2017 “Project Joy” Kickoff Blog

After the Video Kickoff Workshop, I decided to write a blog addressing how we can practice in times that could seem to make practice irrelevant. I became even more committed after hearing from a few folks in the aftermath of the election that they’re struggling with a recent Peace Quote:

Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

- Swami Vivekananda

Perhaps the most difficult task for us spiritual aspirants is to understand intellectually, and then to “grok,” that ours is a nonseparate reality. The difficulty is that the shift from separate to nonseparate is the movement from the dualistic world of the intellect to the intuitive, experiential world of spiritual understanding.

The Buddha teaches that suffering is a fact of Life, there’s a reason we suffer, there’s a way to end suffering, and it’s possible to end suffering in this lifetime. He tells us that hate will never overcome hate; only love will overcome hate. We are to radiate boundless love to the entire world without ill will or enmity. Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, we are to cultivate a boundless love toward all beings. 

If we accept that as true, what are we to do if someone is not meeting our standards, is not being the way we know they “should” be, is in our view cruel, greedy, selfish and scary?

Aldous Huxley masterfully demonstrates what he and others called The Perennial Philosophy by quoting mystics from every religious and spiritual tradition describing the same experience. None of these mystics were speaking of dogma, though they spoke in the language of their tradition. They described their practice and what they realized in moments of union with the Divine.

Here’s a bit of Huxley’s synopsis of what he calls the Ground of Being or the Divine Ground (also called That Which Is, That Which Animates, the Mysterious Fact, Buddha Nature, True Nature, Authenticity, God):

Any event in any part of the universe has as its predetermining conditions all previous events in all parts of the universe. (As we say it, you are the sum total of everything it has taken to produce you since before the beginning of beginningless time.)

1. The phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness—the world of things and animals and even gods—is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

2. Human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

3. Humankind possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner human, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a human, if s/he so desires, to identify with this spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

4. Humankind’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify with the eternal self and so come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground of all existence.

As the Buddha phrased it, one who experiences oneself in all of Life sees oneself in all beings.

My teacher used to marvel that people would settle for believing something (that unity with the Intelligence That Animates is possible) that can be known. That we are each and all manifestations of the power of Life that shapes all life is something we human beings can “know,” not intellectually, but experientially. Wisdom animates all of us and is the force of this power, the mystic energy pouring into the field of time and space.

Conditioned mind, the mind that thinks, believes, and assumes, becomes so involved in concepts, in ego-driven fears and doing that the energy of wisdom cannot flow. The energy is blocked and we are tossed into a faux “reality” of ego’s making, lost in an incessant conversation of what I need, what I want, what I’m afraid of, how it should be, what’s wrong—and the suffering is ceaseless. 

The Buddha taught that it’s possible to “cultivate the conditions” for wellbeing. It is the conditioned habit of attending to unwholesome states of mind, to the negativity of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, which is the primary obstacle to awakening. Our practice is to replace that by attending to what is wholesome, to what is so in the present. The Buddha identified some wholesome acts: taking action, bearing witness, not knowing, generosity, stillness, compassionate speech, and not opposing evil.

Attending to “what is so in the present” is extremely challenging for conditioned human beings because the assumption is that “what is so” is what “I” (the illusion of an ego that is separate from Life) perceives as so—and that is not so!

And, here’s where it gets even stickier: Our practice is to first embrace all that arises as we perceive it. We are learning to change our perception from ego’s “how it should be” to Life’s “how it truly is.” We are practicing turning attention away from the beliefs and assumptions held in a dualistic conditioned mind and to witness Life from the awareness of wisdom, love, and compassion rather than the limited perspective of “me.” 

So was Swami Vivekananda being hard on us? Was he being judgmental and harsh, blaming us for what happens to us in our lives? Is he saying that what’s happening in the world right now—what we perhaps see as cruel and hateful—is good and holy and beautiful and there’s something wrong with us if we don’t see it that way?

