Seeing Life as Is

You often can't really change how you feel about life. You may consider yourself fat even though your husband says you look so sexy, or you may feel under-appreciated at work even though objectively you are doing just fine. What you can try to do though, you can try to compensate in your actions the way you perceive things. So even if you view yourself as a mouse, you can nevertheless roar like a lion whenever life demands it. You do that because a higher authority tells you that is who you truly are.

You can disregard the voice in your head or the feelings you experience in order to reach the reality that truly reflects your Self. Say you are greedy but you don't act on it because your consciousness tells you to. Say your mind says, "get that promotion at any cost", yet your conscience tells you not to take advantage of others. Or say your body begs, "conquer that attractive woman", yet your heart tells you not to cheat on your soul-mate.

Caroline Knapp describes in Appetites the yin version of deviating from the Self. If greed is the yang energy that wants to conquer, indulge and take over, anorexia is the exact opposite. It is the desire to shrink physically; the need to punish the body for some psychological reason. The problem statement is one of perception, anorexic people perceive their body different from reality. They see fat where there objectively is none. Caroline Knapp eventually healed herself from this disease by forcing herself to eat against her will. The question is, can you in fact reprogram your way of seeing when you look into the mirror? 

Affirmations are the conscious attempt to bring the self closer to the Self. The way to heal greed is to acknowledge that what you have is in fact awesome. Sheryl Crow puts it well in Soak Up the Sun, "It is not about having what you want, it's wanting what you have got." You can learn to discover that. Just open your eyes, life will teach you to see the world with new eyes. Step outside of your head and fall in love with life and you will experience reality quiet differently. You will discover a stunningly attractive woman where you saw only fat thighs in your mirror before. You suddenly meet a well-meaning friend or a colleague who is struggling colleague where you perceived a ruthless competitor only yesterday.

Spirituality is the art of engaging and falling in love with what is. The voice in your head or some unpleasant sensations may still exist but they increasingly fall short in the new reality that you perceive. Use affirmations to override your interferences, understand where cravings, desires or fears come from, but most importantly, just show up every day and let this world teach you who you truly are and what really is going on. Discover yourSelf in the mirror as well as the real world.

When the Eye Sees what the Heart Knows

You can see the Christ everywhere, except in bodies.

(A Course in Miracles)

We all make mistakes. We all step away from God's Path but mostly it is a missed step here or there and we immediately recognize that something is off. Sometimes we experience anger rising in us; on occasions we spot arrogance; there are times when we are careless and accidentally hurt our friends' feelings. But all that is not a big deal; we apologize afterwards and promise to do better next time around. Every missed step in fact makes the Way shine even brighter afterwards.

Sin is the deliberate looking in the wrong direction. It is the conscious journey away from God. Lust can blind us; greed and fear can lead us away from the Tao. Yet, while a seasoned spiritual traveler will experience these emotions just like everyone else, we physically just can't follow through. Walking away from God simply hurts too much. After you have experienced high energy vibrations you mind going back to the lower ones.

A spiritual traveler sees what is. It may be a vision at first, it may be foggy at times. Yet, 'what is' suddenly dawns on us in contrast to what 'appears to be'. There may still be a voice babbling in the back, there maybe a missed step along the Way but we can no longer be fooled by the stuff that appears to be. We reach the point when the eye sees what the heart knows and at that blessed moment we are Home.

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.      

The Art of Coming Home

Jesus was fasting for 40 days in the desert. The devil appeared and asked him to turn stones into bread, but Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." The devil then tempted him to change the power of gravity and lastly, to take over the world. In all cases Jesus declined and the devil was gone forever.
(New Testament)

If you run after possessions you run away from your True Self. Yet, if you don't allow yourself any luxuries, you may repress your intrinsic desires instead. And if you constantly run after sex you probably try to drown out the restlessness and emptiness inside; yet, by becoming a nun in the name of spirituality you may in fact be just be too afraid to face the lust that slumbers inside. The same with power. If you crave it you probably don't recognize the power that you already possess. Yet if you keep on turning the other cheek, as Jesus once demanded, you may in fact be afraid of the Clint Eastwood inside who wants to be expressed.

So where does that leave us? What are we to do if we are spiritual travelers? What is the True Self and what are nothing but repressed desires? There is in fact an easy reality check to know what is truly going on. As long as you perceive drive, greed, lust, avarice, anger, you have to deal with it. If you think you can just pray and meditate it away, you may be fooling yourself. Look for the authentic needs you can express with spiritually kosher means: a promotion at work that expresses your talents, a soul-partner who fulfills you sexually or perhaps even an open relationship. And what exactly prevents you from getting the house, vacation and hobbies of your dreams? This is your spiritual path; you find out what is kosher for you and what is not not. When you are where you want to be, peace will be with you; but until then, let life lead you to the expression of your True Self.

