Unhitching "I Am" From Whatever Comes Next

I am in a prison of my own design...

Material life is like a vacuum, especially if it comes with lots of attachments. It's easy to get caught up in the common definitions and necessary demands of our lives and completely overlook the truly essential part of it – the part that's always there and never really changes. Our eternal selves need recognition too, you know.

Probably the easiest way to pick out what's part of our eternal self and what isn't, is simply to look at what parts of our lives are always changing and what parts aren't. My hair, and the shape of my face and my body keep changing (dammit). The nature and circumstances of my work life do too, and really always have. My appointments and emergencies come and go; my bills pile up, and then go away (and then come back). In fact, all of the temporary aspects of my life, the externals, have always been continuously changing, even when they haven't appeared to. Trying to control or hang on to these parts of life that change is what sucks you in.

You'll hear Buddhists talking about "attachments," and "selfish cravings," and it can sound a little holier-than-thou, or even kind of cold, like: I am detaching from that, because I don't like it...or like: I am so "spiritual" that I pretend not to want nice things. Sometimes you're perfectly right to wish things to stay the same, like when you say: I am perfectly right to like things just the way they are. While these attachments can lead us away from happiness, the secret to finding a little serene self-realization is right there in the structure of every one of those statements.

It may be obvious that grammar is not my strongest suit, but even my amateur analysis of sentence structure in this case might help open the window up to a wider, more carefree view of Life. Ramana Maharshi, a famous Indian swami, put his finger right on it when he said simply (and I paraphrase): The important part of "I am this or that" is the "I Am" part – it's the "this or that" that is always the problem.

With that helpful foot up from Swami Maharshi I'd like to point out the simple (but very profound) distinction between the start of those statements we make about ourselves – "I am" – and the finish – "this or that" – and what an easy way it is to separate the transitory part that causes a lot of the problems in our lives from the eternal part that's truly essential to our sense of wholeness and happiness. 

"I am hungry; I am an American; I am still waiting to get paid for that job; I am unhappy with my landlord; I am smarter than they are; I am detaching from that; I am very spiritual." What changes and what doesn't in all of those statements? You'll notice the second part, "this or that," is what always changes, or can always change. The first part, "I Am" always stays the same, and just that simply, there's your connection to the eternal.

"What never changes is what is real"    
                   Nisargadatta Maharaj

That "I Am" that never changes is what we all share, the common ground we all spring from and stand upon. It's how we are all the same, the way we can always identify with each other – especially with people who could use a little help, or with difficult people who need understanding. That I Am isn't just the start of our shared human experience, it's the ground of it – a little grammatical door to the actual Source of all this beauty and apparent craziness we all swim in everyday. 

It can not only compassionately connect us to each other, but to all of nature and the universe – all the plants and  animals;  the oceans and the earth – even the stars. It can realistically inform our relationships to one another and to our planet, and help direct a true sense of responsibility for the behaviors we choose and the actions we take. No small trick for such a little bit of grammar, right?

"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, 77 

On a personal level, identifying primarily with "I Am"  can really make our lives a lot easier and more comfortable, especially when you consider what that second half lets us in for. Not only do we usually start separating ourselves from one another when we say "I am this or that," we also open the door to our regrets, fantasies, and sense of self-entitlement: I was our Homecoming Queen; I was the first to use that technique; I am planning on retiring to Bermuda; I am more deserving of that promotion than anyone else.

When we are living in the past (regrets) or in the future (expectations), we're not grounded in the present, where everything actually manifests, including our wholeness and happiness. "I Am" immediately reconnects us to the truthful, important stuff in Life, and appropriately disconnects us from the unnecessary desires, fears, fantasies, conceits, and the like; that emotional quicksand our egos create – our troublesome attachments to the vacuum of the material, so to speak.

Here are a couple things the "I Am" is telling me always, as well as in this very moment: I am a very lucky guy, and, I am going on long enough about this...and that is about to change right now.

 How to Survive Life (and Death), is available from Conari Press, or at all major booksellers (but get it from your local bookshop...)

Cheers&Blessings!    

