Sometimes We Think You Like Your Cat More Than Us...?

When I was the Center Coordinator at a meditation center in Chicago, I had the great pleasure of the companionship of a little black kitty named Nina, Spanish for little girl.  Which she was.  She was small and sweet and shy and mostly only interested in my company.  And I was happy to provide the very best life I could for her in a good kitty way.

And one day a student at the Center said, "sometimes I think you like your cat more than us."  To which I replied, "only sometimes?"  This is apparently not the spiritually masterful response that was expected, but I think it was one of truest things I ever said.

And what is spiritually masterful if not reflecting truth in your speech.  I could have talked about the dignity of the soul or respect or universal love, but I do tend to enjoy the silent and undemanding presence of kitties over the requirements of human beings.

I have great love for many people, and lots of like for many, many more, and deep concern about and sympathy for even more than that.  But I love that kitties never need to know how my day was, or how I slept, or where our relationship stands, or what my plans are.  Their immediacy of focus is such a respite from our modern need to over-think and over-do.

I love also that they are unfiltered.  A kitty will never say one thing and mean another, never pretend that they like you petting their head when they don't.  I admire any living creature with the courage to live without compromise. 

Back Off, Dude

Reading a local community paper the other day, and an Op-Ed piece was berating its readers for someone outside the community doing what they thought someone within the community should have been done.  I thought a little appreciation for someone doing this thing at all seemed the right response.

Y'know how much we are all doing, all the time.  And you think it's a shame we're not doing more?  Seriously. We are expected to be smart about finances, health, investments, work, insurance, automotive concerns, fashion, home repairs, technology, child care, self improvement, etc., and are encouraged every day by all sorts of experts to take ownership of and responsibility for all of these things.  As if somehow simply tending to everyday concerns doesn't already fill our time to overflowing.

I watched Jodhaa Akbar, a movie about the great Mogul King Akbar, set in the 1500s in India.  And I loved the movie for so many reasons, but most of all because it reminded me of a time when art and music and dance elevated everyday life.  Now they are what you see in performances or recitals or in galleries, but once upon a time, you sang while you worked, and communities danced together, and holidays weren't just the 24 hours in which you crammed all your travel and pleasure.

So, back off op-ed dude.  Stop pushing people to do and be even more, when we don't have the time or resources to elevate our own lives, to make who we are and how we live into works of art. 

What Else Could It Be Other Than Hate?

Maybe you're familiar with the recent flap over the Ralph Lauren ad with a horribly re-touched photo?  You know something's wrong when her head is wider than her hips!  Looking at the super-skinny digitally manipulated photos of fashion models makes me certain that at the heart of the fashion industry is a real hatred of women - of womanly curves and softness and roundness.

So much of women's fashion today is clearly designed to fit slender young men, who do not bear the apparently hideous burden of breasts and hips and tummies and thighs, but rather offer narrow straight lines.  And in order to find women on whom such clothes look good, the industry pushes models and consumers alike to be increasingly thin and narrow and straight as well.

Cellulite, round tummies, full upper arms, etc., are not just considered unattractive, but there is a real element of sinfulness associated with women who are so careless and lazy as to let their bodies be lush and womanly, as if they are a sure sign of moral decay and good citizenship.

Of course, there's the other model of womanliness designed to appeal to men, not to fashion sense, and that model uses as its inspiration the porn star - bleach blond hair and surgically enhanced, overly exaggerated and overly exhibited female body parts.

What ludicrous and artificial choices.  Why condemn the most typically feminine aspects of the female body?  Risking the wrath of all that is PC, I wonder if gay men designing for women makes a difference?  If your interest in the female form is purely aesthetic, then it might seem perfectly reasonable to design for a certain artistic ideal that is no way connected with most "real women".

And if you prefer a narrower, less-curvy figure in what you find intrinsically attractive (i.e., men), then you might also bring that preference into your design work, and look for models, albeit female, who match that look, naturally gravitating toward and cultivating slender and narrow.  If you like twinks (Google it if you want to know), you might like your female models looking that same way.

