Goings On: Personal Update

Returned recently from Hawaii where I spent time on both Kauai (first time) and Maui (first time back since moving from there almost 3 years ago). While I was there I worked some and played a lot, and returned with the intention of living that way all the time from now on.

So for the last couple weeks I've been working (SalesForce.com training delivery mostly, but also an implementation for a non-profit that is wrapping up), learning the dilruba with a new teacher (just got my dilruba back from Shastro when on Maui), dancing, and practicing Bikram yoga at least every other day. If you've never done Bikram, it's a bit like going to a sauna for 90 minutes a day, only doing a lot of balancing and stretching poses while in there. Sometimes it's a little hard to breathe, but I always leave feeling centered and relaxed, so it is worth the torture.

Reconnected with my old friend Lori, who I originally met when I was hosting a women's spiritual arts therapeutic support group 14 years ago. Turns out she is friends since childhood with my next door neighbor. I also got to connect her with my friend Stevo who owns a permaculture farm on Maui where he takes in work/study students and teaches them permaculture. Lori is wanting to learn permaculture to extend her nutritional consulting work to earlier stages in the food's production.

Meditation practice is fairly strong, but daily mindfulness practice is quite strong. That may be partly due to running into Rinpoche quite frequently lately. I've seen him three times in the last week. Each time, his presence strengthens my own foundation within the view. It's as if he vibrates so strongly with a certain note that everyone around him gets attuned to it too through entrainment.

Working on my fourth book these days, and got one of my teen nieces to agree to provide feedback. It is a book for teens, so that is very helpful.

No complaints in the romance department. In summary, life is good, and I intend to keep it that way as a mental decision, regardless of the exact contents of my experience. But I also intend to make a real effort each day to fill the day with as many happiness inducing experiences as I can reasonably come up with. Life is what you make it. I've decided to make mine fuller, and that does take some effort.

All The Love You Could Have Given

I've had that line from a Kate Bush song running through my head the last few days. It just pops up out of nowhere, sometimes when I'm meditating, other times when I'm just going about daily chores. Any time my mind comes to rest, it seems to want to remind me, "Are you giving all you could give? Are you fully using the opportunity of this day of life?"

Generally when I have songs I can't get out of my head I find it really irritating. In this case, I'm grateful for it, because too frequently I find the answer is "no" and realize I need to make an adjustment. I suppose it would be irritating if I found it difficult to make such adjustments, but fortunately I do not. In fact, having set my intention to truly take full advantage of the opportunity daily life presents to give love to others, I find more and more opportunities seem to be presenting themselves. I'm sure it is just that I'm noticing more, but either way, I am finding I am experiencing more beautiful moments in which I am able to touch someone's heart and support them in a loving way.

I've found so much joy in remembering this simple guiding principle, "Give all the love you can give each day," that I thought to share it with you. I hope you find it as useful a reminder as I do. It is so easy to forget the point of life. So easy to get lost in the striving for what we want, the desire to be entertained, or the warding off of what we do not want, that we easily forget that we always have the power to direct love outward to others, as well as savoring the love we feel for ourselves.

I hope you will take this inspiration to pause for a moment and truly sink into a feeling of love for yourself, and that in your next interaction with anyone you decide to direct that love outward with an openness towards them and genuine desire to contribute to their feeling good about themselves.

Everyone is an artist. Our works of art are our lives as we live them. Yet too many people die with their artistry unacknowledged, both by themselves and by others. Each time you help someone to appreciate the artistry of who they are, you help them to love themselves, and make more and more beauty out of the art of you. This is an invitation to become a connoisseur, but not a snobby one. Would you choose a world filled with people who are all loved and appreciated for their unique prism's reflection of the Divine light that shines through all things? If you would, then in each day, be alert and open to perceiving that beauty and artistry in anyone you encounter. Love them. Appreciate them. And someday die knowing you have given all the love you could have given.

Playing the Game of Life

Just as I thought I was winning, I realized again that the game isn't even real. Darn. Why is it I always have to see through the illusion just as I'm getting to the good parts? Why can't the lows be just as transparent?

Anyway, just passing along the reminder in case you're in a low and could benefit from it, but can't see it yourself right now.

This "self" that is thinking happy or sad thoughts that are triggering happy or sad feelings, it isn't a solid thing. It isn't you. It is a constantly fluctuating set of habitual patterns. It is a perspective that colors everything even as it confines it to a space much smaller than the infinity that you truly are.

