Courtesy of LadyVivian

Who I am today is nothing like the man from yesterday, let alone the man from years ago. If I had an opportunity to meet my future self, I might not even recognize him.

There’s no hiding the fact that the decisions you make today are impacted by the experiences of the past. It’s part of what makes this journey so fascinating and so unpredictable. Have you ever noticed that no matter how many goals you set for yourself, there is always something that gets in the way of most? I call this my Dharma, and although I think I see the path in front of me, I have no assurances that I’m the one in control of that path.

So what does this mean for you and I?

Let’s start with who we are…we are made of building blocks. Some blocks are more firm than others, but by and large, our identity is sealed into place by the bricks of our experiences and the mortar of our feelings toward them. Notice I said that the mortar is made of your emotional reaction towards your experiences. I firmly believe that if you allow every experience to be a teacher, a reminder that you are working your way towards living your Dharma, then no matter what happens…you will be able to take it in stride.

Conversely, if you continue to react adversely to situations that don’t feel like they were meant to be, then you are only cementing more pain and suffering into your life. That is an extremely unpleasant way to live.

I was reading the book Zen Shorts, by Jon Muth, with my children, and I was fascinated by the manner in which the storyteller (in this case a panda), was able to take life as it flowed. It isn’t an easy frame of mind to obtain, but there is merit to be had from seeing each experience as a building block rather than a stumbling block.

Now, as for following your path…try to remember that you aren’t in control and no matter how hard you try, there will be twists and turns that you didn’t expect. Rather than fight the current of change, why not embrace it and see where you wind up? Sometimes it isn’t the plan that’s important…it’s the journey. Try to enjoy it.

Tags: dharma, experience, life

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?

Tags: buddha, buddhism, dreams, goals, happiness, motivation, zen

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.

Tags: animals, awareness, humanity

I’m proud to be who I am. I am thankful to God, The Creator, The Divine…for giving me a chance to take on this shell and learn what it was like to be human once.

There are some that teach us to feel guilty for being born in this skin. Others will have you believe we are less than perfect. All of that may be true, but I refuse to believe it.

We’ve been given a gift of seeing what it is truly like to live. We struggle, sometimes alone and sometimes together. We suffer, we laugh, we cry…we love. We spend our lives hoping, searching, and sacrificing our lives for love. We all feel deeply tied to each other, even though we try to forget.
Sometimes the suffering is too much and we quietly return to our shells…hoping that our luck will change. We often feel alone, but we know that we are not. Somewhere, someplace, there is a being or a spirit that lives within us.

We should not feel guilty, for we are born to be exactly as we are. Perfectly formed beings filled with the intention of our creator. Whether or not you believe in a god is irrelevant. We are the very act of a nature so great and powerful that we do not understand.

Universes bent to the will of fate…by the hand of nature herself, in order for this miracle of life to take place. By chance or by fate, it has happened and the likelihood of it happening anywhere else or at any other time is virtually nonexistent.

Celebrate who you are, even if your times are dire. Someday we will all realize that we are in this together. Someday the consciousness of man will shift further toward the divine and when we all wake up what a glorious day that will be.

Don’t feel guilty in your own skin, be thankful for the chance to shine. Be grateful that you’ve been able to see what it was like to suffer, for now you understand joy. Be thankful for war, for now you know peace.

In the end, whether our souls move on our perish forever, our memories will be imprinted on the very space we inhabit. We will remain forever on the fabric of time.

Although future generations may not know us, the universe will forever keep us in her memory. That my friends, is why we do matter. Just as we learn from the universe, the universe learns from us. Let us cherish that.

Tags: human, love, soul, space, suffering, universe

Image by slack12

How many of you find yourself worrying about things that are beyond your control? I know I am guilty of this all the time, even though I realize the futility of the effort.

What about feelings like jealousy, angst, or even malice? Have you ever found yourself caught up in a torrent of emotion that seems to take control of your mind without you even realizing it?

I only say this because I experience it too, and what I’ve come to realize during my meditation is that for some reason, people love to give themselves up to their emotions. Now, this works with both positive and negative emotions, but what I want to talk about here are the negative ones.

It happens so quickly and before we know it we are overcome with a poisonous mindset. It almost seems as if we are addicted to emotion…almost as if we thrive on it. As we feed our minds with these poisonous thoughts, we start to crave them more and more. We start to create an appetite that is insatiable and cannot be conquered. Over time, our lives become a permanent state of jealousy, angst, hate, rage, depression, or bigotry. We start to isolate ourselves from others, and as we do this we feel more and more disconnected from the world. Yet, we don’t experience it in this context…we think the world is disconnecting from us.

We create enemies out of friends and fighters out of lovers. We start to withdraw further into our mental delusions and eventually we forget where we are or who we are.