Of course this is conjecture, but I know with certainty about the condemnation of any female celebrity unfortunate enough to be caught bearing cellulite.  And entertainment media accuse any famous women with even a little bit of a tummy of being either overweight or pregnant.  The biggest selling cover story is often the actress that lost 20 (or 30 or 40 or 50) pounds and thereby changed her life - and must now wear a bikini on a magazine cover.  Woe to the woman who gives birth and doesn't make regaining her pre-pregnancy figure a priority; it demonstrates unforgivable sloth.

I'm all for cultivating a deeper sense of self that doesn't look to size and shape, but to qualities and virtues and character.  Real beauty is completely invisible and its standards are eternal, unchanged regardless of culture or fashion or style or any of the other transitory measures we keep trying to impose on it.

Proof of G*d

In the screaming world of cable news and the over-hyped release of any new creative work, hostile debates about everything from politics to fashion are pushed to the extreme. And, for as much of a pop culture fan as I am, I do my best to not participate in raising the volume of the already noxious noise.

But when I hear religious fundamentalists argue with atheists, that noise gets my attention, at least for a second, because I wonder why they are arguing and what a win would look like. Why would a fundamentalist of any stripe accept the challenge that there must be a final and scientific proof of G*d? And why would an atheist be so fundamentally dogmatic in proving that G*d doesn't exist?

I need the exact same proof for the existence of G*d that I need for the existence of love or happiness, and that is simply this: experience. I have the full measure of my own experience that tells me everything I need to know.

I'm not asking science to concur, or religion to explain, any more than I would ask them to verify that the love I know is real. I don't need an expert to tell me the laughter I share with friends is proof of happiness. I already know it.

I know G*d can seem abstract and philosophical and literary and all sorts of other human constructs. Just like all the great poetry and prose and psychological analysis about love. But the essential experience of that divine presence is all the proof I will ever need.

Belief...not belief. Whatever.

I'm so tired of folks who insist on flying the banner of belief. Y'know - the ones who talk about what they believe, or don't, and insist that we should understand something significant about them because of it.

I have no issue with belief. I believe in all sorts of things. I just don't want to have to know what you're trying to tell me with your belief shorthand. Tell me what you mean instead. There is so much belief shorthand, all tied up with labels, that we have lots of words and no meaning.

Like global warming. Seems innocent enough. But part of the shorthand about global warming for conservatives is that it represents an erroneous belief in scientific data, and the politics and policy that have emerged from concerns about global warming are just another excuse for liberals to trample the rights of private citizens and businesses.

And part of the shorthand about global warming for scientists and perhaps more liberal politicians is that we are facing a crisis that requires resources and engagement and that it's getting exponentially worse, so we must act now. And failure to do so may be the most catastrophic event to befall the planet.

BIG difference in perspective. What the actual data reveals depends entirely on your basic belief system. You cannot understand information in a belief-free vacuum. It is simply not possible. And belief comes from experience, and experience comes from belief. 70 degrees is a bit of factual data. If you're in Arizona in the summer, it means very cool. If you're Alaska in the winter, it means very warm. The information by itself otherwise has no particular meaning.

There are all those folks who don't seem to realize that what they believe - the truths they hold to be self-evident - are beliefs at all. Folks who think that evolution is the answer to explaining the world believe that science got it right, and that ONLY science got it right. And some of them defend that viewpoint with more religious fervor than the overtly religious. And they hold that because their belief is based in science, that it's not at all about belief. It's just about facts.

But it's never that way. What you accept and reject is essentially about belief. "Scientific" notions of the truth have changed dramatically over time, and continue to change, literally every day. There is no constant truth in science. Just the belief that examination of the physical world will yield the ultimate insight into the meaning and purpose and existence of life.

It's the exact same pursuit as religion, just different methodology, and different acceptable criteria. And you can see that some folks who have been wounded by religion are so religious in their rejection of religion and so passionate in their embrace of science. They are defensive and unbending about the rightness of their belief in non-belief.

