The most important decision we have to make is whether we believe in a friendly universe, or in a hostile universe."

Is God friendly? Well, since Life is quite plastic, then it's really up to you and the attitude you bring to Life – so why not? If you have a friendly attitude, you tend to have a friendly God, and vice-versa. It's especially easy if we see The Father/The Transcendent/The Universe, as the overarching power and expression of Love. As Dr. Wayne Dyer used to say: "The way you look at the universe is the way the universe looks at you."

Our biggest problem often comes in finding a comfortable, practical connection to that Source – a two-way street that helps us experience a loving, supportive Universe. That's where the second of our three parts comes in.

With the Christian trinity, while the path to God (the dharma for Buddhists and Hindus) is often proclaimed to be through Jesus, our true intermediary might be better described by "The Holy Ghost" – you know, that Angel on our shoulder; our Spirit Guide or soul connection whose guidance we receive through prayer, and in meditation or contemplation. It's the buffering shepherd through which we find our connection to what Native Americans call "The Great Spirit."

The Quakers refer to it as: "The still,small voice," also known as our "voice of reason." It comes to us as intuition – intelligent thinking without intellect. Thinking from the heart. It arises from a place that's accessible to everyone, the place Yeshua (the Gnostic Jesus) talked about when he said:

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

Logion 3, The Gospel of Thomas

That universal awareness comes when we forget about "who we're supposed to be" in this world of matter (that doesn't really matter); when we quietly and humbly pray for the answer to a hard question (we ask), and then meditate to clear our minds (we get the answer). In short, it's still and always Love.

As a Near-Death survivor, I can tell you that this information could actually be coming to us directly by way of our Angels or Spirit Guides, whispering in our ear from another dimension; but if you don't believe in that and you can still hear them, well, what difference does it make? It's almost always through the process of prayer, meditation, and reflection that we can find this guiding voice, "The Holy Spirit," that affirms the Love and the natural benevolence that Life and the Universe really holds for us.

If we consider it agnostically, with a layman's sense of neuroscience, we could correlate the activity of our Right Brain to the actions of our angels. It occurs in the right hemisphere of our brains (where what might be called parallel processing takes place) when we realize holistic thought, and experience an understanding of "one-ness" and Being. That's our connection to Source, our link to God Consciousness, Buddha Mind, The Transcendent. This short talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, author of A Stroke of Insight describes it brilliantly. Our Left Brain is where we can get stuck in the material world – the day-to-day serial processing that dictates our rigid Ego-based consciousness. All that exhausting demanding, organizing, judging and comparing is definitely the hardest part of "being me."

But what if I'm not just me, but also the "Son of Man" too! Then right here in this body is where I can try to experience bliss, where I can learn, intuitively, to be authentically my self – our Self. To know what it's like to be the unique expression of Source that I Am – an antenna for sensory collection...a blossoming flower. You've got to really be a human being to experience Christ-ing, moksha, nirvana, samadhi, Heaven, or Unified Consciousness.

All it takes is a little work to make a better connection...

That's us, up from the Earth; The Holy Ghost, down from Heaven; and all alive in Divine Consciousness 

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 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 of the Koko Lion, Part 21: Two Feathers, Second Feather

............................................................................read about the first feather

Koko stood on the deck, looking across upriver to New York, to the promontory at the bend, but he didn't know why. He didn't...but then he did.

It had been a couple years. A couple difficult, challenging years in every way, except in the ways it mattered most. His work had gone disappointingly, one remarkable opportunity after another had taken a sudden turn south, until it seemed that you just couldn't even make the stuff up anymore. His big breaks had all broken. How could he be put in such unique and impossible rooms, only to have their possibilities evaporate? He worked his tail off, and yet nothing had taken flight, except his capacity for Love, which drew in the sky. His heart was full and open. She was always there. Food was always on the table. They lived a frugal life of sheer abundance, which didn't seem possible to them either. But it all worked out, somehow.

He knew the lessons he'd learned from the river, just sitting and listening to the wind, the songbirds, the bullfrogs, the sundance writing on the passing water, and the eagles' calls from the top of the white pines; it all taught him how to live a different way. An impossible way.

Now, he was being tapped on the shoulder again, by the unseen. It was telling him, the same way it had before, that the eagles had another feather for him. Another feather? Another feather. A different one, for a different reason. Look over there, they whispered in his ear, where you're looking now.

