Honor Your Problems

The Hindus have a proverb that states that if you say that you are enlightened you are not. You are enlightened in the now. There is excitement in the now and serene tension. You always know what to do, but you also know that you can choose differently. When you say " she is enlightened", you in fact presume that this tension is gone.

There is a scene in the James Bond Movie Skyfall when James Bond had disappeared from the world because he is presumed dead and all he does is to spend his time drinking and letting scorpions crawl over his skin in a weird macho competition. It is clear that he is adrift, mentally dead and only becomes alive when the next villain comes on stage to be conquered.

You are enlightened in that holy moment when duality strikes you and you have to make up your mind whether to choose left or right. You may not be enlightened like the few mystics who might be, but you are enlightened in the holy Now and that is pretty darn often if you so choose. Honor your life and honor your problems, they make you all you can be.

Magnum Force

Many of us aspire to be somewhere sometime and in pretty much all of our visions we want to be special: a movie star, a diva, an all-star, a CEO, a professor at a prestigious university, a famous spiritual author, enlightenment or whatever else it is that you consider special. The psychologists would say that this dream of yours may be as much as a compensation for the lack of inner security you have, as it is a desired expression of your creativity and vision. If you are truly creative, you will find an artistic outlet here and now in whatever job you have and you do not need to hide behind your fame or a title.

I took the title of this post from Client Eastwood's Dirty Harry movie - the ultimate male fantasy to dominate. Do you remember the size of his gun, the .44 Smith & Wesson Magnum? Fact of the matter is that you need  magnum force when you feel small inside, otherwise, why to carry this heavy weight around all the time. Take the other male fantasy, James Bond. Do you remember his pet weapon, his Walther PPK? How small and yet, how efficient and deadly it was in Bond's hands. James Bond is portrayed as the highly intelligent  and flexible force that always finds a way to cope with any situation. James Bond is the magnum force, he doesn't need to carry one. True, his  character is an infantile fantasy as well, but his story could also be a  reminder that if you truly face your environment and challenges here and now, this  magnum force will be with you. Let go of your fantasies and let go of all your idols and life will come your way and welcome you home as the force you were born to be - a spiritual giant.

Karma Yoga

Life has its round-about ways to get you to your destination. I saw my mission to observe my profession and it's people from a distance and accumulate enough material to write books about how one can be Zen at work and manifest exactly what one wants by just walking the Tao. While this might be right, and in the end probably will be right, the signals I have been getting at work recently are quite different: work is sucking me in 100 percent, while my work as a spiritual writer is just simmering in the background.

Karma Yoga is about doing your job to the best of your abilities. It is about looking fear into the eye and saying 'I feel the fear and do it anyway'! It's about seeing that relationships and situations are broken and about repairing them. Sometimes I wonder when I observe our top management put in these insane hours and work commitments, or seeing our portfolio manager living in a pressure cooker day in and day out and I am asking myself what force drives them; after all, they are all swimming in money, they could stop working any moment. But  I understand that, besides their love for power and recognition, Karma Yoga drives them. They just have, very much like me, a drive to work off, and we are doing it to the best of our abilities.

Once you get rid of the 'me' perspective and you are being drifted by the Tao like a leaf in the wind, you actually have only one mission left: healing. Put your best foot forward such that every day becomes a flawless exchange of energy, care and attention. You sometimes feel if something is off, very much like you can feel when fear is creeping in. Look for the learning opportunity, reposition and do it better next time. As you know, James Bond was given the 'License to Kill', but he has disappeared for the time being, killed by the global financial crisis as irony has it. Well, I am giving you the 'License to Heal' instead. You can do it right here, at your job, with your family or whatever else you might be doing today. Perhaps Karma Yoga is your spiritual path home as well.