No matter whether you are currently winning or losing in the game of life, there is nothing truly to be accomplished other moving your pieces around the board. Games can be fun, especially when we are winning. But for the game to be worth playing you have to be a good sport about it and not take it so seriously that when you start losing you throw a fit and threaten to quit. You can't cry just because the game isn't going your way. Well you can, but if you do the game will become less and less enjoyable and your chances of improving your performance will also decrease... not to mention that you won't exactly be a choice partner for the rest of the game.

In this moment I kind of wish the game was real. I wish my accomplishment actually meant something solid and enduring. I wish it was "done" and that I could rest with that forever. But the insatiable ego never rests in anything, so any satisfaction born of ego can only be fleeting. Whether I realize I can't "keep it" because it isn't real to begin with or realize I can't "keep it" because ego is insatiable, either way, I can't hold on to the joy of accomplishment for long. In fact, it is already just another day.

My company did just come out with its first piece of software today though. And I'm really excited about the opportunities for new directions in my life experience that will probably grow out of that. Variety of experience is enjoyable not just to my ego, but also to the infinite "self" that is experiencing through each of us. I'm looking forward to something new. Who will I be this time next year? What square will I land on? Or to mix metaphors a bit, what is on the next page of this script?

A Tonglen Life

I became aware during Tonglen today that the point of my life has always been to be a blessing with the living of this life. To me, apart from that, there is just the act of survival, and we all know how successfully that ends. Everybody dies. The only way to do it well, is to leave a trail of benefit in one's wake.

It seems common when people speak of recognizing this that they couch it in apologies for past selfishness or cluelessness. I can't do that. I have been living a life of service since I was 15 and started my first public service venture, a countywide high school youth council that among its many projects in that first year organized and put on a two week summer crafts camp for elementary school children. I am not writing to describe the turning of a page of awareness, but to reinforce a message that is already within everyone reading this.

I am writing to say, do it bigger, more frequently, and without any doubt that it is in fact the point. Life is that simple and direct, no matter how pervasive the false teachings of "masters of the universe" mentalities that control our media and seek to define our culture.

There is awakening, the path of letting go of our false beliefs about reality, particularly our false sense of a separate self. And then there is also navigating relative reality, which we were not born into by accident. As well as the awareness of ultimate reality, there is making something out of this experience of the relative. As far as I can see, the only thing worth making out of it is the alleviation of suffering around us and the spread of joy, love, and support in more and more creative and effective ways.

Phone Buddies came out of such a desire, as have many other projects I've been involved in over the years. What is your offering to our collective experience to be these days? What would you like to gift us? If you have tried already to bring your heart gifts out into the world, you already know that working to help others is still hard work. The world does not pave a path of gold for you just because you want to do something good. There will be many people who will be threatened by your desire to make a positive difference. Some will be jealous and not want to see you succeed. Others will not let you help them, they will reject your help because they don't want it to come from you.

This is a very frequent experience of people of color who seek to help people of all races, including the dominant racial group of whites, often because the intended beneficiaries hold a self-perception of superiority that does not happily accept assistance from "inferiors." In my twenties it was hard for me to learn this lesson, both in terms of being difficult to comprehend and also painful to accept. Yet I kept on working to give benefit wherever I could regardless of race or racism, because it is who I am, and I could not snuff out that inner drive however difficult the journey.

I am writing to encourage all of you who have ever thought you wanted to do something with this life more than survival, beyond even creating additional lives (children) and seeing them grow. There is something more than service to self or to immediate family. There is service to the community of life itself. And in the end I truly believe that is all relative reality ever adds up to over time. The rest is timeless and unconditional. We are meant to have both joys, which is why we were created with both aspects of reality such integral parts of who we are.

If you are still looking for your "calling" or your next "service idea," I would suggest adding tonglen to your daily routine. Breathing in, visualize your Buddha nature drawing all the suffering and inner conflict out of everyone on Earth. Breathing out, visualize your Buddha nature fanning the flames of the inner fire of Truth and Love within the heart-minds of all beings. After however many cycles of breath you have time to devote right then, rest in the glow of a world of happiness, health, wealth and wholeness. Do this at least once each day, and as much as once each hour, depending on how quickly you want to birth the vision into reality. I would say "good luck," but that's not what you need. Just do it.

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.

Right-Livelihood, What is It?

Over the last couple weeks I have been experiencing a tremendous deepening of my connection with my spiritual self's wisdom. I have long believed that surrender to the highest inner wisdom of the "God within" was the only way to fulfill one's potential in life, but only recently have I begun to live that truth, embracing Spirit as the master of my life. I find lately that I am often dwelling in a state of constant surrender, asking, "what do you want of me?" instead of "what do I want right now?"

