Life Before Death

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Friend, hope for the guest while you are still alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think ... and think ... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire ...

- Kabir - from The Time Before Death
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Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body

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That may be an address too many of us share.  Taking the miracle of embodiment for granted is a horrific loss.  It would be a profound healing of our lives to get back in touch with it.

All it takes is practice in coming to our senses, all of them.

And ... a spirit of adventure.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn in Coming to Our Senses

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and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring, declaring
declaring that your body's really you
- Leonard Cohen
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You reading this, be ready

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Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?  Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day.  This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life--

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

- William Stafford
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The spell of the sensuous...

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...is no further than the sound of the rain taken in, or the feel of the air on the skin, or the warmth of the sun on our backs, or the look in your dog's eye when you come near.  Can we feel it?  Can we know it?  Can we be embraced by it? 

And when might that be?  When?  When?  When?  When?  When?

- Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to our Senses

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- Spell of the Sensuous is the title of a book by David Abram which  "...ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it" - Los Angeles Times
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How to listen to music

with your whole body
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Enjoy this soaring musical journey as Evelyn Glennie, a "deaf" percussionist, gives us a remarkable lesson in embodied listening.
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... allow your body to open up, allow your body to be this resonating chamber... experience the whole journey of that sound.
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more about Evelyn
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Find Your Voice

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The moment a person finds their voice... is the moment their life takes on grace.
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That quote is from Steve Errey, the Confidence Guy, in a post called Find Your Voice or Die a Slow Death.  It's a short post but it speaks volumes - here's a condensation of the post, a comment response by Steve and of course my own two cents' worth (hey, it's my blog):

Grace is simplicity, effortlessness and congruity.

Think about it.  What are you speaking with before you find your voice?  What are you saying?  And who are you being before you find grace?

Everything before you ‘find your voice‘ means that you’ll be struggling with things in and around your life, for the simple reason that you’re missing something fundamental.

Your life might be full of clutter and noise.  You might feel like you’re searching for something.  You might drift through much of your career, with no real plan or agenda.  You might feel, in those quiet moments, that something’s missing.

You’ll be dying a slow, safe death.

And all because you haven’t found your voice; that voice that gives you elegance, ease and a sense of wholeness.  That voice that gives you the confidence to do things your way, follow what matters and relax into yourself.

Find your voice, find grace, find confidence.

Asked what 'finding your voice' means, Steve replies:

Your voice is simply finding what matters to you, the things that have meaning and relevance to YOU, and then honoring those things in your life. Look at a moment in your life when you felt really alive, when you were buzzing, firing on all cylinders and feeling on top of the world. Then dig into that moment and ask yourself what was so important to you in that moment. What was it that made it stand out? What is it about that moment that resonated with you? That will give you clues about your personal values, and that will help you find your voice.

Finding and using your voice isn’t about finding answers, it’s singing simply because you have a song.

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That last sentence refers to a quote from Maya Angelou:
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer: it sings because it has a song.
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As someone who has only recently found my own voice (and who is still learning to sing), I can say without reservation that everything Steve says above is absolutely true.  Once you even begin to realize what is important to you - what gives your life meaning and purpose - then you find your voice.  This is exactly why I blog, and the more I blog, the more I clarify my purpose and the more I recognize my song.

You don't need to wait for some huge epiphany or for some future time when you feel ready - right now start a journal, or a diary, or a blog, and write as if no one is going to read it.  Just speak your truth and don't worry about what anyone else thinks.  Keeping your gift locked inside yourself is, as Steve says, like dying a slow death.  Finding your voice makes you come alive, gives you confidence, and shows you like almost nothing else who you are and why you're here.

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the gift keeps on moving
never know where it's going to land
you must stand back and let it
keep on changing hands
- Bruce Cockburn
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Remembering the Past, Envisioning the Future

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Today is November 11th - Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans' Day in the United States.  There is a lot of old combat footage on TV, mostly black & white images of World War II.  Every time, I'm struck by how young the faces are and how, even though these boys are smiling and joking for the camera, their eyes are full of fear.  It's sobering to think about how many of those young men never got any older than they were the day those pictures were taken.

Somewhere between 62 and 78 million people were killed in World War II.  Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military deaths: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. Most of those who survived the war have since died; only a few remain of those smiling boys going off on the adventure of their lives.

The Vietnam war is said to have resulted in approximately 60,000 American casualties and four million Vietnamese deaths - one million of the Vietnamese killed in that war were combatants, the other three million were civilians.

So today is a day for remembering everyone who died in those and other wars - the good guys, the bad guys, the innocent and the guilty - as well as those who were forced to take the lives of others who were just as frightened and confused as they were. Let's remember also the young men and women who are still putting themselves in harm's way, fighting for causes they may or may not believe in.

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But today is also a day for envisioning a new future for humanity.  It's a day for remembering that each one of us has the power to influence what that future will be, and to believe with all our heart that collectively our power is unstoppable.

Is it possible that we can heal our planet and prevent cataclysms?  Could we visualize world peace into existence through a massive pulse of belief transmitted by one million people around the world at the same time?

The best guess today from quantum physics is, "Yes, probably."

If you are inspired by that probability, if you believe wholeheartedly in a positive vision for the future, if you believe that the energy of one million people intending a new global reality together can tip the balance, please visit the New Reality Transmission  site and click the button that says Learn More.

On November 11, 2010, one million people across the globe will mentally project a unified vision of a new paradigm for our species... a new reality.  The very real physics that connects human consciousness with molecular structure will be harnessed en masse during the largest scale simultaneous manifestation transmission in recorded history.

In a world where the messages of Fear and Greed fight with each other daily, it is worth a try to move in the other, more inspired direction.

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you may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one
- John Lennon
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The World Beyond the Window

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Effing the Ineffable:
How do we express what cannot be said?
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Thomas Aquinas ended his life in a state of ecstasy, declaring that all that he had written was of no significance beside the beatific vision that he had been granted, and in the face of which words fail.  But Aquinas was exceptional. The history of philosophy abounds in thinkers who, having concluded that the truth is ineffable, have gone on to write page upon page about it.

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I have long been in awe of people who can express the inexpressible, who can describe their inner and outer experience with such depth and precision that their words penetrate to my very soul, to that place inside us all that is the source of our being, of who we are.

I think we all long to be able to put into words - and thus share - that "world beyond the window" - at the same time we know it's hopeless, that to describe it is to somehow diminish it, to reduce that mystery that "cannot be described but only revealed" to familiar labels and concepts.

Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.

Roger Scruton also longs to open that window.  In this article at Big Questions Online, he wonders what these moments of revelation have to do with our ultimate questions - do these ineffable moments point to that which science cannot explain?  Do they point to the cause of the world?

