What's Your Story?

What you think you become.

(Buddha)

We are a story in the making; a product of our own belief-sets. Everyone carries some of the collective experience as a baseline life-hypothesis and adds the personal perspective, and idiosyncratic lessons learned: we carry mental memes around such as, "my family supports me"; "my boss is challenging"; or, "I am overweight", or "I am good at my work". And as the years go by, dependent on how successful and how devoted we are in certain areas of our lives, we are willing to revise the narrative a bit. So we celebrate little success stories such as, "I always was pretty shy, but now I find it easier dealing with people", and will revise our belief-sets accordingly.

If you are willing to step back a little, you could question whether all limits are self-imposed. Someone with years of practice at work may have evolved from being in the "also run category" to mastery, which is a nice accomplishment; someone else might have gotten fired and needs time to rebuild this professional confidence. I salute the Law of Attraction folks for being open to experimenting with the thought and belief matrix that we all seem to operate within. "The Secret" is a philosophy of sorts. There is only one way to find out whether it works for you personally, you just have to try it!

It takes years to build the story one truly believes in. As we change our belief-sets, the world we operate in changes with us, but this adjustment is a process and requires time and patience. The boss who was once perceived as challenging may change his attitude towards us, or may be replaced by someone who has more of an interest in what we are doing. Or we might be changing professions ourselves. It takes time to adjust the characters in our movie for the reason that it takes a lot of time and persistence to change subconscious belief-set. 

We spiritual travelers are different from the Law of Attraction folks in that we believe in the GUIDANCE of a higher authority. We also believe that there is a purpose to our life that gets communicated to us - a mission of sorts. GOD is writing the story with us, so to speak. Just as Lord Krishna reminds Arjun that each of us has some dharma to live through: 

"It is better to do your own duty badly, than to perfectly do another’s; you are safe from harm when you do what you should be doing." (Bhagavad Gita)

Interact with life and grasp this passion and purpose that life has in store just for you and do it to the best of your abilities. Your feelings, your intuition, your insights and the signs of the WAY will lead you to your life story. When you truly believe in your mission, your subconscious belief-sets and life's events will follow you. Yes, you are that powerful!  Once you have discovered purpose and passion, follow it with all you got. Make your story a good one and share it with the rest of us. 

 

Waking Up Within a Dream

Neo: "But if you already know, how can I make a choice?"

The Oracle: "Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you have already made it. You are here to try to understand "why" you made it."

I remember as a student in Graduate School a night when I argued passionately with someone that there must be more to life than just being yanked around by forces beyond our conscious control, as he claimed we were. In the meantime, I am no longer so sure. Especially after I learned about a neurological study in which researchers found a light bulb going off in our brain prior to us having become conscious of having made a decision, just as the Oracle explained it to Neo.

Both the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching claim that that's exactly what is going on. Says Lord Krishna to Arjun in the Bhagavad Gita:

The LORD dwells deep in the heart 

of all beings, by HIS wondrous power

making them all revolve 

like puppets on a carousel.

So while I would no longer pick a fight with the student of the graduate school days, I also today understand better what irked me about his thesis at that time, it was the pointlessness of living a subconscious life. But then, we have spirituality to wake up to. We can be the spiritual aspirant who wakes up to the choices she makes, and with it, awakens to the movie we are operating in. Maybe as long as we walk the earth, we are always caught in a dream; but we can wake up within the dream and adjust the level of consciousness. Lucid dreaming is a lot of fun. Why don't you give it a try!

Every Storm runs out of Rain

One believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. Realizing that which is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can you slay or cause another to slay?

(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

He was a soldier in the greatest battle there ever was, Athens against the invading Persians. They had been fighting since dawn and the sun would be setting soon. They were ridiculously outnumbered but somehow they kept the line of defense going. If the Persians broke this last line of defense they would kill everyone in a 200 mile radius; their wives would be raped, their parents killed and their children put into slavery. That was the true reason he was still standing even though two arrows had already penetrated him; his shield was breaking under the weight of the incoming battle axes. He was slipping in and out of consciousness and his movements were purely mechanical at that time. He didn't know whether he was dreaming when he heard the trumpets of Spartan from the far distance. He felt a push from behind and suddenly saw fear in the attacker's eyes. There they came on their white horses down the right flank of the Persians, cutting trough the opposing lines like a knife cuts butter. His loved ones will be save now, and perhaps even he can still make it after all.