However, I still have to apply my intellect to sort out and apply the instruction I am given. Spirit doesn't tend to say things like, "I want you to quit this job and apply for this one. And no more wine. Stick to apple juice." At least it doesn't say those sorts of things to me, anyway. Instead it gives images, impressions, feelings and flashes of insight. It is up to intellect to figure out how those things fit within the physical realm we act within. And that's where the confusion comes in when I wonder if I'm doing the right thing at the right time, and if not, what would constitute the right thing to most fully actualize Spirit's highest goals for my life.

For a couple years now my online technology consulting work has seemed blessed; it flowed so naturally and I became so good at it so quickly. When I decided to do the work primarily for non-profits (NPOs) it seemed to my intellect that it would of course be a combination that was even more favored by Spirit. But then the transition has been like slogging through mud. It keeps almost happening, but not quite happening.

At the same time, just yesterday I heard from someone I did a spiritual healing session with years ago, who tells me he has adapted a part of the work I once did with him, creating a daily practice he calls "The Way of the Heart." He says that doing the 5 min. practice several times each day has brought him his life partner, and that it has done the same for several other people he taught it to. It was the centering intro for my work, not the focus, so no soulmates with me. Still, it makes me think about doing sessions again.

He wrote me to ask if I would review the book he is writing about it, and when I gave him some clarifying feedback, he asked how I had come up with the original method. Within my search for the answer to his question within distant memory, I delved more deeply into the heart of the work I once did than I have in several years. Doing so renewed my love for the work, and my recollection of just how profound a difference I was making in people's lives.

The reason I had stopped doing it was the "business" aspect of the work. What got hard for me was that I'm not much of an entrepreneur in general, but particularly when I am having to promote myself as having such nebulous abilities. My technology work is more concrete, and so doesn't feel as much like a promotion of "me," so trying to sell my value in that regard doesn't feel as vulnerable as trying to sell my value with healing work.

When technology clients say, "We've worked with many consultants, and Indigo is the best we have found; she did wonders for our business," and these people are leaders in their industries, well that feels like very strong affirmation and I'm confident other companies will want me to do the same for them, and expect I can. Spiritual healing work is very different from that. After a few years, I just didn't have it in me to keep up the effort of maintaining a separate healing room (at considerable extra expense above my personal living space needs), keeping promotional materials in circulation so that clients could find me, and then "closing the deal" and scheduling the sessions. It all felt like a burden, rather than a gift.

Writing to Forest and explaining the content of the full ClearLight Nature/Bliss Therapy sessions brought back the reason I had created the method in the first place, as well as my confidence in just how effective it is. It truly does restore people to an experience of their spiritual center as their "I" identity. And it leaves them with guidance they can use to help maintain that, even as familiar habits and life structures pull them back towards their old norm.

Then today I read an article by Dave Pollard called The World Changing Story, which essentially asks the question, "If our current civilization is collapsing in on itself, as it appears to be doing, what part of our path forward do you want to be?"

In reflecting on how to answer, I realize that I also see the current way of life as unsustainable, but am split on how I fit into the effective human response. A part of me is concerned with financially supporting myself so that I am not a victim of the worst of it. (e.g. The difference in experience of catastrophe between the poor and the wealthy during Katrina was significant, and I'm still far closer to the poor pole than the secure one.) Another part of me wants to ease people's suffering in immediate ways -- sort of salve and bandage the wounds -- hence my desire to work with non-profits as a tech consultant, helping them be more effective in their service work, and my creation of the Phone Buddies peer counseling community.

Still another part of me sees a spiritual solution. We need as many people as possible attuned with their Buddha Nature/Inner Wisdom to guide us out of this. Intellect won't manage it. This leads me to want to go back to doing my spiritual healing work, which was focused on exactly that "re-centering."

So how do I balance these 3 wants? Is it Spirit's desire that I do incorporate all 3 into my life, or is it pointing me towards just one now? Was the previous support for the technology work only meant to last for that period of time, and is it now time to refocus on offering spiritual healing work and trying to help as many people as I can before X happens? Is it the intermediate work of helping non-profits with technology that is not supported, and I am meant to support myself financially by offering technical assistance to well paying corporate clients so that I can offer the spiritual sessions for free and easily afford the space to conduct them in? Or should I do nothing, and simply wait for something to walk right up and lay itself across my lap, as opportunities did when I lived in Bali?

Spirit, speak more clearly; my intellect is not succeeding in sorting out your cryptic instructions.

