Balancing Your Life (Part 10)

“I ask for this moment’s indulgence to sit by Thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards. Away from the sight of Thy face, My heart knows no rest or respite, And my work becomes an endless toil. In a shoreless sea of toil. Today the summer has come at my window, With its sighs and murmurs; And the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove. Now its time to sit quiet Face to face with Thee, And to sing dedication of life In this silent and overflowing leisure.” Rabindranath Tagore

If you look at these words through an extremely powerful microscope you will see a dance. Molecules, atoms, electrons, subatomic particles are moving about in a ceaseless celebration. The words appear solid because your senses perceive solidity at this tempo of energy. But one look under the microscope gives way to an astonishing symphony of motion. 

Likewise, everything is in a state of perpetual motion. You appear to be sitting still, but our planet is spinning once every twenty-four hours, orbiting the sun once every 365 days, and moving through space at unthinkable speeds. The same can be said of your body. It a biochemical field of vibration and movement, which appears solid and motionless. All information that you receive comes to you through your senses, but Love. Love is information which comes to you through the Beyond. Your Spirit is beyond your senses. Your Spirit sees, hears, speaks, touches, tastes and understands world’s the microscope is incapable of seeing. Your Spirit understands that Evil has a vibration and a Frequency; that your problems are really disharmonious energies; that your mountains appear solid and unconquerable but they too are vibrations and movement (which is why they can be moved). Your Spirit understands that Love is an energy field which emanates from God. Your Spirit understands Gratitude, Mindfulness, Energy, Health, Work and Love are quantum energy patterns in constant motion. Conversely, slower, perceivably solid vibrations, keep you grounded in problems, hatred, unforgiveness and fear.

Thus, Love is the sixth practice for achieving a balanced life.

Love is beyond quantum motion: The human mind is below it. The social mind is below it. It looks like the other gates but there is a great difference. Love is the third mind. Love is the Universal Mind. Love flows through the universe rhythmically, cosmically, spiritually. Love moves at a higher rank than cancer. Love moves at a higher rank than hate. Love moves at a higher rank than religion. Love moves at a higher rank than happiness. For love is not a single step, it is a quantum leap.

Evil can be perceived, but Love is known. You know when you are in love. You know when you are loved. You know love energizes. You know love heals. You know love hopes for all things. You know love is Gratitude and Mindfulness and Energy and Health and Work and Service. You know God is love. No one taught you these things. So where did they originate? How did they get so close to your Spirit?

Balancing Your Life (Part 9)

 

I slept and dreamt life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold service was joy. Rabindranath Tagore

We live in strange and stressful times, when about one-third of us are overworked and looking for time off, one-third of us are looking for increased hours just to make ends meet, and another third of us are looking for employment. In 1998, the second leading cause of death in Tokyo, after cancer, was called karoshi, or “death from overwork”.  Most victims of karoshi were between the ages of 34 and 61 years old. They often died at their desks or while commuting to work. In the United States, as many as 80 percent of workers report suffering from work stress- induced exhaustion, insomnia, depression, muscle pains, ulcers, and many other stress-related disorders.

So what are you willing to die for?  A bigger house? A fancier car? To send your children to a private school? To live a “better” life than your parents lived? But can’t you see that stress wants your attention? Can’t you see that you are too tired and busy for your children? And now about a third of adolescents have contemplated suicide. And now half are at moderate or high risk of abusing drugs, failing in school, getting pregnant, or otherwise retreating from life altogether? You can continue to drink from the well of tradition, but you will be thirsty again.

The crucial fifth practice or step to attain a balanced life is work, but not conventional work. Work as service. For your work should bring bring joy to your inner world. Your work should grant your mind permission to sleep and dream of this joy. Your work should awaken you in the morning like a loving caring touch. Work as service will allow you to abandon the fear that permeates your consciousness about not having enough. And isn’t this your deepest fear? Isn’t this why you remain loyal to a job you hate? Isn’t this why you have no energy? Isn’t this why you have mood swings? Isn’t this why by Friday you need a drink? Isn’t this why you eat fast food? Isn’t this why you live your life vicariously through TV or social networking? Isn’t this why you are dying? Not today, but everyday? Everyday you are commiting karoshi and you are not even aware of it. Why not live? Why not take a quantum leap into service? There is so much work to be done, and this world needs your hands, heart and mind. Our children need your hands, heart and mind. It is time, it is already time, you have waited long enough.

