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!

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!

Taking the Last Steps Across the Bridge

If you are trying to resist temptation, you may find yourself feeling the forbidden desires more strongly just when your ability to resist them is down.
(Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower)

When an addict tells you that from here on he will stop his destructive path because he has finally figured out how much he values life after all, you will be happy to hear this new-found commitment, but you will nevertheless be doubtful. Too often have you raised your hopes only to find that a little pressure or a simple reminder of the old drug-filled world immediately brings a relapse with it.

The journey of a spiritual traveler is remarkably similar in that there will be a phase towards the end of your journey when a a war will be brewing inside of you, with the self battling the Self. The reason for that is simple. There is a force inside of you that tries to prevent you from taking these last steps and will put all its remaining eggs into one basket, the last area of specialness that is dear to you. You will have to be mindful and vigilant at this stage otherwise you will waste a lot of time with an endless back and forth. This is where the comparison with the addict comes in, willpower alone will probably not get you over the bridge.

Have you heard about the Radish Experiment? A group of students were given the instruction to eat radish in a room with freshly baked cookies while waiting for a test. It turned out that in the test students had to work on a puzzle afterwards and those who had already used up their willpower on withstanding the cookie temptation dropped out earlier than students who were allowed to eat cookies in the waiting room. So it turns out that willpower is a muscle, you want to use it on occasions, you may even try to strengthen it over time, but you can't strain it for too long otherwise you will give in fact give even more power to your temptation.

There is only one guaranteed way to take the last few steps over the bridge. Simplify your life, surround yourself with things that give you spiritual energy instead. Find projects and people that you are passionate about and let this mission put you on auto-pilot. The Tao will present all your temptations as simple choices for or against your sacred mission and your love for the people and the work will get you over the bridge without problems. So what is your calling in life? Once you have decided on something, trust that your soul siblings will show up shortly afterwards. As a matter of fact, your soul siblings signed up for their mission eons ago to take those few steps with you. All you have to do is to drum up that little will-power to follow their lead. Let love show you the way.

The Spiritual Martial Artist

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

Imagine a circle with the Self - our Soul - at the center of it. At the core of the circle is perfect unity, internal and external merge into one. It is also the place where energy stands still. All visible movement has come to a halt. Yet, all the energy is lively active if you can experience them with your inner microscope. They are totally collected and ready to move if you are ready to give any instruction. If you want to merge consciously with the Self you will find that you can't. It is like looking into disturbed water and trying to look at the ground by moving the water with a stick. Even more sand will rise to the surface that way and the water will become even muddier. What you can do though, you can wait. Just don't do anything and the water will clear by itself. Let Tao bring you to merge with your core. You are totally passive yet lively alert. You join the flow and back to the source.

The spiritual martial artist is the one who knows how to follow the flow. He is so still and sensitive that he joins the flow of the Tao. With this collected energy, with being totally present, he is able to move and respond to situations with clear clues. He totally merges with the Now. With this awareness, with this total presence, he turns his life into a piece of art. It is like whatever he does, where he walks, he turns every moment into a beautiful lotus flower.

Most of us are not able to do the magic yet. However, this is not a problem. The point is that you have to know that you have this power if you can learn to connect with your Core. Enjoy the glimpses that you see. Experiment with the powers you discover inside of you and your environment.Try to schedule a mindful activity every day, something that you enjoy doing. Cooking, jogging, meditation, cleaning the house, weightlifting, walking, talking to people, breathing…etc, there are endless things you can do if you can pay your attention to it. And then slowly expand this mindful exercise to other activities you don’t enjoy as much. Practice for a while and see for yourself what you experience.

When you are doing these exercises, you may observe fears and desires popping up inside of you. Try to catch them and understand with your awareness. We argue that whenever you are disconnected from your Core, you enter the realm of the " I", the ego, which brings fears and desires with it. Being aware of them is all you can do. Only at your Core will they evaporate into nothingness.

Whenever you sense the fears or desires arise in you, try to understand what it is about. When you fear, you are worrying that you are going to lose what you have. When you desire, you want to strengthen your identity. When you can monitor and understand these fears and desires, they will lose some of their power over you.