Inspiring Commercial Creativity: Blue Bears, Branding, and Intuitive Intelligence

Over all the years now that I've been entering into "The Creative Process" as a means of earning a living, I've had plenty of chances to consider the hows and whys of it all. All my crazy experiences – from drawing portraits of thoroughbreds as a teenager, to providing illustrations and designs for hundreds of media outlets, to creating animations for advertising and network television – have led me to some slightly esoteric, but I believe pretty accurate conclusions that I'd like to share with you, and that I hope will help you understand your own relationship to the creative process.

Out of all the creative solutions I've stumbled across in my day, this one thing has become pretty clear to me:  The most meaningful, powerful, and effective ideas aren't always the result of brain power, or an ability to collaborate effectively. They don't come from rounding up a bunch of options and cutting out everything but the "best." They aren't built from the raw materials of project criteria and market goals – forced, fabricated, fashioned, hashed-out, or in any way massaged or mentally manipulated into "success." Don't get me wrong, a lot of typically (and many regrettably) useful solutions perhaps are. 

Usually the most focused, most profoundly effective ideas simply arise from a mysterious, and rather magical (but very reliable) source. Since they are not the result of any willful intellectual process, more often than not they are essentially dreamt up – the product of a kind of personal, immediately shareable vision.

The more you've taken part in this process, the more likely it is that you can identify with the mysterious leap that I'm trying to describe, but then where does that clear, nearly perfect idea come from – that idea you only could have dreamt of finding and never induced through brain power alone? This query should evoke a little mysticism and magic, as I believe it does. In an effort to locate it's source, let's try to put the whole curious process into a greater, even more "scientific" context for a minute, starting at the very beginning:

We are all sitting on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system in a tiny galaxy in the vast, unimaginable infinity of "outer space." Infinite numbers of stars, planets, galaxies, and probably universes too are constantly being created, coming into being, atrophying, and disappearing within a scale of existence that can only be described as timelessly eternal, and more to our point, beyond imagination. Somewhere within that overwhelming picture, we can begin to form a sense of The Creative Force – the essential field of everything becoming.

In Quantum Physics, the principles of non-locality and entanglement describe just such an active, invisible field in which everything is connected – an aquifer of innate intelligence at a sub-atomic level, in the realm of an equally infinite "inner space." That might all seem overly magical and unlikely to boot, except for the fact that the functions of our modern technology very reliably depend on those, and other crazy realities revealed by our most practical form of physics.  

On a more personal physiological level, medical science continuously defines and redefines the character of our brains – our thinking organs – in a sense as an organic collector and conduit of different, extra-ordinarily elaborate capacities, driven by basic instincts, and fed from a vast well of conscious and unconscious intelligence that originates from without, and within.

 On the left side of our brain we have our serial processor, constantly taking inventory, comparing and categorizing, scheduling, ordering, and manipulating; experiencing the demands of time and impending necessity. On the right side, we have our parallel processor, experiencing the holistic moment, the connection of everything to everything; the empathic bridge from the sensory to the eternal.

And beneath it all, on any scale and in every function, the power of creation flows along like a mighty river, animating, enlivening, and energizing everything from the greatest cosmological process to the smallest personal decision. Naturally it isn't a river that we can personally command in any way – it's one we may be briefly swept away by, or, for our purposes, one we may only hope to temporarily channel. And how do we go about that? How do we tap into all of that intuitive, archetypal intelligence? How can we reliably access our own artistic common sense? 

It's no surprise that in the world of commercial creativity, over-thinking a problem usually is the problem, so recognizing the difference between an intuitively inspired solution that arises from that mysterious source, and the willful, intellectual one that we force into existence is critical. Is it that the first thing that comes to mind is the best solution, as it so often appears to be – an instinctive stroke of brilliance? The best evidence in my experience (before collaborative comparisons are made), is that the first inspired thought that simply arises usually is the best solution. The challenge is then either to quickly go with it "as-is," or to protect and preserve it throughout the process of development.

There doesn't seem to be a perfect situation for allowing the intuitive to surface, it comes from a set of inner conditions – not outer ones, and so it travels with you through your life – from job to job, and place to place. The only way to encourage it is to try to recreate the circumstances that have best allowed that creative flow in the past, like placing a radio in the window sill where it can receive the strongest signal. Working in familiar, comfortable surroundings and relationships, at the right time of day, or with your preferred partner, privacy, music, or cup of tea. 