It is hard to find that distance the Bhagavad Gita talks about when it comes to our life and that of our loved ones. We cannot help identifying with what means the world to us, just as the soldier of Athens did. But then, times have changed for the better. While our media wants to claim otherwise, violence, murder and war is actually receding as it is carefully shown in Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature" by providing centuries of criminal and war records. We are still part of the same movie though. The ego conquers and gets defeated just in the olden days, it is just that this time around we don't need to wait a life-time to start over again. For today's' quarterback a lost playoff game feels like the end of the world, until he steps back and fires himself up for the the next season; just as one day he will make plans for his retirement.

We wouldn't kill ourselves over a job, would we? So what if the stuff didn't quite work out; we take the disappointment and the lingering negative energy and throw ourselves into the next endeavor with twice the energy and a lot more experience. Your overall life story has to make sense, little setbacks along the journey are just that, temporary set-backs.

"You are not the voice in your head", our spiritual folks have claimed for as long humanity has been around. No matter what happens to us, we can always take a step back and perceive Oneness in what is. I remember the story of an Indian Raja who got executed by an invading Muslim Sultan. As he took his last breath he said to to him, "Thou art Him" and died. You don't have to be as enlightened as the Raja in our story. Just take a good look around you, the opportunity to find the big perspective in your life story always presents itself no matter what storm might be brewing in your life right now.

What is Your Way?

I was sitting in a car with another investor and I told him that I was assuming coverage of a different region than I had done before. He asked me why, and I responded "My boss told me to do it - so be it." He looked at me and only said, "Well, you are a soldier."

You may like Christian Wiese's writings, and yes, that is who I am. I am describing a Way, but hardly the Way. The Psychologist C.G. Jung once discovered what he called our Archetypes -different personality types, roles that seem to be written into our collective subconscious - and we all seem to be gravitating towards one. Mine has loyalty written all over it. I once came up with the 3 Cs that define Christian's Way: Care, Creativity and Community. I care about the community I am operating in and would give everything to see things through that I care about. I am the love that the Christ talks about, just as I am the soldier that Lord Krishna appealed to on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita. Love and loyalty are my sources of creativity and strive, but as I said before, it is my Way and hardly the Way.

Find your source of originality but don't make a religion out of it. The word religion is based on the Latin root "to bind"; always act from your nature but don't tie yourself to anything but the Way. You are everything! There is a time when the soldier has to rebel and there is a time when the player has to make a stance. There is no wrong or right, there is only the Way. As the reader of my writings knows, I am also a Tao traveler. As Lao-Tzu discovered many thousand years ago, the Way comprises everything: the solder, the mother, the trickster, the wise woman and so much more. Do your job in whatever shape or form, then go your jolly Way.

Everyone on a spiritual journey has to make a first step towards Her. So what's your Way?

Emotions: The Missing Link

Shatter every window 'til it's blown away.

'Til there's nothing left standing,

nothing left of yesterday.

Every tear-soaked whisked memory

blown away. Blown away!

(Carrie Underwood, Blown Away)

Buddha once stated the perhaps obvious, "The good deeds, do them, the bad, avoid them!" Righteous living is demanded by all faiths. Lord Krishna tells Arjun in the Bhagavad Gita that "he should lift up the self by the Self, and not sink into the selfish; for the self is the only friend of the Self, and its only foe." And then, of course, there was Jesus who simply stated "Get thee behind me satan!" when he was tempted to play with supernatural powers in his 40 days desert stay.

We spiritual travelers mostly know what to do because it is somehow obvious. Sure, sometimes we have to do what seems not so kosher at the first because the Way lets us know that nothing is quite as easy as it seems. But eventually we all travel the same holy pathway and meet at the same beautiful location. No, the true challenge of returning Home is the process of letting go emotionally. Stuff that has been swept under the carpet for decades, perhaps for even for lifetimes. Stuff that we projected or repressed. Fears that we are finally willing to confront, anger we are willing to admit to ourselves; guilt we release and temptations we are willing to face. It is an emotional process and no guru can help us with that personal and painful journey. We have to get it out of the system all by ourselves. 

