One fine afternoon, while studying in the graduate library at the University of Wisconsin, a man, who I did not know, approached where I was sitting and tapped me on my shoulder. He told me that there was an important phone call that I needed to attend to.

This was very strange. Who could be calling me with such urgency in the middle of a nondescript day?

I entered the office where the phone waited for my ear. It was a call from my father. Before he could even say “hi”, I heard the words:

Something terrible has happened.

I could tell that he was choking back tears. My dad was not prone to weeping, but here he was struggling not to burst into a gushed cry.

Your aunt “Jerry” (her nickname) killed herself this morning. You have to come home right now.

Speechless. Breathless. Insane. Was it a dream, a horrible nightmare? This question would reverberate through me like a kind of craziness that found a home in me.

On that day I too died. I was truly dead. This was the one thing I was certain of.

I hung up the receiver and stumbled back to my apartment. I called my cousin Steve, who was also in grad school at Madison, and told him the horrible news. I also told him that I was dead, that my life was over.

I was very, very, close to my aunt. I admired her greatly and I thought that her blood and mine flowed in the same deep channel and now she was, abruptly, dead. So I too was dead.

The journey back to Philadelphia occurred in total darkness. Other people appeared as ghosts, also dead, irrelevant, empty. I was just drifting in blackness.

And then the momentous return to my parent’s home. I entered a world paralyzed by agony. My mother was crazy with grief.

She and Jerry were supposed to go out and do some shopping and when her call to her was unexpectedly unanswered that morning, she drove to her house, just four miles away. Her knock at the door was also unanswered, so she took a little look around. Through the small windows of the garage she saw her car parked there and she also saw the body, already in rigor mortis frozen, dead. That’s how she found her.

Everything was over, finished. But it would get worse. I guess I wasn’t fully dead yet.

Shiva is the practice of mourning in Judaism and so began the days of mourning for my aunt. The Shiva was conducted in our home. There was plenty of great food and many, many guests and family coming to our home everyday to talk, reminisce, and even joke … much of it to get our minds off the terrible bleakness that hovered around and under every moment. A psychiatrist was among the many guests and he dutifully lectured on the inevitably of suicide once the mind is fully made up. He distinguished the “true” suicide with the false variety that is designed to appear lethal, but is really intended to attract attention. My aunt’s suicide was of the “true” form. We we’re reassured by his words.

Jerry also had a little poodle. Before she got into her car to gas herself, she wrapped this sweet dog in an upstairs bathroom with the shower curtain and carefully placed the dog in the bathtub, all to protect him from the deadly fumes that would soon fill the house. Her care was, it turned out, a waste of time, for the dog also died from the same lethal gases. It was like an add-on death, a reminder that the scourge of self-violence leaves unintended victims.

Shiva can be wonderful, if only for the delicious salty lox and bagels and seeing so many relatives that I hadn’t seen for many years. But then the day ends. A kind of terror fills the house, for now we had to deal with the icy splendor of silence, alone with the crisis of emotion. Everyone leaves and you are left alone. My mother would just cry and cry and I would cover my ears desperate to escape the enveloping darkness and her tortured weeping. I too wanted to die and this desire only reminded me of my failure, my guilt of being alive. So much death … death seemed everywhere.

Day after day followed like this.

My uncle Maurice, Jerry’s husband, had become a paraplegic on account of a failed surgery intended to remove a blood clot in his spinal cord. The note left by my aunt explained her motivation. She had hoped that they would commit suicide together to save the family of the burden of his disability, but he refused, so she thought that her death would inspire him to follow her example and do the brave and right thing. He didn’t, but he would die a horrible death several years later poisoned by bed sores, alone, and hopeless.

One of the most disturbing memories involved my father trying to add a note of levity to this solemn occasion. I recall seeing my father sitting next to the rabbi on our living room sofa and asking him if Auschwitz had tennis courts for the inmates followed by rather raucous laughter from my father coupled with a profoundly perplexed confusion in the rabbi’s face. I felt both embarrassed and ashamed. I wasn’t quite entirely dead.

I remember my grandfather, Jerry’s dad at the Shiva. I loved my grandfather utterly and completely. He was the epitome of a decent and kind man. He was also a widower at the time of my aunt’s death and he attended the Shiva alone.

Then there was a moment that I will never forget. It clings to me still.

I remember, one bright afternoon, he was sitting in our living room not socializing with the other guests, painfully alone. I could see that he was muttering something to himself. I went over to him and asked him what he was trying to say. He looked into my eyes with a kind of desperation and I heard him say these words:

This hasn’t happened. This is only a dream. Jerry is alive and well. This is just a dream and I will wake up soon. This is just a dream and Jerry will be here with us happy and alive.

That was the moment my heart exploded in grief. I begged him to stop. “Please STOP!!!!” I whispered to him. Please STOP, I whispered hopelessly. But he sat there gently davening (a soft rocking back and forth as prescribed in Jewish prayer) in denial. My legs went weak, my breath halting and I knew that all the sweetness of  life was fully over, never to return.

And then, one day I returned to Madison. I was dead inside. Everything appeared to me as dead. I would never recover from this. I grew up in the near shadow of the Holocaust and I thought I could not survive that, of my family’s tireless grief and now this. I had no right to live, not to mention the ugly self-indulgence of experiencing a smile or joy of any kind.