Addendum 8/09: As is often the case, as soon as I clarify the question, the universe sets about creating the answer all around me through the circumstances of my life. I was letting myself get lost in other people's ways of relating to life, within which I will never find peace because it is simply not my viewpoint. I am not a person with a story that looks forward, only one which is revealed looking back. Fortunately for me, by then it no longer matters, and so I am not confined by my stories. I don't know who I am or what I am doing in this world. I know I have many opportunities to be of use because I have taken advantage of each opportunity to be of use in the past, even the ones that were rejected as unworthy of a developed intellect by so many others before me. What that adds up to, I don't need to know, unless I'm looking for a good party-talk answer to the question, "What do you do?" I can't live my life for good party talk. I guess they'll just have to be satisfied to hear that I am an unlimited being at play within the ocean of being, motivated by love, and satisfied by this moment.

Fellowship for Good - Kiva Invites You

I have been a Kiva lender for a few months now and am glad I joined every time I get an email notifying me that one of the two Ghanaian women whose business I supported has repaid part of the funds, which I will then be able to make available to other borrowers. Normally I don't do more than read the email and smile to myself at how easy Kiva has made it to share a chance at the prosperity my birth in a rich nation has given me direct access to.

Today, for the first time I followed some of the links in the email to return to the Kiva website to have another look around. I'm glad I did, as I discovered the Kiva Fellows program, which allows people like you and me the opportunity to go to Ghana, Peru, Ukraine, etc. to work with the local Kiva field office which selects businesses for the program and guides them to success with their businesses.

Here is an excerpt from the site - Kiva Fellow Core Responsibilities:

The Kiva Fellow is an integral part of the Kiva Team, acting as Kiva's eyes and ears in the field and helping to extend limited resources to maximum effect. Kiva Fellows fulfill tasks set out in a Work Plan, defined by Kiva along with the host microfinance institution (MFI).

1. Facilitate Connections between Kiva's Borrowers and Lenders
   Your journal entries, business postings and blog entries will help build the rich content that bridges our borrowers and lenders and makes Kiva's model work!
   • Interview no less than 15 businesses per week to assess loan impact, verify data, and gather information for journal updates
   • Develop innovative ways to facilitate connections via creative journaling, YouTube video and other means
   • Write a blog entry every two weeks on the Kiva Fellows Blog
   • Promote awareness of the host MFI and its programs to the Kiva lender community
   • Promote an understanding of the Kiva lending community to borrowers

There are two more items on the list, and it is recommended you visit the Kiva site for complete details. I highlight this first one here because it reveals an answer to a dilemma I confronted years ago when trying to help an African orphans support non-profit use online technology to grow their international support base. I kept trying to impress upon them how important it would be to have a blog that included entries from recipients so that people who donated money could get direct feedback about the difference their contribution was making in the childrens' lives. I even set up the blog for them and posted the first entry, but they simply never got themselves to a point where they could post anything themselves.

Kiva probably faced a similar problem, and solved it by having westerners who would be there in the field, posting the information on behalf of those who received services. It may seem like a small thing, and you might wonder both why it would be so hard for the local people to do it or why it would be important enough to send people half way around the world to do for them. I still don't know why it is such a seemingly insurmountable hurdle for local agency staff abroad to do the updates, but I can definitely say as a financial supporter myself that those updates mean a great deal to me. They are the human proof that there was a good reason for me to skip those two dinners out with friends to send the money I had worked for and earned to someone I have never met and will never meet. Those updates provide the motivation to keep on giving, so that others too will benefit based on the experience lenders had with those who came before them.

The next deadline for Kiva Fellow applications is coming up Oct. 1 and that trip will be departing in early February. If you do decide to apply, please come back and share insights about your experience in the sidebar comments.

As someone who has traveled and lived in financially impoverished countries, I can definitely attest to the life changing impact such an experience has on you. Though I never went as part of an official program, I always sought out and found opportunities to make a contribution to the lives of those around me beyond simply paying them a good price for whatever products their family business sold. I never saw myself doing the 2 year, government sponsored Peace Corp program, but the 3-6 month non-profit based Kiva Fellows program could be a great fit for anyone who sees economic independence as a key part of self-actualization for people around the world, and who wants to be a part of helping that happen.

The Schizotypal Shaman

If you have a spare 80 minutes, check out this fascinating Stanford lecture video on the Biology of Religion, which could more aptly be called, "How religiosity is the healthy trait expression of schizophrenia and OCD."

Not being a follower of any ritual based religion (my Tibetan lama has removed the ritual aspects of the religion from our sangha's practice), I don't myself see the benefits of the traits linked to OCD. But for those people who find peace within ritual and believe in its transformative power, hopefully you find no insult in the linkage to OCD. You really have to watch a good chunk of the video for the connection to be clarified, but he is definitely not pathologizing religion.

