Sunday, kind of, spirituality
25 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Awareness
I am amazed when I run across individuals who think God is a nice idea for Sundays, but wholly impractical for the rest of the week! I am being too kind, I think, of their assessment: too many people think God is a sham and therefore put on a big show, pull out their pious face whenever they deem appropriate, and conveniently quote the Bible, or some sententious patter (or mystical blather!), for whatever purposes they think a “Sunday kind of God” serves.
I am not interested in Spirituality that gets me through on Sunday: I am too selfish for that. I want an effective hard-hitting, useful and truthful in-your-face spirituality that helps me rake through the down-and-dirty muck of life EVERY MOMENT OF EVERYDAY. I will settle for no less — and neither should you. Getting to the heart of any matter, especially that of human beings, is no easy feat and can never be achieved by the indolence that would rather have its way, than find its way. It is only those willing to do the work that ever find their way home again.
Sincerity has more ineffable power than all the words of preening peacocking preachers of all faiths and stripes without it; even if you could string those infernal utterances together and cast that lengthy line (surely reaching the outer regions of the cosmos), it would never catch anything close to truth. BUT, YOU have, within you, a magical element transforming your life every time you invoke it, every time you take the time to cultivate, show, and plant it. Take that sincerity into the fertile soil of the universe in which you reside, and you change indelibly and intrinsically the manifestation of your good, and ergo, the experience of your life.
If you don’t believe it — you’ll never get anything out of it. People are terribly frightened of feeling genuine authentic emotion because underlying it, always, is a force so great that it has the power to shake our private world to a shambles; like an earthquake ready to bring to dust a skyline whose permanence once seemed without question, such as a mountain, two towers, a dynasty, or a nation. What fears so to be toppled is the ego, yet it is this very thing that will bring our physical world to its knees. “I” before “we” is certain to end in ruin, sooner or later; but it will come soon enough.
What more needs to happen before you drop the charade and take your spiritual life seriously? When a crisis comes a patched together ad hoc version of things cannot possibly see you through. If you want to build a strong solid and functioning inner realm — you must start now. (For those of you already plugging away: I congratulate you. Well done. Keep up the good fight!) Be audacious enough to stand by higher principles — and stick to them. You don’t have to shout it out, or share it (it’s often better when you don’t), but; you do have to embody it and live it for yourself to get results.
Your sincerity is between you and the greater God, the real God (Spirit); its effectiveness swift and apparent. You’ll never be punished for being insincere — but you won’t get any results, either. Try it and see. Sincerity is magic — but you have to mean it, and it has to be from the heart — free, spontaneous, and without strings! Remember, wherever you place your time, effort, and money is where you’ll get your return. How much do you really devote to your spirituality? Answer this question and you’ll know how truly important it has been to you. It may also indicate to you why your life; your peace of mind, happiness, satisfaction, are not what you wish them to be.
Maybe a Sunday-kind-of-sort-of-all-for-show-sanctimony-competition is enough for you… Or maybe you’re just a cynic, or too blase to be bothered… Maybe you think everyone else around you looks like they know what they’re doing, so you’ll just behave as they do — without questioning whether its working for you. Or maybe, worst of all: you lack the nerve to commit to being that divine spiritual exponent you know you are deep within, so you make jokes and belittle yourself instead of stepping up and living the dynamic example for good you’re meant to… Fine. We’ll all be waiting. Meanwhile, I’ll take the kind of spirituality that sees me through Sunday, the rest of my life, and beyond — starting now.
Tough stuff.
10 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Strength
When things don’t go our way it can be very discouraging. We cling to the outcome, or the perceived loss of what we thought we almost had (what was rightfully ours!) and we slink away for a spell too daunted to go back and try again, when, if we would; we’d find out things work out even better if we’d but give them a chance! Rationality and emotionality tend to run on separate tracks, without ever jumping, but; in order to get the results we want and be able to count on them and ourselves to produce them, we’ve got to check our own fears and irrationalities, then prove them wrong.
