Create Your Story

I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom I talk, but who listens.

(God in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God)

Many spiritual travelers look for enlightenment. Well, there is good news, at least going by Neale Walsch's book Conversations with God. No point waiting for Godot and start listening to HER in the here and now. Maybe you find parts of HER MESSAGE in this note. Maybe you can find GOD in nature, in your surroundings or the people you talk to today.

Truth of the matter is that this world is entire self-created. Life as we perceive it is a simple reflection of who we think we are. Yet GOD, though operating outside of life as we know it, permeates everything. With every step we take both the self as well as our GOD connection are shining through.

Some people take this to mean that we should negate the self in order to be exposed to the SELF. While this approach may work in mathematics, that is, the negative of a negative is indeed positive, this concept falls short in spirituality. The institution that negates the self is still the self. Or put differently, putting two negatives in front of zero still doesn't give you a positive number.

Buddha had this observation shortly before reaching enlightenment. He realized that he was trying too hard. The part of him that wanted to get to enlightenment was still part of the same institution he wanted to overcome. So he tried the Way of the Middle instead, and "enlightenment" descended on him shortly thereafter.

A spiritual traveler has an amazing opportunity to meet GOD in the here and now. Everything we have ever done before, and everything that we ever experienced up to this point prepares us perfectly for following the WAY in the here and now. Zoom into your spiritual mission; mix purpose and passion and then simply have fun along the WAY. You know that you are on your spiritual path when self, soul and SPIRIT all rejoice. 

Create your story and enjoy every step of the WAY. With GOD as a CO-CREATOR, chances are your story will turn out to be a good one!

Sharing GOD's Secret

It was 2007, and I was on my way to the airport. On a long business trip to Europe or Asia, I always pick up a couple of books to while away some time on the plane. I found "A New Earth" by an author I had never heard of before. The title looked intriguing so I bought it. Later as I passed the security line I saw "The Power of Now" by the same author; it was then when it clicked; yes, I had heard of Eckhart Tolle, the new spiritual author on the block. It turns out the "A New Earth" was a symptom of my own awakening. Today, nine years later, I am one of the millions of initiated light-workers Eckhart Tolle had with his book in mind.

The irony was that when Eckhart Tolle submitted his first book, "The Power of Now", to a publisher it was rejected on the grounds that this idea is as old as spirituality itself. True, how nice that another publisher brought it on the market as it quickly lid a fire in the New Age community. So perhaps we should just remind each other from time to time of the ancient wisdoms that apparently have to be rediscovered by each individual spiritual traveler for herself. GOD's "secret"  has been out there for millennia, ready for everyone to discover it. "The Power of Now" is one catchy phrase, but there are so many others. The Old Testament is full of spiritual insights, as were Jesus' teachings. The Sufis know it, as does Taoism, Buddhists and Hinduism. 

The note below zooms into a little book that is a spiritual master piece, "To Have or to Be", by Erich Fromm. The author was foremost a psychologist, with a passion  for the Talmud, spirituality and socialism as well. Erich Fromm knew GOD's secret, just to fall in love with life; to do something with your life that is both purposeful and passionate; to learn to recognize the distracting whispers of the ego that keep you from the WAY. Erich Fromm also realized that magic tends to happen when we wrestle with life on a path that is of GOD. Lastly I would add that enlightenment is not something that you aspire to get one day; enlightenment is a state that you can enjoy moment by moment, as long as you use some of these insights below as your milestones. Everyone can be a light worker. Hope you join us too!

God's Secret - The Problem Statement

Problem Statement: Separateness 

Adam and Eve, what is the sin they have committed? To face each other as separated, isolated, selfish human beings who cannot overcome their separation in the act of loving union. The sin is rooted in our very human existence. Being deprived of the original harmony with nature. Being endowed with reason and self-awareness, we cannot help experiencing our separateness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Problem statement: Me, Myself and I

Our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is "really real" and, mainly, in the sense that most people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware hat most of what they hold true and self-evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live. Knowing , then, begins with the shattering of disillusionment. Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Mental greed - and all greed is mental, even when it is satisfied via the body - has no satiation point, since it's consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Everything and anything can become an object of craving: things we use in daily life, property, rituals, good deeds, knowledge, and thoughts. While they are not in themselves "bad", they become bad; that is, when we hold onto them, when they become chains that interfere with our freedom, they block our self-realization. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

But if the greedy person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but simply annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But factually, greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as illness. To be driven by irrational passions is to be mentally sick. To the degree that we achieve optimal growth, we are not only (relatively) free, strong, rational, and joyous, but also mentally healthy; to the degree that we fail to reach this aim, we are unfree, weak, lacking rationality, and depressed. (Erich Fromm quotes Spinoza in "To Have or to Be")

Problem Statement: Having, not Being

Greed is the natural outcome of the having orientation. It can be the greed of a miser or the greed of a profit hunter or the greed of a womanizer or the man chaser. Whatever constitutes their greed, the greedy can never have enough, can never be "satisfied". (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

What is fully describable is our persona - the mask we each other wear, the ego we present - for this persona is in itself a thing. In contrast, the living human being is not a dead image and cannot be described like a thing. In fact, the living human being cannot be described at all. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living. Because I can lose what I have, I am necessarily constantly worried that I shall lose what I have. I am afraid of thieves, of economic changes, of revolutions, of sickness, of death; and I am afraid of love, of freedom, of growth, of change, of the unknown. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The fear, then, is not of dying, but of losing what I have: the fear of losing my body, my ego, my possessions, and my identity; the fear of facing the abyss of non-identity, of "being lost". (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

GOD's Secret - The Solution

The Solution:  At-One-Ment

There is but one way to save ourselves from this hell: to leave the prison of our egocentricity, to reach out and to one ourselves with the world. If egocentric separateness is the cardinal sin, then the sin is atoned in the act of loving: "at-one-ment" is Middle English for union. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The Solution: Purpose and Passion

The joy of a mitzvah (the fulfillment of a religious duty) is he only way to get the Holy Spirit. (Erich Fromm, quoting the Talmud in "To Have or to Be")

In order to avoid decay, we must strive to approach the "model of human nature", that is, we must be optimally free, rational, active. We must become what we can be. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Joy is what we experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming ourselves. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Activity is "wholesome" only when it is rooted in and expresses the ultimate ethical and spiritual demands.  (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Only in the process of mutual alive relatedness can the other and I overcome the barrier of separateness, inasmuch as we both participate in the dance of life.  (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

In non-alienated activity, I experience myself as the subject of my activity. Non-alienated activity is a process of giving birth to something, or producing something and remaining related to what I produce. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The Solution: The Holy Now

The active, alive man is like a "vessel" that grows as it is filled and will never be full. 

(Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Freedom in the sense of being unfettered, free from craving for holding onto things and one's ego, is the condition for love and productive being. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The mode of being exists only in the here and now. The mode of having so exists only in time: past, present and future. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Knowledge is no particular thought but rather it peels off (all coverings) and is disinterested and runs naked to GOD, until it teaches HIM and grasps HIM. (Meister Eckhart in Erich From, To Have or to Be) 

The Solution: Being, not Having

One of the main themes of the Old Testament is: leave what you have; free yourself from all fetters; be! (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Do not lay for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

There exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

They respond spontaneously and productively; they forget about themselves, about the knowledge, the positions they have. Their egos do not stand in their own way, and it is precisely for this reason that they can fully respond to the other person and that person's ideas, because they are not holding onto anything. While the having persons rely on what they have, the being persons rely on the fact that they are, that they are alive and that something new will be born if only they have to courage to let go and respond. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

To the extent that we decrease the mode of having, that is of non-being - i.e., stop finding security and identity by clinging to what we have, by "sitting on it", by holding onto ego and our possessions - can the mode of being emerge. "To be" requires giving up one's egocentricity and selfishness, or in words often used by mystics, by making oneself "empty" and "poor". (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

While having is based on some thing that is diminished by use, being grows by practice. The 'burning bush" that is not consumed is the biblical symbol for this paradox. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

We human beings have an inherent and deeply rooted desire to be: to express our faculties, to be active, to be related to others, to escape the prison cell of selfishness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Every new step contains the danger of failure, and that is one of the reasons people are so afraid of freedom. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Master Eckhart taught that to have nothing and make oneself open and "empty", not to let one's ego stand in one's way, is the condition for achieving spiritual wealth and strength. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

We should not be "filled" with our knowledge, or hang onto it, or crave it. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

Living structures can be only if they become; they can exist only if they change. Change and growth are inherent qualities of the life process. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

The Buddha, the Awakened One, calls on people to wake up and liberate themselves from the illusion that craving for things lead to happiness. (Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be)

GOD's Secret - Conclusions

What may appear to you as a tour de force was just a little book full of ancient wisdom by a wise man, Erich Fromm. Every single line in it - very quote cited here - can lift you to that state, just as the simple title "The Power of Now" tried accomplishing a few decades later. Having this insight is huge, but living it is priceless. And that is where GOD's mission comes in. Find this path, hold HER HAND every step of the WAY and you are enlightened. If this all sounds all a bit overwhelming right now, why don't you start with a mission statement, to be one of us. GOD will do the rest. Of you only one thing is required, do your best every step of the WAY, and share GOD's Secret with others.

Live without fear

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

(Billy Ocean)

Are you scared of experiencing so-called “bad experiences”, like getting old, getting sick, or failing in your profession or your life?  Are you scared of experiencing unpleasant environments? 

 

Why do you think we keep our environments so comfortable and do our best to stay healthy, happy, and energetic? Well, enjoy when you experience these positive episodes but please also understand that the unpleasant, inconvenient and painful stretches are also part of your life.  When life brings you all these not-so pleasant experiences, just accept and come along!  Try to be there without any judgment. Most likely, there is a present waiting for you after some of these not-so pleasant experiences!

 

Remember the story of Buddha? Buddha’s parents worked so hard to keep him from seeing and experiencing any unpleasant experiences. Yet, no matter how hard they worked, just a little accident brought him incredible pain and set him off on a path of discovering Truth. Let's use his example. We work so hard to keep ourselves from experiencing any pain, which eventually will be in vain. Pain is part of our life. Sometimes there is even beauty behind these painful experiences. But you can only experience these if you face your ups and downs with open eyes and with courage.

 

When we can recognize the truth that pain is part of our life and are willing to accept it, a new dimension of life opens up to us. Now we don’t need to waste our energy on something that can't be achieved, insulating us from pain. We also don’t live in fear of trying to avoid these experiences, we can be more at ease with life and experience it to its fullest!

 

Walking on the spiritual path gives us this clarity, courage, and joy to dance with life!  We learn to say “Yes!” to life whole-heartedly and follow Him joyfully!  

By Christian and Su Zhen 

What's Your Way?

Jesus saw the Self in his brother and discovered that as he healed his sister, he in fact healed himself.

Buddha discovered restlessness, falsehood and fear in himself, so he sat down and meditated until all that disappeared in the everlasting sound of Om.

Lao-Tzu saw the ups and downs of life and realized that all these oscillations took place around a perfectly visible Way. "Connect with the Way, and be free!", he passed on to us.

Lord Krishna appeared to Arjun on the biggest battle-field in the history of man and advised him to follow the calling of his soul. "Do your job Arjun, and be free!" is the wisdom of the Blue Lord.

You can try to follow established religions. You can dabble a little here and there. But in the end you may have to find your Way instead to trail a new path for the rest of us. What is your Way?

Freedom

The Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. This is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom.

(A Course in Miracles)

God in Neale Walsch's "Conversations with God", often said that there is no "wrong" or "right", there is is only useful and less so, judged from the perspective of what you want to achieve. Some want status and power, while others want love and freedom. Freedom was Buddha's stated goal and he was uncompromising in his approach to get there. I remember a scene in Deepak Chopra's "Buddha", where Lord Krishna visited Buddha after a long meditation session. Buddha said to Lord Krishna, "You have no idea how much I have longed Thee!", to which Lord Krishna responded, "I know!". But then Buddha closed his eyes again and said, "Please leave now I have work to do." That is indeed the mindset of someone who is on a mission. You keep on going until your goal reached. In Buddha's case it was a mission to be completely free from all mind-driven illusions.

