Swaying With the Music

William James, the famous psychologist, was lying one day in his cold New England room under his cozy blanket and was agonizing about the question whether he should get up. Then one moment he just got up and asked, "So what about my will? Somehow the decision to get up just happened. Why exactly did I get up?"

Believe it or not, his insight - simple as it seemed at the time - was in fact revolutionary. Scientist have run neurological studies of people who had a decision to make. Somehow the "system" knew about the decision even before the person became consciously aware of it. A light bulb literally went off in their head before they knew about it. The "system" knows and the "system" initiates while we are consciously explaining afterwards why we did what we did.

Consider this experiment. Some people were hypnotized and told to get up in the next business meeting and water the plants in the room while the business session was progressing. That's exactly what they did. You can imagine the surprise of the meeting participants. When they were later asked why they did what they did, they gave explanations like, "I suddenly realized how thirsty the plant looked. I simply couldn't wait." Not a single participant said, "You know what, I don't have the faintest idea why I did what I did."

The system knows and you just follow what a higher authority does convincing yourself that you are in charge. But don't get me wrong. I am not saying that you should stop looking for answers with your rigorous thought process; neither am I saying that you should stop listening to the intuition of your heart. I am also not saying that you should stop looking for love and try living a spiritual life. All I am saying is that the wholeness in you knows when you know what you know. You do what you do because somehow it is useful for you, making mistakes as much as having insights. Life unfolds through you in all areas of your life; even the seemingly unimportant question when to get up.

You are part of a movie. Just let it flow it through you. Make your perceived choices, struggle with heart-wrenching decisions; you can make it a mission to become somehow "enlightened". Experience the joy of moving psychological issues and behaviors out of the subconscious into the conscious. But in all that, relax as well. She is in charge; you only think that you are in charge. Get lost in the movie you call life and find your Self in it. Break trough imaginary walls in this divine Matrix. When every choice you face has literally become a no-brainer you know that you are Home.  Thoughts just "know" and feelings "feel" what the system experiences. Just as William James suddenly just got up, when you are with Her all you ever do is to sway with the music.

The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences

You may have heard the expression Terrible Twos, the fact that a child starts realizing her own identity after the first year and can act up a little during that time period. I remember a conversation with our pediatrician when my oldest child turned 4 and I complained that he was acting up. The doctor said that in his opinion the Terrible Twos were overrated and that in fact this time period was the hardest. I stopped him right in the tracks and reminded him that he had said exactly the same thing a year ago when our boy had turned three. He smiled, looked at my younger son and said, "Yes, there may have been a little marketing involved. I just didn't want to tell you how it really is, otherwise you may not have chosen to have the other one."

I have just published my first book, The Magnificent Experiment, which describes my spiritual wake-up process. There was magic in the air in these years and it was certainly a lot of fun sharing this spiritual renaissance with others, because they are likely to encounter similar magic. Yet, it was objectively a synchronization process with a higher force and there were also some less comfortable experiences involved that I didn't touch on in the book. For example, I remember months when I put the boys to bed at 8 pm and I had just enough energy left to take the additional 12 steps to make it to my bed and I was out by 8:01 pm, completely spent.

Why to talk about stuff like that? I am sure I hurt myself one way or another as parts of my ego minded being synchronized and acted up whenever they had a chance. A spiritual experience is not supposed to be like that. All the mistakes are mine and all the glory is Hers, that is how it goes along a spiritual path. Neale Walsch describes a conversation with God in which he complained that he wasn't connected to God over many months and God replied that it was Neale Walsch who had disconnected instead. That is what I observed as well. The Tao is always out there extending a welcoming hand, but it is up to us to cut the interferences out; no one else can do that for us.

I think if we really want to help each other grow spiritually we need to zoom into these disturbances. It is a frustrating exercise for sure. It is certainly more fun to describe the magic than the mistakes and then, all mistakes are idiosyncratic. So you need to capture the "dark side" of the spiritual awakening process from all kind of angles, which is confusing and cumbersome.

My hunch is that what exactly is kosher and consistent with your spiritual path is very much a unique psychological experience. Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th Century Mystic of India used to say that he couldn't associate with money at all. His disciple, Vivekananda wanted to test him and put a coin under his mattress after which Sri Ramakrishna complained that he couldn't sleep all night. Perhaps it would be useful to run surveys in our spiritual community to see what works for some and not others. I have never been discouraged along my path to run experiments, but in the same vein, I have always been encouraged to be vigilant once a problem statement was out in the open. After all, if you have made a mistake before and realized it, why on earth would you do it again, right?

The good news is that a spiritual path traveler doesn't really have a choice in any of this. Your energy vibration is by now way too advanced to tolerate a crash to a lower level. But you certainly can delay things by going back and forth between the different levels of spiritual consciousness. William James had a fascinating book out at the turn of the century, The Varieties of Religious Experiences, outlining the different spiritual paths and experiences he had come across in his studies of biographies and historical accounts at the turn of the 20th century. Perhaps we could revisit this effort with a special emphasis on what has held people back on their paths. Email me if you have some idiosyncratic observations at zeitgeistma@gmail.com.

On Peace

Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is.
A Course in Miracles

Why would anyone sign up to travel the Tao? You are going against everything you seemed to have learned and everything the fellow next door thinks is sane: being compassionate, while ignoring your own agenda. The first step is the hardest and that's why I advise you to start with little experiments. But eventually big ones will come your way and you will be scared that your environment will take advantage of you. Unfortunately, no one can help you with this problem. You see the abyss, you take a step and only then will you know whether the invisible bridge really opens up. Fact of the matter is that nothing really changes when you travel a spiritual path. The movie is still rolling, but what changes is your perception and interpretations of what these scenes  are for. Before, you externalized all tensions. It is the others who were responsible for the situation you are in, some were the heroes and friends while others were the jerks and the villains. In your new movie everything is about you and the fears that prevent you from becoming the one you aspire to be. But with the fears that you are facing there will also be  a magical world that opens up to you. And time is on your side since with every step you are taking along your path, peace will penetrate every fiber of your being. God says in Neale Walsch's 'Conversations with God' that it does get easier. I found this to be true, but I would be lying if I didn't tell you that there were a few scary steps along the way.

Eventually you will merge with the Tao and the peace will be complete. Everything that happens to you, good or bad, will have spiritual meaning to you and thus, in its own way, will be perfect. I came across a description of a spiritual path traveler in a collection William James put together in 'The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences' more than 100 years ago, and I immediately felt that he must have been a Tao traveler as well.

"The compensation for the loss of that sense of personal independence which man so unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all fear from one's life, the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner security, which one can only experience, but which, once it has been experienced, one can never forget."

Yup, that's the peace of mind one experiences once you travel the Tao. I hope you will feel it too.

Melancholy

Boston was covered by clouds yesterday, and I just felt it in my bones that my day would be a challenging one. I felt the demon rising in me, but these days I manage to keep him in check effortlessly. Work was a bit more challenging than usual, two doctor visits with the children on the same day didn't help either, but in the end pots of coffee carried me through the day. At home, when I read William James' "The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences", the entire chapter was on depressions. I had to smile, apparently the Tao set me up for all this to better appreciate this chapter. No, on a spiritual path, the low of the depression never gets you with full force because deep down inside you know that the sun will be shining again and the birds will be chirping.