We love each other as angels love, reaching for the unknowable “I.” We hope as angels hope: with our thoughts fixed on the moment when the things of this world fall away and we are enfolded in “the peace which passes understanding.” Putting the point that way I have already said too much. For my words make it look as though the world beyond the window is actually here, like a picture on the stairs. But it is not here; it is there, beyond the window that can never be opened.

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Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher living in England. His many books include Beauty and The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope.
Learn more about him at www.roger-scruton.com.
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all these years of thinking
ended up like this
in front of all this beauty
understanding nothing
- Bruce Cockburn
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You Are Already Here

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Non-Striving
The Fifth Attitudinal Factor of Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Non-striving is related to dropping in on the present moment and the timeless quality of the present moment...

Non-striving isn't trivial - it's realizing that you are already here.  There is noplace to go because the only agenda is to be awake.  It isn't some ideal that after four years of sitting on top of Mount Everest or in a cave in the Himalayas or studying with a million Tibetan teachers or doing 10,000 prostrations or whatever it is, that you'll be any better than you are now.  It's impossible - you'll just be older.  What happens now is what matters.

If you don't pay attention now, said Kabir (the great Hindu Sufi poet of the 16th Century), if you don't pay attention now, you will only wind up with an apartment in the City of Death later.  T. S. Eliot said in his last poem, Four Quartets: Ridiculous the waste, sad time stretching before and after.

Non-striving - even the tiniest little bit of letting ourselves off the hook and just realizing we're already here.  The future that we want - this is it.  This is the future of all the previous thoughts you have ever had about the future.  You're in it - you're already in it. What's the purpose of all this living if it's only to get someplace else and then when you're there you're not happy anyway - you want to be someplace else...

This is it.  This is your life.  You only have moments.  This moment is as good as any other - in fact it's perfect.

The Doing comes out of the Being - to some degree that's an art form.  Are any of us good at it?  No.  But at least intending to live that way has a chance of greater balance - greater emotional balance, greater cognitive balance, greater clarity of mind and heart - and is a lot less toxic for other people who live with you or around you.

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nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken
nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb
nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come
- Leonard Cohen
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Guardians of Being

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The Essence and Being of Animals
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Pet lovers will enjoy these images by Patrick McDonnell, from Guardians of Being by Eckhart Tolle - there are a few more HERE.
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When you pet a dog or listen to a cat purring, thinking may subside for a moment and a space of stillness arises within you, a Doorway into Being.

What is it that so many people find enchanting in animals? Their essence - their Being - is not covered up by the mind, as it is in most humans.
And whenever you feel that essence in another, you also feel it in yourself.



Millions of people who would otherwise be completely lost in their minds and in endless past and future concerns are taken back by their dog or cat into the present moment, again and again, and reminded of the joy of Being.



If you'll excuse me, I need to find a cat (or two) to pat right now...
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Blought for Today

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Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
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Put a Dent in the Universe

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Your body is the vehicle for your life's expression, and it's your responsibility to express that life in ways that are most meaningful.
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Another inspiring video from Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy)
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Confidence is the life-blood that lets you get out there and participate fully in the world no matter how big your fears or doubts are.

What kind of dent do you want to make in the universe?
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Let Yourself Be Seen

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Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the question: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness?
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In this video Dr. Brown tells a candid and moving story of how what started as an academic research project eventually brought her to the realization that, through her willingness to embrace her own vulnerability, she could open her heart to joy and the courage to be imperfect.  She ends the talk with this heartfelt advice:

let yourself be deeply seen
love with your whole heart
practice gratitude
lean into joy
believe that you're enough

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Who are you?
I really wanna know
- The Who
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Hymn to the Great Song

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In Search of The Great Song, a Song Without Borders documentary series by Michael Stillwater, explores and celebrates the song within us, connecting us and surrounding us. Filmed in America, Europe, and Australia, it features artists, educators, scientists, spiritual teachers and 'ordinary people' giving expression to their unique perspective on this universal concept.

In this episode, 'Hymn to The Great Song', Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk known worldwide for his contribution to interfaith dialogue and advocacy for the power of gratitude, speaks of song born in silence, St. Francis, and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.

"There is really only one song, and it's the Great Song, the cosmic song, the song that all things, animals, plants and humans sing in their deepest heart. And every song that a human sings with his or her voice is only an expression of that one Great Song that is there from the beginning and will be there after the end."



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Even though the world changes like cloud formations,
all that is fulfilled returns home to the One,
to the changeless One.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
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A Gentle Re-Minder

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from Full Catastrophe Living
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Chapter entitled Yoga Is Meditation
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Bringing mindfulness to any activity transforms it into a kind of meditation.  Mindfulness dramatically amplifies the possibility that any activity in which you are engaged will result in an expansion of your perspective and of your understanding of who you are.  Much of the practice is simply a remembering, a reminding yourself to be fully awake, not lost in waking sleep or enshrouded in the veils of your thinking mind.  Intentional practice is crucial to this process because the automatic-pilot mode takes over so quickly when we forget to remember.

I like the words remember and remind because they imply connections that already exist but need to be acknowledged anew.  To remember, then, can be thought of as reconnecting with membership, with the set to which what one already knows belongs.  That which we have forgotten is still here, somewhere within us.  It is access to it that is temporarily veiled.  What has been forgotten needs to renew its membership in consciousness.  For instance, when we "re-member" to pay attention, to be in the present, to be in our body, we are already awake right in that moment of remembering.  The membership completes itself as we remember our wholeness.

The same can be said for reminding ourselves.  It reconnects us with what some people call "big mind", with a mind of wholeness, a mind that sees the whole forest as well as individual trees.  Since we are always whole anyway, it's not that we have to do anything.  We just have to "re-mind" ourself of it.
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Sunflower Seed Meditation

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A bird in the hand....
is worth a thousand words about being in the moment
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I'm always fully present

I'd rather have raisins.

When can we eat?

Eenie, meenie, miney, moe...

They all smell the same.

Shhh... I'm listening.

Can I swallow it now?

Awesome - let's do it again

the world offers itself to your imagination
- Mary Oliver
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Are You a Seeker or a Finder?

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You don't have to make any effort to be free.
Freedom is letting go, and letting go is freedom.
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Lately I have noticed myself feeling extremely content and at peace.  Not that that's unusual, really - I'm generally pretty happy, positive, not too many complaints.  But this is a more fundamental contentment - and reading these words from Andrew Cohen brought this present state of being sharply into focus - I am content because I am no longer looking for anything. 

Are you a seeker or a finder? This is a very important question. If you are on a spiritual path, have you found what you are looking for? Or are you still searching? If you are doing a spiritual practice, are you doing it to reach a goal or are you doing it just because you think it's a good thing to be doing?

Or are you doing spiritual practice from another position altogether--the position of being a finder? Being a finder means you are one of those rare individuals who has unequivocally found what they are looking for, and are now doing spiritual practice only because they want to continue to develop.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment that I became aware of this shift to another state of being.  No longer striving, I realize that I already have the life I want, that I already know my greatest gift and can give it freely without reservation.  My path now is, as Cohen says, to fully participate in that life and to continue to develop that gift.  The path and the goal have become one.