A spiritual path is about experimenting with the intersection of the divine Core and the psychological " I". It is about putting yourself into situations where the Self is likely to pop up, about finding ways to merge with the Now and even just experimenting with the psychological "I". Have a look at the figure below. Perhaps you can think of the " I" as a circle around the True Self. Internally, perceive how the " I" is afraid of doing what deep inside you know you have to do. Perceive how the " I" wants to escape from freedom by engaging in all kind of mindless and addictive activities. Externally, perceive how the " I" wants to be different from others, wants to built a persona that dominates, while simultaneously feeling attacked from higher authorities. Just be mindful of everything that is going on and counter-act as best as you can when the self wants to gain the upper hand over the Self.


"I" feels afraid.                                     "I" wants to escape.


                                       Self


"I" feels attacked.                                 "I" wants to be different

Counter-balance the internal forces like a martial artists when the " I" wants to take you away from the Self. So specifically,

Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Feel the desire to escape and don't do anything about it.
Feel the temptation to give in to stronger egos but resist.
Feel the temptation to dominate and refrain.

By Christian and Su Zhen

On Meditation

It is difficult for most of people to do meditation because it is simply hard for them to just sit there and observe the voice in their head. Have you ever even thought of the voice in your head as something separate from you? When you are moving around, when you are occupied with something or engaged with other people, you won’t even notice that in fact you let go off nervous energy. Only if you sit there for 20 minutes or so do you realize how much nervous energy there is inside of you bubbling to the surface. Your mind is racing like a lunatic jumping from issue to issue in an almost random way. Sometimes you observe people babbling to themselves on the street. That is the restless mind in action at an even more advanced stage. You aren't much different. You are driven by your mind, by this voice in your head, and you are not even aware of it. Only meditation can help with this problem. When you are occupied with something, you mistake this voice in your head as your guide. When you sit during meditation, you realize that this voice is in fact nothing but noise.

Observing your thoughts gives you an opportunity to understand that you are not your mind. With this realization you can create a space between you and the voice in your head even when you are not meditating. All our craziness comes from the untamed mind. Instead of using our mind as a tool to function in your daily life and to reflect on God, we are instead driven around by your thoughts like a monkey. Regular meditation gives us a chance to create that space between our True Selves and our mind. We suddenly experience who we truly are.

While meditation is hard in the beginning, if you make it a routine, slowly, you can feel a different energy penetrating you. It has a higher vibration, it calms you down and infuses you with peace and joy. When you connect with this energy, observing the signs of the Tao will come natural to you. Without the distracting noise in your head you will be one with your environment. It is like you have lived in a dark cave before and suddenly light is showered all over you.

The other important function of meditation is to become conscious of your spiritual energy. Whenever you interact with different people, whenever you go to a new environment are participate in some activities, your energy vibration changes. All these places and things all carry their own energy vibration, but this fact is very hard to pick up. Still, when you get in touch with these people and places your energy resonances with them. You observe that your mood changes, but you mostly cannot tell why.

Meditation is like a cleaning process. It gives you a time and space to be mindful of your energy vibrations and all the foreign idisappear disappear like smoke. When this happens you suddenly feel so light! How blessed you are at this moment; you are suddenly in contact with your True Self. When you truly know yourself, it is just like being in touch with your inner GPS. You naturally know where you want to go and what you want to do and you are suddenly in touch with the only emotion worth living for, pure love.

People run around to solve their problems and look for happiness. Happiness and guidance is just inside you. Meditation provides you with an easy solution. All you need to do is just sit there and watch. Why don’t you give it a try?

By Su Zhen

How to Connect with the Tao

We have often shared our observations of walking the Tao. The big question of course for anyone who likes to join in our journey, so how exactly does one connect with the Tao? Actually connecting with the Tao is more about your willingness and openness to connect. The divine connection always exists moment by moment. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher is there.

Connecting with the Tao is like a curtain falling and where there was a room before there is suddenly open space for as far as the eye can see. Eckhart Tolle wrote in The Power of Now that after falling into a deep depression he was suddenly caught by a force that seemed to suck him into a vortex and when we woke up the next morning he literally saw and perceived the world with new eyes. Sometimes you can have this transformation when you read a spiritual text, you can have it when inspiration hits you during a conversation, a movie, a sad experience, anything really. When those significant moments occur something shifts within you. It doesn't mean that after this "wake-up call" you don't have an ego anymore, but you do see your Self for a brief moment and have a different relationship with your ego afterwards. In Su Zhen's case, she actually had an awakening when she read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.

