Decisions, Blame and Joy

So much to do, so many decisions to make and questions about it all. What to do next, what direction to take, which road is the one I want to be on and is it what it appears to be?

This is my current place in life, I expected it, I think I actually wanted it and now I have it, woo-hoo!

Do not get me wrong, I am not complaining about it, much, but one thing I realized on my trip was the answer for a question that I have been asking for many years and I often hear from friends, family and clients, "What am I supposed to be doing, what direction should I be going in?" Personally, I tend to throw in the "G" card as if it makes it a more valued question and not just the bigger excuse it really is.

On rare occasions, I find that the Universe has a specific plan set up for an individual, usually it is about following a general path of character and the one thing so many of us, myself included, seem to hate; making a decision.

Some of us like to get the opinions of others and then internally shift any responsibility or blame onto those who we listened to, God gets this one a lot I am sure...  LOL

Simply put it is all our choice and our decision to make, everything, every day.

What we forget is that, as Joseph Campbell used to say, "Follow your Bliss!" Your bliss is your Spirit passing along what is the correct answer, and only becomes problematic when we ignore it.

One thing to be aware of, bliss is not always what brings the easiest or happiest path in the short-term, in fact I find that from the short view it is often the harder and more painful of the options, at least at first. Most often it is the fear we have placed into our decision making process that causes our next step to seem so difficult.

I am in one of those places right now, I want to pursue my writing; both the Spiritgeek in general, like this blog, and the work with people in one-on-one settings, but I also need to come up with that lovely stuff called cash which seems to push toward getting a more traditional job, at least in the short-term.

So while I stall in making my final decision, not really final as I can always change it, I am working on both paths to see where they both may lead in the next week or so. I am actually open to either as one appears to be more direct, but the other may just be a way of taking care of other things that I may need before the other is quite ready.

So what am I going to do? I will know soon enough, I have been getting my personal little signs, I call them my déjà vu moments so I am reasonably comfortable with where I am and what I am doing. I find my inspiration to be a great help and am SLOWLY learning to trust it.

I know that joy is mine and that all things are perfect for their time and place and as much as I like to think otherwise; that includes me. If it includes me, it includes you as well!

ॐ शान्तिशान्ति
Robert Allen

"The Secret" and "What God Wants" from me...

A friend of mine, whose opinions I have found to be quite worthy of my respect, was telling me about how much she really enjoyed reading the book for "The Secret". I had previously been told by others that it was basically a written version of the film and that there was not much more to it, hence I was not planning to purchase it. She was right and I am so glad to have listened.

I could go through several parts of the book and discuss how wonderfully it expands upon the the themes of the film and in some places goes into things that didn't make it in, beyond a cursory mention. One that really spoke (read yelled, screamed and made a general nuisance of itself) was the final chapter.

On many occasions, I have tried to find the will of God for my life. In the Southern Baptist world we are told that God has a plan and it is our job to fulfill whatever role He put us here for. Now this works really well as a philosophy for people who don't wish to take any particular responsibility for their lives and pass it all off on God. Now don't get me wrong, I understand completely why the majority of peoples would prefer to be at the whim of a distant and all powerful deity, but when I look around me and see what that mindset has created in the majority of mankind, I just find it questionable at best and obviously misguided at most. The first section of Neale Donald Walsch's book "What God Wants" goes into this with amazing clarity and brutal honesty.

I have never found a difficulty in asking God if something is right or wrong, guidance has never been lacking when I'm willing to hear it. But when I have asked what it is that God wishes of me, there has always been a distinct silence. I have been known to become a bit annoyed and sometimes testy with God over this lack of communication. If He has some wish for me, I would think it only polite to make me aware of it... How can I be help responsible on the day of Judgment if He won't speak up, especially when asked?

My parents and the common logic is that we are to race on this treadmill of sleep, work and television with the weekly visits on Sunday and Wednesday to Church to give my soul it's injection of Salvation. Now I am the first to admit that maybe I am just pig-headed about this, but I cannot imagine a more depressing. You might as well pull out the gun and blow my head off, talk about a hellish existence.

