What would be helpful? 08/30/09

What would be helpful? What do you need help with? You’re looking for the right place, the right environment, the company of the right kind of people to help you do what? It would be helpful to me if you knew what you needed help with. Perhaps, you need help knowing what would be helpful. That would be helpful to know.

You have to help me, help us, help you. It would help me, help us, if you knew what you need, or, at least, if you knew that you need something. Why would you go anywhere, particularly at 9:20 on a Sunday morning, not knowing what you were doing there, what you were looking for, hoping to find? You wouldn’t go to the grocery store without something in mind, if it were only to wander the aisles looking for something to appeal to you. You wouldn’t go to the doctor without a reason for being there. You wouldn’t go to a spiritual retreat center looking for a place to bowl. What are you here for? What do you need help with?

If we are to help you, you have to do your part. Your part is squaring up with who you are (and who you also are) and how it is with you (and how it also is with you). Your work is looking until you see, listening until you hear, asking until you understand. Seeing, hearing, understanding—knowing and not running. The Cyclops represents all we don't want to face about our life. About life. Our work is to face it, to deal with it. In the right kind of company. The right kind of company helps us do what we must do alone. Recognition. Acceptance. Accommodation. The bringing forth of our gift, our life, our destiny.

Now, I know you don’t want to talk about fate and destiny. Sounds too deterministic to you. You want to be free to do anything you want. The problem with that is you are not free to want anything. You are limited to wanting what you want. You cannot want what you don’t want. As you grow up, you begin to want what you ought to want. Your work is to want your destiny, to fit into the life that is yours to live, that no one can live but you. Our destiny is the life that is our life to live. It has nothing to do with what we want for ourselves, with the life we wish were ours. Our fate is the way things are in our life. It is what is waiting on us when we come out of the womb. Reality. The facts of life. If we don't use our fate in service of our destiny it becomes our burden to bear, our “lot in life,” a ready excuse that keeps us from having any life at all.

Our task is to take our fate—the givens of our life—and use it in the service of our destiny—what is ours to do. The quality of our life hinges on US, on our consciousness, our awareness, our full participation in life as it is (our fate) in light of our life as it can be (our destiny). We play the central part in bringing our life to life, in bringing ourselves to life in the life that is ours to live. This is our work to do alone, and we can only do it in the company of, with the help of, the right kind of people.

The bad news is that we don't get much out of it beyond having done it. Fortune and glory don’t enter in. Destiny isn't a ticker tape parade. LIFE is what we get out of the deal. To look for more is to miss the point. To ask what's in it for us is to miss the point. We are here to do what needs to be done, what will not be done without us. We are in it for IT!

Now, the problem with all of this is that I’m answering questions you aren’t asking. No one can give you his, give you her, questions. Your questions are your questions. The catch here is that you have to be asking questions. This is also your work: You have to be asking questions!

What are your questions? Knowing what your questions are is fundamental. Curiosity is the essential characteristic, which is discouraged early on. No wonder we are in such a mess. We are told to not ask so many questions, to sit down and be quiet, to do what we are told. Questions are out of the question, yet, questions are the hope of the world! So, what are your questions? Ask them. Examine them. Reformulate them. Perfect them. Expand them. Ask more of them. You can't ask too many questions. The deadest people alive ask no questions. Have no questions. No life. There is a connection!

If you are asking questions, you know what you need to hear. You can only hear what you are ready to hear. I can say all this stuff but you can’t hear it until you’re ready. But I have to say it. I have to say it because that's my part. Your part is to be as ready as you are to hear what you need to hear. To listen, hoping to hear. We have to listen for what catches our ear. Sometimes, we don’t know what we need to hear until we hear it. But, in order to hear anything we have to be listening for something.

Hearing is a function of listening. Seeing is a function of looking. Things from “out of nowhere” come to those who are looking for something, somewhere. We can't be so intent on what we are seeking that we overlook the Find. See the photograph on the way to the photograph is the first rule of photography and life. Looking for gold, we miss the oil. Looking for India, the New World just gets in the way. We miss the treasure looking for the treasure. Looking is the momentum required to see. What we see may not be what we are looking for, but if we hadn't been looking, we wouldn't have seen.

Asking, seeking, knocking is essential for ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to understand. The work required to do our work is curiosity. We have to be alchemists of sorts, interested in seeing what we can do with the base metal of our lives, wondering how we might turn what we have been given into gold. We are the philosopher’s stone, the mystical agent required to transform the hum-drum and the ho-hum into dazzling sparkle, light and life. How do we do that? That’s our question to ask and answer.

Those who are dead and dying think their lives are just fine as they are and that all they need is a little luck and a little more money to have it made. Our lives aren't fine as they are. We are living at odds with ourselves. Fragmented. Dis-integrated. Off the beam. In the Wasteland. And we know it.

We know how it is with us and don't want to admit it because we are lazy and it would take too much work to change what needs changing. We want somebody to fix our lives for us and do for us what needs to be done to make us happy. Mama! We want our Mama! But our lives are our own, and it is up to us to live them. It is up to us to take fate and turn it into destiny, to bring ourselves to life. We have a life beyond what life has done to us, is doing to us, and we bring that into being in the time left for living.

There is more to us than the facts which define us. There is more to us than the lot that is ours. There is life beyond the life we are living. Being alive is what we do in response to the life beyond life. Being alive is what we do in response to what stirs, sometimes, within. It is when we move in sync with That Which Knows, trusting it, listening for it. Being alive is what we do when we hear the music and dance. When we know what has to be done and do it. Being alive is when we work out what's right for us within the terms and conditions, context and circumstances, of our lives. Being alive is when we do what needs to be done AND pay the bills because that also needs to be done. Being alive is when we live in light of what is right for us without neglecting our other duties and responsibilities.

Of course, this is not easy. It is the Hero’s Journey. The temptation is to decide it isn't worth the effort, to give up the struggle to be alive, and settle for living out our days as comfortably as possible. The temptation is to sell out, and spend our time going through the motions, hollow-eyed and empty, buying plastic. Faking it but not making it.

We need those with us who tell us we can do it, who tell us how they did it, are doing it. Laughter and playfulness, kid. Laughter and play. The problem with laughing the kind of laughter that is foundational for making it is crying. Can't laugh without crying. Sorry. Yet, it is as easy as knowing what's right for us and doing it. That leads us to doing what needs to be done no matter what. Which saves the world.

Picasso said action is the foundation of success. You can think you can attract success by thinking, but. No one succeeds without doing. We have to do what needs to be done whether we want to or not. That's the hard part. Easy to do what we want. Hard to do what we don't want. So, we just have to do what’s hard. It’s never more difficult than that!

Doing What Is Right For Us, 08/23/09

You aren’t going to like this, but. In every situation there is what is right for us and what is wrong for us. Our place is to intuit and live toward what is right for us. Of course, there is a catch. What is right for us may be wrong for someone else. Your good may be my bad. My good may be your bad. It gets worse. What is right for us may also be wrong for US! Chocolate, for instance, may be right for us and wrong for us. So, what’s right for us? It gets even worse. Doing what is right for us may require us to do what is wrong for us. Changing the baby’s diaper, for instance. And, here is the worst part: What is right for us has no necessary connection with what we want for us. We can want what is wrong for us. We block our own path, wanting. I knew you weren’t going to like it.

It’s too complicated. You wanted something easy, something light, like a Jazz brunch on a Sunday morning. Five minutes to a trouble-free life, that would do it. Everybody else gives out instructions for five minutes to a trouble-free life. What’s up with me? I know, I know. I don’t know. But. Here’s what I do know: When we fail to do what is right for us, our psyche suffers. Our soul shakes its head and sighs deeply. Our lives become more of a wasteland. Of course, there is a price to pay for doing what is right. Doing what is right for us asks hard things of us. The Spiritual Journey is no stroll through the park. Walking that path is the Hero’s Journey. To not walk it is a failure of nerve and to die well before we are dead.

All of our symptoms, physical (headaches, muscle aches, stomach aches) and emotional (fear, anxiety, depression, etc.), are invitations to take up the path, to begin the Hero’s Journey, to get to the heart of the matter, to square up to who we are and what is being asked of us, to face up to the conflicts within and without and do what must be done.

No wonder, wouldn't you say, that we do everything we can think of to keep from getting to the heart of the matter? Seeing is doing. Or not. If we see and do not do, woe be unto us! It is better to not know the time of our visitation than to know it and do nothing about it. Once we know what needs to be done and fail to do it, we have to live with having failed to do the thing that had to be done. Let’s not know. “Leave the way, turn aside from the path, speak no more of (the things that must be done)!”