While peace and love is the ultimate measure of success, studying the demon who pops out every other full moon is the other. Why do we have anger fits on occasion? Why do we you experience emptiness and restlessness, and why do we at times do the opposite of what all the spiritual literature tells us to? Find the slumbering conflict inside that still hasn't entirely come to the surface. What authentic desire might we still not have granted ourselves? Instead of beating us up over it, we can very much try to understand what the demon wants.

The Art of Coming Home is the observation that there is a red thread right in front of us that helps us with our mission. Walking the Tao doesn't take the pain away that everyone else experiences. We have to adjust along the Way and change can be hard at times. We have to be entrepreneurial even though we may be averse to taking risks, and we certainly have to face all our fears. And sometimes we have to say no to what is meaningful to us. So while the pain is there, the rewards are bountiful. As we travel the Way, we feel how the pounds are dropping. We experience how our posture straitens and we realize how we become ever more light-hearted. Excess baggage that we have carried around for years is falling by the wayside. We travel light along the Tao and every step of the Way fulfills our authentic needs.

I started this note with Jesus' three temptations. All his temptations were about power. As we all know, Jesus ended up doing the opposite. He said no to the ego wherever he went and created a spiritual spark in half of humanity. That was his way of resolving his power struggle. What is yours? I am not saying that you have to become another Jesus - we already had one. Just become the whole, empowered and loving person that you are born to be in whatever niche that might be. Say no to your ego on some occasions, express your desires in others; try to understand what your demon wants from you. All of this is easy to accomplish, just dance with life. Peace and love may not always be with you, but ever more often as you walk the Way. Holding onto Her hand is a blissful journey indeed!

The Day the Ego made Peace with God

Someone shared an image at the spiritual networks that showed thousands of words lined up next to each other. It had expressions like fear, lust, pain, must, competition, guilt and so forth. But all of these words were blurred; it was as if someone looked at all these expressions through a distorted lens; the only word that was fully visible was in color and was right in the center: love.

That's what life is all about, a magnificent obsession to fall in love with what is while burning your passion on something that is important to you. Never mind if you are all-to human, and never mind if you still carry karma from the past. You might sexually lust after someone who may turn out to be your soul-partner; your love of power can be transformed into a love for your co-workers and the mission of your business. Your love for money can be transformed into a desire to found and fund charities.

No matter what the calling of your ego might be, God is always standing right next to you, ready to give you a new perspective that helps you realize that true love is what you are after. It is as if a divine lens lets you zoom right into the center of your priorities, true love. There is only one requirement, you have to connect with the Way and let Her do Her thing. Once you have held Her hand, once you have tasted true love, nothing artificial can ever again cast a spell over you.

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.

The Shift

Why do we change jobs and why do we change careers? Personal growth is about outgrowing desires. You literally transcend them and move on to the next spiritual level. In the past, status and power may have mattered to you, but after working long and hard - and after being beaten up a few times despite your best efforts - your notion of success may have shifted somewhat. Relationships suddenly matter more; mentoring and seeing the younger generation succeed become more important to you. And then one day you retire from your old career and your perspective entirely changes yet again.

"Been there, done that" is a holy mantra in my opinion. The shift is complete in one dimension of your personality structure and you move on to other personal quests that are still important to you. So from that perspective, no matter what you do, life tends to prepare you for undergoing this "been there, done that" moment. That's  quite an uplifting message actually. So you can stop complaining about the past and how you could have been so much better off had you not done a particular mistake. You did what you did for a subconscious reason; so even your so-called "mistake" was probably perfect for preparing you for the shift that is about to take place.

While most desires tend to drop off as you engage with them because life shows you what truly matters to you, addictions are the exception to this rule. An addiction is a desire that just gets kind of stuck. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you run after whatever it is that gets you high, it actually only strengthens its grip on you. In this case - after many years of wasting your time and undermining your physical or psychological health - the shift simply consists of stepping away from it for the very reason that there is no alternative. Addiction is a demoralizing trip to get to spiritual awakening, but making a decision to stop can be pretty powerful shift too. Many recovering addicts report that they gain a new level of intimacy with God as they leave behind their compulsive nature.

Life is perfect as is - for everyone and at every time. This is probably a hard pill to swallow but it is true as long as your goal in life is spiritual development. One note of caution though: please don't drop your existing relationships and work out of the blue just because it feels right. Listen to your environment and be guided in your decision by the voices of people you care for before you make any drastic changes. When the "been there, done that" moment really comes you will know it and the world will be smiling the day you graduate to your higher calling.