I don't know if this state will last or for how long.  But that's okay.  Right now I feel no bias towards either being or becoming, but am satisfied to let both dimensions manifest in their own time.  I believe that they are as inseparable as form and emptiness, and that as aspects of innate awareness, they are both always already present.  I need do nothing but nurture a deep, unshakable trust in the process.

If you are a sincere seeker, then it's important that your spiritual practice be imbued with a life-and-death commitment to your own liberation here and now. The short-term goal must be to get to the other side of existential doubt. You want to free your soul from both the ego's suffocating self-concern and the outdated and spiritually unenlightened values of our modern and postmodern culture. First and foremost, you need to do whatever it takes to free yourself. Why? So you will finally be available to participate, consciously and wholeheartedly, in the greatest gift you've been given...which is the life you're already living right now.

If you are no longer a seeker but one who boldly claims to be a finder, then that means you no longer have any doubt about who you really are and why you are here on this Earth. In your own direct discovery of and awakening to Spirit's true face, existential doubt has died a sudden and irrevocable death, liberating an infectious confidence rooted deep in your soul.

... as finders we're no longer doing practice in order to experience a spiritual epiphany that will convince us of something we don't already know. Now we're making the effort to evolve because we're in love with life and are committed to unlocking its higher potentials through our own development.

But of course that's not enough for Andrew Cohen.  We have to co-create Heaven on Earth.  No small feat to be sure, but he does give us some pointers.  He describes the usual "outside-in" approach to spiritual practice which starts from an intellectual understanding of our selves and we move along a spiritual path because we think it makes sense to do so.  In contrast, his "inside-out" approach begins with our direct experience of the Truth of Oneness - our path (and our goal) being to align the various dimensions of our being with that Truth.

To create this Heaven on Earth we need to make our relationships with one another our highest spiritual practice.  We need to cultivate what he calls spiritual self-respect, which always includes respect for God or Spirit - for that which is higher.  And of course we need to commit to putting our inspiration into practice, so that we will simultaneously create and reap the heavenly rewards.  He concludes:

The life we have chosen to live and our relationships will become an ecstatic cauldron of creative ferment. Because Spirit is both freedom and creativity, our own empowering realization of spiritual freedom will give rise to an unusual capacity for creative engagement. The truth of God will emerge again and again and again through our own ongoing love affair with the possible.

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Read the complete article in the Huffington Post HERE.
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There Comes A Time

from garden writer, philosopher & poet Doug Green:

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There comes a time in every season
when it is time to stop and reflect
There comes a time in every life
when it is time to stop and reflect
How marvelous when the leaves fall,
allowing us spaces to see clearly
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What Might Happen...

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You may or may not have noticed, but most of our fears revolve around What Might Happen in the future.  We take these imagined scenarios to be real and we let them guide our decisions and behavior - limiting our choices and in effect creating a future shaped around our fears.

And most of the time our fears about What Might Happen are drearily predictable: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking stupid, fear of change, fear of death... on and on ad nauseum.  So since our fears are imaginary anyway, why not get crazy, why not give yourself permission to imagine some new, more creative and enjoyable versions of What Might Happen, for instance ~

• the discovery of Atlantis and a whole new race of fish-people
• David Letterman and Slash from Guns n Roses getting married in a Scottish castle and adopting Richard Simmons
• God appearing drunk, live on Oprah
• the Internet becoming sentient and taking a sabbatical in Thailand to get away from the crowds, then dropping out and starting a folk duo with Joaquin Phoenix.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? 

That list actually came from Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy) in a post entitled How To Beat the Fear of Success, where he not only reveals possible futures, but looks at the three main reasons we fear success.  It's an interesting article and I hope you enjoy it.  Maybe you can come up with some fun fears of your own.

A related RoadKill Post:
What Makes You Come Alive?

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Beat your fears of success by recognizing what’s real and what isn’t.  What might happen is not real.  What you’re doing right now is real.  What matters to you is real.  What you’re capable of is real.
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What If?

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What if  we realized that our "personal problems" are simply basic, ordinary manifestations of ego?

What if  we gave up the "endless and pointless archaeological dig" into our past traumas?

What if  we awakened to a part of our self that was never wounded or traumatized, that doesn't need to be healed, that is already whole and complete, that has access to boundless energy, creativity, and positivity, and is completely ready to participate in life fully, boldly, passionately, holding nothing back?
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For the answer to these and other questions, here's a wonderful article by Craig Hamilton of Integral Enlightenment.  If you like that one, here's a previous post by Andrew Cohen along the same lines.  Enjoy.

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Nothing is confined except what's in your mind.
- Bruce Cockburn
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Meditation is Training for Life

A quote of the week from Andrew Cohen:

Meditation is training for life. If we want to be free, it is important to learn how to directly experience the unbroken chaos and impersonal confusion of our own minds without being disturbed by any of it. Only if we can bear it will we be able to take responsibility for it. If we cannot calmly endure our own minds, others will inevitably suffer the consequences. If we cannot handle our own thoughts and emotions while we are simply being still and paying attention, then how are we ever going to be able to make the appropriate choices when we are walking, talking, and engaging with others?
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Waiter, There's a Fly in my Trash

Why Dumpster Diving will save the planet
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Browsing through the latest offerings from Reality Sandwich, came across this article by Jill Ettinger.  She starts with the teaser:

Americans throw away nearly 100 billion pounds of food every year - almost as much as we eat.  In Dive!, filmmaker Jeremy Seifert set out to find out why supermarkets are letting perfectly edible food end up in dumpsters instead of being donated to starving people.  What he discovered will shock you.
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What really surprised me was that they're not talking about spoiled food or leftovers scraped off plates at fancy restaurants - what supermarkets are tossing into the dumpsters is perfectly good, fresh meat, milk, eggs and vegetables which often have not even reached their expiry date.

You can read her full interview with Jerry Seifert HERE,  watch a trailer for the film HERE, and learn more about what's being done (and what you can do) around the issue of food waste HERE.

For me, an important first step to really caring about the issue of food waste was hopping in a dumpster, bringing home the food, and eating it. Eating trash is a subversive act. It goes against a culture of over-consumption and gratuitous wastefulness. Experience that initial rush, shame, fear, and exhilaration of "stealing" trash and eating it will change you in good ways.
- Jeremy Seifert.
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Ego, Soul and Self

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Aspects of Ego is Part 5 of a 6-part Guru & Pandit series entitled Creating New Structures in Consciousness, featuring Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber in conversation, filmed live in Denver, Colorado.  The series can be enjoyed in whole or in part - each segment is a profound teaching in itself and they hang together beautifully when viewed in sequence.

This short clip is by far the most eloquent discussion of ego that I have heard anywhere.


