The Prosecution Rests

We have all faced a great deal of both suffering and joy in our lives. The world of ego is by nature a constantly fluctuating dance of cruelty and beauty. Though we all suffer, each of us carries a unique personal story of how we have been wounded by the very nature of the world created by ego. Yet as Hafiz so eloquently says, "your wounds of love can only heal, when you can forgive this dream."

We can only move beyond identification with "the story of me," which is essentially the story of what has happened to the ego and how it felt about it, when we can forgive the world for being the way it is. And this forgiveness is only possible once we feel that the story of our personal suffering has been heard, understood fully, and met with compassion. We must testify as witnesses for the prosecution, have the world be found guilty, and then decide in our hearts to grant it a full pardon.

Many of us have had experiences of temporary awakening. Each time we thought it would be the ultimate one, that it would last. Yet each time we were eventually pulled back into the world of ego identification. That happens because something is left undone. The ego identity is still being clung to for some specific reason, not just as a general state. That is why some people are able to indeed let go and stay let go. They let go and there is nothing that snaps them back. They are truly done with the story of their ego identity. It no longer holds any power over them, anymore than a movie they once saw does.

When your "story self" feels that he/she has been fully represented, that the criminal called "world" has been exposed, and that he/she is the one who has decided to forgive the world its sins, then it will be able to let go of you. It won't need to keep you carrying around its story, lest it be forgotten and never given its due.

The Trial
Write out the story of your suffering. Start with your earliest memories of childhood and go through your present life. See if you can identify any patterns to your suffering and any beliefs you have come to accept even though they cause you great pain. For example, I have dealt with an anxiety disorder my entire life and as part of that I developed a belief that this world was a very frightening place. I realize it isn't that frightening to everyone, just to people with anxiety disorders. But that doesn't make it any less true for me. So that is a part of the story of suffering that I carried through life, that I was a defenseless being in a terrifyingly violent world. See if you can identify not just the details, but the thematic beliefs of your story. This is necessary before the ego identity whose story it is can feel it has fully been understood.

Once you have written out the 3-10 pages you are likely to wind up with when you are done, find a trusted, loving, and supportive friend and ask him/her to help you with a healing ritual. Since you'll be asking a lot of the person, you may want to present it as a mutual project you are doing together, where they help you one week and then you meet again the next week for you to return the favor to them.

Send the friend your story in advance, with them committing to read it before your meeting, so that you can be sure they have had time to sit with it and fully take it in. Then when you are together, read the story aloud to them, so that you are testifying to them. After you have read the story, ask them if they understand fully or if they have any questions. If they have any questions, answer them as best you can before proceeding.

Ask yourself internally if you are truly ready to release the story of your victimization by ego's world. If you get a "yes," then burn the pages of your story, with your friend as witness. As you watch the pages burn, announce your love and compassion for the person who is being destroyed by the flames of love. Speak whatever words you feel moved to speak, and open your heart with full compassion for the story of suffering that once was your "home" and that will never be seen or heard from again.

Bury or scatter the ashes somewhere outside. That's it. It's over. May he/she rest in peace. Just don't go back to visit the grave.

Singing for Your Freedom

"You are forever pure.
You are forever true
and the dream of this world
can never touch you.
So give up your attachment
and give up your confusion
and fly to that space that's beyond
all illusion."

~ Shimshai from the song "Suddhosi Buddhosi" off the album "Live on Maui"

I love the sound of silence so much that sometimes I forget how transformative a blessing music can be. Of course, it can always be entertainment, and such distractions can be fun, but when I'm not looking for distraction, when instead I'm looking to deepen my intimacy with the present moment, I generally surround myself with silence. And then there comes a day where I brew the very best oolong tea I have been able to find, open up the French doors to the garden, and turn up the volume on my favorite acoustic musicians.