The Journey Towards Wholeness

The greatest challenge in life is discovering who you are. The second greatest is being happy with what you find.
(Quote from Spiritual Networks)

There are times when we are greedy, there are times when we are selfish and there are times when we are horny. We are human, period. Sure, we can aspire to be divine, to be all-loving and as innocent as children. However, fact of the matter remains that we still will be "here", contemplating how it would be if we were "there". And that's typically where the problem starts. There is a voice inside of us that beats us up if yet again we failed to be "there".

Accept these feelings inside just as they they are. Naturally, that doesn't mean you should take advantage of someone in order to advance professionally. It also doesn't mean that you need to stuff your face when you are hungry, or cheat on your soul mate when you have the opportunity to do so. All your acts can remain as spiritual conscious as they have always been, but still acknowledge the fire that burns inside; otherwise you are overlooking something on your journey towards wholeness.

I remember an interesting "aha moment" when I was in graduate school. I was playing a card game with my room-mate who was quite competitive. I remember becoming quite intense myself and always asked myself, "Why exactly is that? This is only a stupid card game!" I always blamed my competitive room-mate for igniting this reaction in me, but truth of the matter is that my interaction with her should have told me already then what I know today: a lion hides in that sheep that I had perceived. Today I see my life's mission in finding that wholesome personality that represents all aspects of my being. Just as it is described in the Garden of Eden, the lion lies peacefully next to the lamb.

Life makes you whole. Spirituality provides you with the mission statement but it is life that gets you there. Acknowledge all your inner tensions and do something creative and beautiful with it. This is the promise of your a Creator: suffering is meaningless; no matter what your conflicts, drives and desires may be, a door will always opens up for you designed to fulfill all your authentic needs. Life is here to show you who you truly are, and make you whole.

Perhaps the problem statement can be summed up that way: you have been on a quest towards holiness and minded all those reminders that you are human. Yet, when you look back and reflect on your past, you probably find that you have been on a subconscious journey towards wholeness all this time. Make it a conscious one by going after your authentic needs and discover that holiness is always near-by.

The Magnificent Obsession

Have you ever talked to someone who obsesses about money? Everything that comes his way is analyzed from the perspective of what is in it for him. Or have you ever met someone who wants to climb the professional ladder at any cost? Every colleague who comes his way is either for or against him. At best you would call driven people like that egoistic; in the extreme you would conclude that they are in fact insane. They will trample on love left, right and center, if they have to, in order to get what they want.

Every obsession is tunnel vision - you go after what is meaningful to you at the exclusion of everything else. It turns out that you are on a road towards your goal that becomes self-fulfilling. Money begets money, power begets power and lust begets lust. Consider this psychological experiment. People where primed with money symbols, like seeing dollar signs on a TV screen, or having Monopoly money lying on a coffee table in the background. Afterwards the experimenter went into the room and "accidentally" dropped pencils. It turned out that the people who were primed by money symbols were less helpful in picking them up compared to those who weren't.

Obsession is a road towards your destination. This begs the question, if you are a spiritual traveler, can you be on a road towards God? Can one in fact have a tunnel vision for God? Just based on our observations, a spiritual path leads you out of the tunnel instead - traveling the Tao is about opening up to everything that comes your way. A spiritual vision lets you see curves where you perceived edges before; it takes judgement out of contested issues, and idiosyncratic ego symbols transform into universally accepted expressions of love.

The magnificent obsession is the love with what is; a realization that everything matters, yet nothing does. Spiritual travelers are like artists who look at the magnificent painting called life and get the gist out of every situation: love or a cry for love.The magnificent obsession is open to everyone at any time. Let go of what clutters your mind for but a moment and She will take you in!

Clean Up Your Act

Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God.
(A Course in Miracles)

You hear often in the spiritual community that we have to abstain from lust, greed, competition, status, and what have you. Is that really true? You probably have areas in your life as well where a fire is bubbling below the surface and you feel that you have to negate something within in order to comply with our kosher spiritual notions, or have you?

Shadow work is the willingness to open the hood and having a look at the engine. If something inside feels abused by your notion of spirituality than you have to respect that voice even though the desire appears dark to you. When it comes to shadow work it turns out that you have two subconscious forces to deal with, the "holier than thou" voice that minds that you even dare to listen to your shadow, and the demonic side that encourages shadow work because it surmises that it can take you or a ride down the dark alley.