You are the Tao. The holy Now goes by you - you will connect in whatever way it is meaningful to you. For Su Zhen meditation is the way to reconnect to the True Self. She sits quietly, waiting for the rhythmic breathing to go on auto-pilot and then alertness and silence simply descends on her and she is in the Flow again. For Christian it is seeing the signs when "life hits him", seeing magical connections that no one else appears to pick up, discovering symbols in everything we do, say and experience. Connecting with the Tao is like walking a red carpet that is visible to no one but you. The journey is simply beyond imagination. When you walk the Tao you always feel full of harmony, peace, beauty, love and joy!

You may again ask, " Yes, I get that it is cool to be connected, but how exactly do I get there?" Well, given that you are reading these notes you are probably pretty close. That is how the Tao typically works. Just open up to life, appreciate everything that comes your way, whether you initially like it or not. Find your quiet times as well. You can medicate anywhere really. If you are quiet enough, you can always feel that your energy frequency changes according to whatever you are thinking of. Your ego has a very different tune than your Tue Self. Try it. If you truly want to find out hat is going on inside of you, your teacher will show up. He could come as a friend or Her Voice could come from within. This Universe was created just for you to come Home. You cannot really make a mistake. If you are connected you have everything and if you are not, the Tao will always tell you the interference that stand between you and perceiving the holy Now. Just have fun experimenting - enjoy!

Just Keep the Rascal Occupied

Our spiritual community loves to beat up on the ego. Everything is so simple, there is the ego, the 'I' that wants something, and then there is the soul, the True Self, the love we can read about in spiritual books and can oftentimes feel in ourselves. Well, when you contemplate on the ego concept, who do you think is doing the contemplation? It is the ego, isn't it? Fact of the matter is that you are you, just as I am I, and that is all we know with certainty. Figuring out which part of me is the 'I' and which part is my True Self is an academic exercise in my opinion unless, of course, you have a really good intuition, which some women do have.

The path of the Tao is to realize that every moment is priceless, every moment is an opportunity to be connected with a Force beyond our comprehension. It is actually not that hard to perceive that divine connection. When you are holding Her hand you just know. You can experience this divine connection everywhere, at home, at work, when you interact with people, when you enjoy nature, when you express your creativity - everywhere really. At this blessed encounter you do not need to question your ego, it simply gets sidelined, burned up in the holy Now.

I think of the ego as the rocket that propels you into outer space. Eventually the fuel tank burns out and will be disconnected from the space capsule. The capsule simply gets going in outer space since there is no resistance. Yes, the ego does burn out if you keep headed in the right spiritual direction. When you walk the Tao, there is no resistance either. Just keep the rascal occupied and let Her show you the way. Along the Tao, passion is transformed into serenity, while the desire to get your agenda fulfilled becomes the love for what you do and the people you care for. Do not worry about your ego, keep instead the divine connection going and your spiritual life will be blessed indeed.

Enjoy the Blue Sky

There is a deep silence inside of you which is your true nature. However, most of us can not feel it because we are too busy running around. We are probably always on the move because we want to drown out all the noise in our head. In fact, we spend most of our time running away from ourselves. It is a like we are too busy chasing after things so we don't have any idea what we have at home anymore. We don't remember what we have in our pantry room, nor what we have in our fridge.

You probably remember many occasions when you were so deeply buried in thoughts that you just gobbled down your food without even being aware of what you were eating, or an evening when you were having sex while all of your day's problems were still spinning in your head. The point is that only when you manage to experience the stillness inside of you do you manage to enjoy life's precious moments. The way you live right now doesn't allow you to truly appreciate how special you are, nor are you able to enjoy the many presents the To has lined up for to spoil you today.

This deep silence is just like the sky, it is always there. Sometimes it is hidden though behind the clouds. Yet, this deep silence never changes, it is eternal, it never comes and it never goes. The divine silence defines you, but often you lose track of who you really are just because there is too much background noise.

It is so easy to be carried away by the voices in your head, the emotions, the stuff you want to get out of life and all the physical distractions. We forget our true nature as we identify with something that we are experiencing. We are so fascinated by temporary cloud formations that we forget all about the blue sky in the background. We forget that we are the consciousness; instead we think that we are our thoughts and emotions. We are carried away by life and often become confused and lost in life's eternal ups and downs.