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What we are calling ego in the positive sense, I believe, emerges in its most beautiful radiance to the degree to which our attention is being compelled towards something which transcends it.
- Andrew Cohen
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Here are links to the other videos in the series:  
Part 1 - Creating New Structures in Consciousness 
Part 2 - Trust and the Creative Principle 
Part 3 - The Purpose of Meditation  
Part 4 - A Closed Loop  
Part 6 - The Evolving Soul   
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The Most Important Conversation Of Our Time

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Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice
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How can a living spirituality enable human beings to create more enlightened responses to our common problems?

There is no more important conversation—or commitment to action—in the world today.

Join 27 of the most dynamic contemporary spiritual teachers as they engage in this series of dialogues. Each teacher will bring a distinct, profound, and catalytic perspective to the Big Conversation. Each has drunk deeply from the wisdom of the past, and is also embodying their wisdom in a new way, freshly attuned to the challenges of our moment.

This groundbreaking series will explore an an "embodied, engaged, evolving spirituality that is true to who we are, here and now — and that can empower us to co-create a sustainable human future."  You will learn:

• How to turn the fast pace of life into a profound practice to experience clarity, purpose, and inner peace.
• How to find community in our fragmented, virtual world and get the support you need.
• What neuroscience can teach us about skillful, effective (and efficient) personal practice, and how you can apply this research in your everyday life.
• How to question our inherited spiritual wisdom, and at the same time rescue the light of that wisdom, like precious jewels, from being dimmed down and fragmented.
• How you can help catalyze the transformation of our culture as well as your own consciousness.

Through these dialogues you will meet such remarkable teachers as Ken Wilber, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ram Dass, Adyashanti, Surya Das, Diane Musho Hamilton, Andrew Cohen, Gangaji, Steve McIntosh, Katherine Woodward Thomas and others.

To learn more about this FREE teleseminar series, or to register, just  CLICK HERE.

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You are the Crown of Creation
and you've got no place to go
- Jefferson Airplane
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Secrecy Is The Original Sin

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Secrecy is the Original Sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear.”
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I encountered the above quote from Timothy Leary through an article in Reality Sandwich entitled A Supraterranean Manifesto.  Supraterranean is an on-line magazine where people can freely publish any type of creative work without having to go through the usual editorial process.  In the manifesto the magazine's creator, Nick Meador, chronicles his own amazing journey. 

Perhaps it hit me when Time Magazine named their 2006 Person of the Year - YOU. It was so simple, so obvious. The decision must have been based largely on the runaway success of YouTube. By that time, many considered a night of watching "viral videos" and bootleg concert footage to be more rewarding than flipping channels on TV. Much else was changing about the ways we communicate and spend our free time and energy. But even that simple switch from passive to active media consumption was one that, I felt sure, would forever transform our society.

Through this manifesto Meador addresses much of the current cynicism about the influence of the World Wide Web on our personal, cultural and global evolution and allows the possibility of a radical new order emerging through that portal.  He talks about how his generation, disillusioned by the "reality" that was being presented to them through mainstream media - institutions, marketers, advertisers and editors - found the communication and connection they were craving on the Web.  Moved by this personal revelation, he began looking more deeply into traditional journalism and publishing practices and did not like what he found.

For too long the creative instinct has been bottled up to make human beings into consumer robots. I see now that I wanted to break the mold, while helping existing robots (myself included) regain the optimal path.

This guy has certainly done his homework.  Drawing from such visionary minds as Freud, Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Henry Miller, Neitzsche, Robert Anton Wilson, Carl Jung and others, he developed a personal and professional philosophy which eventually found expression through Supraterranean.  It's a fascinating and compelling story and I cannot possibly do it justice by summarizing - you can read the full manifesto HERE.
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The Web allows people to project their mind in endless directions, at an unprecedented speed and distance. It’s a collective out-of-body experience that lets us share in each other’s daydreams – a new map of time-space to help to navigate the inner and outer cosmos.  On Supraterranean, we are all connected by the creations that people share with the community.
~~~~
“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”
– Doc Brown, Back to the Future
~~~~

A Simple Question

from Andrew Cohen, near the end of a talk entitled "The Miraculous Impulse to Evolve":

~~~~
Isn't the transformation of the world we are living in entirely and totally dependent on the changing of the individual at the level of consciousness - to move from self-obsession or extreme narcissism to care for the whole process itself at the deepest level?

Isn't our collective future in the end entirely dependent upon that?
~~~~

To hear the entire talk (in three parts) follow these links:
Part 1 - A Universe Without God
Part 2 - Enlightenment for the 21st Century
Part 3 - Partners in Creation

Rescue Yourself

Why you need to abandon your rescue fantasy

Dave Navarro has hit the nail on the head again.  Rescue fantasies are so subtle and insidious we seldom realize that we are buying into them, let alone being aware enough to look further and discover how we use them to shield ourselves from the brilliance of our own unlimited potential.

When we catch ourselves repeatedly using phrases like "if only..." or "someday..." or "when things are different...", those are cues that we are stuck in a rescue fantasy or wishful thinking.  We are convincing ourselves that there is something outside ourselves - something we think we don't have - that will make us happy.

When we cling to our rescue fantasy, we make life more difficult.

This excellent post by Dave links us to a blog post from Mahala Mazerov entitled Suffering by Desire, which starts:

At the most basic level, the definition of suffering is wanting things to be different than the way they are.

Abandoning the fantasy of some conditional future happiness connects us with the present moment, which already contains everything we need.  And this discovery brings a wonderful feeling of freedom and possibility as we realize that our happiness is in our own hands, that we can cultivate the practice of gratitude for everything we have right now.

~~~~
Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.
- Lao-tzu (604-531 BC)
~~~~

Rethinking the Human Narrative

~~~~
A video by Jeremy Rifkin
~~~~

Rifkin believes that humans are "soft-wired" not for aggression, violence, self-interest or utilitarianism but for such qualities as sociability, attachment, affection and companionship - and that the "first drive" is an empathic one - the drive to belong.

This really is an amazing video and a beautiful message.
 


Is it possible we could actually extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family and to the biosphere as our common community?

What do you think?
~~~~

Boomeritis: A Postmodern Disease

~~~~
Boomeritis is a fascinating topic, particularly for those of us who experienced first-hand "the revolutionary fire of the sixties", but it has a dark side in terms of the evolution of human consciousness both individually and collectively.  This video goes to the heart of the complex and insidious relationship between consciousness and culture.  I found the comments by Cynthia, a retreat participant, particularly poignant...
~~~~



Here's how Tom Huston describes the phenomenon in Boomeritis: A Postmodern Disease:

Coined by philosopher Ken Wilber to describe a curious condition afflicting the baby boom generation, boomeritis means “high cognitive pluralism mixed with high emotional narcissism.” In other words: a smart, progressive person with a big ego.

Further on he adds: If there’s no higher authority than the postmodern self, then who is to say what is right or wrong, true or false, higher or lower? The truth is, with no ultimate authority and no hierarchy of values, there isn’t much left that can prevent the incessant battle cry of the human ego - “Nobody tells me what to do!"  - from having its way with all of postmodern life.

