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Tales: From the Eagle's POV

"Stay calm. Share your bananas."

Koko the Gorilla

A popular video on YouTube shows a dog rescuing an injured dog from traffic on a road. Koko the Gorilla answers questions about death and friendship as intelligently as many people could. A very recent study suggests that dolphins are so intelligent, we should treat them as "non-human persons." There are lots of birds that can talk, comment on their surroundings, and recognize objects and people. Imagine understanding or making sense in bird language.

Revisit a previous posting about the nature of animal consciousness, and the intelligence alive there that practically equals our own – within their differently perceived worlds.

With that in mind, let's examine what our Eagle brothers and sisters might have to teach us...

"Detach and arise above the mundane so that you're able to see your life and circumstances with a broader perspective and greater vision."

Eagle, Animal Spirit Guides, Steven Farmer

Vision of the World's Abundance

The eagle looks out over the river. To our eyes, the water appears to be blue-green, almost solid. The glare from the sky prevents us from seeing beneath the surface. But the eagle has naturally polarized vision. She can see right into the water, past the surface, to the rich abundance that each endless section of the river is bringing. She isn't hunting, she's picking out what she wants whenever she needs it. Whatever looks good to her. The fish are always there, never running out, like a river full of candy bars swimming right past her. She is always taken care of. She has no concept of fearing that she won't get what she needs.

She sees how the world gives.

The Big Picture (A Bird's Eye View)

Atop a great white pine, hundreds of feet up, or riding a thermal a thousand feet above the river valley, the eagle sees the whole picture at once. She knows that there's no reason to get tangled up in the undergrowth. That the world isn't limited to just what's in front of her, but that each direction reveals the next direction. She's incapable of ignoring her intuition, of the willfulness that leads into a quagmire. From this perspective, she can cover great distances almost immediately, without ever leaving her perch.

She knows that the world shows her, intuitively.

Rest and Repose

The eagle is always either doing what needs to be done, or she is not. When she is doing what needs to be done, she is just focusing on doing that. When she isn't, she is resting and observing. In Zen, it's called wu wei, doing without doing. She never worries about how, or when. The event stream of her life shows her those things, when and how to do, and not to do.

She knows that the world lets her move, and lets her rest.

The Natural Connection

From her perch, the eagle sees the movement around her without attaching any judgement, just witnessing, just allowing. With patient observation, and a variety of calls, messages, and meetings, she is always connected to her family. She is always linked to those of her kind. She knows what is happening in her territory. Through this observation and communication, all problems find a natural resolution; all resources are shared. She learns and teaches by example.

She knows the world is always showing her how to be.

"Everything would change if only we could treat every single being we meet, human or animal, as who they really are -- a disguise of God."

Bede Griffiths


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 of the Koko Lion, Part 18: The Mexican Haircut

"What lies behind us and what lies before us

are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

Emerson

In 1961, I was 5 years old. John Kennedy was President. The high point of each week was Sunday evening when Tinkerbell flew onto the TV screen and christened an eruption of cartoon colored fireworks with her little fairy-wand at the start of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color." It was the only color TV show on any of the three networks.

My father, Eugene, was still fairly present then. Still almost a regular guy, which is to say he hadn't quite formulated his other persona, that of Gino, the mysterious international car dealer. Soon he would detach and start taking his month-long trips abroad, to England and Italy, and other exotic lands.The young man who took my brother and I for haircuts in Tijuana never really came back after that. So it went for my father, who fell head-long into the void of an alter-ego who would never again allow him to settle for a "regular" life...

Dad parked the Chevy in the Woolworth's lot just off Avenida Revolucion in Tijuana and walked us down the side street to the big barber pole. I saw myself reflected in the painted front window, in the glass of the brass-handled front door, a slightly shabby little boy on the verge of tonsorial splendor. The bell announced our entry, and the faces of neatly dressed gentlemen seated along the right wall turned to us for a moment, looking up from their Mexican newspapers as they waited their turn with their favorite of the three barbers. There was an air of conspiratorial relish, the energy of a fraternal initiation of two little shavers, made all the more special by the familiar foreignness of it. The rites of manhood crossed language and borders.