A Tao traveler faces everything that comes her way, no matter how kosher or dirty it appears. Dealing in dark symbols is always tough, and chances are you face turbulence in your life whenever you engage with them. The problem is you just don't know whether it is the "holier than thou" part of you that sabotages you or whether the Tao wants you to change direction. Typically it is both. Simply accept this rocky period. What else can you do, sweep the dust under the carpet? If life confronts you with these temptations they must be meaningful to you. The Tao only cares for your wholeness and peace of mind.   So be ready to get your hands dirty a little, but with the aim to clean up. The intent has to be a kosher one when you do shadow work, otherwise your demon will take you for a ride.

You don't have to sacrifice anything along the Tao. If you have a desire you want to express you will find a way to do it without undermining your spiritual journey.You only think you are missing something if you haven't quite connected with an authentic need. All your authentic needs will be satisfied along the Way. Perhaps you have to transform lust into sexual passion, greed into a creative outlets, competition into just having fun while playing and status into respect for what you do and who you are. Along the Way everything you do is authentic - this is your Way, your idiosyncratic journey. Along the Tao you can have it all.  Don't be afraid or ashamed of any of your desires; just let the Tao purify them for you and then run with them.

Accepting Your Drives

When Sattva predominates, the light of wisdom shines through every gate of the body. When Rajas predominates, a person runs about pursuing selfish and greedy ends, driven by restlessness and desire. When Tamas is dominant, a person lives in darkness, slothful, confused and easily infatuated.
(Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita)

When you are greedy it doesn't make much sense to tell you that running after name, fame and profit doesn't become you. When you are full of lust it doesn't make much sense to remind you that you are not your body. When you are worried it doesn't make much sense to advise you against taking out insurances and protections. Spirituality wants you to be generous, pure and worry-free; yet, if you are not, pretending to be will only create a super-ego. All you will do that way is to push the tensions and unresolved conflicts under the surface. Don't bother with artificial spirituality, live your life instead. Like a magnate you attract the situations that allow you to express yourself.  There is no wrong or right, there is only your next choice that allows you to advance spiritually to the next level. This is why living the life that presents itself to you is the best of all worlds - perhaps not from a happiness perspective, but certainly from the perspective of your soul development.

We advise you to be mindful of everything that is going on inside of you as well as in your environment. When you realize that you are greedy, accept this first and then see what to do about it. Your drives have to be burnt up. Some desires you express, some you repress in the name of spirituality, and some you simply transcend because you have outgrown them. The serenity associated with the state of Sattva has to be earned, you can't will yourself towards it. When you experience the state of Tamas at some stage of your life, rise and get the hidden energies to the surface. When you experience the state of Rajas, go and get the conflicting energies out of your system. The state of Sattva is when your infinite energies circulate in equilibrium. Sattva is also the understanding that the world is already perfect as is. You have to do very little in that state - your mere presence makes it perfect. Sattva is your true nature, keep experimenting and expressing yourself and you will discover it. No one can keep your birthright from you.

The Journey Towards Wholeness

A land developer in Brazil goes to a new plot that he acquired from a buddy who works for the local government. A few environmental concerns were overridden, a number of animal conservation policies ignored. When he arrives he doesn't see the beauty of the rainforest. He doesn't appreciate the untouched nature, he cannot perceive the merging of countless  plants into a magnificent landscape, he doesn't hear the cries of the birds, and is not aware of the beautiful sunset. He literally sees only dollar bills! He is already mapping up the location of the farm, the houses, the agricultural plantations and the road to the next city.

Erich Fromm observed in "To Have or To Be?" how the ego, when pushed to the extreme, is in fact mad. Greed, lust, ambition, fear, pride, or whatever else it might be the ego gets excited about, can become so one-dimensional, it is literally as if one wears blinders and while running after the perceived gold on the horizon, you trample everything that is in the way.  Take addiction as an extreme of that disease: at the end of the road the junkie shuts out life itself; only one tormented program runs his system: how can I get the next fix?

You very much have a choice in this. Just as the "I", your personality, your childhood, your cultural background, your fears and aspirations, develop this mental filter, you can let life  help you remove the blinders for you. That is the magic of the Tao. The ability to fall in love with life despite the workings of the "I". Nay, stronger than that, the longings of the "I" make you a perfect recipient of the Tao. Life was created just for you, to bring you Home here and now. All you have to do is to open and listen to Her messengers.

Following the voice of the ego to the end always leads to isolation, depression and unhappiness. The trick is to figure this out early in your journey into nowhere, make a U- turn and drive in the opposite direction. Following a spiritual path will bring you connection, love and joy. You do not sacrifice anything, all your authentic needs will be satisfied that way. But sure, life will encourage you to drop your grandiose plans by the wayside for they will not make you happy even if you get everything you wish for.

