A problem for seekers

There are those who describe themselves as "seekers." At what point do they become "finders?"

They become finders when the choose to stop searching.

That is called acceptance -- it is the exact opposite of seeking.

Do we own our minds?

Our minds appear to be marvelously practical things that we own.

They recognize colors and shapes, feelings and sensations. Consciousness will spontaneously move from full sleep to perfect focus with the single creak of a floorboard. Effortlessly guiding the most mundane bodily functions, our minds simultaneously leverage bits of thoughts into elegant structures such as families, cities, economies, and societies.

But do we own our minds? We lead them like horses on halters. Yet, in an instant the same horses drag us bucking and kicking across the fairgrounds though fences and into the trees.

Some say the mind cannot conceive of death. I find those assertions contrary to experience. When quietly asked, the mind will subtly unfold the simple calculus of death. That formula is the absence of sensation, the cessation of cognition, the absolute loss of the moment. It is profoundly more than the absence of existence, it is the termination of the ever-present now. It is nothing at all, drenched in a rich blackness that is so devoid of meaning that it lacks any trace of reason, matter or energy.

That subtle response is accompanied by a disclaimer. Mind says, "you asked what death is and I have given you the calculation." However, Mind continues, "I have not presented this to you previously because it is not true. I am not of your body."

"Quite the contrary," Mind reveals, "I perpetually generate body, motion, sensation, time, matter, energy, and presence for our amusement, education, gratification, and for love. Fear not, for I am not so easily snuffed."

With a wink, Mind whispers at the same moment, "be afraid, for I am not so easily snuffed."

Forgiveness is synonymous with acceptance

Forgiveness is synonymous with acceptance. These are the essential elements of any blessing. Moving though the day blessing without limitations or preconditions is the essence of mindfulness and meditation.

It is something that needs practice.

Now is a good time to start.

I first encountered death as a child

I first encountered death as a child with a beloved parakeet discovered at the bottom of his cage. I buried him in a wooden jewelry chest under a cherry tree.

Then, a neighbor who had given me a toy top died. I cried alone in my bedroom when I heard my parents discussing the news downstairs. Before I was ten years I saw a man riding a bicycle fall over in a school yard. His pants were wet and he did not move. I learned later that he was the father of a classmate -- I had watched him die, not knowing what I was seeing and not knowing what to do.

I've known at least six suicides. Some were dear friends. Joe killed himself when I was 20, as had a college friend the Christmas before. Laurel died on railroad tracks and another hung himself. They all died violently, each death a disaster.

Peter was murdered when I was 26. Peter's wife Linda had died in a car crash the year before when she was thrown though the windshield after a tire blew out and the car tumbled. I was with my sister-in-law as she was dying from cancer four years ago. Mario, bigger than life, taught me the trick of selling anything to anyone. He died from Lou Gehrig's disease two years ago.

I watched my father die of coronary disease in a hospital when I was 28. Last year my mother died of old age in my home while I was giving her a last drink of water.

Last month I went to the funeral of a good friend who called me for help shortly before his unexpected death. There was no help that anyone could give, for there was no help that he would accept. Is an alcoholic a suicide or a victim? For him, for others, and for myself I have done what I can to fight death, to slow it down, and to hold it back. From this I have learned that death is patient and relentless.

I have also learned that every death leaves the Universe smaller and diminished beyond our capacity to see. The people of my parent's generation have completely gone and those of my generation are beginning to pass away. Funerals are more frequent. Each time the Universe is left smaller.

But I am blessed by my long life. These blessings include courage and perspective. Tonight, as I changed my daughter's diaper, I kissed her and she smiled at me through her large sleepy eyes. I felt that the Universe had expanded with her arrival. My beloved adopted daughters in their diapers have confirmed that God's Mercy exceeds God's Wrath.

However, until tonight I did not know the extent by which Mercy exceeds Wrath.

Now I see the difference is infinite.

Goodnight moon.

"Let there be light"

The first commandment is not about photons or the luminous images of vivid imaginations. It is not a prohibition of improper behavior. It promises no wrath.

Instead, "Let there be light" is a description of the path to Divinity. It is a recipe for action.

It is a demand for the energized output of goodness.

This first commandment is not aimed at the void, it is aimed at our hearts.