These poisons that we fill our mind with are one of the quickest ways to cutting ourselves off from our spirit. If you find yourself experiencing these feelings, try to remember to sit back and observe as your mind sparks with senseless fury. It will conjure these feelings from thin air, yet expect you to believe they are real. These emotions are nothing more than a thought process that we invest in. If you stop investing in the thought process, you stop feeding the beast that keeps you from your path.

The true path of the Dharma is one of peace and compassion, not of jealousy and rage. Your ego is a wonderful trickster and is always finding new ways to lure you off of your path. Stay focused on living your dharma and do not be distracted by useless emotional patterns. Let go of your hate, your rage, and your jealousy. Realize that these negative emotions will only lead you onto a path of despair – a state of hell.

Accept things that you cannot change and work to improve those that you can. Remember, we are all dying and regardless of how you try to cover it up, one day you too will fade away. Use this time to hone your meditation and your contemplative spirit. Withdraw from the world of Samsara and retreat into your inner being. Only there will you find your true self.

Tags: compassion, dharma, emotion, hell

Would You Take the Red Pill?

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You claim freedom and free will, but how far are you willing to go to back that up? Given the choice, would you take the red pill and risk everything to gain it all, or would you be afraid to leave your “quasi” life behind and cower behind the blue pill?

Many people say that they want freedom, but I’m willing to be that they simply tell themselves that to mask the fact that they don’t have the strength or courage to do what they know must be done.

You have a choice…you can forsake everything you have for the sake of a spiritual journey, or you can remain in place, stuck to a body that will die and a life that will fade away.

How Much Control are

You Willing to Give Up?

The question isn’t so much, how much control do you have – the question is how much are you willing to give up? The true measure of control is the amount that we are willing to let go of and I’m willing to be that given the choice, many of use would retreat to our comfort zone.

You see, I know you feel it somewhere deep inside of you, that urge to break free of your cocoon and live the life of a butterfly. I bet that every day that passes where you haven’t shed a layer has resulted in another layer being added. Every day you feel the emotional energy build up inside of you, but you are afraid. You can’t take the pain of separation, of change.

So where does that leave us? You aren’t alone. We are all tied to our social and physical bonds. However, if we just realize that eventually, everything is going to fade away regardless, then we can accept our life as a butterfly much easier.

The truth is, once you face death and conquer it, you fear nothing. Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful way to live?

Tags: control, freedom, Impermanence, Reality

Image by Younglings

Do you live with a panic deep inside of you? You might not even know it is there, but you can probably feel it. It drives you to continually find new ways to improve yourself and to better your life. It drives you to eat more, drink more, or spend more money. You keep trying to find a new rush to fill up the gaps in your life, but you keep ending up in the same position.

The panic I’m talking about is a hole that doesn’t seem to fill up no matter what you try to fill it with. Some people think money will fill it, some think that family will fill it, while others think that helping others will fill it. However, every time that you do something that you see as the peak experience, every time that you reach a goal, this feeling doesn’t go away. In fact, you start to get more desperate…you try and try until it begins to eat you alive. Then it hit you, maybe like it hit me: no matter what I do, I am never going to fill the hole…ever.

You see, the hole I am talking about is a hole in your spirit that keeps telling you there is something wrong in your life. The problem is that in most people, it manifests in material ways, rather than spiritual ways. You think that becoming a millionaire, helping the poor, or finding love will all help to fill the hole. The problem is that it doesn’t work…none of it does.

I thought that money would help me, but it didn’t. Then I started running, but I kept wanting more. I started competing, but just competing wasn’t good enough. I wanted to win…then I wanted to always win…can you see the pattern? Every time we reach what we think is the “peak experience,” we realize that the experience wasn’t what we expected at all. I was thinking about my personal goals and I kept noticing that every time I thought I’d found the true path to happiness, it never came.

That’s when it hit me – like a ton of bricks actually, that no matter what pursuits I go after or achieve, I will never find a physical way to fill that hole. All my striving, all of my hope, was based in a physical world that relies on that hope and striving to pull you deeper into it. You see, that is the trap that binds us to suffering. This ego creature is so masterful that it will find any way that it can to trick you into thinking you are on the right path. Only when you realize that you’ve lost your way will it give up and try something else.

This is what happened to me. I thought I was on my path, but I was being tricked into thinking that. I was never going to fill that hole, instead I would just be travelling further and further down the rabbit hole until I reached a point of no return.

The only true way to fill that hole is by spiritual experiences. Even those are fleeting, but they are much more real then the physical experience. I don’t care what religion you follow, but the truth is that if you want to stop striving then you have to find a way to satisfy your spirit. For me, I know exactly what I must do, and it is something I find a way to avoid every day – meditation. I know that I must withdraw myself from the world of Mara and go inward, but I keep getting tricked into giving up. Realize that when you are tricked into physical pursuits, that even should you accomplish them your cravings will still go unsatisfied. This monster is never full and it will devour every part of you that it can. Stop feeding the monster and go inward, toward the spirit. Only then can you find your true path and only then can you fill the hole.

