Tag: meditation

Pride

December 30, 2019 / Tom

Sometimes I am so powerful.

I can stand on my own two feet, and face the storm with fearless abandon. As the inferno burns hot before me, I can stare the flames right in the soul as the world turns to ash all around. I can crawl over boulders and reach heights as the fear grips at my mind. There is much fight within me even as the ground shakes below me.

Sometimes, I am so weak.

I hear their voices and I shrink into my shell. My legs wilt under the weight of the cross I bear, falling to my knees in abject failure. The chorus rains down shards of judgment, shards that pierce my armor and force my heart into hiding. I am a lost child, gone beyond my veils, outside the walls of my kingdom.

What is left to do now but learn? Can I shed the mask of pride? Can I rid myself of the weight I’ve carried with me my entire life?

Pride, that alien being to my soul, that bastard bully hiding in the shadows right behind me! Whisper if you will, but I can hear you. Sing if you must, my ears bleed at the sound of your song. One day I shall turn the torch and burn a hole through your darkness. Pride cannot defeat the lowly man with an empty bowl. He stands, kneels, and bows with equal power, with equal strength.

That warrior knows the only strength he needs is to lift his bowl, give all he has, and accept what others are willing to offer.

A hard fight for me indeed. The hardest battles are often the ones we wage within.

A Conversation

I turn to my god, the Silence I crave in the noise of my mind, and beg of Her to answer me.

The answer is as it’s always been. “Shed your gold and give glory to your heart. Pride is thine enemy.”

So much gold has been cast into the raging torrents, sacrificed to the god of who I am. There lies so much of what I once believed important, so much of what I gave my life to have.

“It’s time to give more of you and less of what you have. It’s time to rise, naked in the snow,and be warmed by what only love can provide. That is what you must learn. It is you the world needs, not your coin. It is love that must fill your pockets. You will fly in the lightness of love, not be drowned by the weight in your purse.”

“I have little left to give,” I answer.

“Wrong. You have yet to scratch the surface of what you offer the world.”

A tear forms. I have heard this all before.

“My child, you have hidden behind the quest for things of the world, seeking to be judged by them as some reward. The gold you seek is waiting for you, and when it ceases to be your quest the truth will open up those waters to raging currents. Where the green light shines within you is that space you should work to fill. The other chest will fill after your treasure chest has opened, and your heart becomes free to beat to its own time.

The chest you’ve tried to fill cannot be filled until the chest that holds the true treasure, your heart, is fully open.”

A tear spills. I know all of what I hear to be true.

A Lesson

“It has been said,” the Silence whispers to my soul, “that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass the gates of heaven. A chest of gold cannot fit but the man full of love passes through easily. You will leave your gold behind, my son, but love will go with you forever.”

“Yet I tire of the struggle,” I respond.

“Ah, it is the struggle that keeps you from your truth. You will regain wealth, have no doubt, but first you must stop judging yourself in its presence or its absence. When you love, you will know yourself the same both in wealth and in poverty. Neither will change the man you know yourself to be.”

It is the struggle that I know myself, and it is in the struggle that I judge myself as worthy. What was once so easy has now become so difficult. The river that once flowed has now become a trickle.

“The ice up there is ready to melt again and Spring is ready to appear,” said the Silence. “Love shines warmly. Let it shine, watch the ice pack melt and the river flow again. It is truly that easy. Stop being the struggle and start being the Spring.”

I smile, knowing full well the beauty and truth of this remembering.

“I know it is difficult, my son, but you were not built for the easy things. You were bred to make the difficult things easy. You were born to melt the ice…”

A breath, a moment, an undeniable truth.

“…and to light the way. So, now shine. Love yourself as worthy and watch the river flow.”

My Last Day on Earth (If Only I had the Courage)

October 9, 2019 / Tom

It’s almost become cliche. Actually, it has become cliche. We’ve turned a profound question of introspection into one that bounces off our exterior, often finding it hard to penetrate the wanton shrouds we place on our every day life. Still, though, the question remains a powerful one, even if it seems lost to the swirl of our common personal insanity.

What would I do if this is my last day on Earth?

I ask mys elf this question while sitting in a whirlpool of daily existence, head throbbing with the weight of the day on my shoulders.. This time, though, I want to answer it honestly and without reservation. I truly want to discover my long-hidden truth.

The first thing that I realize is that I would not be wasting time as I do. I would not give a fuck about my job, although I would still care about the people I serve. I would not care about the mundane things I give so much attention to. I waste so much of my life in the mundane, struggling to grasp at golden rings that always seem just beyond my reach. I spend much of my life threading water in a mundane pool of worry. There, I worry about what would happen if my car broke down, or I got sick, or if something happened to one of my beloveds. Perhaps knowing that this would be my last day on Earth would free me from such worries. Perhaps I’ve enshrouded my life with so many veils of worry that I can’t see what life is anymore. Perhaps my throbbing head offers me an answer.

