Image Credit: Stuck in Customs

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the motivations behind my behaviors…I’m trying to get to the root of what really makes me happy and what causes me grief. Although this process is never complete, I think this period of introspection has led me to some interesting insight that I’d like to pass on. Keep in mind that some of this might be difficult to hear, some of this might annoy you, and some of this might not fit your behavior, but I can’t do much about that.

As I continue to achieve many of the goals I’ve set out for myself, I’m finding that achieving the goal doesn’t lead to anything more than a brief moment of contentment. As soon as one goal is completed, another, more difficult one, replaces it. At first I thought this was due to my never ending quest for self-improvement, but I realized that this was only part of the equation.

Seeking happiness leads to emptiness?

More pressing than any desire to achieve, is the desire to be happy. I used to think that happiness would come from self-actualization, but now I realize that it doesn’t come from achieving a state of mind, but from fleeing states of mind.

What I mean by this is that many of my quests have, at the root, a motivation that is self-serving. I want to write words that people will like because when I receive feedback, it makes me happy. The problem is that it doesn’t make me happy and I believe that this is because I attach an expectation to my action. As a result, I set myself up to be disappointed, time and time again. And so this is true for all of my dreams, goals, and achievements. I think they will make me happy because I will finally have cracked the code or unlocked a new door in my quest, unfortunately it is because I want a result that I am become less happy.

As you succeed in achieving these goals and finding that happiness doesn’t meet you there, you start to feel a sense of despair. Why can’t I be happy? Is something wrong with me?

Planting the seed of truth

The truth is that as long as you seek to be happy, you never will be. And so I’ve finally realized how important the teachings of the Buddha have become, not because they enlightened me at the time, but because they planted a seed that would blossom exactly when I needed it to. Had I not studied Buddhist and Zen teachings prior to now, I wouldn’t have the frame-set to understand what I am going through. Since I have read these teachings, I can look back and say “Aha! Now I know what he meant!”

For years I wondered if I would ever fully grasp these teachings…I wondered if my faith would grow or shrivel into the dust from which it came. Looking back, I’m amazed at how the pieces fall in to place, even though at the time I thought “what the hell is going on with my life?”

So where do we go from here? Well, I’m starting to think that attaching any expectation from an action is going to lead you down a path you don’t want to follow. For instance, recently I helped treat someone suffering from dehydration and anemia. She was in a state in which she needed someone to take care of her. I enjoyed the feeling of helping and I didn’t even think about why or how I was going to do it. I just reacted and helped her. However, as I was driving later that day I wondered if maybe I should have been a doctor or work at a hospital so that I could help people. But…when I got to the truth of why I wanted to do that, I realized that helping people made me feel important, which felt good at the time, but still leaves you empty because the feeling doesn’t last. Helping people is great, but doing it for selfish reasons is only going to produce sorrow.

Feelings don’t last

The reason that it leads to sorrow is because feelings don’t last and as soon as the “happiness” fades, you instantly feel a void and search for more happiness to replace it. As a result, you are constantly in a state of searching, hunting, and desperately seeking a “happiness” fix. Eventually, you get so caught up in this trap that you lose site of what you were doing in the first place. This is how searching for happiness leads to despair.

The truth is that happiness doesn’t exist until you cease looking for it. When you do, without expectation or attachment, then you will learn what it is to truly find peace. This is what it means to chop wood and carry water. Let the Tao guide you in your actions…follow the middle way. This is what I’ve learned, how do you feel?

Courtesy of L.Shadrack

What makes us human?

Is it our heart, opening…closing, like the windows of God’s eyes.

Is it our brains, constantly scanning, searching, hoping, thinking about what comes next.

Is it our emotions, feeling a single high for every low, always keeping us on our toes.

Is it our ability to recognize suffering? Is it our ability to acknowledge it?

Are we as unique as we think we are…will the journey continue to unfold after death?

In my opinion, none of this is what makes us human. The difference between a rock and an animal is that the rock accepts its fate. The rock knows it has no place to be and needs nothing to survive…now or ever. An animal is driven by instinct, it is always trying to survive. An animal is anxiety, movement, panic. A rock is stoicism, stability, and patience.

Humans are animals, but there is one difference that differentiates us. What makes us human, is that we are connected, we are alive, we are one. We feel the patience hiding inside of the rock. We feel the constant struggle in an animal’s instinct. We are both the rock and the animal.

We are aware of those around us. We know how our actions affect others, but there’s one problem.

We try to forget…

During your daily struggles, don’t become the animal. Remember that you have no place to be, except where you are. Remember that your place is not in your individuality, but in your connection with others.

We are human, but we are so much more. Become more.

Image by hcchoo

We live in a world that makes every possible attempt to control us. There are pysical, social, psychological, and even spiritual mechanisms in place to force our actions down a certain path. Those that are able to break free from these mechanisms of control are those you don’t see on the heavily travelled path. These people forge a path of their own through the jungle and because of this freedom they do not fear failure.

