Traces

Story

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:55:43 -0700

It’s amazing how attached we can become to our story. What’s also astonishing is how identified we can become with someone else’s story. Because sleeping people are so suggestible this can be tragic. We start to make someone else’s story our story. Some years ago I watched a training video on personal relationships. One of the participants in the seminar had a story about his childhood that I remembered this morning, again. It was one of those stories with which it was easy for me to identify because it was an abused child story and I had one of my own. His story was better than mine. When he did something that displeased his father he was held down and then had jalapeño pepper juice poured into his eyes. That’s high drama! As an adult he was a very soft and sensitive man with huge brown eyes. As an adult he was still telling the story of the young boy who was so horribly abused by his father. He was his story and had no identity apart from it. He was stuck like an old phonograph record with a gouge in it that keeps the needle jumping back to the same spot repeatedly to replay the same section.

Probably the purpose of him telling his story again was to help him to get free from it, to overcome it and get on with his life. It probably didn’t work. After forty years of going to seminars and workshops, reading books and talking to counselors I’ve found the only way to get past your story is to get on with your life. As I sat thinking about the man with the jalapeño pepper juice story it reminded me of my story. Bits and pieces of it started to come up and I reminded myself, It’s just a story. It stopped because I stopped it. I withdrew my energy and attention from the worn phonograph record with the gouge in it. Given the condition of our memory a prudent person will ask himself if our memories ever happened. Did the boy have jalapeño pepper juice poured into his eyes? I’m sixty-two years old and I’ve seen many horrible things that sleeping machines do to other sleeping machines. I don’t doubt it happened. I don’t doubt his story. We’re not talking about if the story is true or not. This is about getting free from the story not verifying its veracity.

Our memories are questionable because we’re not awake enough to perceive the truth accurately. We were subjective then and we’re subjective now. That makes our memories flawed at best. Some of us have observed that many of our stories have been told so many times the story just tells itself without us. Not as fantastic as it may sound given that our lives as man-machines run by themselves, are made active by the events in life while we imagine we’re in control of what’s happening, what’s going to happen. We don’t have to let our stories run us for the rest of our lives. I know this because I am abandoning my story. It’s no longer my story. It’s just another story, like a television drama. The more often I stop it when it comes up the weaker it gets. What used to be the cornerstone of my life is now a pebble on the beach, just like all the other pebbles. It’s quite freeing. Try it.

Birthdays

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 10:19:45 -0700

Today is my birthday. What is the difference from one day to the next? Apart from weather and external events a day is a day. It’s something to which we either give meaning or to which meaning is given without our conscious participation. Today I’ll change the number representing my age on the About Me page. What will that mean? It will mean I have today completed sixty-two years in this body, on this earth. It will mean today I begin the sixty-third year in this body and on this earth. It will not mean I am wise or kind. It will not mean I have gained anything through my survival. Some might say nothing means anything until we give it meaning. What’s more is that the meaning we give it doesn’t have to be its real meaning. Yes, there is real meaning because we live in a created and ordered universe. What is real meaning? Is it meaning that doesn’t change? If so, then why are there so many things that change meaning? It is because there are two meanings. One is the real meaning assigned by the creator and the other is a place holder meaning that we put over top of real meaning.

This morning I was standing in the kitchen preparing my breakfast when I an interesting realization that caused me to smile. After all these years I’m beginning to like me. I don’t mean love me the way we all love ourselves no matter how much we lie about it. This isn’t self-love. It’s more like self-acceptance. Something that has consistently eluded me. My life is not perfect by any standard of which I am aware, other than the idea that everything is perfect the way it is and we do not realize it. The work of esotericism has a subtracting effect on us. Instead of adding to us it takes away from us. It seems ironic that this should be the case as most people come to esotericism to get something not to get rid of something. That’s how I got started. Perhaps this helps explain why so few find it desirable to continue what they’ve started. If we had nothing else in common we would all still share incomplete octaves. We start things and then do not finish them. We change our minds about things because we don’t have anything that could properly be called a single mind. Instead we are divided into many different minds according to our desires, which we mislabel wills.