His neighbor had offered the loan of his kayak, whenever, so he took him up on it and set out upriver, rowing against the lighter current close to the bank, and then cutting across to the shallows on the other side. The sheet of water over the smooth river rock field got so thin his butt dragged and hung up on the bottom; so he hopped out, and ported the kayak up to a channel near the far side. New York.

Almost as soon as he arrived at the point, he knew he wasn't going to find anything, even though This is where you have to look for it, was what he kept hearing, with that same insistence as before. He floundered around in the lush, leafy undergrowth on the bank, looking up into the virdant cave trails that the animals had made, but he wasn't going to find anything but deer ticks in his hair, if he was willing to look for those. Or if Suzy would.

Why do they tell me something that's right, but not right? he thought.

About a week later, he repeated the futile exercise again, and then again, until his neighbor asked him what he was doing with his kayak, and all he could think of to say was, "Oh, nothing, really...just going for a paddle..." And now it was loud again in his ear, making him a little crazy, making him walk back out on the deck, peering purposelessly across the river to see what was much too far to ever see. This is crazy, he thought.

Right at that moment, a big female eagle hopped out of her New York tree on the point, and wheeled down south over the river, heading his way. She flapped her huge wings a couple times, gaining altitude and just as she did, a single white tail-feather fell from her fanned tail, fluttered lightly down, and set atop the current in the middle of the river. His heart stopped. There! They silently hollered in his ear.

"Hey!" Koko hollered back.

"What?" replied Suzy, who was planting flowers in the Vole's Garden. "Did you want me?"

He ran in, changed into a swimsuit, and ran down the rock steps, yelling crazily, "Watch that white spot on the river and tell me when I'm close to it!" and he dove straight in.

"Keep going out!" She yelled. "Keep going!" He could see it, when he craned his neck up above the little waves in the river. It was coming right to him, bobbing along, and when it arrived, he was right there for it. He put the quill shaft between his teeth, and swam in through the suddenly cold water, to his big sitting-rock. He held it up in front of his face, fourteen inches of a perfect, snowy white feather, just deposited magically before his eyes by the great female eagle whose awkward, oversized "chicks" would spend the summer learning how to fly out over that same piece of river.

Koko amazed, How and why, in the entire world, could a man be standing where I was standing, looking where I was looking, and see that, if it isn't for me?

The white feather is for having survived the years that so many never survive to see. The years until your head and tail strike pure white. Now, you know just how big this vision of life is. You've learned the lesson of Action and Repose. You can wait for it, and watch for it, but then you must dive in and swim to reach it. Have faith in the unfailing wind, in the abundance of the river, in the heavens in your heart. Now you know how to grow. Now you know how to fly.

Later, at the little town's street festival, Koko told the abbreviated tale to a woman at an Eagle Conservation booth.

"It's against the law for anyone but an Indian to have an eagle feather!" She snapped with authority. Koko could only think, I don't think she understands how it happens...

"My great-great-grandfather was Kickapoo," Koko said softly. He knew it was okay, in his heart. His grandfather tapped the woman on the shoulder.

"Oh...well..." she sidled and smiled a bit, "then it's okay, I guess."

.....................................................................this just popped up the other day

A Hug from Amma

"My religion is love." Amma

Have you ever heard of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi? She is better known to the world as Amma (mother), "The Hugging Saint." Amma has given darshan, a deep loving hug, to more than twenty-seven million people! During three days last week here at The Manhattan Center, Amma must've hugged another couple thousand. In sessions that last 15 hours (or more) straight, Amma doesn't get up, or eat, or drink. She just gives beautiful deep hugs. Long hugs, longer hugs, one at a time, two at a time. And to hug Amma is like hugging an ocean of love. After so much hugging, she is built for hugging. She is without a doubt the best hugger in human history.

It's difficult in our culture to give one's self over so completely to love -to make love itself the single overarching motivation for everything you do. Some touch on it dedicating themselves to their families, but usually you have more important things to do that don't allow you to act solely out of love, right? No, that's not really true. It only seems that way.

At any and every moment, we have a simple choice between two directions in our lives: towards ego gratification in one form or another; or towards love, compassion, and the simple, practical path towards personal growth and contributing to life that the path toward love creates. This choice appears in every aspect of our lives, from the smallest decision -like what to watch on TV, to the largest -like how to raise your kids, or how to care for an elderly parent. If you put love in the center of every decision, your intuitive intelligence will kick in and direct you as clearly as if someone were speaking in your ear. You'll stop gossiping. Stop criticizing people and institutions, and instead know how to help improve things. You'll intuitively know what to do in tough situations. You will become a link in a chain of love, and experience the incredible strength, unity, and freedom that comes from making right decisions, from acting ethically.