Focused time is absolutely essential – you simply can't be multi-tasking and expect any clear connection to take place. Texting, web-surfing, watching YouTube, making reservations, in short, worrying about anything else simply won't do it. Even our least encumbered mental processes already create plenty of obstacles without adding more. You need clear space – free of mental interference – to clearly receive intuitive inspiration. This is true whether you are formulating the most complex concept, or writing or drawing a single line well.

Probably the most effective means for encouraging and allowing your intuitive connection comes through meditation, which shares two very important goals with creative endeavor, namely: 

1. The observation and discernment of the quality and necessity of our thoughts; and 

2. The opening of the most direct connection possible with that mysterious wellspring of all creation (so you may listen to your client, and then listen to the universe). 

Either meditating as a practice, or folding elements of meditative practice into your creative process will open your channel for receiving specific answers like nothing else. Setting aside the demands of serial (left brain) thinking, and connecting with your (right brain) intuitive source becomes less of an applied second nature, and simply a more natural way to begin the process. Asking the universe for help is a pretty direct way to start things off  – after all, everything has come from that divine source anyway, and so realistically, any source that's responsible for the entire universe shouldn't have much trouble helping with our little songs or sayings, buildings, pictures, or other ephemeral, creative projects.  

Because of the undeniably profound nature of that source, it's actually easy for anyone to recognize a truly inspired idea – the clear, intuitive solution just has a special presence — it sings, in a way that strikes a deeper note. There's a magic to the moment that it comes into being, and everyone that witnesses it can recognize it, and could embrace it immediately, and hold on to it – if they could only keep their mind out of the way. 

The obstacles to intuitive inspiration in a commercial setting are usually personal and institutional, coming about as a result of company directions, project associations, egos, and personal issues. Quick, direct, intuitive solutions often simply are not part of a business strategy. It's (usually mistakenly) believed that only something more willfully fashioned will do, or some bosses or coworkers may refuse to recognize an intuitive inspiration that isn't their own. The spontaneous appearance of an inspired idea can challenge the egocentric thinking that typically requires (subconsciously or not) some degree of self enhancement, or false sense of control. It can be tricky politics, keeping a great idea alive.

When forces push back against an inspiration, you may need to take up the issue and defend it (though it will usually do that for itself), but you should never fight over it. Easy come, easy go. The creative source is constantly showing it's own way. Entering into a collaborative give-and-take may be the most fluid path to a reasonable (though perhaps less inspired) solution...and fluidity is a good metaphor for the over-arching inspiration empowering the creative process. It's like going downstream, being carried on a secure and powerful current and allowing solutions to simply arise. A dissolving of one's "ego-self" into the intuitive flow is necessary for an inspired idea to take it's proper shape.

On the teamwork side of the equation, when you suddenly see someone else channeling an intuitively inspired solution get out of their way and let 'em go – or better yet, help them bring it into reality as well as you possibly can. That kind of constructive yielding supports the power of the perfect idea. Allowing and encouraging intuitive inspiration will always leads to the best solution you'll ever get, and the highest quality results are often impossible without serious ego deflation taking place by one participant or another.

But it's a problem too that capitulation and compromise of an intuitively inspired idea will often knock a project right off it's foundations. It can destroy a client's (or teammate's) faith in your direction, and energize a painfully unconscious cycle of unnecessary reconceptualization and endless revision. In the clear light of intuitive intelligence, only an original vision will serve as the catalyst for the best solution of the creative problem it addresses. There really is no such thing as "re-visions" when one of these idea vacuums suddenly forms – almost instantly, the path to any solution becomes longer, more complicated and less rewarding. 

One sad sensation I've witnessed repeated over and over through my career has been the sense of loss at someone having had an intuitively creative solution compromised or abandoned. The knowledge that for awhile we had it! – and then egos and personalities prevented it from ever seeing the light of day. But the really great thing about working intuitively in collaborative efforts is that even if an inspiration is compromised, there is plenty more where that came form. In commercial efforts, as well as in all of life, the source of creative inspiration is infinitely abundant, adaptable, and forgiving. If you continue to allow it to arise, it will continue to show the way to a fresh and newly energizing solution.

Realizing that we are not completely in charge of the mostly uncontrollable collision involved in any creative production can help a lot too. It's by the grace of the Creative Gods, so to speak, that we're provided the opportunity to play a part in bringing something special to light as a means of making a living – that alone can provide enough of a purpose for a journeyman artist. We can simply show up, do our best, and leave the results to our Creative Gods (so to speak).