Yet it seems I’ve started answering the question of what I would do by suggesting what I wouldn’t do. That seems to be because I spend so much of my time doing things I would not do if faced with the end. Perhaps there is a sapling rose in the weed-filled garden of my life, a garden that I first must weed just to get to the flower. Maybe there is so much shit in my way that a clearing is necessary. It’s time, perhaps, to burn the fucking thing to ash just to clear out the trash. Maybe that is what my response is telling me. End the patterns that have never served you well, and let those that do bloom in their sacred majesty. Let me now pull out the most easily pulled weeds in my garden.

So, I would not be sitting at this desk wishing I was on a trail somewhere. I would not be looking out this window at the gorgeous blue skies wishing I was under them unimpeded by the glass, wood and nails of the box I am in. I would not be sitting alone wishing those I love were near, sharing in the glory of the moments we share alive and in health. I would not be asking myself questions the betray the misery of American human existence. I would not need to learn, or teach, or ask for the truth. I would just live, and life itself would be my teacher, my instruction and my honest breath.

I would be making love in the mud, dancing in the rain, searching for the rose in the weeds. I would be laughing an honest laugh and walking the hardest trail. I would hold your hand with all the vitality of a man in love with his mortality can muster. I would hold your face and kiss you with the knowledge that I don’t have many of those left, and I would cherish that kiss with all the attention it deserved. I would hug those I love with a heart wide open, and they would return the love because they, too, realize the frailty of our interaction. I would bask in such glory, having found heaven in my midst and hell in knowing I would be leaving it all behind.

I would write my book without the distraction that lives outside my soul. The words themselves would shout with the exuberance of a wild beast in his element, and they would shake your heart to its core. You would feel a pulsing in areas that may have been long-dormant and I would quake with you in an ecstasy of connection. You would tingle, and I would dance, and that majesty would wake up the world to a truth we’ve often left lost in the madness of our distraction. That rose would bloom in being free from the weeds. Free to bask in the sun of its day and the moon of its night.

If only I had the courage.

This morning there was such a sweet meditation. I was walking in a beautiful and lush valley, teaming with life and basking both in the light of the Sun and the shadows created by a ring of high mountains. I loved the way I felt in the valley, allowing the chill of the shadow to give the warmth of the light its meaning. My fingertips draw funny shapes in the dew that clings to the large leaves, and my eyes close in a silent prayer as nature plays around me. I can hear a distant waterfall mixing with the rush of a spring stream and I wonder if there is anything else I could want.

Those mountains. Their peaks begin calling out to me with a siren’s song, That is where I need to be. My heart pleads for me to go, but my feet sit idle. My soul screams at me to move, yet my mind stays still. All of me wants to sit on their summit, all but the part of me that needs to make it happen. That part of me holds firm to what it knows, what it was taught, lost in the fear of what lies just beyond. I am sure the view is beautiful. I am sure the climb is majestic. I am sure that the thought of moving scares the shit out of me.

My god, if I only had the courage.

I am awakened from this vision. Swirling in that brew created with parts of thought, parts of soul, and parts of heart is a stew meant for great consideration. Perhaps there would be no fear if this was my last day on earth. Perhaps the views would worth my final breath. Perhaps the climb would be worth each drop of sweat left in me. Maybe I could rise from this valley I feel stuck in if only I had no repercussions to face. Then I wonder what the repercussions would be if I stayed and failed to climb the mountains that promised at least a view of the promised land.

Now, however, I have no time to think about such things. I have to get to work, to meet my responsibilities. I have to bathe in mundane waters that keep the trail dust from settling on my skin. I have to hide in this box telling the world that “I am just like you” while knowing I am not like them at all. I have to lie just to find the truth, and I have to reconcile my wild nature with rules I had no hand in creating. If only I had the courage I’d have if I knew this was my last day on Earth. If only I could move.

What Absolutely Beautiful Ugliness I Am

August 29, 2014 / Tom

How could I feel melancholy?

I lay here, alone in my bed, the sounds of nature coming in through my open bedroom windows, wondering about such things.

My life is so beautiful. I have the love of three children, and the tender smiles and life-altering dramas of my little ones to grace my days. I have physically moved into a great space, with the harmonies of nature singing me to peace, and a cool breeze lightly filling the space where shortly I will fall to sleep.

I have beautiful people in my life. I have friends who mean so much to me even if I never quite find the right ways of expressing that great fortune. It isn’t that I don’t care. It’s just the opposite. I love them with all of my heart, and they are in many thoughts and deeds during my day. No, it’s not a lack of emotional love that keeps me silent.

Sometimes I just feel as if I need the distance. Not physically. Emotionally. I feel that I can love them best by not needing them, by not having them need me. I feel that I can do my thing in a way that allows them to do their thing, and that I best fly when not feeling constrained. See, I tend to crash into walls. And walls hurt.

