How do U solve a problem like Maria?!?

There are many things about me that seem to confuse people, cope... but it does make me an "interesting" character to get to know and if there is one thing that is true, it's that I am true to what I am, no matter what... :)

One of the things that a friend used to tease me about is the fact that I have quite the video collection. Some are excellent movies that either are or are likely to become classics and a few that should though they likely won't.

One of the reasons I collect my films is that they are fun way of provoking either an emotional state for myself or they have a memory attached to them. One such collection of films are the following:

• "The Wizard of Oz"
  The devine Judy Garland, can you believe they really wanted Shirley Temple for the role of Dorothy? Cute, but no...


• "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"
  Other than just being fun, it was also my first introduction to Benny Hill, he played the Toy-Maker.


• Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments"


• "Ben Hur"
  Actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Heston back in the 80's, nice enough, shame he turned into such a dick later... Oh well.


• "The Sound of Music"
  it won the Oscar for best film the year I was born...

The one thing that these films all have in common is that when they would be on TV when I saw a kid, my mother and I would ALWAYS watch them together so they carry some of my best memories as a kid.

Lately, I have had the song "Maria" running through my head and after a conversation I had yesterday after work,it really started to hit home...


I had a conversation with a friend about religion in general but specifically about the mistranslation of scripture and ideas from the sources into the modern day.

Now as happens in many of these conversations, his perception was that his scripture, in its original tongue, was closer to the original than any other. It's not one of those discussions I particularly love since you can either turn it into a fight or ask the obvious question of how one proves such a claim, almost always a dangerous proposition at best.

It has started to become painfully obvious to me that trying to teach be re-aligning a current system with a universal underlying philosophy is going to be an extremely difficult way to go about it. We get so caught up in our paradigms and how we relate to them.

I am going to have to start creating at least a basic structure for explaining things that can be used to explain concepts that are in all the assorted scripture but not taught or directly understood.

For example, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is why God would go to all the trouble and allow all the pain that comes in creation? I tend to agree with Neale Donald Walsch when he describes it as God knew himself (pardon the gender there) to be the totality of all that is, was or ever would be but that knowing something is totally different from experiencing it. Creation is God experiencing being that totality.

I usually ad the analogy to prove the point of this of when we were children, our mothers told us the stove was hot and this would burn us, so we knew it, but after the first time we actually touched it, it went from a piece of datum to an experience.

This in many ways is one of the easier questions.

There are so many of these questions that I tend to answer in differing ways based on what my intuition tells me will speak to the current recipient, but that's not likely to work in larger groups or when trying to write something for mass publication.

So I would ask the same questions the nuns ask in the song:

• How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?


• How do you keep a wave upon the sand?


• How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Imagining is not just for John Lennon

-- Imagine --

I have been a fan of this song for most of my life, but it wasn't until much later that I actually sat down and listened to the lyrics.

I think the first time was probably when it was the closing credits of "The Killing Fields" which really struck me hard. The movie exposed me to a visual representation of just how vile mankind can be to others.

The great teachers through history have all addressed this from one perspective or another, but the simple fact is that when you view yourself as a separate entity, cut off from everyone and everything else, it becomes second nature to dehumanize the "others."

I have Christian Fundamentalist friends who call me a "New Ager" for discussing the union of all living souls, but if they would actually look at their scripture, they would find out that Jesus used it as a fundamental paradigm in his teachings, in other words, there is nothing new about it.

One example that comes to mind is when Jesus addresses the disciples in Matthew 25:40, telling them:

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Now to many this is not going to prove anything to them as far as unity of all creatures, but if nothing else it points to the idea that dehumanizing ANYONE, especially the least of these, is in opposition to what Jesus was teaching.

I sometimes wonder about what it is going to take to waken the vast majority to its actual in-humanness in its actions toward the rest of the people in this world. We seem to be pre-programmed to separate and tag anything and everything into groups and those other than ours are to be invalidated. We have a cultural perspective that says Hitler was terrible, but other than the numbers game, are the majority of us really any better?

Be it gender, race, religion, orientation, nationality, et al the simple fact is that there is only one race of (semi) intelligent beings on this planet and that race is human, aka homo sapiens.

Those who have read the mini biography on my website are aware of the "Great Experiment" and some of the interesting things that became apparent.

Start with being aware that whenever you judge someone else, what you are really doing is judging some aspect of yourself that you may or may not like, depends on the judgement.

Start relating to the world around you as if there was no difference between "them" and "you."

Become aware of the eternal part of yourself and start relating to things from it's perspective and you will no longer have to imagine a better reality, you will have taken the first steps at creating it.

A new dawn in Washington DC...

Today, as of 12 noon EST, George W. Bush has joined the ranks of the 11.1 million people that were listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as unemployed last December. Eight years ago, the rate was 5.7 million, nearly half of today.

This, as well as many of the other woes of the country, are not specifically his fault, but he, his party and politics as usual have had a lot to do with the creation of the situations we find our nation in.

Our new President, Barack H. Obama, has run on a platform of change, not a particularly new platform but he has definitely worked it to his advantage during the campaign season. I hope he can fulfill at least a quarter of what he has said.

One of the things that I hope both he and his administration are aware of is that playing the race card will only work for a short time before the American people stop finding it clever and just find it patronizing.

Larry Elder, a local radio personality and author, wrote a book several years ago called "The Ten Things You Can't Say In America" where he discusses one of his recurring themes, about how "White Condescension Is as Bad as Black Racism" about which he says "Blacks Are More Racist that Whites" (titles of chapters 2 and 1 respectively).