An awaiting gentleman, enjoying his paper and his cigarette, and having all day to get his weekly trim, waived us through with a smile, like a driver in a slow moving line of cars.

"Ahhh, Señor..." said the barber officiously, turning the big scrolled iron barber chair towards me, snapping the seat with a hand towel, "Por favor..." motioning to take my place. No, "momentito," holding his hand up to pause me, "Esperes, por favor..." He wheeled on one foot, dipped down, and arose holding a deep green tack-upholstered leather booster seat, which he set on the chair, re-inviting me to take my place.

The barbers looked like family, well-groomed professional men, with their white short-sleeved doctor's shirts, shiny black hair and mustaches. Mine was the youngest and portliest, with no grey at his temples, manning the far chair. He turned me to face the long mirror and marble mantle, the array of multi-colored potions, balms, and astringents, like the exotic line-up of liquors behind a bartender in a ritzy hotel. There were all sorts of gadgets and accessories, each with more possibilities than the other. Graduated vials, sculpted bottles, ornate containers; mysterious, vaguely surgical-looking devices, ostensibly for the purpose of making a man all that he could be, and more.

He snapped and whirled a sheer white cotton dropcloth around my chin like a toreador, like the framed Correos posters on the wall. It settled down on top of me with perfect gentle gravity. Sweet-smelling. Calming. He gathered the sheet up around my neck and wrapped it, once, twice around with soft white crepe paper, sealing my neckline securely with a clip. Then he went to work.

The scissors snipped rhythmically, with metallic precision. It seemed no stroke was wasted, even when no hair was cut. His fingers felt like big warm rubber knobs, pushing and turning my little boy's head like a grapefruit. He smelled of cologne himself. The electric trimmer snapped on and buzzed at my temples, lightly scraping around my ears as he folded them over. Everything so precise, so assured.

Then came the coup de grace. With all the professionalism afforded to his most mature patrons, he took his soap mug from the mantle, and with one raised eyebrow and some steaming hot water, proceeded to whip up a rich lather with his brush. He tillted my chin forward, and spread the warm, fragrant lather behind my ears, and around the nape of my neck, then quickly, setting down the mug, he reached into the front pocket of his barber's shirt, and unfolded his abalone shell handled straight razor. He stropped it to a sheen on the broad leather belt that hung from the side of the chair, and resting his little finger on the back of my head, meticulously shaved my neckline.

Afterwards, he wiped the excess lather off with a warm towel, unwound the paper seal from around my neck, and whisked around my tingling neck, ears, and shoulders with a soft, powdered brush. There was a slap of lightly perfumed hair tonic massaged into my fresh haircut, and a firm, definitive final combing. Then he turned the great chair slowly to face the mirror.

The seated gentlemen lowered their papers and looked up.

"Ahhh..." the men admired simultaneously the perfectly groomed little gentleman in the mirror that I been transformed into at the hands of this craftsman as he lifted the cloth off of me, and I basked in the sensation of a real haircut and shave.

In a way, I wished I could stay with that brotherhood of Mexican barbers, in their warmth and professionalism. The propriety they afforded even a little boy. But after I played out front, squinting on the hot sidewalk, peeking in until my brother's haircut was completed, we rode back to San Diego with our Dad, who could never quite muster the self-assured comfort around his young sons that seemed so natural to that family of Mexican barbers. We rode back in silence across the border at San Ysidro. Back to our "regular" lives.

Tales: The Heart is Where the Home is...

""The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the eye...by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him."

Black Elk

Our hearts pump blood. They have to, or there's no show, right? That's what hearts do, but that's not all they do.