A common snafu, stopping up even the most earnest, is when we condemn our supposed “weaknesses” and are ashamed of what frightens us. This causes two problems: 1. It compounds the feeling of failure, strengthening these suppositions into “fact,” and 2. Running, denying, or punishing only exacerbates the problem; the least damaging being the first, which ensures we do not prevail, for, how can we conquer what we do not face? Learning to love unconditionally are nice words. Learning to accept one’s self with all manner of foible and folly is also a nice idea…
How do you do it?
Even self-proclaimed spiritual people will sincerely think they’re being loving, while also judging themselves, and denying every experience they deem imperfect or somehow “wrong.” In the Lord’s Prayer, the line about “leading us into temptation” is just incorrect. Why would God lead someone into temptation? We do it plenty on our own — we don’t need any help. The thing is, to be able to love ourselves including our temptations and imperfections. I kid you not! Guilt, punishment, even denial has no place in a world of LOVE. Love is so powerful and malleable, just throwing enough of it at a problem, listening and letting it do its part will provide all the answers you need.
Self-acceptance is hard. First, it requires self-awareness — this is the tough part. Trying to get people to look at their lives in an investigative manner, looking to themselves as the conduit of all they experience, to be discerning and with standards demanding a veracious spirituality with enough mettle to sustain and nurture, and encourage real growth — this is the rarest of natural resources on our vast and generous Earth. After achieving a modicum of awareness, a fair-to-middlin’ period ensues, whereupon spiritual seekers still feel the need to divide ONE that is indivisible into two, or three, or four (you know, us vs them and all). Such conclusions can never comfort, even as the beneficiary, because the understanding is still limited, and therefore, so is the love, and here is where we fail ourselves. For, logic that is not propelled by love, will always be both inaccurate and incomplete, only emphasizing the original lie from which one has tried to escape: that there is something wrong with you, and you are not enough on your own.
To be continued…
Hilarity Therapy
09 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Harmony
HAHA member since 1973. 
Progressive scientists have found that all our problems can be placed under one heading: Seriousness. Seriousness is the leading cause of everything from cancer to tarnation. Scientists from the Hilarity Academy and Humor Advocates (HAHA) have already discovered a new source of healing. It is called “Humor Therapy”.
If people are feeling miserable, if they have financial problems, if their relationship situation is the pits, if they are in ill health, if they have a need to sue people, if they find fault with their brother, then obviously, their Hilarity Processor is closed. When this happens, the scientists have observed under a high-powered microscope that the cells of every organ display a sad face, and when the Hilarity Processor is open and functioning normally, the cells display a happy face. 
The scientists realized that if a person is ill, it is because his mind has projected guilt onto the cells of his body and forced out the love that is normally found within each cell of the body. The cells are therefore saying, “I lack Love,” or “ILL” for short. The scientists also discovered that all disease is due to the fact that the cells are out of ease or dis-eased.
When the Hilarity Processor is opened and working (or rather, playing) properly, the cerebral mechanism sucks up misery, pain, anger, resentment, grievances, unhappiness, etc., and converts the energy into tiny red heart shaped balloons (or red lanterns if you’re Chinese). The red heart-shaped balloons contain Love and Joy. These balloons are directed to the dis-eased cell or situation and a happy face appears instantly.
Sometimes these red heart shaped balloons are called endorphins, due to the fact that when anyone experiences them, the feeling of separation ends. They experience being back home and hence are no longer an orphan. This is the well-known end-orphan (endorphin) effect. So, if you think someone is attacking you, Hilarity Scientists recommend that you visualize sending that person’s red heart-shaped balloons filled with Love and Joy.
Remember to keep your Hilarity Processor open and laugh hearty and often. Seriousness brings in tarnation and not reincarnation. 
If you think Tian looks scary…
20 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Awareness
Boo!