You are searching for meaning. You are searching for love. You are searching for peace. You are searching, which is good. But you are searching in all the wrong places. You have searched in others. You have searched through your work. You have searched in the church. You go on searching and searching and there is no end to it. This is because your searching has led you to the magical world of the many. And you are not alone. Many live in this magical world. Monday through Friday, they enter their magical world with the expectation that a raise or a promotion or a new job or a new spouse or a new car or a new house or a new love or a new life will bring them happiness. From a distance, their lives are beautiful. From a distance, you imagine that they are living their dreams. From a distance, you wish to be like them. But it is all an illusion. It is a rainbow in a clenched hand. It is a dream.

There is a house, from a distance, it is a beautiful house. If there is no other human being on earth what will be the value then? Who will appreciate it?

To be continued…   

 

Work and Service.

Balancing Your Life (Part 8)

“This food is the gift of the whole universe- the earth, the sky, and much hard work. May we live in a way that is worthy of this food. May we transform our unskillful states of mind and learn to eat with moderation. May we eat foods that only nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the way of understanding and love.” Zen Meal Blessing 

Some people live to eat. Others eat to live. We invest so much time, energy, money, and attention into feeding ourselves, yet health statistics indicate that nearly 90 percent of all disease is linked to unwise choices in the foods we eat. Most of our food choices are deeply linked to how we view Self and the world outside ourselves. In many ways, eating is essentially a form of self-medication. We nourish ourselves but we also alter our biochemistry and thus our state of mind or consciousness each time we eat.

We all know that our eating patterns can create low energy in the body and mind making us feel dull, lethargic, or sleepy, while eating other foods leaves us feeling calm, balanced, and energized. Whatever your eating patterns, the food choices you make bring you more, or less, into balance. Thus, the fourth practice to balancing your life is health.

Your body is biochemistry and food is essentially the chemical energy required to maintain its health. Therefore, Mindfulness of our food choices is an essential key to balance. The ability of your body and mind to maintain adequate reserves of energy against the impact of stress depends to a large extent on a well-balanced and nutritionally sound diet. This is one of the essential steps to achieving greater energy. And greater energy is the gateway to higher consciousness: It is one more possibility of getting in tune with existence. It is one more possibility of having clear eyes and less clouds in your being. It is one more possibility of living a refreshed and rejuvenated life. It is one more possibility to catch a glimpse of your original face.

Mindful eating is reconciliation of body and Spirit. And how can you pray if you are unreconciled? How can you come into your destiny if you are unreconciled? As you are, the altar is secondary. As you are, prayer is secondary, because you are not in the mood or don’t have the energy to pray. Prayer is not a duty. It is not something you just wake up and do. It is not just a matter of going to church or the temple and doing it. Prayer is an arousal of the heart, Spirit and consciousness of unknown peaks. 

Mindful eating will allow you to awake with prayerful energy. So that when you rise in the morning, the sun will also rise in you. And there will be a kind of innocence, not only in you, but it will take place all around you. The trees will look innocent. The dewdrops will look innocent. The sky will look innocent. The birds will look innocent. And a new day will dawn in your spirit. Again a new day.

Father God, May We live in a way that is worthy of this food.

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life (Part 7)

 

Avoid entangled thoughts, that you may see the explanation of Paradise. Rumi

Mindfulness is never lost. It simply becomes entangled with the other things of this world. So the first thing to be remembered: it is never lost, it is your nature, but you can focus it on anything you desire. When you get tired of focusing it on money, on power, on prestige, and that great moment arrives in your life when you close your eyes to the world’s system and instead focus on the awareness of God’s kingdom, on the original breath, on the root and not the branch, in a split second you will be transformed. And don’t ask for there is only one step. You must turn in, not out. Turning in is the practice of Mindfulness. 

The third practice to achieve a balanced life is Energy. If you watch carefully, you’ll notice that there are periods throughout your day when your energy is naturally balanced in your body and mind. These points of balance normally take place when you are observing or when you are involved in creative imagination, or while in prayer. At these times, there is an evenly balanced flow of energy.

Every second, minute, and hour of each day corresponds to a paradigm shift in energy within the body, earth, and the heavens above. Within each day there are seasons. There is a winter, spring, summer and fall within the energy cycles of each day. Each hour brings its own set of awareness. Each moment brings it own set of prayers. It is a sacred Mystery which lies beyond the three-dimensions of time. It is the luminous energy of every breath. It is the pebble dropped into the still pond. It is the open door.  