Our heart is, in so many ways, at the very center of our lives. It is the seat of our emotions – we actually perceive feelings in, or through, our hearts. Our hearts sustain us, direct us, comfort us. Our heart is an accessible storehouse for our feelings. It's an inspiration through it's action. We don't beat our heart – it can beat without us. In short, our heart creates, forms, and maintains what constitutes the very core of our lives.

I switch to a collective possessive form referring to "our heart," because it's part of the consciousness we share, our collective consciousness. It's part of our shared intelligence, our Eternal, Universal, or Divine intelligence. People who don't share this concept, we perceive as being "heartless" – tragically disassociated from Love, from those aspects of human life that are the most fulfilling and rewarding. They are also most capable of violence. Of selfish and pointless destruction – or of simple pettiness, shortsightedness, and lack of empathy. It's not because they aren't thinking, more often it's because they're thinking too much. With their heads.

"The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad."

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

"They say that they think with their heads," he replied.

"Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise.

"We think here," he said, indicating his heart.

Pueblo Indian, Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake) to Carl Jung,

from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

As with everything, to find a better way to think about it, we do need to think about it with our minds. It's a bit of a leap, because our minds often don't understand what our hearts are doing. In fact our hearts have (or should have) a kind of unassailable authority over our minds. We think we should do what our minds tell us to do, but we know we need to follow our heart. By this I don't mean our passions or cravings – not lust, or ambition – but the simple, intuitive intelligence that mysteriously arises from our heart.

As is the case with most mythical, mystical, intuitive, and indigenous knowledge, Science is slowly catching up –providing us with "real proof" of what's long been known to some to be the cognitive and controlling facilities of the heart. Unlike any other part of our bodies, the heart contains a similar intricate cellular structure as the brain; the same neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins, and support cells. The heart is directly linked to the brain, and can control it's electrical activity. Along with being able to independently learn, remember, feel, and sense, the heart can directly enable the brain to acquire certain perceptive abilities, to inspire types of thought, as well as determine our emotional experience.

Medical Science now agrees with "a thinking heart," a heart with a brain, or that is itself a different kind of brain that unites body, mind, and emotions. Exactly how it does this is a mystery to medical science, but for centuries it's been known in Hindu Bhakti Yoga, and Tantric tradition that the fourth heart chakra is the center in humans of the higher self's true intelligence; connection to the field of higher intelligence; the seat of Divine Consciousness; of healing, of compassion; of wish-fulfillment. The spirit brain. The true source of your life's authentic direction, free from all that messy karma our minds can make for us. Our head thinks about our self too much, our heart thinks of others first.

Listen to your heart, to our heart, and let it have the last word – after the barrage of words your mind thinks up. (Some of the worst things I've ever done I thought about a lot first - but I should have listened to my heart). Regard your head as just another (albeit important) extremity, packed with senses perfectly suited for the physical world. Consider your intellect as a ladder, used to transcend itself. But know your heart as the brain that connects you to The Eternal Intelligence that constitutes your true center. Let your heart do all the important thinking for you. It's where your home really is.

"Though the inner chamber of the heart is small, The Lord of both worlds gladly makes His home there."

Mahmud Shabestari

Check out this site for more information about Heart/Mind science!

Before the Lion thoroughly consumed Koko, cryptic paintings like this one from Arizona didn't hold much hope...

Tales: (3) The Maya of Media and Science

Here's the last of these three explorations of "Maya," inspired by this beautiful Logion:

"Yeshua said: If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Logion 70, The Gospel of Thomas

Denial is ignorance, accepted as truth through the force of will. Our personal will, and our collective will.

Popular Media and Science justify and enforce this will, directing us away from the self examination that makes us face our collective truths, and psychically cornering us in the "The Way Things Are." They preoccupy us with good enough reasons for why things are like they are, why they have to be like they are. Much of Media and Science is created to diffuse truth and replace it with a designed objective, to sell an idea or product—turning the truth into an obstacle that needs to be suppressed, where it becomes, as stated in our Logion again: "That which will destroy you." We end up walking through a false world, looking for what's real. This is the Maya of Media and Science.

