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!

Mind Sex: 21 Days to Serenity

Watch a pornographic movie, masturbate, get drunk, chat with others in adult web communities and see what happens in the following days. Observe how you perceive people you  see and meet in the street; do you see them as bodies or as spiritual beings? Watch your thoughts, are they replaying the events of the night before? Wean yourself from all sexual activities for 21 days and see what happens. Do sexual scenes still capture your imagination afterwards? Do you perceive people that you see and interact with any differently. Our scientific folks would perhaps conjecture that your sexual drive is going up after 21 days of days of abstinence. My claim, the opposite is true. Try for yourself' just understand that 21 days of abstinence is a steep climb. But once you have made it you will perhaps see for yourself, passion and serenity is a choice. You  can have peace of mind or the spice of life, the choice is up to you.

Time-out

Pursue your passions, run after life's spices and you give your Self a time-out. When the blood is running through your veins in over-drive, the Self can't be heard. But alas, misery will follow your passion with certainty. Succeed with your project and boredom will hit you after a temporary high. Fail and depression hits. The Self will pierce through in these moments of misery. The Self will lift you up, ever-forgiving, but soon enough you will be running after a new craving.

After tasting a few bitter fruits like that, you can turn the table and give the ego a time-out. Become an artist in whatever you do, get lost in the the beauty of your creation, work and serve without expecting anything. Don't worry, you will not miss anything and enjoy serenity and peace wherever you are and whatever you do.

Disentangling The Hook

The time of the season is here when we have to sign up our kids for summer camp again, and I was reminded of this dreadful picture I once saw that tried advertising a camp by showing a picture of a teenage girl with a lifeless expression pretending to bite into a hook that a bored middle-aged man was holding up for her. As you can imagine, I didn't sign my kids up for this one.

The spiritual mensch flows with the universe moment by moment and doesn't stop anywhere since the tune is changing all the time. When you truly exchange yourself with somebody you care about you will notice this ongoing flow. There is no set agenda and there is no game plan. The difference between passion and enthusiasm is subtle, but it can boil down to the difference between an obsession and serenity. You are on fire in both cases, but you dance to your own tune in the former case, while you are operating in harmony with the universe in the latter.

You have to follow your passions, that's your life mission statement, but understanding the different feel of the two states can at least help you to find that creative healing opportunity to launch you on your spiritual path. Yes, your passion hooks you, but if you are truly putting your best foot forward, the Tao will find a creative way to help yourself disentangling yourself. The fire that consumes you will slowly die down that way. As you take your hand out of the fire and will instead jumpstart that eternal flame that burns inside you.

Passion, Obsession and the Tao

How do you distinguish an obsession from your spiritual path? Can your spiritual passion become an obsession? I find that the enthusiastic feeling you experience along the Tao is very different from an obsession or an addiction, though you feel a high in both cases. The first difference is that with every obsession you feel the blood running through your veins, whereas when you experience the Tao you just don't feel your body. A second difference is tunnel vision. When you run after your passion you block everything out and are irritated with any distraction. When you walk along the Tao instead, distractions just don't exist. Anything that happens to you, everyone and everything is connected and has a symbolic meaning. The Tao is the exact opposite of tunnel vision. The final difference is the moment after. Every high that is generated by an obsession or an addiction will have a low attached to it. The Tao, if you can stay on it, is an infinite energy provider. There is no low just because there is an ongoing Now. Enjoy!