Going Deeper

I'm not sure if it is because I read to much, or it's my imagination, or maybe it is God pushing. But, here we go again. I am being "encouraged" to go deeper into some kind of awareness. No, encouraged isn't strong enough. I'm definitely being pushed, as in not having a choice. I'd like to yell back, "can you just leave me alone and let me do what I'm doing." But, no, now I have to be more aware. Aware of what?

I envy people who can get up in the morning, wash up, eat a normal breakfast, go to work, come home at night, have dinner, watch a little TV, and go to bed without ever having to think about anything any deeper than, "Would you like paper or plastic?" For some idiotic reason, ever since my first year in college, having that Quaker English professor who insisted on us asking questions about our values, the meaning of life, etc., I have had to dig deep into whatever it is that lies underneath our daily, normal, waking, existing, lives.

Now it's about becoming more self-aware. I can't just do things. I have to be more aware of what I am doing, and I have to be doing it for the sake of itself, not because I am trying to get somewhere. Are you following me? We are talking mindfulness . Vietnamese monk Thich NhatHanh says: "Washing the dishes to wash the dishes." Well, why else wash the dishes? I know, it's a clever way of saying be mindful, don't wash them thinking about what you are going to do next. And I guess that is what this is all about. Being with what is happening in the moment and stop living in the past or the future. I guess when you put it that way, going deeper isn't so bad or dumb.

Fine, so the new thing I am being pushed towards is being more present in the things I have to do every day, all day. That sounds a lot easier than being more aware. Although, I guess being present is being aware.

Maybe I just like to argue with God just because I like to argue. Well...I gotta go wash the dishes.

...just finished the dishes.

By the way, my book Holistic Perspectives, is listed on Amazon with a really good discount. Last time I checked they were selling it for only $13.57. You can see the listing by clicking on the amazon link on this blog.

Lessons From Denmark

There is a teaching in Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now that talks about the difference between working toward a goal and being excessively focused on that goal because you think that goal will bring you happiness, fulfillment, and a better sense of self. It is a good thing to have goals. In going to Denmark I had certain expectations, hoping for certain things to happen. They didn't.

I spent a lot of time wondering, actually begging the Universe to explain to me why I made such a long and difficult trip and investment if there was nothing to be gotten from it. I've been to Denmark before, it is a beautiful country, but not as pretty as New England in September.

I got all kinds of answers from "it was a mistake" to "next time you'll know better." In the end though, they weren't really answers at all. I've learned that I really don't know very much. And worse, as our brilliant vice-president points out, "we don't know what we don't know." That has more wisdom in it than any thing any politician has said in recent memory. We don't know what we don't know.

All of this thinking that we know what we don't know leads to being pretty miserable. Sometimes, maybe all the time, it is best to not be so attached to what we think we want. When I e-mailed my friend Mike Ryan telling him of the situation he replied: "Dude, you aren't meditating, are you? I can always tell. Go do it now. Do the one on how the root of all unhappiness is desire...You need to let go."

I did follow his advice about meditating, but I didn't do it on desire and letting go. I did it on what I thought I wanted. Am I not an idiot or what? I meditated on getting what I wanted. How stupid is that? I thought I knew what outcome would be best, so I thought I was being holistic, having a holistic perspective. I was having my own, limited perspective, is what I was having.

Tolle says that when we do that our life's journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive. No longer an adventure. An obsessive need to arrive. I want my life to be an adventure. It is hard to let go, but that is the only way I will allow my life to have mystery, suspense, surprise, excitement. I want that.

We can't have it our way AND have adventure. If we did control everything that happens to us, our lives would become boring so quickly. Geez, the Red Sox would win the World Series every year. What fun would that be?

So, I'm back home in Rhode Island doing my best to do what Michael told me to do. I am going to let go and see what happens. I'll live with the not knowing. And even though it is hard not to get your own way, that is the price you pay to have the kind of quality life that I truly want to build and grow into. This letting go does feel a lot better than trying to make the world be the way I envision it should be. There is a deep sense of peace.