In fact, he starts with examples of how biological traits of physical illnesses also have valuable protective abilities within a society. Sickle cell anemia results from a trait that protects against malaria. Cystic fibrosis from a trait that protects against cholera. Tay-Sachs traits that protect against tuberculosis, and so on. It is the small portion of cases where the trait is excessive that disease results. Because the trait normally expresses in a healthy way, it gets passed on to future generations (many people with the trait still reproduce).

The need to "get it just right" is the key point of the lecture. In traditional tribal cultures, the shaman who goes into a trance, speaks to spirits, and thereby draws in healing energy in a ritual that the next day has the sick person get up from their sick bed totally well, or allows them to forewarn of the need to make a change in the tribe's behavior which months later turns out to save all their lives, this shaman is using the best of the traits of schizophrenia to benefit everyone. The schizophrenic who babbles to himself during a part of the hunt where everyone needs to be quiet in order to catch the game, gets exiled. There is a world of difference between highly well adapted traits that make super capable and maladaptive disorders that make one incompetent when it comes to personal survival and tribal survival.

As someone who possesses some such traits (channeling healing energies like Reiki and Johrei, having some truly miraculous healing experience in my treatment of AIDS patients, etc.) and who has also experienced some of the more difficult aspects of them within modern culture (the need for personal isolation within a culture that demands constant social contact in order to achieve), this lecture had a particularly strong resonance within me. It makes me feel both vindicated and condemned. Great to think my biology falls in that "just right" range where I can use the traits beneficially, but still so very hard to live with Shamanic ability within a culture of skepticism. And to have it be biological means that like the autistic, there is really no amount of trying and learning that will ever get me to a point where I don't need to be alone so much just to be at peace.

Fortunately, a tendency towards religious belief also seems to be a very strong buffer against depression. It is thought to relate to religious belief's ability to soothe the pervasive human need for a sense of control over one's environment. Humans don't like it when cause and effect relationships are obscured so that they have no sense of what they need to do to get what they want and avoid what they do not want. In fact, an internal "locus of control" is a well-established psychological determinant of mental health, as opposed to feeling buffeted about by circumstances beyond one's control or a victim of fate.

Lastly, the lecture points at one other pathology whose traits offer some positives when expressed in a mild and adaptive form: temporal lobe epilepsy (to be distinguished from other forms of epilepsy). With TLE traits the person may have a tendency to write a lot and to be fascinated with philosophical/metaphysical topics. It's not that they are necessarily moved by the subjects or applying them in their lives. They are simply fascinated by the mental musing and synthesis of ideas about the subject through writing.

This is a trap of the religious life that many good teachers will point out. Many Buddhists I think particularly fall prey to the down side of this one. They get stuck at a love of the ideas, but do not practice them in their daily lives. They can ruminate and theorize endlessly about the value of compassion, and then be rude to every single person they meet without seeing any incongruity between the two. Yet surprisingly, the same could be said of many atheists. They are just as fascinated by religious ideas, simply from the standpoint of refuting them. They can go on for hours (or write volumes) about all the reasons why religion makes no sense, and they will if you give them an ear.

Similarly, Catholic spiritual leaders back in the 16th Century could be found warning about the practice of empty ritual and how it was important to not let the meaning and spiritual experience of the ritual be lost. Congregations were told to guard against the people who would be attracted to the religion by the structure of the ritual but essentially have no heartfelt embrace of it.

I suppose we should also add to the list of "warnings of pathology masquerading as the healthy balance that produces a benefit to the community" the new age teacher who wants to convince everyone they are speaking for God (the one and ONLY God) as a unique and special messenger. This would be the distortion of the shaman role in the community. The traditional shaman is never thought of as having a special relationship with God. It's more that they have a job that few people are needed to fill, and that few can fill, but it's still just a job within the community.

I can't really present you with any conclusion from all this that goes beyond what has already been said. I think the point is just to present these ideas for you to reflect on with your own experience. For me, I think it leads me to a place of greater acceptance around my solitary nature. I had recently begun thinking I really needed to somehow overcome that, but this research suggests continued attempts would be just as futile as past ones have been. Rather, I should see the value in having the other traits that go with that, and commit myself to making good use of them.

If you find any of yourself reflected in this post, I hope you find an insightful yet empowering conclusion as well. Peace and blessings be with you.

Update 9/14/09 - Comments have just been added to this blog, and this article can now accept reader comments.

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?