The good news is if you truly want to connect with your eternal silence you can do something about it. If you are tired of the many cloudy winter days living in the Mid-West, move to San Diego instead with its eternal blue sky, or at least spend a long vacation there. The point is that you very much can quiet down the endless chatter in your head with meditation, yoga, mindful living, sports, a creative outlet and a meaningful employment. If you truly want to know, the Tao will tell you how to get you there. Every moment becomes an opportunity to reposition yourself, a new way of experiencing all your emotions fully, a new start at work to synchronize your professional and your spiritual aspirations, a new attempt to live each moment in the now. See for yourself how as you follow the Tao's lead, the voices in your head are fading into the background until all that is left is your eternal silence, the real you. Enjoy the blue sky ahead.


By Chrisian and Su Zhen

The Maze

Two friends are inside a big maze and they both are very hungry and want to get out as fast as possible. Says the one friend to the other, "I know for a fact that the end of the maze is north because we entered from the south", says the other, "Yes, but that insight doesn't help us very much. We have to methodologically examine all paths because it might just be that you have to go south first in order to advance to the north."

You think you know that you have an atman inside you, a soul, a true self or how ever else you would like to call this divine connection with God. Similarly, all other parts of you that are headed in the other direction must mean that they are bad, right? Your ego has to be controlled, conquered, overcome. The problem with that approach is that who do you think does the controlling, the conquering, the overcoming? It is the ego, isn't it? Along the Tao the ego melts away. It might still be there but you don't engage with it because your breath is taken away by the situation. Your mind is still - you have reached the "I Am" state at this magic moment.

Everything about you is the 'I', the thoughts, the feelings, the subconscious thought processes, the memories and the stimuli from your environment. Accept the 'I' wholeheartedly and devote your life towards making it whole. Being a Tao traveler means that you converge with a divine Force. Allow yourself to be absorbed by it, allow yourself to be digested by life. Life will offer you the priceless opportunity to be divine here and now just as your soul sibling is offered the same opportunity in her slightly different movie plot. When you experience interferences try to find out what is undermining the divine synchronization process. When you honestly ask, you will be told what is holding you back and you will choose smarter next time around. Compared to experiencing Her energy, all other states are zombie states. You have to be with Her and let the Tao show you the way. Please don't have any preconceived notions of how to proceed. Remember that you still carry a lot of psychological baggage that you have to dispose of. As the maze example showed us, sometimes you have to travel in the opposite direction to advance to your destination. Let the Tao show you the way.

Mind the Voice in Your Head

There is a voice in your head that you identify with. After all, if it isn't you then who exactly is talking? The voice in your head worries endlessly about everything that could go wrong and is scheming how to get things and also beats you up over past mistakes. Well, this voice is not you, it is just the ego in action, using your ability to reflect on the past and to anticipate the future to take you for a joy ride and a guilt trip. The good news is, there is an Ancient Voice buried deep down inside of you. You can connect with that Voice but it takes time. You must be very still and must learn how not to get distracted by what it going on in your head.

Our brain has evolved from the animal brain which mostly operates in the now. We have the ability to reflect on the past so to make sure that we don't repeat our mistakes, very much as we are able to anticipate future outcomes to be better prepared for it. Our brains allow us to abstract, use symbols, make decisions based on reasoning, calculations, etc. Symbolically, we ate from the Tree of Knowledge and when that happened, we unfortunately lost that ongoing connection with the Source in the process. The voice that always speaks first and loudly has taken over. But you can get the Ancient Voice back.

The voice in your head tells you that you are different from everyone else, that you need to worry, protect yourself, scheme to get things. This voice tells you that you need to work hard to be worthy of love. The ego makes comparisons. When you think you are better than others, you feel arrogant; if you are worse than others, you feel bad about yourself. This ongoing measuring, comparing and contrasting in your brain creates tension and angst. Do this for a few decades at an accelerated pace and you will get really depressed.

Don't get us wrong. Using your brain is of course useful. Eating from the Tree of Knowledge has brought us a long way. All we are saying is to use your brain for all the technical and useful purposes, do not let the voice in your head tell you anything about your interpersonal relations as well as your destiny. Leave all these decisions up to the Tao. All you have to do is to reconnect to life and your Ancient Voice despite the loud babbling in the background. Congratulations! If you have come to this point, it means you will soon break free from the insanity that has plagued you for so long. The voice in your head is not the real you and you can strip out of it like an old set of used and smelly clothes.