It is in fact possible to be "free". Not in the way that you can cut yourself completely off from the subconscious processes that run below the surface, but in the way that you can really live your life completely detached from the longings of the ego. There is a Way that somehow always knows best and all you have to do is to follow Her. Sometimes it is external signs that guide you, while sometimes it is your intuition. There always will be a few missed steps but mostly you can be connected every step of the Way. You can see and feel the Way just as a scientist would and you learn as much from your mistakes as you do from your blissful moments. Along the Way, the longings of the "I" simply melt into nothingness and in those moments you get a taste for true freedom, just as the Course in Miracles claims.

It is pretty meaningless to strive for enlightenment just because this gift a higher authority has to grant you. What you can do though, you can cut out interferences to the best of your abilities by just holding on to the Way. Joy and freedom follow you where you go. Never mind if there are still a couple of dimensions in your life where people or positions seemingly still hold you back. This just means that you aren't quite ready for the big jump. Serve willingly as a free master and true freedom will be yours before you know it.

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.

Life's Spiritual Wisdom

I am hardly a spiritual master but I am an expert in something; I know a lot about my human side. I certainly have experienced the greed in me and have faced my fears on countless of occasions. I also could write volumes about lust. And I know how egotistic I can be, not to mention my insecurities and jealousies.

A spiritual journey encourages you to be aware of everything that happens beneath the hood. Actually, the trick to deal with them is awareness, not repression and not confrontation. If you battle your jealousy, lust, greed or egotism, if you condemn your nature, you are really starting a war inside. It is a merry-go-around game that the voice in your head plays with itself. Actually, it is not so merry at all; it is quite destructive and cancerous. The only way you can be in harmony with your human drives is being aware of what is going on. Observe everything without getting involved; even when you hear the righteous voice in your head that feels superior to the "darker" emotions. You will realize that even this voice is the ego talking to itself.

Buddha once said, you can't think yourself into Heaven. So just being mindful of the stuff that happens inside doesn't make you a spiritual master. Yet there is an all-knowing master who is available to you any time and completely free of charge. This master is called life! When you are mindful it is not hard to figure out what life is all about. Everything that you attract, every interaction, all the so-called successes or disappointments, everything is just a reflection of your inner frame of mind. Life wraps itself around you and puts you through this virtual reality show. And while you are running after what is meaningful to you, life in fact sends you on a subconscious journey Home. We spiritual travelers encourage you to make this journey a conscious one.

The Law of Attraction folks have figured out that with the right mindset you can steer yourself in the direction of your liking. That is certainly true! In a way, the Law of Attraction insight could be compared to lucid dreamers. They have realized that you can master the art of waking up within a dream and start manipulating the dream to your advantage. That is certainly a nice power to have but we spiritual travelers want more. Why should we wake up within a dream if we can wake up period. Life is designed to bring us Home and all we have to do is to open up to it and discover its spiritual wisdom.

If you think that a spiritual path entitles you to peace, love and happiness every step of the way, you most likely will be disappointed. A spiritual journey is about gaining insights, about struggling; it is about transcending and letting go. "Not this, not that" becomes your way to proceed. A spiritual path is about de-masking the illusion. Heaven on earth is what remains once you see love shine through behind every choice.

There is no book that you can read, no master who can tell you what to do - it is your journey Home. You have to stumble through insecurities and righteousness, arrogance and humility. But after a while you realize that no matter what happens, no matter what path you might have taken last time around, life always wraps itself around you and offers you the same choice again and again: "choose love", it says. Often it whispers and sometimes it screams. There is incredible wisdom in the choices life presents. If you get lost in it, if you just follow that simple road-map life offers to you, you do not need to be wary of your human dimension at all. All distractions melt away in the busyness, loveliness and joy of living and all that remains along the Way is pure love.      

Peace

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
(A Course in Miracles)

The other day I asked in the Spiritual Networks community the question whether there is a dark force at work that wants to keep us from God, or whether our perceived God-separation is just based on our own illusions. The majority of the spiritual travelers thought that there was a dark force at play, but the thoughtful commentary made me realize that the answer to this question doesn't really matter that much.

You probably remember Jesus's story of how he resisted three temptations in the desert. He experienced a dark force and just ignored it. Buddha experienced the battle between good and evil as well and just kept meditating until the theater dissolved into nothingness. The philosophy of the Tao traveler is to interact with life. Our premise is that peace and love is always ours to choose no matter what. We don't engage in the battle of good and evil either.

Whether the ego is deliberately leading us astray or not, each time when we feel separated from God, a battle between "good" and "bad" will be brewing; whenever we perceive that we are "here", but want to be "there", a voice will pop up reminding us that we are fooling ourselves. Say, we discover that we are greedy, competitive or horny, but look for God's peace and love instead. The moment you feel disconnected from the Way, a dialogue will be raging inside.

Just step out of it! You can can avoid the yin and yang of spirituality every step of the Way. If greedy thoughts pop up, let's ask whether there are some authentic desires that we don't grant ourselves. If they are, work on those instead. When competition enters our mind, let's contemplate the cooperative solution. And if lust overcomes us, we can always ask whether love is nearby. Step out of the battle between good and evil. Peace is always yours to choose; that's the promise of your Creator.

Enjoy the Game

Perhaps you can think of your life as a big interactive video game. We have our goals in mind; we try, we err and learn from the feedback mechanism we receive. Along the way we probably bang our head into a wall a few times just because we think the way to advance is forward despite all the obstacles. We also find it hard to retrain what we have been doing all our life even though it may no longer work for us. Yet sooner or later everyone learns that there must be a better way, so we practice our skill to readjust and to jump out of the hole that we dug for ourselves.