Madness is ensuing with no sign of abating. Western society is still reeling from the whiplash of September 11, 2001. You can feel it brewing all around you, just as my friend, a respected Thai journalist, saw the sea before the Tsunami of 2004: “The sea was mad,” is what she said, how she described it. The ocean looked to be boiling and then the first wave hit and took her under. She had a scarf tied around her neck which hooked itself onto a picnic table lodged by a tree holding her in place so that she was not swept back out to sea when the wave receded…
It is but a matter of time before another “wave” hits and the western world is again in upheaval by a major man-made catastrophe. This inevitability, though perhaps not consciously recognized and often avoided, is nonetheless profoundly impacting, producing some surreal behavior. Unrest and unease define the Zeitgeist of the day — they’re inescapable — so a disconnect from reality must take place for some to cope. When danger comes we either accept it and prepare for it, or we run from it and distract ourselves with one frivolous diversion or another. What, what can we rely upon when all seems so uncertain?
You may be experiencing some trauma in your life, a sense of urgency, a desperation even. These are all understandable: we are in trouble. It’s real and no amount of denial or pollyannishness can altar this simple fact. (If this is gloomy, so be it. ) But, let’s return to that urgency… We’re reaching a critical time of crisis where those unaccustomed to handling the radical and difficult changes will buckle under the weight of the burden. I need to say to you, while we still have some time, be selfish: save yourself first. Only in love is there strength — and we will, all of us — be going to need it.
This is not a time for pretty philosophies or rigid ideologies — you must dig deeper than those. Life is not just some leisurely study for the foppish, sanctimonious, or intellectually curious: this is no longer enough. The only truth that will be worth anything, is that which is rooted in reality garnering real results. You’re going to have to find it within yourself to determine if what you’ve known has any place, any real application in the world that is to come. If you’ve not considered the veracity of your current paradigm, examination at the earliest possible time is highly encouraged. Aiming to “be right” will not help you when your world starts crashing in. “Being right” is the business of the ego.
Living right, however, should be everyone’s business. Being forgiving, generous, flexible, and compassionate may sound defeatist to some, as though we are whitewashing the situation, or overlooking real negative forces or enemies. This is not so. We are addressing the enemy within: for, within each of us is the capacity to uplift or destroy — ourselves. You’ve never had a better reason, or arrived at a better time, to take a personal inventory and assess where you’ve made missteps, and make swift and definite action to correct them. The time is NOW, while you’ve still got the time.
Let me ask you: if you know a corrupt global society is devouring itself, its deterioration hastened by greedy individuals devoid of accountability conniving, swindling, and bullying for scraps of any kind or size (trying to “get theirs” while the getting can still be got), if you have the remotest or tiniest inkling that the worst is yet to come externally, or even fear it; would you not work as hard as you can to make your internal world as solid, harmonious, rich and in tune with what’s eternal ASAP? What could you possibly be waiting for? Madness may be ensuing in a crowd (witness pointless, countless, way-too-enthusiastic-to-be-believed-and-unwarranted standing ovations occurring EVERYWHERE) — but what about you as an individual?
…When my journalist friend was hit by that first wave, the picnic table that saved her life also pinned her down so that she was unable to move. She was severely injured from the debris of all sizes that the enormous wave pulled both in and out, and was knocked unconscious. She came to when a voice told her to, “Get up. Get up your journey is still not over.” She fought her way up and out — before the second monstrous wave hit. If she had stayed under that table she would have died. She had moments to get to higher ground. A voice told her to, “Get up.”
Is there a voice that’s been trying to communicate with you? Dare you not listen? She didn’t know that second wave was coming, yet, a greater intelligent understanding reached her consciousness to save her. We all know massive waves of destruction and turmoil are ahead (and if we don’t, we should). The increasing sense of urgency will only heighten as it’s directing us to grow, expand, love one another, to do as that master called Jesus taught so long ago: “To love thy neighbor as thyself.” But, how can we possibly do the former, if we do not first do the latter?