In the discussions he talks about how we seem to expect less from someone who is perceived as part of a minority group. I am hoping this is not something that will be a basic tenant of the current administration or the media.

My expectations of the new administration are just as high for this administration as it would be for any other. I have no plans of cutting it some slack because the point-man is of African decent, neither should you.

During the campaigns, we heard MANY people go directly after the fear buttons of the populace, fortunately it seems that it did not either work as well as some would have hoped or the American people are starting to show signs of stirring. We heard scare tactics like:

• Since his father is a Muslim, he's going to install sharia (Islamic law) upon the land
• His middle name is Hussein and on many occasions called him Saddam Hussein Obama to associate him with Saddam Hussein
• He is a socialist (a major power word for Republicans) and will undo capitalism

Now that he is President we will see what he will make of the opportunity that has been placed before him.

As far as his predecessor, George W. Bush, we will see what history will make of his administration as well as see what kind of ex-President he will become.

Some Presidents do a much better job as ex-Presidents than they did in office, look at Jimmy Carter. As President, let's be honest, he was a bit of a wet noodle and not a particularly strong leader. After he was out of office, he has become quite the example of what many hold dear in a leader as well as a human being to the extent that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Somehow, I just do not hold such lofty goals for the departing administration (may the universe PLEASE surprise me on this one).

I am reminded of a joke that may likely play itself out over the next year or so...

Boris Yeltsin was starting his first day in office as President of the Russian Federation when he came across the outgoing President Mikhail Gorbachev cleaning out his desk.

President Yeltsin asked him if he had any suggestions as to how to perform the duties of President to which he was now responsible.

Former President Gorbachev told him, "When you get into a jam that you cannot get out of, open the center drawer of the desk and you will find two envelopes. Take the first one out and follow its instructions. Later, when a second unsolvable situation comes up, take out the second and do likewise."

Time went along as it does and eventually a situation arose that President Yeltsin could not find a solution to. He remembered the envelopes and pulled out the first on which read, "Blame the previous administration."

He followed the instructions and sure enough it worked like a charm.

More time passed and another situation came up and after trying everything he could think of, he opened the second envelope which read, "Sit down and write two letters..."

Lets hope that there is more than a joke that describes this new administration and that they truly do succeed in creating the change that this country both deserves and in my opinion needs.

Let us hope that we truly are seeing a new dawn in Washington DC that works to the benefit of the masses instead of an elite of businessmen and corporations. Hope springs eternal.

How to create perfection...

I am often asked just how we can change the world, fix its problems and awaken the masses? The short and simple answer is that we cannot.

What we can do is change OUR perception of the world, fix our problems and wake ourselves. As we work on these things, we will begin to resonate with what we are doing and THAT will attract others of like mind and/or sympathetic goals.

More often than not this is followed by a "why not" or something in that general ballpark. The simple answer is that we can only change ourselves. To attempt to change others inevitably leads to using force in one form or another which is guaranteed to fail -- sometimes dramatically.

The most common flaws in trying to change others usually seem to run as follows:

• When we are "changing" those around us, we have stopped loving and accepting them for the perfection that they are in every moment. They loose a source of love and we tend to start withholding our approval, acceptance and caring till they start living up to our expectations.
  


• In time, we start practicing what I call "Green Stamp Theology." When I was a kid, my mother would shop at stores that gave out Green Stamps. We would collect them and put them into books which could be redeemed for merchandise at a later time.
  
  Sadly we see a lot of this in America today where the traditional religious members are more concerned with numbers of attendance and "saving" others while loosing the point in their own lives. It becomes more of a point system where we attempt to buy our way into the afterlife of our choosing.
  


• If you wish to see perfection, you have to be willing to see it. Passing judgment on anything is to deny that its perfection already exists. Simple as it may sound, if you need something to change, it must not be perfect.

It's funny to me that this very question caused a major philosophical schism in Buddhism in what we today call Theravada [ancient doctrine] and Mahayana [great vehicle] schools. Fortunately, they have handled it very well over the years.

The Theravada school has as its central focus the enlightenment of the individual where the Mahayana school is more focused on the enlightenment of the masses and the tradition of the Bodhisattva, the enlightened teachers. I guess I would fall into the Theravada school generally since I just cannot see how one can take another to the Truth until they have arrived there themselves, not that I am there, but I pass on what I have found to those who ask.

So if you want to change the world, change yourself and the world cannot help but follow. Will it change as fast as you might want or think it should, no... but how you relate to all those things you used to see as imperfections will become new joys to celebrate.

to Start a New Year

Christmas has come and gone and the New Year is just around the corner. It seems like just yesterday that we started this one. Oh well...

Last year started with such promise and turned into what could only be called a major mess, but in retrospect, I needed it.

As much as I was looking forward to what appeared to be a year of prosperity, just once I would like it to be financial... :) I have been finding that there are many things that I have been clinging to that I am in need of releasing.

If the end of this year is any indication, next year should be quite interesting as many new players are starting to arrive on the stage of my life and they seem to be of a different caliber than the past. I am starting to attract like souls who might walk with me, not just new students. Nice change... I love my students, but it is nice to have contemporaries to hang out with, either way I end up learning from those around me, students or otherwise.

So I will leave this short and sweet and just say Happy Holidays to all and may the New Year be everything you want it to be...