The voice in your head wants to take you for a ride. It promises you a pleasure ride, but each trip always ends up in tears. This voice wants to be in control, wants to map out everything. But then when unexpected things happen along the way the voice will create stress. People who follow the unrelenting commands of this voice will sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, but will always end up with a headache. As you age you will withdraw more and more from life as you learn that there is perfect control if you don't interact with anyone and if you don't do anything. But if you withdraw from life you die. Life is to be accepted and enjoyed. Embrace life with open arms and the Tao will present you so many impressions along the way that the load voice in your head will naturally be silenced.

The voice in your head is always expecting something, always looking forward to, always anticipating. The Course in Miracle states that an outstanding characteristic of the ego is that whenever you have reached your goal you will still not be happy. That is what the voice does, always reminding you that the carrot is still dangling in front of the donkey.

The voice is also very good at judging. I ask you, have you ever met anyone who was truly on your level? There are those who are above you in the hierarchy be it professional, social or even spiritual. How different this voice is from the claim of the Course of Miracles, namely that we are all soul siblings, no one is above, no one is below - we are all Daughters and Sons of God.

Our education system wants to make you smart, fast, intelligent and efficient. All we do is to feed that voice in our head. You will be an intellectual. You will dissect what is whole only to find after decades of labor that what you have in your hands is dead. You will get caught up in an imaginary and artificial world of the mind and you will get lost in it. But in a weird way that is good. Send all the students of the world to Harvard and MIT, for these institutions will not only make the students smarter, but will also generate so much pressure with that ever continuing rate race to climb up the intellectual and social ladder that many will lose their way. That is unfortunately exactly what the homecoming process entails. You need to get lost first before you will look for a new way. Unfortunately you need to drive into a wall first before looking for a new direction. Getting lost instils the hunger in you to listen to the Ancient Voice.You will enter our post-graduate studies and the school master - the Tao - will teach you how to become children again and how to regain your innocence and be always full of joy, laughter and serenity.

The Tao is all-knowing. The Tao operates in the past and the future via the Now. But the Tao is nevertheless the polar opposite of the intellect. The Tao only deals in the present, the Tao never judges, never compares; gives you everything that you need , but not what you want because you don't really want it anyway. The Tao is beyond duality; the Tao is non-linear, creative, imaginative, always changing and in the end nothing but pure love.

So how to detach from the voice in your head and connect with the Tao? There are some signpost that you can watch out for and you can learn to get your life back. Watch out especially for these signs: 

1. When you feel you are in big conflict and experience struggle in everything you do. If you feel this way, most of time you are geting caught up in mind games. Once you are aware of this fact you can step right out of it. Just listen how insane some of these mental connections are. It is just a voice, not you.

2. When you feel fear and anxiety. Most likely you are contemplating all kind of downside scenarios. Can you come up with an equal number of upside scenarios just to create a balance? The point is when you follow the Tao and embrace life with open arms you will have little time to think. Instead you will learn to accept whatever comes your way without thinking much about it.

3. You are telling yourself that you are bad, miserable, unloved, a loser....you feel bad about yourself and start attacking yourself. If you notice that the voice is telling you these stories, know that this is an impostor speaking. God loves you, as do your soul siblings who are waiting patiently to interact with you. Just step out of your mind games and open up your eyes to a new reality.

4. You feel resentful and guilty. Your mind goes back to the past and you lose the connection with the Now that way. Well the past is dead, wake up and join the living instead.

You don't need to silence your mind, just learn when to use it. You also need to learn how to embrace the Now - the Tao will teach you that. We will present some practices that will allow you to disconnect from the voice in your head, so please look out for those in coming weeks. Perhaps you already want to check out The Worry List (zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-worry-list.html) as a first practical step to silence your voice. Do not worry, you will get back your life and everywhere you will look there will be joy, love and laughter.

By Christian and Su-Zhen

Getting Ready for the Tao

Spiritual giants walk with you, but you can only perceive this when you walk the Tao. And walking the Tao day in, day out requires that you really know yourself. Being in tune with yourself is like an inner GPS, it is an inner guide who makes you aware of everything that is going on with you. When you lose contact with yourself, even if all the Masters of the Universe are standing by your side, you wouldn't notice them, let alone receiving their messages.

Connect with your inner guide first, then you are able to connect with the Tao or the Now. But too often we are caught in the drama that our mind has created for ourselves. It is ok to create a movie in your head, that is what the ego does all the time, but it is equally important not to get lost in the movie plot if you want to appreciate the Tao. It is possible to perceive both, the movie in your head as well as the calling from the spiritual giants walking next to you, and it is a skill that can be learned.