Reminds me of the terrible tension between the most ardent fundamentalists of Islam and Judaism. They are so very similar in how their belief should be upheld in daily life - the importance of prayer, the rejection of modern culture and society, gender roles, the importance of religious education, etc., - and yet for all their similarities, for their common heritage and ancestry, they see each other only as enemies, seeing only the differences and blind to the similarities.

These are all folks who are deeply, intensely, passionately concerned with Truth - finding it, understanding it, living it and sharing it. And ironically, their equally intense pursuit of the same thing has taken them in irreconcilably different directions.

I don't know that we can get to any place of understanding without one of two things - or both of these things. One is communication with real, simple, everyday words, with the actual intention of listening to each other. And the other is silence. If we can come together in silence, hearing not our own voices, but the heartbeat of G*d, then maybe we have a chance.

Marin Luther vs. Jesus

The big difference between Martin Luther and Jesus is that Martin Luther was all about reformation, fixing a system that was breaking/broken. Jesus was a revolutionary, a radical, who broke away from a broken system, not trying to fix the system, but creating a new one, original and truly new.

The folks who are shocked by the moral state of modern culture are reformers, wanting to hold onto a structure that once had meaning and integrity and wanting to restore it to its (perceived) perfection. And it's tempting to think that all we need is "X", to return us to whatever the good times were.

But the folks who are making a real difference in this world rocked by tension and tragedy, are the ones with a new vision, an original understanding of what is needed here and now. They don't look to the past for answers and solutions - they look to an original vision of the future, to G*d, and to the truth of what is essential to human joy and meaning: peace, love, understanding, purity, happiness.

Whoever said...

"Whoever said, 'it's not all about you,' never met me..."

Shiv-Shakti

The ancient representation of the Shiv Shakti is the combining of divine male and female energy, pure spirit made into physical matter, G*d brought to earth. And this image is powerful in that the most elevated human life is pure spirit - soul - brought into the human dimension.

The shakti, female energy, womanly energy, is the fulfillment of bringing the totality of creative energy into the physical body. The ability to create life is the most elemental and biological representation of feminine power, but only one of the ways it shows up in life.

Being a truth teller, a carrier of ancient wisdom, a holder of integrity and uncompromising values is to be a shiv shakti. Living fully into every relationship, every opportunity, every challenge is to be a shiv shakti.

Ordinary human beings are defined by their weaknesses, their fears, their limitations and their frustrations. A shiv shakti, the human incarnation of divinity, defines herself by strength, humility, grace, and by becoming a channel for divine energy to manifest itself on earth.

It's not a small undertaking, and you can't do it just part-time. You can't do it just half-way or just a little. You make a deal with the divine, and you never leave it behind. You can't go back to ordinary awareness or pretend you don't know what you know.

And you're supposed to be different because of it. You're supposed to be a different person and live a different life. And it's by being true to all of this that G*d's power becomes your power and your life then runs on magic.

A Gem

I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting for change to come, and now that Mercury is retrograde for a little while, I'd be amazed if anything will change. Unless Mercury is helping to set things in a new motion, a new direction. Which is always possible.

Otherwise, a fixed Venus at the apex of one's T-square (astrology speak, I know) means that I don't move quickly in relationship matters. I would say I move glacially slow, except that now, with global warming, the glaciers are moving more quickly than I.

And I must apologize, 'cause I've foisted the blame for the slowness on another, not seeing my own hesitation as the energy that blocks movement. I've thought I was the one wanting to move ahead, and that I was being thwarted in my natural rhythm. But more accurately, I was wanting to move so slowly that it felt like no movement at all.

It's very tricky to recognize in yourself what you've conveniently blamed another for. But seeing it, seeing your own limitations, is another kind of jeevanmukti - liberation. I figured I'd have no access to the grace of humility - the wisdom of knowing who you are and who you are not - if I didn't acknowledge my responsibility in my own life.

So, much to my relief, I am owning it. I don't know what'll happen in terms of relationship, but I know what is happening for me, and there's no downside to that. There's no downside to bringing different aspects of yourself together in one sparkling, glittering, gorgeous multi-faceted gem of a person.