~~~~
Ken Wilber's novel Boomeritis is at once a hilarious adventure and a clear and accessible overview of the key concepts that form the foundation of his evolutionary teachings as well as those of Andrew Cohen and others.  I highly recommend it as a "primer" for a more in-depth exploration of the evolution of consciousness as presented by these amazing visionaries.  And (uncharacteristic of most of Wilber's writing) it's a naughty, delicious, laugh-out-loud romp that's delightfully easy to read and incredibly hard to put down.
~~~~

Here are some links:
Boomeritis: A Novel That Will Set You Free, by Ken Wilber    
Boomeritis & Me: Not Just a Book Review, by Elizabeth Debold   
Boomeritis: A Postmodern Disease, by Tom Huston    

RoadKill posts:
The Second Face of God - Part 2  
The Second Face of God - Part 3 
The Second Face of God - Part 4   
What Ever Happened to Truth?      
Spirit is Higher

~~~~
What would you do if you realized it was all up to you? What would you do if suddenly you realized that the entire evolution of the whole human race rested on your shoulders alone? What would you do? - Andrew Cohen
~~~~

Face Everything, Avoid Nothing

~~~~
from 11 Days at the Edge: one man's spiritual journey
into evolutionary enlightenment - by Michael Wombacher
~~~~
11 Days at the Edge is the author's amazing account of his experience during an 11-day retreat with Andrew Cohen in Montserrat, Spain.

Here is an excerpt from Day 8: Face Everything and Avoid Nothing.  Andrew Cohen is speaking:

“What does it really mean to face everything and avoid nothing? It means we have to ceaselessly inquire into the true nature of what it is that is motivating us to make the choices that we make. Do we have the humility to face into the aggressive and frighteningly selfish nature of many of our own actions? Do we have that kind of courage? Because if we refuse to face the darkest parts of ourselves, we will never be able to transcend them. Only if we truly want to be free more than anything else will we fnd the integrity of interest that will enable us to face everything and avoid nothing, no matter how diffcult or challenging it may be.

“But facing everything means facing everything, not only our darkest impulses. Facing everything means daring to face wholeheartedly into the infnite depth of our own Self, a depth that reveals a mystery so awe-inspiring that it simply cannot be imagined. But more often than not, we’re unwilling to face the profoundly liberating implications of our own potential because we’re simply not prepared to accept that which our mind cannot comprehend. Always living in denial of our darkness and ever fearful of the overwhelming brightness of our own unexplored heights, the inevitable result can only be mediocrity.”

~~~~
you know who I am,
you've stared at the sun,
well I am the one who loves
changing from nothing to one.
- Leonard Cohen
~~~~

You Are Not So Smart

A Celebration of Self-Delusion

It had to happen. Someone finally announced what us netsurfers and bloggers already know - most of the time we're not looking for information on the Net, we're looking for confirmation.  We don't look for or post articles that run counter to our own ideas or values.  What we look for - and always find - are sites that promote or enhance our current point of view, much as we think that we're open to diverse ideas, much as we like to believe that our website presents a balanced viewpoint.

So imagine my delight at finding this article called Confirmation Bias by David McRaney on the You Are Not So Smart website.  Yes!  I knew it, I knew it, and now it's been confirmed!

“Thanks to Google, we can instantly seek out support for the most bizarre idea imaginable. If our initial search fails to turn up the results we want, we don’t give it a second thought, rather we just try out a different query and search again.”- Justin Owings

This post, and the others on the YANSS site, are at once fascinating and insulting.  They really poke at how we're not nearly as smart, sophisticated or savvy as we think. But it's okay, they still prove what we already know - we're all human - so we're good to go ego-wise.  Each post starts with the common "misconception" and then present the "truth", like this:

The Misconception:  Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis.

The Truth:  Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.

Drawing from observations and studies on such diverse topics as old movies, politics, Amazon.com wish lists and conspiracy theories, the author reveals again and again how we "...tend to come up with a hypothesis and then work to prove it right instead of working to prove it wrong", and that "once satisfied, you stop searching."  He closes with this advice:

Remember, there’s always someone out there willing to sell eyeballs to advertisers by offering a guaranteed audience of people looking for validation. Ask yourself if you are in that audience.

In science, you move closer to the truth by seeking evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the same method should inform your opinions as well.

The article and the website are fun and interesting - enjoy it all HERE.

~~~~
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.” - Sir Francis Bacon
~~~~

A Very Delicate Experiment

Andrew Cohen on Enlightenment



~~~~
and the night came on, it was very calm
I wanted the night to go on and on
but she said go back
go back to the world
- Leonard Cohen
~~~~

Love Has Always Been Here

~~~~
Love was here long before we were.  It was here when this universe first exploded into existence.  It was here when atoms first began to form molecules.  It was here when those molecules first began to form cells.  It's been here every step of the way - in fact, love is so fundamentally woven into the fabric of this universe that some even posit it as the fifth elementary force in the universe - the force of self-organization through self-transcendence.

In this remarkable audio clip, Ken Wilber takes us on a journey back to the Big Bang to chart the amazing evolution of Love as both the central driving force of the Kosmos and the most important of human emotions.  Drawing on the work of Abraham Maslow and other philosophers, he describes how this force, Love or Eros, constantly moves toward higher and higher stages of complexity, unity and wholeness - reaching out to form unions and to form higher connections based not on deficiency, but on "a super-abundance of the feelings and capacity for unity, for connection and for embrace."

It is the internal driver that pushes people from the state of ignorance and un-enlightenment where everything seems to be a separate thing and event and is felt as a separate thing and event, to a state where this dis- memberment is re-membered and everything is felt as a unity, everything is felt as One Taste, everything is felt as part of the spiritual texture of the universe.  And that drive moving us from dis-membered to re-membered and from separate and fragmented and partial to total and unified and holistic - that drive is Love.

The whole talk is HERE  (27 min)

~~~~
I never lived with balance, though I've always liked the notion
I feel an endless hunger for energy and motion
Open
Open
Open
- Bruce Cockburn
~~~~

Is Equality Over-Rated?

Dominance. Submission.  Two very provocative words by themselves, more so when taken together.

In these days of political correctness, any hint of inequality is seen as outmoded and oppressive.  But those of us who work with situations where decisions need to be made may have intuited that insistence on equality doesn't always stand up in real life.  Take consensus, for instance.  In a ideal world, it could be well argued that consensus is the best decision-making model as everyone gets to have a say and everyone has to agree on the ultimate outcome.  But in practical terms, consensus can take a long time and often results in very weak decisions, especially if one person is over-cautious, in which case that one person's hesitation can result in any forward momentum becoming completely blocked.  Think of a "hung jury".