In the olden days energy was scarce, and our brain capacity was limited, so evolution crafted us as habitual machines.  Habitual behavior is something you do over and over again until it finally forms an energy cycle. Once the cycle is established you outsource the activities into the subconscious and the robot inside of you takes over, while you can use your precious conscious energy for new tasks. The downside of course is that the robot runs by itself even when you have changed your mind about where you want to go. But once the robot bangs your head into a wall a few times you may want to consciously decide to override that energy cycle. It is initially hard to do but it can be done. Change can be painful but if you truly set your mind on it, the reinforcing positive change can also release enormous energy in you. And very much like you created your old habit before, once your subconscious has been overridden, the new direction will be as natural for you as the old routine once was before.

 Buddha left his kingdom and Eckhart Tolle left his academic career. There are many stories of people who experienced spiritual renaissance sometime in their middle age. We experienced this transformation as well and one may be in store for you.  We change directions when the old path has become meaningless for us. But once you are on a lookout for something new, we claim that you can suddenly perceive a red threat that connects everything:  a right job, the right family, meaningful friends and colleagues and limitless opportunities for creative outlets. You have the right to experience fun, love and meaning all at the same time. Let the Tao assist you in your change of plan.

If you find resistance in what you do currently, honor that constraint. Life has a habit of pushing you in the direction that works for you. Embrace change, don't fight it. Every habit can be overridden; start with a vision of your personal success and happiness and let the Tao implement it for you step by step. Our whole life is nothing but a big game, but the outcome is hardly random. You decide on where you want to go and the Tao will propel you in the right direction. So put on your game face and have fun along the Way.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Expanding the Circle of Love

We all know that Buddha left his family and kingdom behind to seek enlightenment. It is ironic, isn't it, that the people he left behind suffered because of Buddha's quest to end suffering. So would we say that Buddha was in fact irresponsible? Would you question his love for his wife, his parents and his kingdom? Had Buddha not left everything behind, he might not have found enlightenment and our world - including his kingdom and his family - would have lost a great mentor. So it seems like his decision was the right one after all.

If you read the memoirs of great spiritual mentors you find this theme often. It is not uncommon  for these giants to leave their family behind and surrender to their inner voice.
Remember Mark 3:31: "Then Jesus' mother and brothers came. They stood outside and sent a person in to tell Jesus to come out. Many people were sitting around Jesus. They said to him, "Your mother and brothers are waiting for you outside." Jesus asked, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" Then Jesus looked at those people sitting around him. He said, "These people are my mother and my brothers! My true brother and sister and mother are those people that do the things God wants."

 Often this step contradicts our notion of true love. Yet despite the apparent pain, all parties can find meaning in these occurrences.  It is like these mentors break free from their social positions and from all social norms, and their loved ones will not stand in the way.  Everyone is our family.  When we love each other we support each other's dreams and actions. Parents willingly send their children off to college, there is no heartbreak in this step, just joyful tears. True love gives our loved ones the wings to fly.

Walking on a spiritual path you will sometimes reach dark valleys, yet as you are walking through them you realize that these shadows are just a reflection of your self-imposed limitations. As you break free from your chains you see the sun shining through. There is only one way, your way, and every step on it is holy. Never mind the occasional sadness - just like Buddha's departure from his beloved home - follow the signs of the Way and there will be a happy ending for everyone. Sacrifice is a notion that is completely meaningless to God. Find your way and see that along it everyone is merry.

By Christian and Su Zhen

The Symbol of the Snake

The Tree of Life and Death by Berthold Furtmeyr is a remarkable display of the story of Adam and Eve. It shows Adam slumbering in the Garden of Eden with the snake climbing up the Tree of Life, while two women were distributing the fruit to others: Eve from the Tree of Death and Maria Ecclesia, the mystic Bride of Christ, from the Tree of Life (see below).

What really got me about this picture was the snake as a symbol of the phallus climbing up the tree. Indeed, it displays Adam as being driven by a subconscious force. We think we are the master of our destiny while from a divine perspective we are still asleep. We have to respect the force of the phallus until the day we wake; before that, we simply have no choice.

While the snake in motion displayed as a phallus is a symbol of our human struggles, the erect snake is often displayed as a symbol for enlightenment. I recall a movie about the Buddha where he sits lost in meditation, and as it starts raining, a cobra moves up to him and covers his head from the rain, hovering over him in an erect pose. That's indeed the symbol of enlightenment, displaying the dissemination of the life force through the erect body into the brain rather than losing it in the act of ejaculation. Well, it is not really lost. but it takes both yin and yang during the sexual act to become one. Whereas enlightenment transcends both. Just as the bible says, when your two eyes become one, your body will be filled with light.

The last symbol that in a sense combines both cases is the symbol of the snake that bites its own tail and forms a circle. This could be called the symbol of the Tao. The Tree of Life and Death displays duality, Taoism transcends good and evil. The circle encompasses yin and yang, subconscious and conscious. The circle may not represent our notion of holiness, but it is whole. From a divine perspective all aspects of life are "perfect", may they be subconscious or not, male or female, enlightened or not.The circle comprises them all and that is Taoism.

Peace

Buddha allegedly once said "The good stuff, do it. The bad stuff, don't." That is indeed it. When you have reached that stage, peace is yours. When every action, every word and even every thought and feeling you experience is in harmony with the Way, peace, bliss and love are yours forever.

Unfortunately, Buddha's insight is exactly why so many in our spiritual community struggle. You want something. You want to be peaceful, you even try convincing yourself that you are peaceful and happy. Yet you are not. You are "here" even though you want to be "there". You want so much to be "there"  because deep down inside you know how miserable you are.  You mind that your "ego" is in the way to experience the "True Self" and that is why you are not peaceful.

Well, perhaps you can read the previous paragraph one more time. Do you now see the way out? Stop trying to be "there" and start accepting the here and now and you actually have a shot at being peaceful. Make peace with your "ego", make peace with everything that is hidden deep down inside, everything that wants to come out to the surface, ugly and crazy as it may look to you. Accept the here and now, accept everything life brings your way. The "I" that you experience, the subconscious urges that you can recognize in the Freudian slips. Know that with every loving gesture just as with every frown you see, you are looking at yourself that moment. When you can accept everything life brings your way, when you accept what is, the "here"  merges with the "there". You never have to do anything to live in the world the Buddha describes. Just drop everything right now and appreciate the "here". That is all really.