Today I immersed myself in Shimshai, and what a soul opening choice it was. As I listened to his music today, I found my heart opening with a keen awareness of one aspect of the suffering in this world. Recently I have been troubled by the rise in gang violence, and particularly in the growing tension between the races and an increase in gang related race wars. As I sat listening to the music, I felt a deep connection to the false beliefs that were controlling the minds and eclipsing the hearts of all those young people, causing them to live in rage, hatred and fear -- some as victims and some as victimizers, but all as suffering souls. The more I felt the pain of their delusion, the more my heart opened and I began to cry for them. Every inch of my heart cried out for their release, as I prayed that the light of the Truth of their perfection, and indeed the perfection of their imagined enemies, might pierce the darkness and reveal itself to them.

Earlier today I began my morning meditation the way I always do, with the Buddhist Four Immeasurables prayer:

"May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
May they be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.
May they never part from the happiness that is beyond suffering.
May they dwell in equanimity, without attachment or aversion."

I have long known that the one cause of suffering this prayer points to is the suffering caused by the delusion that we ARE these limited, separate, physical devices that we use to move through this physical realm. This false belief is the only true source of suffering that exists. Once we know that we are infinite beings having a localized experience, everything falls into perspective. Group identity is just an idea. Pride, respect, power -- all just ideas, none of which hold the power to cause or prevent our inner peace and outward demonstration of love. But in the presence of false identification with the illusion of these separate bodies and their separate life stories that we call "me," well then no happiness can possibly be a lasting one, for it is all frail and threatened, needing constant defense and shoring up.

Ending each meditation, there is the prayer that the merit gained by the practice be used to free all beings from suffering:

"Rising above all forces of negativity,
going beyond the turbulence of [belief in] birth, old age, sickness, and death,
from the ocean of samsara,
may I free all beings."

This is always meaningful to me, yet rarely does it reach into the depths of my emotions and empower itself as a creative prayer. Yet our thoughts and words have the power to create within this manufactured realm. We can take action upon the physical using our physical bodies and their efforts, but as Divine creators who manufactured this realm ourselves, we can also act upon this physical realm from a non-physical level. Yet in order for us to do this, we must "move" from the locus of our spiritual self, which is heart-centered. Emotion can be one of the widest paths to that center of connectedness with all life. And today it was music that allowed me to follow that path home, and re-energize my commitment to using my life to help as many people as I can to find freedom from the tyranny of their mental confusion, and to remember who they are.

"Pure, pure like the water,
let it run forever more,
to be clean, clean as the waves
come crashing to the shore.
It leaves me
smooth, smooth as a pebble,
polished in the depth of love
carried by the winds of grace
on the wings of a dove.
...
Arise and awake from your slumber
Kindle ancient flame
as witness to the waves of what's to change
though the essence remains the same."

~ Shimshai from the song "Pure" off the album "Deliverance"

Let yourself rise from the depths of your slumber. Remember who you are. You have lived a life from within a limited perspective, but you are not a limited being. You are Christ. You are Krishna. You are Buddha. Remember, and shine your light so that it might enlighten others as you pass through this world. You are not alone. You were never alone. There is only one of us.

"I know that Jah
is forever beside me.
I know the love
will forever remind me.
I know that Jah
is the light in a darkened world.
I must live in Thy way and Thy will."

~ Shimshai from the song "We Give Thanks" off the album "Live on Maui"

May you see the Truth in yourself, and find it again reflected back to you within every face you see.

Too Simple

There is a beauty that is too simple for most to see. There is a peace too pervasive to embrace, and a joy too unearned to satisfy. Thankfully, there is also a power we each carry within us to make a new choice, a different one in this moment. We can choose to accept what is simple, pervasive, and unconditional as the very thing we have sought, and thereby come to full rest within this very moment.

This is it. This is the moment you have waited for. This is the breath you needed to exhale, and see how the one you needed to inhale comes so effortlessly following after.

There are still so many habits that rule your life and determine your actions and reactions. Yet the antidote to them all is so simple. Sit in meditation each day. Learn through meditation how to let habitual action and inner reaction pass through without identifying with it as "I" or "my experience." Just watch it, as an attentive observer. Be the silent and impartial witness to the cascade of inner turmoil, joy, sadness, anger, and judgmental chatter that calls itself feeling and thought.

