Lifting The Veil

If you asked people who have just watched a pornographic movie to sketch the faces of the male actors they probably have a hard time remembering since the camera zooms into their body parts and not really into the person behind it. Had you asked Napoleon or Hitler about their troops they would have given you the names of their generals and the associated divisions, but there wouldn't be any specific people behind it, just the strength of their divisions in numbers and by weaponry.

Evil is the word "live" spelt backwards; it abstracts, it zooms out of life. Love is the opposite, it zooms in. We are given powerful minds and we have the ability to abstract away from the holy Now. We project into the future, we analyze the past. We have fantasies and we remember our mistakes and that of others. We run our experiments, do our surveys and find out how the "average" person reacts in a specific situation. All that is a veil. We are not telling you to stop thinking, that would be impossible anyway. We encourage you to observe how different everything becomes once you zoom into life rather than away from it.  

They say that under a microscope no snowflake is the same, each a wonderful idiosyncratic creation to behold. Yet when a massive snowstorm hits, we measure the snow in feet. A spiritual traveler is not that different from a novelist; creative writing is all about perceiving God's treasures as they are. A Tao traveler is someone who has fallen in love with life, and as you do, the mind naturally stops thinking. Images, scents, creativity, energy and feelings hit you with a speed and an intensity that shuts thinking temporarily out. Your thoughts become a story line of your perceptions; you are receiving God message as is, and not as you want life to receive. The veil is lifted in the holy Now and living your life becomes a form of meditation. Along the Tao the veil disappears like the morning fog is dispelled by the rising sun.

The Tao of Insight: Tangential, Yet Whole

Every want strengthens the ego.
Every doing strengthens the ego
Thinking leaves the here and now,
Only she who loves lives truly.

Kurt Tepperwein, Die hohe Schule des Lebens

A tangent along an object describes this object in an infinitesimal area. It is a true description of the moment, but only an approximation in the next. Jana Yoga, the path of wisdom exists. Along this path every thought is just an afterthought, a description of the insight that the 'system' just received. A symbolic description that can be explained to others in a way that is meaningful to everyone. You think without leaving the here and now just because you are being thought, you are 'I Am'.

You rarely want along the Path, because everything just is. But when a want comes you perceive it and it comes and goes like you are blowing bubbles. You just let it be and don't do anything about it unless, of course, it is part of the Way. As you experience the Tao good and bad melt into nothingness. You do, but it is tangential as well. It is an extension of the Way; the stuff that comes naturally, the stuff that is neither good nor bad. The band that ties everything together is love. Love and gratitude for the insight you are getting, the love for the moment and the love for your soul siblings who participate in this magnificent movie.

Awakened by the Moment

I was shopping in the grocery store yesterday and suddenly found myself on camera in one of the security cameras. It only caught my face for a micro second, but it was long enough for me to notice that I didn't look happy. I must have been caught in some train of thought, but used the precious opportunity to wake up from it, least for a moment or two.

We are all robots most of the time, riding train of thoughts that we think express our being, when in fact we are just participants in a movie that is beyond our conscious control. Have you ever seen how unhappy old people look most of the time? Dark thoughts indeed they must have based on their grim facial expressions.

But then, you don't have to end up that way at all. You can be as happy and flexible as children, and today you have a perfect opportunity to turn your ship around. Think of everything that happens in your life - failures as much as successes, pleasant surprises as well as unpleasant ones, applause as much as criticism - as a way to be rescued from your auto-pilot. Welcome everything that comes your way, no matter what. Never aspire to be elsewhere other than the situation you are in and the company you have right now. Life is your guarantee to be awakened at that holy moment.

Your mind attempts to shield you from life. You certainly can't stop these thoughts from popping up, but you can do your best to allow life to redirect your energy. My philosophy is to say yes to everything that comes my way, no matter how painful or joyful it appears on the outset. The alternative is dreadful - me having fun with my thoughts. I think that it is fun for sure, but my facial expression suggest otherwise. In contrast, when I have to engage with people in the situations life throws at me, I may dread them in advance, but when the camera catches me engaging with the now, there is suddenly liveliness in my facial expression. The Tao keeps you in the now.

There is no difference between the spiritual folks and many other folks at all. Everyone has the same shot at happiness, everyone has the same right to be blessed by the moment. Show up for life and engage completely with consideration and love for others and you are as spiritual as they come. They say 'be here now or be nowhere'; yup, that is the Tao in action - life is as simple as that.

Thinking versus Intuition

Daniel Kahneman presented a little mental puzzle in his book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow':
A bat and a ball cost $ 1.10.
The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

The intuitive answer is 10 cents which is a nice demonstration that your intuition is not always your friend. As you can calculate, a ball costing 10 cents would lead to a total expense of $ 1.20, so the right answer happens to be 5 cents. The question that I immediately had was whether we spiritual path travelers risk getting too complacent just because it seems that the Tao hand-delivers everything on a golden platter for us. I thought briefly about it and then decided that I am not really worried. While it is true that we tend to live our life intuitively, it is also true that on accessions we get our signals to dig a little deeper. In fact, whenever I get an annoying request at work, I tend to work twice as hard as I know there must be a deeper reason behind it. So just speaking for myself, like an eagle I tend to have my 10 000 feet perspective most of the time, but when something is stirring on occasion, I happily zoom into the project that requires attention to detail.  So don't worry, the Tao will always let you know whether it is best to use your mind or your belly.

Your Behavior affects your Thinking

There are some psychological experiments in which people were asked if they would have sex with partners who were considered as physically unattractive and the outcome very much depended on whether or not they were sexually aroused. Before arousal, only a small fraction said they would, whereas in a state of arousal there was a significant jump in interest. Well, I guess you didn't have to run an experiment to get this insight, common sense could have told you that as well. To me, this is just another example that shows that your behavior affects your thought process and your desires, and with it, the next decision you make.

Sometimes I think of a 'personality wheel' that is spinning inside of us. Dependent on the situation we are in, and what kind of psychological triggers we get, we move from one personality trait and one desire to the other. When the wheel is spinning really fast, it is hard to even recognize the person who was on the other side just a short while ago.

The outcomes and the intensity of the states is by no means random. What you do and what choices you make very much determines the next event and your perception of it and reaction to it. The Law of Attraction seems to be at play here. This chain of event is perhaps obvious when it comes to addiction. The alcoholic may still be able to hold back when he passes the liquor cabinet, but once he has opened it and taken the bottle opener in his hands, the addiction train has probably already left the station. You can experiment with this concept yourself. Take one of your New Year's Resolutions and reprogram your behavior for 21 days as many self-help books suggest. As the days go by you can literally study the fog in your head - changing programmed traits temporarily throws the system in disarray - but after a few days the system clears up and you are literally a changed person afterwards. 

 As you do, so you think, and as you think, so you do, so I hope you agree with me the the world can be your oyster if you are making the right choices along the way.