 Cancel all self-improvement classes. Stop reading what notions others have about spirituality for a couple of years. Make peace with yourself first. What is self-improvement? It is your mind telling you how things should be. Believe it or not, there is actually violence in this approach since you neglect where you are coming from. You neglect your psychological demands, the unresolved struggles of your parents that you still have to live through. You neglect your unique personality which may well have been an outgrowth of some previous lives. And you certainly have demands from your manliness or your feminine side that needs to be expressed, not to mention the hunger of the selfish gene - the stuff that got you here over the last couple of million years. But you know what, despite all that you can experience peace here and now. Buddha found his way, now you find yours!

The Way is the realization that life is a mirror reflecting all your tensions, aspirations, hope, desires and struggles back to you. This Matrix knows who you are. More than that, the Matrix knows that you already are "there", so it puts the world as you experience it in front of you so that you can backtrack your steps. Accept who you are and then embrace life and always put your best foot forward. When you open up to everything life brings  you with an open mind, the Way - the Tao - will lead you back to the Source. Sometimes you run fast, sometime you stroll in a beautiful park, sometimes you barbecue with dear friends and sometimes you fight with contractors to get the home improvement you paid for. But in all that you can experience incredible peace because you know that you are walking the Way. May Peace be with you!

When Wholeness Meets Holiness

Buddha once said, " The good stuff, do it, the bad stuff, let it be!" This is true but you have a long journey ahead before you realize what is "good" for your homecoming. The Tao will lead you Home but you will probably be encouraged to question your spiritual value system.You will find that over and over again the Tao encourages you to follow your desires. This is what you were born to do, discovering who you truly are by embracing who you think you are and by encountering life. We don’t get this realization by listening to anyone. Life teaches us day by day who we really are.

We have been taught what is "good" and what is "bad" since our childhood. These values have effectively become our super-ego and so we will experience extreme struggles if a voice inside us is telling us that we should deveate from these norms. Yet we feel intrigued by whatever is prohibited. Crossing that line at times feels right, and at times has a demonic attraction. As Tao travelers we can't tell you anything about your path. Get in touch with yourself and become your own guru. By exploring life and by not avoiding anything your heart desires you will certainly make mistakes; will experience pain, but at the same time you will experience the complete spectrum of life and and you will become whole in the process. You will have so much more compassion for the fellow next door that way and you cease being afraid. If you have met your shadow, if you face your pure ego-driven desires without repressing anything there is nothing you can be afraid of anymore. At this moment you internalize all spiritual rules and perhaps you can even teach society a thing or two. You will learn to let your heart talk no matter what.

Along the Tao you will differentiate between"useful" and "not useful" instead. God in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God talked often about this concept. When you want to drive north, it just doesn't make much sense to drive south instead, right? But how can you say that going north is "good", it is not for someone who is going south. In the same matter, let the egomaniac CEO do whatever he has to do and the Hollywood star go for her 7th plastic surgery. It doesn't make sense to put any value judgment on driving north, for your soul siblings who drive south are as special as you are.

You have to decide what homework you still have to do. As long as you think something is missing in your life, go after it. Woo that dream partner that you lust after, go after that promotion that you aspire, try to become the bestselling spiritual author that you always wanted to be and manifest that body of your dreams. You will have to wrangle with life a little to get what you want. The Tao will send you plenty of feed-back along the way. Let life - the Tao - show who you truly are and let your choices define you and make you whole.

Being a Tao traveler is not something you can just do as a hobby. When you are chosen you will no longer really have a choice as it is probably dawning on you already. Further and further will you walk up the staircase towards the light and every step in the opposite direction will literally hurt you - taking a few consecutive steps in the opposite direction will suck the life out of you, so upwards you have to go. The reason for that is energy. Along the Tao, higher and higher energy centers are opening up and they will transform you. Any exposure to old energy fields will literally hurt you.

As you mature spiritually and as some of your ego-driven desires drop off naturally along the Way, you will converge with the religious notions of "good" and " bad". The high energy centers all converge in the end and the Tao will lead you there. Eventually you will find divinity in your sexual partner, you will eat only purified food and you will put your life in the service of humanity. The way towards holiness is wholeness and wholeness is acquired by embracing life fully. After a decade or two of dealing with life as a Tao traveler you will probably echo Buddha's sentiment, "The good stuff do it, the bad stuff, let it be!" But you have to let every Tao traveler find this insight out for herself.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Take a Walk to the Dark Side

I was drawing with the boys the other day out of a book that had step by step drawing instructions for ghosts, witches and similar Halloween folks, and the character they chose just happened to be Mr. Hyde. The boys were asking why he looked so sad and angry and given that I had little appetite to start a discussion about shadow personalities with kindergardeners, I said that Mr. Hyde felt sad and angry because his friend, Dr. Jekyll, didn't want to associate with him. They asked me how the story ended and I had to admit to them that Mr. Hyde got more and more destructive to get Dr. Jekyll's attention, but he never succeeded until the day when they both got locked up. They were sad to hear that, but then felt better when I told them that it was just fiction anyway.

I would guess that we all have a shadows personality, the demon on the other side of the shoulder, sitting just next to the angel.The spiritual path traveler has the added problem that he probably condemns his shadow; he doesn't want to associate with him and feels guilty about his dark drives. Yet, listening to the advice that I gave the boys, perhaps Mr. Hyde just wants to be acknowledged and wants to be understood.

A light worker has to have a shadow, so please understand that what you are going through is normal. Ask and the Tao will always tell you why your demon exists and why he acts the way he does. But you have to be willing to look towards the shadow, otherwise Mr. Hyde will never go away and probably scream louder and louder in the process. Hang out with Mr. Hyde and experiment with the dark forces until you understand them. When you understand the psychological forces as play, you perhaps can even incorporate some of your shadow demands into your persona without undermining your spiritual journey.