It may sound funny to call this Occultism, and to suggest that Media Operatives and Scientists are Occultists, but unfortunately, it works for a couple definitions of the word—in the sense of using supernatural or paranormal means- Media people know they are manipulating dark fears; and in the sense of it being only for the initiated—scientists and media people consort amongst one another to keep their stories straight. Scary secrets shared by a select few.

Popular Culture often harnesses the psychic energy of "that which would destroy you" as it's chief attraction. The Collective Ego is always on the lookout for something to prove that humans are not particularly Divine, that we don't measure up, and so there must be something that can fix it, something that can ameliorate our shortcomings. So Media constantly stimulates those hot buttons of judgement and comparison; Fear, and the pathology of self-enhancement, to get you to buy it:

My clothes are right. My Lifestyle is right. I have the right friends, the proper idols. My country is right. My religion is right. If you don't keep in line with these artificial demands, you won't measure up, or deserve material reward and the acknowledgment of others, which in reality can do nothing to assure happiness or fulfillment. You're made to fear that you might not even deserve Love unless you've achieved some standard—and we all know the truth—that Love is the only thing that really assures happiness and fulfillment.

These fears are heightened and kept malleable by the ever-increasing exposure to explicit violence, explicit selfishness, and explicit narcissism, without which, there would be practically nothing on television; or increasingly, at the movies, or on the radio either. In television's earlier years, human foibles were pointed out—often as a lesson. News programming reported events fairly objectively, but now media ruthlessly exploits human faults and fears, in all formats.

Television and film must be be watched very selectively to avoid these base, destructive energies; and the internet allows for content choice—but don't forget the greatest selectivity of all: Don't take part in it. And if you must, don't invest yourself in it spiritually.

Remember what Marshall McLuhan said: "The medium is the message." If you are constantly carrying, sitting in front of, looking at, a device that keeps you constantly attached to a false world, it will be impossible to live an authentic life. If the forms of input you receive are superficial and fragmented and designed by people who don't have your best interests at heart, your life will be the same. Attachment to current media results in the collapse of your consciousness into a dark, selfish place.

In a generally (though not always) less intentional way, Science does the same thing by manipulating the agnosticism of the seeker. It's kind of like a religion whose dogma is always changing. It's a religion of logic, of data, of "empirical" observation, based solely on what our current senses and devices permit us to perceive and calculate. In the past, these means were limited, but Science was still very sure of itself, and it's description of the world. As means of observation improve, the world and being itself changes—according to Science.

Now, as evolving consciousness allows perception beyond our five senses (and is verified scientifically), and technology enables us to observe more and more of our (formerly invisible) nature of being, Science begins to resemble a dogma chasing a tale that Mysticism has been telling for a long, long time. And here's how that tale ends: 

 Everything is connected and interdependent; and, if we aren't willing to investigate the truth behind our being, and the motivations that suppress that truth, then "That will destroy us."

There is a form of Maya that can free us from the delusional limitations of the other (scary) three: We can switch to a Maya of inner experience and collective ecological sanity...The Maya of Nature. Turn off your mind, open your heart and your senses, and the truth will rise up out of the ruins of our false structures of ego—media and science.

The Universe is an awesome and beautiful mystery, activated by our shared Consciousness. If we bring forth that Universe that is within us—that we all share—then what we bring forth will save us.

Read about this and much more in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide can be pre-ordered online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

A piece of storyboard from the Faith & Mr. Floppy trailer- click on it to see it big!

Pt.2: The Maya of Religion (Essene but seldom heard...)

"Yeshua said: If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Logion 70, The Gospel of Thomas

There are lots of obstacles to Enlightened Consciousness inherent in this human form, most of which are created by a level of unconsciousness that will never allow that goal to be reached. We struggle with these obstacles, usually not recognizing them for what they actually are, often denying their very existence – so it's necessary to show great care when pointing them out, lest we ruffle some feathers. Of course, some feathers probably need to be ruffled.