I know, that the idea that pain is impending is an assumption, and making assumptions violates my own agreement. Yet at some point in life one must wonder where assumption-making ends and experience takes over. No, not every shard of glass is sharp, but experience tells me that if I walk on shards of glass I will end up cut and bleeding. I have the scars to prove it, and frankly I have no great desire to need more stitching.

More analogies and metaphors rush into my head like waves of a stormy sea. So far I’ve crashed into figurative walls and walked on ideological shards of glass while soaking in tsunami after tsunami of frothy, wind-swept ocean water. I’ve

I’ve hurt those I love the most, loved those who have hurt me terribly, and lived in the shadow of death.

heard echoes about my footsteps in the sand, how I was carried by some savior whose name I can’t remember out beyond some horizon I never seem to stand upon. I’ve cursed some saints and loved some sinners while not quite understanding the meaning to even my own questions. I’ve hated and loved, and pushed away some things I certainly should have held on to. I chuckle at the irony of it all.

I’ve choked on the very ocean water I love so much. I’ve become ill listening to my fears, and I’ve honored those fears as the very things that I’ve used as footholds on my trip to the summit of this life. I’ve been burnt by the fires that have warmed me, and I’ve grown blind in the very light I’ve used to light my way. I’ve hurt those I love the most, loved those who have hurt me terribly, and lived in the shadow of death. I’ve grown afraid of not knowing fear, and I’ve discovered that I find my truth when facing the monsters I’ve long held captive in the closets of mind. I’ve argued with others, but no more than I have argued with myself, with the voices implanted in me from birth often arguing with the voices implanted in me before birth. I’ve traveled enough in my own universe to know that there is no such thing as empty space, and I’ve heard the chorus sing through one, unified voice urging me onward even in the most wonderful moments of stillness.

Then there is that one voice I hear. The bastard macho fuck that won’t shut up until he gets his way. I know him well, and I fight him hard.

No, motherfucker, I won’t stop whining and I won’t stop complaining. I won’t “man up”, whatever the fuck that means. I won’t stop, and yes, I’ll let my panties get into a bunch. I’m sick of your rules too, and I plan to break every one of them until I am done here. In our time together you’ve kicked my ass and I’ve kicked yours to equal measure.

I’m not sure either of us has ever truly won anything in the process, although I’m pretty sure we’ve both loss plenty. We’re stupid that way.

Yet, I’ve met some beautiful people along the way. People who accept me even in the distance, people who feel close even when my heart is dancing among those stars neither of us can really see. I walk through the crowded room where I’ve put those memories and I smile broadly when saying “hello” to each of them. I remember the hugs, the kisses, the stories, the conversations. “I love you,” I say to each of them. They respond, “I know you do.”

I’ve seen some beautiful places while playing here. I’ve been fortunate to see so much in this journey, and to find the hidden caves of this place I could always call home if given the chance. I’ve seen flat land, my beloved high peaks, and the sandy ocean waters I now call home. I’ve gotten wet in viscous southern storms, kissed the snows of high altitude, and dove deep in the clearest seas I have ever bathed in. I’ve flown high above the clouds and felt the pressure of the deep, and I’ve floated on the surface of things when the people I love were floating there, too. I’ve had wealth, lost plenty, and felt the most loneliness a man could ever feel. I’ve been blessed with what my mind calls the “good” and the “bad”, and I’ve come through the day to see the night and then lived to see the sun rise again.

Yeah, I’m blessed. I’ve learned how to stand up on my own two feet without the crutches I’ve been told I’d need. I’ve learned that sometimes I have to crawl, even through the mud. I’ve learned that even the tone-deaf can find the right note from time to time. I’ve learned that I can make my kids laugh until their sides hurt. I’ve also learned that sometimes that is all we need; to laugh until our sides hurt. I’ve learned that thinking, acting, and being just like a kid is sometimes the cure for what ails me. I’ve learned that I love being alone because I love the company I keep there, and I’ve also learned that sometimes there is nothing like a great hug, a tender kiss, or that something more that highlights just how wonderful some people can be.

I guess when I look back I realize that the weatherman doesn’t always need to be right, and that sometimes it is just perfect to get soaked to the bone when science says the sun should be shining. Sometimes it is nice to be the only one on the beach because the experts have said it would be raining cats and dogs. Sometimes it is wonderful to just be wrong, to make that one mistake that sets your life on fire. It is especially wonderful when you realize that you already hold the tools necessary to put that fire out, yet you just sit and watch it burn for a while.

One day I will be done here. Then, I’ll be grateful for that one late night I spent writing about the idiosyncrasies of this experience.

I’ll be grateful for those wanderers who find value in these words I’ve thrown together, who seek out their own recipe even in the cookbooks found in other homes, on other shelves, written by other chefs, yet who invariably end up cooking the meal the way they want to with ingredients of their own choosing. I’ll be grateful for the loss that made room for so much gain, for the pain that exposed the pleasure, for the night that showed me the grandeur of each and every day.