Others say that I should lock myself into an ascetic community or cloister of monks and like-minded individuals. Now maybe I am just a touch cynical, but somehow I suspect that is more for their satisfaction than mine. I have thought about it and would be open to it. My biggest stumbling block to date on this score has to do with where the previous is so far to one extreme of the spectrum, most ascetic communities are just as extreme on the other. Like the Buddha, I seek a balanced path down the center, the path between all extremes.

While there are many variants to the above paths, about the only true alternative is the "Follow you Bliss" path. Misery may satisfy the "original sin" crowd, but I just can't get my heart to believe in a deity that has nothing but spite for his creation and wishes them to live in eternal dread and toil.

Some say that to follow your bliss is to seek a hedonistic lifestyle, thinking only of oneself and taking little interest in the repercussions of those actions. Taken in a selfish way, it can be a slippery slope but through inspiration and perseverance we can keep our perspectives and hearts clear and true.

The simple fact is that all ideas, philosophies and theologies taken one way can bring true joy and just as easily taken the other direction tends to bring pain and suffering in the long run. St. Francis showed a path of simplicity and poverty and yet many found such things to be the source of pride and vanity in their personal experiences. This is also shown in some of the ascetic paths in the Indian traditions. We tend to feel raised by "our" sacrifices "for" God, how our ego's love to stroke themselves.

So what does God want from you? Listen to your heart and find the answer, if you truly listen it cannot be missed.

What does God want from me? The things that make me happiest are finishing pieces like this and sharing with others the joy I get from a view of life on this planet that I once thought was only allowed for greater people than I would ever be. My friends have giggled at me at times when I talk about my teeth humming. When I am "in the groove" I get the sensation that my teeth are humming along and a warmth runs up and down my spine and eventually explodes out from the sack of skin that I think of as "me".

Do I ever doubt myself and this whole thing? Of course I do at times and that is when I ask for guidance all the more fervently. We tend, in Western Christianity, to deify Jesus and put him completely outside our frame of reference, but as the Gospels tell us, even he doubted himself at times and the things he was called to do. We all have our moments where we are in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Since I know someone will ask, no, I have no delusions of such things, but use it as an example that if even the greatest of us can have doubts about what we are doing, then the least of us can't really be condemned as long as we are listening to that voice of inspiration that brought us here in the first place.

By Their Fruits...

This has been an interesting few days while I contemplate writing this piece or not. I want to since it really pulls into the light how what I (as well as many others) have found to be true the things I have come to believe, but it is quite likely to be taken by many as a direct attack, which in some ways it probably is.

I go to a video store called Record Surplus that has a habit of getting videos before they are released. The other day, I picked up "The Celestine Prophecy" which is expected to be released on December 19. For those who are not familiar with it, it is based on the book of the same title by James Redfield.

One of the central themes of the book, in it's "Insights," is to become aware of the apparent coincidences that occur in our everyday life. Because of this and the other book that I just finished reading, I felt that I was getting a definitive answer to my question as to writing this.

The book that I just finished is Neale Donald Walsch's "What God Wants : A Compelling Answer to Humanity's Biggest Question" which I think is fantastic. A quick read that will definitely make some ideas rattle around in your brain. The book is basically divided into three parts;

1. How our previous views of what God wants have affected our cultures and manifest in the day-to-day world.
2. What God wants, it's quite direct and to the point! ( ;-P )
3. How this new view of God's wants will manifest in the future world.
   

This piece is in the same vein as part one.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we find the following as part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount":

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:15-20 (KJV)

My thoughts lately have been to look around me and see what "fruits" are going on around me, both personally and otherwise.

They say that the definition of insanity is to do the same things as you have done in the past and expect a different outcome. It's funny in a way, we as a race will do some of the most innovative things ins the name of progress, but in our personal lives, we can be completely "insane."