I am less than I was. If you have learned to see the plague of yourself you know why I was smiling. Why I will smile periodically throughout the day and for many days to come, if I live long enough. If I don’t I will be satisfied knowing that I am less today than I was ten years ago. To many this may not seem a worthy goal but to a few who understand it will be real. Today is another day. Today is the only day because there can never really be another day like it. We have to be here for it to realize it and that’s so hard to do. We’re called away by so many hopes, dreams, desires and past associations that being here for now is out of reach most of the time. We can be different. Not more but less and less is more when we come to see the plague of ourselves.

Discomfort

Tue, 12 May 2009 20:02:16 -0700

An email appeared in the inbox this morning from the other side of the planet. It still amazes me when things like that happen and I’m glad it does. I don’t ever want to take people, life or this Work for granted. There is no question in my mind that I have been and am being blessed. It’s a strange term to use, blessed. From my current perspective, which I know will change, I do not subscribe to the belief in divine favor as something one may receive apart from everyone else. God is no respecter of persons suits me just fine. Somewhere along the way I had to relinquish my little god for a great Unknown and Unknowable. Though from time to time I have religious twinges and regressions I am not sorry to see it go. It was sentimental and full of idiotic contradictions that hindered my forward progress in the process of transformation. Now I have other things that can hinder my progress. What is purification if it’s not removing the hinderances to our progress?

What I mean by blessed is that I have the good fortune to be grateful. Obviously, being grateful is not something everyone can be. If they can be there seems to be something that hinders them from being grateful. Probably the same things that cripple my ability to be grateful now and then. Mostly accounts, feeling owed or some other form of negative emotions--the attractive poison that we can’t seem to resist for long. It’s an addiction. The email was about a Podcast that I made back in February of this year. As I listened to it to see about what the emailer was talking I had to die a little more to my idea of myself, my sense of myself. This is never really pleasant but it is necessary. As the apostle Paul wrote, I die daily. If we’re on the right track we should be dying on a daily basis as well. It’s so hard to stay on the right track when there is so much in us that wishes to run screaming from the path.

He had some question about something I’d said about negative self-remembering. The thing that I found unpleasant was the tone of the podcast. A kind of superior tone that arises out of a certain despair in which little I’s love to wallow. If it were up to my pride and vanity I would remove all the podcasts that didn’t show me in the best possible light. Perhaps Peter would have had the account of his denial of Christ expunged from the Gospels at some point in his spiritual development. I like to think that he wouldn’t because he realized that his discomfort was not as important as the lesson it could teach, the inspiration it could spark in someone, somewhere, sometime. The podcasts, like the essays I write, are reflections of my own personal pattern of growth, development. Because I am not fully mature they reflect the blemishes in my personality. Sometimes I am the author of unpleasant manifestations. I don’t like that but it is true and I want the truth above all else, even more than my own personal comfort. Is it possible to develop and guard our personal comfort? I think not. It is times like this morning that Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, supports and comforts me. He wrote, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. When I first read those words forty years ago, they struck me as true in a powerful way. If you haven’t read Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance recently may I suggest you give it a read?

Dystopia

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 10:49:20 -0700

Much of my life was passed in a certain malaise that I’ve come to recognize is common among spiritual aspirants. Because of our condition it doesn’t appear this stage of development can be avoided. Being an i dotter and a t crosser is something I acquired very early in life, always striving to get it right, whatever it happened to be at the moment. What is it that incites us to seek out another way of understanding ourselves and the Universe in which we find ourselves? The short answer is suffering. It’s what started Siddhartha Gautama searching for the answers that led him to becoming a Buddha (enlightened). Why do people suffer sickness, old age and death? Many wailing Westerners moan, If there is a God how could He let this happen? Why is there so much injustice in the world? Usually they’re not really looking for an answer. It’s a justification for casting off any self-restraint that may be encouraged by a society, religion or philosophy that requires something of the individual or places the blame on some individual.