Some might argue that democracy is a better, fairer system.  While it it is certainly more resource-efficient than the consensus model, the downside of democracy is that at any given time 49 per cent of the people can be very unhappy about decisions made by the other 51 per cent.  And that's not even taking into account minority governments and political patronage.

But I digress.  I want to share with you another of Steve Pavlina's blogposts - this one called Domination-Submission and Personal Growth, where Steve again takes lessons learned in the business world and applies them to the realm of personal growth and relationships.

One thing I really like about Steve is that he dares to thumb his nose at politically correct stances, dares to pose the question: what if the opposite were true? In this case, what if a consensual dominant/submissive relationship were more desirable for both parties than a relationship of equality? He first applies this query to an entrepreneurial situation:

So would you agree that all else being equal, you’d be more likely to succeed as an entrepreneur if you could start your business with either a free slave or a free manager, assuming they’re competent? And if you can see in advance that you’re likely to succeed, wouldn’t you be more willing to dive in and try it? Wouldn’t you also be willing to stretch and take more risks in your business?

Now consider this. Would these businesses also be good experiences for the slave and the manager? Could you fathom that they might also benefit tremendously from it? For example, what if the slave is, in real life, someone just starting out on their career path, and even though they work for free, they gain tremendously valuable experience. This “slave” is essentially an intern. Similarly, the manager could be thought of as a mentor or board member.

Then the story gets personal, as he and his partner experiment with the joy and freedom of a D/s style of mutual play.  (PC Warning: the following blog section may be offensive to some readers - getting over yourself is strongly advised.)  He talks about how, as the "master", he can see potentials in his partner that she may not see for herself, which he can encourage her to explore and express.  And she, as the "slave", can give him feedback that draws out new behaviours in himself as she playfully responds to his "commands".

With unconditional acceptance on both sides, each partner gains the freedom to relax and let loose, knowing they don’t have to worry about rejection or judgment. Isn’t it wonderful to be able to explore such things whilst knowing that your partner is completely loyal to you and fully accepting of you no matter what?

Steve concludes:

Perhaps an even more important point is to be careful not to dismiss a potential new growth experience out of hand. Be cautious about judging what you’ve never experienced or what you’ve experienced only in a limited way. If you’ve never experienced a particular dynamic firsthand, it’s safe to say you don’t have a clue what it’s really like. If you cast judgment from the outside looking in, all you’re doing is limiting yourself.

I think it’s better to keep an open mind about that which you’ve never tried. Don’t buy into the social conditioning that encourages you to pre-condemn with prejudice. Our society cannot progress much until we drop such limiting thoughts.

Read more HERE...

~~~~
and the dealer wants you thinking
that's it's either black or white
thank God it's not that simple
in my secret life
- Leonard Cohen
~~~~

Remain Open When Disgusted

from Chapter 19 of Blue Truth by David Deida

You can try not to judge others, but even that is based on a judgment - "People who are non-judgmental are better than people who judge."  The fact is, feeling good or bad in response to others is natural and inevitable.  The trouble starts when you allow your emotional response and mental judgments to result in heart-closure and separation.  When you clench your belly, close your heart, and pull away from others, then you are actively creating unlove and suffering.  It's one thing to be disgusted by some jerk; it's another thing to close your heart and add separation.

When you look into the eyes of those who most disturb you, practice feeling the openness behind the face of their fear and distress.  Whether they are on TV or standing in front of you, no matter how closed or twisted they may be acting, feel through their pained expressions into their yearning heart.  Their moment is open as yours, though they may be closing, unwilling to open as love, and therefore they are suffering their denial of love's openness.

When someone disgusts you, and in every moment, practice to relax as the moment blooms open as every body.  Allow openness the opportunity to live through you and your relationships by practicing to feel and breathe the deep openness that in everyone yearns to flower as love.

~~~~
some will lie behind, but we needn't be unkind
keep it open, keep it open
and help me keep mine open too
- Bruce Cockburn
~~~~

Intelligence, Not Enlightenment

~~~~
The Case For Building a Stronger Ego
from Steve Pavlina's Blog
~~~~

Checking out from life and trying to pursue ego-less enlightenment may be popular in certain spiritual circles, but it’s not a path I recommend, especially after witnessing the long-term results of many of the practitioners, not to mention the behind-the-scenes inconsistencies of certain proponents. It’s a path that can feel comforting at first because it gives you permission to avoid many of your fears instead of facing them. You can shrink away from life instead of boldly pushing yourself. You don’t have to stand out much. You can simply sit still and quiet your mind. There are many benefits to meditation of course, but don’t let the practice turn into escapism.

I think you’ll find it much more beneficial to relate to life on the basis of ego development as opposed to ego destruction.

Ego destruction is slow suicide. It’s yet another version of giving your power away. As long as “become ego-less” remains on your spiritual to-do list, you can use it to distract yourself from facing the real life challenges that scare you… like stretching yourself to go out and make a real difference in the world instead of escaping into the land of make-believe enlightenment.

Having a strong ego is not in conflict with inner peace. Inner peace doesn’t mean being passive. You can be quite active and engaged with life and still feel very peaceful and centered on your path.

Part of the reason ego-less living has so many people pushing it is that it’s a control strategy. People with strong egos are harder to control. If a religious leader wants to be surrounded by a bunch of loyal followers, it’s much easier to do that while encouraging all the followers to shed their egos. Then standing up to the leader can be called out as an act of ego and therefore something that the culture itself will repress, thereby keeping the leader in charge. However, this structure stunts the leader’s growth as well if the leader must pretend to be upholding the same ego-less standard that’s being preached to the followers.
~~~~

I have nothing to add to that except to say that if the above excerpt piqued your interest, gladdened your heart or totally pissed you off, I highly recommend reading the whole article from Steve Pavlina, appropriately entitled How To Build A Stronger Ego.  He presents a very compelling case for developing our ego as a vehicle through which we can offer our unique gifts to the world (oh look, turns out I did have something to add after all).

And if you have something to add, a reaction or argument - for or against - comments would be most welcome.

~~~~
the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame
preacherman seeks the same
who'll get there first is uncertain
- Bob Dylan
~~~~

You are Already Free

from Always Already:

And so, as you rest in the pure Witness, you won't see anything particular—whatever you see is fine. Rather, as you rest in the radical subject or Witness, as you stop identifying with objects, you will simply begin to notice a sense of vast Freedom. This Freedom is not something you will see; it is something you are. When you are the Witness of thoughts, you are not bound by thoughts. When you are the Witness of feelings, you are not bound by feelings. In place of your contracted self there is simply a vast sense of Openness and Release.  As an object, you are bound; as the Witness, you are Free.

We will not see this Freedom, we will rest in it. A vast ocean of infinite ease.
~~~~
this post is a follow-up to:
Always Already:
The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness
~~~~

Pray That The Road is Long

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many when
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
~~~~

Always Already:

The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness
by Ken Wilber

This excerpt from The Eye of Spirit is described in the introduction as one of the most powerful - and beautiful - pieces of spiritual writing Ken Wilber has ever produced, and I sincerely agree.  With astonishing simplicity and depth he peels away layer after layer of concepts surrounding spiritual seeking and traditional non-dual practices, pushing through and beyond experience to find the experiencer - what he calls the Seer or the ever-present Witness. 