Eventually you will find a way to keep your shadow at arms-length, because the problem statement will never change, Mr. Hyde wants to march in the opposite direction of the light worker. Of course you will find this arrangement that works for you; this is your problem, you gave it to yourself to gain wholeness. Spiritual path travelers have powerful allies who help you finding and defining yourself. So relax my friend, wholeness is waiting for you. Take a walk to the dark side and find the way that keeps your shadow at arms-length permanently.

They say that the Christ and the Buddha at one time on their spiritual journey just said no to their ego. Three times in total the temptation came and went and then it was gone forever. This feat is hard to replicate and we ordinary mortals feel guilty that we don't have the willpower like the Ones we aspire to be. I have a slightly different experience. After a long struggle, a dark symbol appears, it flashes by you like a vanishing dream and at that point you just understand what the demon is up to. Willpower is required to get you to that stage, the never-ending back and forth, the dance of shadow and light, but the last step is as much an insight as a decision to abstain. Just like that the insight strikes and the ostensibly never-ending struggle is over!

The Journey Home

Buddha once said 'The good stuff, do it and the bad stuff, cut it out!' That's indeed a way to return home, yet, even though religions all over the world have tried hammering these moral standards into people's heads, it seemed to have had little success. The problem is that if a spiritual authority or a cultural norm just tells you how to behave, this voice of reason will become a super ego. No, you have to find a way to experience the two voices in you - ego versus the True Self - for yourself. Once you discover who you actually are and once you see for yourself that you can experience Heaven on earth, the ancient journey is over.

You require a Rosetta Stone, a reference point that provides you with a guide post. Some people have a wake up call when they suddenly run into a wall. They realize the hard way that the voice in their head that they always thought was them is in fact alien and not the friend they thought it was. Others discover the quiet voice inside. The voice that always speaks second, the one that is love and that has a constant connection to God.

I discovered a precious insight along my journey. I found out that ego begets ego and that you can very much experiment with that fact. I discovered that the more you engage in ego activities, the more you drain your energy and your peace of mind. Similarly, you can observe that the more you cut out all the impurities along the way, the clearer your thinking, the higher your energy level and the more synchronized you are with your environment.

Try cutting out the stuff your ego is obsessed about, the body obsessions, fascination with money or status, or having conspiracy thoughts about others. Sure, these thoughts and feelings seem to belong to you, but you can observe that as you manage to turn away from them, they do get weaker over time, just as they get stronger when you put your mind on it. Try it, it works, you can experiment with these concepts very much like a scientist would.

Let me give you a little example. In a psychological experiment, people were exposed to money symbols, such as having a bank note as a screen saver, or having monopoly money lying on a a table. It turned out that the people who were exposed to these subconscious money symbols were less helpful in the experiment when a person who passed by accidentally dropped things. It appears that for us money is a ego symbol, and once you activate this voice in your head you automatically deviate from the True Self.

Life is a journey and it turns out that you can redefine these dark symbols by giving it a new spiritual meaning. Sex can be an expression of love, work an expression of love for what you are doing, for being with other people and an outlet of your creativity. Wealth and status can become an opportunity to reach out and help others. The beauty is you don't really have to do anything, just follow life's invites moment by moment to choose love over everything else. Headed in this direction, your journey will soon be over.

Experimenting with Your Shadow

In the early years of the Internet when MSN and AOL had half of America on-line, I enjoyed exchanging sexual fantasies with folks who just like me never really did anything about it, but just wanted to have a little virtual trip to the dark side. Given my liberal European upbringing I never thought there was anything wrong with my behavior, but when the Tao got a hold of me, it became clear to me that discussing sex with strangers is not really consistent with my spiritual path, so I wanted to stop but to my surprise I found it hard to break free.

I had only a few 'Conversations with God' moments along my path given that I never really trusted who exactly was talking in these conversations, but at one point I became just so I frustrated that I just asked out aloud, 'So tell me True Self, what is the problem here?' A voice responded, 'You are cycling my friend!' Wow, I was dumbfounded. That was exactly what was going on. I must have spent a couple of years in a holding pattern, alternating between who I aspired to be and the regular missteps along the way when my demon got the better of me.

This gave me the idea why not to experiment with this dark cycle altogether? You have probably heard of the 21 Day Experiment. You do something consciously for 21 days, like breaking a pernicious habit, and trust that afterwards your subconscious has taken the change on board. Try it with whatever it is that you think is holding you back from your spiritual path. You will find that the first three days are really hard. It turns out that with a changed behavior you are literally re-wiring neural pathways in your brain but after a few days the going gets easier. It is hard to believe on day one or two when the withdrawal symptoms are rampant, but a completely different person will look at the world on days 12 or 13. When you have been through a few of those cycles you actually know that this is a fact and this knowledge gives you the motivation to keep the course.

The advantage of the 21 day rule is that you are not promising that you will break free forever. Actually, you can hear the demon laughing inside when you make a statement like that - you just promise to stay away from it for 21 days! That is a very different perspective and you can certainly accomplish this plan with some willpower. The advantage of the exercise is that you are no longer fighting your dark side, you are experimenting with it and you will soon realize that in this process you gain incredible insights about the other you - the one that you do not really want to associate with.

See how your mind goes on autopilot on the day when you give in to your temptations yet again. Experience the rush when your dark side takes over. You will also realize that you are walking up and down a mental staircase in your experiments- the longer you walk down, the longer the climb up will have to be afterwards. Perhaps the term addiction is too strong to describe the struggle I went through, but I definitely got a feel for the hook that addicted people hang their hat on and an appreciation for how hard it is to unhook yourself from the robot inside.

