Thursday, November 24, 2011

You are Cordially Invited to a Party on the Hill

In the society of nations, America has assumed the role of the power broker - the same persona that is being vilified by the occupy movement. Millions of Americans are proud of this attitude and think that it's vital to the nation's integrity that we have more power, more money, more respect, more influence and more more than anyone else in the global community. If we want to foster an air of fairness and equality within our boarders, we have to adopt a philosophy of global fairness and equality, at the same time. A healthy community is created from communion, not competition. Compassionate and empathetic people will bring rise to national compassion and empathy, which will inspire a nation of compassion and empathy, which will infect the globe with virtuous inspiration.

It's true that the governmental and national operating systems are dysfunctional, but they've been built around an assumption that the underlying goal is to be “the king of the hill”. It's that underlying current that needs to be addressed. This is what those who say, “The occupiers are just an unruly mob with no clear agenda” seem unable to fathom. When the hill is formed into a sharp peak, there's only room for one at the top. Once we've rounded the top off, there will be enough room for a dance party there. The drummers are already jamming to a danceable beat. Yes, there are many structural issues that will need to be corrected along the way, but the primary agenda that needs to be addressed, is the attitudes of the nation, and its citizens. We have to stop climbing on and over others to get to the top, and start to help each other up the hill, to the festival that's awaiting us all.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Growing Pains

Don't blame the bankers, brokers, corporate leaders and politicians. They're just playing their roles. It's another expression of survival of the fittest. A squirrel is bound to harvest as many nuts as it can. It's not keeping count. It just knows that more is better. Our present society has been evolving into this unjust, unsightly and inhumane manifestation since before its inception. The current faces of our economic, industrial and political systems have been raised to play the parts they've adopted. The name of their game is “more”. More power, more money, more influence, more more. It's no wonder that they haven't developed the compassion of saints. It's not in their job description. They were taught and encouraged to become the greedy little squirrels that they are. If they weren't filling the ranks, someone else would. Our current society demands it. As one occupier's sign read - “The system's not broken, it was built this way”.

Our species is in its uncomfortable adolescence, and we're going through growing pains. Like a snake aching to shed its skin, we're finally feeling a compulsion to shed habituated self serving attitudes that don't actually serve our higher aspirations or best interests. A young child is only concerned with its immediate wants and needs. As it grows, it learns that friends, family and community are important, in and of themselves, as well as, for the individual's well being and happiness. The young child doesn't see that its constant demands take a toll on its mother's health, just as humans have largely been oblivious to how our demands on our mother have been detrimental to her health. And a sick mother can't properly tend to her children's needs. A mature child can see when its mother is failing, feel empathy toward her and act more compassionately – even to the point of becoming the caretaker. Humanity has had voices of conscience pleading to attend its mothers needs for hundreds of years and they've been growing increasingly more insistent over the last half a century. Finally, it's starting to sink into our collective consciousness enough to begin to overwrite the attitudes of childish self obsession. And like a child, who would live solely on candy, oblivious to the warnings and consequences, we have been living for pleasure and immediate gratification to the detriment of our growth and health, too. As a child can't imagine acting in the best interests of it future self, we seem unable to act in the best interests of our future generations. It's time to adopt more intelligent directives and make choices that nurture and serve us over the long run, if we want to be healthy, grow strong and live long as a species. Children are fooled by appearances, and think others can be fooled by the same. So toys are shoved under the bed to give the illusion of cleanliness, vegetables are tucked under a napkin to make it look like they've been eaten and over sized shoes are donned to make it seem as though they're all grown up. But putting on mom's shoes doesn't qualify a kid to drive her car, and we've been behind the wheel without a license for some time. Now we've left the road and are heading toward catastrophe.

Plowing through the ditch has slowed us down a little, but as the eyes of reason and compassion strain to see over the steering wheel the body of society is trying to stand on the feet of power brokers, which is pushing the gas pedal down even more. And there are tall trees directly in front of us. The talking heads keep referring to our getting back to where we were, intimating that it was a healthy intelligent way to be. But the cause of our current dilemma is that we were driving too fast, in the first place. We need to spend more energy on choosing our course and less on increasing our speed. The societal model of consumerism that we've all grown up in was ill conceived from the beginning. It requires exponentially compounding consumerism to work. And that's simply not realistic, for myriad reasons. The priorities that have governed our ambitions are skewed by our presumption that this model is practical, functional and sustainable. We're children with blankets tied around our necks, believing that we can fly. The bankers, brokers and politicians are cheering us on and urging us to jump, but (mostly) we're all complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that's been handed down from previous generations, who'd been blinded by the delusion they were sold. Let's just hope that we out grow the juvenile fantasy before we jump off of the precipice that we're so precariously poised on the edge of.