Instead of doing what must be done, let’s surround ourselves with a culture of distraction, diversion, denial and treat our symptoms and never get to the heart of any matter. Somebody pass the sex! Somebody pass the money! Somebody pass the drugs and alcohol! There is nothing like sex, money, drugs and alcohol for saving us from getting to the heart of the matter. But. The heart of the matter doesn’t go away.

It isn't going to get any easier than it is right now. Whenever you start, you're just going to start somewhere. Why not here, now? On the path to the heart of things? You start by paying attention to your sense of things, to your sense of what is right for you and what is wrong. Live toward what is right for you, away from what is wrong for you. Live toward what is right for you with grace and compassion, courage and resolve, refusing to let fear and lethargy keep you from that work.

Fear says, "There be dragons!" And keeps you from living toward what is right for you by listing the bad things that will happen if you do. Or, it says, “What do you mean, thinking of yourself when there are so many with so much need! Serve others! Serve others! Serve others! Or, you know, else!” Lethargy says, "What's the use?" And lists all the reasons nothing you do will ever do any good and why nothing will change about your life. Well. You owe it to yourself to find out about the dragons and the uselessness of doing anything. Don’t die not knowing.

Live toward what is right for you, and see what happens. Don't think you know what should happen. You are exploring your own life here. You are seeing what can happen. You aren't following some blueprint to success and eternal happiness—there is none! You are living toward what is right for you, seeing where that leads you.

Don't give up just because it's hard and nothing seems to be working and you aren't getting anywhere, and there is no cooperation. It's a test of your resolve. The Universe doesn't come to the aid of those who don't mean it. Who want it to be easy. Who just want to want something and have it delivered. The magic is in the work, in the doing, in the practice. “The more I practice, the luckier I get,” said Lee Trevino. And Arnold Palmer. And Gary Player. And Tom Watson. And Samuel Goldwyn… If you want magic to happen, do the work. Consistently, reliably, dependably. Live toward what is right for you, with grace and compassion.

Of course, we don’t know what is right for us. We only know what we think is right for us. Live toward that. Toward your best guess. Find out. Instinct and intuition, kid. Instinct and intuition. We aren't here to give up. We are here to get it down. Sensing what is right for us. Knowing what is right for us. Being right about what is right for us. And doing it.

Oh, wait. I know. It's too late, isn't it? No use to try now. You missed your chance to have a life, way back when. Now, there is no point. Lethargy speaking. Tell it to step aside. You aren’t here for fame fortune and glory unbounded. To hit the big time and have it made. You are here to find your life and live it. To do what is right for you. Period. You live toward meaning when you live toward what is right for you. You live toward life when you live toward what is right for you. You are here to find what is meaningful and do it. What good is meaningless fame, fortune and unbounded glory? Go for the meaning. Every time.

Whatever our experience is, we have to experience it, explore it, express it, and live toward what is right for us within it. Instinct and intuition, imagination and creativity, are our primary tools in aligning ourselves with what is right for us and doing it. They work anywhere. Any time.

In doing what is right for us, we have to accommodate ourselves to the circumstances of our lives. We live where we are, when we are, how we are, and do there what is right for us. And what is right for us doesn’t have anything to do with what we want. We can always want what we cannot have. The fundamental conflict is a conflict of interests. We can want what we have no business having. Go talk to us about that. Make us happy. Doing what is right for us may not make us happy. To do what is right for us and to do what must be done, what needs to be done, is the same thing, and it may not be what we want.

We take it all into consideration and act. In doing what is right for us over and against what we want for us comes forth the saying: “Thy will, not mine, be done!” Our practice is doing what is right for us even when it is wrong for us.

To get beyond what we want to what is right for us requires focus, concentration, awareness and practice, practice, practice. There is no standard for optimal living, no blueprint, no black footprints. There is you living toward what is right for you in your life in relationship with us, and all the others. We live toward what is right for us in relationship with those who are living toward what is right for them, and we work it out all the way. We have to be a self in relation to other selves. Gets tricky. Negotiation and compromise, kid. Negotiation and compromise.

Then there is the fact that what's right for us may also be wrong for us. What's wrong for us may also be right for us. Life is funny that way. Pays to withhold judgment and to not give up just because it isn’t what you think it should be. There is no blueprint, are no black footprints. There is only listening deeply and living toward what your best sense of what is right for you here, now, all things considered.

This is not easy, living toward what is right for us, within the context and circumstances of our lives, in relationship with each other, but that’s the task. It is not for the "carefully kept," or the faint of heart. Imagination and creativity, kid. Imagination and creativity. Courage and resolve, kid. Courage and resolve.

Waking Up, 08/16/09

When we wake up, we wake up in our life as it is. We wake up in the midst of how things are, of how it is with us. It’s a nightmare. We want to pull up the covers and go back to sleep. Too late. We are awake to the fact that we are awake in the presence of the intolerable and overwhelming. Who can live face to face with the truth of how it is really? We can’t handle the truth, remember. We have to hide. We have created a culture of distraction, diversion, denial and addiction to help us escape from the truth of how it is really. But, then we wake up, and know we are dying and cannot live in the world at it is.

We wake up because of the incongruity between the life we are living and the life we are called to live. We wake up to the fact that how things are with us is not how things need to be with us. We wake up to the fact that what needs to be done on one level of life keeps us from doing what needs to be done on another level. We wake up to emptiness, to symptoms that are killing us, to meaninglessness, to the dead weight of our own lifeless souls. We wake up looking for harmony, for integrity, for the integration of inner with outer, for the sense of being in synch with, aligned with, meaning and purpose and value. It does not seem like too much to ask, but the world does not lend itself to our need to square ourselves with our lives, to live lives that are expressive of who we are and serve the deep interest of our soul. It would wreck the economy and not be in the interest of national security.

Nothing is more indicative of the reality of our soul, of soulfulness than the symptoms of emptiness and futility that characterize our lives. Primal societies would diagnose our plight as a “loss of soul,” or “soul sickness,” and they would prescribe specific remedies for the realignment of self with soul, for the re-en-soul-ment of our lives. When our doing is out of accord with what needs to be done we are "off the beam," and have to do the work of realignment with OUR life, with the life that we are here to live. Harmony is living with integrity, integrating inner and outer so that who we are is expressed in how we live our lives and we are who we are.

The problem is that we are handed a blueprint for our lives by Those Who Know Best when we are born. "This is the way it is to be done," we are told. It is an upstream swim to OUR life against the strong current of popular opinion. Most don't make it. We live caught between cultural/parental/societal expectations and the needs of our own soul. We have to balance the needs of two worlds, inner and outer, and work things out between them all the way to the grave. Discord comes from trying to please too many conflicting desires, within ourselves and those of other people. Accord is living aligned with our sense of meaning, purpose and value and doing what needs to be done in light of that. Ah, but, just try doing what you think needs to be done!

Nothing stirs up resistance and opposition and discord in our outer life like living in accord with what we think needs to be done! Yet, to smooth things over "out there" is to disrupt things "in here." This is not easy, living in harmony with our sense of meaning, purpose and value and doing what needs to be done. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be called “spiritual discipline,” this being true to ourselves within the context and circumstances of life. We work it out, bearing the pain of negotiation and compromise between the demands of our life and the demands of OUR life all along The Way.

Now, this is going to sound like a tangent that has nothing to do with what has gone before, but. Every last one, you could look it up, of the scriptural reports of encounters with God, in both Testaments, comes at the precise moment in a person’s life when she, or he, is at turning point in life and makes a decision to align herself, or himself, with her, with his, destiny, to the chagrin of popular opinion and the ways of Those Who Know Best. The encounter with God is an encounter with destiny. The experience of God has disappeared from modern life, and we are left with rehashing the doctrines and repeating the creeds in the stalest, most lifeless, kind of way, because we have sold out. We have turned out backs on our destiny in favor of well-paying careers. A good job has nothing to do with goodness. It pays a high salary with benefits. We are too busy earning money to care a whit about destiny. And no one knows anyone who has experienced anything of God remotely akin to the experiences of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, the Prophets, Jesus, the Disciples, and Paul.