Stop putting off the important things. Do them while you can still enjoy them. Sure, you’ll have plenty of chances in the future to express love, but, why wait? In your procrastination, think of all the moments you’ve sacrificed! Can you really afford to be so wasteful? Think how much further along you’ll be if you were to start now! Love yourself — the real kind. Do not settle for another man’s truth, or the machinations of a religion or government that seek to control you for their own gain. Look not to achievements or laurels of the past, nor meekly accept and be driven by societal definitions of success. Ascertain your own standards, and have the guts to stand by them.
What will save this world when it’s time to rebuild, is what was missing all along: genuine spirituality, one man, one woman at a time. It is also what will save you when all around you appears to be lost.
What I have not told you, and what you may not know is, after the tsunami, the beaches and waters of Phuket became more beautiful, clear and pristine than they had been for decades… They were washed anew by those mammoth raging swells, seeming harbingers of destruction that also brought restoration in a way that nothing else could.
Preemptive Wisdom
17 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
We're getting older every minute -- and have much to look forward to!
One of the joys (or reliefs!) of growing older is our capacity to divine the future. Rather than “seeing what happens” we develop foresight to help prevent disasters instead of just “hitting and running” experiences, speeding along with regret, too frightened or ashamed to peer in the rear view mirror (or too guilt-ridden to stop). However, analyzing the past to better navigate where we’re headed is only helpful to a point: for life is ever-changing and always looking to what “once was” to determine what “now is” can sometimes prove inaccurate at best, and completely cynical at worst.
Learning from past experiences is essential to the advancement of any spiritual student, or student of life; but mastery is to treat every moment as novel and full of possibility, you being new along with it, while in it! Perhaps if you didn’t know what to expect from yourself, you could express differently, make a different choice, feel free to excel even! You could be released from bonds of old (holding you back more certainly than any ropes or chains) and recognize you have become somebody other than that self-image with which you have identified for so long; that it’s time to bless it, move on, and celebrate!
Vacations can prove reinvigorating because new activities and environments don’t have predetermined responses tied to them: surprising aspects of who we are surface and give rise to fresh perspective — on ourselves. But it’s not exclusive unto external circumstances: you don’t have to go somewhere or look for some “fix” — preemptive wisdom is a natural part of who you are… Be open to spontaneous free-flowing action with love in the supposedly “humdrum” everyday and watch yourself flourish. It cannot be said enough: God is everywhere present, and unlimited possibility exists within you in every instance, for you are a part of God.
Thinking ahead is not merely a mental exercise, it requires intuitiveness and confidence in ourselves to be able to rely upon it. If we’re mired in drama, or stuck in a negative mindset, our intuition remains inaccessible. Instead, strive to create an inner world where all the encouragement and support you may have lacked in the past are at the ready and in ample supply. Wisdom cannot be separated from Love — love yourself first and all good will follow as it must — as is your right and endowment from Spirit.
Spotting preemptive wisdom:
1. Tubes of toothpaste rolled from the bottom, not squeezed from the middle.
2. Yogurt — lots of yogurt.
3. Earlier bedtime without whining, or wine.
Spacing out is underrated
06 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Home
Tian stares into space...
Sometimes NOT thinking is a great way to figure things out. Just as your muscles need a break after an intense workout, so does your brain! Unceasing rumination can engender ruination. Couch potato away! Find your inner vegetable and “veg” out! Not every moment needs to be filled, though for every second there’s an app, a game, a song, a blog(!), an infomercial, tweets, texts, endless distractions and diversions warding off the dreaded possibility of you having to be alone with your thoughts! As technology fights and fuels the terrible battle against the threat of boredom, in a society where noise is king, it all soon becomes white noise: For, what could ever take the place of solitude? We may all want to be heard, but perhaps what we truly want is to be the one who is listening. If you’re not hearing yourself — you’ll never be satisfied. There’s gold in silence. There’s sustenance, rejuvenation, peace, and happiness.