When all the stuff comes to the surface it really hurts; it really blinds you and it tempts you to do stuff that you know is not right. When you reach this point you at least have to let the steam out. The trick is not to accumulate new karma in your interactions with others, but as far as the stuff below the surface is concerned, you have to let it come to the surface, ugly as it is. Find ways to let go. Make faces, scream, cry, do kick-boxing; allow some little dark symbols in your life from time to time. The tortured girl in Carrie's song unfortunately seems to have reached the end of a road; she believes that there is "not enough rain in Oklahoma to wash the sins away". Yes there is! There is always a way to let go. Just allow your emotions to flow and everything will work out in time.

How Old is Your Soul?

Heart beats fast, colors and promises. How to be brave?

How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?

But watching you stand alone,

all of my doubts suddenly go away, somehow.

I have died every day waiting for you. 

Darling, don't be afraid, 

I have loved you for a thousand years;

I will love you for a thousand more.

(Christina Perri, A Thousand Years)

It strikes me as odd that a concept that is key for our spiritual advancement - our soul - is so poorly defined. The Hindus - as always - have the purest and highest notion of the Soul: it is our God connection. The spark that God implanted when we decided to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and fell in a self-imposed slumber. This is how the Gita describes the divinity in us:

The sharpest sword will not pierce it,

the hottest flame will not singe it.

It is perfect, all-pervading,

calm, immovable, timeless.

But the Hindus have other expressions that are missing in our vocabulary: the concepts of vasana and dharma - a tendency, an idiosyncratic desire, a mission statement; something meaningful that we have to fulfill and burn off. I would argue that we - more in the spirit of the ancient Greeks than in the Judaic-Christian tradition - could use the expression soul in contrast to the True Self that already encompasses this notion of God-connection. 

So what exactly does it mean to have a soul-longing? Well. It is something we have been after over many lifetimes; a homework we may not have quite completed, a lesson not yet learned; some residual homework that our parents left behind; a karma that somehow sticks to the soil of the country we are born in or where we now live. In short, we have a human mission with a divine purpose that is ours to discover.

The beauty of this insight is that once we have reached this stage of illumination, we are already Home. When we remember the longings of our soul we will always find a way to express it in a spiritually kosher way. Our feet are on the ground while our eyes gaze at the stars. We put our heart and soul into whatever is meaningful to us just like we did before, yet, for the first time we 

remember God's Golden Rule: choose love every step of the Way. Our spiritual journey is already complete even though our body and mind are still at it.

Soul of a thousand years, we bow to Thee. The journey is finally over!

Do Your Job and then Move On

You have a right to your actions,

but never to your actions’ fruits. 

Act for the action’s sake.

And do not be attached to inaction.

(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

Take any goal of yours, a promotion, a degree, a possession, and you will find that even if you get what you want, the enjoyment will only be temporary and soon enough a voice inside will speak up, "so what's next?, "was that it?", and "if only I also get this next thing I will finally be happy!" There is only one solution to this problem - just as the Bhagavad Gita suggests - aim for the activity per se that gives you meaning and don't worry much about what is in store for you personally.

Accept life as is. It is perfect from a spiritual perspective. Success and failure, progress and set-back are finely attuned to ensure that you learn along the Way to let go of things that no longer serve you. Run after whatever it is that get your juices flowing -that is all you can do anyway- but stand ready to let go when the job is done.

Don't negate your desires but learn that life knows best in providing you with what is yours. Keep the attention on your job, the task at hand, the people you work with and the problems that come your way. When you truly care about what you do and the people you are connected with, your authentic needs will always be fulfilled. And if the ego acts up now and then along the way, then so be it. The sun will shine again even after a little rage, a whiff of depression or a few shattered dreams. The sun always rises the next morning, you must have spotted that pattern by now.

There was a time when I felt that the Bhagavad Gita is a spiritual norm as well - a super-ego so to speak that risks bringing out the demons in you if you repress whatever it is meaningful to you. Today I think of the quoted Gita's verse as an insight instead. We cannot live with or without the ego, with or without the desires and the the aspirations, but we can transcend them. Life does that for you. All you have to do is being mindful and you can discover for yourself that it is only the journey that matters and the people you meet along the Way. Leave your mark for future generations if you wish but know that the "destination" of your journey is every step along the Way.

Killer Instinct

Self-possessed, resolute, act
without any thought of results,
open to success or failure,
This equanimity is yoga.
(Bhagavad Gita)

A colleague had a training session with a former tennis star - who actually turned out to be quite nice. When my colleague asked him afterwards what exactly separates the top ranked players from the rest he replied, "the killer instinct"!