You will learn in these experiments that the dark side tempts you on days when trouble is coming your way anyway. Initially I thought that the Universe was beating me up over my missteps, but in hindsight, I conjecture that your system just knows when you get ruffled a little and your demon gets active around that time just as your energy contracts in anticipation of the pain that is coming your way. If you repeat these cycles a number of times you will realize that these dark periods always pass very much like a dark rain cloud and before you know it the sun is shining again. You will also realize that the misfortune that hits you is perhaps not so bad per se, but that it is the lack of energy coming from the internal battle inside and the conscious effort to climb out of the hole that makes it so.

I was reminded of the opening statement of the Course in Miracles: 'Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God.' Indeed, that is what these negative feedback cycle felt like: real for a couple of days and vanishing like a mirage in the days afterwards. You learn that the Tao is always out there willing to extend a helping hand; it is just that for a day or two a massive rain cloud is passing by, so that you have a tough time seeing Her hand. The longer you walk your path, however, the easier it is for you to see the Tao always in action - even on low energy days.

You will get incredible insights about your shadow when you experiment; in fact they are so intense that your experiment will not even feel like a misstep at all; it will feel like a precious learning experiment instead. Learn what the shadow really want from you. Perhaps there is something that you can adjust in your real life that is entirely consistent with your spiritual path. In my case I learned that by becoming more assertive in my dealing with people, the sexual fantasies lost their appeal. I also learned that body building was a great real substitute for my mental longings. Apparently my demon just wanted me to become a little more manly; why should that be inconsistent with my spiritual path?

You will outgrow your struggle for the very reason that you will get a comparison of the short-lived excitement versus the loss of energy and connection with the Tao afterwards. No thrill ride in the world can compensate you for the pain of being disconnected with the Tao, albeit only a day or two. Everything that was meaningful to me I couldn't do after I had indulged my dark side. I couldn't go to the gym for about a week, didn't have the mental peace to write a blog entry for a few days and more often than not, fell outright sick as my immune system took a beating. Of course I asked myself, is this just my super ego acting up or is this a message from the Tao until the day when I decided that it doesn't really matter. I miss my connection with the Tao way too much so I simply stopped one fine day altogether with these dark experiments when I felt that I didn't really learn anything new about myself any longer. I venture to say that the same will happen to you. Once the Tao has gotten a hold on you cannot help doing what you have to just because you realize that any resistance is futile.

We all admire Jesus and Buddha so much for their resolve to withstand their final temptations. Just don't forget that both also traveled a spiritual path before. Get the stuff that holds you back out of your system, find that creative outlet that appeases your demon and enjoy the day when you finally will break free!

Shadow Work

Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course in Miracles

Every spiritual path traveler has a shadow for the very simple reason that we aim for the light; and every sun shine creates a shadow somewhere. The extreme version of this struggle has been told in 'The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'; in it, the innocent Dr. Jekyll was taken over by Mr. Hyde, both unaware that both personalities exist in the same person. Isn't it odd that different personalities reside in you, dependent on whether it is morning or night, whether you are in the company of good friends or annoying people, or whether you have eaten or whether you are drunk. You are probably tired of all the back and forth you have experienced; the endless discussions between your angel and your demon; you are probably sick of all the broken promises to yourself and perhaps even others.

The Tao is here to help you. The way out of the dilemma exists, yet you may not know it yet. The problem you are facing and the shadow that you own is something you should respect, perhaps even value. It will make you the person you are born to be. Let me give you a few ground-rules of how you get the two sides on talking terms. The Tao is here to help you and lead you out of the dilemma, yet the confusion is that you never really know who is speaking. Is it the devine message from 'beyond', or are those the fears speaking. Is your environment telling you what the consequences of your actions are, or are you subconsciously beating yourself up on a self-imposed guilt trip. Well, you have to find out for yourself. Schedule little experiments, see how your environment reacts to them. Take yourself time. This is a blessed period; you are taking your internal conflicts, and instead of being abused by your internal tension, you start expressing yourself creatively and design the spiritual giant you were born to be.

Never abuse anyone in your experiments. The Law of Oneness dictates that whatever you do to your environment will come back to you. This applies for love as well as violence. The trick of shadow work is to let go of existing baggage and not accumulate more in the process. But you have to stick your neck out a little in your experiments. If you go back to your 'I must only do what my True Self dictates', you are back to where you started from. A dark voice will be growling in the background. Protect both voices in you, the anticipated True Self as well as the complaining demon voice in the background. You might believe that the demon in you doesn't really exist and only your True Self is real, but the point of shadow work is to find out what exactly the demon voice wants from you; your repressed desires, your not yet accepted personas. You are not abusing your True Self with your shadow work, you are finding out your destiny instead.

Find the path that utilizes the strength of your passion while moving into the direction of the purposeful life. What is it that your demon wants? Sure, if the game plan is to obstruct your spiritual mission than you have to find a better game plan. Something the demon wants perhaps makes you stronger and more effective in your spiritual mission. I owe my demon my fitness, physical strength and my recently acquired more assertive nature. None of these attributes interfere with my ability to love - perhaps even to the contrary. How can you respect or love someone who walks right over you.

Don't get stuck experimenting with your shadow. Listen to the reports of addicted people and you will realize that they fall into a trance when they doing whatever it is that gets them high. An addiction is an escape from freedom. It is the anticipation of the pleasure that gets the ball rolling and once it is there is no stopping before the orgasmic high follows into a fall into despair. A spiritual path traveler is on the journey to freedom. Everything that glues you along the way has to be cut out. So when you run your experiments schedule a 21 to 28 day period in-between and you will see how your mental ties to this activity reduce with every day of abstinence. I know it is hard to perceive that the dark activity could not matter much to you on day 15 or 16 when you have the activity fresh in your mind, but it is. So develop the willpower to tough it out - you have no choice anyway.

The advantage of a spiritual path traveler is that the psychological movie plot becomes visible, time shrinks and the cause and effect of every action becomes immediately visible. If you can see the law of oneness at work in front of your eyes, would you ever do anything to undermine yourself? Probably not. Run your shadow experiment and see that all your actions have no real consequences. Three or our day of irritation are soon followed by blazing sun-shine. Once you have figured out what you can give your demon without undermining your spiritual birthright you will soon transcend to the next level. There is a point when your shadow work doesn't give you any insights any longer and it will bring you nothing - besides a temporary high - but plenty of interferences. That is a good day to move on. There will be a day when you leave your shadow behind like Buddha said no to sexual temptation and Jesus refused to participate in a power trip. But until that day, study, transform and take it easy.