Our destiny is exactly our sense of who we are and what we are about. It is working out who we are within the context and circumstances of our lives. We don’t do that these days, so God is reduced to a set of ideas, or doctrines, beliefs, and opinions which reflect a deity that is nicely supportive and affirming and here to assist us with our lives, who is deeply concerned about our prosperity and well-being, and just wants us to be happy. Nothing at all like the God of the Bible who rips up the lives of individuals and sends them off on journeys with no thought to their own interests or desires. If you want to know that God, take up your life—the life that is yours to live—and live it in the face of all the objections and resistance it will stir up! THAT is the spiritual journey! Anything else is just a new agey pipe dream.

It’s having the courage to take up the spiritual journey, integrating inner with outer, living the life that is ours to live within the time and place of our living that opens the door to God—which I understand as the source of our sense of what is right, and good, and necessary—and makes this group of people, or one like it—essential. We cannot bear the burden of being awake alone. We can’t handle the truth, remember. We need the company of the right kind of people to have a chance. You are so lucky that you found your way here. We are working to become the right kind of people, helping one another with the work of being awake in the midst of a nightmare. This work is the spiritual journey. It is the work of being alive in a world that is not conducive to life. We need the company of the right kind of people to do that work.

Now, the right kind of people are not to be confused with the Right People. The Right People are what is wrong with the world. They are the people with the position and power to make things happen for a price. The price is doing it their way. They will be glad to help you get things done, but you’ll owe them forever, and they will draw out their investment on their favor to you long past its original value. Be wary of the Right People. Hang out with the right kind of people.

We are working to be the right kind of people. The right kind of people know what’s what without being undone by it. They understand what’s what as the place where we work to effect (produce, create) what can be. What’s what is the raw material, so to speak, that we use in the service of marvelous possibilities. The right kind of people don’t stop with seeing what is true (what’s what), they keep looking until they see what is also true (the possibilities contained in the what’s what). And, they work within the one to produce the other. It’s all quite magical, and revolutionary, and transformational, and wonderful. And I’m so glad you are a part of it, because we need you in this with us. It takes us all. We cannot do what must be done alone.

It takes an other to make us whole. This is because of the nature of perception, and the importance of maintaining optimal viewing distance between ourselves and how things are. We lose our perspective if we are too close or too far away. It takes us all to maintain a proper perspective. On our own, the way we see things easily becomes the way things are. We are great at projection, transference, inflation and deflation. We lose our sense of perspective and get off center in a thousand ways. The company of the right kind of others is necessary for our balance and sanity. We keep one another grounded and centered through the quality of our dialogue. The checks and balances provided by additional perspectives keep us from going off into our “own little world,” and forces us to do the work of bringing ourselves to life in the time and place of our living without kidding ourselves either about who we are or about what’s what.

The task is to live with clarity and courage. We need one another to help us be clear and to remind us of the importance of being courageous when it comes to living our own lives within the conditions and circumstances of life. We have to work things out between the truth of ourselves and the truth of the world in which we live. And we cannot do that alone.

We cannot do it alone because fooling ourselves is what we do best. No, shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best. No, telling ourselves what we want to hear is what we do best. No, wanting what we have no business having is what we do best. No, selling ourselves out is what we do best. No, opting for what is quick and easy is what we do best. No, being our own worst enemy is what we do best. No,… Well, you see the list is long of the ways we get in our own way and make it difficult for us to do the work of bringing ourselves to life in the time and place of our living. And so, we need the company of the right kind of others to keep us honest and to keep us from losing heart for the work that is ours to do.

Life is hard work. 08/09/09

Life is hard work. That is true for every living thing. Only dead things have it easy. If you are alive, your work is cut out for you. Some of us opt out of the work that living requires by dying before we are dead. It’s so much easier to be dead that it’s a wonder why any of us opt for life. What are we thinking? What does life have to offer that could possibly compensate us for the high cost of living? We have to be crazy to be alive. Sanity requires that we put ourselves into a stupor and do what someone else tells us to do, stepping in the black footprints all the way to the grave, dying way before we are dead. Anything else is inconceivable.

The smart thing to be is dead. The deader the better. You feel no pain that way. Have no conflicts. Encounter no obstacles. You just follow instructions and don’t worry about—don’t think about—a thing. It’s heaven on earth. No troubles. No woes. No responsibilities. Can’t beat it. Being alive, on the other hand, is nothing but trouble. It’s one thing after another. Judgment calls, decisions, choices, obligations, responsibilities, everywhere we look.

We want it to be as easy as praying, rubbing a rabbit’s foot, wearing crystals, reading horoscopes, eating yogurt, avoiding caffeine. Sigh. We want the solution, the answer, the remedy, the shortcut to an eternally happy, trouble-free life. We put off doing what needs to be done, hoping that Mama will do it for us. Hoping that someone will do for us what we must do for ourselves.

Where IS that handsome stranger, that fair maiden, who will deliver us from the hum-drum and worrisome and make life grand? Why is just us and what needs us? All of our happy fantasies have to do with deliverance, salvation, with someone doing for us what we must do for ourselves. We are what we seek. But, we do not want to hear that! The Divine Mother/Father is always coming to our rescue. We are helpless, befuddled, lost. Poor, poor us! Somebody save us! Anybody! Mama!

Life asks hard things of us. Life is the end of our happy fantasies about how life should be. How things are is not how we wish things were. Life is hard work. Remember learning to tie your shoe laces? Remember algebra? Remember spelling Minnesotta, no, Minnesoda? It's always been hard. It isn't going to get easier. It's always going to come down to us having to have what it takes to “get up and do what needs to be done.” Once you know everything the Guru's know, you still have to do the things that need to be done. All that knowledge and still, the dishes!

What we are about here is not handing out the secret to having our way, getting what we want, having life on a string, sitting on a rainbow. What we are about here is the simple realization that OUR life waits on us. And, OUR life is not what we have in mind. It is not the answer to our prayers, the realization of our dreams. It is anything but that. It is the opposite of what we have in mind for ourselves. But, it is OUR life. And it waits.

The adventure we get is not the adventure we have in mind. We're thinking Hollywood and we get a white rabbit. A mix-up, no doubt, in order processing! Do what is yours to do and see what happens. Live the life that is your life to live and see where it takes you. That's the adventure! But who wants that? And, even if we did want it, how would we ever find our way to it? Easy. Follow the white rabbit. Follow the Aha’s!

The Aha's put us in accord with our lives, with the adventure of living our lives. We do not whip our lives into submission, we align ourselves with our lives. OUR lives. Aha! Get it? It’s all about understanding that our ideas for our life is not the same as OUR life’s idea of itself—of our LIFE’s idea for us!

The fundamental realization, the ground of all spiritual truth, is “Thy will, not mine, be done.” The trick, of course, is understanding the “Thy” here. Think of the “Thy” as “The One Who Knows.” Think of the “Thy” as your Destiny. As that which you were born to serve, as the LIFE that is yours to live, as OUR life. Who knows what that is? Do you? You wish! But, there is That Which Knows! There is The One Who Knows. The One Who Knows is the “Thy” in “Thy will, not mine, be done.” Your place—our place—is to align yourself—to align ourselves—with the will of that “Thy”!

Ah, but. There be a problem. The problem is a conflict of interest. We are at odds with ourselves over the life we are to live. Who is in charge? Who says so? Your work is you and your life. My work is me and my life. We have to get ourselves together with our lives. Living in synch with, in harmony with, aligned with, ourselves so that who we are is expressed in our way with life is integrity and happiness. Our work is to synchronize, align, harmonize our being with our doing so that the two are one: BeingDoing. DoingBeing. Integrity in action. “Thy will, not mine, be done!”

We live our life, gradually waking up to what our life—what The One Who Knows—is asking of us. We want 10,000 things but what wants us—what needs us—is the question. Being on the beam and off the beam recognizes there is a beam. We cannot live any way we want to. There is a beam! Get on the beam! Get it? It takes a certain perspective to ferret out the beam, to align ourselves with our destiny. We don't have to, you know. Makes it interesting.

Something else makes it interesting, as well. We look for dramatic arrivals to transform our lives. Winning the lottery. Falling in love. What we get is a white rabbit. White rabbits don't rank with us. But, a white rabbit is the shortest distance, and quickest route, from where we are to where we need to be. Life lies so far from where we are living we can only get there by way of a white rabbit. Forget all the self-help books and directions to the life of your dreams. Practice recognizing a white rabbit when you see one. Follow it. The white rabbit leads you home. Whatever catches your eye leads you to you.