Looking at the world from a dualistic viewpoint, there seems to be much more cruel and hateful than good and holy and beautiful. After all, there are real victims. Not everyone has the same chance. It’s easy to be grateful and optimistic if you have all the advantages. What about the people who don’t have enough to eat? What about those living where bombs are falling? From ego’s perspective—looking at content rather than process—surely that appears to be the case.

Years ago I read a story told by Peace Pilgrim: When the Allied troops liberated Buchenwald concentration camp, the scene they encountered was hideous, heartbreaking, and unbelievable. As they moved through the camp getting medical care to the survivors, they were assisted by an energetic fellow with long, drooping mustaches. No one knew who he was, and there wasn’t time for introductions, so among themselves they just referred to him as Wild Bill, after Wild Bill Hickok. When everyone had been given all the care they could be offered at the time, some of the soldiers questioned Wild Bill about who he was and how long he’d been in the camp. He told them he’d been there from the opening of the camp. They were amazed, even doubted him, as he was robust and in both good spirits and good health. This is the story he told: He was an attorney living in a small town in Poland with his wife and five children. Because he spoke several languages, when the Nazi’s came through they used him as an interpreter. He was kept alive and made to watch as they killed everyone in the town, including his wife and children who were placed against a wall and shot. In that moment he “saw” the horror that ignorance and delusion can inflict, and it came to him in a moment of awakening that he had two choices. He could either live with the hatred he felt in his heart and become like those who had just destroyed all he loved in the world, or he could live the difference he was able to see and choose to love unreservedly everyone he encountered for as long as he lived. From that clarity he cared for his fellow prisoners, offering what help he could, until the liberators arrived.

If you don’t see God in the next person you meet, where do you hope to see God?

--Mahatma Gandhi

So, where does this leave us? How do we apply our understanding of this possibility? How do we live the difference we know is possible? We can take action as the Buddha encouraged. We can bear witness. If we choose, we can let our legislators know our wishes. We can call, write letters. We can be generous, get involved with groups working toward change we’d like to see in the world. If no one is taking on something we care about, we can start a non-profit to address the need! In a word: participate. Participation does not require us to hold opinions (as the Hsin Hsin Ming warns us “do not chase after enlightenment, only cease to cherish opinions”) or to use language that lacks compassion or to identify “evil” and then oppose it. We support and aid. Above all, we hold everyone and everything in the unconditional love and acceptance that we all wish for ourselves no matter how wrong-headed we may be in any given moment!  We can he humble enough to realize and admit that we don’t know, and that complaining and criticizing is not a path to liberation encouraged by any tradition!

I don’t know about you, but I often wonder if the reason we get so upset when we witness negativity, when we hear judgmental, intolerant, and hateful words and see those same attitudes in behaviors is because those “external” words and behaviors put us in touch with the same in us. I could only laugh when it dropped in how prejudiced I am against prejudiced people! What I’d been clinging to is that “they” are prejudiced against the wrong people (innocent people), while I am prejudiced against the people who truly deserve judgment! Really? Doesn’t take a lot of scrutiny to get to “it’s not what, it’s how.”

When lost in the “I’m right” of the dualistic world of conditioned mind, we all believe we are correct in our assessment and those other people are simply stupid, deluded, wrong, or probably evil. They think that about us, we think that about them, and the world of egocentric karmic conditioning chugs happily along.

As students of awareness, seeking clarity and liberation, choosing lovingkindness and compassion, we can get as engaged, active, and involved as we like—and we can do that from love. The burden I suspect Swami Vivekananda is asking us to throw back on ourselves is to find in our hearts the unconditional love that is the difference we know. When we find that love in our own hearts, we realize that is the love that animates all beings, and that we each have the opportunity to choose that love in each moment—even as Wild Bill did, in truly horrific circumstances.

We have no ability to influence that choice in someone else; we do have the ability to make that choice for ourselves. If we don’t choose, how can we blame anyone else for not choosing? There’s much debate about the origin of the quote, but the sentiment is sound: If not me, who? If not now, when?