How sad, but probably true. The question only is why would anyone become a professional sports player. All these rules are man-made. If you put two professionals against each other, one has to win and the other lose. Those are the rules. But life doesn't have to be that way at all. Life is creative. When you walk the Tao you know that everyone wins - that's the Way.

The message of the Gita sounds like it is the opposite of professional sports, but then, in some dimension, it is the same. Yes, you can be "successful" without rooting for it. You are lost in the moment along the Way just as the athlete. Instincts are kicking in along the Way, yet it is hardly a killer instinct. You act as you receive an invite to act. You act without any pressure and without expectation. It is an act of freedom, of creativity and love. It is the most obvious and natural thing in the world. You aren't rooting against anyone, you are showing up along the Way.

The Retirement of Retirement

You have the right to work Arjun, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

A colleague told me other day a story of a fairly successful CEO who retired at the age of 65 and afterwards fell into a big hole of darkness. I can understand why; it is hard to accept if you go from being at the top of the world to apparent "nothingness". Sure, most rich people have the means to hide this transition fairly well. Fancy vacations, club memberships, perhaps even displaying their "trophy wives" in social gatherings but eventually all that is meaningless. Only one thing gives you true happiness, meaning, connectedness and love!

If there is a promise of the Creator it is that meaningful work is yours to choose if only you are willing to go the distance. The rewards the Creator can't promise to you since these are your desires. But as we all know, whenever we put our heart and your soul into something, a few crumbs will come our way. So let's focus our attention to the creative outlets, the connectedness with others and the love for what you do instead and chances are, we will be just fine.

Everyone should always have an eye on the next creative outlet. It is a nice feeling to be at the top of your game and perhaps at the peak of your earning power. Think about passing that golden goose on to someone while you already work on your next endeavor. Sure, there may be a time when you finally settle down with a person you love and really do retire for good. You will know when this point is reached, but until then have fun creating, connecting and caring for what you do!

Phallic Life Expressions

He who performs his duty
with no concern for results
is the true man of yoga.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

We moved at work the other day and as I was putting my belongings up in the new office I noticed that my colleague had left his memorabilia from a previous offsite meeting behind. When I dropped them off he was happy to get them back. One was a conductor's baton that we all got when we met with an orchestra conductor and a handful of musicians to compare our business philosophies. I was thinking to myself that a conductor's baton is in fact is a great symbol of everything I aspire to accomplish as a strategist in the financial industry: guide others with my investment knowledge and get the timing exactly right - just as every good conductor would.

It has been many years since we had that offsite and I have grown a lot personally and spiritually since then. At that time I would never have made these symbolic associations. So I probably put the baton somewhere in a storage box at home and will find it one day when I am moving houses. Yet, as synchronicity has it, a few days before the move I got a coffee mug which has in bold letters "maestro" written on it. So I put it up next to me at work on the book shelve as a reminder of what my true aspirations are. The symbol is always there in the background, yet nobody really would make this association and even I - quite deliberately - face away from it in my day-to-day operations.

Isn't that exactly what the Bhagavad Gita has in mind? You acknowledge your desires, you do your best to get them expressed in a spiritually kosher way, but leave its manifestation up to a higher authority. Being at the top of our game professionally and being admired by our peers for that ability we perhaps would consider a somewhat more refined phallic symbol. Yet, it is the same underlying desire that makes the peacock dance in front of the hens. As it turns out, I am no longer quite driven the way at work I once was and now use my job mostly just to pay the bills. My next career will be that of a writer and a spiritual coach. So from a spiritual perspective this will be an even more refined expression of my being, yet it is exactly the same leitmotif: the desire to be admired for my wisdom.

As long as we walk the earth we have to accept our roots, yet it is very much in our power to transmute life's energy through whatever creation we choose. Take this choice seriously, express yourself in way that works for everyone but don't worry so much about the results. A higher authority will figure out how exactly your creation is being implemented. Successes, disappointments, lucky strikes and faux pas - accept them all as they come. You just worry about burning your fuel in the process, while the Tao guides you home efficiently and in a personally meaningful way. Decide on a creative outlet, do your work to the best of your abilities and than walk away - that is the Way!

Holy Indifference

Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. With unified consciousness, however, all anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill.

When your mind has overcome the confusion of duality, you will attain the state of holy indifference to things you hear and things you have heard. When you are unmoved by the confusion of ideas and your mind is completely unified in deep samadhi, you will attain the state of perfect yoga.