Learning to shift your energy from one season to another is an important step to achieving personal balance. But what often happens is your energy is assaulted by the early morning storms. So by the afternoon, you are already suffering from a long wintry night. And by late afternoon, there is little or no energy left. This is why you cannot achieve balance. This is why you cannot live your dreams. This is why your children are being raised by someone else’s media. This is why you have dis-ease. This is why you are cold and unfeeling. You are stranded in winter.

In order to protect the little energy you have left, you hide yourself behind walls and locked doors. You drive and never walk. You text instead of talk. You wear a mask in public rather than share your real face. You are warming your breath with a candle, your hands on a stove, when there is a full sun in the sky. If you would slow down and catch a glimpse of the radiance that shines through all things, you would generate greater gratitude. If you could trace your pathway of energy through space and time, you would generate greater mindfulness. When you come to a stoplight or crossroad or mountaintop or church or any meeting room along the way, if you would pause, breathe, focus and observe the season, you would intentionally generate a field, a season of blessing energy that would refresh and inspire an explanation of Paradise in all those who pass through your path for a long, long time to come. 

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life (Part 6)

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.  Thomas Merton

Here’s a simple truth: You did not originate from the union of sperm and egg as you have been led to believe. Your conception was not decided by your parents. Even after your parents decided they wanted a child, their decision had nothing to do with the child they would have. And even though you share a common DNA with all humanity, you also share a spiritual ancestry with God. Yet, you have spent your entire life wearing masks… trying to forget… when the God of the universe is trying to get you to remember. God is trying to get you to a place of gratitude. And the deepest expression of gratitude is the remembrance and acceptance of your original face. Thus, the first practice for a balanced life is Gratitude.

The second practice of a balanced life is Mindfulness. When you practice mindfulness, you begin to see clearly what is really going on inside of you. As you see more clearly, you will find that you can begin to influence the direction your life is headed by simply taking conscious control over the wheel of balance. Thus, Mindfulness is not the powerful river or the howling winds, it is the deep quiet inner stillness that is completely undisturbed by all chaos. It is the sky-like presence of a peaceful mind. It is completely unstained by the graffiti of the world system.

The essence of mindfulness is not only to be aware of what you are sensing, feeling, thinking, desiring, and intending at any given moment, but also to accept those moments when the fierce winds of thought and emotion betray your intentions. However, you cannot allow your memories to become your enemies. And so much of what you have been taught is adversarial in nature. So much of what you have been taught has been darkness. Now you need a course in braille just to read the writing on your wall. Now you need the vessel of religion to carry you across the abyss which has separated you from yourself. Now you need Saint Peter to knock on the doors of heaven for you. This is because you cannot see your own light.

Mindfulness is the second practice you must master in order to achieve balance because higher consciousness gives rise to transformation. But transformation is only possible when you look; it is only possible when you drop all masks. It is only possible when you achieve the miracle of sight.

Clarity must be practiced daily. Just clarity of the eyes so that you can look directly and penetrate the sperm and the egg. Just clarity of the eyes so you can see the flower without your mind taking over the moment and naming it. Just clarity of the eyes so you can look directly into the abyss which separates you from yourself.   

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life (Part 5)

“We are already one and we can imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. Whatever we have to be is what we are.” Thomas Merton

You can either serve life with your Soul or use that same Soul to divorce yourself from life. You can either serve Love with your heart or use your heart to divorce yourself from Love. You can either serve your neighbor with your Mind or use your Mind to divorce yourself from your neighbor. You can either serve God with your heart, soul and mind or use your heart, soul and mind to divorce yourself from God. Divorced, you will create masks. Divorced, you will become weak and invite dis-ease into your life. Divorced, you will destroy your muscle memory for gratitude. And the first step to balancing your life is to practice gratitude.

God knows you have suffered tremendous hurt. God knows you were molested by a relative when you were a child. God knows you were bullied and made fun of in grade school. God knows your father was an abusive alcoholic. God knows your spouse cheated on you. God knows your son made some poor choices and was arrested. God knows you were betrayed by your best friend. God knows you were laid off work. God knows you are facing mounting debt and foreclosure. But you cannot allow what is happening outside of you to modify the Light that is inside of you. You cannot allow this world system to create a recession in your Spirit. You must resist the temptation to fellowship with the darkness. You must resist putting on the mask of (ignor)ance and thus (ignore) the reality that your life is feeding the first wolf of revenge, bitterness, anger and hatred. 