In gassho,

Cheri

Practicing in Difficult Times: An Audio Encouragement

At the request of many, an audio blog has just been posted.

Gassho

Right-click to download

A Really Big Idea

Several years ago while sitting an idea dropped in. It was a really big idea. It was such a big idea that it qualified as a vision; a vision that appeared instantaneously and so full-blown that I could elucidate an astonishing number of details on the spot. It was quite stunning—and fun.

The picture returned with some regularity over the next several days, and I enjoyed the details that were added with each appearance. But then, like a dream that slowly becomes a nightmare, with insistent repetition it began to dominate the space in the mind that had previously been occupied by other awarenesses.

This process was not unfamiliar. Over the years, when an inspiration for a project or a book dropped in, there would be a fairly consistent “revelation” of material and process until clarity was achieved, and I could implement whatever was being called forth. There have been times when these “creative impulses” have been so insistent that I’ve needed to metaphorically stack them up, requiring each project to wait its turn to come to the fore. If a project fell out of the queue before there was time to execute it, there was usually a sigh of relief. Plenty more where that came from, it would seem.

But when I tried the “get in line” approach with this vision, the images simply became more insistent. By this time the whole thing was completely ridiculous, and in a classic appeal to the powers that be I begged for mercy. “I don’t know what wires have been crossed in the Universal Communication System, but this vision is not for me. I can’t do this. You have the wrong human. I don’t even know anybody who could do this. I don’t know anybody who knows anybody who could do this. Please check the records and see if the right person can be tapped.”

All became quiet and that seemed to be the end of it.

And then I was at a conference in Dallas and it all came rushing back in.

Walking through a predominantly African American neighborhood, aware of bright colors, the music, the sounds of laughter…. Here it is again. A theme park. Africa Around the World.

What’s your pleasure? Would you like to see Josephine Baker performing in 1920s Paris? Maybe you’d like to start in Harlem for the Harlem Renaissance, or perhaps the New Orleans of the 1940s for some blues and jazz, or head down to Mississippi for some time in Robert Johnson’s world.  How about Trinidad and Tobago for some early calypso?  Jamaica for reggae?

Possibly, after all the music and dancing, you’d like a more serious look at Africa’s contributions to our modern world: coffee, mathematics, and modern art? Ubuntu? You would certainly want a tour of the history of Egypt, a chance to visit the varied cultures of African countries, the fight to end apartheid; and here at home the history of slavery, the Civil War, the underground railroad, the Civil Rights Movement, and so very much more.   

But I don’t think this vision arrived just because it would be a gloriously exciting theme park. It would provide much needed employment for countless talented, ambitious individuals. It would be an opportunity for people who would never have a chance to meet and appreciate one another in other circumstances to do so.  It would showcase talent, inspire young people, foster respect between the races….

I would devote myself to this vision in a second if there were any possibility at all that I could advance it. I know I cannot. But here’s what I realized I could do: Write this up and send it out into the world. Maybe you, reading this, are the person the vision was meant for. Maybe you know someone who knows someone for whom this vision might be destined.

In my heart of hearts I think the vision is trying to find Oprah Winfrey, for whom it would be a grand legacy, don’t you think? But who can say? Certainly not I. I just hope this beautiful vision finds its home, and the world can benefit from all the beauty, imagination, creativity, inspiration, and joy that is Africa Around the World.

Gassho

Seven Steps to Practice Integrity

When I was told about a seven-step process one of the monks is using to deepen daily practice my response was, “Oh, we must make this available to as many practitioners as we can.” Hence, the following.

The Scenario: There is something it is your responsibility to do. You failed to do it. It could be anything big or small, from not picking up the milk for tomorrow’s breakfast to not picking up the kids from school. It was yours to do and you didn’t do it.

Step 1

As it drops in that you didn’t do it, there’s a moment of “ugh” as you see clearly what happened.