Presenting abstract or hard-to-grasp concepts of self-realization to people has often led to the invention of elaborate mythologies that end up permanently concealing the simplest, most effective truths. The beauty of the core teaching can be obscured and subverted by human ego, and it's pathological need for control. This leads to The Maya of Religion (of many religions really) illustrated in this "passion play" example of the early Church of Rome.

Prior to the inception of the Church, it's fathers saw the influence and potential of "Gnostic" post-Hebraic Eastern–influenced mysticism, like that taught and practiced by the (possibly mythological) Essene Master, Yeshua (Jesus), throughout Egypt (where he may have studied), into Asia Minor, and then upon his storied return to Judaea. 

The Essenes were a wide-ranging sect (or sects) of Hebraism, whose communal inns where all were welcome were the inspiration for modern hospitals. They fed and healed anyone who needed their help. They celebrated meals. They practiced advanced hygiene, and herbal medicine. They were strictly vegetarian, and disapproved of the taking, or disrespecting of any life. They wore white. They were into foot washing and massaging (feet were especially important back then). Love and service was their rule. In short, they were the christians before Christianity. It is from this school that Yeshua came. The Gospel of Thomas, quoted above, is one of their texts.

Hebrews, and Pagans, weary of the politics, corruption, and barbarity of Jerusalem and Rome, were very likely hungry for the Alexandrian synthesis of Eastern mystic "religion," like Buddhism, The Bhagavad Gita, and The Tao te Ch'ing that traveled the road from Egypt to India; mixed with the simple wisdom of the Ten Commandments, and consciousness expanding practices as taught by Yeshua. This wisdom from the east taught that The Kingdom of God was to be found within each person. That "heaven" was here and now – accessible to anyone, based on personal realizations of transcendent unity, or gnosis. It became the heart of the Gnostic (Essene, Ebionite), or Nazorean teachings, and it became quite popular.

Over the next several hundred years, the shifting power base of the Roman Empire systematically usurped and subverted the potential of this Gnostic message by cobbling together a synthesis of their own: They consigned the Feminine Divine to a subservient role; they fashioned a mythology from existing mythologies, replete with a ritual life that only they could administer – the Eucharist; and they synthesized the appealing aspects of numerous competing religions by styling messianic narratives for each group of potential followers whose ultimate message established the deadly authority of Rome. They even aligned popular holidays of pre-existing religions to their version of "Christianity." They began a ceaseless campaign of genocide against "heretics," and of scriptural suppression, effectively removing The Essenes and their texts from Western history.

This inexorable reconstruction project guided it's mostly illiterate followers along a "Path to God's Kingdom" controlled by an organized elite. Spiritual seekers were directed to take part in a tailored mythology – a kind of occult hall of mirrors that continues today – The Maya of Religion – full of constructions that conceal and subvert true spiritual discovery, limiting it to a fraction of it's potential. The Church parcels out the benefits of the underlying spiritual wisdom with corrupt or unconscious authority, forcing their adherents to accept the most egregious offenses of material humanity; politics, war, slavery, money-worship, sexual predation and pedophilia. Ironically, from it's own central text the truth comes, to paraphrase: "You shall know the tree by the fruit it bears."

This post-Christmas Tale is the story of the wealthy, corrupt—yet for some, spiritually irreplaceable—Church of Rome; but the recipe for The Maya of Religion described here has been applied many times through the ages, and can be clearly seen in more contemporary examples, in fabricated religious myths and dogma like those found in Scientology, or the anti-Essene versions of Christianity that replace humility with a prideful lust for material "superiority."

It's a testament to the illuminative power of the true light that shines through all that dogma and artifice – that even though it's potential is seriously stifled, the little bit that escapes this vacuum of delusion can still be enough to inspire profound spiritual transformation to take place. Direct inner, "mystical" experience has always provided this solution to the conundrum posed by institutionalized religion.  