Everything is a threshold that leads you to you if you have the courage to look until you see, listen until you hear, ask until you understand. Everything has depth, is a threshold to the invisible world, a vehicle of transcendence. It only takes eyes to see to know that it is so.

All you have to know is what is important, what is meaningful, what matters, and do it. We have to give ourselves to what is meaningful whether it means anything to anyone else or not. If it isn't or doesn't really, you'll figure it out eventually. "Meaningful" changes over time. We have to be alert to the shifts. Life calls to us from new locations. The white rabbit is a wild ride.

What we are about here is the Hero’s Journey, and the Search for the Holy Grail. It is also called following the White Rabbit, not thoughts, ideas, catechisms, doctrines, beliefs. This is not about mottos and clichés and truisms and positive thinking. It is about finding and living the life that is OUR life. We have to be working the program, engaged the process of finding and living OUR life. It's no intellectual exercise, not something to know.

This is about aligning our idea of our life up with our soul’s idea of our life. Our agenda isn't soul's agenda. Guess who has to adjust to whom. It takes a different mindset to shift from focusing on how we feel about our lives, and “just wanting to be happy,” to how we might live in the service of what needs to be. How we feel about our lives is influenced by 10,000 things. What we do with our lives is directed by what we value, intend, find meaningful.

To “have a life,” or, “to have life and have it abundantly,” is to live in the service of something that is bigger than we are, that calls us beyond ourselves and asks to do it regardless of how we feel, or what mood we are in, or whether we want to or not. If there is nothing in our life that needs to be done no matter what, we are in trouble. No meaningful work is not a good thing. Our task is to find what is meaningful and do it! “Thy will, not mine, be done!”

We find our own way to the life that is OURS to live. WE say so! We put it all on the table. We listen to all of the voices, inner and outer, mull things over and choose what we will do, and bear the pain. Bearing the pain of our choices is part of the fun of making choices. There is no one to blame but us for the life we choose to live. No one can tell US what to do, which is exactly how it must be. We take it all under advisement and act to do what WE say needs to be done. After all, it is OUR destiny!

Doing what needs to be done

We are here to help you with your life—both of them. With the life that you are currently living and with the life that is your life to live. The movement is from this life to that life. From life as it is being lived to life as it needs to be lived. Oh, I know, everybody thinks she, thinks he, is living life as it needs to be lived. We all think we are living our own life. Well. Tell me about your symptoms, and your addictions, and your escapes, and your denial, and your fear, and your depression, and your despair, and your emptiness, and your nagging sense that things are not right somehow. Your sense that you missed the boat, the point. Tell me about your listlessness, the lack of meaning and purpose in your life. And then tell me that you are living your own life, the life that is YOUR life to live. Right.

We are here to help with the discrepancy between thinking that you are living YOUR life and the symptoms, and addictions, and emptiness that are constant companions in the life you are living. Ah, but. It won’t seem like help. It will seem like we are against you, not for you. We have to get you to face the facts if we are going to be able to help you transform the facts. That’s a problem because you want to feel better about the life you are living without living differently. You want to feel better without doing the work of getting better. You may have to feel a lot worse before what you have what it takes to get better. You have to be fed up. You have to be at the end of your rope. Nobody volunteers to make the changes necessary to live the life that is THEIR life to live. Everybody has to be up against it before they have what it takes to make the transition to transformation. Life is always after death. You could look it up.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that life is never more than a perspective shift away. We change our minds about what’s important, and Boom! as John Madden would say, life. Our life. The life that is OUR life to live, pressed down, pouring over, hallelujah! Amen! So, when you reach that point, remember that we are here to help you with the transition, with the transformation, with the movement from where you have been to where you need to be.

LIFE is not a solitary pursuit. We cannot be alive alone. It takes us all. We need one another. Well, that’s not quite it. We need the right kind of company, the company of the right kind of people. We need to be with the people who can be with us, who can sustain us, and accompany us, and encourage us, and expand-deepen-enlarge us without fixing us, or diagnosing us, or directing us, or living our life for us. It is an art, being the right kind of company. We don’t have it down, but we are working to figure it out. Mostly what we do is nothing.

Doing nothing in the right way transforms everything. It takes a light touch and faith in the process to do nothing in the right way. Mostly what is done when we do nothing in the right way is observe what is happening. Seeing clearly what is happening, which includes what is also happening, is the necessary prerequisite to seeing what needs to happen. Seeing what needs to happen naturally leads to assisting what needs to happen, serving what needs to happen, allowing what needs to happen to happen. So, doing nothing does what needs to be done to enable the happening of what needs to happen. It isn’t exactly doing nothing, like sleeping through the day, but it is doing next to nothing. It is assisting by not interfering, doing by not-doing, like the ripening of a tomato, or the growth of a Giant Sequoia.

So, we are here to help you with your life by not interfering with your life. Which means that you bear the burden of helping us help you. We all bear the burden of helping one another help us. We have to be capable of being helped! Which means being open to the possibilities and restrictions of our lives. We have to be willing to see how things are in order to be able to see what needs to happen in order to do what needs to be done.

Here is optimal: Everything in its own time. Yet, we say no to this and yes to that. Not that, this! Not this, that! We live out of harmony, at war with life. Restoring harmony is a matter of seeing into the nature of things and knowing what’s what, which includes knowing what can happen and what needs to happen and how we can assist what needs to happen within the limits and restrictions of life as it is, in a “This is how things are, and this is what can be done about it, and that’s that” kind of way.

The Dali Lama, in talking about the situation between China and Tibet, said years ago, “If in any situation, there is no solution, there is no point in being anxious. If the forces at work have their own momentum, and what’s going on now is the product of what went before, and this generation is not in control of all those forces, then this process will continue.” Carl Jung says there are no solutions for any of the real problems with life—they can only be out-lived. So, helping you with your life doesn’t mean helping you have what you want. It means helping you see what needs to be done and helping you do it and helping you live with what must be lived with.

This is a very practical, pragmatic approach to spiritual development. We have to be who we need to be to live the life we need to live, to do what needs to be done, within the time and place, context and conditions, nature and circumstances of our lives. With the question, “WHO needs it?” comes the matter spiritual reality. Life in the hard and fast world of physical existence is governed by spiritual, that is not-physical, needs. Spiritual is “of the spirit,” invisible, intangible, but quite real.

Physical needs are such things as food, clothing and shelter. Spiritual needs are such things as meaning, purpose and values. It matters how we live our lives. To whom does it matter? It matters to US, to that part of us that is tuned in to the spiritual aspect of existence. “We know,” says Joseph Campbell, “when we are on the beam and when we are off of it.” We know when something is right for us and when it is wrong for us. We know when we are being true to ourselves and when we are betraying ourselves.

The work of being human is to be true to ourselves within the circumstances governing life in the physical world of everyday existence. To do what we need to do to feed our souls and to do what we need to do to feed our bodies. We have to live with a foot in both worlds, with allegiances to both worlds. This is not easy. The physical world has a way of commanding our attention. We can be mesmerized by its promises (the lights and action of Gay Paree) and terrified by it’s threatening possibilities (Fire! Flood! Famine!). It is difficult to maintain our balance and our connection with the world of spiritual reality when we are being buffeted by the winds and currents of life in the physical world.

James Hollis says that we must constantly contend with the demons of fear and lethargy in doing what needs to be done to serve our soul and bring ourselves to life in the fullest, deepest, sense of the term. Fear keeps us from acting by telling us “There be dragons! Don’t do anything to be seen! Don’t invite their wrath! Something terrible will happen if you stir them up!” Lethargy keeps us from acting by saying, “Why try? What’s the use? What’s the point? You can’t do anything! Give it up!”

So, we come here to remember and remind one another to ask the right question: What do we need to find OUR life and live it within the possibilities and restrictions of life as it is? That's The Quest! What stands between us and the life that is OUR life to live? What plays the Cyclops to our Ulysses? We have to realize that we are on the hero’s journey here. Coming to terms with our lot in life—our fate—is the first part of the hero's journey. Transforming it—shaping our destiny—is the second part. We are here to help you, you are here to help us, with both parts, coming to terms with our fate and shaping our destiny.