Polish the mirror

Perhaps you are an atheist. That is an honorable approach. But don't stop now. Go further and clean your path to the Real.

Sufis say when you know yourself you will know God, and when you know God you will know yourself.

I trust you will do both. You are the great soul who has the wisdom to douse your atheism with the same bucket you washed away old notions of Divinity.

The method of enlightenment, they say, is to polish the mirror.

I see the scouring cloth in your hand.

God was watching her, agape

It does not matter in the least that she could not hear God.

God was watching her, agape.


From the page: "Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, "Listen and do not hear" the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me" that I let Him have [a] free hand."

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction "that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html

The dream

When we are not feeling love we are wandering aimlessly in a meaningless dream.

While it may be entertaining, mundane, or at times filled with terror and anguish, without feeling love, it does not mean anything at all.

"It's not a dream" you say. "Certainly I am more than nothing! Clearly, my actions make a difference."

"Prove it" I kindly reply, pointing to the inescapable relativity of all things and thoughts and the impermanence of every structure.

You respond, "Life has unspeakable cruelty and insufferable pain."

Bouncing a crying baby on my knee I suggest, "So does a nightmare"

So here we are thinking about ethics, poverty, compassion, war, and nonviolent action, while stuck with tools made from frothy relativistic dreamstuff.

Is there an ethical framework that works here, there, and everywhere, even in dreams, even in nightmares?

Please don't be afraid

The salvation argument presumes there is something that needs to be saved. There are several problem with that view. First, of course, it requires that something needs to be broken. That "something" happens to be you, me, and everybody else. Using a standard monotheistic definition of God as Creator, we might ask, would God create something that was broken or susceptible to breakdown? I suggest a good answer is "no." God is not a clumsy oaf and nobody around here is broken.

The second problem with worries about salvation is the presumption of the existence of a "plan." Unless somebody is using some sort of special "secret" dictionary, "plan" means a series of staged actions over time, or a scheme, or a map or diagram, or an intention that has not been fully executed. Is time God's master? Would God wait to act? Does God need to write things down or tie a string to an anthropomorphic finger? Again, I think not. Just as bandits "don't need no stinking badges" God does not need a plan. Also, I respectfully direct your attention to the preceding paragraph, which points out that nothing is broken, so nothing needs fixing.

Third, there are often worries about whether the "plan" will "work." Will "the plan" really move someone from a state of being broken, to a state of being unbroken, over time? That's the heart of the worry. After all, some structures are lovingly built with the best of intentions but they fall down like the famous Tacoma Narrows Bridge or the World Trade Center. Here again, the fear collapses into anthropomorphic nonsense. After all, there is nothing to fix, no plan to fix it, and no new action needs to be taken.

So, if asked the question, "Have you done enough to be saved?" I would have to respond as did Marisa Tomei's character in My Cousin Vinnie:

"Answer: It's a bullshit question."

A good way to work through those kinds of "you may be going to Hell" questions is to take them apart and see the limits placed upon God. Throw out the limits you know are goofy and smile at the limits your version of reality demands of you today.

Another good way to respond to just about any version of the "is everything okay? worry, is to direct the question to a baby, who will give that straw man all the consideration it is due while she fills up a diaper and reaches for a hug.

So informed, I have a few more questions . . .

Whence the Light?

When the tree branches wave in our dreams, we would do well to remember there is no wind inside our skulls. We create and animate every detail for our own amusement, enlightenment, or terror.

Likewise, when the light shines it comes from you, not to you.

"Opaque curtains, translucent veils, clear windows, open doors, bright mirrors, brilliant lamps, windowless and doorless barriers that open mysteriously, bridges of radiance over precipices and oceans, broad highways of sunlight, narrow paths of moonlight. beams of radiance emanating from the breast of holy beings on moonless nights, lightning flashes prolonged in ecstasy, angels of Light, ladders of Light. and stairways of Light--these are the landscape of the mystic way. Spiritual travelers encounter these forms of Light. which take form temporarily and change form instantly, as they traverse the infinite dimensions of the unified field of Light in bodies of Light drawn to the single goal of Light."

-Lex Hixon, Atom from the Sun of Knowledge at 162, Pir Publications (1993).