I Am Here For You

Summer is here and with it the Sunday School the boys and I have together every year starts. The beginning of the lesson plan is always Adam and Eve. If there was only one spiritual story to be told it is this one since it contains everything we need to know about our departure from God as well as our homecoming. Few people know that Adam is just dreaming all this and that it is very much in his powers to wake up. In any case, the older boy always gets upset at the part when Adam and Eve have to leave the Garden of Eden. But then a week later comes lesson plan number 2, the story of the prodigal son. We can always return Home! My older son was very happy to receive this message and I saw a smirk on his face when I mentioned that the brother in the story minded when the lost son got such a nice treatment from his Father when he finally returned.

The parent child relationship is perhaps the closest of them all. We are one! You know that, right? Unfortunately I know of a couple of cases when parents decided to disown their own children. I can only shake my head in disbelief when I hear that. Don't they realize that they shun themselves that way? Our children are our extension. I can feel this fact in my bones, and you can probably too. But then, the more spiritually advanced we become, the more we realize that we are literally one with everyone. Our spouses and life partners, our friends, even our so-called foes. We are all one and you can very much experience this for yourself. All you have to do is to open your eyes and let go of your thinking and your preconceived notions. Suddenly you realize that your so-called enemy is nothing but a mirror put up in front of you. He shows you an aspect of yourself that you haven't quite integrated and thus still disown. When you are mad, you are mad at yourself. When someone manages to hurt you, you have hurt yourself. When you are afraid, you mind monsters that seem so real to you even though they don't actually exist. Live by that idea and you see that it is not only correct, but you will also come very far in life with this philosophy.

I had these thoughts this morning when I listened to Bon Jovi's "I'll be there for you" on the radio. Isn't that the attitude to have about all our relationships? You never give up on anyone. Unless of course someone decides to depart in which case you will certainly not stand in the way - God didn't stand in Adam and Eve's path either. Actually, when I listened to the song's lyrics I realized that even this promise is not strong enough. "I'll be there for you" is a commitment, a promise which could be broken at one point. It is not yet a fact. The phrase should read instead "I Am Here For You Always". I Am You!

I'll be there for you
These five words I swear to you
When you breathe I want to be the air for you
I'll be there for you
I'd live and I'd die for you
I'd steal the sun from the sky for you
Words can't say what love can do
I'll be there for you

Bon Jovi

The Zen Master with Sticks

I remember a day in the Fall a few years ago when I was waiting for the elevator together with a colleague and I pointed out a new artwork to him which depicted a beach somewhere in Cape Cod with a beautiful cloud formation and when he asked me what I thought it stood for I answered, 'the sky is the limit'. 'Strange', he responded, 'it makes me feel insignificant. The painting seems to portray the perspective of an insect'. On that day he was laid off given that our firm had to downsize in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

We humans are psychics at times. We feel it in our bones when a negative event is likely to hit us even though we consciously would never admit it. I have been a Tao traveler for a number of years now and have observed something odd. I observed that days when you pursue your not-so-holy activities tend to be more stressful than others. Does that mean that the Tao punishes us very much like a Zen master with a stick, ready to swing it at the poor student whenever he has missed a Zen moment just to hammer the necessary alertness and awareness into him? 

Possible, but unlikely. I rather think that you cut into your own power supply as you develop a bad conscience. So the day would have been challenging anyway, but you felt that trouble was heading your way so you felt more inclined to let your more destructive nature run its course. And as your energy dropped in the aftermath, you experienced the consequences as more harmful as otherwise would have been necessary. Viewed from that perspective, it indeed looks as if the To beats you up over your missteps.

 I remember once someone saying in a spiritual forum that you could kill a man in the morning and still ascend to Heaven in the afternoon. Well, I don't know about that, but I get the idea that if you somehow can get rid of your guilt, your energy should manage to rebound since the Tao always welcomes you with open arms very much like the prodigal son in the Bible.

So I could imagine a very advanced soul who deliberately hurts the Devine order and then makes a symbolic act of cleansing and his sins are washed away in the process and the laws of karma are disengaged. Of course, if this is all too intellectual or questionable for you, you can always follow the advice of the Buddha instead: 'Just do the right thing', and you will be all-set along your Way. Unfortunately it doesn't really work like that. A spiritual path is like everything else in nature, for every two steps forward there has to be one backwards. Just make sure that in the aggregate you are headed in the right direction otherwise the Zen master will get you with his stick in the end.