Always the challenge is the same: To see what needs to be done and do it. To respond appropriately to the situation as it arises. That's it. We decide what needs to be done based on our reading of the situation as it arises. And, we respond to it out of our sense of what we have to offer that would be appropriate to the situation. May we see clearly, choose wisely, and act decisively! Frustration, depression, despair come from trying to do too much, wanting too much, expecting too much. The call is to be what is needed now. Making too much of something is the source of all of our problems with life. Becoming appropriately playful is the solution. We are not here to attain, acquire, amass, achieve, accumulate but to offer what we have to give in the service of what is calling our name. And we play our way along the way!

Living our lives and becoming who we are 07/19/09

The church has always understood disenfranchisement in political and economic terms. The church likes to “speak truth to power” (government and business) about its political and economic oppression and disenfranchisement of the people, conveniently ignoring its own position of power in the lives of the people, and its spiritual, emotional and psychological oppression and disenfranchisement of them.

It is time for us to understand oppression and disenfranchisement in emotional, psychological and spiritual terms. Who speaks for/to the emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually disenfranchised? The church is the embodiment of their disenfranchisement, the power behind the diminishment of the spirit of the people. Yet, who speaks truth to power where the church is concerned? The church prides itself as the conscience of government and business, but who is the conscience of the church?

What is the mechanism by which the church rights itself? Sees itself, evaluates its own impact, changes its mind, alters its course? Who conducts a performance review of the church? What is the structure by which the church is changed for the better? How does the church examine itself?

How does the church determine which beliefs are worth believing? Which practices are worth practicing? How many beliefs and/or practices have been jettisoned over the years, politely put aside without any official declaration as to their unworthiness of our allegiance or even affiliation? How much of what they believed/did in the early church, or the church of the Middle Ages, or the church of the Reformation, does the church continue to believe/do? We should make a list. Things Once Believed And Practiced But No Longer Believed Or Practiced. That would reflect how foolish it is to believe that the things we believe are sacrosanct, beyond question, worthy of eternal veneration and submission, that the practices we practice must always be practiced.

Life is not static. The more rigid our beliefs and practices are, the more dead we are. The more resistant we are to examining our beliefs and practices in terms of what is helpful in living the life that is ours to live, the more dead we are.

Our work is that of living our life and becoming who we are, which involves us in the process of dialog with our shadow and becoming who we also are. What are the tools required to do the work that is ours to do? Helping us answer this question is the prerogative of the church.

The church rights itself through on-going dialogue with a broad range of perspectives in the service of inquiry and exploration into the truth of our experience and our evolving understanding of what is helpful in living the lives that are our lives to live. What we believe and what we do is informed and transformed by that dialogue. The core of our perception of who we are and what we are about is dynamic and alive, changing, evolving, becoming.

This is the nature of relationship with transcendence—it calls us beyond ourselves into an ever-deepening engagement with mystery. We don’t know who we are or what our life is in an intellectual, rational, logical way. We know who we are and what our life is experientially, as we step into the mystery of finding our way to what is right for us.

What does it take, really, to do the work that is ours to do, to live the life that is ours to live, to be who we are? Living a meaningful life means doing what is meaningful to us with our life. No one can say what that is for us. No one knows what that is but us. Listen to yourself. Stop looking for directions in stars and tealeaves and secret signs. Direct your own life. Follow your own intuition, your own passion. Do what is meaningful to you! You know what is meaningful and what is not. Live toward what is meaningful. This is not difficult. Your sense of what is meaningful is the operative force in your life. Don't be duped by the bright lights of Gay Paree. Follow meaningful.

Ah, but. We don’t get out of the gate before we need help finding our way to the life that is our life to live. It is not enough to tell us to do what is meaningful, to follow meaningful. If it were only a matter of doing what resonates with us, that would be one thing, but what tantalizes us trumps what resonates with us. And we are carried off with those cartoon-like hypnotic eyes locked onto the object of our fascination into the distant regions of the wasteland. We think something meaningful is resonating with us when we are mesmerized by the sights and sounds of Las Vegas, and Bourbon Street, and Gay Paree.

A different kind of problem with doing what is meaningful is finding the personal strength and authority to live our own lives. We are hesitant to let ourselves care about what is meaningful to us. What would our family say? What would the neighbors think? We have to care about what we are supposed to care about, and everyone knows what that is. So we shape ourselves around someone else’s idea of what is important and call that being alive.

It’s complicated. We cannot just be told to find our way to the life that is our life to live by doing what is meaningful. Yet, that’s the way, as fraught as it is with potholes and pitfalls. We have to trust ourselves to what is meaningful even when we mistake enticement and temptation for meaningful. We have to risk being wrong in our search for what is meaningful. And we have to find the courage to do what we think is meaningful regardless of what Those Who Know Best (Truman Capote) think we should do.

This is not easy. And the church has to be on our side encouraging us, nourishing us, nurturing us, sustaining us, enabling us to do what is difficult: Listen to all of the voices within until we can discern the voice that knows what it is talking about—and follow that voice through Gethsemane to Golgotha if need be in doing what needs to be done no matter what.

Here is the heart of the matter: We don’t choose what is meaningful to us, it chooses us. So. What do we care about? How do we express it? How would anyone know we care about it? What does caring about it say about us? About who we are? About who we are not? What do we care about is the question. We can wonder if it’s worth caring about later. For now, it is enough to know what we care about. And to care about it. To do what is meaningful until we see that it is a sham, and we were wrong. Then we have to start over with the next apparently-meaningful thing and give ourselves to it and see what happens.

This is the wonder: We don’t have to be right about it being MEANINGFUL. We just have to be right about it being meaningful to us. We cannot do what someone else thinks should be meaningful. “You’re a boy in the deep south. You should like guns. Here’s a gun. Go shoot something.” We have to listen within for the voice that knows what it is talking about, and take our orders from that source.

What if we are wrong? Guess again! We are here to get guessing down! To become better guessers over time! Guessing wisely is wisdom! We guess our way along the way! Who knows what they are doing? We can’t wait to live our life until we know what we are doing. We start right now by doing what is meaningful. And we can’t wait to be sure. We guess and go!

We are looking for meaningful. Not easy. Not exciting. Not sexy. Not entertaining. Meaningful. Don’t forget what we’re looking for. Not comfort. Not security. Meaningful. Sacrifice everything in the service of meaningful. Meaningful to us, of course. We make the call.

We avoid being stuck by assuming personal responsibility for our own life and living in the service of our evolving idea of what is important, of what is meaningful. And this is heroic stuff all the way. Where did Odysseus find what it took to face the Cyclops? That’s were we find what it takes to face our lives and to live OUR lives.

The revolution is simply reclaiming our lives, making our own choices and our own mistakes, living toward ends that are meaningful to us. It comes down to this: Listening for the voice that knows what it’s talking about, watching for the white rabbit, trusting our instinct and intuition, and letting the outcome be the outcome. Getting it wrong is just a step on the way to getting it right, and getting it right is just a matter of time.

How to engage our lives is the question. 07/12/09

The church is the great destroyer of lives, the subversive supplanter of civilizations. Or would be, if it believed it’s own message, which is “Wake up! Live the life that is yours to live!” If everyone lived his or her own life it would transform the world. If any of us did it, it would shake the foundations. That’s the revolution, living your own life, the life that is yours to live—which is not to be confused with the life you want to live, would like to live, wish you could live. What the world most needs is for you to live the life with your name on it. The church as it ought to be would be enabling us to do that.

How to engage our lives is the question. How to live the life that is ours to live. There are many distractions to take our minds off the business of sitting down, shutting up, being quiet, looking and listening, watching and waiting.

We wait for the path to appear before us, for the white rabbit to grace us with a glimpse, even as we work to pay the bills and mow the lawn. We do the things that need to be done while we wait to see what NEEDS to be done. Waiting is a test of our faith, courage and resolve. We have to believe in something. I recommend the path and the white rabbit. We wait for the path to open, for the white rabbit to appear.

We look and listen our way to where we need to be. We don’t think our way there. We listen for what’s next. We look for what needs to be done. We don’t think up these things. We spend our time waiting to see, to hear, and then acting upon the obvious. Of course! Why didn’t I see this, hear this, before?

We have to live out of our feel for what needs to be done even if it makes no sense and seems to be a waste of time. Everything hangs on our doing what needs to be done—on what we say needs to be done—whether it matters to anyone else, or makes any discernible difference in the way the world works, or not. Our task is to do what is meaningful to us. It doesn’t have to mean anything to anyone else.

Gandhi said something along the lines of “Of course your contribution will be insignificant, but it is essential that you make it. No one can do it for you, and if you don’t do it, it won’t be done. Nothing is more important than that we do what is ours to do.” I couldn’t have said it better.