On a personal level, for example, is my current job as a town car driver. Now, I love my job actually, I meet some fascinating people and most of the time I make decent cash, but I am quite aware that it is a dead end where advancement will require the death of another. The fact is that, though I enjoy it a lot, it will never take me where my life seems to be pointing me. I could very easily play it safe and stay right where I am but how long will it take for that path to become a rut and then a grave, once it is deep enough?

We tend to follow the rules, a good thing usually, but when we intuitively know that there is something missing and we need to change our direction, we find it difficult to outright terrifying. I have been thinking about changing careers and going into what is called "Life Counseling" and nearly everyone who knows me thinks I would be very successful at it. When I looked into it and found out what it actually was, I realized that this is what I've been doing for my friends for years, but for free (can I send out bills for previous years? Hmmm).

The predominant world view that we really need to look into is how we view God and our relationship to Him/Her, the idea that we are separate entities. Our religions tell us that God is away in His/Her heaven, passing judgement on our every action and, depending on which one(s) you follow, how to get to heaven or out of the wheel of life.

What are the fruits of these beliefs? Jihads, crusades, feuding factions, the destruction of lives and our planet.

A really good example is Bill Moyer's "Is God Green" piece. It is about a schism in the Evangelical Christian denominations about how the future of the planet and our involvement in ecology should be. Some believe that God's gift of dominion of the planet to man is justification for the wholesale rape of the planet's resources and environment. Others believe that stewardship requires man to be more considerate of the repercussions to planet and the future of mankind.

In Iraq, while there is more than this going on, the fact is that unless the Shia and Sunni learn to co-exist, little less both get along with the Kurds, the chances of a valid nation ever coming together and surviving is about as likely as the moon being changed into green cheese. Most people don't realize that a fair number of the Middle-Eastern nations were created by the European world after the collapse of the Persian Empire and that solidarity of the individual groups is next to nil.

On a personal level, our belief in separation places us in the position of making ourselves into hypocrites on a fairly regular basis. We claim to believe in this Supreme Being who will care for us, once we've made peace and the proper atonement's, but since we are "alone" in our daily existences, we don't live it and actually spend a fair amount of our existence living in exactly the antithesis to our "claimed" ideals.

Our religions believe in the supremacy of their preferential manifestation of God or teacher and declare all the others as liars and charlatans. This leads to warring and hatred and is not doing anything to bring the followers closer to any Godliness. I've always found it of interest that the only religion that has never fought a war of aggression in the name of it's teacher/founder is Buddhism.

To wrap this all up, the point is that we need to become initially aware that we are eternally linked to God and that our separation is an illusion of OUR creation, not his. After we know this, then we start to live our lives based on this premise and that starts to make changes in every other aspect of our lives. Guilt and fear fall away and freedom in the knowledge that all can be right in the world if we will just start to be aware of our interwoveness (is that a word?).

There will be those who say that this is dangerous because it is different from the current norms. The current norms are doing such great things for the masses of hungry, hateful, judgemental people?

Others will say that this would be anarchy, it is possible. Any good thing can be misused to the detriment of those around. The fact is that those who would misuse it to justify selfish behaviors would do so no matter what is taught or thought. As long as spiritual children are needing lessons to grow from, they will get them and deal with the messes they create. There seems to be a growing number of people out there that want more from their lives than shat they were taught as youngsters and these are methods to explore and experience.

I have a challenge for you...

Try putting some of these ideas into practice in your everyday existence and see what happens. When you walk down the street and see a homeless person, instead of passing a derogatory judgement on them, say to yourself; "There I am living outside the norm." When you see someone who has been abusing drugs and is paying for it, say something like "There I am exploring chemical substances." Pass no judgement, for to judge others doesn't just open us to judgement as Jesus said, it IS to judge ourselves since we are all part of the whole and there is no separation but what we make in our minds. From there do most our problems spring. See what fruits you develop...