After all, what is the good without the bad? It is, frankly, my horns that hold my halo in place. Or, perhaps, it is my halo that makes my horns just so fucking delicious. Hhhhhmmm, I’ll have to ponder that one for a while.

A Pure and Holy Selfishness (An Introduction)

November 13, 2013 / Tom

“Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

I wander, in this windswept world of ideas and thoughts, and wish I could escape it all. Yet, the wish is yet another idea, part of the mind, and it seems as if there is no liberation from the voices in my head.

My soul, my essence, my spirit, has apparently decided it wants to play in the land of the Great Known. Here, everything is judged, defined, and falls under certain rules we must all live by. Judgment is a part of the breath of our physical form, for even the very act of being non-judgmental is an act of judging itself. Beneath the conscious parts of ourselves lies an undercurrent of patterned behaviors, of instilled thoughts and ideas that can only be vetted by the amount of suffering they cause. It seems as if the world around me is devoted to the act of suffering to the point where even the practice of detachment is devoted to it. We suffer in the fact that we must become detached from those things that make us suffer, never realizing that it is the suffering itself that is an arrow pointing toward places of pure joy. Yes, Eve, it is possible to revisit the Garden of Eden, but first you need to wake up from your nightmare.

I am fortunate. I live in a society where, traditionally, being white and having a penis is an immediate advantage. Yet I feel distinctly disadvantaged as I observe the suffering around me. I see men forgetting who they are, struggling daily to act like their fathers and the men who taught their fathers. I see the glorious power of women being trampled on by the fear and insecurity of men taught such things by their ancestors. I see children being victimized by those who love them the most as the shackles of ideology and culture are placed upon them, and see the wonderful wings of a child’s imagination clipped as they are taught they cannot be who they want to be, and they cannot do what they find great joy in doing.

Of course I generalize here, describing the things I see pejoratively in the largest part of the whole I have lived my entire life in. My memory brings back a time when I was a conservative white male and saw the world through those eyes. My, how the victims I see now were the victimizers then. My, how those with the least were trampled under the weight of my idea that they deserved to be. I remember how the poor were unworthy of my help, and how my white, male self was being victimized by the poor simply because I was forced to help them.

Today, of course, I have evolved and see things much differently. I’ve been wealthy and have lived the life of a wealthy, white man. I’ve had a gorgeous wife, a big house, fancy cars and money to spare. Yet, like a short-necked giraffe I could not reach the sustenance I needed even as I stood on the summit of the American dream. The fruit I needed to live was on a much higher place than I could reach, so something needed to change.

So, as is the case for most of us, something much more powerful than I took over. I lost my financial wealth and was forced to downsize a life that had gotten out of control, a process that continues even now. I lost the gorgeous wife, the fancy cars, and now live in relative simplicity. The talents that helped me accumulate wealth are still there, but my focus is now on what brings me joy. I write, I think, I protest, I work and I live to love my children. My children are not an aside to my workday, my workday is an aside to them. I have discovered the love of people I would have never known in my “past life”. I’ve taken charity, I’ve received and I have learned. I’ve learned to let go. I’ve learned to tolerate. Most of all, I’ve learned to forgive and accept while always realizing that my choices are my power. There, I’ve learned much about responsibility that goes well beyond the type my ancestors taught me.

I may not die the millionaire I once sought to be, but I will die a wealthy man. I will die a liberated man no longer a slave to the story I once saw as “my truth”. Today, I see my truth in the fact that I am a perfectly fallible man, full of judgments and opinions and thoughts and ideas. I accept the fact that there are times when I will judge you harshly for your actions, but I also accept the fact that the gaps between such judgment and my forgiveness of it is narrowing quickly. Perhaps that is the role of judgment, to make us examine the gaps between the lower vibrations within us and the higher ones we seek to feel and how quickly those gaps close.

Right now I look to compassion and love for solutions that used to come in dollars and cents (no, not sense). I’m talking about real compassion and love, not the kind that says “I’m beating you with this stick because I love you,” or “starving people is compassion because it teaches them they need to fish.” Compassion, to me, is defined by what makes me smile in service of others, and love is defined by what raises those tiny little bumps on my skin. That’s all. It’s not about you as much as it is about me.

This is a new kind of selfishness that I define as a “pure and holy selfishness.” Here, my neck must lengthen not for the good of the herd, but so I can reach that fruit at the top of the tree that will keep me alive so that I may do some good for the herd. Here, my arms must widen so that I can hug you tighter. Here, I must be happy so that I can make you smile. It has to be about “me first” so that I can put YOU first. It’s a simple equation that goes something like this:

Ok, I’m just kidding. Actually, it is more like this:

I(x) = U(x)

If “x” is happy, well then I am happy and you are happy. But I have to be happy first. I can also make you upset if x= upset. See how easy that is?