This leads to the bigger picture that recognizing and developing our creative, intuitive channel can give us, as we find the source of our best ideas is (not coincidentally) also the best source of our moral and ethical direction. When we start consciously opening our contact to that creative source, our consciousness expands, and we find ourselves in touch with more and more of that wonderful "common sense," and the ease and direction it can bring into our lives. Commercial projects and activities that were formally fought for – or over – become more difficult to live with, as our mystic creative channel directs us away from commercial ambition and towards serving our deeper needs.

...And deep is where those sweetest creative solutions live, and so they touch a deep and satisfying note within everyone. They unify and energize the entirety of a project, as well as the attitudes of it's participants – and it's at this deeper level that they carry the most commercial effectiveness: at that profound level of branding and brand association. Intrinsically, we all know what serves our real needs in the best, most commonly beneficial way, and so we identify with, and want to (even subconsciously) associate our selves to those inner essential shared values.

Gratitude, generosity of spirit, humility, and joyful participation work so well in every aspect of Life, that naturally they'll help in the largely inconsequential problems that the world of commercial creativity presents; after all, in the end, none of it is of any particular importance whatsoever, except for how we go about it, and whether or not we can bring that shared, intuitive understanding to life through our shared efforts. The need to open yourself up, get out of inspirations way, have a conversation, and follow the flow.

At last, at the risk of seeming overly subjective, I'll resort to an example that's specific to my commercial animation industry, just for the sake of making a point. Here it is: 

Would you rather hang around with Geico Auto Insurance's petulant, EastEnd salamander, or would you prefer spending the day with Charmin Toilet Paper's silent, cozy, big blue bear? Which character and direction suggests a comfortable, intuitively inspired creation, the quality of their product, and a sensation of shared benevolent purpose and meaning? ...and there's your brand. 

I'm not sure what you think, or better yet, feel about it...but it makes me wonder – just where do big blue bears come from, anyways? 

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! 

The James Hillman Tribute: To a Life of Passionate Participation

            Saturday, May 4th 2013 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, there was a tribute to my late uncle (by marriage) James Hillman, the preeminent Jungian psychologist and philosopher, presented by his wife Margot McLean. For a man of James' academic stature, you might expect a gathering of global dignitaries and the cream of Higher Education, and there you would not have been disappointed. The surprise came not from who was or wasn't there, but rather from what the participants brought to the occasion. 

There were no long-winded inventories of James' accomplishments and awards. Scant mention of his many literary successes, the countless people he had helped through his patient therapeutic practice, or the legions of students he had educated. It wasn't even mentioned that he had served as the Director of the Jung Institute, and that his re-imaginings of Dr. Jung's ideas revolutionized psychology, injected new life into the archetypal mission of the modern gnostic, and reanimated the mystical dance around academia that Dr. Jung himself had struggled with his whole career – these facts were only briefly touched upon. 

Instead, during the course of the afternoon, the intellectual feats and rigorous excursions into the human psyche placed second to Uncle Jimmy's demonstrated love of a great joke well told, and his late-in-life devotion to tap dancing – two pursuits possessing the syncopation and joy that arises from the expression of pure being, from a rhythmic persistent and passionate participation in Life. Kla-tappity, tappity, tappity, tap tap! and a beautiful punchline – there it is!  And apparently no one, not even the most elevated academician in attendance, had shown up with anything else in mind other than simply getting right down to the heart of the matter.  

Along the way we were given that insight, so precious in any human story, into a childhood and young life, into the struggles and trauma and family dynamics that fashioned the spirit of a man who would spend his life delving into the mysteries of the human psyche; and leaving us to wonder, did he ever understand his own? Can any of us truly know ourselves? What lies at the heart of those shifting, elusive personal motivations that seem to define each of us outwardly?

Our friends, our families, our paths are hewn out of the "stuff that dreams are made of," karmatic partnerships and forgotten agreements – a program for personal evolution hashed out in a dimension that can only be tentatively experienced from this perspective of life.
  