Step 2

You recognize this as an opportunity to bring awareness to a process. Here is a real-life event, and you know real-life events are our best opportunity to see how suffering happens. (If this would not be your experience as “Step 2,” please know it will be as you practice the steps being described.)

Step 3

You choose not to go to a child’s place of feeling bad, of trying to hide what you’ve done, of hoping that no one notices, or of making excuses. You don’t blame someone else or see yourself as a victim.

Step 4

You use the tools of Awareness Practice to explore the process. How did this happen? (You don’t go to conditioned mind to “figure this out.” You stay present and allow conscious compassionate awareness to drop in insights.) Does this kind of thing happen regularly? Do you often forget to do something that it’s your responsibility to do? Again, no “noodling;” just paying attention, trusting Life to inform you.

Step 5

Whether or not you have clarity about how this happens, you look to see what might support you in being successful in the future—all the standards: post-its on the bathroom mirror, the steering wheel; an email, text message, voice mail reminder; recordings that you listen to every day, etc. The essential question you ask to receive insight on is: What is the change in behavior that will allow me to go beyond this process of forgetting to do what I’m responsible for doing? Again, you wait for the clarity of a deep, intuitive understanding to drop in rather than turning to the voices in conditioned mind.

Step 6

You communicate. If someone else is affected by what you’ve done, you let them know and you take responsibility.

Step 7

You make a recommendation to resolve the issue and rectify the situation—if that is appropriate. (I’ll drive to the 24-hour market and pick up the milk. I’ll tell the kids how sorry I am, reassure them of my love, ask for their understanding.)

Without self-hate, without beatings for oneself or blaming of others, it is possible to express that what happened was not intentional. “I didn't mean for it to happen, and I'm working diligently to see it doesn’t happen again.” And taking responsibility for what happened is not the same as believing what happened was a mistake. These situations are how we grow past karma and learn to choose unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves and others.

In a recent email class we were asked these questions:

1) What is the energy of non-resistance, of accepting what is, without trying to control, fix, alter or change it. 

2) What does it feel like to experience the storm of identification or the peace of center as simply aspects of the spiritual journey, to eschew avoiding one and craving the other?

3) What is the energy of being open and welcoming to all that Life brings, to be able to receive any aspect of Life “as a gift from the guide beyond.”

This 7-Step process is a marvelous “how to” in our practice of “using everything in our experience to see how we cause ourselves to suffer so we can drop that and end suffering,” a valuable aid in “emptying our cup” in 2016.

In gasshō,

Cheri

Third Spirituality and Money Blog

I sometimes get information that my approach is hard, that things I say are harsh.

While I don’t idealize sugarcoating, I never mean to be cold or unfeeling. In the world of waking up and ending suffering, it’s not helpful to “pretend.” Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate pretends (to be nice, be polite to people’s faces) in order to stay safe, unseen, hidden. It’s the quintessential puppet master, pulling strings just out of sight. That has no place in awareness practice.

Communicating clearly, offering clear information, is kind. Bodhidharma was called Grandmother because he was so compassionate, never hesitating to hit someone along side the head if they were lost in conditioned mind!

Walking the path of waking up and ending suffering, we choose to take advantage of all information we find in our path. If it’s in my path, it must be for me. Because we’re practicing to see karma/ego ever more clearly, nothing is perceived as too harsh. Only ego reacts in defensiveness.

Early in my tenure at the monastery where I trained I received a huge “spiritual opportunity” when I asked my teacher, in a rather large group of people, a “why” question. I never knew so much could be said about why without ever addressing the why! It was brutal. If I’d wondered before what of me was authentic and what was ego, that question would have been answered through those grueling (what seemed like) hours but must only have been minutes. It felt as if at least 100% of me was being crushed, sifted, and discarded. Much later I realized the authenticity was there, not at all concerned about ego’s mortification, right ready to bring me back to the next opportunity. Praise be!