Poisoned in Denmark

So, I have been making fruit smoothies every morning like I usually do. Today I ran my five miles and Helen, my host here in Denmark, had them waiting when I got back. "I've used lots of elderberries that I picked by the road." She was looking so proud of her work.

I had two full glasses. A short while later I began to feel nauseous. Maybe it was just the stress of being in Denmark. Then I had to run to the bathroom with diarrhea. As we started to get in the car to go to the University I had to stop. I threw up my breakfast there on the driveway. Not long after Helen lost hers into the toilet.

That felt better so we left for her school. Half way there I felt cramps but thought I could hold it. They got worse and I asked Helen to find the nearest station. I didn't make it. Not a lot of fun washing your pants in a public bathroom, standing there in your shoes and shirt.

It turns out that elderberries contain cyanide, cooking them destroys it but raw ones are mildly poisonous. Next time someone offers me a fruit smoothie I'll check out the ingredients.

I've never been poisoned before. Hard to have a holistic perspective on that.

Magical Music In Denmark

I do not buy music that was published after the 1970's, other than Bruce Springsteen and a few others. Contemporary music does nothing for me. I am in Denmark this week and my friend Helen played for me a CD of songs that her daughter wrote and sang.

The first time through I listened to her voice and could not believe what I was hearing. I heard Barbara Streisand, Janice Joplin, Shania Twain. And I heard a young woman with soul and unearthly passion.

Then I listened a second time. The words and emotions of her singing took me by surprise and I had to hold back my tears, just barely. The third, fourth, and fifth times, I just cried. All I could think of was that I wanted to be involved in making a musical documentary about her message. I am still trying to make sense of all this.

Her name is Freja Eriksen.

Go to www.myspace.com/frejaeriksen and download "The Spring," listen to it twice and be prepared to be blown away. If the thought that the trees will stop breathing, and the sun will be gone cold, and birds not singing, and that we are the spring on hold...if that does not get to you...you may be dead.

Holistic Perspectives & Integral Theory Published

A couple of years ago I decided to write a book on holistic perspectives and integral theory because:

1. I couldn't find a book that explained what holistic is. There were books on holistic medicine and nursing and business, but none that actually dealt exclusively with what a holistic perspective is.

2. Integral theory is a very important method for understanding our world and seeing what is, but often books about it are difficult to understand. I wanted to write about integral theory in a way that would make it easily grasped.

So, here it is--now available on Amazon.com. I suggest that before you spend any money, go to holistic-perspectives.com and read as much of it as you like. In fact, if you are short of funds, the whole book is available on line.

I totally enjoyed the process of researching and writing the book. I did my dissertation (which is also available on Amazon) on Ken Wilber's work and this is an extension of what I learned in the process.

While writing Perspectives I was also working on another book, Spanish Lessons, which should also be available in about a month. It's not really so much about Spanish as it is about what happens when you don't have to work, but can't stand hanging out doing nothing. As some of you know, the last three winters I have been traveling around the world taking Spanish lessons, but what I really have learned has more to do with the meaning of life and finding passion again. In the end I did find it and it's all in the book.

I'm off to Denmark tomorrow. Who knows what will happen there?

Nirvana?

The world may be round, but it sure feels flat. Everything I do, especially walking, I do as if the world were flat. If I hadn't seen pictures of the planet from space I'd have a hard time believing in a round world.



My experience of my self sure feels like I'm an individual self. I mean, I'm me, you are you, and everybody else is who they are, separate selves. If I had not experienced for my self, one time during meditation, that my separate self is an illusion and that I am only a manifestation of some larger all-inclusive self, I would still believe that I am just little old me and nothing else.

Nirvana has been defined as a breakthrough in consciousness in which one never thinks of oneself as a separate self again. It is never seeing the world as flat anymore. All it takes is that one experience. Often when I mediate I recall that awareness of being one with all consciousness and I remember who I really am. I experience the universe as an organic whole, of which I am a part. Subject-object duality is seen for what it is--an illusion.

By the way, the picture on the side is of the equator in Ecuador. The yellow line is the equator itself.