Don't beat yourself up if you perceive dramas in your head. At least you can have sympathy for all the people who are moved around like puppets in the soap opera called life. The good news is, everyone has a shot at stepping outside of the robotic mechanisms that drive us. I am starting to separate the two worlds. If I can do it, so can you.

When the internal drama takes over you accept the perspective of the ego at this moment, who sees the world very differently than the Tao would. At that moment you start deviating from the subtle signs the Tao sends your way. You suddenly feel lonely and separated, which drains your energy and makes you even more desperate to look out for your own interests. In contrast, when we connect with the True Self, the Tao, we are in complete harmony. The sun will shine, and even if it were to rain, the Tao would hand us an umbrella and rain boots.

You will of course ask 'So how do I connect with my inner self?' Well, it is a process, the separation of the 'I' from the True Self takes time. But there are things you can practice. Accept your emotions and and allow them to be there. Connect with your emotions and you can connect with your inner world. Once you are aware of everything that is going on inside, the next step is to understand your different reactions toward everything that is happening in your life. What events in your life exactly triggered your emotions? If you are sad, why do you feel sad? If you are angry, what has caused this state? When you truly accept everything that is happening inside of you and if you start putting the pieces together, you have a shot of stepping outside of the movie plot.

I hope you understand that this is not repressing your emotions in the name of love and spirituality at all. It is the opposite. Only when you reach this state of emotional and intellectual mastery will you have a shot of stepping outside of the internal drama. And when you do you will realize that there are spiritual giants walking next to you who will help you further along. In fact, once you see that the world outside of your internal drama is always ready to smile at you, it will be so easy to merge with the Tao. Your internal and external world will synchronize and Heaven on earth is ready to welcome you with open arms.

By Su-Zhen

The Path of the Golden Middle

Dividing and conquering is an ego strategy. That is what the ego does. It is afraid of the whole and thinks that by dividing it and by attacking the pieces individually, it will succeed. One mode of attack you know about, the attack of your perceived dark side on your so-called True Self. You have seen this movie before, say at night after a stressful work day, or after the third glass of wine, stuff comes out of your system that normally is safely stored away. But then there is the other attack that the spiritual folks rarely talk about, your expectation of who you should be. The so-called True Self may well exist, but the voice that is talking is your ego wrapped in some holy clothes attacking the self that you don't want to see in you. It is the same divide and conquer strategy but it is a little more subtle. The path of the golden middle is a simple idea: be you and always you. Accept who you are and let neither self get a hold of the other self. Be yourself and be whole in the process.

In physics it is a well-established fact that if one force pulls you from the right and one from the left, the resulting force is just in the middle (add the vector from the right force to the vector of the left force and vice versa and you will establish the resulting force as the line that connects the created parallelogram). This is the Path of the Golden Middle. It is not hard at all to walk the path of the golden middle. Life - the Tao - invites you to be your whole self moment by moment. See how the tension recedes in you as you accept who you are. If the True Self really exists you will experience how the light and darkness in you will merge and how the forces will eventually all overlap.Tension is there to help you discovering who you truly are, but once you have, all that remains is peace.

The Voice

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
(Luke 12:34)

A colleague showed me the other day a photo in a local newspaper that displayed someone who made it into the Guinness Book of Records with the biggest biceps in the world. When I looked at the arms I didn't really know what to think. I find body building attractive myself, but he looked a little like Popeye on steroids. They also had an interview with his wife who said, 'Well, it took me some time getting used to this size, but I now consider it normal and when I look at the arms of all other men I think to myself, are they sick or something?'

A spiritual path starts when you realize that there is a voice in your head which has little to do with you. The voice telling you that you are not loved, or that you will never make it. Or the voice that tells you that you need to be CEO, or that you need to have the biggest arms in the world. The good news is that once you have experienced only for a single moment that you are not this voice, you have reached the beginning of the end of an ancient journey. Reading others who tell you about your supposedly evil ego doesn't do it; you have to experiment this disconnect for yourself, at least once. But then you will learn to disengage more and more, and as you do, you experience joy, happiness and peace along the way.

You may ask how does one reach this magical moment of disconnecting with the voice in your head? Observe your feelings and see how they are sometimes at odds with what is going on in your head. Realizes how this voice is driving you into a wall over and over again. Experience the inconsistencies in your life - the disconnects of what you want from what the world reflects back to you. A spiritual path is very simple really: figure out who you truly are and what you truly want independent of what the voice babbles.