One of my university instructors, an old drunk, told me that I would fail his graduate seminar if my review of an 800 page book was not turned in in 36 hours. When I explained to him that my aunt killed herself and that I was with my family, he informed that this wasn’t his concern. So I did the reading and wrote the report. What difference did it make? Work … not work … it’s all the same. His indifference melded with my own uprootedness. Nothing mattered anymore.

I was dead for six months and then, one fine day, the clouds broke and a ray of light broke through the gloom. I could, once again, feel the beat of my heart, I could feel the beauty of my thoughts and feelings. Wonderful air entered my living chest. I could even laugh now and then.

No storm lasts forever. Time truly heals all wounds.

But it’s not quite as simple as that. This mysterious body and soul will carry on singing the songs of its memories, both weighed down and bouyed up with the trials of this life and I am, at long last, oddly grateful to all those who came before. I don’t know why these horrible storms come, but I know that they too pass and the light will always shine again.

Dear reader, you should know that I have tried, in the name of “spirituality” to sever my ties to my ancestors. I have struggled with my Jewish identity, as if it were a mere label made falsely valid by empty belief. This jewishness seems to come and go. But, truly, I don’t want to forget my ancestors. A part of me wants to be nurtured by their suffering and their grief. I know that it’s really not all that special, for I am also nurtured by the tragic history of the millions of Africans forcibly brought to this land only to be slaves and to the millions of Native People whose land was stolen and who fell in the momentous conquest of this sad continent.

We are never alone, even in the darkest of times. Even then, we are connected by this elusive cord of life and living. Their bodies and breath touch us with their sweet message and life goes on. The trash needs to be put out, the dog walked, and all the rest in this vast, yet intimate mystery unfolding here, unfolding now. No matter what, life plunges on, pulsating, breathing, inexorable. No death can hold it back … but in its shadow, death too plunges on and it too will not be denied. Light and dark holding hands in the light on this truly fine, fine day.

Jerry killed herself at the age of 48.

Isn’t it true that inquiry is based on the belief that it’s something we need to do to gain understanding of who we are?

Who needs to gain anything? That’s the question. What is it we lack that years of inquiry will fill?

If we cease obeying the call to inquire, what remains?

See that the promise of inquiry is that we will have some modicum of control. It’s based on the hope that if I get this, then I will be free of the burden of the self! What is this self that you need to be free of?

What is this struggle against the self? Who is struggling against what?

The self is not a belief. It is this.

Isn’t inquiry a convenient way to avoid living this simple moment? The struggle with the self is that action that cancels the opportunity to be in grace. We realize that this moment has already been lived. It’s happened. We seem to produce all of this stress and anxiety over what? Is it not self-rejection that lies at the very core of this anxiety and stress?

Are you obsessed with doing the right thing?

Since no one knows what’s right or wrong, then what is the problem? It’s all happening and no one has a clue how or why it’s happening. So why ceaselessly evaluate?

Take a walk and get the sense that you’re not doing anything — nothing! or … you really are doing it all. See that the line of demarcation that identifies “your” doing from “other” doing (like what makes the sky blue) is arbitrary. It’s the insertion of a learned belief based on nothing but fabrication.

Inquiry is an effective way to sustain the belief in a separate self. It tends to appeal to analytical, intellectual types, like me, but I’ve now seen it as more of a detour … maybe an essential detour, but a detour nonetheless. Can you see that as well?

If inquiry has a purpose, then it must be this: to inquire into the belief that one needs to inquire at all. Who is that person? When that identity is clearly seen as something unreal, merely a lingering belief that’s hard to shake, then a very large step toward real freedom from the search has happened.

Let’s keep this very simple.

What blocks contentment is the most changeable aspect of our lives; “me”, for all that changes is “me”.

This “me” wants, fears, opines, fears, craves, complains, loves, hates, and everything in between.

Then something really terrible happens.

We get all spiritual and so begins the endless war against poor, little “me”.

We can love just about everything in our lives (with the possible exception of dentist appointments and having to speak amicably with our Mother-In-Law). But the one thing we can’t love is “me”. “Me” becomes our problem. It’s like a horrible parasite that gets fat sucking our blood.

So we meditate, chant stupid mantras, scour the web for that one “spiritual” post that will finally free us of this moronic, repetitive, predictable, boring, insufferable “me”.

What makes this “me” so horrible?

That’s a very easy question. We believe we are this “me” and maybe we really are this “me”. What if that were true? I know you’re going to give some predictably spiritual answer, like “We are not any ‘thing’.”

But, down deep, don’t you suspect that you just might be this agonizingly idiotic “me”?

What if you are? What then?

If so, then “you” haven’t made any “progress” at all, have you? You’re right where you started after the years of meditating, imitating the wise pronouncements of gurus you’ve been told to admire and all the rest.

In other words, you really are this “me”!

Now you’re really fucked. Game over. Me 1 — spiritual You 0.

Sorry. You see in every game there is just one winner and any number of losers.

So what is the solution (if any)?

The solution is seeing through the spiritual catch–22.

What you reached out for as the time-tested resolution for your existential crisis turned out to be a mirror reflecting the insubstantial nature of your own questioning instead of the perceived life-saver, you desperately sought.