The compassion and unconditional Love that gives us a connection to the Divine. Faith without works is dead. Showing up for one another. Releasing the false attachments of material desire. Entering into transcendent union though the means of self-examination and meditation. The silent surrender to the loving Universe, and the power that grows out of it – out of what Mahatma Gandhi called ahimsa – absolute non-violence. The powerhouse of Love to heal the rift between the two – Ego and Spirit, as taught by the Essene Master, Yeshua (...whose true story can only be found in your own heart).

"Yeshua said: If two make peace with each other in this one house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move Away,' and it will move away."

Logion 48, The Gospel of Thomas



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: The Water's Fine - (1)The Maya of Individuality

"Yeshua said: If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Logion 70, The Gospel of Thomas

This profound and timeless lesson by the Gnostic Master Yeshua speaks of ancient spiritual concepts, like The Kingdom of Heaven, The Tao, and Buddhist Karma, and in two little sentences underlines the whole of Modern Psychology as well: Freud, Jung, Adler, Maslow, and more. This is scripture that was left out of the New Testament, and largely purged from history by the Roman church.

For me, it inspires this first of three explorations into the Hindu concept of Maya, a term often defined as "The Illusion of Life," but is closer to delusion – the intellectual and emotional investment people make in various unreal surface "realities" or constructions in order to give their lives definition and purpose. I've heard it compared to living by looking at a map of your surroundings, rather than using your senses to experience them. It's the development of our sixth sense that enables our ability to perceive maya, and is the goal of Buddhism, Jnana Yoga, Gnosis, and Jungian Individuation.

Water has always stood for the mysterious depth of being, the unity of all things, the fluidity of spirit, the profundity of the unconscious. With that in mind, consider the New Testament metaphor of Jesus' "walking on the water," most often thought of literally, as something Jesus could actually do. He could, and so can you.

A Religious Literalist would attribute this ability to the human manifestation of an all powerful God, who can basically do whatever the heck He wants without regard for the physical laws of nature. An Agnostic Scientist, who needs a rational explanation for any magic trick, might suggest that Jesus was a master of quantum reality, and commanded the mechanics necessary to engage a phase transformation of the water on a sub-atomic level, temporarily changing it's physical characteristics to support his weight.

Both of these explanations only serve to separate us from the Divine by making any kind of real identification with the experience impossible. Which way can you realistically use to walk on water? Maybe Yeshua, the "Nazorean," Gnostic teacher had something else in mind.

Consider the water metaphorically standing for the depth of your personal experience; the formative moments, patterns of coping, and genetic predispositions that constitute your psyche, and provide the foundation for "who you are," determining your life actions and beliefs. The effects of those early experiences assert themselves in your conscious mind, often positively, when you remember a life lesson you've learned in the past, and make decisions based on that knowledge. Sometimes you might still behave irrationally, ignoring the lessons of your past and acting out on some destructive impulse, out of habit. You know you're acting irrationally, but the reason you have to do it is rooted in your subconscious mind, the "...that which is within you," in our opening quote by Yeshua.

When we don't know why we make certain life decisions, or harbor certain beliefs, it's time for some healthy self-examination, "If you bring forth that which is within you" – especially if it's manifesting as self-sabotage. If it's a destructive script we're compelled to act out over and over. (People experience this a lot in bad relationships...) Then it's our karma, a place our past actions are bringing us to so we can learn the lesson and move ahead with our lives. In these cases, our Ego forms some unfortunate opinion about how to "protect ourselves," which becomes a kind of survival instinct run amok. Often it's about something we feel we must have, or something we're clinging to. But if it's not Love, let it go. You're not protecting anything. There's nothing to protect. It's more likely, you're doing new damage based on old damage.

Time to dive in! to your conscious past. Jacques Cousteau around your memories, the circumstances and experiences that may have formed this instinctive need to repeat certain actions. Things arise from the depths to help you. Answers may have been staring you in the face all along.

