01

Take it standing up
and ask them if that's
the best they got.

You can do it with the right perspective,
attitude,
frame of mind. 

Perspective is a super power,
transforming everything
and transforming us to deal appropriately
with everything.

There is nothing that the right perspective
can't improve.

Step into your life
with the right perspective,
and watch things fall right into place
around that.

It is amazing what perspective can do.

But don't take my word for it.
Pull out your own perspective
and shine that baby up.
Put the "Nothing can happen to me
that I can't improve
by the way I think about it" to it,
and take it around the block
a time or two.
And then take it on the road.
See what happens.
You'll be amazed.

–0–

02

Alan Watts asked Joseph Campbell,
"Joe, What form does your yoga take?"
Campbell replied,
"I underline passages."

Yoga is looking/seeing.

What form does YOUR yoga take?

I also underline passages,
and look out the window,
and take photographs,
and mull things over,
and ask the questions
that beg to be asked,
and say the things
that cry out to be said,
and do the things 
that need to be done--
when, where and how 
they need to be done--
in each situation as it arises,
no matter what,
with nothing it it for me
beyond the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it.

And seeing arises of its on accord
in its own time,
in its own way.

Mixed motives kill seeing.
You cannot be looking to see
and looking for what is in it for you.
There may be a monetary reward in seeing,
but it is beside the point,
a secondary consideration.

I occasionally sell a photograph.
I do not take a picture
with marketing it in mind.

If you are looking for the wrong thing,
you will not see what is there.

Columbus was looking for India,
spices and cities of gold,
fountains of youth,
and the northwest passage,
and never appreciated what he found.

If you want to see,
you have to look with innocence,
integrity,
sincerity,
spontaneity
from the heart,
to see what is there.

And be enjoying the search.

–0–

03

The Dalai Lama said, on the Chinese occupation of Tibet,

“If, in any situation, there is no solution, 
there is no point in being anxious. 
If the forces at work 
have their own momentum, 
and what’s going on now 
is the product of what went before, 
and if this generation is not in control 
of all those forces, 
then this process will continue.”

He is saying we have to know what we can do
and what we cannot do,
what can be done
and what cannot be done.

He is saying we cannot will
what cannot be willed.

And that some things 
have to play themselves out
over time.

Everything plays itself out over time.

The pendulum swings
according to its own pleasure.
And when we have done all we can do,
we have to wait for the tide to turn.

The tide always turns
in its own time.

–0–

01

The tools at our disposal are
our awareness,
our original nature,
our innate virtues,
innocence,
integrity,
sincerity,
spontaneity,
emptiness,
stillness,
silence,
playfulness,
pace
and timing.

Everything else falls into place around,
and flows from,
these things.

Our practice is learning to live
in ways that serve and share them,
moment to moment
in each situation as it arises.

If I left something out,
add it in!

–0–

02

The Wasteland is where people are unclear
about what is important,
and do not know what needs to be done,
or where, when and how it needs to be done--
and don't care about knowing/doing these things.

In The Wasteland,
one thing is as good as another,
one time is the same as another,
and it does not matter how we live,
as long as we are happy
and doing what we want to do.

In The Wasteland,
we are happy to do what we are told to do
if it pays well
and enables us to do what we want to do
with the rest of our life.

In The Wasteland,
everything is about money,
and people will do whatever it takes
to have all the money they want,
and do whatever they want to do with it.

The polar opposite of The Wasteland
is Eden where people live to be who they are
and do what needs to be done--
what needs them to do it--
when, where and how it needs to be done,
whether they want to or not.

The Return to Eden is what the rest of our life
is to be about.

It is a simple matter of knowing what is important
and doing what needs to be done,
when, where and how it needs to be done,
in each situation as it arises
throughout the time left for living.

We are never more than a slight perspective shift 
away from The Wasteland to Eden.
The trip from one to the other
is only a matter of turning the light around
and entering through the gateless gate
"to the land of gentle breezes
where the peaceful waters flow"
(Anne Murry, "Snowbird").

–0–

03

It matters how we live.
We have no business living
as though it does not matter
how we live.

It matters how we live.

We should be doing everything we can
to align ourselves with the life
we need to be living--
because it is the life that needs us to live it,
and because it is the life we were born to live.
And we do not know anything about it.

Which can be solely attributed to 
bad parenting and bad preaching
since the beginning of parenting
and preaching.

With good parenting and good preaching
we would be in the center of our life's will for us,
and aligned with the Tao of being,
the Tao of living,
and the Tao of here/now,
of time and place.