In my opinion, finding and maintaining a relationship with God is a personal journey that must be undertaken alone. You may meet others along your journey to help you find your way, but in the end the choice is up to you to Live Your Dharma.

They say that every guru you meet is nothing more than a physical manifestion of your own inner guru, and I can “feel” the truth in that statement. So, if the journey is a solo path that requires us to voyage inward, then how do we do it? Well, I view this journey as a parallel to an ascent back into the womb. I know it sounds strange, but try and remember the Matrix when Neo “woke up.” When he went through the process of awakening, he journeyed inward and beyond…out of the vortex and into the real world. I believe our spiritual journey to living our Dharma is very similar to that experience.

So you might be asking, what does this have to do with fasting? Well the answer is this:

Recently, as a result of a personal feeling of being too attached to certain emotions and experiences, I decided to go on a 3 day fast to break the chain binding me to some of these attachments. I also felt that there was something that God was trying to tell me, and I thought that if I tuned out and focuses solely on God, then I might hear what needed to be heard.

Although fasting can be difficult at times, during most of this experience I felt physically and emotionally detached from this existence. In otherwords, I felt good. The hunger tried to reach through and cause pain, but it felt outside of my body and I realized that there does exist a “watcher” within that is not attached to my body at all. Trying to tune in with that detachment allowed me to see myself as a spirit trapped inside of a dying body. I felt as if I was confronting death face to face…and I was not afraid. It was liberating to free myself from the bondage of physical attachment as things I normally used to gratify my ego became unimportant alltogether.

I also tried to remain silent and conserve my energy as much as possible. During this time I realized that words are nothing more than an escape from the “now” that Ram Dass talked so often about in his book Remember, Be Here Now. We use words too often and more often than not, they only convolude the actual experience. I often get agitated at long winded conversations and those that feel an attachment to talking, and I believe that was a progression towards the lesson I learned during my fast.

I’m not going to claim that I had a profound religious experience, but I do believe that I learned some very important lessons about myself and my nature that provided me with clues to eventually break free from Samsara. If we can start breaking these chains of attachment and mechanisms of control, then eventually we will see the world for what it really is – a mystical experience designed to lead us towards our Enlightenment and our final journey home.

Listen to the teacher inside of you. Listen to the voice that tells you where to go no matter how many physical, social, psychological, or spiritual boundaries you feel are in the way. Those that find a way to free themselves and start exploring their own path through the woods, usually end up right where they belong.

When we were children, we were not afraid of much. Maybe the dark or a bully down the street frightened us, but for the most part the only things we really thought about were wondering how things are, our hopes, and our dreams.

The wonders of the universe:

Although I remember a little bit of my own youth, I am best reminded of it when talking to my children. As little ones, we didn’t understand how anything worked and so we were fascinated by it. There was a certain magic to the world that could only be seen through a child’s eyes. The clouds were amazing, insects were spectacular, and things such as the ocean just blew us away.

My son often asks me how things work and as he tries to make sense of the world, I get urges not to give him a normal answer. There have been times where I have done this and felt pangs of regret as I realized that each question he asks me takes him closer to losing the magic that gives him the fire in his eyes. Children are able to see and hear things that adults are not able to and I am convince it is because their innocence allows them to be open to all perception, whereas our ignorance closes many of its doors.

The reason I bring this up is that as we age and mature, we start to find out how thing work and through our analysis we turn the magnificent magical world into the scientifical ordinary universe. In our quests to understand, we wind up thinking we know too much and forgetting about the magic behind the curtain that drives this wonderful existence.

It is my goal, as I progress down this path of living my dharma, to give up much of that analytical mindset that keeps me from the magic and try to return to the childlike innocence that made the world so wonderful in the first place. It is far too easy to get caught up trying to analyze why things are rather than just appreciate the beauty in everything I see. There is magic in everything around us if we only take the time to look. I’ve often thought that in far less technologically advance times that true magic may have existed because people might have been just innocent to. Maybe it still does exist for those willing to look for and accept it?

Were a Buddha to cross your path today and show you how he could alter the world or your perceptions, would you even be aware enough to see him try?

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite poets:

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

-William Blake

Image by J.A.L.E.X

Are We Living in a Dreamworld?

My son asked me a few months ago (he was 5 at the time) if we were really in a dream and if life was real. At the time, I was blown away by the question and struggled to even formulate a token response. Instead, I simply said, “I don’t know.”

The question has since bothered me night and day because it is one I’ve asked myself, although far later in life than my son did. In an attempt to shelter myself from uncertainty, I am guessing that I simply disposed of the question in the back of my head. The catch with that sort of thing is that eventually the question will return, more nagging and burning than ever.