Life is one big therapy course. And it comes free of charge. Know yourself, understand your struggles, map out your aspiration and let the Tao work out the road towards wholeness. Sure there is same pain involved next to the love, joy and excitement you feel along the way, but it is merely the pain a child feels when suddenly a friend borrows a favorite toy at a play date. Everything is already forgotten the next day when the child impatiently asks his mother for another play date with his best friend.

Life communicates with you in a deeply spiritual way every moment. When you connect with this Force, the Tao -  the divine Now as Eckhart Tolle calls it - you are already Home.  The Tao works a little different from the religions that you grew up with. Sure, doing "the right thing", that is choosing love always is a golden rule to live by. The Tao will certainly never force you to choose against it. But contrary to all the religious rule books, the Tao will also encourage you  to acknowledge the demands of the "I". The lesson plan of the Tao is to show you that life is perfect as is from the perspective of bringing you Home. Every step that you take along the Tao broadens your perspective just as every step towards your ego goals narrows it. And what you see is beautiful to behold and just perfect as is.

Putting Down the Ego's Dark Glasses

Our evolutionary biologist tells us that happiness is just a chemical released in our brain to induce us to behave in a way that benefits the replication of our genes. This perspective implies that we are driven like robots who are programmed to acquire as much as we can, to get all the status that we can get, to mate the most attractive and strongest partners and above all, spread our genes. Unfortunately there is little we can do about this programming, millions of years of gene competition sit pretty deep in our bones. What we can do though is to be mindful of where we came from and we can discover our Soul in the process. That is what our spiritual path is all about.

Take status as just one example. Have you ever observed how you talk to your boss and how you talk to a waitress in a cheap restaurant instead? What do you experience when you are all dressed up and sense admiring looks on you? Or how do you feel when you go out with an attractive partner? The point is that we perceive our social environment like a giant pyramid with some people above us and many others below. We do what we can to advance higher and higher on it. Sometimes it is conscious but often our actions and desires are subconscious. Yet we claim that with practice you very much can bring these tendencies out on the surface. More than that, we tell you that this pyramid is nothing but hot air. In the real world we are all on one playing field and together we are so much more powerful that you can imagine right now.

So how exactly do we get to this world? We say " I must not be competitive" and spend additional time with the waitress just to look caring; we try dressing down or deliberately don't go out with the prom queen or high school quarterback and try not to hang out with the in- crowd. Well, how special is that! Not only could we hang out with the in-crowd, but we deliberately decide against it to revolt against the regime. We hope you realize that there is just nothing you can do to step outside of this trap. All you can do is to observe. We can even write spiritual books with the intention to change the world for the better only to realize that deep down inside we want to be special like everyone else. So do what you feel like doing. Be as passionate as you like but be mindful. Let life - the Tao - show you who you really are while you run after your passions.

The ego is the psychological force that wants to exploit our biological wiring and wants to prove that we are different from everybody else. It claims that if we sit at the top of the pyramid and look down on everyone else we will be happy. Well, this is a fallacy. It is the acquiring, the getting somewhere that releases these happiness chemicals. Like Jesus said many thousand years ago, "What use is it if you gain the whole world and lose your Soul in the processs?" When you are finally at the top of your pyramid you will be sad and lonely indeed!

In the ego's world we can only gain when others lose. We can only be beautiful when others are less attractive. The ego doesn’t want to stand on the same ground with others. The ego always wants to be better. The ego craves competition. Looking through the ego's dark glasses, the entire world is nothing but a battleground for me and more me. Observe for yourself that we subconsciously use other people as a stepping stone to get a better image of ourselves.

But please don’t blame yourself or others when you discover this hidden agenda. Just observe! As we always say, leading a mindful life liberates us from the dark psychological force inside. You don’t really need to do anything about it. When you see so clearly that what you are doing is killing yourself and others, you will naturally drop your weapons. More than that. If you really look, your life is nothing but an invite to put down the ego's dark glasses and look again. The Tao will teach you that being is in fact having and that giving is getting. She will also show you patiently that the unimpressive waitress who just served you is an angel in disguise. You do not need to do anything. Live your life and discover that the pyramid you saw before isn't real at all. It only existed in your mind. Follow the cues of the Tao and observe how the fata morgana collapses. Suddenly all that you ever can perceive is an equal playing field of the Children of God. Go out and play, it is really a lot of fun!

By Christian and Su Zhen