(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

It is hard to walk the spiritual path the Bhagavad Gita recommends. Actually, being stoic about the ups and downs of life brings is not even the hardest part. The toughest part is that it is so easy to confuse this divine state Lord Krishna describes with a forced lack of emotion and a repression of what really matters to you in the name of spirituality. Yet, it is possible to reach that unified consciousness the Gita refers to - a state of perfect harmony with the Way. When you see the seeds of decay in success, and the beginnings of a renaissance in failure, how hard is it to have an an even mind about things? When you at-one, it would never occur to you to question the perfection of the Way. The holy Now is beyond good and evil, success and failure. It is just perfect as is.

The Elephant in the Room

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
 (Hindu Wisdom)

Freud had astute observations about himself and his patients, yet he was one of the blind men that told us about the elephant. Freud discovered the ego and analyzed it for us. He was bold enough to talk about sex in an utterly sexually repressed society, yet he was not bold enough to talk about the Spirit. Erich Fromm once described one of Freud's dreams where Freud experienced love as a dried up - dead - rose. Yes, Freud analyzed life with an razor-sharp intellect; unfortunately sometimes life bleeds to death during this operation.

Freud made the subconscious a household name, but it was Jung who made us realize the elephant in the room. Not only did he help us understand the incredible wisdom and power that is hidden deep inside of us, but he was also willing - buried by lots of intellectual blah - to admit the presence of the Self. We have passed a century since this discussion started and have added plenty of insights from the New Age movement. Today we know of the elephant in the room. Yet everyone will have to see and feel all parts to really know all about it. That is exactly what a spiritual journey will do for you.

For many of us the path is a journey through all four quadrants: intellect, ego, subconscious, and Spirit. We tend to know the New Age "ego - True Self" debate pretty well, but unfortunately it is just that, a debate. You have to experience your ego dissolve in the presence of the Self for yourself. This is your spiritual mission. You have to feel it, breathe it, struggle for it, and come to appreciate it. Eventually the "I" transcends into "I Am". This may happen in front of the burning bush, may happen after falling in a deep depression, or might happen on a trip to the local grocery store. Until then, monitor the workings of the "I", see how your state of mind interacts with the environment you are operating in, and do whatever you can to also be in touch with your Spirit. For many this connection happens as they pray or meditate; some discover the Self in others, very much like the Chinese sage Lao-Tzu did when he described "The Way".

The Bhagavad Gita is an intellect driven spiritual journey. Lord Krishna tells Arjun on the battle field that you can cut through the distortions of the ego. The goal of the spiritual warrior is find out the demands of the Way - your personal dharma as the Hindus call it - and just do it, whether you like it or not. The Gita was written for Gods. If you go down that path make sure you listen to the voice in your head as much as you listen to the wisdom of  your subconscious. Women and children have a better access to this Voice then men do.

Imagine an iceberg with the ego and the intellect above the water line. Spirit and the subconscious would be the giant mass below it. There are angels and demons hidden there, archetypes as well as fears and monsters. Freud's optimism that we can catapult many of these forces into our conscious mind was justified. Yet he wanted to squeeze these insights through the male intellect while the true reality is so much bigger than that. Woman and man have to merge, child and adult have to walk together, intellect and subconscious have to be in harmony, within and without have to be on the same page, and the ego has to be guided by the a Self. This is a giant task but you have a life-time to work on it and you have so many friends and angels cheering you on.

We invite you to join our journey towards wholeness. Nothing is sacred while everything is sacred; we feel and understand at the same time ; we discover every external occurrence in perfect harmony with our internal state of mind, and we see every sister as a mirror image of ourself. Discover that we are God together with us. It is a Herculean task but it is a lot of fun too. There is a unifying force linking intellect, ego, Spirit and the subconscious: love. You can love the intellect that Lord Krishna gave us, you can be proud of the "I" that has already traveled so far and just needs one more step on the homecoming journey. You can love the Spirit that prevails in everything and you can love the innocence, purity and strength of the child, woman and hero within, just as you can appreciate the incredible energy reservoir of the demon. Discover the wholeness inside. It is as plain as the elephant in the room.


                                         Intellect



Ego                                     Love                          Spirit



                                      Subconscious

On the Freedom to Choose

Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

When I was 5, I was supposed to go shopping with my mom, but somehow decided to go in a different direction. My mother was never very forceful so no matter how much she tried, she just couldn't get me to turn around. In the end she couldn't take it any longer and started crying. Only then did I come to my senses and joined her.