With every year that goes by, life becomes easier for you. You will suddenly discover the benefits of cutting out all interferences. At this stage you simply become a simpleton. You are not naive, you are focused like a laser in the direction the Tao points out at you. One person comes and says 'X' to you and you take a look at his body language and it reveals the opposite so you say to yourself 'Your body language is talking so loudly, I do not hear a word of what you are saying' and then comes someone who says 'Y' and you take her word as the gospel because the Tao tells you that you should. Once you reach this stage, the simplest interference coming from your ego would drive you insane, so you adopt a kosher lifestyle in all areas of your life just because there is no alternative.

So much energy is wasted in our community because we strive to be like the Christ and the Buddha. After all, they did it, they said no to the ego so many thousand years ago, so why on earth can't we do it? The problem is that the scriptures are very explicit on the the day when they said no to the ego, but quite vague on the decades leading up to that holy moment. The point is that they struggled as much as you do. Your moment in the sun will come as well. Just stop striving my friend and see what happens. Everything that your ego has done up to this holy moment is nothing but fog as the Course in Miracle reminds us. So there is nothing to regret, just accept who you are today and define the direction you want to take from here. If you truly accept who you are, why should there be any wishful thinking involved in your spiritual mission statement? This universe was created to see your spiritual mission fulfilled. Take one step after the other and just see that the Tao will bend backwards to make you the person you were born to be. Just take your dark friend along on your targeted stroll and see how it merges with the light along the Way.

The Final Step

And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Don't fight yourself.
A Course in Miracles

Finding your True Self is an endless back and forth. 'Not this, not that!' You can only learn who you truly are by having both feet in life. Over and over you will be presented an opportunity to 'choose again' until something in your head clicks. All spiritual rules such as 'you are not your body', or 'avoid casual sex', can only cause frustration in you. You have to feel in your bones what is your True Self and what is not. Only life can teach you that, nobody else can.

One day something shifts in you; the ancient journey has come to an end. On that day you will feel the need to go all the way to eradicate all interference. Very much as the umbilical cord has to be cut when the baby needs to be separated from her mother, the remaining spot that stands between you and God has to be eradicated.This is the symbolically meaning of the last temptation of Jesus and Buddha. Buddha resisted sexual temptation while Jesus avoided a power trip. A final 'no' to the ego and the Kingdom of God was at hand.

The ego is you, why would you fight it? Yet after many a back and forth the 'I' separates itself from the True Self and you actually have a choice to put it away like a snake disposes of its old skin. You never need to fight or avoid anything; all you have to do is to show up in life and find out for yourself who you really are and the evidence at hand will be self-evident. There is nothing theatrical about the last step - it may just require a little wiggle and the old skin will come off by itself.

Embracing the Shadow

The monks in the medieval times used to whip themselves to make the lust go away. This method of self-degradation was so prevalent that it became a vice in itself. There must be  a different way to deal with the dark side that probably every spiritual path traveler discovers sooner or later.

We aspire to be the Christ or the Buddha and in the process develop a voice inside that screams 'hey, this isn't me'. Then we pray it would go away or classify it as our ego that wants us to deviate from our True Self. The point is we are in a transition phase, we are on a journey to our Core and we still have a lot of psychological baggage to throw overboard. We need the therapy of life to let the air out of the psychological bubble.

I am an economist by training so I have studied many models of how the world is supposed to function and how policy is supposed to be conducted. Then came the global financial crisis of 2008 along and surprise, surprise, the mainstream economic profession was clueless about what to do. Only the historians had advice to give for they studied the cancerous financial deleveraging phase of the 1930s and the post-bubble environment in Japan. Very much as in theory the financial sector is just assumed to do its job, so will our spiritual community tell us that we should only have an eye out for the Christ or the Buddha. Fact of the matter is that you are neither the Christ nor the Buddha, you are you, and you are in transition towards who you really are.

There are three ways to advance. The religious path you know already: You appeal to the True Self inside you and quietly endure the shadow effect. The opposite approach is the yoga of aghori which is practiced in India: you consciously engage in many not-so-holy activities and find out that way who you really are. The option in between is the path of the Tao. You accept the battle between good and evil inside yourself and you don't take sides. Instead you use this creative tension to channel it in a productive direction consistent with your spiritual path. There is very little to do, you just follow the signs the Tao brings your way and let life deflate the remaining air in your psychological bubble. This spiritual journey defines you. It is the impurity in the oyster that creates the pearl. 

No matter which path you travel, it does get easier. Soon you will get a feel for who you are not. Patterns in life and actions will suddenly look familiar. Phases of guilt, illnesses and struggle get shorter and shorter because you realize that is you yourself who punishes you for your supposed misstep. You also learn than every rain cloud is followed by weeks of sunshine. Keep up your journey and soon you will realize that pretty much no matter what do there is only one purpose each situation has to offer: reveal to you who you really are.

Saying No to your Ego

The regular reader of this forum knows I am not exactly a proponent of the ego bashing that some believe in. You are you, so taking on the perceived not-so-holy aspect of you is as perhaps as effective as boxing your mirror image. Yet, our older and wiser spiritual brothers, Jesus and Buddha, had to go through their last temptations before they gained their freedom back: Jesus said no to power, while Buddha said no to sex, so the question is what spiritual lessons could their final temptations have in store for us.

Sometimes we see our sisters and brothers do things and we stay quiet and what we really like to express, if we could get a chance to say it, would perhaps be, 'No my friend, I know you better than that, this is not you!' In the same vein, there are occasions when we observe a tendency in us, an urge and desire and while we listen to this impulse without condemning it, we suddenly feel this isn't us. 'Get thee behind me Satan' is too strong in my opinion; the feeling is more like a soft voice that whispers 'Ah, there we go again'.