Things that are seen come and go, are happy or sad, pleasant or painful—but the Seer is none of those things, and it does not come and go. The Witness does not waver, does not wobble, does not enter that stream of time. The Witness is not an object, not a thing seen, but the ever-present Seer of all things, the simple Witness that is the I of Spirit, the center of the cyclone, the opening that is God, the clearing that is pure Emptiness.
 
Every time I recognize or acknowledge the ever-present Witness, I have broken the Great Search and undone the separate self. And that is the ultimate, secret, nondual practice, the practice of no-practice, the practice of simple acknowledgment, the practice of remembrance and recognition, founded timelessly and eternally on the fact that there is only Spirit, a Spirit that is not hard to find but impossible to avoid.

Here are some lines from Wilber's exquisite description of the freedom that comes from resting in that ever-present, pure and simple witness:

I am no longer caught up in the search for experiences, whether of the flesh or of the mind or of the spirit. Experiences simply come and go like endless waves on the ocean of what I am. As I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I am no longer moved to follow the bliss and the torture of experiential displays. Experiences float across my Original Face like clouds floating across the clear autumn sky, and there is room in me for all.

When I rest in the pure and simple Witness, I will even begin to notice that the Witness itself is not a separate thing or entity, set apart from what it witnesses. All things arise within the Witness, so much so that the Witness itself disappears into all things.
 
And thus, resting in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I notice that there is no inside and no outside. There is no subject and no object. Things and events are still fully present and clearly arising—the clouds float by, the birds still sing, the cool breeze still blows—but there is no separate self recoiling from them. Events simply arise as they are, without the constant and agitated reference to a contracted self or subject. Events arise as they are, and they arise in the great freedom of not being defined by a little I looking at them. They arise with Spirit, as Spirit, in the opening or clearing that I am; they do not arise to be seen and perceptually tortured by an ego.

I am simply an opening or clearing in which all things arise. I notice that all things arise in me, arise in this opening or clearing that I am. The clouds are floating by in this vast opening that I am. The sun is shining in this vast opening that I am. The sky exists in this vast opening that I am; the sky is in me. I can taste the sky, it's closer to me than my own skin. The clouds are on the inside of me; I am seeing them from within. When all things arise in me, I am simply all things. The universe is One Taste, and I am That.

But how can we, resting as ever-present awareness, interact with the things and events which are still, as he puts it, fully present and clearly arising? How can we fulfill our yearning to offer our unique gifts to the world?

It is simply that, as embodied being, you also arise in the world of form that is your own manifestation. And the intrinsic potentials of the enlightened mind - such as equanimity, discriminating wisdom, mirror-like wisdom, ground consciousness, and all-accomplishing awareness - combine with the native dispositions and particular talents of your own individual bodymind.  And thus, when the separate self dies into the vast expanse of its own ever-present awareness, you will arise animated by any or all of those various enlightened potentials. You are then motivated, not by the Great Search, but by the Great Compassion of these potentials, some of which are gentle, some of which are truly wrathful, but all of which are simply the possibilities of your own ever-present state.
   
And whatever the form of your own resurrection, you will arise driven not by the Great Search, but by your own Great Duty, your limitless Dharma, the manifestation of your own highest potentials, and the world will begin to change, because of you.

~~~~
That is just a tiny sampling of Wilber's amazing offering to us - a re-membering of our own ever-present awareness - this free and empty Seer, this spacious opening and clearing in which all things arise.  Please take the time to read the whole piece - and if you think it worthwhile, please share it with others.
~~~~

If you liked what you read here, a related post at  Signs of the Times  is well worth a click.  David invites us in with a quote from John Sherman:

"To look at yourself just once, and then again, and then again... is to move from the endless work of self-definition to the endless adventure of self-discovery."

and adds, "In spending our lives learning to tell our story, mostly to ourselves, we really only meet ourselves in terms of either reflections of our bodies in a mirror or in comparing concepts we have of our “self” with what we imagine other “selves” are or think, etc.  Self-definition  …  hard and frustrating work, that nobody really has to do.  Who cares?  John is talking about looking directly at our experience of being alive, of existing … without regard for what we find or not."  The post, with links to some of John Sherman's work, is HERE.

~~~~
when the current of thoughts is self-liberated
and the essence of dharma is known
everything is understood
and apparent phenomena are all the books one needs
- Sadhana of Mahamudra
~~~~

You Are What You Want

EXPRESS WHO YOU REALLY ARE
From Blue Truth by David Deida, Chapter 17

Every desire reveals your true nature.

Every day you want to do many things, from hugging your lover to earning money. Why? What feeling underlies all your hopes and dreams? This feeling is the tension between who you really are and who you assume yourself to be.

Consider your desire for intimate relationship. There are many reasons for engaging in a relationship. But you only feel utterly fulfilled in intimacy when you and your lover trust each other so much that you are willing to let down your guards, open your hearts, and love. This is your deepest desire in intimacy because, in truth, you are open as love—but you assume yourself to be a separate, isolated individual. So you scheme and dream to experience in your relationship what, in truth, you already are.

You want to enjoy financial security because, in truth, you are abundance, although you assume only effort will provide a feeling of ease. You enjoy dangerous sports because in every moment you are at the edge of death—the ultimate edge of winning or losing—and yet your assumed security makes you seek risks. You want to eat chocolate because, deep in your heart, you are blissful fullness, though you often close to its pleasure and so seek its taste.

Through your daily round, you seek to approximate the truth of who you are that you have lost touch with. This drama of approximation is the story of your life. You never quite succeed like you hope to. You never quite get the love you really want. And so you either try harder or give up trying. In either case, you are missing the point of existence.

The open expression of who you really are is the only thing that will free you from the stress of feeling incomplete. In truth, you are what you want.

The farther you wander from who you truly are, the more you crave the qualities you miss. Since you can’t feel the love that lives you, you look to your lover to cherish you. Divorced from your home of unlimited openness, you seek to expand the sphere of your power, the size of your portfolio, the borders of your country. Desiring the freedom of inherent ease, you try to discharge stress through masturbation, conversation, and secret habits of release. You miss the simplicity of being, so you seek it in the warmth of a heroin rush, a fluffy bed, or a ritual cup of coffee.

At times, you fret over your appearance, seeking to find the radiance you truly are. You think to yourself constantly, providing a reflection of your own presence. Yet, in truth, you are utter presence, whether or not you reflect yourself by thinking.