Notice too the viewpoint that is watching. Watch the watcher. The truly miraculous thing is that the impartial watcher within you is the same as the one within me, and every other sentient being. There is only one watcher, taken form in many different bodies and watching the passage of many different life stories, all at once. We are not connected; we are one.

And we are enlightened right now. Notice. And appreciate the simple things.

The inner chatter and habitual behavior doesn't necessarily stop when you awaken to your ever-present perfection. It eventually will because you won't be feeding it with the energy of new "I" identity energy, which it depends on to grow, but at first and for probably a long time it will still be there. Yet through meditation you will have trained yourself to not be bothered by it and to most assuredly not feed it. And so, there is the habitual mind, and there is the perfection, and it is all here right now, in peace.

The fire
Has roared near you.
The most intimate parts of your body
Got scorched,

So
Of course you have run
From your marriages into a
Different
House

That will shelter you
From embracing every aspect of Him.

God has
Roared near us.
The lashes on our heart's eye got burnt.
Of course we have
Run away

From His
Sweet flaming breath
That proposed an annihilation
Too real,

Too
Beautiful.

~ Hafiz

Choose again. Sit, watch, and learn to separate Truth from untruth, the Divine you from the temporary form of you. It truly is just that simple. Anyone could do it. I've taught it to convicts right there within prison. Absolutely nothing about enlightenment is the stuff ego pride can grow on. So what do you truly choose? Your next actions will answer that question for you, honestly.

Namaste

What have you been looking for that is so much more rewarding than what is here right now? Is it a dream of accomplishment you seek - affirmation that you are valuable and needed? Is it for the world to love you more, this time enough for you to actually feel lovable? Do you need the roar of the crowd to feel it, or is even that not enough? Is it the security and freedom that you believe more money will buy? Is it the promised impenetrable bliss that enlightenment is said to provide?

Are your distractions from your present moment experience more of the variety of entertainments or defenses? Are you grasping or pushing to get away from here -- to get away from "right now?"

I ask these questions because I see myself in all of them. As I sat in meditation at the Buddhist center yesterday, all these questions kept arising in my mind. In short, "Why exactly is it that I keep chasing after something in my mind instead of appreciating what is here within my experience right now?"

I am a smart woman. I know full well that happiness can only be had as an experience. The thought of happiness is the basis of hope, but actual happiness is better than the hope for future happiness. Unless there is dread of future suffering that is stronger than anything else within one's awareness. And I think that is the root of the issue for me. You should look within yourself, within the lessons of your life, and see what the root is for you. I share more on mine now, in case we are alike in this way.

Having identified this root, I next seek out the genesis of the root so that I know how to uproot it and make sure it never takes hold again. Seeking this, I recognize the programming of my childhood and early adulthood. I was programmed for self-hatred. The world often tried to convince me that I had no value -- because I was a girl, because I was black, because I was poor, because... fill in the blank. Society rarely comes right up to your face and speaks those words, though sometimes some of us have even experienced that.

Actually it is easier to be defended against it when it does say it plain. It's when the lesson comes from people's behaviors and the situations they thereby create, that the programming is particularly effective. You never even realize a lesson is being learned. You simply embody and then repeatedly re-create the beliefs that are carried by the lesson. There is more that is taught like this than merely self-attack, but that is the lesson I particularly want to focus on now. It is the one that leads to this ever-present anxiety about what lies behind the next corner.

Within us all is a sense of justice. I believe this in an inescapable human trait. That is why criminals always do stupid things that eventually get them caught. A part of them wants to get away with it, but another part wants to be punished, because they are convinced they deserve it. I tend to agree with the criminals that they deserved to face the legal consequences of their behavior, but what about you? You have never shot, stabbed, robbed, beaten, swindled or otherwise preyed upon those around you. Why do you deserve to be punished?

If you protest, "No, I know I don't deserve to be punished," then go back to the start of this article and begin again. Now, tell me, why is it that you believe you deserve to be punished? What is it about you that is so bad it must face pain and suffering in order for all to be right in the world?

