Yesterday was Christmas (OK, if you looked at the header for the message you know that) and I had the best Christmas I have had in years.
I have always been aware of the fact that we tend to see "outside" us better than inside ourselves. I can look around and see a million people around who are miserable and obviously so very sad without realizing how sad and/or depressed I may be since it has become such a habitual state of mind and being.
It's like the man who has something terrible happen to him and he gets angry. In time, he has been angry for so long that he doesn't even realize that he is always angry and that those around him are quite aware of this. Eventually, most will leave him since who wants to be around an angry person all the time. They may realize why, but many will not, but he will just know this is who and what he "is".
Since leaving the limo company and going to work for myself has been a somewhat stressful and unnerving experience, I have written here before about how disconcerting getting outside my personal comfort zones has been. It has had an interesting effect on my life that I am SOOOO very thankful for.
Yesterday, I went to a party of friends and have to say that I probably had the most enjoyable time that I have ever had, or at least in many years.
Having been so attached to my job for so many years, I had not even realized how much of "life" I was missing out on since it just "was" what I did. May I never get to that place again of bypassing life while trying to survive.
This group of friends and acquaintances are mainly people that I have only known for a few months and they have accepted me and made me feel welcome in ways that you don't find in Los Angeles very often. After the party, I was driving home and became aware of just how full of joy I was and how long it had been since I had been there outside of meditation and teaching.
As much as I loved all the gifts I received for Christmas from my friends and adopted families (K: the "Magic 8-Ball" said that my wish for happiness today was likely, right so far... :-) ) the one that I will cherish forever is the joy and happiness you all have brought into my life and the refuge that you have offered from the difficulties in the day-to-day existences of my life and calling.
May everyone be blessed to have that one person or group of people that let them just relax and enjoy, if not, why would life be worth living?
ॐ शान्ति
Om, shanti (Peace)
December 26, 2007
December 15, 2007
Time Travel; fun but not very profitable...
Last weekend, I was working on some questions and supplying answers when the following came up:
There is an old expression that says "if you you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you completely miss the present" and the present or now is actually all that we really have. Another expression that I heard on this was "yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is the only cash we have."
Learning the lessons of the past is important so that we are not condemned to repeat them as Benjamin Franklin said. Becoming fixated on our past is not healthy for us. Rehashing our past failures or disappointments for the purpose of punishing ourselves is not healthy.
The same goes for the future. We can enjoy an amusement of playing out the future in our heads but thinking that we can plan every detail of the future and expecting it to follow our detailed schema is a fantasy that tends to become painful when it is not realized. As the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."
Imagining and fantasy can actually become detrimental to our growth. In the process of fantasizing, we usually tend to tell ourselves how we would like something but define why we are not going to get it or are unworthy of it. For those who are aware of the Law of Attraction, this is a big warning sign to not allow to pass unheeded.
Within reason, all of these time travel experiments can be helpful and fun, but the fact is that if you spend all your time in any of them, you are going to miss the present and it is the present that you change into the future and the past is just a record of how you got to where you are.
Enjoy the now, be the now and live in it. I can guarantee that once you spend the majority of the time thinking about what is, this moment, the past stops being something of sorrow and the future becomes a new landscape that unfolds moment by moment before you.
How can I let go of others’ problems instead of trying to solve them?I find that we all suffer from this to some degree. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking may not be a big proponents of it, but to a degree, we all do it. When we think about things that have happened to us in the past, imagine or plan things in the future we are practicing time travel in at least one of it's methods.
This is an issue that I have been working of for a while. So far, the best I have been able to accomplish is to become aware of it as it is happening and then I can try to let go of it and begin to regain my peace.The hard part for me is the letting it stay gone, I tend to rehash it after the fact and I can get just as frustrated, if not more so, as I would at the time, time travel can be fun and completely unprofitable.
There is an old expression that says "if you you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you completely miss the present" and the present or now is actually all that we really have. Another expression that I heard on this was "yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is the only cash we have."
Learning the lessons of the past is important so that we are not condemned to repeat them as Benjamin Franklin said. Becoming fixated on our past is not healthy for us. Rehashing our past failures or disappointments for the purpose of punishing ourselves is not healthy.