Movies like The Matrix touch upon the subject and music often takes us to a place where we feel dreamy, but still it is difficult to ponder such a thought without becoming very troubled. They say that meditation will teach you that life is a dream of sorts, but one cannot really understand that statement until we reach the mountain top for ourselves. Yes, we all want to get to that mountain top, but what do we do until we get there?

The Riddle

I often imagine that I am living a dream and that this life I am living is simply an imagined construct based on a set of loosely held predispositions and beliefs. If my current dreams are any indication, were we to really be in a dream world, our imaginary world is most likely a gross misrepresentation of the real world we are missing. Laws that exist here probably do not exist in other worlds, at least not in their entirety.

So, an interesting question based on the dream world hypothesis would be, “is everyone else real?” If they are, then are we all dreaming? If they aren’t, then am I living a hallucination? For me, this is the hardest part about the dream world idea, because if the rest of life was not real, then my family, children, and friends would disappear when I woke. Now ask yourself this question: If we had positive evidence that life was a dream and no-one else was real, would you be willing to wake up knowing that you would sacrifice everything you had become and those you have/had loved? Would you even be given the choice? Maybe upon knowing we are dreaming we simply, wake up?

Bringing it Back Home

I know what you are thinking because I am thinking it too. Somehow while hearing this message from my source I’ve stumbled upon a truth of some sort. If meditation and Buddhism/Zen teach us that to climb that mountain we must give up every bit of baggage we carry, then in a way we really do have to give up our current “realities” in order to reach the higher ground. So is that what is stopping us from waking up? Do we purposely stay asleep so that we can continue to live and love our life on Earth? If we have to give up our realities to reach that summit, are we wrong in wanting to just admire the view from below?

I suppose this is where the cycle of death and rebirth nudge us in the direction we must go, but it sounds like a very difficult journey. I’ve dedicated myself to reaching that peak, but I hesitate to do so without my love.

So I ask you, is there a place for love at the top?

Maybe sanity is overrated…

I sat in a series of briefings and round table discussion today regarding ethnicity and race, which then brought about a great series of conversations about the effects of social and cultural groups from an international perspective. We talked about how we use our “groups” to construct the realities we live in and in doing so use these groups to give us purpose.

Constructing Reality

Whether the logic holds true or not is beyond the scope of this blog, however this got me thinking about how I create my own realities and if the manner in which I do so clouds my judgment or enhances it. Traditionally, I’d view myself as an eastern, Caucasian, non-denominational, Ohio-born, American. So, considering all of those factors, how is my world view affected? To be honest, I’ve spent the greater part of 20 years trying to shed my ties to these categories, not because I don’t appreciate my roots, but because I want to do my own thinking. The question is, do I really do my own thinking?

Social, Religious, and Cultural Divides

Having had Born-Again Christianity beaten into me for 10-15 years as a child and into my teenage years, I still do sense a slight resentment towards Christianity and Religion in general. This led me to actively avoid Christianity for quite some time until I finally understood that not only did my Christian past help me form the broad foundation I have today (because of my search for freedom) concerning religion, but also that my Christian experience was not the only Christian experience that exists. However, this has affected my own created reality in some manner.

As far as other categories go, overall I would say the group think in which I was raised is conservative, somewhat-selfish, privileged, and patriotic. Although I most certainly have not figured out how these roots have manifested into my realities today, I can only surmise that I have a lot less overall experience and understanding than I was raised to believe I had.

Am I Seeing Clearly?

Now, to back to the topic so as not to get long winded on this whim, do I really see things clearly through my lens? That is really a rhetorical question and I am sure you can see where I am going with this. Clearly most of us, upon examination, do not have as clear of a world view as we think we do. Blame however, is not the goal here, rather I propose that introspection should be instead.

Freeing Ourselves from Delusion

Just as Buddhists use the eightfold path to free themselves from delusion and suffering, I would argue that deconstructing our own realities as finitely as we can will help us understand why we act the way we do, as well as see and appreciate truth when we stumble upon it. Chances are we see it every day but do not have the facility to recognize it. If we truly are going to live our Dharma, we must do so without false intention, clouded judgment, or altered perceptions of reality. So the question is, what filters do you use to create your own reality, and had you even realized they existed? Furthermore, have you been susceptible to group think when creating your own world view? Its easy to do, the question for next time is, how do we fix it?

Alexi Murdoch is one of my favorite new (new to me that is) artists, and I really found these lyrics to reflect how I’ve felt while travelling down the path to spiritual peace.

Alexi Murdoch :: Wait Lyrics

Feel I’m on the verge of some great truth
Were I’m finally in my place
But I’m fumbling still for proof
And it’s cluttering my space
Casting shadows on my face
I know I have a strength to move ahead
I can hardly leave my room
So I’ll sit perfectly still
And I’ll listen for a tune
When the mind is on the moon

And if I stumble
And if I stall
And if I slit now
And if I should fall
And if I cant be all that I could be
Will you, will you wait for me

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