One thing is important though, never let anyone tell you what you supposedly have to do in the name of spirituality. Our spiritual community is very confused on this point. Who knows, perhaps the man with the biggest arms in the world follows his destiny to show others what we can accomplish with our bodies. Perhaps Steve Jobs followed his spiritual mission to start Apple to let the world experience the wonders of technology. Only you know what is your destiny and what the ramblings of 'the voice' are. Separating the two is really not that hard: 'the voice' tells you where your treasure is supposedly  hiding while your heart knows where your treasure is. All you really have to do is to listen to your heart; that's all.

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.

Will the Real Me Please Stand Up

By insisting so strongly that we ought to love one another, Christianity has in effect not only interfered with our normal sexual development, which is not like romantic love at all, but also with certain innate trends of cruelty and hatred which are necessary aspects of our reality, at least during our early experience of life.
E. Graham Howe

Who is the real me? Am I the real me when I am in touch with the Christ in me,  the Atman, the Soul or the True Self, or however else we call this Force that seems to exist within us. Blessed are the children, the women and the mystics who are in touch with this Force, but all ordinary folks like me can only experience the 'I'. It turns out that the 'I' has many faces; in E. Graham Howe's words, we experience the Christian love and the romantic love as well as the animal spirits and the violence. The 'I' encompasses the light as well as the shadow; that is what being human is all about.

Many spiritual travelers have commented on the shadow experience. The shadow pops up because we tend to appeal to an archetype; we want to be someone else in the name of spirituality and we negate the existing other forces inside; we literally sweep them under the carpet because they are too ugly to look at. Step 1 in the process is to acknowledge that you have a shadow; this by itself is hard to do. Step 2 is how to deal with it. Many appeal to the True Self whenever the shadow pops up and try to purify themselves until the shadow goes away. Others accept and embrace the shadow and some even try to harness the power of the demon and put it to a good use.

I try to balance the different phases inside myself very much like a surfer rides the waves of the ocean. Just to give you one example, I enjoy my spiritual outlets like my writings or my conversations within the spiritual community very much. More than that, I would even say I live for them. Nevertheless,  I keep a foot in the real world just because I know it is the outlet for the energy that still has to be harnessed by life. I guess this approach sums up my philosophy as a Tao traveler pretty well: Everything is perfect as is to get us to experience our Core;  so embrace your life wholeheartedly and to the best of your abilities and get done whatever it is you still need to accomplish. Life and the resistance you face keep your demon at bay; all you have to do is to show up and put your best foot forward each step of the Way.

Now or Never

J. Krishnamurti used to say that you either understand the trap of your mind here and now, or you never will. We have the hope that we will experience enlightenment, the hope that we get wiser, the hope that we connect more and more with our True Self and understand better and better the short-comings of our ego. Perhaps this voice in our head, this hope, is exactly what is holding us back. If we understand now the siren song of this voice, we may actually have a shot to perceive the Authority behind everything here and now.

I am a Tao traveler, I live my spiritual life based on external signs that I receive. What I have observed is that you either are connected to this Devine threat in your life or you are not. There is no in-between. There is no almost pregnant. When you are not connected, find out what interference is holding you back, because the inviting hand of the Tao is always there. In the same vein, when you experience love and connectedness, enjoy! But when you feel the hope, the good feeling in your belly that you are working towards something, please stop right there and analyze that trap. Wake up here and now or wander aimlessly forever. 

Passion Versus Serenity

Norman Mailer in his 'On God' introduced an idea that really resonated with me. He said he had most energy whenever his angel as well as his demon were equally interested in a project. The ego is passionate, your Higher Self experiences serene joy, and you do best if you allow both parties their share. Passion is the force that jump starts you, the True Self is the one who confronts you with the choices that get you to your desired journey from a holistic perspective. 

The image I had in my mind when I reflected on this theme was that of a rocket. The rocket is the one that shoots you out of the orbit, and when the resistance vanishes disposes of its fuel tank. Shooting you into space can be thought of as passion's burning desire, while the effortless journey of the rocket without the resistance of the atmosphere can be thought of as the serene enjoyment of the True Self.It is the straight  direction that gets you into the orbit, if your trajectory is crooked, you stay within the earth atmosphere and no matter how powerful your fuel supply, eventually you will run out of power. 