But we cannot look for recognition and results, outcomes and payoffs, to provide us with the necessary motivation for doing what is ours to do. The motivation is entirely internal. We do what we do because we need to do it—because it needs us to do it! The external recognition, acknowledgment, appreciation, etc. is quite beside the point and can distract us from the essential focus which is doing what needs to be done—what we need to do—no matter what. Our response to the lack of external reinforcement is “Oh well,” and a return to the matter of attending the internal directive. The absence of external reinforcement can be seen as a test of our resolve to align ourselves with the inner directive no matter what.

The problem is that the life that is our life to live—the work that is our work to do—isn’t what we think it should be. The life we get is not the life we have in mind. We are always called beyond ourselves. It is never our idea for ourselves, for our lives, we are asked to serve. We are here for more than our own life, our own pleasure and happiness. We have to trust ourselves to the life that is ours to live even when it seems like it is all for nothing. Joseph Campbell says, “We know when we are on the beam and when we are off.” Being on the beam becomes tedious and boring and it looks like nothing is happening and we are going nowhere fast and we long for excitement, and adventure so, off the beam we go.

We are always looking for the exit. It doesn’t take long for us to be done with this life and be ready for something else. We look for things to help us escape our life. We hate our life. We want out of our life. We want some other, better, finer, easier life instead. Happiness is always another life. But not the life with our name on it. We aren’t about to go to Nineveh. We have to be really desperate to go there!

We look for things to take our mind off the life we are living. Romance. Wealth. Prosperity. Winning the lottery, you know. Dreams of how it will be when we have it made. We need to look for things to engage us with our life. For things to deepen, expand, enlarge our lives. For things that will enable us to live our lives. But, that’s the last thing we want to do.

We’re playing a game called “We’re not playing a game!” The game we are not playing is designed to keep our mind off the life we are not living, the life that is our life to live. The problem is how to get us together with the life that has our name on it, that is our life to live. We want the excitement and the glory of Gay Paree. We want to enjoy our lives. We wouldn’t mind living the life with our name on it if could also be the life we have in mind, the life we wish we could live.

Sad to say, the adventure we get is never the adventure we have in mind. The beam we get is never the beam we want. We have to trust ourselves to the beam, and do the work that is ours to do, and let that be that. But wait. We don’t know what the work is that is ours to do, right? We would do it if we knew what it was, but we don’t know, so we can’t do it, right?

I don’t buy it. We know what we have to do (or are afraid we might know), and what we have no business doing. Boarding the boat, Jonah knows Nineveh has his name written all over it. All this talk about not knowing what to do with our lives is just an excuse to keep us from doing what we don’t want to do. When it comes to not living the life that is our life to live, any excuse will do. It’s another way of boarding the boat, or another way of missing the boat, same thing.

Our only hope is to go on doing it our way. Boarding the boat, or missing it. Sailing away from Nineveh as fast as the wind will blow. Our salvation is the great spiritual truth that no matter how far we go, or how long we’re gone, we’re just walking around the block. This is another way of saying, “Nothing is wasted.” Everything works together to wake us up. If we can wake up, we will wake up.

The process requires us to help one another see the way we see. I'm here to help you see the way you see. You're here to help me see the way I see. From seeing the way we see comes all things. When we finally see our way of seeing for what it is, we start listening and looking, asking, seeking and knocking, watching and waiting. And, at that point things change.

Things change when we begin listening within for the voice that knows what it is talking about. This is what being still and quiet and attentive does for us, it opens us to the truth of our lives, of the life that is ours to live. What carries the force? The ephemeral weight of necessity? That is so negligible that we can dismiss it, discount it, overlook it, ignore it, not know it when we hear it yet is so powerful that it runs the universe by its authority and holds the world in its hands? That is the voice that knows what it is talking about. And it is our place, our responsibility to hear it and align ourselves with it. Everything depends on it. Everything is on the line. Everything rides on our knowing “the time of our visitation” and doing right by the moment at hand in a “Thy will not mine be done” kind of way.

The spiritual practice of listening deeply connects us with our spirit which knows more than we do about who we are and what we are about and the life that is life. But when the path opens and the white rabbit appears, we have to follow. We can't be saying, "That wasn't what I had in mind!"

“(We) can do all things through (that which strengthens us),” is the old scriptural formula for living out of the power within us. It is not a power for our good, but for the good of the whole. The boon is not for us but for the world. If we can come to terms with that, we have it made.
The talk of prosperity and abundance feeds the cultural/capitalist bias toward what’s in it for me. The subversive counter to that orientation is the idea that we have what we need to do what needs to be done, which has nothing to do with having what we want. What we want has no necessary connection with the life that is ours to live. “You have your life as a prize of war” (Jer. 45:5). Our booty is our life, is the experience of being alive, is the knowledge that we did what was ours to do. In a “Well done, good and faithful servant” kind of way.

We are free to choose the life that has chosen us! 07/05/09

We think freedom means doing whatever we want, whatever we choose, whatever we please. But we are not free to choose what we want, to choose our choices, to choose what pleases us. How free is that? We cannot be told what we cannot hear. We are imprisoned behind bars we cannot see.

Each of finds our own path to freedom. It begins with our waking up to how un-free we are. The more conscious we are of our bondage, the more we can exercise what freedom of choice we do have in the service of the life that is ours to live. We cannot choose any life. But we can choose to align ourselves with our life, the life with our name on it, for better and worse, in sickness and in health, from this day forward for as long as we shall live. This is our freedom, to choose the life that is ours to live, to submit to, to serve, a will beyond our will.

We get a sense of this “will beyond our will” in encounters with the numinous and through our experience with resonation. We do not make up what resonates with us. We do not decide what catches our eye. Our freedom consists of whether we will respond, to what extent we follow.
Our freedom consists of the latitude to determine to whom, or to what, we will give ourselves—to decide in light of what we shall live. Our freedom is to choose our own direction, to chart our own course, to find our own path, to decide for ourselves who will direct our steps, who will be our guide—in a “Thy will, not mine be done,” kind of way. Our freedom is the freedom of self-determination. And we make a mockery of it by handing ourselves over to the culture, to the norms and codes and structures governing how things ought to be, by working to live as life is “supposed to be” lived and going where they tell us to.

If we are just like those around us, how free is that? How free are we to voice an opinion that is not the opinion of those we run with? How free are we to see things differently from the way they are seen by those in our “in crowd”? How free are we to think, feel, or believe something that is not supposed to be thought, felt or believed? How free are we to speak with our own voice, to sing our own song, to live out of the foundation of our own authority—apart from any script, any set of established norms, any influence from the guiding voices of Those Who Know Best? Whose opinion matters most? Whose opinion do you live to trash? These are the people who are running your life. How are they doing? Our lives are empty because we've been digging dry wells where someone else told us there was water.

What is meaningful is rarely easy. Here’s the catch, what’s easy is rarely easy. We think we are saving ourselves time and trouble when we opt for easy over meaningful. We think if it’s easy, it will be meaningful enough. We sell out for easy. That’s the story of our lives, of the life of the species. We think easy is easy, but easy is hard. This is the thing we will not learn. Easy is hard. Short is long. Fast is slow. We don’t get it. We think we can have what we want: easy and meaningful. Sorry to be the one to tell you: Only in our dreams.

We stand between meaningful and easy and sacrifice meaningful for the sake of easy every time. And whine because life is empty. No kidding. Our only hope for a meaningful life is to live the life that is our life to live. We find our way to the life that is meaningful by asking, seeking and knocking. By searching, inquiring, experimenting, challenging. By doubting, questioning, exploring. By listening, and looking, and waiting attentively, expectantly, patiently. By being awake, aware, alive. By waking up, being conscious, in a community of the right kind of people.

The right kind of community, is a “we” composed of “I’s” who are being true to themselves in respectful acknowledgement of the “otherness of the other I’s” who are being true to themselves. A “we” is not a merger, or a blend, of “I’s,” but an association of “I’s” who use the “otherness of the other I’s” to bring forth what is also true and, in so doing, expand, enlarge and deepen each other. A “we” is formed around “I’s” who are becoming larger, more complex, more complete, more whole, more integrated thanks to the other “I’s” whose perspective is necessary for the development of the individual “I’s” and of the “we.”