Feeling, Not Finding

I don't know that we find truth so much as learn to feel it. There isn't a place on the planet where it resides, hidden away like some item from a scavenger hunt list. Truth isn't locked in a vault or buried in a secret tomb familiar to only a select few.

There is a seed of truth within us all, and like every seed it needs the right food and water and light, the right season in which it can bloom.

The seed of truth is our eternal connection with G*d, what pulls us back into relationship with Him. We want to feel the nourishment of complete belonging flowing through us, the pure desire to see the seed of truth blossom and bear its fruit in our lives.

No Love, No Truth

It's fine to invest in words and ideas, to attend classes, lectures and retreats. Words may accompany truth. But truth is most clearly communicated in the simple vibration, the pure energy, of love. No love = no truth. And no volume of words can make it so.

StoryPeople

Sometimes I feel like I've got nothing to say 'cause Brian Andreas, the genius creator of StoryPeople, already said it, and better than me. I love how much he captures in a sentence or sentence fragment. A whole world lives in just a few of his words...

Check out www.storypeople.com

Patience

I keep finding the next right direction, and it keeps dissolving into nothingness. And so I think that this is a time to invite, surrender, attract, submit. Trying to impose my will on life, on how I think things should unfold, seems the worst sort of exercise in futility.

When nothing moves forward, then perhaps what is required from me is to wait with the grace of patience. The movement is one of going deeper within, not of pushing forward. At least for now. Until the time and space continuum and I reconcile on our idea of how to move through the temporal.

Heart Surgery

It seems to me now that so much of the energy I've been putting into growth and change has been slightly, and very accidentally, misdirected. Instead of that spiritual power strengthening me, it has been diverted into a vast expanse of space that exists between me and others, reinforcing the walls protecting me and the emotional distance it provides. Behind that wall I've gotten bored and lonely, and the energy is as dead as a fire with no fuel.

That very tiny tear - that small hole in my heart - meant that however much love and energy poured in, the same was always leaking out. A broken heart, literally having a break in your heart, has long lasting consequences, invisible, imperceptible and incapacitating. What should be the vessel for containing the life force, physically, emotionally and spiritually, instead leaks out vital energy, dissipating all the good stuff you need to keep going and feel good about it.

It's healing now. My energy is returning. My confidence is sinking deep down to the center of my being, anchoring the nervous tension that defined me, calming and relaxing all of it.

Something New

I've always been clairvoyant, which is simply that I can see what's invisible. And the kind of vision I have to see the invisible is insight. I don't have foresight or hindsight. I can't tell the future or figure out the hidden past.

But with an invitation and agreement from another, I can peer deep, deep within the soul, into the realm of pure spiritual potential. I can see what is hidden from ordinary awareness, and provide a clear and undistorted reflection of that potential.

When I was young, the feelings and thoughts of others flooded my awareness, and I was too sensitive to know the difference between my reality and the emotions of others. It is only now, after more than 23 years of practicing Raja Yoga that I've learned how to use that sensitivity to help people.

I have always wanted to make things better, to be someone who helped where help was needed. And the feedback I've received for years now, is that the Divine insight that comes through me awakens the soul to its most pure, powerful and essenceful nature, freeing hidden potential and focusing energy.

Imagine peering into a mirror that reflects back beauty, virtue, talents, abilities, qualities, gifts, and opportunities. Imagine how energized and comforted and uplifted and affirmed you feel seeing yourself in a new and more clear light. This is the gift of insight.

The View From a Bardo State

Bardo states are intermediary places of transition for the soul (according to Tibetan Buddhism), which is what my life is feeling like these days. Typically this state endures between lifetimes, but I'm claiming it for my own. Everything is in transition, and I have certainty about nothing related to how my life is unfolding.

I can take no definitive action until a clear vision appears to me, and that vision is nothing I can force, create or consciously think through. It's always been that way for me. Once the image is clear, action is immediate, but until then, energies are incubating.