Oh, and I never asked another why question. I got the lesson.

My point? If we are to be free, we must go through and let go all of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate’s resistance. I don’t want to, I don’t do that, that’s not me, I don’t feel like it, it’s crazy, I’m too tired, it’s too hard, it’s scary, I can’t and all that digging-in-heels ilk must go. They must cease to be a part of our reality. No longer will they pull us up into conditioned mind, siphon off our energy, and make us believe that ego’s whining is our whining.

People suffer over all sorts of life content, as we all well know: relationship, money, jobs, security, future, anxiety, not enough, benefits, depression, the past, health, appearance, sex, worth, etc.  There’s endless agony as the voices of self-hate drag a person from one misery-producing “thing” to the next. “How will I?” “But should I?” “What if…” “I’ll never…” “You didn’t…” “Well, you should have…” Conversation after conversation with one focus and one outcome—suffering.

In practice we have many, many opportunities to confront the voices and get out of the conversation. Some opportunities we’re allowed to participate in, some the voices say no to. Ah, yes, it is voices saying no. We’re brainwashed into believing “I make the decisions in my life,” but in a lucid moment we know believing that is silliness. The voice in the head calls the shots. Moderate resistance means I probably get to do whatever; a lot of resistance means I don’t. No matter how long I’m willing to pretend authenticity is making my choices, sooner or later I’ll have to admit I’m a slave to the voices in the head.

I started this series of blogs writing about money and money karma, but we’re expanding beyond that because money is only one piece of content, interchangeable with all content. Given that, here’s the straight scoop. Not mean, not sugarcoated, just the “how it is.”

If we are suffering over something and we don’t want—which includes we are afraid — to address the cause of the suffering, we need to face that we’re choosing suffering and we need to stop complaining.

If I’m choosing suffering, I might as well acknowledge my choice and accept that I choose to suffer rather than having to go up against egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate in order to end the suffering. No pretending here. No saying one thing and doing another. I don’t want to face those voices when they start shrieking and threatening so I’ll just do what they say. My choice.

This could be a quick way out of the conversation in the head. The conversation is about what’s wrong, yes? If I admit I’m choosing what’s wrong because I don’t choose to end what’s wrong, what’s there to talk about?

Of course, the voices will switch to “Well, you should,” but we know what that’s about, yes? So, we can just sigh, look aggrieved and acknowledge, “Yes, I probably should, but I don’t choose to.”

A tangential, yet significant, point we do well to consider as conditioned human beings is this: In believing I am ego and ego is me, I am agreeing that the conversation in the head is me talking to me. In agreeing to that, I am agreeing to indulge the suffering drama in the head—and the ruined life it results in—rather than face the fear of “not being me.”

One advantage we have in practicing awareness is that we know—at least intellectually—that we will stop “being me” one day anyway. We’re going to die.

The old expression “you can’t take it with you” applies to money and possessions and can give the impression there’s a “you” that’s going somewhere and will have to face what you can’t take with you. Good to clear up that misconception for ourselves as soon as possible!  If there is no I and there is no me, which an awful lot of our spiritual heroes have strongly encouraged us to prove for ourselves, then it’s unlikely any “one” is going to make the journey and the main thing we won’t be taking with us is I/me!

The “would you rather be right or be happy” got very popular because people can sense the truth in it—though most people still choose “right.” In awareness practice the question is even more direct: Would you rather suffer as an ego or be happy?

I’m still looking for those folks who want to take the next year to see and see through the whole mess, those intrepid spirits looking to face and face down egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate once and for all. Not someone who’s just curious, might be interested, would like to find out more…. Nope. Not that person. This is the “I’ve had enough; I’m in if I die in the effort.” Those are the ones.

As someone who is already doing the year-long “getting past money and all other karma” retreat said, “I have wanted to face this (ego torture) all my adult life; I just never had the courage or the support.”

It’s available now.

In gassho,

Cheri