The same goes for the future. We can enjoy an amusement of playing out the future in our heads but thinking that we can plan every detail of the future and expecting it to follow our detailed schema is a fantasy that tends to become painful when it is not realized. As the saying goes, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."
Imagining and fantasy can actually become detrimental to our growth. In the process of fantasizing, we usually tend to tell ourselves how we would like something but define why we are not going to get it or are unworthy of it. For those who are aware of the Law of Attraction, this is a big warning sign to not allow to pass unheeded.
Within reason, all of these time travel experiments can be helpful and fun, but the fact is that if you spend all your time in any of them, you are going to miss the present and it is the present that you change into the future and the past is just a record of how you got to where you are.
Enjoy the now, be the now and live in it. I can guarantee that once you spend the majority of the time thinking about what is, this moment, the past stops being something of sorrow and the future becomes a new landscape that unfolds moment by moment before you.
December 4, 2007
What are we and Why?
There is an old question that I got asked in philosophy class that is reasonably close to a koan from the world of Zen, "Can God make a stone so large that He cannot move it?"
What if this is the wrong question? What if the right question is, "Can God create a puzzle and/or riddle that is so complex that, as of yet, He has not solved?" And if that is not enough heresy for one day, I would add, "What if we, people as well as creation, are the attempt to solve that puzzle/riddle?"
Generally, I tend to think of the relationship between God and His creation in less than philosophical Gordian knots, along the lines of, as explained so eloquently by Neale Donald Walsch, God knew Himself to be the totality of all that was, is and ever would be, but the knowing of something and experiencing it are completely different. Creation is the attempt of God to turn datum into experience.
Now, to some, this is absolute heresy, I tend to feel sorry for these people since they usually have a view of the relationship of man and God as being nearly diametrically opposed. The view of separation between creator and created seems to manifest in forms of societies that end up bullish and uncaring in their assumed relationship to the creator as "the chosen."
Why is it that we cannot look beyond our little egos (OK, not so little in many cases)? If we take this view of God as a diamond and all the differing ideas about God are just different facets of the same stone, we are left with all our descriptions of God being like the story of the blind men who start fighting over what an elephant is since they all have experienced different pieces and not the whole.
Imagine the joy that would come from the acknowledgement that not only is our view and belief right, but also the plethora of views from the Haitian Vodoun Mambos and Houngans, to the Islamic Imams, through the Hindu Brahmans, to the Buddhist Lamas and Arhats to the Christian Popes and assorted ministers and preachers, wouldn't that just be amazing to experience?
Note:
Thanks to J. Michael Straczynski for reminding me of this with Dr. Franklin in Babylon 5.
What if this is the wrong question? What if the right question is, "Can God create a puzzle and/or riddle that is so complex that, as of yet, He has not solved?" And if that is not enough heresy for one day, I would add, "What if we, people as well as creation, are the attempt to solve that puzzle/riddle?"
Generally, I tend to think of the relationship between God and His creation in less than philosophical Gordian knots, along the lines of, as explained so eloquently by Neale Donald Walsch, God knew Himself to be the totality of all that was, is and ever would be, but the knowing of something and experiencing it are completely different. Creation is the attempt of God to turn datum into experience.
Now, to some, this is absolute heresy, I tend to feel sorry for these people since they usually have a view of the relationship of man and God as being nearly diametrically opposed. The view of separation between creator and created seems to manifest in forms of societies that end up bullish and uncaring in their assumed relationship to the creator as "the chosen."
Why is it that we cannot look beyond our little egos (OK, not so little in many cases)? If we take this view of God as a diamond and all the differing ideas about God are just different facets of the same stone, we are left with all our descriptions of God being like the story of the blind men who start fighting over what an elephant is since they all have experienced different pieces and not the whole.
Imagine the joy that would come from the acknowledgement that not only is our view and belief right, but also the plethora of views from the Haitian Vodoun Mambos and Houngans, to the Islamic Imams, through the Hindu Brahmans, to the Buddhist Lamas and Arhats to the Christian Popes and assorted ministers and preachers, wouldn't that just be amazing to experience?
Note:
Thanks to J. Michael Straczynski for reminding me of this with Dr. Franklin in Babylon 5.
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