"To dive into these dark waters and stay conscious, you have to take off your individual personality and leave it on the shore." Eknath Easwaran

Now comes the hard part about "walking on the water." Some destructive behaviors arise from deeper down, from your unconscious mind. These are based on experience that hasn't just been repressed subconsciously, but has been fully suppressed, deep in the watery reservoir of your psyche. Ancient fears. Shameful fears. The simplicity of being that you had as a child is stuck in the mud at the bottom by this stuff. You may never be able to fully "bring forth" these deep motivations, but you can become more aware of them. There are ways of bringing them into the light, where they might "save you," rather than stay within and "destroy you."

First, sit in meditation, where you learn to recognize the false internal voice of the neurotic Ego. It's easily recognizable: anything that's judgmental, comparative, or fearful...anything that's not Love. "Bring [that] forth..." You are not that. Disassociate yourself. (I discussed this method in more detail back on 11/11, in "Tales: Through a Glass Darkly.")

Next, realize there are seven billion people here, all going through very similar experiences. You are not so special or so important. Individuality is something of a delusion that your Ego will cling to, even if it destroys you. There's nothing to hide, everyone knows who you are already. They are the same thing.

If you believe it's especially difficult  even inescapable, if it's just "who you are, and that's all there is to it," if you just react, fearfully and unconsciously, then you'll sink into those depths and drown.

"What you do not bring forth will destroy you." In Matthew (14:30), Peter takes a stab at walking on the water, but as soon as his fears take over, he sinks. Guess who saves him? The simplest interpretation of this is look to Christ to save you, but that might lead you to neglect the actions you need to take yourself.

There are lots of creatures who walk on the water all the time. They're insects. They're just being. Their "personal gravity" isn't great enough to break the surface tension of those dark waters, so they can simply skate across the surface, using all that underneath as support. We can do that too, when we lighten our personal gravity and know we're not that special – except for Love. We have nothing to fear, nothing to protect. We never have to be what we used to be.

When we "bring forth that which is within you," we can use all that deep, murky stuff as a foundation for just being what we are truly meant to be, and "What you bring forth will save you." Then you can walk on the water too.

"Water finds it's power by seeking it's lowest point."

Zen saying

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is now available everywhere, but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 17: The Drive to the Next Life...

"The fundamental, simple, and great mystical realization is that by which you identify yourself with consciousness, rather than with the vehicle of consciousness. Your body is a vehicle of consciousness."

Joseph Campbell

Koko just couldn't pass it up any longer, that tiki torch cocktail lounge with it's glorious lacquered bamboo façade, so when Grace needed a ride to the airport to visit her aunt, he volunteered to drive her, knowing the trip home would take him right past the place—past it's flapping torch flames, and red chop suey script sign. The round trip would take him much farther away than he ever could've imagined. He parked her car—the one she loved, the one her father bought her—in the side lot, and ambled into the place as the sun was setting.

"Gee," he told the waitress, whose features are long since forgotten, "I've never had a Mai Tai." "Then let's fix that," she said, smiling. She smiled at the first easy Mai Tai, and easy it was, bright orange hanging garden of fun in an imperial pint glass. The second was still fun too. But the third spelled trouble, and forgetting her face was just the beginning of the bad part. She knew that sideways loss of recognition all too well, working at The Tiki Lounge, there in downtown Glendale. But Koko really had never had a Mai Tai, at least not an official one, and he could've sworn that he didn't feel a thing after the first, or even after the second. He never felt all that much anyway, so the third seemed like a reasonable experiment. He hadn't quite finished it when leaving seemed like a good idea too. The King Kong Club interior looked too flammable to last.

It was an easy drive. Weren't they all? A quick hop home—and just to be on the safe side, there were unexplored back streets that pointed in the right direction, and promised a cop-free ride. After all, it was always smartest to err on the sidestreet of caution's sake.

Now it was dark, and there was a stubborn cassette acting up in his wife's car's tape player; and a funny, winding little suburban street, right where they should all be straight, and a little too much foot on the... BLANGG!! 

The tape broke and sputtered out of it's dashboard slot.