I can even change your x simply by being a different x first and choosing to stay there. Yes, I now love math when it’s taught like this.

I can attest to the fact that this is not an easy road to travel. It’s rife with the pain and anguish many spend their time avoiding. I can understand the avoidance, and I know that when the Universe says it is time you will have no choice. It may not happen in this lifetime or even the next, but it will happen when your soul is ready to experience something new we profoundly call, “the truth.” One day you will wake up, swallow the red pill, and the pathway will change. Enjoy the journey, it is nothing but wonderful once the fog lifts and the sunlight warms your heart.

Peace.

It is Coming, It is Here.

July 16, 2013 / Tom

I am clearing space in my life. I’m not sure for what, but I am sure that for some reason I am making room in my life for something that is not currently present in it. So, I go dutifully about my business instinctively, much like a bird making a nest or a wolf creating a den, without knowing what is coming or when it will arrive.

I wonder if I’ve always done this and am now simply aware of it, or if this is something new. I wonder as I watch the fruit fall from the tree of my life if it soon will be my time to ripen. In the silence of my breath I wonder quietly if I am the fruit at all, or simply discovering that I am, instead, the roots of the tree deeply connected with the Earth around me. Am I feeling the Earth as part of me now in a way that has never been? Or am I realizing that I am the Earth; Her streams, Her mountains, Her valleys, Her oceans and Her deserts?

I feel the sky in my stillness. Am I no longer just the blossom, or the fruit, or the tree or its roots, or the Earth but also the sky? I feel myself as the breeze, the clouds, the raindrops, and the starry night sky. I feel lighting come from my fingertips, and heat from my eyes. I feel the Sun burning from my heart and the moon from my Soul.

I feel as if I am the Sun. Just being me, destructive and life-giving, loving to some and painful to others. All I can do is burn, in the way I was created, in the way I have become, and light the sky for some while burning the ground for others.

I sit here for a while, enjoying the warm light from within, the stars surrounding me, the emptiness engulfing me. In the green-hued mist of my stillness I feel it all, and I remember. Yes, I remember it all. From seed to sapling, from sapling to tree, from tree to fruit, from fruit to root, from root to Earth, from Earth to sky, from sky to Sun, from Sun to here. I feel the Universe blanketing me, surrounding me in full emptiness and beautiful aloneness. I can’t feel any separation here, only truth that I am all of it. The sounds of silence tempered by the beating drums of eternal heartbeats fill my Soul with the rhythm of life, and I realize I am.

Now I return as that entirety sinks into that tiny Being we call “me” once again. I realize now that I am no longer just rooted in the Earth, but in everything I am. I love the scorched ground on which my light has shined just as I find joy in the lush meadows that would not ever have existed without me. I walk with a smile in the cracked creek beds that have dried in my presence and swim happily in the oceans teeming with life just because I am. I can make no apologies for either, for you are the creator of your own judgments on the matter. I can only be and let everything fall where it may.

Yeah. I am instinctually creating space in my life. Something is coming. I don’t know what, and I don’t know when, but I can see clearly in my steadfast foundation that when it arrives I will be ready. I can’t make excuses, I can’t make words to describe what it is, but I feel it all around me as I bask in the light I was created to shine. I feel the puzzle fitting nicely into place. I feel the warmth and cold with equal love, and I feel the day and the night blanket me with equal care. It is coming. It is here.

I. Love. Just. Being. Me

June 5, 2013 / Tom

There was once an ideal so great it seemed indestructible to me. It stood tall in the landscape of my life, and dominated my horizons even in those moments when I felt small and cold in its shadow. I measured my worth in its presence, often wondering if I could ever stand as tall as the person who had dominated my life.

Ultimately, I failed her and her me. It is remarkable what one can discover when the velo di amore is lifted from the eyes and replaced with la nebbia di avidità.

That is often where we find ourselves when a great promise becomes a lost ideal. I found myself a rudderless vessel unsure of each footstep and lost in an abyss of yesterdays, tossing and turning in a vast sea of uncertainty often sailing against the winds of my own heart. The very moment when you watch everything you once cherished and idolized become consistent with everything you wanted to remove from your life is the very moment when the ideal is lost, and often the very moment when you realize your life is no longer the dream you once held dear.

I had no idea what I was in for in that holy instant when the rains came and the flood waters descended upon my world. The walls closed in on me, and my heart sank into the black depths of despair. Gone are those who said you were their son. Gone are those who only hours before had said they loved you. Gone are those who called you brother, and gone is the one who promised you an eternity.

Everything goes. Everything vanishes. Everything returns to the dust on which it was built. Your life ends, or so you think.

I felt as if I was helpless, alone, and that I’d been left hanging in a place of which I had never been, in a way in which I had never experienced. I cried tears so salty that they dried my body of its substance, and sobbed so loudly that I had stirred the gods from their deepest slumber. I searched for reasons, and although I was told why from her, I realized that nothing I had ever believed in was real. I soon lost my sense of who I was and what I was doing.