The right kind of community is not “one big happy family,” where everyone silences her or his own voice for the sake of the harmony of the whole, but is, rather, a cacophony of voices learning to integrate themselves into a symphonic arrangement of individuals participating in the wonder of the whole that is produced by the “otherness” of each other. We bring out the best in each other by being true to ourselves, singing our own song, speaking our own voice, honoring our own perspective without striving for dominance or control. We are not here to quell, or crush, convert or quieten the other, but to listen to the other and to be transformed (deepened, expanded, enlarged) by the experience of “the otherness of the other” (James Hollis), by our “disinterested” (in the sense of our striving to force our way on the other, to have the other recognize how brilliant, wonderful, and right we are) interchange with the other, with all the others.

The right kind of community enhances the “self-ness,” the “otherness,” of each member of the community. If anyone feels diminished or dismissed or discounted or silenced or ignored, the community suffers. If anyone gives up self to belong to the community, the community ceases to exist. The health of the community is a reflection of the health—emotional/spiritual—of the individuals comprising the community. Our emotional/spiritual health is an indicator of our degree of alignment with the truth of our own soul, of our living (and speaking and being) in sync with our heart’s true desire. If we forsake that for the sake of the peace of the community, we die and the community dies, though the façade might live on for years or generations. Keeping up appearances is what we do best. But the right kind of community catches us in the act of “being nice,” calls our hand, and insists that we speak truthfully, reminding us that means hearing what is also true. The dialectic is not between what is true and what is not true but between what is true and what is also true!

Without this kind of compensating and confirming community of Others, the way we see things becomes the way things are. We slip easily over the edge and become lost in our own constructs, increasingly out of touch and disconnected. The right kind of solitude is possible only in the right kind of community. It takes both to produce the right kind of awareness, the kind that perceives what is true and what is also true, and lives in the tension, on the boundary, between yin and yang.

We have to listen to ourselves, but we cannot listen only to ourselves. The right kind of community of Others challenges us, confronts us, opposes us and provides the counterbalance to our subjectively biased view of the way things are. It takes an Other to introduce us to what is also true.

Listening to an opposite point of view doesn’t negate or cancel out our own. Oppositional is not adversarial but expansive. It asks us to take into account the “other side,” that which is also true. Every perspective is true as far as it goes, as far as it can see, up to a point, and needs to be enlarged by other perspectives which see more than any one person can see alone. All of us together can see more, can see better, than any of us alone can see. But hearing other points of view is not easy.

We are always changed against our will. We resist it all the way. We are the young child snatched from Mother’s arms and thrown screaming into the rite of initiation from which we emerge transformed. Spiritual growth is not for those who do not have what it takes to die. Again and again. Spiritual growth is for those who have run out of other options. We need the contrary voices to deepen us, enlarge us, expand us, wake us up, grow us up, round us out, and develop within us the capacity for true human-being-hood. On our own, we are narrow, shallow, blank-eyed (or wild-eyed) and empty.

Every church needs to have the capacity to define, to re-imagine itself, to be redesigned anew from the start all over again at any point in its life. Of course, there is no starting over in life, but, on the other hand, we are always starting over, beginning again. “O God of second chances and new beginnings, here I am again,” goes the old prayer. As it is with us, so it is with the church. And we need the capacity to redesign ourselves from the ground up, to re-think what it means to be the church in each generation. We have to have the freedom to bring to life now what needs to be brought to live now. To think what needs to be thought now. To believe in what needs to be believed in now. We cannot take what was meaningful to our ancestors and give it to their descendants. Nobody can hand us meaning. We have to create what is meaningful for ourselves in the moment of our living. And the church needs to provide the atmosphere in which this work to find what is meaningful is encouraged and sustained. May it be certainly so!

No one has the last word! 06/28/09 b

Truth

Truth does not come wrapped in bright paper and tied with a bow, between two covers, nicely worded in sequential fashion like some wonderful Final Theory, which isn’t theoretical at all, but fully factual all the way so that that’s that, and there is no question about it. Truth isn’t like that.

Truth is all squirmy and slippery, and contradictory, and inconsistent, and paradoxical, and conundrumatic. So that the truer it is the less sense it makes, and you have to carry it around with you for days cogitating on it, poking it, and prodding it and turning it over in your mind, and the more you think about it, the more you see that its opposite is also true, and that doesn’t negate it, or cancel it out, but deepens it and expands it and enlarges it, and you find yourself saying, “Of course!” and laughing at the wonder of it all—which includes wondering why people take truth so seriously that they excommunicate one another and go to war when they should be laughing together and singing Pub songs.

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Woody and I tripped up to Roan Mountain State Park to take in the Rhododendrons and Flame Azaleas on Roan Mountain, and I asked for directions to Carver’s Gap from an 80-something year old on the path from the cabin to the car. “Honey,” she said, “you’ll have to ask somebody else. I’ve been coming here all my life, but I only go where they tell me to.”

We don’t want to know any more than we need to. Carver’s Gap is somewhere. We know that much, but if someone else will do the driving, why bother with the details? Just get in the car and enjoy the ride!

It would be a different world if people were living their own lives. Most of what passes for life is a substitute for life, a surrogate for life, a replacement for life, a facsimile of life that depletes us and leaves us exhausted and empty. But, if we stay busy enough and tell ourselves to just do what we are told enough, we may not notice the emptiness and be “just fine” all our lives long.

The clouds kept the camera in the bag during the early part of the day, so I drove into the village of Roan Mountain, Tennessee and had breakfast at Bob’s Dairyland, and sat waiting on my eggs and toast among the locals who were already enjoying theirs. As I took in the crowd, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have a chance with them. Better to keep my ideas to myself, discretion being the better part of valor, and all.

I walk among, live among people who cannot begin to understand what I’m saying. “Why don’t you talk to us about things we can understand?” means “Why don’t you tell us what we expect to hear?”, or, “Why don’t you tell us what we have always heard?”

For people to understand what I’m saying, they would have to reformulate their world view. They would have to un-think everything they think, and ask questions they cannot begin to ask. The gap is too great. It’s FM talking to AM. So, I don’t push the matter. Those who hear me hear me, and those who don’t hear me, don’t hear me. Those who are with us are with us, and those who are against us are against us. We have to do what is ours to do and let that be that.

“Some girls don’t like boys like me, ah but, some girls do!” The Sawyer Brown song wraps it up. Some people can’t hear what I have to say, ah but, some people can. So I say what I have to say and those who can hear it, hear it. But they don’t stop with having heard it, as though I’ve said all they need to hear. They use it as a spring-board into what else they need to hear. We all continue to listen for what else we need to hear.

Life consists of listening for what we need to hear, looking for what we need to see. When we hear it, see it, we know it. It resonates with us, and we have no question about that being what we need to hear, to see. We incor-porate that into our lives, make the shift necessary to accommodate what we have heard and seen, experience the transformation, and look and listen for the next thing we need to see and hear. There is always a next thing.

There is no final word, no Final Theory. We never arrive. We just stop too soon, are satisfied with too little. We go where they tell us to go, think what they tell us to think, believe what they tell us to believe, and are happy with that. But, we cannot quit. The path does not end. There is no settling down with this point of view, or that one, this belief system, or that one, this way of structuring reality, or that one. Here, in the world of how it really is, everything is off the table and up in the air!

No one has the corner on truth. Truth cannot be cornered. Captured. Incarcerated. Truth cannot be dissected. Examined. Exposed. Explained. Truth is not content, but process. It is not a noun, but a verb. We cannot talk about truth any more than we can talk about God. Or, when we talk about truth and God, we can only use words like “mystery,” and “numinous,” and “contradiction,” and say of both truth and God, “There is that which is true and that which is also true.”

But, not everyone can hear that. There are those who ask you what truth is and then answer, before you can, “The Word is truth!” And, that’s that. They say it because they have been told it, and believe it, because they have also been told that to fail to believe it is to go straight to hell and stay there through all eternity. Going where we are told to go doesn’t get us anywhere.

If we are going to get to the Land of Promise, we have to find our own path. We have to look in order to see. And it takes seeing to spur the looking in order to see. Something winks at us, nods to us, flashes across our field of vision, waves to us on the periphery, and is gone. From there begins the search. We don’t get to the Promised Land, we don’t find the Holy Grail, in chronological order, first this, then that, if-then-therefore. This is not a logical, rational, intellectual exercise. This is intuitive, instinctive, insightful, discerning all the way. We struggle to see and then, like that, grasp the truth of what we have always known without knowing that we knew, or are stunned by a reality beyond our grasping, and cannot help laughing, or crying.

