somersaults

After every happiness comes misery; they may be far apart or near.  The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does the one follow the other.  What we want is neither happiness nor misery.  Both make us forget our true nature; both are chains — one iron, one gold.  Behind both is the Atman, who knows neither happiness nor misery.  These are states, and states must ever change; but the nature of the Soul is bliss, peace — unchanging.  We have not to get it; we have it.  Only wash away the dross and see it.

This paragraph was quoted from Swami Vivekananda during a class he held on Tuesday, June 25 1895.  He was teaching a small group of folks up at Thousand Island Park in New York.  The very nature of our soul being bliss, knowlege and existence is a pivotal realization in spiritual life.  It makes the end result effortless and sustainable.  The effort is to clear away these mistaken identities of self that define us in small ways and refract our true nature into selfishness, fear and hunger.  Through practice one can “freeze” the mind in mid stream and see that anger and other emotions are efforts and not a natural flowing.  To be natural is to be love.

Gung ho!

okay, okay so maybe I got a little flighty yesterday, but in the reality of it all, I didn’t get half as worked up as I should have.  grin.  I am starting my days with little pledges of good behavior.  lol.  I know, the religiously squeemish will begin the eye-rolling here and I suppose it is well deserved.  The fact is, though, that it is working.  After all these years of practice, I have begun to notice little patterns and loop-holes that my mind has when it gets involved bits of mischief.  Well, I’m countering them by making a small pledge to myself in the morning in the shrine to simply not be engaged with them.  That is all.  It works because when I see the pattern emerge during the day, I am transported back to the shrine where I made a very serious commitment to myself to not engage.  It’s a mind hack, no doubt, but I’m getting high on the success.  grin.  The beginnings of my spiritual life are full of little tips and tricks like this.  It’s a bit humorous to be in my forties and still be chasing a cranky teenager for a mind.  What to do?

S&E

Sincerity and earnestness are the only necessary ingredients to see God.  Be brave and start your quest and be unremitting in your effort to see things as they are and not as they seem to be.  Be patient and know that you will know the truth and the freedom you will uncover will knock the wind out of you in such a boldness that you will never again not know.  Struggle for a taste of that.  It is our inheritance, our right, and the very nature of our being.  It is everything we seek in the world “outside”.  It is the very essence of what all the senses can only provide a stand-in for.  Many sages have stood before us and screamed in ecstacy from that place–using words and religions of every form to try and describe the undescribable.  They have made threats, promises, stories, books, songs and poetry to try to somehow get us to move, to see what they are being–to join in the primal scream of love untainted, unlimited and unending.  Get up!  Get up!  God damn it!  GET UP! 

topless.

I have walked my life rather freely up until the last few years; and on some scale, even those.  I have tasted and tried many things many times.  I have never enjoyed something that did not leave me wanting more.  That constant effort required for the next thing is exhausting and has no end.  Eating sand cannot fulfil one’s hunger;  what would it matter if I owned an entire beach.  There is more beauty in a contented moment alone than in all the ornamented world around us.  Today I got to go into the house of one of the neighbors here in Pacific Heights.  I was being shown around by a designer that might be doing some work in the temple here.  I saw someone who spent 1 million dollars on a silk, handmade carpet for the front stairs of their home.  A home that will be lived in for less than 2 weeks a year.  That is one hell of a beach to serve for dinner.

Recursion

I got onto the roof of the monastery last night and was staring at the Golden Gate bridge and the city lights and thinking about life in general.  It’s funny how it passes so slowly but adds up in a recognizable way.  The truth is a whir of experiences, but the result is a small collection of memories.  When I scritinized these memories, I saw many of them had become more story than actual memory.  I could only put my finger on a few scraps of actual experience from each one of them.  There are vast gaps missing that I usually just ignore.  I do remember, though, a strange experience when I was about 8.  I had just come in from baseball practice (maybe) and was standing in the foyer of our home in Sunset, Utah.  While I was standing there, I remember having a daydream that was so vivid that when I snapped out of it I was amazed at it.  I remember walking to my room and sitting on the top bunk of the bunkbed and thinking about it for awhile.  What I kept thinking about was this:  how do I know that I’m not standing in some vestibule somewhere daydreaming all of this?  My daydream in the foyer was so real while I was caught up in it that I have returned to that thought many times in my life; and I have to tell you, I would not be surprised even to this day, if I snapped out of it and was an eight year old kid just back from baseball practice, standing in the foyer of his home in Sunset, Utah.