The best I can hope for is to use the time and energy until clarity emerges to go deep within and learn all sorts of good things about who I am so that when it is time to move forward, that movement fits me well.

I have never been able to set goals in terms of strategic planning. I find it too much of an imposition on that unfolding creative process that forms itself inside of me. If I plan, create a set of goals and come up with a 1 or 3 or 5 year plan, I am taken completely outside of a rhythm that honors G*d's magical energy at work in my life.

Work, relationships, who I am and what I'm going to do with my time and energy all elude me at the moment, so I'm sticking to taking things one day at a time. It's all just a bit too much otherwise.

Astrology

The amazing thing about astrology is that it can offer so much insight into one's energetic nature. You could be worse or better or different, but you're not. Astrology isn't about determining your worth or value, but really just designed to give you insight so you become familiar with your energies and know how to build to your strengths, meet your challenges, and fully explore your opportunities.

Self-knowledge is the key to acceptance, which is ultimately the key to fulfilling your pure potential. Once you know who you are, and lovingly embrace and accept all the energies you've come with in this lifetime, and STOP fighting yourself, then you have more fully available energy with which to make choices that honor your best self.

Healing

The most important thing I've learned about healing is that you don't have to go through the details of the past to begin moving forward. But it only works if you do it with love.

Guilt, shame, anger, frustration, disgust, regret, heaviness, all stand in the way of the good stuff, the better stuff, the best stuff.

Making Meaning

I've tired of the great need to make meaning, the endless search for meaning, the compulsive urge to create meaning. The need for meaning is measured by sorrow. No sorrow, no search for meaning.

No one ever asks why or why me in the middle of happiness... No "why did we have a wonderful, beautiful baby?" No "why did I meet the perfect partner whom I love endlessly?" No "why are my finances so strong?" No "why am I so healthy and well?"

The "why" always shows up as sorrow's shadow. The need for meaning, for answers, always accompanies the tragic, the flawed, the grief-stricken, the fallen, the wounded, the injured. I understand the desire to know answers that make sense out of the senseless, and have invested every ounce of who I am in tracking down meaning.

But I'm at a different point now somehow. I don't want answers to questions. Now, I want to live as freely and fully as I can, fearless both because of and beyond any answers I've gotten so far.

Instead of chasing after meaning, I'm letting it come to me. And it's showing up in the most ordinary, wonderful places and people. It's rarely accompanied by angels singing or bright, white lights, and it doesn't take me out of myself nearly as much as it resonates with the best of who I am.

Feels good not to be seeking, searching, struggling, begging the universe to reveal its secrets. I'm making friends with the universe and I'm not so sure it's been keeping secrets anyway....

Not Good Enough

Guilt and shame, awful secrets, destroy the soul from the inside out, toxic and corrosive, eating away at self-respect and self-worth. But there is something equally soul-destroying: undervaluing yourself. Settling for what you think you can get, instead of what you truly want, erodes you self-esteem as badly.

Whatever you've convinced yourself is "not good enough" about you, is the weakness that then defines your decisions. If you don't value yourself professionally, maybe you settle for a job you hate, doesn't pay enough, doesn't honor your talents. If you don't value yourself personally, maybe you settle for relationships that are painful, dishonest, empty.

And when weakness is stronger than any other feeling, when your own bad feelings about yourself are stronger than everything else you know about who you are, you accept people and circumstances into your life that are a practical reflection of that negativity. They are then a constant reminder of your weaknesses made real.

Their presence is painful on their own because of what they are, but even more so because of what they say about you. The awful feeling that you think you aren't good/smart/ special/thin/talented/interesting...enough to live the life you really want, to be the person you really want, to have the relationships you really want.

But acknowledging who you know yourself to be at your best, and admitting that you want a life that reflects that, is an act of courage that is step one toward creating/restoring the life of your dreams. However scary it is to put yourself out there honestly, being clear and simple and straightforward, where others can see and judge you, is actually the freedom you've longed for.

And all the stuff that falls away when you stop hiding yourself is stuff you never wanted anyway.