It’s easy to see how spiritual seekers can come to see the world as a dystopia (an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. The opposite of Utopia). The search then becomes an escape from the dystopian world in which they now live. On a very basic level it becomes an escape from this imperfect world to a perfect utopian paradise where there will be no suffering. Religious sales of Paradise, heaven or the Sweet By and By have kept the organizations that peddle them rich and powerful for many centuries. Even after one has gone beyond the very basic idea to something more esoteric there are still remnants of dissatisfaction that cling to us like smoke and spoil the potential peace of the moment. It takes the form of a kind of anti-materialism that leads one to denial of pleasure in almost any accepted form. We like to blame the religious organizations for doing it to us but there is no prison as strong as the one we build around ourselves.

Slowly I began to see how spiritually waterlogged I’d become but lacked any power to do anything about it. Instead I found ways to justify my condition until one day, quite inexplicably, I was freed from that state. It turned out to be a temporary freedom but it assured me there was something beyond the limits within which I’d lived. Not just something but a very real, palpable state of consciousness in which my perception of everything had been adjusted. Because I had no power to get myself into that state I also had no power to keep myself there once my perception began to fade and distort to something with which I was more familiar. I’m aware of the arguments that insist I’m really in that state all the time, etc., but I have little interest in arguing. What I sense is that I will live in that state sometime but that is not permanent either. It’s a stage through which we must all pass on our journey. A stage that may be difficult to release if we make it another Utopia. Nothing in our universe is static so there’s no point in imagining that we will one day reach a static state where we can live happily ever after. If you want to live happily ever after learn to do it where you are. It is this skill that esoteric ideas aim at teaching us.

Whores

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:36:32 -0800

While browsing books at Amazon it was staggering the number of books, teachers and teachings that abound. Some of the prices of the books amazed as well. Tracking down titles and authors to websites was even more astounding. There are so many self-proclaimed conscious and even super conscious teachers. Each of them claiming to represent the true way, the fastest way, the easiest way, the best way. Some offer health while others focus on riches and still others will help you find your soul mate or the love you’ve always wanted. There were even a few who would guide you to higher states of consciousness, for a price. That’s what triggered this essay. Everybody was selling something.

One of my first teachers told me, Teach the truth and the people will take care of you. That was forty years ago. I would amend his advice by exchanging one word for another. I would replace people with Universe. Teach the truth and the Universe will take care of you. To be precise I would also say that if you seek the truth the Universe will take care of you. What does it mean to be taken care of by the Universe? Does it mean you will always be healthy? That you will be wealthy and never want for any material thing? Does it mean you will find someone who loves you as you think you deserve to be loved? That’s not what my teacher meant when he said it. Those things are not what it means to me and it’s not what I mean when I say it.

In forty years I have never sold my services. When I was a student I sold one article to a magazine as well as a few photos. Apart from that I have never set a price on what I do. Not only did my teacher teach me well but I learned well the lesson he shared. It was the truth and that truth has been personally verified over the course of forty years. If it is the truth it will work for anyone who applies it properly. Aye, therein lies the rub. There are genuine Spiritual teachers. There are also a larger number of spiritual whores, just as there have been for thousands of years. Being a whore is a two way street. It wouldn’t be possible if someone wasn’t buying. Why do spiritual whores write books that don’t need to be written, fabricate teachings and plagiarize others? Money and fame, which leads to money.

People in our world need money to live. It’s a fact of life. Mixing money and spiritual matters isn’t a bad thing but it is a thing that is badly done by most. If people were real with themselves the world would be more real to them. Because we are so full of self-emotions we are not real with ourselves and so we are taken in by others who are not real with us. U.S. Treasury agents are trained to spot counterfeit currency. They are not trained with phony money but with the genuine article. They know the real so well they are able to spot the counterfeit more easily. It’s a method based on a spiritual principle. Know the truth and the truth will make you free. Free from what? Free from what is not truth. When people seek the truth they are taken care of by the Universe and they, in turn, take care of the people who teach the truth. Self-seekers end up being little more than spiritual johns for spiritual whores.