The testimony, pentimento, and presence of every person there revealed the truth beneath our shared surface in a way that Uncle James, or any other philosopher – or even poet – can only hope to approximate with words. That truth held within the simplest truth of being:  This is all miraculous, and we are all miracles.  Friendship, laughter, and unexpected tap dancing stole the show from academic reason, and instead induced a sense of wonder at the real power that one man's spirit could carry.

Naturally, in a group with the sensibilities you'd expect to come together and celebrate one of the great explorers of the soul, most everyone there was pretty much on the same page. It's a page found fairly deep inside all of our own books, amongst one of many dog-eared pages that we have all read and reread, written and re-written over and over, hoping to get to that heart of the matter ourselves.

But there it was, within that moment together, unmistakably illuminated by the light shining from one elemental man's life:  Beneath the surface of everyone present, from the possessors of all the keys to those who've clearly had to jump out a couple back windows; from the accomplished to the unknown to the silly rich and noble poor – the shiny, the ancient, the aloof and outgoing; under our outfits and hair-dos and don'ts and eyeglasses and shoes, there was what Uncle Jimmy was writing about, what he'd been tap dancing on top of through all those chapters and passages –

When we peel away the skin that forms around this life, that seems to contain and define it and ourselves, we find our greater self – that expansive well we all spring from together. There is the scintillating, effervescent, joyful field of being whose name we come closest to when we call it Love. Everyone everywhere knows it intuitively, but only gets to occupy it on rare occasion. Everyone there knew it and felt it too. This was one such occasion.

A personal hero of mine, Coleman Barks, the poet and translator of the great Sufi poet Rumi, was there, among the many others whose lives are to be celebrated as well. I introduced myself to him, to thank him for the gifts I'd received from his work, at once he said "pull up a chair,"  and immediately it became clear that here was a man whose heart had been permanently pried wide open by the essence of the timeless poetry that he'd been channeling for years.

Mr. Barks and Rumi prove that there are words that can express this invisible thing we share, and I was reminded of a piece of Rumi from his book Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion that describes (with lotus-like architecture similar to that found in the Upanishads) a room within the heart with a window from which one can actually behold The Divine. It is available to all of us, the one requirement being that you have to find your way into that room.

Occupying that precious address requires a persistence and passion great enough to realize the eternal self in all things; a willingness to participate in the constant upheaval and revelation that comes about by living a life worth living, and letting go of it with the kind of grace that Uncle James had. The spirit of all the day's presenters completed the portrait of a man who helps us kick in the door to that room, when we need to; when only breaking in allows us to discover the heart of the matter. Acquiring that view is an inside job indeed.

At the gathering afterwards, I realized that at least for that one moment in our earthly lives, we were all in that room together. It is a very nice view to have shared with such a nice group of people. Thank you James, and thank you Margot, for opening the window for us to look through. 

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

Codename: Kids Next Door – More 2x4 Technology on Wheels

For all you junkyard junkies, here are a few of the less often seen rolling 2x4 vehicles employed by numbahs one through five...the colors have been adjusted to jive with the junkyard Leonardo design specs I originally had in mind...

The Selectivity of Religious Myth and the Resurrection of the Easter Bunny

At the time of the earliest stirrings of the philosophy that was to become Christianity there were numerous centers of nascent world religion, from the Gandhara region of India thru Asia Minor, Persia, and Greece, to Alexandria and Jerusalem – and other spots within and beyond the Roman Empire and the rest of the known, civilized world. To literate religious academics of the early Christian era, all of this knowledge was available. Christianity, like all religions, was not born in a vacuum.

You'll notice in the retellings of the Passion Play that Christians celebrate each Spring, as well as throughout the New Testament, there are plenty of references to the Pharisee sect of Hebraism, the proletariat and middle-class Jews of the time. The Sadducees, the bourgeois, aristocratic sect get very little airtime comparatively – despite making up most of the temple priesthood. Edited out of the story completely are the Essenes, which were not actually a single sect but instead a collection of differing gnostic beliefs grouped together generically.

Beyond their numbers, which were significant throughout the middle east at the time, the Essenes were the original Christians, eschewing sacrifice and materiality, living simple lives based in practices of healing and service. They were dedicated to cleanliness, to communal, all-inclusive dining, to the practices of foot washing, vegetarianism, and holistic herbal healing. Their "inns" and white robes were the inspiration for our present-day hostels and hospitals, and doctors' white coats. It's likely that the Jesus of mainstream Christianity was drawn from this model. 