Yes, and there is the pain, is it not? There is the tear, and the agony, and the why, and the not fair. There is that wounded child, a little bird that was ripped from its shell too soon. And I cry with you. And I cry for you. And I cry out to you, "Please stop."

Stop punishing yourself for the crime you never committed. Stop accepting your programming as truth. Recognize that all you believe is something you were taught, and that now, as an adult, it is your responsibility alone to conduct your reprogramming.

You must program yourself for love, or you will not be able to settle into the peace that is here within this moment. You will not be able to surrender the future to the future until you no longer believe that assuredly some great harm awaits you there -- a harm you must take action or expend thought to ward off now, instead of simply being present with what is.

Breathing in, think, "I love myself." Breathing out, think, "I embrace what is." Breathing in and breathing out, over and over, we proclaim and attend to the truth, and thereby create a new mental habit, one that works in harmony with our peace instead of obscuring it.

Notice that I say, "obscure," not "prevent" or "interrupt." There is nothing that ever prevents or interrupts your peace. Your peace is eternal, ever-present, and unshakable. Your peace is right here right now, as it always is. But are you present with it? Do you take it for granted, or do you worship it with the full holy awe to which it is due?

If there has ever been a small infraction by you that might warrant any suffering, I would say it is this. That you do not exhibit the proper gratitude for the sacredness of your life. You fritter away the moments thinking about the past or the future, regretting this, wanting that, warding off some other thing, and meanwhile moment after moment of life comes and goes unacknowledged by you with so much as a nod. You should be on your knees.

The greatness of who you are in this very moment is so awesome, so beautiful and radiant and powerful, you should be on your knees.

I bow to you. I salute you. I embrace you. I thank you for coming to Earth. And I do it all, now.

The Right Kind of Independence

Yesterday was the 4th of July, an American holiday celebrating our liberation from Great Britain so that we became a separate country instead of a collection of British colonies. It is sometimes referred to as Independence Day.

Some friends of mine at a barbecue yesterday kept greeting people with "Happy Inter-dependence Day," and I definitely find that more appropriate a wish given what is needed in the journey ahead if we are to survive as a species. We need to recognize our interdependence and begin working together for the common good, instead of trying to climb over each other's bones for a personal "win."

Yet a deeper interpretation of the word "independence" offers a promise for even greater human triumph than that which social interdependence could bring. The independence of which I speak is freedom from the tyranny of a mind that criticizes everything you or anyone else does, is impossible to keep happy for long, and which seems to feel it has something of value to say about every little moment of your life.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, "My head hurts. I need to get some sleep. I need some peace and quiet. But these thoughts keep running through my head, on and on?" Do you ever tire of the constant judgment flowing through your head? Wouldn't you like to be free of all that?

Well I sure would, and that is what I want to invite you to cultivate in your life. May you find independence from the tyranny of your chattering mind. May you be at peace. May you close your eyes in just a moment, take a deep breath in, think "I accept myself" as you breath out, then pause on empty and allow your mind to go blank. Then breathe in again as such, and begin the cycle again. May you do this over and over for the next 10 minutes, and opening your eyes, find yourself immersed in an all-pervading clarity and peace.

Be well.

To Be a God or Not to Be

I have recently relocated back to the mainland after 5 years in Hawaii. Some might say it was a mad decision. Occasionally I think so myself. Yet I also know that it was time to get back into the flow of life.

Within Buddhism there are said to be various realms in which beings live. There is suffering within all realms until one attains the mind of a Buddha, transcending all deluded perceptions and beliefs that lock one into the other realms.

The suffering of the God realm is unique. Life within the God realm is perfect. There is tremendous pleasure and enjoyment all the time. Suffering is experienced as the fear of eventually exhausting the good karma that gained one entry into the God realm and having to fall to a lower realm of less comfort and enjoyment.

The suffering of the human realm is said to be busy-ness and poverty (the belief in lack, however much material or other wealth there may actually be).

Well I can only say that my life definitely resembles that accusation. I definitely feel that I have left a land of milk and honey to return to a place where everyone is constantly busy and trying to get ahead financially, no matter how well they are currently doing. Actually they are trying to get ahead in all respects, trying to more fully present an image to themselves and the world around them that says, "Perfect in every way. I have a perfect life."