There is so much bitterness in the world today. But you cannot allow yourself to become a victim of negative energy. Even though you have permitted so much graffiti to be written on the walls of your mind and soul, you must defy the root of bitterness from sprouting invasive weeds in your garden. Rather than praying for God to change your present condition, pray for a miracle that God changes you, not your condition. Pray for an awakening of your inner light. Pray for your wheat to grow at a faster rate than the weeds of the enemy. Pray for spiritual graffiti removal. Pray for greater peace and a greater capacity to Love. Pray for a universal mind. Pray for greater energy. Pray to see your original face. Pray for a miracle to recover your original unity. Pray for the restoration of your muscle memory for gratitude. Pray.

Father God,”Whatever we have to be is what we are”.

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life (Part 4)

The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ He replied, ‘An enemy did this’.  Matthew13:24-30

A grandfather was having a conversation with his grandson shortly after the events of 9/11 in New York City. He told his grandson, “I have two wolves barking inside of me. The first wolf is filled with anger, hatred, bitterness, and mostly revenge. The second wolf inside of me is filled with love, kindness, compassion, and mostly forgiveness.”

“Which do you think will win? the young boy inquired. The grandfather responded, “Whichever one I feed.”

The world system is designed to encourage you to feed the first wolf which is filled with anger, hatred, bitterness and revenge. It manipulated many Americans into a pseudo-personality of hatred under the guise of patriotism. Hence, A new mask was imposed on the America public. No matter what you personally felt. No matter what you originally thought. You were not allowed to express any other emotion contrary to the reflections of the first wolf for fear of being considered ”unpatriotic”, or worse, a social outcast.

AND the owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ He replied, ‘An enemy did this’

There are two things you must understand from this verse. The first thing is God always sows good seed. The second is You have an enemy. And the enemy is always howling at the light through the darkness. It’s sole purpose is to get you to become so comfortable with the darkness that light itself becomes an enemy. And you have made friends with the darkness because all masks are worn to hide light. All masks are worn to conceal truth. All masks are pseudo-personalities. All masks are wolves in sheep’s clothing. All masks are identities. This is how you can tell who is important or not. The more important a person is the more they are identified by their clothing or car(s) or home(s) or their entourage. There is nothing wrong with owning cars or homes or even having a following but if this becomes your identity than you too have become socially engineered. And you will never achieve harmony.

You will never achieve wholeness and the opposite of wholeness is dis-ease. You will be dis-eased with yourself and others. And this is why you wear masks. Deep down inside you have been taught to distrust who you are. You have been taught to distrust your voice. You have been taught to be dis-eased with your original face. So now, even if you were to throw off your shoes and run through the grass in an effort to emancipate yourself, that too, would be false because it is not enough to act free, you must become freedom.

Take a moment right now to stop reading and empty your mind of all its constant chatter. Now close your eyes and allow yourself to trust and gently experience Light.

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life (Part 3)

 

 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ He replied, ‘An enemy did this’.  Matthew13:24-30

The world system is so old, it is supported by the whole past, and when a child is born, it is almost impossible that it will be able to grow to a healthy and loving adult. It is almost impossible because the world system is designed to create a slavery in its citizens. It is designed to give birth to the crowd, not to individuality. It is designed to influence you to think like everybody else; to live your life like everybody else; to never see your original face like everybody else; to lose your memory of freedom like everybody else.

So even in a democracy, you will never know freedom. Even through religion, you will never know freedom. The goal is to kill the freedom in the child, and by doing so, kill the dreams of the child in the adult. The goal is to create deep emotional feelings of self-condemnation in you. The goal is to make you feel guilty about achieving self-happiness. The goal is to kill your internal laughter and to extinguish your eternal flame. The goal is to kill the child within the adult. The goal is to replace true freedom with the mask of social privilege. 

This is why you always feel guilty when you experience a moment of reckless abandon.

