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.

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 Vision of Love

When you love someone you have perceived him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to know him.
(A Course in Miracles)

At work I felt competitive with one colleague in particular which is actually quite unlike me; normally I manage to collaborate with pretty much everyone. So at times when I felt annoyed by that colleague in question, I use a little trick: I recall a conversation that both of us had when our children where much younger. He said that he was reading a story to his little boy and often felt so exhausted that he fell asleep in his son's toddler bed. I actually had a similar experience around that time. When our boy was little I could only prevent him from running around at night by falling asleep next to him. Somehow my sleep must have had a soothing influence on him; minutes later he was also gone.

So the mental imagine of this big man lying in his boy's bed made me always chuckle and all the ill-wishes were gone instantaneously no matter what. Perhaps you can use my little trick for your situation as well. Get to know everyone you interact with on a more personal level. Everyone has a story that you can resonate with. Know that whenever you don't experience love, there must be something that you are overlooking. Without love you perceive a distorted perspective of reality, so please do something about it. The vision of love is possible for everyone. Sometimes you  just have to dig a little deeper

The Bar Has Been Raised

You know what happens in a high-jump competition? Just when you pass the hurdle, it will be raised on you. Does your life feel like an endless high-jumping event? The work-requirements go up, the resources you have access to get fewer and fewer; new and younger colleagues are moving up the rank fast, and in all that you realize that your children and significant others need more of your time, care and attention.

This would be a good time to connect with a life-coach. Someone who reminds you of your bigger picture and helps you to redefine your priorities and objectives. A Tao master could help you as well. After all, our motto is that everything you require to be happy and successful is at your finger-tips. You are always safe and sound, and all these people who you think annoy and challenge you, are really here to help you.

Start with a life-coach first though. Create yourself a little breathing space to look for alternatives, a new way of looking at things. Your problem is that you are on auto-pilot running after things that your parents, your friends, the advertisers, and society at large tell you are important. You are running like everyone else after the stuff that glitters on the horizon and are trampling over the gems that are lying in front of you in the process. Sort out your priorities a little, become more confident and efficient at what you do and start getting in touch with your soul. Once you have completed the warm-up exercise you are ready for the a Tao. And this is when the true fun will start.

Why do you think the bar has been raised on you? You have put yourself into this position. Subconsciously you want to run against a wall to remind yourself that there must be another way out there. You want to remind yourself that you are like a donkey running after the carrot never to be reached. Today is a good day to stop; drop everything and remind yourself of your happier days. We are telling you that you can have it all. You can experience these feelings of joy, love and well-being any time, at home, at work, everywhere really. But first you have to stop and reposition yourself. The life-coach will get you the breathing room to get ready for our magnificent journey, a first step into freedom. For the homecoming-tour, the Tao will take your hand. And when She gets started you will be in for a breath-taking ride.

Enjoy the Game of Life

When children play basketball you have probably observed for yourself that the attitude of some kids pretty much determines the outcome. If you just wander around and worry about the mistakes you might make, you will lose the precious opportunities to make the winning shot. If you are not 100 percent committed to the game, if you don't participate in the flow of the game, you won’t feel the excitement, the strength, joy, or the pain. Your mind is holding you back and you end up feeling bored and annoyed in the end.

Life is like a never-ending game. The way you feel about it depends largely on how much you participate in the games. The nice thing is that you can always change your mind about it. So for example, you can just choose not to cater to the worries that plaque your mind and take the winning shot no matter what. Your mind holds you back from enjoying life, but you can do something about it.

Women tend to worry, men tend to go out and hunt the game. Worries are the one end of the spectrum, aggressiveness is the other. Think of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods how they went out out and defeated their opponents with lots of skill but even more will-power. Sure, you can play a game that way too and it is a lot of fun when you hold the trophy in your hand and are admired by others, but is it also fun when you experience your off-hours, or when you have to torture your body to have that little physical edge over the fellow next door? All-star pro players are the mirror image of the timid basketball player from the beginning. The ego can worry or it can go out to grab limited resources from others. The game of life can be played that way, but there is a much nicer version for you to embrace.

Along the Tao resources are abundant. The fear of losing is non-sensical because all you ever can do is to create. The idea of grabbing stuff from others is as meaningless because in our game of life the interaction with your soul siblings creates the abundance. "Economics", the discipline of distributing limited resources doesn't exist where we play our game. You have everything always - and so have your soul siblings - so there is nothing to distribute. Heaven on earth exist but to live there you have to leave your ego behind. You may ask, so how exactly do I do that? Well, there is only one way and that is to always, always go for the winning shot no matter how much the worry worm in your head disagrees. Meanwhile you let the Tao demonstrate to you that you and your soul siblings live in an abundant world. If you always show up rain or shine, sooner or later it dawns on you that you are just participating in a fun, creative and loving world. 

Put your worries behind because you are well taken care off and understand that competition and aggressiveness is meaningless. Take the cues from life and join because wherever the Daughter of God is walking, people are connected, they create and they care for each other. Be playful, be yourself and enjoy the game. See for yourself the beauty of the game of life.