God, Man, Messiahs & Perverts

You ever look at the world and the people in it and wonder just how everything got so screwed up? How did man (to use the Genesis version) go from making the mistake of eating the forbidden fruit to teetering on the edge of self-annihilation?

In recent times, we in the United States hear a lot of rhetoric, both political and religious, about Fundamentalist Islamic Suicide Bombers. How do you create someone who not only thinks killing themselves is such a great idea that they plan it, but convince them that they are doing God's will?

I have read the Quran and while I don't consider myself to be an expert by any fancy of imagination, I can't see where it justifies this teaching. Sure, it talks about martyrdom and the blessings and after death benefits of it, but I don't see what is being taught to the young in parts of the Middle East in it.

A couple of years ago I read a translation of a service, given by I believe Yassar Arafat's Imam, where he started with a story of a young 14 year old boy walking up to him and proudly proclaiming that in 4 years, when he was old enough, he was going to be a martyr via bombing (implied). If that wasn't tragic enough, the Imam was actually proud of his youthful zeal and enthusiasm. So, for these people who wish to blow themselves up in the name of God as they understand Him, I have a question:

• You made the choice to become a bomber
• You made the choice to strap the explosives to your body
• You made the choice of the location to do it in
• You made the choice of when to do it
• You made the choice of how to kill as many as you might
• Where is God in all this?

As far as I can tell, this is all you and no one else. That's not God's will, it's yours! The simple fact is that you have decided to become a murderer and suicide and just because you do it with God's name on your lips, doesn't change jack, the Quran is quite explicit about the penalties for both.

Yes, I have a serious issue with these Imams that teach the young, dissatisfied and vulnerable that suicide, even in the name of God, is a career choice. Martyrdom is something God puts before you and you choose to accept or not.

But, this isn't about being anti or pro anything, it's about how we messed it up.

When you look at the core messages of the Teachers who claim to have messages from God or a technique for finding God from within, people just can't help but twist it to their sick little definitions of God to the exclusion of all others.

I am not a particularly strong fan of organized traditional religion, though I do understand it's intent. You can have a body of teaching and many examples of it in action, but for it to pass from generation to generation, you need to give it a form that can be explained or experienced. The problem is that the form tends to become more important than the purpose. A friend told me a story that illustrates this.

The abbot at a Buddhist monastery, high in the mountains had recently received a large group of young men to start their education as monks. He noticed that while the young men were enthusiastic and devout in their subjects, they seemed to be lacking something. After thinking and meditating on it for a while, he realized that being young men, they needed companionship and friendship, so the abbot took it upon himself to acquire a small puppy, which he introduced to the young acolytes.

Life in the monastery became more satisfying for the young men and the puppy slowly grew in size and love for his new home. The only problem with the arrangement became obvious when the young dog started attempting to play with the students while they were in temple and practicing their meditations.

To solve the problem, a stake was planted in the courtyard near a tree and it became the practice to tie the pup during meditation times. Now at first the pup didn't really care for the idea, but in a short time it became habit and all was calm.

As time went on, monks left the monastery and new acolytes entered as well as teachers leaving and passing, including a few abbots. Eventually, the dog had become long of tooth and finally passed on. This threw the monastery into a near case of chaos, since it was apparent to all that a new dog must be acquired immediately, since everyone knows you can't meditate without a dog tied out front of the temple.

Now this simple little story isn't much unto itself, but it illustrates a trend in religion throughout history. What starts out as a suggestion or an idea, after a while becomes tradition and then potentially ritual and cannot be changed by us mere mortals.

We do the same things with our teachers as well, look at Jesus as an example. Jesus was a good Jewish boy brought up in a less than ideal side of town, but he was blessed with an insight into both people and God and he later spent the last 3 years of his life being hounded by those who wanted to ride his coattails and those who were threatened by the "new" teaching that he was giving, the miracles probably didn't help on either of these fronts.