This is why you feel immature and irresponsible When you take off your shoes and dance in the grass. When laughter spills from your heart during a “serious” adult moment. When your palms feel sweaty and your heart still races at the possibility of finding love again. When you order dessert from the menu while everybody else is ordering what the boss ordered during the business luncheon. When you create a silly tune in your head and hum it to the heavens all day long. When you give a humorous card instead of a religious prayer to a friend undergoing chemotherapy. When you wake up with deadlines facing you but all you want to do is play. When you stop to thank God in the middle of a down-turned economy. When you dare to remove your mask…

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life (Part 2)

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.” Thich Nhat Hanh

To find your original face is the deepest meditation, the one you had before you came into this world, and the one you will have when you return to God; because you cannot carry all these faces with you into eternity. They are techniques of deception, they are techniques to defend yourself, they are temporal walls you have built around you.  

But why do you have so many faces? What is the need and what is the fear of dropping them? Society created the first mask, but now you have continued creating masks for many years. For there is no need to change the inner cup when you can simply change the mask. There is no need to be a good person when you can simply wear the mask of religion. Why bother going to the church, mosque, or temple when a mask will do? But you cannot come to God unless you are naked. You cannot come to God wearing the mask of Christ. The light can recognize the light, but the light will never validate your darkness. In your total nakedness you will drop all masks and recognize your real face. There is no other way.

Your whole truth has to be understood, only then will these words be clear to you. The Truth is you have never been taught to love yourself. You have never been taught to love any one else as well. You have simply been told you must love. You have simply received an education in the ideal, not in reality. In reality, you are full of self-condemnation. In reality, you make yourself loving but you don’t feel worthy to be loved. In reality, your friends look to you for strength when you too are in need of help. In reality, the miracle of transformation is within you.

But you cannot see your light because the world has rewarded so many for living in darkness. You are like the small child who wanted to go play near the water or to play with another child you didn’t know or to run and jump around when it was time for bed or to eat the chocolate birthday cake instead of dinner or to get some money for the ice cream truck or who raised your hand in class because you had the answer or who wanted the day off from work because it was the first day of spring, and the parent, the teacher, the boss, the husband, the wife…  All…  Say,”No!”

And so, the world creates a neurosis in the child, a condemning spirit of self-hatred in the adult. It is not neurotic to play in the sand. It is not neurotic for a child to play with another child they don’t know. It is not neurotic to run down the street chasing the ice cream truck. It is not neurotic to ask the boss for a day off because the birds are singing, the trees are blooming, the flowers are blossoming and you want to take a moment of your life to celebrate renewal. You are not neurotic, the world is.

So sit up and feel your feet touching the earth’s floor. For the miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive. 

To be continued…

Balancing Your Life

“The Temple bell stops But I can still hear the sound coming out of the flowers” Basho

We live not as we are but as we would like to be; not with our real face but with a false face. When you were born you had an original face, an original voice, but soon after birth the world starts working on your face. It convinces you to hide the original, the natural, the one you were born with, and your original face is replaced by many faces for different occasions because the world convinces you that your original face is not good enough; that your original voice will never be heard. So you change your face from moment to moment, with each situation, and you eventually begin to wear many masks. You wear a student mask, an employee mask, a manager mask, a wife mask, a husband mask, a mothers mask, a fathers mask, a sons mask, a daughters mask, a Christian mask, a Muslim mask, thousands of masks are needed over a lifetime. When you see a person of power and influence, you change your mask. When you see a homeless person approaching you, your mask is very different. Watch your face because most of these changes are involuntary. You are no longer in conscious control of them. So when your son or daughter enters the room, you do not even look at them. You act as if they do not exist. But when someone of affluence enters, you suddenly have energy, you have a smiling face, receiving, welcoming, as if God Himself has entered the room.

Look in the mirror and think of the many faces you can change. Look in the mirror and create the face when you are angry or greedy; bring the face when you are feeling sexual. Now bring your religious face. Watch yourself in the mirror. You will find you are no longer one person, but a crowd. And you will find it will be very difficult to pick your original face out from amongst the crowd.

Only one step separates you from your destiny, but it is a very big step indeed. If you are living a false existence it is difficult to know your purpose. If you are living a lie, you cannot find Truth anywhere or in any thing.

Can you identify your face in the crowd? Do you know what your real face looks like? Have you ever heard your real voice? The one who wanted to be a dancer, but out of necessity became a lawyer? The one who dreamed of travelling the world, but out of convenience is now a stay-at-home mom? 

If you were to drop a stone in the ocean, it would send out ripples but could it draw them in? If you were to pick a flower could you see its beauty? Or would its essence be drowned out by the loud sound of the Temple bells?

To be continued…