When people speak from the heart—as opposed to reading from the script—about what they see and think, about what they have experienced and gleaned from their experience, about their lives, we all benefit. I am drawn to the places where the truth shines through.

This is the kind of talk that saves the world, honest talk, straight from the heart about what we have experienced and gleaned from our experience, and what has helped us most with our lives. We cannot get by on the strength of someone else’s experience, but their frank discussion of life’s impact can help us find our own way.

There is no formula. There are no directions to give. No explanations to make. There are no maps to the Promised Land. No one else’s path to follow. No nostrums, remedies, fixes, or cures. There is only life and living it. What helps? What works? A lot of people are hawking a lot of things, but there is no removing from us the burden of life and living it. What have we found to be helpful? What have we found to work? What enables, allows, assists us in living the life that is ours to live? In doing the work that is ours to do? What do we need to live the life that is ours to live, to do the work that is ours to do?

We crave certitude, certainty, explanation, structure, and we are called to step into the unknown, “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” What’s it going to be? We have to move past what we want into what we also want. We have to know what we also want. We have to open to that part of ourselves that wants more than we want. We cannot just go where they tell us to go. We have a voice—we have to listen to it!

My trick is to connect you with you and get out of the way. You might say that my place with you is to bore you so much with me that you turn to yourself to find what you need. I have to refuse to give you what you want. I cannot become who you need me to be. Only you can become that. I cannot, must not, usurp your power to provide yourself with what you need. That is your responsibility, and you cannot grow without bearing the burden, the cross, that is yours to bear, namely YOU. You are charged with the care and tending of YOU. We find our way in the company of those who are finding their way, but it isn’t the same way. We may drink the same water, but we dig our own wells. We all may wind up in the Land of Promise, but we find our own path.

Being Soft

We don’t have enough soft places in our lives. Those of you who were on hand Wednesday night know that I uncovered my need to soften up in an encounter with a photo of a tree at Rocky Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Soft is where it all begins. Soft is the essential step, the crucial place to be.

Becoming soft means trusting, relaxing, letting be, laughing, enjoying, easing up. But, it’s hard to be soft. It’s hard to be easy. So, we have to be easy on it not being easy. Be soft with it being hard, and let things be as they are for as long as it takes for them to be different. We all will make it as well as we can for as long as we can. What more could be asked of us? What more can be asked of the tree at Rocky Knob? We have to celebrate that tree, and honor it for what it is. The same thing applies to each of us.

The path begins beneath our feet. We start where we are. We don’t have to be somewhere else. We begin by being soft with ourselves. Accepting ourselves as we are. Letting ourselves be. “Easy does it,” is an AA slogan for staying on the beam and in sync with our true best interests, intentions and desires without trying to make anything happen. Of course, we would be better off sober than drunk, but we can-not will sobriety any more than we can will ourselves to fall asleep. But, we can arrange to fall asleep, just as we can arrange to be sober.

There is a Zen technique for dealing with our propensity for internal chatter, or “monkey mind,” during meditation. “Let it come, let it go,” or “This too, this too,” simply acknowledges the noisy thoughts without engaging them. We just observe them and allow them to pass on. This is quite different from “fighting for peace,” or “willing ourselves to be calm and serene.” We arrange to be quiet without forcing ourselves to quieten down.

The same approach applies to spiritual development. We cannot force spirituality. We can be spiri-tual, but not by not trying to be spiritual. “Do or do not,” says Yoda, “there is no try.” This is the Taoist doctrine (And they say they don’t have doctrines!) of wu-wei, or doing by not doing (It’s how water wears away stone and finds its way to the sea, how dandelions grow through asphalt, how we go to sleep and wake up—we do it but we don’t consciously, willfully, DO it). It is a matter of aligning ourselves with what needs to happen (so that it becomes what we want to happen) and getting out of the way.

Getting out of the way is the trick. We have to accommodate ourselves to the possibilities. This is where “easy does it” comes in. We don’t get out of the way by willing it. There is no forcing. “There is no try.” That’s the trick. How do we learn it? Spiritual practice, practice, practice. And the practice is becom-ing soft. Softening up. Getting out of the way.

It’s hard to be soft. And so, we practice. Being soft. Softness. Softness has to do with resiliency. With acceptance. With accommodation and acquiescence. And with persistence. Courage and resolve, kid. Courage and resolve. Soft is steady, constant, unrelenting, yet undemanding and non-intrusive. Soft is receptive, willing, waiting, anticipating. Soft is putting everything on the table, and seeing what comes forth, seeing what shows itself to be important, perhaps to our surprise and consternation.

In talking about his understanding of God, Carl Jung said, “(God) is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions, and change the course of my life for better or worse.” How different is this view of God from the popular offering of institutional religion, where God is the benevolent doofus, the kindly Sancho Panza, helping us along our way, serving our ends, seeing to it that we prosper and are happy, and rewarding us with paradise when we die.

The soft understanding of God allows God to shake up our lives and allows our lives to be what they need to be in order to wake us up and change our intended course “for better or worse”—for better AND worse!—in order to become what they must be. If we are going to adopt the soft image, and allow the tree at Rocky Knob to be what it is, and allow ourselves to be who we are, we must also allow God to be who God is and allow our lives to be what they need to be. If we are going to be soft, we are going to allow things to unfold according to their nature, to become what they are, to “do” us, to “live” us, rather than us “doing” and “living” them!

The work of being soft is to sync-up with our lives, with the lives that are our lives to live, the Authentic Me, so to speak. We are all more or less authentic, there is something genuinely us tucked away into each one of us. The idea is to live so as to be more of who we are and less of who we are not—to live with our eyes on the lives that are ours to live. Ah, but. We have eyes for other things! And so, we must get out of the way!

How do we get in the way? What do we do to escape the lives that are waiting to live us, that are our lives to live? To numb ourselves out so that we don’t feel the uncertainty, anguish, and anxiety that comes our way? To avoid the fear of being abandoned or overwhelmed? To avoid the agony of not being able to live the kind of life we wish were ours (which consists of, don’t say it doesn’t, more in the way of avoidance and less in the way of responsibility)? In what ways are our lives spent running from life? Complying and denying? Where are we being asked to grow up, to do for ourselves what we wish someone else would do for us? Where are we not facing what needs to be faced and not doing what needs to be done? Where are we asserting or failing to assert the power of our own personal authority over our lives?

What do we do to keep from being still and quiet? How quiet can we be for how long? What meets us in the silence? How do we meet it back? Then what happens? The only thing silence is good for is listening. When we listen in the silence, what do we hear? What are the voices? Whose voices are they? What are they saying? Are they chastising us? Condemning us? Berating us? Where did we first hear them? Where in our lives, in our lived experience, did they originate? What person in our experience do we most easily associate with the voices? How old were we when the voices made their lasting impression?

We are no longer that old. We have to stop acting as though we are. Step into the silence in behalf of the person you were when the voices made their lasting impression. Stop agreeing with the voices. Whose side are you on? Become an advocate for yourself. Ask the voices what they want. When they tell you they just want you to become somebody, to make something of yourself, tell them they are taking a dumb route to that end. Ask them when has telling someone she is fat made her thin, or when has telling someone he is lazy, stupid, slow and worthless made him the opposite of those things? Point out to the voices that for all the years of their constantly haunting and hounding you, you are still the poop pile you always have been and their strategy of yelling at you hasn’t gotten them anywhere, and that is indisputable evidence that they are as great a failure as they accuse you of being. And then tell them to step aside because there are other voices you must attend.

The other voices have been waiting for you to be quiet long enough to hear what they have to say. These are the voices who know what you need, who know who you also are, who are with you to help you find and explore the path that is yours to walk, the life that is yours to live. Ask them what they have to say, and begin the dialogue that will sustain and guide you through the rest of your life.

There are a number of ways of developing your ability to engage the nurturing voices in this kind of sustaining, guiding dialogue with ourselves. The Clearness Committee exists to help us hear our-selves—our deeper selves—speaking to us. Parker Palmer’s “Circle of Trust,” which Carol Steger and Julie Strope are going to initiate here in the near future is another approach. Keeping a journal is another. Working with your dreams and paying attention to your projections are others. Learning to participate in active imagination is another. The list is long of ways to listen to ourselves and talk to ourselves and deepen, expand, enlarge ourselves thereby. It is a spiritual practice that never ends, and one that cannot begin too soon.