If you’re quiet it will come. Unplug and space out for awhile. You may find that in your struggle to “get ahead” you were wasting more time than if you had just “wasted” time by allowing yourself to be… silent and still… But always with love: If you haven’t any real love for yourself you’ll only tune out and not in, never face yourself because you can’t stand your own face, and always look for the latest thing because you secretly don’t think your own personal tastes or interests are worthwhile. Your self-loathing will breed insecurity and drive you to become a consumer of pop and/or snob culture. You may become great at it — but you’ll never BE great because you will have denied yourself the opportunity to find out who you truly are… Your one consolation will be that you’re “better” than “others” (which isn’t much because it’s a lie). If we can just “be,” we can move beyond the ordinary and “be” what we already are: extraordinary, unique expressions of God.
Quit wasting time. Quit trying too hard. The best revelations often come when we’re not looking for them. So-called “empty space” is packed with untold belongings — and so are you – the majority of your life exists in this “unseen” realm! Become an expert at relaxing and watch the quality of both your life and productivity sky-rocket and remember: Spacing out is better than stressing out.
40th Post
17 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
Not only is everyone different: everyone has different standards for what they expect from life and themselves. It is often said that the key to successful human relations is to be able to see things from others’ viewpoints. If we can allow others their foibles, their humanity, their quirks: we can avoid being disappointed. The truth is, when more is revealed, we find that each individual is resonating at their own frequency, moving and being according to their own level of awareness. In QuamTao it’s said that heaven or hell is not necessarily a place, but a condition where who you are meets the person you could be…
To riff on this syllogism, to see what a person could be, their inherent and potential good, and help them to achieve this, must make one a messenger of heaven — an angel — come to earth. We have, each of us, the capacity to help every person we meet in our realm of influence, to become a thriving and impressive spiritual exponent. If we consider that we truly are ONE, our universe expands the moment we move beyond the small sphere of “me” to include others in our experiential realm. When we contribute to the strengthening and overall well-being of others, we expand our reality! We get MORE happiness because our world is bigger!
If you sincerely care about others, not just you and yours, but are sincerely interested in seeking out opportunities to uplift, support, love, stand for right, coming not to bring peace but a sword!, you will become a force for good with which to be reckoned. You become a real rock star, for it matters not what a fickle society presents as important, what is of no substance cannot be endowed with it merely by the concession of millions of people or ratification by millions of dollars. What’s real lasts and all else is temporal. This includes the pain and struggle of your current circumstance: The true you is still and will overcome.
I have an intelligent friend who has had his share of burdens who cleverly wrote, “This to will past.” I love how he changed, “This too shall pass,” which teaches us to be patient and have hope, into a statement encouraging us to act. If we can “will past” our current barriers and limitations, focusing on how we can be of genuine service to others (don’t waste your effort — make sure it has legs), rather than thinking solely of ourselves, we’ll experience bliss we’d never known possible before, on a scale heretofore unprecedented. But you may have to break past your expectations…
Accepting and loving people as they are is not always easy — do it anyway. A spiritual person recognizing the Truth of another is a powerful thing. However, if an individual is not yet interested in growing spiritually, be gracious, move on, and know that everyone awakens according to their own rhythms, in their own time. There’s no need for disappointment, and there’s no need to be a doormat (not even for yourself to wipe your own boots on!). God is eternal, and so is the internal journey. Do this for others and you’ll wind up recalibrating your own standards, becoming a lot less exacting, and a lot more loving.
It’s unconditional love for yourself, starting right where you are… If you don’t do it for you, you can’t do it for anyone else! And about getting unconditional love from others? Who cares!? That love within you — accepting the bountiful love of God — is all you ever needed to do… and all you’ll ever need…