There is the Self that our spiritual community talks about and then there is the will to create something, the perceived longings of the "I". Sometimes we create what our Self wants us to and sometimes we are on our own trip just as that little boy who was supposed to go shopping with his mom that day. So somehow there is a consciousness inside of us - the will that Lord Krishna alluded to - that is free to choose between the two voices. This consciousness can be clouded at times but then there is life that reminds us to always take a stance. Life reminds us of who we truly are, but it is very much in our power to hold on to the self-will and we can certainly put blinders on.

Your homecoming starts when you realize that everything that happens to you is really the Voice from the beyond trying to remind you of who you truly are. Sure, there will be moments when the self-will takes over again, but these are just temporary distractions. It takes one look at your soul-sister walking next to you and you remember your mission. Once you get a glimpse of the Self, the self-will fades into nothingness before you know it.

Saints, Lazy Bums, and People like You and Me

Sattvic workers are free from egotism and selfish attachments, full of enthusiasm and fortitude in success and failure alike. Rajasic workers have strong personal desires and crave rewards for their actions. Covetous, impure, and destructive, they are easily swept away by fortune, good or bad. Tamasic workers are undisciplined, vulgar, stubborn, deceitful, dishonest, and lazy. They are easily depressed and prone to procrastination.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

As I read Lord Krishna's description of how different people are and how differently they approach their life's mission and their careers, I came up with the title saints, lazy bums and people like you and me. Truth is we all have our saintly moments, our periods of striving and greed, as well as times when we are lazy. I am sure that you have have your serene moments in some areas of your life - a state of perfect equanimity. I am also sure that you have your thrills your strives, as well as your egotistic and lazy moments. Fact of the matter is that different personalities come to the fore dependent on where you are and with whom you interact. You may act saintly in your church community, but then you go out and "kill" your opponents while playing tennis. Meanwhile at work, you may be somewhere in-between.

Repression is the biggest challenge for us spiritual travelers. So often have I fooled myself in believing that I was Zen in all my interactions only to observe that the demon popped out at 2 am on a full moon. Taoism can help you with that problem. Along the Tao you experience everything that comes your way with  full-intensity and complete engagement. Lust meets love, greed meets generosity, and evil meets life-affirming actions. You observe yin and yang at play and you transcend both forces in the holy now. Taoism would say that there is a time for serenity, a time for strive and a time for laziness. Along the Way we welcome everything. Life comes our way, we embrace it, deal with it and digest it. Along the Way we let go of the old baggage while the new one just doesn't stick.

The Journey Home

The Tao is a homecoming journey. To what exactly only those who have finished the journey can tell you and few of them are around. So you have to find out for yourself what walking the Way is all about.

The Tao is a journey of healing, of undoing all the cuts from the past. Do not regret these little injuries, do not blame those who inflicted them. They made you the person you were born to be. You couldn't have reached this point of departure if it weren't for them.

Life is a web that pulls you up. You thought that it could pull you down. I can but only if you believe that it can. The Tao is here to teach you otherwise. Everyone you meet in fact cheers you on. Where you saw enemies before you only saw ghosts of your own making. No one has the power to hurt you, only you can.

Start your journey back to the Source today. Many paths lead you there, ours is that of the Tao. Along the Way everyone roots for you because you make it your premise. Enjoy the healing, the fun, the laughter and the boundless love.

Stop thinking about your final destination. By traveling the Tao you are already there. Many have seen that divine connection. Moses discovered I Am when he saw the burning bush, Arjun discovered the Way on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita. King David's Psalm 23 describes the magnificent web of life. Be part of it and be Home already.

Accepting Your Drives

When Sattva predominates, the light of wisdom shines through every gate of the body. When Rajas predominates, a person runs about pursuing selfish and greedy ends, driven by restlessness and desire. When Tamas is dominant, a person lives in darkness, slothful, confused and easily infatuated.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

When you are greedy it doesn't make much sense to tell you that running after name, fame and profit doesn't become you. When you are full of lust it doesn't make much sense to remind you that you are not your body. When you are worried it doesn't make much sense to advise you against taking out insurances and protections. Spirituality wants you to be generous, pure and worry-free; yet, if you are not, pretending to be will only create a super-ego. All you will do that way is to push the tensions and unresolved conflicts under the surface. Don't bother with artificial spirituality, live your life instead. Like a magnate you attract the situations that allow you to express yourself.  There is no wrong or right, there is only your next choice that allows you to advance spiritually to the next level. This is why living the life that presents itself to you is the best of all worlds - perhaps not from a happiness perspective, but certainly from the perspective of your soul development.