Most sects labeled "Essene" fully embraced a more personal, inward, mystical path to the realization of a divine simplicity, and so were the foundation of the esoteric forms of Gnosticism and Kabbalistic practice. In some groups, Buddhism was very influential, and in fact "Theraputae" Essenism was likely one in the same as the Buddhist community located near Lake mareotis, outside of Alexandria (from Theraputta, sanskrit meaning "from the old ones"). Buddhism was alive throughout the region for hundreds of years prior to Christian mythology, and it's very important to note that the Buddha sat in the wilderness alone and was tempted by the devil, walked on water, fed the multitudes from a single basket, and drank at the well of an outsider (and more) 500 years before the Christ story came about.

It's very likely that the teacher Yeshua, whose philosophy – resurrected in the  discovery of very early pre-canonical scripture like The Gospel of Thomas – serves as the basis for the teachings of the Jesus of the canonical, Roman gospels.

The selectivity of Christian myth runs roughshod over much of what is actually known – as is the case with most inventions of organized religion. This is not limited only to religion, the same is true for organized historical dogma, organized cultural dogma, and organized social dogma. In a contemporary American context, for example, we have the assertion that Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union, or that John Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin; both nascent myths that aren't based in fact, but still canonized as historical truth by many. 

Likewise, American frontier identity was actually rooted in the genocide of the indigenous Americans, whose culture was, so to speak, crucified by "Rome." The positivity and popularity of much of contemporary American culture is based on the transcendent adaptations of African people held in slavery for hundreds of years. The implications of these truths are truly biblical, but not in the self-enhancing way traditional white male American historians would have us remember it.

So the suggestion that the Christian Passion Play is mythic, and was created in the centuries following the decline of Rome to serve political purposes by commandeering an authentically mystical path actually makes much more sense than the assumption of the canonical gospels as historical fact. The first big tip-off is the fact that the eventual authors of those gospels weren't actually named Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John – those were pseudonyms of journeymen writers of their day. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are you better duck.

More recently there are the examples of Mormonism, whose co-creator Joseph Smith is a proven plagiarist, philanderer, arsonist, and possibly worse – but not at all proven to be a prophetic witness to an early ancient American Judaic civilization; Scientology, whose inventor was unquestionably a hard-drinking, womanizing, egomaniacal science fiction writer – but highly questionable as an enlightened channel of godlike alien entities; and, going back a little further, Islam, the transcendent, mystical heart of which is regularly betrayed by random acts of violence. 

Sadly for true believers, the historical references to the actual existence of the Jesus of the canons is still limited to the scant testimonies of Pliny, Tacitus, and Flavius Josephus, whose less-than-second-hand accounts came well after the fact, and were subject to powerful political and cultural influence, and countless subsequent rewritings. The most compelling testimony of Josephus has been known to be a forgery for a long time now, while Judeo-Roman historians contemporary to the times, like Philo, never mention the man or events, despite having every reason to. Josephus, in all his authenticated accounts in fact, mentions at least twenty different people named Jesus.

Then what should we really be resurrecting today? If the religious establishment now neatly sequesters the whole of the ancient Essene world into the austere walls of the community at Qumran, and the timeless teachings of philosophers like Gautama and Yeshua are respectively redefined as platitudes and tragic morality plays, rather than as the radically effective calls to action they truly are, then clearly what requires resurrecting is the spirit of divinely shared consciousness that Aldous Huxley called the "Perennial Philosophy." 

"The All came forth from me and the All came into me. Split the wood, and I am there. Turn over the stone, and there you will find me."

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 77  

It's forgivable human nature to transmute certain realities into conveniently avoidable practices, or for people suffering from the fearful manifestations of low self worth, greed, and delusional self-centeredness to act out in our shrinking world, but what we really need is to rebirth the elemental compassionate unity, the eternal springtime of human spiritual evolution alive in each Easter every day, if possible. That is the message continuously carried by the spirit of Yeshua (not to mention the Buddha, Krishna, Gandhi, et al).

We can all "sit in the wilderness" – take the inward path to realization of our shared being; "walk on water" – rise above and make foundational our psychic afflictions;  "feed the multitudes" – know that we have plenty with what we always have;  and "share water from the well" – understand the eternal that unifies us, regardless of our outward labels. The Jesus of the Christian Easter is purely a symbol for the real power for tranformation each of us carries within – all the time, not just in the Spring.