So my challenge here is not to fall into that. You might say then, why leave the God realm at all? Well I can't say I had run out of good karma, as certainly my transition to this place has been just as blessed as my transition to Hawaii was 5 years ago. It is more the recognition that the aspiration of my spiritual path is not to live as a God.

That may sound obvious, but for many people if they actually look at what it is they hope their spiritual practice will get them, they will see that it is unending pleasure and freedom from pain. They aspire to live as Gods, whether in a place like Hawaii or among the mere mortals where they currently reside.

Yet the life of a Buddha is not necessarily comfortable, in the way of creature comforts. Maybe there is beauty, wealth, spaciousness, the best foods, personal transportation, etc. within one's life as an awakened one, but maybe not. It is irrelevant to the Buddha. It is not the aspiration of the path to be more comfortable than one was before awakening. It is the aspiration simply to live with an unwavering awareness of the Truth.

This Truth includes the recognition of one's perfect love for all that is, one's perfect oneness with all that is, one's complete satisfaction within each and every moment with whatever is. So there is peace, and joy, and an appreciation of beauty, but only by the standards of a Buddha -- not necessarily by our everyday human standards.

So I am shaking off my false interest in awakening and embracing a sincere commitment to awakening. Not that I think I'm going to be waking up tomorrow morning in a Buddha experience, but that I am clearly making choices that support that instead of ones that support the aim of worldly joy and comforts.

I write this because I think it is worthwhile for anyone on the spiritual path to do a personal assessment of exactly what it is they practice for. What is your aspiration? Don't assume. Really think about what it is you are meditating for, or living where you live for, or reading all those books and going to all those teachings hoping to get, be, or experience.

What would you change if you saw a need for an adjustment of how you live so that it is more fully in alignment with what you choose to do with this lifetime?

The Perfection of Your Present Situation

The following is an adaptation of a post I recently made on a message board in response to a woman's complaint about the challenges motherhood is presenting to her spiritual practice. I repost it here because I think it applies equally to whatever excuse we are clinging to for why we are not doing the very actions that are most likely to help us awaken. The ego doesn't want to awaken; it just wants to pretend it wants to while cloaking itself in excuses for why the conditions of one's life make freedom from its tyranny impossible.

Ego says, "Sure I want you to wake up. I like the idea of enlightenment. As soon as I can make every speck of external reality perfect you won't need me anymore and you can become enlightened then. Let's work very hard at this enlightenment business. I'm sure I can come up with a very effective strategy for you."

I suggest you take the point of view that your current situation is exactly what you most need to support your practice. If you have to be active every waking moment with home and family care tasks, meditate mindfully as you engage in the activity needed to support your family. View the path within your situation to be the blessing, not the compromise or sacrifice.

Think of how many more hours of meditation you can get in like this than someone who merely sits for meditation practice 40-60 minutes a day (the norm). You will literally be getting hours of meditation practice each day, if you are willing to embrace the situation as an opportunity to meditate rather than clinging to the idea that it is an obstacle to your meditation. Think of how much inner discipline it would take to get you to actually sit for meditation and lose yourself completely in the experience for 14 hours a day. Yet as a mother with young children you have plenty of drive to engage in selfless activity for so many hours. All you have to do is use the situation as a meditation practice instead of fighting it.

In vajrayana, enlightenment is about developing the view of the Buddha, recognizing that nirvana was always there within all the situations of samsara (all of them), not about changing anything outside onself so that it becomes nirvana. So in daily practice one doesn't strive to rearrange the chairs on samsara's Titantic. Instead we just want off that damn boat altogether, and we achieve this by realizing that the boat never truly existed, so it can't truly sink.

Liberation comes just that quickly, when there is insight, conviction, and stability in the view. No external situation can stop you from realizing that external situations are inherently empty. Only your conceptual beliefs (your opinions) about those situations can stop you if you are unwilling to see that the beliefs themselves are equally insubstantial.