"Tao" is pronounced "Dow,"
and is a Chinese word meaning "The Way,"
or "The Path."

It is The Way Things Need To Be.
It is The Path To Right Living And Right Being.

The catch with The Way
is that it cannot be told, said, explained, defined.
It can only be known.
It can only be experienced.

How do we know/experience
what cannot be communicated?
The right kind of emptiness,
the right kind of stillness,
the right kind of silence.

The right kind of emptiness
is the emptiness between breaths,
where there is nothing--
no thinking, no feeling, no emotions,
no regret, no desire--not even for emptiness,
no fear... Nothing.

The right kind of stillness 
can be maintained while moving around.
We can walk with the right kind of stillness,
dance,
swim...

The right kind of silence can be loud.
We can play the drums.
We can sing.
We can talk out loud...
and be completely at one 
with the silence of here/now.

In the emptiness, stillness, silence,
we wait,
listening,
looking,
watching
for that which arises unbidden,
unthought,
spontaneously,
naturally,
from the emptiness, stillness, silence
to call us,
compel us,
urge us
to realization, 
awareness,
action.

This is The Way.
This is The Path.
This is The Tao at work in our life,
within our own being.

It will lead us to right seeing,
right hearing,
right knowing,
right doing,
right being,
right living.

And place us in the center
of a life that matters. 

–0–

01

Joseph Campbell had the right kind of parents. 
I'm envious.
With the right kind of parents
children have an immediate advantage
that others their age can never overtake.

Just try getting over having had 
the wrong kind of parents!
And mine were no worse than 90%
of the parents in their age group.

Gives you an idea of what the kids
in my age group had to deal with!
Compensating for the wrong kind of parents
is time consuming
and fraught with disaster.

We all need another go at it
with better parents.

On the other hand,
I was a better father
than my father was,
so, who's to say 
what kind of father I would have been
with a better father?

I don't know,
but I would love to find out
with another chance.
I'm going straight to the do-over line in heaven.
Or hell.

I suppose it will be a longer line in hell.

–0–

02

"Columbus took a chance," as the old saying goes.
It's nothing but chance all the way down.
We can reduce our chances,
but we cannot eliminate them,
and live with everything on the line every day.

Being at peace with this
is simply a matter of
living consciously with everything on the line every day.

Why hold anything back?
Risk it all in being true to yourself!
We lose validity by trying to be safe and secure,
and cover our bases 
by keeping the right people happy.

Sacrificing our own integrity
to keep the right people happy
is not being safe and secure.

Jesus said what needed to be said,
did what needed to be done,
and left himself open to the wrath of the authorities.
In guarding his own integrity,
Jesus left himself open to the opposition 
of "the right people."
And paid the price.

He would have paid a different price
doing it the other way.

What price are we going to pay?

Our answer to that question tells the tale.
The tale we are telling
by the way we live our life.

There are four words to honor,
cherish, implement in the way we live:
Innocence.
Integrity.
Sincerity.
Spontaneity.

Stopping to think about it.
To weigh our chances.
To reduce our risks.
To cover our bases with the right people
brings calculation,
assessment
and analysis into play,
and innocence,
integrity,
sincerity
and spontaneity
are replaced with being smart
and crafty.

Jesus would be alive today
if he had done it that way.

And Columbus would have never sailed.

–0–

03

What needs to be done in a situation
may have nothing to do 
with what should (ought to) be done.
Must trumps should/ought.

And so it is said,
"Principles fly in the face of necessity!"

The right thing to do
leaves morality and ethics
debating the implications and consequences,
and acts in the moment
anyway, nevertheless, even so.

Being true to ourselves
in doing what the situation calls for
is taking the chance 
of being right 
about what the situation calls for.

There is no being sure for certain
that we know what we are doing.
We trust ourselves
with everything on the line
and do what we say needs doing,
and wait for time to tell
if we were right or wrong.

This is called
having the courage of our own convictions
and acting out of our own sense
of what needs to happen--
and doing it again
with regard to the outcome of our action.

Step by step all the way.
This is the way.

–0–

01

Against Orthodoxy! In Praise of Heresy!

G.K. Chesterson said, 
"When Jones follows his Inner Light,
Jones follows Jones."

Of course.
As with everybody who follows anything.
Ask someone why they follow whom they follow.
Let's say their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And they will give you the spiel implanted by Orthodoxy,
"Blah, Blah, Blah."

Ask them who says it is so,
and they will give you a long list
of saints and prophets and disciples and 
Blah, Blah, Blah."