The transition from childhood to adulthood is rarely easy, seamless or without angst. Now is the time for humanity to grow into a sensible, respectful, mature species, that will intelligently and compassionately tend to the needs of the greater whole, while respecting the needs and rights of all individuals. This is no small order; but, in the same way that a teen or an adult is bound for catastrophe if he doesn't act with maturity, it's well past time for us to “act our age” unless we want to live with the extreme consequences that are bound to come as a result of our negligence.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Bumper Sticker Spirituality

Wisdom is just common sense,
with a birds eye view.

Teaching the Wind

There are a few built in problems with being an honest spiritual guide. Spiritual exploration requires delving into an aspect of existence that doesn't conform to the same conditions as the material side of the equation. And peoples minds are conditioned to process everything in terms of material ways of seeing, understanding and learning. We're talking about a realm that is beyond the reach of the thinking mind. So catering to comfortable reasoning is inherently misleading.

No one can know that their understanding is correct with absolute certainty. Belief is the best that one can hope for, which, in and of itself, is self deception. Since no one can actually know, belief is really just assuming that a theory or someone else's story is true. Belief shuts out other possibilities and ignores “the scientific method”. And, although we don't expect scientific provability in such matters, we still know that following the method is the most accurate approach to learning and refining our notions that we can use. But there will always be mystery. So, essentially, one can't claim to be the ultimate authority, without lying. And people don't have confidence in any “expert” who says, “It seems kind of like this to me, but you'll have to check it out for yourself and see what you think”. We wouldn't trust our investments, education, home and auto repairs or anything else in life that we consider important to someone who told us that it was ultimately our job to figure it out.

But that's the thing about spiritual exploration and discovery, it's a personal thing. All of the great teachers throughout the ages have clearly stated this fact. Unfortunately, their teachings were then claimed by others, who turned them into religions that now profess to freely hand out all the answers – the very answers that we're supposed to discover and interpret for ourselves. Where as, all a spiritual guide should really do is provide seekers with the right questions to ask and give appropriate directions for the next leg on their paths of personal inquiry. But this is kind of like trying to sell a do-it-yourself guide without providing a picture or description of the final product. And who would buy something and go through all the steps to make it, without knowing what they were going to wind up with in the end?

So people basically have two choices in seeking spiritual guidance. Go with the masses to the polished palaces that claim to have all the answers and promise eternal glory; or, go to the lone individual who tells them that he/she can't really say what the seeker's truth is, and that they'll have to suss it out for themselves. Being conditioned to functioning in a material world of stable certainty, it seems pretty obvious where the greater tide will be inclined to flow.

Another major factor in the equation, is that people are very attached to their egos, believe that they are their egos and are happy with whatever allows them to carry on, living in this comfortably familiar fantasy. So, knowing that it holds appeal, the church offers ego polish along with its incense. Which isn't to imply that polishing the ego isn't a good thing; but by definition, spirituality is the pursuit of moving beyond the ego. However, it's much easier and more comfortable to just skirt that little issue, and pretend otherwise. The giant electronic sign in front of the church says, “All egos Welcome”, while the cardboard sign propped up in front of the lone teacher says, “Ego Remover – Free Samples – Inquire Within”. Certainly, most by far, will choose the empty promises over the promise of emptiness.

It's a great scenario for the institutions, and a disheartening one for informed teachers. It's clearly the way it is, and must therefore be embraced as such. But it can make it somewhat challenging to sustain the requisite passion and avoid the temptation to make more marketable claims, just to capture an audience. That's the plight of the sage. Wisdom to share, understanding to impart, called to uplift one and all, yet destined to teach the wind.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Bumper Sticker Spirituality

There's a time to tune in.
It's called now.