"We are all beads strung together on the same chain of love." Amma

Life will begin to flow in a smooth, sure way that actually requires less effort to accomplish more. Even unforeseen professional and financial solutions will show up for you right on time, because you will be supported and directed by love, which, as the great binding foundation of life, never "goes wrong." You probably won't win the Powerball if you feel you've bought a ticket "with love," but ask, and you'll receive all that you need to be happy.

You'll likely still hear the voice of your ego goading or belittling you or others, making fearful declarations, like: "You can't make a living by just loving!" But you'll recognize that voice as an unfortunate tendency of our human form -a destructive over-identification with false promises about solutions based on acquiring things, or attaining the approval of others -solutions that are superficial and momentary. Because everyone knows that for all of humankind, loving has always made the best lives, and will always have that power to do so. In a practical sense, listening to love will cause you to show up for what's truly important in your life, to be in places where you'll find opportunity that you may have never been otherwise. Joy will arise from all decisions based in love and service, and will wash away all your worries more and more as your new power develops.

Could it really be so simple that just the act of holding love in your heart as the focus of life can connect you, guide you, and provide for you? All the great wisdom of humankind tell us it's true. In The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: "...when one's faith is completely unified, they gain the object of their devotion. In this way, every desire is fulfilled by me." And the Bible puts it this way: "As a man [person] thinketh in his heart, so is he." So it sez-eth.

So, it just comes down to that choice -between fear or faith. If there's a part of you that seems to enjoy living with fear, release that destructive hook and fearlessly choose the direction that love will clearly lead you in. It's the best free life consultant there is. My dear friend Anne put it this 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 your life. It's where the river of the Source is constantly carrying you, so that all your worries may disappear." And this gem from Amma: "There has never been a guru who died of starvation."

Poo-pooing these beliefs as a "naîve, unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky fairy tales" is the attitude that has created every disastrous condition ever known. Period. And Amma says this:

"In the end, love is the only medicine that can heal the wounds of the world. In this universe, it is love that binds everything together. As this awareness dawns within us, all disharmony will cease."

Next year, I hear they may have to move Amma's event to a much larger venue. It's continually growing too big for one location after another. They may have to hold it in Madison Square Garden. Next could be Yankee Stadium, or maybe Central Park...it sure would be nice if the whole world could share a hug with Amma.

The Zero Point is Everything

"Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens."

Carl Jung

When you close your eyes, what do you see? Most people would say that they don't see anything except darkness. But you know that's not really true. What you actually see when you close your eyes is an amazing dance of electrochemical color fields and particles, waving and surging up out of the "darkness." You're seeing the effervescent energy that enlivens everything. Here is the ether – the Zero Point Energy ("emptiness") that for some reason, the human mind wants to call "darkness." It's from this rod-and-cone wave/particle participation that our shared consciousness creates everything we see. It's a view of the electric truth that powers these chemical robots we inhabit.

Must be that darn Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge we ate somewhere along the way that makes the ego-mind constantly strive to detach us from the reality of a world so obviously out-of-balance, and from an existence of inextricable interwovenness with every other human who's simultaneously experiencing many of the exact same thoughts, fears, and joys as you are. The ego-mind wants to separate everyone by constantly telling you that you're different and special. And of course, you are. Everyone is. In that very sense alone, we are all the same thing.

Look at the reflections of the sun dancing off the surface of a lake, then close your eyes and look the same way at the performance of energy in the after-imaging inside your eyes. Now look up a bit (eyes wide shut) toward the center of your forehead, towards your third eye, as we tree-huggers call it. There you may very well find a wellspring of golden-white shimmer amongst the dancing energies. It's the door to the source, and if you can stick your head in there a while, you'll come back refreshed and energized. If you don't make it in the first time, try it again. You'll get there if you try. Everybody does who tries (and always has), if they keep it up and allow it. You might recognize and enjoy this as a meditation.

If you can, go to a gallery that has some Rothko paintings, stand in front of one and stare transfixed into the center of it. The memory of lake reflections may very well kick you into a new understanding of art as a portal to the "unseen."

What do you hear when you listen to the voices in your head? Do you just hear one strong and clear voice that is "you?" Probably not. You might hear an anxious or worried voice; an assertive, resolved voice; a poetic, natural voice. Do you hear the calm voice of reason sometimes? Next time you hear that voice, concentrate on it, and identify yourself with it. That's your intuitive connection to universal intelligence, what The Buddha, Stephen Hawking, or Deepak Chopra might call, "the mind of God."