Ask them who says that what all these people say
is so,
and they will give you another impressive list
of preachers and lay people who declare it to be so.

Ask them who says that what all of these witnesses
and believers say is so,
and they may give you scriptural proof that what
they say is so is so.

Ask them who says what the proofs say is so is so,
and follow this out to the end of the line,
asking of everyone they put forth as authorities
who know it to be so,
how they, themselves, know it is so,
and they will say they take it on faith.
Ask them how they know the validity of what they take on faith,
and they will say, "I know! I know in my heart it is so!"

When Jones says he follows his heart,
Jones follows Jones.

Allowing Jones to be everyone,
which Jones is in this regard,
it is clear that everyone is the authority
of their own declaration of what is authoritative.

We are the authority
by which we determine
what has authority for us.
WE are the one!

We observe and revere no revealed truth
that we do not declare to be worthy
of our observance and reverence. 

We are the sole authority
by which we live our life.
What we say is so is what we say is so.

Which, of course, is the very
heart and ground of heresy.

God is the God we declare to be God.
Who says that God is worthy to be served as God?
The people who serve the God they declare to be God!

We are self-led,
self-guided,
self-directed,
self-assured...

No matter what we say
about who said so,
we are the ones who say so.

Jones always follows his Inner Light.
Jones has no choice but to do so.

–0–

02

We cannot help how we see things.
We cannot un-see the way we see things.
We cannot be talked out of or into
the way we see things,
not directly, intentionally.
But we can be influenced, 
if not controlled,
to see things the way we do.

What this amounts to is 
that we need to stop putting
so much stock in the way we see things.

It is just the way we see things,
and we have to realize that
before we take how we see things 
with such seriousness
that we put our lives,
or the lives of others,
at risk because of how we see.

It is irresponsible 
to allow the way we see things
to have an impact on 
how we treat ourselves
and one another.

It is only how we see things.
Do not take it seriously!
It has no necessary connection
with how things actually are.

–0–

01

"Tat Tvam Asi" is Sanskrit for "Thou Art That,"
meaning the individual is the Absolute,
or, as the Buddhists say,
"All is Buddha-mind."

It takes but a shift in perspective 
to see that it is so.
That shift in perspective
is known as "Enlightenment,"
or, "Awakening."

As Jesus would say, "The Father and I are one!"

And, speaking of his disciples,
and, by way of implication, 
of all of us as well, he prayed,
"That they all may be one--
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 
that they also may be one in us,
And the glory which thou gave me 
I have given them; 
that they may be one, 
even as we are one,
I in them, and thou in me, 
that they may be made perfect as one..."
(John 17:21-23).

Oneness with Christ and with God
was not given any press at all 
in the church that came to be,
but it was all the rage 
in Gnostic Christianity,
which became heresy and blasphemy
in the church that became The Church,
which extinguished Gnosticism as best it could,
and inserted itself between believers
and their God,
making sure they understood they were not God,
and if it weren't for the many kindnesses
of the Church,
they would all burn in hell for sure.

But Jesus said, "Thou Art That!"
And, leaves it up to us
to be who we are, 
or not.

If we take up the claim to be one with God,
we have to take up the work
of living in ways that make us
as close to God as some people get.

The work is there to be done
by all who would do it.
As Jesus said,
"The harvest is plentiful,
but the laborers are few."

Leaving God to wonder,
"Is you is,
or is you ain't,
my constituency?"

–0–

02

There is no vocabulary 
for saying what needs to be said,
no words for telling
what needs to be known.

We process our experience
by coming to terms with how things are
and understanding things 
that cannot be told
by living it--
not by thinking it.

Instinct and intuition are understanding.
Connecting dots.
Drawing pictures.
Taking photographs.
Saying, "This is it!"
"Thou Art That!"

Knowing how to cook 
by cooking
and not by reading recipe books.

Knowing how to dance
by dancing
and not by hearing someone
tell us how to dance.

Swimming works by getting wet.
Not by thinking about it.
Bicycle riding
and roller skating...

It is all about knowing without words.

Living is that way.

"Listen to me when I say,
'DON'T LISTEN TO ME!'"
Listen to what knows within,
to what you know just by knowing it.

Hinduism and Buddhism
spend a lot of time talking 
about non-duality.
The Buddha brought this with him
from Hinduism into Buddhism
(I can't figure out what it was
about Hinduism he did not like).

Makes me crazy.
Duality is essential to consciousness.
We can say "Thou Art That!"
because "Thou Quite Clearly Art Not That!"
If "Thou Wert That!"
no one would have to tell you that.
It would go without saying.
It would be quite obvious.
So much so,
no one would think
of making a religion out of it.