By Christian and Su Zhen

The Adventure of Bonnie and Clyde

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein

Economics has the model of the the perfectly rational and selfish individual. It actually has been a pretty good working assumption explaining what is going on in businesses, societies and politics. Yet many of us feel there must be more to life than that. You probably have already created your island of love, trust and cooperation, but you probably also can think of the areas in your life where you face a 'dog-eat-dog' environment. Try to extend this island of peace, trust and corporation in every area of your life. The Tao will show you the way, but remember to take small steps until you truly have the confidence that it can be done. Remember, it is you who has to throw a lot of psychological baggage over board and your daily interaction give the opportunity to do it.

We live in a multiple equilibrium world: believe that you can live in love and in peace wherever you go and you will experience it; believe you are operating in a dog-eat-dog world and you will always attract the shady characters who are happy to play with you. It is your choice, it is that simple. I want to illustrate the idea with the model that the economic community uses to illustrate selfish behavior, the Prisoner's Dilemma. Somehow, the story goes, we live in a world with lack of communication and in this world people will end up choosing non-cooperative behavior that in the end hurt everyone. 

Take the famous gangsters, Bonnie and Clyde, when they were caught early in their out-law career and the district attorney had little evidence to use against the two, so she tried the classic game-theoretic interrogation technique that she had learned at law school. Clyde was told that Bonnie was being interrogated by one of her colleagues. Both would be convicted for 5 years if they both confessed, but if Bonnie confessed while Clyde remained silent, she would go free, while he would be locked up for 10 years instead. She of course figured that given these circumstances they would both confess and would both lose out in the process, but to her surprise Clyde laughed in her face and said "This woman has taken a bullet to save me. Execute me on the spot, I will never betray my soul sister!"

You may say my example is childish and that trusting others has backfired for you personally in a professional setting. I think the cooperative solution is out there for you if you dare to pursue it. Just try it in small things and see what happens. What exactly do you have to lose? After all, has scheming really ever got you anywhere? You are not asked to sacrifice anything. Try and explore until you have found for yourself this niche of trust, corporation and love in whatever you do. At one of the retirement parties at our firm, one of my colleagues said, " I have been so productive here because I felt I never had to watch my back." If she could create this working environment in the competitive financial industry, why shouldn't you succeed wherever you are working right now?A little effort is probably required to find this niche, a few missteps will probably occur but believe me, the cooperative outcome is well worth the price.

Competition Versus Cooperation

The willpower of power is the willpower of conflict, the alternating dualism of "yes ...no, yes ...no", which are the two aspects of desire. But the willpower of wisdom has nothing to do with such competitiveness; in fact it behaves in quite the opposite way. It manners are perfect; it is never rude, because it feels no revulsion. It never says "No" and is never offensive. The willpower of wisdom is the willpower of a single motive of acceptance - yes, yes, yes.
E. Graham Howe

I was once in charge of an offsite, a team spirit building exercise, and I decided that we would go and play mini-golf according to the Ryder Cup rules. The Ryder Cup is a golf tournament that is played between the best European and American golfers. And even though golf is a highly individual sport as we all know, when you put the players into teams with alternating shots or by choosing the best shot of each player, suddenly a team spirit develops and for the players who gel with each other, the team effort can be much more than the sum of the individual players.

The Tao master knows something about cooperation. The Tao teaches you how to cooperate with life and with other people. Sure, competitive folks will show up along the Way as well, they too will be incorporated in the magnificent play of the Tao. You let them do whatever they need to do but you never fear their force because in life cooperation gets you a lot further than individual competitive efforts. My favorite example in this direction was the Ryder Cup during a time when Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were Number 1 and Number 2 in the golf rankings and both were beaten handily as a team by the much more cooperative European players.    

The Tired but Pleased 350 Pounder

Sports is a weird human invention. Athletes put their ego, their entire being in the success of their team. The opposing team is the enemy. They hit the gym day in, day out, study the vulnerabilities of the opposing team and hype themselves up psychological to make it in the all-or-nothing play-off game. Our somewhat tired 350 Pounder has played for 15 consecutive seasons, has defended 7 different Quarterbacks, has played for 5 different teams and can still hype himself up to be his best at game night. Still, he is now almost amused when he hears the aggression of the young players, the contempt vis-a-vis the opposing team. Apparently they don't know that he had played with 5 of them for years together and that 2 of them are his best friends. Yes, he now is truly a professional, a hired gun if you wish. He can still carry his weight in every game even though he is a little tired, but most of all, he is really pleased because he knows that when he retires after this season he will be done with this competitive stuff once and for all.

Sitting in the Forest and Throwing Stones at Passersby

Sathguru was telling the story of a holy man who sits somewhere in India's forests and throws stones at passersby if someone comes to near and otherwise spends the days and nights meditating, contributing in his unique way to the evolution of the universe by emitting his holy vibrations. 

I believe we are all running after recognition and social status, the athletes as much as the business community and our spiritual folks. The before mentioned ascetic may be one of the notable exceptions. The ego seeks recognition and wants to be different from the fellow next door by trying to be superior in whatever way possible. In contrast, our spiritual center knows that we are all connected and that we are all special in our unique ways. 

Your ego exists, there is nothing you can do about your drive to be special. What you can do though, is to be aware of it. When your mind zooms into the dimension that makes you superior over others from your vantage point, there is a small window of opportunity to step outside of yourself. If you really reflect you will recognize the narrow-mindedness of your personal agenda and at this moment there is hope for your true self to shine through. I don't think you have to flee to the mountains to get this insight. In contrast, standing with both feet in life may give you the advantage to see your competitive personal agenda instead.