So what happened to him? His followers turned him into a god and put him on a pedestal so high that most of his teachings became inaccessible to the common, mere mortal, people and to incur his displeasure was a sure ticket to everlasting punishment by his father. Strange that none of this is referenced anywhere in his teachings.

I had a discussion with someone a while back about the Gospel of John regarding this (OK, I've had this discussion on many occasions). I was saying that John is probably the most misquoted and misunderstood book since the need of the people to insert their own egos into the expressions of the teacher. For example, what I think of as the most misrepresented verse in the Bible, John 14:6 "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

Now a little context here... Jesus and his disciples are in a room and are preparing for the last supper. Judas has just been given his charge to go quickly about his task and Peter has sworn his allegiance and been told he will betray Jesus three times before the cock crows. He then goes on to calm the disciples and tell them not to worry, that he goes to prepare a place for them and they may join him. Thomas asks where this might be, since (once again) the disciples do not understand what Jesus is talking about. Jesus' response is this verse, followed by "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him."

This verse, John 14:6, is usually taken to be an egocentric statement of deity, but if that was the case, the following verse wouldn't be necessary.

I've always found that John was the disciple who got it. John is writing about the teachings of Jesus and seems to assume we are aware of the context. If you insert the ego that most people do, then Jesus is in direct opposition to most of the rest of the Gospels where he shows himself to be the most humble. What is happening here, as happens in other scriptures as well, is that Jesus has so aligned himself with God in the form of father that he speaks his teachings in the first person for the father. Jesus does this throughout the Gospel of John. In John, we have a definitive split between Jesus, the man, born of Mary and raised as a carpenter's son and Jesus, the Christ, who is aligned with the will of God.

How can one man be both without being crazy? One is the man, as we all are and the other is the will and spirit of the man aligned, not with his own ego but the will of the creator. This is what Jesus is pointing to us throughout his message, the Christ is within each of us and we are able to bring it into manifestation.

Some say that this is Gnosis, it is! Gnosis is just the idea that there is a knowledge that we must find, the truth of our creation, and that it is our responsibility to follow where that leads us which is eventually back to our souls and their direct relationship to God the Creator.

Sin, to miss the point, is exactly this. It's not the eating of the fruit in the Garden of Eden against the stated will of God, but what happens immediately after the eating, Adam and Eve forget their divine nature and become completely deluded by their bodies and the nakedness of them. They miss the point of what creation is actually about and become lost in the illusion of it.

So, the question becomes; if that's the case, why would this not be the teaching of the Church? You can't control people when you tell them they hold all the cards in the game and God just wants you to play them.

There is a very good historical example of this, reincarnation. Very early in the history of the Church, the idea of reincarnation is brought into question, many attribute this to Origen though there isn't a lot of evidence to support this. If this were as much of a cut and dried question as many state, this would have been quickly answered and been done with. This was actually debated for around 300 years before the official church policy was decreed. Now depending on whom you talk to, you get different reasons as to why the final removal of the idea was placed.

1. The church father's, knowing the vulnerability of man, removed the doctrine of reincarnation so people would not be tempted to misuse it and figure that since they have many lives, they can enjoy this lifetime and work the next. Of course the chances are, they would be doing this for many.
2. If people knew that they had many lifetimes and that salvation wasn't decided in a short time, the church would be impotent. The ability to sell indulgences and claim to stand in the place of God on Earth would be laughably ridiculous and the ability to control would be naught.

We could go on and on in the search for examples of this in many (read most) religions and the problem is not in the scriptures and teachings, but in the egocentric natures of the people and organizations that propagate them.

God gives man the truth through teachers and messiahs and we pervert it.

I find it amazing how in our expressed ignorance of the subject, of soul and spirit, we still insist on claiming exclusive knowledge of the correct path and way that God had intended from the beginning. I find that if I come to scripture and interpret it from the universally agreed point in all religions, that we are eternal spiritual entities who only inhabit these bodies temporarily, that the scripture all point in the same direction and have a universal teaching.