Don’t live a life of quiet desperation where you feel a panic inside of you every day. You know the way to happiness and you know it is the right thing to do. Escape the trap of suffering and follow the way…live your Dharma.

Tags: dharma, ego, goals, suffering

What I Learned from Fasting

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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.

We All Go Through It

Image by Suckaface

Let’s face it, we all struggle through pain and suffering at some point in our lives. Often we struggle with minor issues daily, but there comes a time when larger events, such as death, illness, or depression sideswipe us from nowhere, sending our lives into an out of control mess.

Like you, I’ve been there and although it would be easy for me to say that I have mastered this, I would be lying. In fact, dealing with pain is one of the greatest issues I face on my own personal journey towards enlightenment.

I’ve been wracked with depression, illness, family issues, and more…but the times I’ve made it through least scathed were the times where I tried to take a step back and see the greater picture.

It Comes Without Warning

Let me give you an example – years ago I was facing some personal issues and was driving home from court (paying a speeding ticket) and saw one of my favorite cats dead in the center of the road. Here I was happy that I’d gotten a little break from the judge only to find that something I love lay dead in front of me.

Often times we’ll find that things like this happen immediately after good things happen. Although, I’ve come to adapt the mentality of “if things are good now, they will soon get worse…and if things are bad now, they will surely get better,” it isn’t easy to adjust to the blow of pain in any circumstance.

In this example, I grieved for days and couldn’t get over the guilt of letting my cat outside before I left. Then one day I was walking through a local bookstore and saw Pema Chodron’s book: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

The book really helped me get through my grieving, but also to step back and realize that there are certain things in this life I simply cannot change. Things happen for reasons beyond my understanding and as painful as it may be, sometimes it has to be.

The key is to try and learn from the pain. I know you’ve probably heard it all before, but I firmly believe it to be true. Were it not for some of my most difficult times, I would not have found my way on this long and important journey. Our pain and suffering shapes us into following our true paths.

The True Root of Pain

I’ve also come to realize that a large majority of my pain comes from issues that boil down to one thing – Fear of Death.

When illness, income issues, or even marital issues come up, I realize that more times and not the stem of the pain is me being afraid of death. Now, it may seem odd, but think about it like this:

When I lose my job and I am worried about money, what I am really afraid of is that I won’t have enough time to get back what I’ve lost. Now, what I really forget in this case is that when I die, it will all be lost regardless of how much I collect or gain back. When I ignore this fact, I am ignorant of my own death and as I continue to run away from it, I continue the cycle of fear.

In the end, when I come to grips with my own mortality and realize that like it or not, someday I will perish, I can let go of my pain much easier. Holding on to pain only makes you hurt more, but realizing that in the end…no matter how much pain and suffering exists, death will come…can make the journey easier.

Buddhists focus on death because by conquering your fear of death you master much more than your own body. You master pain, suffering, and perspective. A good book to learn more about conquering your own fear of death is The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I’ve learned a lot from that book and it was one of the first I read when my journey began.

Tags: death, pain, suffering

They Don’t Own You

Image by Rosemary

I’ve written often on the topic of dreams and returning to childhood innocence, but I have been feeling like I haven’t really said everything I needed to say. Then recently, when I found a new blog called The Illumined Mind, I read a post that really touched on some things I have been thinking lately.

In his post, the author talks about some things in our lives that hold us back from really achieving the ability to walk the path of our own Dharma, such as everyday tastks, addiction, security, ego, and desire. I couldn’t agree more with this thesis. It is so easy to get caught up in the trap of being satisfied, rather than fulfilled that we allow ourselves to be tricked into thinking we are ok. We create this hole inside of our souls that grows deeper every day that we ignore it, until it is so large that we are consumed by the realization that we are not only unhappy, but we are miserable.

We have to remember that being happy isn’t always a comfortable process and it rarely happens easily. There are lures and traps all over the world that try to bind us to unhappiness. We get caught in the trap of law, of morality, of social normalcy, and of what is commonly accepted. I’m going to say this once:

No One Owns You

You are not tied to any action by more than the strings of your mind that tell you it is wrong or uncomfortable to do anything otherwise. It is very difficult to swim upstream, but it is easy to gaze downstream and see where that path leads.

The law doesn’t own you, your country doesn’t own you, your job doesn’t own you, and your family do not own you. There is no you to be owned, there is simply what must be done and what is being done. When you merge the action of what is done and what must be done, then you will find that you are on the path…you are living your Dharma. Do not be fooled into thinking that you are different or irrational, you are more than that because you do not fear what others will think or say about you.

Become what you know you must become, there is no other way to happiness and there is no other way to enlightenment.

Tags: dharma, enlightenment, happiness