"Pingk... pingk.. .pingk..." went the wrecked car, steam hissing out of the stove-in front end. From where Koko was, near the top of the telephone pole next to the streetlight, you could see everything real easy. Steam poured out and roiled up through the light against the dark sky, hot water running all out on the blacktop. Some other liquid, dark and glittery on the ground. That stuff. Dark dark red, and sticky.

The Celica's front end was really bashed in, but the pole wasn't even crooked! And what was that down there below? Koko wondered...what is that I see hanging half way out the busted window down there? The windshield was busted too, like a tempered glass spider-web target. The steering wheel was whacked into a loopy shape, his motionless arm draped through it. Lights in the neighborhood snapped on, and Koko could hear their approaching voices..."It looks bad... somebody call the..."

There, twenty feet below, with his very badly busted face in, just out of the light, was him. Was me, thought Koko. But he was up here—safe and sound, it seemed—though he couldn't see his hands or body. Perhaps because his body was down there, a bloody broken mess, wearing a red drenched punk t-shirt and black jeans.

Koko stayed for a minute, silently hovering up high, next to the streetlight. It had been long enough now, until he realized that that wasn't him anymore. And he wasn't alone—no, there was somebody safe just behind him, just out of sight, and they spoke to him but not so's anyone else could hear. They told him it was time to go, and so he reluctantly moved along, shepherded into the warm grey cotton night. From then on, he forgot, with only washed-out flashes coming back years later. A piece of effervescence. A seat in a pastoral place. An inventory of some kind...

Koko came to, briefly, in another ambulance, being taken to the hospital where the University had their plastic surgery residency. Then he slipped back to that other place, where he wasn't him anymore, and stayed there for "twenty hours" or so. The girl had long gone back to waitress again at The Tiki Lounge by the time he finally woke up, for better or worse. He had a little different face. He had a whole different life, beyond this one...it seemed. Alongside of it, perhaps. It's funny, he thought, to die—to know how easy it is. Like walking into another room. 

But it was only a personal knowing that would play a part in changing him many years later, when he finally realized that he couldn't just live this body's life anymore.

And as for Grace, well she cried of course, for Koko and his face, and for her car. But from that point on, they never discussed it again. They would be apart for many years by the time he really awoke from the impact of that day, and came back to life.

"If an earthquake opens the prison walls, do you think an escaping prisoner will complain of the damage done to the stone and marble work?"

Rumi

Read about this and 2 more NDEs in the new book: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide can be pre-ordered online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

"Philosophy is really homesickness." Novalis

Mr. Floppy helps Faith escape the material, for a little while...

"The true individual Self should be distinguished from it's distorted reflection, the ego. The ego, the little self, which regards itself from others and the world, is a physical, vital and mental formation; it belongs to the transitory personality and dissolves with it." P. B. Saint-Hilaire

"When the overmind descends, the predominance of the centralising ego-sense is entirely subordinated, lost in largeness and finally abolished; a wide cosmic perception and feeling of a boundless universal self and movement replaces it...In this boundless largeness, not only the separate ego but all sense of individuality...may ...disappear...and this sense of the delight...is not confined to the person or the body but can be felt at all points in an unlimited consciousness of unity which pervades everything." Sri Aurobindo

For many, particularly those whom life has broken open to the Divine, there's an ennui, a sadness to being in this form that I can only chalk up to the Ego's insistence that we are separate from each other, and all other forms of life on this planet, when it clearly is not the case. It's a lot of work, fighting against those urges to constantly compare and judge, the need to claim some kind of dominance of individuality - like a mad explorer sticking their flag into the shore, and proclaiming the whole expanse of some vast unknown continent in the name of their personal country.

The alternative that's presented to us, a graceful middle-ground where we hear the prideful, cajoling voice of the Ego, but pay it no mind, allows us to easily turn that sentimental coin to it's other side, which though equally sentimental, is purely joyful, even in the "sad" parts. A freedom that can't come from being attached to the ever-changing, only to the ever-unchanging.


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!