We advise you to be mindful of everything that is going on inside of you as well as in your environment. When you realize that you are greedy, accept this first and then see what to do about it. Your drives have to be burnt up. Some desires you express, some you repress in the name of spirituality, and some you simply transcend because you have outgrown them. The serenity associated with the state of Sattva has to be earned, you can't will yourself towards it. When you experience the state of Tamas at some stage of your life, rise and get the hidden energies to the surface. When you experience the state of Rajas, go and get the conflicting energies out of your system. The state of Sattva is when your infinite energies circulate in equilibrium. Sattva is also the understanding that the world is already perfect as is. You have to do very little in that state - your mere presence makes it perfect. Sattva is your true nature, keep experimenting and expressing yourself and you will discover it. No one can keep your birthright from you.

Just Do It

At the beginning, mankind and the obligation of selfless service were created together. Through selfless service you will always be fruitful and find the fulfillment of your desires. This is the promise of your Creator.
Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita

Ever wonder where all the stress and annoyance comes from?  Most of time it comes from our own resistance. We don't want to do something though deep down inside we know that it is probably good for us and others.  This resistance creates the stress and conflict in us. So instead of wasting our energy fighting what we have to do, why don't we just accept it and just do it!  Observe how your energy level changes accordingly.

When you accept that you need to work to support your family, when you accept all these chores that are necessary to nurture your family and provide them with a comfortable environment. When you know you need to spend that time with your children to nurture their souls and calm them down. When you understand that you need to be there for your friends and family, suddenly all the annoyance disappears, suddenly, your light shines through every trivial thing that you have to do.  It is almost like wherever you walk and whatever you do, it is the most important activity in the world and the most important
moment of your life.  You basically experience meditation while you do whatever you do.
Divine energy springs forth from your activity and from you.  There is nothing more important than this moment!

Feel the joy of everything you do. The Tao has prepared this task especially for you to make you whole. You can sense that divine connection every moment. Happiness and peace of mind is nor defined by money, nor is it measured by social status. Only one thing matters, you, your divine activity and your connection with your soul siblings. Your presence and your participation makes you one with the Tao.  Can you feel this joy while being at work? Do you share the excitement of simply spotting a wild rabbit in your yard?  Can you experience that silence and joy that is radiating from you? You are the Tao's gem. This world would be incomplete without having you here now.

Leave the rewards of our actions up to a higher authority. These too will come our way. Let's enjoy our life moment by moment by fulling engaging with whatever comes our Way. Let's do it!

By Christian and Su Zhen

Having it Your Way

Arjun in the Bhagavad Gita had a mental break-down when he had to enter a bloody war with his friends and relatives; it was Lord Krishna who reminded him of his mission to do his job whether he liked it or not. Arjun's mental breakdown led to a divine lecture during which Lord Krishna showed him the workings of the universe and explained the different paths to God. Don't get me wrong, no one expects you to fight any wars or do anything that violates your notion of a spiritual path. Arjun was a warrior and fighting wars just happened to be his mission; you have your mission to fulfill. But expect resistance along the Way just because the resistance still lives in you.  No worries though, life - the Tao - is doing its best to remove these interferences for you. That unfortunately means that you have to sleigh a few monsters just like Arjun had to.

What does "having it your way" really mean? You want to be in a professional environment without ugliness, want to raise your children without competing or paying for any top schools, want to live in a nice house without any neighbors looking down on you. You want to be serene, you want to have the ability to meditate, pray,  and emitting positive energy for your environment all the time. Well, if you hit obstacles along this path please respect them. If you see ugliness, greed, competition or stress in your life, chances are certain aspects of your being aren't yet quite as spiritual as you think despite your best intentions.

Celebrate your life as is. Welcome every voice no matter how pleasant or annoying it might be. It is all "you" being reflected back to you. Don't aim for becoming a monk - unless of course being a monk is your mission - that would only mean you are running away from who you are deep down inside. Live your life like everyone else but with with a very different motive. The drive of a Tao traveler is to be always connected with Life. So allow life to "digest" you and see how these hidden tendencies of yours dissolve in the process. You leave them behind just as a snake disposes of its skin.