Are all these voices tantamount to schizophrenia? Sometimes. There's not that much difference really. Sometimes. It doesn't matter if they issue from the well of Jung's collective unconscious, from the dark recesses of your own "personal" psyche, from your right or wrong functioning brain chemistry, or from extra-dimensional entities (spirit guides) – what's the difference, really? You'll still know them by the fruit they bear.

This is where personal responsibility comes in. If a thought suggests that you do harm to yourself or someone else, it's coming from a bad place and needs to be ignored. It's not the real you, just a fear-based reflection of the world as our ego-mind needs to see it (or refuses to see it). Just ask for help from your "healthy psyche–well brain–angel spirit" voice, then sit still and listen for an answer. If you don't hear one, be quieter and listen closer.

This is an explanation for both the secular and agnostic (God bless 'em). My personal truth is somewhere around here: this is the voice of your ancestors, who walked on this very ground, and breathed this very air, and whose lives were no less important than yours for their passing, because you are living it now. So pay attention, even if someone tells you you're crazy to listen to that voice in your head. You may be crazy not to. Remember, your spirit guides are more authentic than any anchorperson will ever be...

What You Always Knew About Intuition.

"Thinking is not going to do it."

Carolyn Myss

Look at a time lapse film of a city sometime. Seemingly permanent structures pile up and wear down like sandcastles. So do we. We pile up. We wear down.

Aside from our senses, the two main aspects of our perception that remain functioning in a fairly constant way are our minds, which tells us what mushrooms are safe to eat, or what time we have to go to the dentist; and our intuition – our inner "voice of reason," which is our true connection to source intelligence. Our connection to the mind of the universe.

We never actually learn much from our own minds, we learn with them. Our minds are tools, usually busily running through random options and possibilities, assigning classifications and priorities. Working, wheedling, making associations, stacking them up and taking them apart. We can memorize facts using that power of mental repetition – or call them up by flicking an associative switch at the right moment. We can collect and categorize knowledge in the basket of our mind, but it's our intuition that confirms the truth of that knowledge, and can actually teach us that truth first. Often, our intuition has to wait awhile for our mind to catch up to it.

The mind can be like a leaf blower, noisily pushing up pieces of data, carrying them along in a measured swirl of sorts, keeping them aloft obsessively, or setting them back down behind us, right where we first saw them. How many times have you come to a conclusion, only to realize that deep down you knew the truth of it already? Yet you needed evidence to convince your mind it was true, even though you knew it all along. And what do you say when that happens? You say, "I knew it all along."

That can be the moment in which you become aware of your intuitive self-- the part of you that witnesses your own (sometimes crazy) thinking. in this sense, you are not the person who's doing the thinking. You, your true self, is observing the person doing the thinking.

Here's the certainty: Our bodies are impermanent (at best). Our minds are tools – largely defensive and survival-oriented in nature, that operate by producing thoughts sequentially moment by moment. Many of these thoughts are extraneous and unnecessary, even counter-productive. They can make us do great things, or terrible things. Crazy things. Or all of the above, as is the case for most of us. Many of the dumbest things I've ever done have been very well thought out.

Our intuitions are our true connections to source intelligence, the truth we may eventually learn with our minds. Nothing really great ever happens without intuitive knowledge. That source knowledge is always available to us, immediately and eternally. However, you can never know it by passing over it with your mind, like a leaf blower. You have to practice allowing your intuition to be, to hear it without the noise – without the mind interference. Purposely enter into the eternal moment that we are always actually living in, where your intuition can be heard. Forget about thinking. Try to consciously allow your intuition to do the thinking for you.

Learn to trust and identify with your calm, inner "voice of reason," what the Quakers call, "the still, small voice," as much as you possibly can. Practice consciously living from that Source Intelligence, and watch the results. This is best achieved through practicing meditation.

Listen to the way this great early twentieth century swami describes it (particularly the last sentence):

"Intuition has a fourfold power. [1] A power of revelatory truth-seeing,  [2] a power of inspiration or truth-hearing,  [3] a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of it's intervention in our mental intelligence, [4] a power of true and automatic discrimination of the...exact relation of truth to truth. Intuition can therefore perform all the action of reason – including the function of logical intelligence...but by it's own superior process and with steps that do not fail or falter."

Sri Aurobindo

Aurobindo said that a long time ago. Some of those swamis really know their stuff...

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!