In the war against “me” everyone loses. The questioner, the seeker, becomes, inevitably, their own worse problem.

Drop that struggle and the light will shine through.

While mantras are just more useless crap, here is a mantra that I can suggest to you. Every time poor little “me” emerges into consciousness in an especially irritating guise say this mantra:

This annoying “me” is just the Wounded “me” and I can love that just the way it is.

It might help to have a picture of you when you were quite young, maybe between the ages of 5 and 10 and keep this image in mind when you say the mantra.

Forget the spiritual and embrace the real.

“What is the real”, you ask?

This prior to thinking about it. And if a thought appears as this than that too happens without needing to think about it.

Try to remember back to your own childhood. Didn’t you get your friends together and then chase down a boy with long blonde hair, thought to be gay, and then tackle him, where you pressed him down on the floor while you cut off his long hair? How dare he wear his hair in a way that offended Mitt! The victim claims that the boyish incident troubled him his whole life. He must have been one of this super-sensitive types (he’s deceased).

Or were you one of millions of boys who tricked a blind teacher into walking head-first into a closed door? That must have been really funny. I wish I had been there.

Boys will be boys.

Of course, Mitt matured, and has changed his ways. Sure he tied his family dog to the roof of his car for an all-day car ride traveling at speeds exceeding 60 MPH. Who doesn’t do that to their dog? And when the dog got sick and pooped on the windshield they had someone clean up the mess and then re-attached the dog to the roof. That’s what any responsible dog owner would do. Wouldn’t you?

As a very successful businessman, Mitt, looted troubled companies. First he bought them for pennies on the dollar. He then gutted these companies, fired most of the actual workers and then sold them for immense profits. Hey its just boundless greed and whats wrong with that? It’s the kind of thing that we Americans are taught to admire and even envy. Who wouldn’t crush workers for their own financial advantage? Its human nature, the way our Lord God intended.

You see. Mitt has changed. Once he was just a typical boyish sociopath. Now he’s a grown up psychopath. In other words, he’s just like you and me.

Of course, little Mitt has apologized for these childhood “pranks”, although he has conveniently forgotten that they actually occurred. Since they are corroborated by a number of eyewitnesses and participants, they can’t be quite so conveniently denied and used for attacks against those that would besmirch his good name.  Alas, he has never apologized for the far greater harms he has caused as a “grown-up”, incidents he remembers all too well.

I’m proud to be an American and have the opportunity to vote for one more deeply troubled, angry, self-hating, bullshit, phony patriot who, like most sociopaths, does a very good job appearing normal, when he is, in fact, deeply disturbed and very, very dangerous.

Update

The boy that Romney and his friends pinned to the ground when they cut off his hair was, at the time, alleged to have been gay. It turned out that he was gay. While Romney claims he doesn’t specifically remember the incident, he does remember that he had no anti-gay prejudices at the time or now. That’s interesting. He backs up this statement with details about hiring gays into prominent positions, as well as talking to Log Cabin gays, whose support he has requested and received.

What makes this interesting is that at the same time, he has re-affirmed his unconditional rejection of gay marriage and even gay legal unions.

This is, of course, routine for sociopaths. They say one thing with a reassuring smile perfect for the inevitable photo-op, but then they do actions that entirely contradict what they have said.

The US has more than its share of sociopaths. It’s a psychological type that is much admired in this country and that too is very strange, because the personality traits of sociopaths tend to be found repugnant in most societies around the world. Some of the best salesmen are sociopaths (see Mad Men) and it’s very easy to see their charm and persuasiveness. So, let’s elect another sociopath … it’s not like we haven’t done it before.

There Is Nothing Wrong With You

In an earlier post (read here), it was said, that the only incorrect thought is that there is something wrong with you.

Who believes this thought most fervently?

Itself, of course.

And who is itself?

It is the thought itself (there is something wrong with me), but we know it by a better name. It’s you the self-improver. It’s also known as the seeker or the you that which craves for enlightenment.

So, when you hear the statement, that there is only one incorrect thought and that is the thought that there is something wrong with you, the hearer, is, in nearly all cases, the thought itself! Literally you.

So what does this thought do with this?

It plans on adopting the belief that there isn’t anything wrong with me. So it expresses itself in many ways; false confidence, strident attempts at self-effacing humor, an embarrassing predilection to appear spiritual and important … etc.

The same thought/identity hears this and then asks, with exasperation in its voice, so what the fuck do I do?

Wu wei … wu wei. I also suggest that you watch my video on this subject. Click here.

Do nothing. Give up on doing anything that involves you. Just plain STOP!

This is, of course, the very last suggestion that the inadequacy identification thought wants to hear. This is the one thing it just can’t live with. It can’t do nothing!

Yes, the thought can’t stop and yes, the thought can’t do nothing. So what does that tell us?

It tells us that its an energetic thought … kind of like an undomesticated animal. It is, in fact, an overly domesticated animal. It is the voice of the super ego and it won’t shut up.

Let it squawk. Let it scream. Let it demand. Let it define and describe your experience (you as victim or you as conqueror or you as bored bystander). What choice do you have?

You see … you really don’t have a choice. The more you effortlessly watch this thought, the more likely that the channel to the light will open up for you and the force of this thought to usurp your identity will wane. You will start feeling an inner relaxation, an unfolding. This is love itself.

Its like letting a wild dog just wear itself out. Thats the process … in a nutshell.

Sit back and enjoy the show. Its your show and it was created by your life. Your’e the main act, the supporting players, and even the audience. It is true that the admission price is rather high … after all, its your life, but you’ve already paid, so why complain?

This is, truly, the only endurable way. Don’t worry, you won’t disappear. You’ll still continuing being the same fool, devil, saint, and wonderful person you already are. You want proof? Look into the mirror.

Our Phony Election

Obama … Romney claim that they represent two different visions for America.

They don’t.

They represent two slightly different themes based on the same premise.

And that premise is set by the people who pay for their campaigns; the billionaires, the giant banks and corporations, and the vast military-industrial/health complex (a really funny irony there!). These are the real leaders.

These mediocre politicians are just fancy salesmen whose job it is to sell you fear. Because as long as youre scared, they can continue their endless war spending, their dismantling of every program that serves those in need (because those dollars don’t directly flow to them), their endless assault on the Earth itself, and the despicable political pandering to the richest of the rich.

It’s really cruel, banal, and disgusting. But its life in this soon-to-be third world military colossus.

The Sell Fear.

They need you to buy their fear. They demand that you pay for their wars, their private jets/yachts, mansions, gated communities, worker killing corporations, and the vehicle that carries their gold-plated voices into our homes, workplaces, and cars: the corporate media.

Thank God for Steven Colbert who keeps it real.

And when things get all fucked up for them, it will be anyone but themselves who will clean up their mess. We, their fear-frozen slaves, and self-appointed slaves, will do all the clean-up. We’ll even pay for their bills! They will probably profit even in their failures. They usually do. And if they actually lose a little money, they’ll just take it off their taxes. Heads we win, tails you lose. It all just works … for them.

They don’t need public education — kill it. They don’t need social security — cut it. They don’t rely on medicare — reduce it. All they need is your vote and your support in the voting booth and at the shopping centers.

You know what makes this all work? This is really important.

You believe their bullshit. You believe the crap you hear on TV and even public radio. All of the corporations suck from the same teat.

Do What You Are Told! Be Obedient!

This deeply immoral, unjust system is always rigged in their favor and Obama and Romney represent the same people, just in slightly different flavors.

Check out how SuperPacs work. Check out how the Supreme Court has diligently worked to make all of this stealing and perversion legal.

What can you do?

Do what you can. Maybe we can talk about this here. Work to make your voice heard. Maybe we can work together and create a new website dedicated to the principles of politics and liberation. Maybe we can make a Facebook page together.

This is history in the making. What will happen, will happen. Things might a lot worse before they get better.

But I do know this: we cannot copy the past. We must base what we do on our love for justice and the Earth and our realization of perfect connection. This means to even love our enemies and to work together to create a society dedicated not to the great wealth for the few, while the many are frozen in fear and want.

No!!!! That cannot continue.

The New Society must be based on the realization of our connection. We will take care of all our brothers and sisters. We will no longer allow endless harms for the sake of profit. We, quite literally, can no longer afford capitalism. Its way too expensive.

This is not a simple problem. It takes understanding, compassion, and, more than anything else, commitment. The revolution starts one heart at a time. Join this revolution of endless liberation.

If you can remember only one truth, remember this truth.

The belief that there is something wrong with me, is the core thought from which all self-delusion arises.

Seeking is useless, unless it undos the belief that there is something wrong with me.

One warning.

If the undoing of this belief yields a new me that is perfect or this or that or anything else, then know that this new me will become the me that is wrong or not right and you will be back where you started.

We are not a thought. We are and are-ness is not a thought.

I am and I am is not a thought. It is not a belief. It just is.

An Interesting Question Raised on Facebook

I placed this post on Facebook (as I do with most of my posts) and someone raised an interesting question:

if nothing is wrong then also this thought is not wrong. Maybe the content of the thought is not the truth but that is different from a wrong thought, isn’t it?

I responded:

There are zillions of “wrong” thoughts. What they have in common with “right” thoughts is that they are both thoughts. The thought “the Earth is flat” is wrong. Its assertion as truth will create an avalanche of other “wrong” thoughts. The thought “I am flawed” also creates an avalanche of other “wrong” thoughts.

Tomorrow — What About Other People (all of those stupid, ignorant, obnoxious people that drive you crazy!)

I’m fairly sure that some of you know that I can be an asshole. If you didnt know, now you do.

I think it might be worthwhile to talk about my assholeness, because there is something here that I need to process … maybe you as well.

Many years ago, when I first started a meditation practice based on a school of Tibetan Buddhism, my teacher stated that the personality was like the layers of an onion. You peel off one layer only to get to another… and another and another.

Later on, I was told how Buddhist training often inflates the ego. We start to believe that we truly are enlightened and we self-assign ourselves as teachers to lead and instruct others.

In my case, I was told I was awakened by a prominent teacher from the Zen Buddhist tradition. I didnt believe him at the time of this great achievement and I dont believe him now.

A Little Backstory

Prior to all of this, I was a kind of intellectual know-it-all who hated and loathed other know-it-alls. I was never a braggart and I always had the capacity to admit when I was wrong, but I also knew that, down deep, I was a lot smarter than the average person. The same, rather severe, capacity to judge others, I used against my own self. I dont think I was especially mean about it, but I was quite pointed and direct … especially with myself.

So I could legitimately assert that I was honest and unbiased, for the same analytical judgements I applied to others, I applied to myself. That underlying stern quality only contributed to my inner ego. I was truly great.

You can see that this persona creates a world where everything is either right or wrong. I was the knight in shining armor leading the charge of rightness against the vast wastelands of wrong that were everywhere to be corrected.

And here’s the important part: this inner judge is not something that comes and goes. It’s almost a continuous presence, the very core of this being. And other people can sense this, even if they can’t quite put their finger on it … they know that this potentially bristly character is present with this capacity to wound. What a fucking burden this has been for me. Truly, this quality is greatly mollified by an inner kindness as well,a kind of empathetic river that also runs deep and that is also all but continuous. Both of these internal psychological domains are present.

But who wants to be wounded? The kindness is hardly worth it if there is a risk of my feeling bad on account of me!

What I did mattered! It mattered mostly to me, but sometimes, I thought it should matter to others. I should be noticed. I deserve to be noticed.

On the other side, I saw the utter absurd grandiosity that undergirded those ludicrous beliefs. Sometimes I saw the same grandiosity in others and found it both contemptible but also quite funny. Often, I perceived my own self that same way … but not always.

Through all of the spiritual insights and accomplishments, that same persona structure is still there. It is my own personal asshole. And my writing of this post reflects the self-critical aspect of that same persona revealing the depths of my self-knowledge and inner awareness. See how amazing I am? I’m, simultaneously, a discerning, albeit pompous autocratic and a pleasantly self-effacing comic on the other! I am a comic despot!

The inner judge can be a royal pain in the ass. He’s very irritating. I always thought that what humanizes this judge is my rather extensive sense of humor, especially my propensity to ridicule myself, but today I think that its time to move on, to put this inner judge where he belongs … my grandiose and burdensome past. I wonder if that’s possible.

I have clung to this sternness and this ridicule all my life. I now see how the ridicule, the human side of the experience, the part that I understood as lovable and adorable, as just another expression of the inner judge. Can you see that? I can. They are two sides of the same coin. A constant inner judge would have been unacceptable and brutal. But the other side, the funny, self-effacing side, made it possible for the judge to persist. They danced to the same tune, me.

Dear Reader

The words I write are really written for myself, my own non-exclusive joy. Take what resonates in your own experience. We all live our lives and who am I to judge the lives of others? Even I live my life and who am I to judge that?

To the extent that I judge myself, to that same extent I resist the real and actual. To the extent that I judge myself, to that same extent do I fail to love and celebrate. What a fucking drag.

It really is a drag and Ive grown tired of it. Too much head and not enough heart.

For many, many years I thought of this as a jewish thing, a kind of jewish superiority (something my father warned me about, but that my mother seemed to endorse). And maybe it is a little cultural. We are what we are and there is no escaping that. Discernment has its power, but it also has its burdens. I would rather have the discernment rooted in the heart, rather than the other way around!

Life can get complicated and I am grateful to that and its mystery.

I’ve written all of this and now I wonder: I this just another expression of the self-effacing part of my personality? Is this just more of the same dance, more of the same?

Truly, I don’t know and I will never know. I see it all and I ask myself, Can I love this just as it is?

The key, dear reader, is this capacity to see and in that seeing to love this sad and happy story of our lives, this reflection of our thousand ancestors, this seed of some unknown future.

This is the way and this voice is just my small voice. I hope its been fun.

Awakening either sees everything as an expression of itself; or
Awakening sees itself as nothing at all, yet is open to whatever is happening.

Awakening is awareness.
Awakening is awareness as discernment.

Awakening is only happening now.
Awakening is aliveness itself.

Awakening dissolves the dreams of the personal self, even if those dreams are focusing on the next minute.

Everything that can be known in life is expressed as awakening.

Everyone is awakened, they just dont know it.
No one is awake because a person cannot be awake.

And thats where the problem comes in.
The seeker wants to be awake.

That cannot be.
That cannot happen.

The seeker, the me is only a projection formed by the Wound.
Know that!

Awakening only happens now as now.

It is attachment to the idea of the person as seeker that is the only obstacle to experiencing this truth.

The truth will set you free.

In awakening the sense of self continues.
The only difference is this:

Prior to awakening, the self was experienced as an independent doer, separate from all other experience.
After awakening, the self is seen as everything that changes and the exclusive doer is life itself.

The Ignorant Fool and His Guru

Several times Ive mentioned in previous posts that my most recent guru is my rescue dog Lucy. She has an uncanny ability to reflect back to me, what an ignorant fool I can be.

Thank goodness for that because we cultivate our own wisdom only when we come face to face with our ignorance. If you’re anything like me, and I suspect that you are, then I think you’ll be unpleasantly surprised by just how ignorant you truly are. Thank the stars for that.

The Rinpoche Lucy at Work

I live in a rather densely populated suburb and if you have a dog you really need to have that dog walk peacefully and calmly on a leash. Lucy

spent most of her puppyhood in the Hood. She was wild and way too aggressive. She was one wild butt biting guru!

But as a human being living in an all too human world, I could not indulge the wild guru her preferences. I had to teach her how to walk calmly and peacefully on a leash. It has not been an easy task.

A preference is a value.

I want (have a preference) Lucy to walk by my side calmly. This is what I value. It is important to me.

So when she pulls ahead, whether it be enthusiastically sniffing the ground for fascinating smells or wanting to kill the cute, little Bichon Frise 100 feet ahead of us, she is violently (notice the judgment) undermining what I value.

What is the result?

I become frustrated. But when this happens a hundred times, despite my best efforts to train her to be calm, anger and even resentment for my guru dog is what results. Shortly after we rescued her I wanted to return her to the ASPCA where she was adopted where surely she would have been euthanized.

Guru Lucy was a perfect mirror teaching me the lesson of how our values create unhappiness and conflict.

But they also had an even deeper teaching (continue reading).

It is not natural for a dog to be pulled here and there on a leash. Dogs want to run, roam, explore, and socialize. But human beings generally cannot provide that for their dogs. Instead they enslave them to the discipline of the leash.

Several times I allowed Lucy to run free and she just ran off and had a great time. Meanwhile, I worried miserably about how she would surely be killed by a passing car and then experienced the agonizing guilt that would ensue when I received the news that she had been run over. Fortunately she returned, usually after about 20 minutes, happy as can be, smiling ear to ear. This is the happiest I have ever seen her. But I cannot allow the risk of her getting killed and must coax her to obey the law of the leash.

The deeper lesson is, of course, great patience. Dogs dont acquiesce into becoming treat addicted slaves to their human masters overnight. It takes a lot of time.

This is the power of the guru. I experienced, first hand, how seemingly reasonable values foster unhappiness and conflict. I learned that insisting on a value that goes against the grain of reality demands patience. In the case of a dog, it is a wonder that their love runs so deeply that they will, eventually, follow the rules we set and still adore us and everyone will be happy. That is the blessing of raising a dog, especially a rescue dog. When such demands are made with people in our lives, they are usually unacceptable and even ruthless.

The World of Humans

As I have said, repeatedly, we will never nurture our own capacity for wisdom if we chase after lofty, conceptual goals. That is just negative ego doing what self-hating egos do. Invariably, the devil is in the details. So, lets take a look at how values create unhappiness in the elements of our daily living.

I want my partner to be pleasant. That is a value that is just a time bomb for future upset. It is also, as in our case history with Guru Lucy, a forceful demand we place on others, as if we know better than they.

I want to get into an Ivy League University and if I don’t, Im going to be miserable. Well, you will be miserable either way because you are placing demands on life that life is unlikely to deliver. The value was attached to getting into an elite university. So, if you don’t get in, then you savage yourself for your stupidity and/or laziness. Either way you lose.

I want to always please my partner and when I don’t Im going to get very down on myself.

I want my parents to respect my choices. Good luck with that.

I want corporations to share more of their wealth with working people. Good luck with that as well.

I want to be able to always find my keys in the morning.

People should recycle more.

It’s fine and even rather heroic to struggle for workers rights and corporate responsibility. The anger we experience when hard reality conflicts with our values can be used to fuel our passion. That is good. Anger and outrage can be essential emotions. And we are free, as long as we see the process for what it is. That is power and it is that power that will give us the resilience we will need to commit ourselves to values that are rooted in our love of our connection to all our relatives; human, animal, plant, and nature. When we see the connection between values and emotion we are clear and vibrant. And when we are drawn to connection, rather than separation and diviseness, we are strong and loving.

Every judgment and preference we assert reflects a value and every value we hold dear will eventually create conflict. Wanting to become enlightened is one such value. It is an especially superfluous value if compared to my value of wanting Lucy to walk calmly on a leash. Do you see that?

The way to free ourselves of values that cause divisiveness is to see them play out in the most subtle of contexts. Life will give you a hundred opportunities to do this everyday. You will notice that virtually every upset you experience is a result of asserting a value over the flow of reality itself. We insist that we are right and reality is wrong. When you start seeing that happening, pretty much all of the time, you will suddenly be jolted into a kind of relaxed freeness.

When we see the relationship between conflict and values, we get what we always wanted. It will just be that the road we took was not what we found on the map created by our psyche.

How much more can workers lose?

With the bankers in charge of just about everything, workers have become mere pawns, object that the ruling class can use and cut and exploit. The worker is no longer the producer. Workers are now simple, scared consumers. Their real job is to give the little they have left to the richest of the rich. The workers is there to pay. When bankers actually risk loss, it will always be the compliant worker who will bail them out. He is there to be the bankers punching bag as they demand their endless austerity measures, which are only a fancy way to make them richer as workers get poorer.

The facts speak for themselves. Only the very richest people have prospered in these hard times.

Today the great economist Robert Reich wrote:

That’s why most of the gains from the productivity revolution are going to the owners of capital, while typical workers are either unemployed or underemployed, or else getting wages and benefits whose real value continues to drop. The portion of total income going to capital rather than labor is the highest since the 1920s.

Increasingly, the world belongs to those collecting capital gains.

They’re the ones who demanded and got massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, on the false promise that the gains would “trickle down” to everyone else in the form of more jobs and better wages.

They’re now advocating austerity economics, on the false basis that cuts in public spending — including education, infrastructure, and safety nets — will generate more “confidence” and “certainty” among lenders and investors, and also lead to more jobs and better wages.

This is the state of workers on May Day in 2012. Once workers lost their voice to the phony pro-worker cries of the corporate media, they could be sold to fight the wars that only benefit the largest international corporations, all made possible by banks. It is the workers who will be gouged at every pump when the bank speculators bid up the price of fuel. It will be workers and farmers who will starve and beg as the bank speculators bid up the price of basic food.

Its high time to just stop and tell these bankers to go fuck themselves. We will have no part in schemes that only benefit them. Its always the workers who must sacrifice. Always the workers that are manipulated to fight their wars. Flag and God they scream. Well, its their fucking flag. They own it, but they paid for it with your money.

Obama is just one more false friend. He is a pal to every Wall Street con artist and war huckster. He wont even support a tax on stock transactions … not even a tax of one half of one percent! But you will pay sales tax on every item you buy. Obama has made his faustian bargain and sold his soul, if he ever had one. He is not a friend of workers or open government.

And Romney is even worse.

Dont vote. Dont play into any of the games rigged by the corporate kings and queens. Know them for what they are, common criminals who insist that they stick their grubby, filthy hands in your pocket to steal the little you have left.

Resist. Re-discover your voice. Stop going along.

Workers unite. Black, Gay, White, Red, and Brown come together. Stop the thievery. Stop your own victimization.

Stand strong. Stand united. Stand with integrity to what is true and good. Stand for what is fair and just. Stand up for the voiceless. Organize, reach out, become the maker of your world.

You will see that what we believe is real is not actually real. The “reality” asserted by our psyches as all that is real is not real. In fact, we will see that our psyches themselves are not real.

We will discover that life is very much like a dream, but is not, exactly, a dream. This is ultimate liberation.

This post addresses one of the most challenging aspects of esoteric Eastern teachings, but its power to liberate and free is immense. Please read on.

The Post

The Buddha described awakening as a metaphor. He said something to the effect that waking up from the samsara of everyday existence is like waking up from a dream. These words strongly suggest that the life you and I believe of as real is, in actuality, a dream.

Let’s see if this is true, because if it is true then our whole world will be turned upside down.

A Dream

Last night I had a dream about placing my dog into a kennel as well as the events that occurred when I picked my dog up from the kennel. Most of the scenes had elements that were utterly surreal and bizarre, including an especially crazy set of scenes focusing on the kennel’s program of wild animal rehabilitation, which was both horrifying and incredibly strange.

When I woke up this morning, I thought what a crazy dream I had.

But while the dream was taking place, it had the quality of being real, despite its incredible strangeness. This points to something essential to realize.

Did I choose my dream?

No. The dream simply happened. I didn’t plan it and I could never imagine creating this dream.

Do I know what my dreams will be tonight?

No. Dreams will happen, but I don’t have a clue what they will be about, but I do know that as they are happening, me, the dreamer as a character in the dream will believe that they are real as the computer on which I am typing this post.

When I fall asleep, the living reality of the waking dream ends. This mirrors the effect of waking up after an evening of dreaming; the dream-state ends.

Comparing the Apparent Dream State with the Awake State

As I have discussed in a recent post and as many other people have noted, we don’t know what is next. We don’t know what we will be thinking or feeling even just one minute from now.

Our thoughts and feelings are often linked to what appears to be happening in our lives. But if we don’t know what will be happening in our lives, then we can’t possibly know what we will be thinking or feeling, even just one minute from now.

We can speculate about it. We might know we need to get ready to go to work or make some coffee, but beyond that we can’t fill in the specifics about any future event. The mind and its psyche think and plan in broad, inexact generalities based on memory and supposition.

Life is infinitely more complex and nuanced that any thought about it. All thinking is a subset of the vastly more subtle qualities of any life moment.

We also notice that the mind wants to believe that it will know what will be happening next, but this is little more than an all but empty belief. It is usually a projection of memory, which is also just an inevitable and unstoppable happening as life.

Notice the words inevitable and unstoppable.

We see the whole play of thinking, believing (a type of thought) and ever-changing situations and events in our life as both unstoppable and inevitable.

How is this different or similar to a dream? This is the key question.

It all feels real, but is it?

We want to believe that our dreams are, intrinsically, unreal, especially in contrast to the happenings of our waking life, but are they so different? Are they different at all?

From the vantage point of the dream-state, it is our waking state that is unreal.

Most of us want to believe that we can make a difference in our lives. Our lives matter to us. Dreams don’t matter much because they are not real. But in real life we have kids, careers, responsibilities, and all the rest. We see this and we sense that there is a very great difference between the two states.

In a dream, the scene may occur in daylight. If you could ask another dream character if it is day or night, they might say that it is day. That is to say, that you, the central character in your dream and another character in your dream are experiencing the same conditions.

In normal waking life, I have thoughts that you don’t have. We can agree on what words make up this sentence, but our individual experience of the sentence will be private and individual. This is also what happens in a dream. There are two levels of sensation, the private and unique and the shared and general.