But you can do that only if you face your life just the way Arjun faced his monsters. Let other people have it their way while you only experience the Way - the Tao. By walking the Tao you live in the best of all worlds, so without aiming for it you essentially have it
your way in the end.

Beyond Duality

I remember a time when I was a young soccer player. I definitely had fulfilled the ten thousand hour rule of play time - the supposed cutoff point when you really get good at what you do. There were games when there was magic in the air. I remember one games when I scored 6 goals in one single game. But then I also remember other games, the times when nothing really worked, or when I was afraid to get injured and shied away from a hard collision.  So deep down inside I was afraid that I wasn't really cut out to become a professional soccer player. As I went to university I pretty much stopped playing altogether and never looked back on that decision from there.

I was young at that time. I had not yet discovered the lion inside of me. Today I know that at some moments when you are afraid you feel the fear and do it anyway. I also know that there are moments when you feel like loosing but with a surge in will-power you turn this thing around single-handedly. After all, this is what made Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan so powerful. The hunger to win and the will-power to make it so. But then, all that drive comes with a price attached. With so much yang energy you will find broken China somewhere. In Tiger's case, it might well have been his admission to get treatment for his sex addiction, in Michael Jordan's case it could have been the ego rant during his hall of fame admission speech. Whenever you will yourself to the top, chances are there is a price to be paid somewhere.

Do not get me wrong, I am not judging, I am not criticizing, I am just  observing. Every star will experience some imbalance along the way just as every ordinary citizen may question why exactly he is not up there in the limelight. There is no "right" way of living your life, there is only your way. We all are on a special mission. Just as the Bhagavad Gita says, "Do your dharma, however lowly it may appear, and leave the dharma of others to themselves, however prestigious it might be."

Discover the duality in everything, the yin and yang at work. There is a Way that shows you how to be superb at what you do without incurring any karma, without experiencing any yin and yang. Just understand that "superb" is in the eye of the beholder. Fame is something that a spiritual path traveler learns to be indifferent about. The public might still see a yin and yang at work in your life story, while you may tell your story very differently. Along the Way there is no duality, there is only meaning that somehow makes perfect sense. There is only "it is as it is", and somehow what is is good as it is.

The Four Paths Home

There is no path that does not lead to Him.
A Course in Miracles

They say many paths lead to the Lord. Pick the one that is closest to you and follow it. There is the path of wisdom, of action, of devotion and of meditation/channeling our energy. Typically whenever you find a seeker who follows passionately one path, there is very little patience for the other approaches. Yet, the longer you walk on your path the more you realize how connected all the four paths really are. True wisdom comes from falling in love with life, from working hard towards your goal, from falling in love with the many messengers God sends your way. As you mature spiritually the different chakras open up inside and your energy field changes. You also experience the advantages of meditation: the ability to experience who you are when the voice in your head quiets down.

You have your unique way Home, but be on the look-out for the co-travelers who can propel you enormously by walking a few spiritual miles with you. Sadhguru told this story to illustrate this point in his "Mystic's Musings":

 One day, one Jnana (Knowledge) Yogi, one Bhakthi (Devotion) Yogi, one Karma (Action) Yogi and one Kriya (Energy) Yogi were walking together. Usually these four people can never be together, because a thinking person has complete disdain for everybody else. A bhakthi yogi, full of emotion and love, thinks that jnana, karma and kriya yoga is just a waste of time. Just love God and it will happen. The karma yogi thinks that everybody else is just lazy. One must work and work and work. The kriya yogi just laughs at everything. The whole existence is energy. If you don't channel your energies nothing is going to happen. Then it started to rain and they all ran looking for shelter, they found an ancient temple. As the storm grew more and more furious they all moved closer to each other inside the temple. Suddenly they felt a huge presence. Lord Shiva Himself was there. They all cried out together, why now, we have pursued you for years and nothing happened. Lord Shiva replied, at last the four of you got together. I have been waiting for this for a long time.

By meditation, some women can see the Self in the self; others, by the yoga of knowledge; others by selfless action.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita on meditation, wisdom and the path of devotion)


Seeing the great Lord everywhere, she knows beyond doubt that she cannot harm the Self by the self, and reaches the highest goal.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita on the path of the Tao)