It is, however, a moment of great opportunity. Some of us seek distractions and support from religion, others seek the same in substances. I simply wanted to watch and to learn. I wanted to seek out the illusions I had constructed in my life and end them. I wanted to suffer in order to end my suffering. I wasn’t going to find my joy in a Bible, or in a bottle; no I would have to find my joy in a place few of us journey into deeply in a way I had never tried before.

That is what I had decided to do. Search. Watch. Learn. Most of all I worked hard at not interfering with the process. Soon I began to see patterns that failed to serve me at my highest place. I saw my consistent need to blame myself for the failures. I saw the mistakes I made in not standing up for who I was and what I wanted in my life. I saw the error of not loving myself, and in not simply accepting my fears, my desires, my needs and my loves as wonderful manifestations of who I am. I allowed myself to be suckered into living a lie; her lie, their lie, and my lie. I followed my heart that said “I love you” without testing the waters in her mind to see if they were too shallow, too cold, or simply not aged enough to dive into. I allowed myself to believe her lie, and soon began living it as if I owned it. Worse, I began admitting to it as if it had really happened.

I began seeing the pedestal I had constructed to place her and them on. That pedestal was a dangerous construct, it puts others in a place of being worshipped unjustly while placing me in a place of worshipping others unfairly. I failed to see my worth, my value and my sense of divinity. It was no wonder I couldn’t see them for who they were.

Mere dust. Nothing more.

There came a time, though, when the proverbial flood waters receded and my ark came to rest on a mountaintop. The rainbows appeared and I let my cargo go free to wander those places I had never seen. It is there that the veil itself begins to unravel, and it is there that the pedestals crumble and the dust blows away. I began to see less with my heart and more with my mind all the while beginning to see it all with something I once searched for but had never truly found.

That part I was always seeking was, truly, that part that was always seeking me.

I began to see that there is truly nothing more valuable to a human Being as the relation I have with my Self. I began to see the things I once held so dear as nothing more than illusions. I began to let go of those swirling dust-devils I once held as gods upon a pedestal and they, in turn, began revealing their truth. I was never what I was told I was, and I was never what I wanted to be. Because I wanted to be it so badly I believed it so easily. In the end the lie was revealed, as was the truth. There is only I, and I am beautiful in every way.

They are just people, and not always just people. They are having their own experience as they have every right, and I have no real need to interfere with that which does not interfere with me. I don’t need their love to feel love, and I don’t need their acceptance to feel accepted. That was a losing proposition that I started years ago, and the faux me could never live up to the ideal that the real me had never agreed to.

So, now all I promise is me…in the flesh and in the spirit without pretense and without some false sense of what you want. You will either love me or not, and I don’t pretend to be able to make that choice for you. I love me, sincerely and without hesitation, as a man with perfect faults and incredible potential. I love what I am doing right now; taking a whirlwind of feelings, translating them into words, and sharing them with anyone who has the fortune of reading them. I love exploring parts of me that were once oppressed and hidden living up to ideals not mine and am often ecstatic about what I find in the process. I love jumping out of proverbial airplanes and free-falling, often unsure if the parachute I packed will ever open even while being sure that I was the one who packed it and no one else. I love being alone when I want, in great company when I can, and in exploring the liberation I’ve found in the broken shackles that now lay littering the place where the pedestals once stood. I. Love. Just. Being. Me.

Period.

I love writing about what I want to write about without worrying about being censored by someone who doesn’t accept me and who will never defend what she can’t accept.

I love that I am no longer afraid.

I love that I can experience this life in the way I wish to experience it without caring about the judgment of others.

I love that I no longer see the “old me” as bad because I no longer see the old me at all.

I love that I can now live in the present moment whenever I choose, undaunted by the desires of others to resign me to the box they created years ago.

I love that I can explore my journey while looking in the rearview mirror, unafraid of the judgments some will place on my experience, and without needing their approval.

I love the fact that sometimes I am deeply saddened by missing those I once called “family” even as I am extremely happy in the knowing of the love I have for them.

I love my children and the relationship I am forging with them. I love that they love me, and that I am acutely aware of the awesome miracles that they create in so many moments, in so many ways.

I love the friends I have discovered, both new and old alike. I love seeing the world with them, and in having our experiences together when the present themselves.

I love that I can be alone for days without worry and without despair.

I. Love. Just. Being. Me

Oh yeah, I said that already. Oh well, I hope to say it many more times before my time here is through. After all, there is no better proof that I love myself then in my ability to love you even if I can’t be “with” you. I love the fucking rain. I love the humidity. I love the cool breeze now lightly caressing my back through my open sliding-glass door. I love my cat who is now rubbing her body on my leg. I love the other one who is watching to see if I’ll pet his sister (they are competitive that way).