5 senses

It occurs to me that everything I could ever do in this world will only be a combination of five senses.  As long as I am running outward for entertainment and fulfillment, I will only be playing with varying combinations of those five options.  Those five senses only allow for a total of 120 possible combinations in degrees of intensity on a scale of 1 to 5.  Look at the most beautiful thing you can see and that is the height of what you will ever be able to accomplish with sight.  Hear the most beautiful noise you can possibly hear and that is the height of accomplishment for the ear.  An orgasm would be the highest of the sense of touch.  Taste and smell are also doomed to the same limitation.  That means the only thing making it all interesting, is the mind behind the senses.  And yet, the mind is only an organ that excretes thought–much like an armpit excretes sweat.  In this arena, any thought can only be a direct product of the previous thought.  No original thought can be manufactured that did not directly follow the previous thought in relation.  Thus, it is the flow of thought that is interesting and not really the thoughts themselves.  This idea indicates something beyond the mere thinking that directs overall flow.  We could call it intellect.  But even the intellect is being observed by this idea of “me.”  I think this is where it gets interesting.  Probing accurately in this area takes a bit of practice and work.  Who is this watcher?  While the world plays endlessly with its game of five, who is it that is being entertained?

Great Quote…

Ok…I’m reading Inspired Talks by Swami Vivekananda and found a quote that is just ideal for rumination:

“God is the inexplicable, inexpressible essence of love–to be known but never defined.”

Is that just the coolest summary or what?

the Mirror

I had a great meal with a certain spiritual seeker last night that culminated in a really great conversation about how to act as a spiritual person.  In this particular case, he wanted to be a good mentor or leader/example for someone he was working with and it wasn’t working out.  I also grew up with the idea that the things that made me a “good christian” (at the time, I was one) were the way I acted and the things I did or did not do or say.  These days I am not so inclined to think that way.  Many scriptures alude to the idea that we are made in the image of God.  People have come up with all kinds of philosophies about what this means and I shall now try my own.  grin.

Look in the mirror and what do you see?  An image of yourself.  It has no seperate existence from you.  It has no will of its own.  It has no identity independent of yours.  And yet…we smile at it; I have caught myself talking to it; I often make faces at it and crack jokes to it about how old it is getting.  This is what it is to be made in the image of something.  The relfection is made completely in my image and I have animated it, given it a separate existence and treated it as companion.  It has only those qualities that I have loaned it from my store of imagination; but I react and interact with it, easily ignoring these ideas.  Hence, my own existence and that of God.

Now it goes much deeper from here as one sorts out what is reflection and what is self and I will leave that as an exercise for the interested.  I am taking a different tac and it is this:  the reflection is only as good as the cleanliness of the mirror.  The mind is the mirror.  Clean it.  Chant the names of God; think about his incarnations; practice seeing him everywhere; talk to him however you like.  These things clean the mirror and the reflection becomes truer by itself.  You will thus “act” more like a spiritual seeker because you are more like a spiritual seeker.  Cleaning the mirror will let you be what you are in its purest form.

Kaleidescope

It can be helpful to view the mind, personality, emotions and senses as as many colors seen through a kaleidescope with you as the viewer.  They are together affecting, but not defining what you see.  Know that you are the ever free, ever loving, ever pure Self which is seeing but not being defined or affected by the colors presented by the kaleidescope.

In the reverse, see this Self (pure, free and loving) as flowing through the tube and affecting the world.  If it does not stick to any of the components of the tube (senses, mind, personality, emotions) it will manifest truthfully on the other end as its nature…again pure, free and loving. If it is manifesting differently as selfishness, anger etc; know that you are attaching to one of the tubes components and the manifested is not true to its source; you will experience pain.

This idea is merely an exercise; but, it will bring you closer in line with what is really going on in this apparent world than from where we normally sit and act.

God?

In a large sense, the values of “modern” society are a comfort.  The idea of reason, scientific investigation, logic and insistence on verified truth is a good foundation for some serious advancement.  The unfortunate aspect of this development, is the fact that much of modern religion has not been willing to step up to the challenge.  This unnecessary reality can only be due to the individual participants of these religions divorcing their “faith” from these values; in short, not doing our homework.  Imagine the billions of dollars spent each year, imagine the entire lifetimes of investigation, training and testing that are going into this scientific revolution.  Imagine the organization and unified efforts of those involved at getting to a better understanding of their fields of study.  Picture the cross-discipline seminars and technologies that are being shared as discoveries have begun to overlap areas of study.  Now imagine the current state of religion.  The average religious person spends $1 a week for the plate at service (grin…non scientific estimate based on casual observation),  spends significantly less than an hour a day investigating his/her beliefs (so argue with me, I’d love to be wrong), bickers endlessly with differing viewpoints…not in search of a common truth but in asserting his/her own belief structure, and generally believes themselves already in possession of the greater truth despite the relative non-difference between their life and that of others around them.  And?  Well, if I had a dollar to bet on which side was going to get at some truth first…

So what is the real message here?  Well, either stop being religious and misrepresenting the potential of the teachings of the great masters or do your homework.  Get with it.  Don’t start your studies with an effort to smugly support your pre-existing beliefs; put all of your ideas on the chopping block and test them, observe them, meditate on them and see if they hold up.  If they don’t, change your hypothesis.  If you haven’t started the investigation, stop being non-religious and do the same.  A good place to start is here:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda