Is Life a Dream?

What You Will Get” From this Post

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. Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on May 1, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Love | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Its Never Too Late to Be an Ape

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I’m Talk­ing About You

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.


by A Voice Posted on April 27, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Humor, Liberation, Life, Love | Tagged | 1 Comment

What Are You Going to Do Next or Is Your Mind a Tyrant?

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Big Brother is your own mind

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??? Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 27, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Soul and Spirit in Classical Music

OSBMy wife, hates clas­si­cal music. It bores her to death. To her ears, it mostly sounds like a mass of jum­bled noises. She is, of course, wrong, but that’s her problem.

I was raised in a very clas­si­cal envi­ron­ment (not by my par­ents, but my brother who was instru­men­tal in mak­ing me the per­son that I am (so you can blame him)). I love clas­si­cal music more than any­thing in my life except for my family.

So I wanted to present exam­ples of music that I believe are not only deeply soul­ful, but also arous­ing of great spir­i­tual depth. For each work I will pro­vide a link to amazon.com, if you’re inter­ested in explor­ing these works in more depth. Also, I will try to go in his­tor­i­cal order start­ing from the ear­li­est works in the list and mov­ing to the present. I’m not going to include any music from the Medieval or Renais­sance eras, because it is so dif­fer­ent from more recent clas­si­cal music, although some of the works from those eras have great pow­ers of soul and spir­i­tu­al­ity, if I may use that loaded term!

This is a very incom­plete list. I have made no attempt to list every work that inspires love and har­mony in my own heart.

One final word; because I know the music so well, the link will go to what I believe is the best per­for­mance of the work. So here goes. Enjoy!

Bach, J. S., Suites for Solo Cello Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 26, 2012
Posted in Culture | Tagged , | Leave a comment

An Undomesticated Human Being

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You the Animal

I’ve called my book, Lib­er­a­tion from the Lie, a man­ual of undomestication.

What does it mean to be undomesticated?

We come into this life as an animal.

Con­sider that. You were not your name, or your class, or your nation, or your reli­gion. You are an ani­mal … a human animal.

Your senses were alive to the world. The world threw itself at you through your eyes, nose, mouth, and body. Your body/mind and the world were con­nected as one. It was a con­nec­tion that could never be sev­ered. You were the world and the world was you.

You the Tod­dler Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 25, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Environment, Family, Liberation, Life, Love, Religion, Society | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Contact: The Ultimate Pointer

wpid-touching-hands-2012-04-24-09-25.jpgThe Ever-Changing

Notice how every­thing in the uni­verse is con­stantly chang­ing. The stars move in their solar sys­tems and the solar sys­tems move around their galax­ies and even the galax­ies revolve around even larger pivots.

Every­thing changes and is revolv­ing. The qual­ity of our see­ing and tast­ing change. The breath revolves around inhala­tion and exha­la­tion. Sounds come and go.

The psy­che is always mov­ing. It revolves around like and dis­like to indif­fer­ence in the blink of an eye. Moods arise and pass away. Energy and fatigue dance in their own cir­cle. Desire and fear are aroused here and there.

What is at the cen­ter? What are all these things revolv­ing around?

This ever-revolving move­ment describes the ever-changing world.

The Change­less

Right now notice the ever-changing and in that same instant notice that which greets this fluid uni­verse. There is some­thing that greets and con­tacts every moment. It is always present no mat­ter what the energy level of the psy­che hap­pens to be. It is there at the cen­ter. Desires and fears revolve around this change­less pivot. Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 24, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Life | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Celebrate Your Inequality

I’ve noticed that many peo­ple run faster than me. It has also come to my atten­tion that although I can do a lot of push-ups, many peo­ple are much stronger than me. I’ve also noticed that while I enjoy swim­ming and I have been swim­ming since I was a lit­tle kid, I can­not swim nearly as well as Michael Phelps.

I enjoy draw­ing, or, I should say, that I would like to enjoy draw­ing, but actu­ally I suck at draw­ing. Many peo­ple draw quite well, but I am not among them.

When I was a lot younger, I wanted to be a Sioux* Indian, but I was stuck being a jew­ish boy grow­ing up in sub­ur­ban Philadel­phia and no mat­ter how hard I tried, I could never be the Sioux war­rior I dreamed of being. Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 23, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Life, Love, Society, Work | Tagged | 1 Comment

Navajo Reciprocity: A World in Balance

In the late 1990s I was work­ing on the Navajo Nation as part of a research project I was man­ag­ing that was designed to eval­u­ated the effec­tive­ness of Navajo Peace­mak­ing to pre­vent and reduce inter­per­sonal violence.

One day, while relax­ing in the back­yard of a tra­di­tional healer, I noticed that he was speak­ing to a tree in Navajo. Navajo peo­ple heat their homes with dead limbs that they care­fully remove from liv­ing trees.

The healer noticed that I was watch­ing him and he asked me if I thought he was a “Cal­i­for­nia New Ager who spoke to trees?” Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 22, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Life, Love, Society | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Join the Dance

To Be or Not to Be

To be or not to be is not the ques­tion. You already are.

Read­ers of my last post will see, directly, that we are being done! Every­thing in our life, with­out excep­tion, is being done. By the time we notice any­thing, it has already hap­pened. The beat­ing of our hearts, the pas­sion of our desires, the puls­ing of blood through our veins … all being done by the same source that also does moun­tains, tigers, and super­novas (and farts).

There is noth­ing for the lack-identified self to do. It’s part (role) has already hap­pened. There is no future. Every­thing hap­pens now. All hopes of the lack-based self die in the fire of this realization.

What do you do, when you real­ize that there is noth­ing you can do? Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 19, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Life, Love | Tagged | 2 Comments

Let’s Get Real!

No one wants to suf­fer, yet we all, unwit­tingly, make that choice. It’s time to really call it quits. We’ve had our fill of phi­los­o­phy to the point where we just want to puke.

Suf­fer­ing isn’t com­pli­cated (although we make it so). So let’s keep this explo­ration very simple.

Who is the sufferer?

The suf­ferer is a belief, a deeply habit­u­ated belief.

We Can Be Lib­er­ated from Beliefs

If you’re like me, when I was very young I believed in the tooth fairy. I don’t know how I dis­pelled myself of this belief, but some­how I did. When one of my baby teeth fell out and I placed it beneath my pil­low, I knew that my par­ents would leave a quar­ter in its stead. Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 18, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Life | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Lion Hunt: An Exploration into Reality

 What is Real? The Lion Hunt Shows the Way

I have a very wealthy friend who recently invited myself and a good friend to accom­pany him on a safari. We were going to the coun­try of Burundi where my wealthy friend hoped to find and kill a male lion. He planned to have the head of the dead lion mounted on a wall so he could show-off his tro­phy to friends and family.

We began our quest very early in the morn­ing. The very first fil­a­ments of sun­light sil­hou­et­ted the beau­ti­ful African moun­tains in the near dis­tance. Mean­while our guide made us com­fort­able with a deli­cious break­fast served in the plush rear seat­ing area of a spe­cially out­fit­ted Jeep loaded with gear.

My friend is a devout non-dualist and he was hav­ing a splen­did time of it. He sat across from me very relaxed and happy. Con­tinue read­ing →


by A Voice Posted on April 14, 2012
Posted in Awakening, Liberation, Life, Society | Tagged | 4 Comments