Functional Solutions for Living

Greetings everyone and happy belated New Year. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve done any regular posting to be sure.  Life wanted my attention elsewhere and I have learned a long time ago to not argue with life.  I definitely question the things of life but arguing with Life itself, not so much!

Anyway, I’m back in action! Currently, I am traveling and enjoying sunny Arizona for the rest of the month, then it is off to South Florida to finish the winter and explore some new and exciting opportunities.  

It’s definitely been an amazing, unpredictable and fruitful year.  Many strange, humbling and edifying things have happened.

In the personal realm, a chronic health problem that I thought was in remission decided to stop by for a visit; a promising business partnership dissolved; severe physical injury occurred; a “sound” financial investment shockingly collapsed into the void; a young family member suddenly and tragically passed on; the seemingly happy and indestructible marriage of one of my favorite couples, without warning, ended in divorce. I could continue but the point I am making has nothing to do with a tallying of 2009′s “good” or “bad” experiences.

However just as quickly, if not simultaneously, wonderful things happened…

New opportunities arose in place of lost opportunities; helping hands were extended; eyes, ears and hearts were opened; smiles were exchanged; children were born; new friendships were grown while old friendships were rekindled; goals, victories and milestones were achieved; there was singing, dancing, geese; and (picture me with a warm relaxed feeling in my body and a rather large smile of my face) true love stopped by to say hello and decided to stay.

Added up, these are the things of life. Suzuki Roshi once called it, “Things as It is.” Some are beautiful and amazing. Some are dark and painful. Some are minor inconveniences and some are major pains in the ass. Some are wanted and some are not. All are, whether we understand or not, necessary!  

If I lost you on that one, “Things as It is”, is the understanding that life is one whole being that includes everything, and that the many things are found in one whole being.

We can cling and resist all we want (which is the root of most suffering) but the universe will continue “universe-ing” and life will continue “life-ing.” Everything is ephemeral…we can all agree on that.

I choose to see it as a beautiful and mysterious dance. I find peace and excitement in letting go and resting in the mystery of it all, in the not-knowing. You may choose to see it differently and that is definitely okay.

We are all intimately familiar with the obvious discomforts of not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want. However, there is also a more subtle discomfort that comes with getting what we do want and then experiencing its dissolution.

But if it helps, remember that when things seem painful, difficult, confusing or downright insane and absurd, “this too shall pass.”

It is also useful to remember to practice gratitude and humility when we do get what we want or when things are going well and we are happy because, “all good things must come to an end.”

I am sure this new year will bring much of the same: victories and defeats; ups and downs; birth and death; success and failure; love and love lost…

An important thing for us to remember in this new year is to avoid, as best we can, resisting and fighting the inevitable changes and flux that life brings (and the opportunities for growth they offer when we practice letting go and making room for the new) as well as not clinging too tightly to the people, situations or the things we love.

William Blake summed up this second point beautifully when he wrote:

He who binds himself to a Joy,
Does the winged life destroy;
He who kisses the Joy as it flies,
Lives in Eternities sunrise.

I think Mr. Blake’s words are a good note to end on.

So, let’s all lessen our defenses, loosen our grips, focus on what we want, love well and make it the best year ever!

Until next time…

Kind Regards,
A

Today’s post will be short and sweet!

It is about letting go…

If a dog has a stick in its mouth and you have a treat for it, it has to drop the stick to receive the treat.

Now, most dogs will probably get a little confused at first, but they will also quickly figure out that they must drop the stick to receive the treat.

Most humans struggle their whole lives before they figure this one out!

Many never do…

If we want to receive what life has to offer us in this moment, we have to let go of all prior moments, real or imagined.

We have to let go of our identities, our expectations, our attachments to our desires.

We also have to let go of the non-existent, imagined futures that we often inadvertently distract, neglect or abuse ourselves with.

We have to let go of everything…

For some this seems like an overwhelming task.

In reality, it is the simplest thing in the world but we usually don’t do so well with simple!

So, to make it appear and feel more manageable, we practice letting go in many small moments over and over again.

If you do this, you will experience your life in a radically different way.

You will be free from the bullshit imaginings of the ego, of the conditioned mind and all the suffering and feelings of separateness that come with that powerful, sometimes necessary but all too often silly and maddening bundle.

You will be able to make clearer decisions and choose action over drowning in information.

You will be able to receive and appreciate your life.

And after a while you just may realize that you are life itself…

Drop the stick and receive your life!

Drop the stick and receive yourself!

If that is too much, then just drop the stick and see what happens.

If a dog can do it…

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

Hey everyone!

Once again, I am off on another out of town adventure and am strapped for time.

Before I hit the road, I wanted to share this story by Allen Watts.

It is a story about reality, where the universe came from and what it is all about.  It is not scientific or literal so just chill out and enjoy:

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can’t have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn’t be able to know, what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.

In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn’t, for if the world went on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It comes and it goes. Now you see it; now you don’t. So because it doesn’t get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It’s like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It’s also like the game of hide and seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.

Of course, you must remember that God isn’t shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside their skins. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn’t any outside of him, like a Mobius strip. The inside and outside of God are the same. And although I have been talking about God as “he” and not “she,” God isn’t a man or a woman. I didn’t say “it” because we usually say “it” for things that aren’t alive.

God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn’t really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It’s the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and so it goes with the world…

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

This past weekend, a few friends and I had the honor and privilege of spending time with Tibetan lama, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche.

To say it was surreal is an understatement…

One minute we were in the car talking about life, women, our children, our finances and the next we were sitting in a farm house with Rinpoche and his interpreter.

I am not at liberty to reveal specifics, but many questions were asked.

Some were very ordinary and some were very deep…

The answers were always very simple!

One thing that struck me over the weekend was the amount of confusion in peoples minds about meditation and enlightenment.

I would like to talk about the latter.

I think that many people are under the assumption that when one reaches enlightenment, all of their personality flaws and imperfections just drop away.

That is not the case…

Although we’d like to believe there is a path that is impervious to our own proclivities for self-deception, self-sabotage and our personal versions of delusion and ignorance, there is not.

From my experience, I have seen that most people approach things like meditation and other spiritual practices with a certain naiveté.

They seem to think that there is a way to practice that is impervious to their defenses, unconscious programming, beliefs and emotional patterns.

I am here to say there is not…

We have certain ways of being, a specific personal history and our own character to reckon with.

There is no way around it…

What I have found is that the more awake I become and the more “enlightened” I become, the more my shortcomings become painfully evident to me.

That may sound discouraging to some but believe me it is not…

It is a gift!

With this seeing comes the ability, the determination and the will to do something about our condition.

The understanding comes first but the change in behavior takes time.

Habituality is deeply, deeply rooted!

Much of what we are up against is emotional in nature. If we are to change our behavior, we first must do the work to neutralize our negative emotional charges.

Usually, much of this work takes place off of the cushion and uses means that are not specific to our practice as an adjunct.

More on this in my next post.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A