Whenever you are ready, you can stop trying to find what you are precluding and start being who you are in truth. To surrender so completely to be who you are is terrifying—your self-image instantly vanishes. Yet it is the only way to live that is real. Otherwise, in every moment of missing who you truly are, you create a self-image that isn’t the real thing. You feel a lack. This tension of deficiency can wind into an intense twist of desire. Eventually, you can become quite warped.

Craving the depth that you miss, you may find yourself engaging in crime, lying, self-abuse, and terrorizing others—or perhaps just sitting in front of the TV and eating cookies. No matter how extreme or mediocre your misplaced efforts become, you can always open as your source. In the midst of stealing, for instance, you can open as the abundance of life-force that you are. How will you act as abundant fullness? Open as you are, your twist unwinds.

In your most wound-up, naughty moments of sicko indulgence, as well as in your common round of daily drudge, you are only missing who you truly are. Through years of moment-by-moment practice, you can open as every twist and hope. You can live open as love, alive as spontaneous blessing.

What you want is who you are. Open as you are without hesitation.

~~~~
But here, right here,
between the birthmark and the stain,
between the ocean and your open vein,
between the snowman and the rain,
once again, once again,
Love calls you by your name.
- Leonard Cohen
~~~~

Open As You Are

DON’T WAIT FOR PERFECTION
From Blue Truth by David Deida, Chapter 14

You can be wide open and diseased at the same time.

No matter how sick you are in body or mind, you can still open. Disease may ravage your body and drugs may cloud your mind, and you can still open. Deep openness can encompass all states of body and mind.

Physical and psychological disorders need not obscure your openness, and your openness may not affect your pathologies. If you inherited nearsightedness from your parents, then spiritual openness probably won’t change your need to wear glasses. If your mind has adapted to habits of panic instilled by years of childhood abuse, then spiritual openness probably won’t eliminate your cringe at the sight of your lover’s genitals.

However, you can be a myopic neurotic and still open with the freedom of unbound love. You may squint and become nauseated as your lover disrobes, but the humor of your response can avail. Like a muscular tic or a snotty nose, your emotional responses are natural effects of your history—perhaps uncomfortable, running their course largely beyond your immediate control. Nevertheless, you can offer your love, laughter, and openness even as you sniffle, panic, or shriek.

Right now, unique as you are in body and mind, you can practice opening fully.

Even as you open, laugh, and love, the patterns of your body and mind have their own momentum. Heart disease, cancer, and even alcoholism have continued in the disposition of many deeply open men and women. Every kind of sexual style and twist can be found in the biographies of saints and spiritual teachers. Your openness can be real and profound, and still your bodymind ripples on, patterning itself according to past influence and present habit.

If your mother drank too much alcohol or was in a state of constant emotional stress during her pregnancy, then your nervous system is somewhat shaped by the chemicals that coursed through your embryonic growth, and there isn’t much you can do about that now. As a consequence of your mother’s actions, your body may be small, your mental acuity may be weak, and your emotional flow may be unstable. These are simply some of the patterns that you may feel and learn to open as, moment by moment.

If your father sexually molested you, then now as an adult you may react to your lover’s advances with numbness. Your posture may be hunched and your pelvis locked. The patterning of your bodymind is what it is. You can change it to some degree, but you can always open as it is, even now. Open now, offering your heart’s gift, and also do your best to live rightly through the present patterns of your past history.

Have you ever done something you wished you had done differently? If so, you can learn from your mistakes and try to do better next time. If the patterns of your bodymind cause undue suffering, in your life or in the lives of others, you can work to transform these patterns, heal them as much as possible, and grow more fully into a balanced, integrated, and healthy person.

But this growth is not the same as spiritual openness and depth. A balanced, healthy individual may serve to create positive changes in the world and yet be unwilling to open and feel fully. On the other hand, someone may be wide open and feeling all, yet appear to be a raving lunatic, lustful, and drug-addicted. Such a person may, in fact, be crazy, lustful, and drug-addicted—and yet be open so deeply their heart feels more than you can know and their love extends to you without bounds.

No matter how fully you open and live as love, your character is only slightly changeable. Your pre-birth influences are ingrained in your nervous system like rings in a tree. Childhood stresses still waltz in the chemistry of your brain and emotions. Even the evolutionary travails of your furry mammalian ancestors contribute to your so-called “spontaneous” desires for sex, food, and comfort.

You are birthed by, grown within, and taken apart by an immense and mysterious web of influence. The efforts you make to be healthy and helpful can be nullified by a falling rock caused by a sudden earth tremor or by a heart failure predisposed by the genetics of your father’s mother’s father. You may truly want to serve your 16-year-old daughter’s friend, and yet you can’t seem to shake the sexual desire you feel, or the guilt.

Integrity is well worth a lifetime of cultivation. Serving others is really the only way to live your heart’s truth. But you are not cured thereby.

Your body may remain bent and your mind may remain twisted. Still, love can extend through your distortions, uniquely twisted yet unbound. Great gifts of openness, love, and awakening can be given—have been given—through arthritic fingers and alcohol-drenched brain cells.

Even as lust, greed, and anger continue to arise in your emotional patterns formed by years of mammalian struggle, parental abuse, and self-torture, you can practice opening without bounds. You can practice opening and giving your deepest gifts in every present moment, however awry your body and mind—and the world—remain.

Feel whatever love you can in this moment, however small. Even if you are woozily soused or ravenous with lust, find a kernel of openness deep in your heart. Feel the place in you that wants to give love and be fully received in love, no matter how messed up you are. Locate your desire for love, for openness, for freedom, even if it is tiny. In the midst of your drunken stupor or wild ire, reconnect with this speck of openness.

Breathe in and out of this tiny gist of love, while you open your senses and feel the people and place around you. Even if you can only open a little bit to breathe through your heart and feel the people and world around you, this is a little bit more open than staying closed.

Practice opening a tiny amount while your body and mind reel on, numb, confused, spinning. Breathe love in and out of the feeling-space of your heart. Breathe the force of love deep down into your abdomen, opening the closures in your gut by inhaling full and filling your belly round. Feel the heart of those around you, look into their eyes, open your senses to all the world’s display, and offer your full-bellied love through your twists by degrees, in every moment you can remember to practice opening.

As slurred as your speaking may be, offer words of love. Through your shaking hands, offer openness through your service. Feel the hearts of those around you as they open or close in response to your gifts. As dim as your awareness may be fuddled, practice to feel the hearts around you and act to open them. Don’t wait for perfection—or even to get straight—to offer your deepest love, full-bellied and open hearted.

Offer your gifts right now with the deepest integrity you can through whatever kinks may remain, always feeling and breathing the hearts of others as you act. Do your best to heal yourself and others, remembering that habits and history may budge very little. Nevertheless, this present moment comes and goes open, just as it is.

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