I love the fact that I am pro-peace and not anti-war. I love the fact that my oldest wants me to teach her meditation. I love the fact that I love.

And, of course, I. Love. Just. Being. Me.

As you can see, the experience of suffering can be a great friend. Losing something you love can also be a wonderful experience. Seeing what others are doing while also seeing who they are can be a wonderful experience. You soon see that they are just like you, having an experience, and even if you don’t like how you feel in what they are doing you can always find love for them because they are just like you. Even if they pretend to be better.

Take care of yourself and let them go. Those who don’t serve your purpose will drop away like rotting fruit from the tree to serve another purpose. Remember, that fruit is only rotting to you, to others that fruit will be a deserved feast, a welcome meal.

In the end what will only be real is the love you have for you. In the end, the only reality you will have is that you are a wonderful part of the Universe designed to manifest Its beauty. Adore yourself, and become your best friend.

Peace.

There is No Rainbow Without the Rain

August 24, 2011 / tomgrasso

The winds subside. The lightning and thunder move on. The clouds part revealing an intense sunlight as you step into its embrace.

Through the destruction left behind you see the Love that remains. Trees stand proudly in their survival as remnants of those left fractured and splintered by the storm lose their grip. You are faced with a choice. Do you focus on the wounded or on the whole? Your choice is yours to make freely. Neither is wrong, and both are expressions of a deep and abiding compassion.

You move freely in the open air. With arms outstretched you embrace the sun. The invigorating smell of air cleansed by nature fills your lungs as you survey the departing clouds in the distance. You see your family and neighbors actively moving about. Some are cleaning up, some are helping others, some are simply staring in disbelief. You begin to walk over to do your part, whatever “your part” means.

You see the grass around you. It seems to look a bit greener than it did yesterday, but perhaps you are just seeing it a bit clearer today. Still, nature all around looks more alive to you. The birds are singing more clearly, the trees look more alive, and the breeze seems to caress your face more gently than it had before. Is this your own perception or is it a reality?

You smile in the realization that there is no difference.

The sky seems bluer today. As you stare into what is not truly blue, it dawns on you that “this too shall pass”. This wonderfully blue, not-truly-blue sky will again became enraged by the clouds it nurses to life. The winds will blow and the rains shall pour. Lightning will strike and thunder will roll. Yet, you sit still observing this storm as you had the blue skies that gave it life. “This too shall pass.”

A wave of peace flows over your Entirety. You are content in the mud that now adorns your feet, and in the sweat that now hugs your brow. You wish you could share this with the others who are busily scurrying around in one dramatic form or another. “STOP!”, you want to say with authority. “Appreciate the moment and rejoice in it!”

You blink and awaken to the moment. You don’t cater to the voice that wishes to shout. You go about your business as you cater to the wave that has given you sight. You smile in peace and with joy in the realization of this moment. A friend looks at you and shouts, “what are you smiling about? There’s nothing to smile about here!”

“See that?” you say as you point to a fully-formed rainbow in the distance. “I love rainbows, and without the rain there would be no rainbows.”

Peace.

The Parable of the Moving Ball

August 11, 2011 / tomgrasso

“There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning. “ ~James Dean

There’s a certain magic in that quote. It tells an entire story in two sentences. Even those few we cherish as “great” are only so because we allow a certain perspective to dictate to us who and what they are. Change your perspective and they cease to become “great”. George Washington and Gandhi were not “great” people to the British of their time. Mother Theresa was not “great” to the starving hordes in Northern Africa. Jesus was not “great” to the Sanhedrin or the Romans. Republicans are not great to Democrats and vice versa. It simply is a matter of how you choose to see something.

I often use the Hawking example of the “ping pong ball on a train” applied to my spiritual practice to understand perspective (a view by which we cast all judgment) so that I can extrapolate the effects of perspective, conditioning and attachment on our reality. Here’s

My Sacral Chakra Ball...(Source: http://www.assistedseniorliving.net/)

this analogy in all of its glory:

There is a ping pong ball sitting on a table on a train in a way that causes it to sit perfectly still. The train, however, is moving at 65 miles per hour.

To some people conditioned to be ON the train, the ball is not moving, never moves, and remains perfectly still.

To others conditioned to be on the side of the tracks, the ball is moving at 65 mph as it whizzes by.

Each has its own perspective because of its own conditioning. The ball is still a ball, but when we add ideas of conditioning to it we create a “moving ball” or a “ball sitting still”. If each is unwilling to waver from its perspective we have the conditions for war, violence or, at the very least, anger and fear.

Yet, each is right in their observation. Where they make a fundamental mistake is when they attach themselves to their idea of what they see or have learned and not what is REAL. The reality of this example is that there is a ball and an Observer, plain and simple. If they could agree that there is a ball then the BELIEF about the ball becomes MEANINGLESS! After all, all one has to do to change the way you see the ball is to change the view. (Change the world by changing the way you see the world.)