Even though surreal events happen in dreams, the main character, does not feel himself to be psychologically different within the dream state than from the sensation of “me” in the waking state. Both characters have a sense of what they are likely to do next even though the context of the presenting situation feels rather different. We are beginning to see that the stuff of dreams and ordinary waking life have much in common.

Since my mom died, last August, I’ve had dozens of dreams where my mom returns and I interact with her as I might have done in normal waking life when she was alive. The “me” sense and the sense of the my mom don’t seem materially different.

Conclusion

So is waking life different from dream life?

That which “knows” that he is dreaming in the midst of a dream and who “knows” that waking life is real, in contrast to the dream state, feels like the same “me” that is typing this post.

I also notice that just as I can’t “know” what will happen next in a dream, I see that I can’t know what will happen next in waking life. In both states there is a sense of what is likely to happen next, but the dream, just like waking life, will have details, qualities, and even content, that is not knowable prior to its happening.

The only difference between a Buddha and us is that the Buddha has realized that what we believe to be the waking state is really no difference from what we know as the dreaming state. The Buddha sees that whatever happens next was both unstoppable and inevitable.

And now we’re noticing another pattern emerging from this post; namely that everything is just happening, whether it be in what we would label a dream or waking life.

It’s all happening. Breathing is happening, smiling, fear, desire, violence, love, needing to pay bills, falling asleep … it’s all happening just as it does. We see, as it is happening, that it is unstoppable and inevitable. It is all potential in the future, but right now, it’s unstoppable and inevitable. And when we see that everything unfolds in this now, we further see that everything must be unstoppable and inevitable, whether it’s taking a piss or getting an “A” in American History. Even meeting the person “of your dreams” (or not) was both unstoppable and inevitable, because your dreams about him or her were also unstoppable and inevitable.

The Take-Away

When it is seen that all of experience is one vast happening and that even the person we have believed ourselves to be is just one more happening and that all thoughts and feelings are, equally, happenings, then something else happens and this is where language fails us.

We see that aware “me” is also just another happening. There is no place to stand. It feels like a free-floating nothingness. Nothing is real, yet, in the moment of it’s arising it feels very real. It’s one vast, absurd contradiction and we can’t bend our minds around it.

Do we just relax? Do we give up? Do we do whatever we please?

Well every response is also an unstoppable and inevitable happening. And, if you really realize this, down to the core of your being, then something else happens.

We are liberated from the belief that we need to be anything, but what we are in this moment.

In the midst of this mind-blowing realization, we sense (and this sensing is also a happening) that the me that undergirds all happenings never changes. This is the anchor, this is the still-point.

You can’t “be” this entity. You can’t be anything, because anything that is, is just another fleeting happening that is unstoppable and inevitable. You seem to be both all of it and none of it. In my own view, we are none of it. We are just the light that enables it all to be seen.

Wake up from the dream of the “me” thing. Right now, imagine this as a dream and then, quickly, believe that it is real. Then ask yourself what is really real? Let me know what you discover.

Ignorance and people go together like coffee and cream.

AHHHHHHHH awake to the foibles. All of those lofty, lovey-dovey aspirations blown away by the breezes of reality.

We are apes and especially dangerous apes, for we have lost touch with our apeness. Somewhere we fell under the spell of sacred humanity and became idiots.

We are apes with a very extensive language. But we are apes nonetheless.

Its not too late to be an ape.

A bad ape is one who believes he isn’t an ape. A good ape is one who loves his apeness.

Do you have apability? I’m sure you do. Throw away the mask of your empty pretentions.

Go ape before it’s too late.

This post can change your life now and forever.

Can you say, with certainty, that you know what you’re going to do next?

“Yes”, you say. “I’m going to waste ten minutes of my life and read this post!”

Maybe.

But what if the phone rings? What if someone comes knocking at your door? What if you suddenly remember you need to write that important email that you forgot to write yesterday. What if you get totally bored and decide that you’d rather get back to work? What if, what if, and what if???

We all already know that we don’t have a clue what we will be thinking and feeling ten seconds from now, but we also see that our sense of what we’ll actually be doing is vague and actually uncertain.

We really don’t know what we’ll be doing in the next ten minutes. And even if you have some sense of it, like “I’m going to work on this important report”, even that is a kind of “best guess”. Anything could happen and usually, something does happen.

“For the unexpected is always upon us (Beckett (I think))).”

But the mind must be in charge! The mind insists on this one single fact.

The quality and texture of my life needs to be formed by the belief that I know what I will be doing next.

But that is, as we have seen, nothing but a lie. The mind is addicted to lies of this sort. And even though the mind is all but totally deluded and rather stupid, it remains in charge.

I have seen how my own mind can be a tyrant. It is the usurper of my life. It makes every effort to be my life. That is the central, core delusion. See that, see the rock-hard truth of that and you are free!

Can you see this in your own life?

So let’s get this totally straight.

1. I don’t know what I’ll be thinking next;
2. I don’t know what I’ll be feeling next; and
3. I don’t know what I’ll be doing next.

Then who is this “I”?

So all of this seeking is inevitably about a kind of faith in what’s next. But I now see that I don’t have a clue about what’s next and NEVER WILL!

So, where does that leaves us?

Now!

This is it. Trust this for this is all you ever know. Love the show of your life, for you never know what will happen next.