Passion can only jump-start you, and it should. Whereas the Holy Spirit will work with your desires and will confront you with the necessary choices that allows you to catch up with your True Self. That way you live in the best of all worlds. You burn a little of your ego fuel, while you are directed into a trajectory that allows you to create in harmony with your True Self for however long you like to travel.

The Fisher and His Wife

When our boys were a little younger they loved listening to fairy tales; as it turned out, 'The Fisher and His Wife' wasn't one of them. I understand why, the story does hit a little too close to home and little children are aware enough to pick this up. The fairy tale goes like that, a poor fisher catches a golden fish who promises him three boons if he lets him free again. The fisher lets the golden opportunity slip, but sets the fish free nevertheless. At home, he tells his wife about it and she demands that he goes back to ask the fish for a big house. Soon after she got her house,  she wants a castle. Soon after she got a castle she wants a kingdom. Even being a queen is not satisfying enough, and soon afterwards - her fourth wish -she wants to be God. Well, she clearly overstepped her boundaries and ends up being back in her old house without anything.

Norman Mailer in his book 'On God' reported that he always felt the most energetic when both his demon as well as his angel were equally excited about a certain project. That's what we tend to do. We are passionate about something and run after it, but as we are hit with many choices a long the way, the saner part in us tends to get the upper hand more often than not, especially when we deal with other people. Your ego is obsessed with something, while your True Self uses life as a perfect opportunity to heal. It doesn't matter what you are running after, the perfect opportunity to heal just lies around the corner. Only one thing is required though, you need to have both feet in life. If your head is in fantasy land all the time, the healing process cannot reach you because the loud voice of your ego tends to drown out the quite voice of reason.  This brings me back to the story of the fisher and his wife. She never spent time with any of her new entitlements. She didn't spend time in her new large house, experiencing what it means to take care of a large property. She didn't spend time in her castle, observing what it takes to lead people. She also didn't spend any time as a queen and consequently didn't know what it means to be responsible for an entire kingdom. No, before life could interact with her, her passion already got her to the big next crazy idea.

Along the way the whimsical fisher got many clues that the progression of things wasn't going right. When he went to the water to call the fish, the water got progressively darker and the weather progressively worse. He also had to wait longer and longer before the fish showed up. The Tao provides these signs, the feedback mechanism to make the right choices. Life heals if you are willing to take everything that happens to you and in your environment into consideration. Yes, you have to run after your passions - this happens to be your mission statement - but it is your job as a creator to find the solution that is consistent with your unique spiritual path. The fisher and his wife weren't ready to command their creative powers, but at least you can always learn from their mistakes. 

Walk the Walk

Where are you right now in your career? What if this was it? What if the world didn't hear your message, your professional mark or your spiritual contribution - would you be disappointed? Take a look around you, do you see some people who you consider less significant? Fact of the matter is that we are all one. Yes, you are the son of God, but there are many billions of others who share your destiny. When you consider all this, it should not be hard to recognize the voice in your head which is not the real you. I think you know which voice I am talking about, the ambitious, the jealous, the scheming one. The good news is, once you recognize it, you see that it is just a layer of your personality which is fleeting, the same as fear, lust, greed and so many others of your so called personal attributes. Make the right choice here and now, one that reflects who you think you really are and as the connection with your true Self is building, the layers of your personality blanket slowly wither away.

The ego will try to convince you that only your professional legacy has importance. How foolish is that! The Course in Miracle states that "Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God." Every smile at the right instant, every kind word, every helpful gesture at the right time is real, everything else is just the illusion of a grandiose mind. It simply doesn't exist. Walk the Tao here and now and you have changed humanity's future as well as its past. Never mind the chatter in your brain, just react to the infinite cues the Tao is sending your way to get you back on track. Walk the walk and you will instantly recognize the voice in your head that may just talk the talk.

Synchronicities versus Spiritual Intuition

The Tao exists, it can be observed moment by moment and I have often written about it in this forum. The question however remains, does it exist for everybody? Some spiritual path travelers describe real conversations with the True Self, a good example in this direction is Neale Walsch who manged to fill books with his Conversations with God. Perhaps the Tao is just an external conversation device for those who don't have the same trust to rely on their inner voices. Synchronicities are seemingly magic connnections that you have with other people and events. You cannot help but to accept their meanings as a gospel from the beyond. Who knows, perhaps they stop after you have finally embraced the inner voice and no longer need any external guidance. Either way, bring it on!