They would not have to add phrases from a book (in this case any religious text) that

Who is doing wrong here in the picture and why?

proves they are right and the other is wrong. They would not have to create “wickedness” in others who see things differently. They could simply “allow” the description by simply not needing one in the first place. (Those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know.)

In this analogy, no one has actually seen the ball. These people have READ about the ball and what it is doing. For the purposes of this post, the book says that the ball is moving.

Now because these people (we will call them Xtians) have never seen the ball but only have a book to rely on describing what the ball is doing (or was doing), they have created “faith” to ensure that the countless generations of conditioning that taught about the moving ball remains intact. They can’t prove the ball is moving, or that the ball even exists, yet this faith allows them to not only believe in the ball and what it is doing, but also condemn those who either don’t believe in the ball’s existence or have different conditioned ideas about what the ball is (or was) doing. After all, their parents taught them it was moving because they themselves were handed down the countless generations of conditioning that have gone into creating this “faith”.

In this example, the Xtians not only have created an idea of right and wrong, but are using someone else’s idea to do so. They are taking someone else’s experience or inspiration and making it necessary for everyone to have it. It isn’t real, it’s an imagined idea of an experience someone else had thousands of years earlier MADE real in order to support their own conditioned thoughts.

They could point to verses in that book that allowed for the conclusion that “I am right, you are wrong, the ball is moving,” and “I will be saved and you won’t be because I believe the ball is moving”. I mean something supreme told them that the ball was moving (or is), right? The book said that anyone who said the ball was still was a false prophet!!! BEWARE but remain hopeful because a savior is coming to prove to everyone that the ball was, in fact, MOVING.

The faith in the book itself would keep you from experiencing the TRUTH about the ball. You would not be able to experience the ball as still because, frankly, you could not get out of your box long enough to have the experience. So, you could not say for sure if the ball was moving or not, you’d just have to have faith that it was. Experience would be secondary to the conditioning and the belief in you it created.

Silly, huh? When you achieve a level of consciousness that allows you to experience the ball as moving and still, either idea becomes equally meaningless and equally valid. Ultimately though, it is not as important as the experience itself. You die when you stop having the experience of existing, and strict adherence to any religion, dogma or belief (religious or otherwise) is a death experienced by those who have forgotten their own breath. Once we start honoring experience as the basis for our purpose, we not only live for the experience but also find a deep desire to let go or it in order to see the sunrise as if for the very first time. Experience is dynamic and ever-changing, religion is not.

The New Experience of Religion (Source: http://www.canyonridge.org)

There is MUCH value in religion. It removes people from horrible darkness and debilitating despair as well as providing the impetus for humans to come to a deeper understanding of who we are. However, religion seems to be the “puberty of spirituality”, that stage of development that allows us to learn about ourselves in tremendously unique ways while still only being one stage of many. Unfortunately, it has been our history that we stop developing at this pubescent stage. We find comfort in religion, particularly if our parents are the ones who indoctrinated us into it or if it has pulled us out of some deep abyss, and remain in this stage rather than mature beyond it.

Religion is nothing more than an experience. You have it, and then you should let it go. Or else you begin to have the experience of stagnation as you live like a veal-calf in a box. You soon forget how to walk, and become so soft as to be desired by wolves. It would be like finding comfort on the seat of a roller coaster and never getting off to experience the rest of the rides.

Now, before you decide that I am judging religion while demonizing judgment let me just suggest to you that I am offering a unique way to describe my experience of religion not only from the inside looking out but from the outside looking in. I am not JUDGING, I am DESCRIBING. I am describing the ball while I was standing by the tracks and now as I stand on the train. I am not saying I am right to you, I am simply describing what I have experienced which, of course, makes me right to me.

In my experience, religion gave me a grounded understanding of my society’s morality, or at least a rosy picture of it. It also seemed to create a lot of society’s inner turmoil. Because of that, it remained for me just a step toward higher levels of consciousness. There was no comfort in the religious stage, only questions that would force me upward and beyond the confines of a book that taught me that ball was moving. I needed to experience it, to know it, to feel it and to understand it and then fortunate was able to let it go. In doing so, I stepped out of its confines into an experience that hasn’t stopped pushing me into deeper and more meaningful levels of understanding. Religion was a gift for me, it got me to a point where I wanted something it could not offer. It has also been a curse because it has cost me friendships and countless hours of guilt and fear as I began growing away from it.

So when someone says to me “you are wrong, the ball is moving” while unfriending me on Facebook because of what I see (or how I describe what I see), I can simply say “yeah, I saw that once too and this is what I saw once I stepped onto the train.” I now focus only on the ball, and keep my “eyes” firmly fixed on it as I let go of all the ideas I have created about what it is, what it does and how it does it. I simply experience the entirety of the ball, and have found something very powerful in this focus.

The ball does not exist. But that’s for another story…