"Whoever seeks will find; whoever knocks from inside, it will open to them."

"When you bring forth that within you, then that will save you."

"What you are waiting for has already come, but you do not see it."

"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, 94, 70, 51, 108

Since I believe that we all only die to this world, and so resurrection is a simple, personal realization that we will all get to experience, is it possible that the spirit of the Easter Bunny could actually be a better shepherd? The brand we want to revive each Spring? Could that be a better metaphor than the image of a good man suffering – the gentle lapine, the playful, prolific, vegan creature of the woods and meadows? Could a bunny be smart and wise enough to easily share that level of consciousness? For the answer to these, and possibly other questions, I invite you to watch this video:

 http://www.dogwork.com/buhr9

Happy Easter 

Cheers & Blessings!

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!

Groundhog Day: Doing it Over and Over, Until We Get it Right

In the great Harold Ramis film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a self-centered, materialistic egomaniac who must relive a single day over and over until he finally learns how to do it right. Sound familiar? He (like all of us) must pass through one difficult doorway after another on our path of spiritual evolution, often kicking and screaming all the way.

The doors he's forced through in the course of his eternal day are generally  forms of surrender and action: realization of powerlessness (the piercing of denial);  the destruction of the egoic self, and detachment from attraction of the sensory self (the "dark night of the soul"); service without expectation for rewards, and the realization of true humility (absolute acceptance and tolerance); then the recognition of the eternal in everyone and everything (enlightenment). After passing through these spiritual stages, he finds Love.

In the film our anti-hero Phil is forced to confront the inconvenient truth that the world doesn't revolve around each of us. Becoming aware that I am personally not all that important or powerful is tough, especially when I matter so very much to myself... Doesn't that person on the subway know that I'm trying to get somewhere? Why can't that fellow employee see that my plan is superior? And just why don't I get what I logically deserve (when less deserving people do)? Of course I am getting just that, all the time.

Each day, Phil repeats the same aggravating mistakes, failing to recognize the patterns imposed on him by his self-centeredness. His rudeness, his arrogance, his impulsiveness, his entitlement. (Unfortunately, that sounds familiar too.)

"The mind deludes him, binding him with the bonds of the body, the sensory self, and the ego. It creates in him the sense of "I" and "mine." It makes him wander endlessly among the fruits of the actions it has caused."

Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination

Phil has to come to terms with the harsh truth that he's subject to the same world that all of us must endure, and hopefully transcend. (Don't they know who I think I am?) The failure to find any relief in sensory gratification, and the shattering of his egoic self-importance finally leads him to despair, helplessness, and a profound depression that results in a spree of suicidal self-destruction...but still he wakes up to this life again.

"The ego's intelligence is only a pale reflection of pure consciousness that robs us of our true nature of joy. By identifying ourselves with our ego, we fall into this world's repetitive struggle of birth, discomfort, and death."

Shankara

Once Phil realizes that there's no escape from the difficulties of this world available from outside of ourselves, he begins to gain access to his intuitive intelligence, recognizing that the answers really lie in his own actions. First, he finds that whatever he wants to accomplish, he can accomplish, if he's willing to lead a simply principled life, accept the position of being a humble beginner, focus, and do his best.  He learns how to play the piano, only for the joy of the effort, the joy of living musically, and the joy it brings to others.

"When you make the two into One, you will be a Son of Man; and when you say: Mountain, move!  It will move."

The Gospel of Thomas, 106

Then, intuitively, instinctively he begins to help others. Every [eternal] day, the same people (everybody) need his help, and from his acceptance of humility comes the willingness to be of service, with no regard for reward. This is the transcendence of human potential. This is the real impulse for spiritual evolution, for by taking these actions, his great transformation begins as he comes into alignment with the real nature of consciousness, which is the joy of being. He comes ever closer to everyone's goal – the realization of Love in our lives (as our lives).

"He who gives up action falls. He who gives up only the reward, rises."