Feed Your Flexibility

People are designed to be flexible, in body, and in mind. There's a popular saying, “Use it, or lose it.” Cumulative time spent within a limited range of motion has a calcifying effect – physically and mentally. Failing to explore range of motion, and practice suppleness, makes for a stiff weak body. Failing to continually learn new things and develop new ways of seeing, makes for a rigid mind with limited functionality.

You don't have to be old for this to happen. As a yoga teacher, I've taught teens who were tighter than mid-lifers who've never exercised. But it's more obvious in many of our elderly. I was walking behind a man the other day who carried his sofa around on his back, like a permanent, invisible shell, mimicking that form fitting indentation he'd worn into it, over the years. It was apparent that the seat was too deep for him, and that he never got around to getting another pillow, to support his back.

Petrification of the mind isn't that much harder to see. Again, perhaps easier to recognize in those elderly folks, who still live in the world that they grew up in, over half a century ago. But it can be seen, in some of our younger citizens, as well. Ideas, set in stone. Dogmas handed down, and taken to heart. Sides chosen, with no willingness to compromise. No effort extended to see the equation from other angles. We need to discard the confining shells of our minds with the same regularity that a snake sheds its skin, so that we can continue to grow beyond their rigid boundaries.

Belief that there is a right posture to hold, a right stance to take or a right way to see things, is contrary to flexibility. Everything is subjective, and contingent on conditions and circumstances. Slouching gets a bad rap, but how could you tie your shoes without doing so? It's not a good place to get stuck, but it's not bad to go there. Beliefs and attitudes aren't bad, but getting stuck within their confines, is limiting in numerous ways, and across multiple time frames. They're best, held loosely, not compressed into a solid immutable mass. We want to be able to sift through them regularly, to take inventory and re-evaluate what's still worth holding onto.

Flexibility may be your birthright, but it's not automatically bestowed. It needs to be developed and maintained. Some bodies are stronger or more easily manipulated. But it doesn't matter what your limits are, or what having more strength or speed might do for you. It's about exploring your full potential, as you are - from your core, to your center of gravity, to the very perimeters of your capacity; and perhaps, just a bit beyond. Similarly, some minds have faster processing speeds or solve problems of a particular nature better. But it's not a head to head competition. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Our task, is to work on the “who” that's present, in each moment, and to strive to be just a little bit better. Not everything needs to be discarded or reconstructed, but we rarely see things for what they are, upon our first encounter - or the twentieth, for that matter. Everything longs to be investigated and retested, and limits yearn to be challenged.

Newness is good. Different is divine. Diversity, our friend. We're well served by exposing ourselves to the unfamiliar, and inviting it to infuse our beings. Stretch your boundaries. Shift your attitudes. Try out new postures. Press beyond your preconceptions. Find a way of being that you've not tried on before, or one that has yet to be examined. Invent a way of holding yourself that's more open, empowered and receptive. Rigid is brittle. Supple is strong. Shed your shells. Soften and stretch. Fill yourself out. Never stop striving. Never stop improving. Feed your flexibility.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Why do I?

I don't write and teach for personal gain or to prove how clever I can be. My mission is actually very ambitious. Practical or not, I do so for the long term well being of the whole. It's understandable that people might find my motives to be a mystery, because I never tell the end of the story. But that's the way it's supposed to be. I'm not trying to provide the answers; but rather, to give folks the tools, clues, guidance and inspiration that will enable them to find out for themselves. That way, the lessons are engrained more deeply. And some need to penetrate to the core, in order to be properly integrated.

When I encourage others to empty their minds, it's not solely for their personal benefit; but more so, encouraging self improvement for the sake of the whole. It's when we get quiet, that we feel our interconnectedness. Compassion isn't an idea. We can't think our way into a loving and generous nature. And following well intentioned rules of conduct won't turn anyone into a benevolent being. I want people to experience their oneness with everything, so that they begin to embody attitudes and adopt actions that are harmonious with the greater good. Dispelling the fantasy of self isn't about attaining some exalted state of being, because it's a mighty and noble accomplishment. It's about feeling and knowing that the wishes of the self aren't more important than the welfare of the community of all beings, and the loving earth upon which they depend; and then, living in accordance with that awareness.

So, I write and teach … and hope.