Duality is the ground of consciousness
because "This Is Not That"
and therefore can be distinguished from that,
and discerned by virtue of its not-that-ness.

If all were one,
it would be invisible to us
because it would all merge into non-existence.
Which is what happens at death.
We merge back into the oneness
from which we came
and disappear.

Poof! What happened to Jim.
He was just here a moment ago,
and here is his body,
but Jim is not there.
Where is Jim?

Jim dissolved/merged back into
the consciousness
from which he came.

How does consciousness materialize
and then de-materialize?

Life is death.
Death is life.
Loss is gain.
Gain is loss.

Paradox.
Contradiction.
Duality.
Reality--or illusion of reality?

Is reality physical or invisible?
Actual or intangible?
Both at different points 
in the cycle of perception.

Now you see me,
now you don't.
Where am I when you don't see me?
Where is the light 
when you switch it off?
Is it the same light
when you switch it on?

What distinguishes me from you?
Does it matter?
Is it important?
Are we more alike
than we are different?

If death erases the differences,
and we are all one (again),
what became of Jim is not a thing,
because Jim's loss is a drop
falling back into the sea.

He was a drop for a while,
and what a great drop he was,
and now he is not a drop any longer.

And you can't spend a lot of time
in mourning
because you are a drop, too!
Sea?

–0–

03

We live toward our death.
How do we live with death at the end of our life?
How does our death impact the way we live?
What do we mean by the life we live
in light of the fact that we die?
How does dying shape our living?
How can something as inevitable as death
be tragic?
Be a tragedy?
Can it also be comic?
Can death--our death--be a comedy?
What separates tragedy from comedy?

Death is "grave and constant,"
to use James Joyce's term.
And how/why we die determines
if our death is tragic or comic,
or a relief and a burden lifted.

What should we aim for?
How/why should we die?
How should we go about living
in order to die a death
we can be proud of?

Christ was living in the service
of an idea--
an idea of how life should be lived--
that killed him.
And, in light of his death, 
we say, "Of course! It is meet and right
that he died this way!
He should not have died any other way!"

And here, the tragic borders on the comic,
and it is ironic that Dante titled his work
on the process of salvation,
"The Divine Comedy"--
not that it is funny,
but that it is proper and fitting
that it should happen as it does--
and our own salvation hinges 
upon our living in a way 
that deserves our death,
instead of being just a natural way
of coming to the end of our days,
not that we will be killed 
because of what we are doing,
but because what we are doing
is the cause of our living and our dying.
We live and die to do what we are doing.
It is our life
and it will be the death of us.

Living like that carries us joyfully
to our death.
And our life becomes a work of art,
not just something we do to pass the time
between birth and death,
but an intention,
a deliberate, joyful, expression
of who we are,
of our original nature
and the innate virtues 
that are ours to serve and to share.

In that is the tragedy and the comedy
of being who we are,
with joy and glee and grim determination
that nothing shall stop the expression
of what we have come to serve 
and express!

–0–

01

Without motives,
drives,
plans,
agendas,
expectations
and opinions, 
we are free to just be where we are,
seeing/hearing what's what
and what is called for,
and doing what needs to be done
with the gifts/daemon/shtick
of our original nature
and innate virtues,
when, where and how it needs to be done,
for the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it,
in each situation as it arises,
no matter what,
all our life long.

If you can come up with a better
approach to your life and living it,
by all means, go for it!

–0–

02

With the complete loss of everything,
we are left with here/now
and what needs to be done,
when, where and how it needs to be done
with our original nature
and innate virtues.

Where we are needed
and the opportunities to provide it
will remain with us 
as long as we can rise and meet the day.

Being and doing what is called for here/now
is the task that remains viable
for us all
no matter what
all our life long.

As long as there is something 
that needs to be done,
we have something to do.

"And when the heaving sea
has shaken my raft to pieces,
then I will swim!"
(Odysseus in the Odyssey).

–0–

03

It is amazing what occurs to us
just sitting,
empty,
still,
silent,
waiting,
watching,
disengaged,
interested,
alert,
aware...

My hunch is that we don't
spend enough time
in that way.

We have to validate our existence,
you know.
Achieve.
Accomplish.
Acquire.
Amass.
Have something to show for
our unending effort
in the service of success
and prosperity.

We can't just sit around
and let life pass us by.

We have to be going places,
getting things done,
proving our worth.

Just sitting
is impossible to justify.

I recommend that you just sit
as often as possible
every day.

–0–