Mahatma Gandhi, from Introduction to The Bhagavad Gita

As he loses himself in humility and service, he comes to recognize the eternal nature of his true self – everyone, and everything. He learns to live by the simple principles that always put the wind at our backs on the path to spiritual evolution, namely: Honesty, Humility, Compassion, Activity, Generosity of Spirit, and Patience. Only then can he become truly effective, he truly contributes, he finds serenity, family, and Love.

It's funny (it's a very funny movie), but even though the film only lasts a couple hours, we never know exactly how many days Phil lives over and over – dozens, hundreds, millions? As is the case with all our fractal futures, we may never know how many times this single organism we call humanity has lived, and will live this cycle of creation and destruction out on our way to finding our true potential; but like Phil, we all can "make the road home, be home."     

Everyday when we wake up, we either see our shadow, or we don't.

Humbling Experiences and the Freedom of "Being Nobody"

Despite their shared etymology, there's a big difference between humility and humiliation. Humiliation is a condition experienced by a damaged ego, humility is a precursor of transcendent growth. Recently, Nature (in the form of a hurricane) humbled us here in New York City, but the surge that might sweep away everything of apparent value just serves to shine the jewel of the human spirit.

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

Zen saying

 In the wake of the great storm so much has been lost that recovery might seem hopeless and impossible, but as that destructive wave strips the coast of every boardwalk and building, it's evolutionary erosion reveals the heart of transformation that is:  Having "nothing."  Being "nothing."

No one is much, really...yet everyone is everything, really. We're important to ourselves and to each each other because we are each other. I feel sorry for those who suffer, and although it may not seem like much consolation if you are one of them (and as silly and insensitive as it may sound), this is the moment that you can grab ahold of your bliss without anything getting in the way.

Everyone can look back over those experiences when Life humbled you in some unimaginable way and notice that immediately in the wake of that destruction there was a peace and simplicity – when being "tore up from the floor up" revealed the truly humble, sacred ground where the seeds of your life's greatest transmutations were planted. 

We've been told this, over and over, through the whole of "wisdom scripture" that there's a special place of growth and realization reserved by Creation for those who have been "broken open" to the potential of The Divine. It's a particularly easy landscape to see then because there's so little left to block your view. What tends to be right in front of you is what unconditional Love makes constantly available – there are people there to help. The slate is cleared for one to realize what's important in life. Morning always follows the Dark Night of the Soul.

Sure, a nice house is nice to have, and actually not any more impossible to replace than it ever was to get. A million bucks is good to have, but if it was in cash under your bed, it might have been swept out to sea too. If you have great material wealth, you're defined by it; your efforts are divided by the need to manage it. If you're famous, you have to work at odds to protect your privacy, and to promote your own fame – to "re-up" the very ego that kicks you when you're down, as you will be again at some point. The hurricane is coming for all of us at one time or another.

There's a lot more to this life than what meets the eye, the mouth, the hands, the body, the intellect and ambitions. We're working towards something largely unknown but widely suspected, and more and more widely understood as these lives and life lessons enlarge our collective consciousness.

"Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Yeshua, The Gospel of Thomas, 54

Then it helps to recognize that fear as something of a friend; a necessary passage you'll survive. In fact, as counterintuitive as it seems, it may be there to help. Loss of possessions becomes the opening for for even greater acquisitions of previously unimaginable fulfillment. After all, what else is there to lose? You're alive – reunited with the truest, simplest foundation of our being.   

"Water flows continually into the ocean, but the ocean is never disturbed: Desire flows into the mind of the seer, but he is never disturbed. The seer knows the peace that becomes clear when desire is forgotten. He lives without expectations and selfish needs: Free from ego, free from pride.

Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita 2:70-71

When our will is squashed by circumstances beyond our control, this level of humility is forced upon us; but really it's a gift, a tool – an esoteric mechanism that we can employ – a "reset button" that's guaranteed to make life much easier, more enjoyable, and more meaningful in any and every moment. It's the true touchstone to Grace that's available anytime we release our material demands and desires, and become willing to treat ourselves to the possibillities that exist when everything of "value" has been swept away by the storm of a lifetime.

If we can get in touch with that real humility any time that life seems hardest (I AM nothing without You), then just visiting that purest, most elemental ground of being is always guaranteed to turn everything around.

As someone who has even "lost their life," I can testify that it may be the only way to find a better one.

That is how we start to become every life and every day – as "nothing"...and as "nobody." 

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