Do You Love Me?

You give the taxi driver the last of your Singapore dollars, then discover you've missed the last flight of the day. No money for another taxi ride home, you begin calling your one contact in country in the hope that they can pay cab fare at their end and put you up for the night. No one answers. You call again, and again, and no one answers again, and again. Inside you ask, "Do you love me? If you do, why are you punishing me for my generosity?"

You decide to risk the cab ride and hope someone will be at the other end to pay the fare, thoughts of Singapore "justice" emphasizing the significance of the gamble. You chat with the taxi driver as you ride through the city. Arriving at the home, all lights are out and no one is there. Inside you ask again, "Do you love me? If you do, why are you not helping me now?"

The taxi driver is irate and accuses you of stealing from him, threatening to drive you to a police station. You pat him on the back and say you understand, he must do what he must do. He wilts under your touch, and says, "If only you hadn't touched me. Now I cannot take you to the police. I will leave you here and come back tomorrow to pick up the taxi fare that you can get from your friends when they return." You feel the presence there with you, and the love you have awakened in the driver's heart, the generosity you gave him the opportunity to show you. There is love. You get out of the cab and eventually the residents come home, give you a place to stay for the night and $100 Singapore to take care of you until you can get the next flight the following evening.

*****
You absolutely hate the yoga ashram. It is more like a prison camp where they make you do yoga than a vacation destination. There isn't even toilet paper in the bathrooms and the food is more like leftovers from actual food than a meal in itself. You are required to stay at least 3 days when you register. If only you had known. Rats run overhead in the after-dinner coffeehouse. You chat with the other attendees and realize they aren't actually very nice people, not friendly, not kind. Inside a voice asks, "Do you love me? How can this be the spiritual pilgrimage destination I had planned to honor you? Why is this place not sacred and inviting?"

The last morning you wait for your taxi into town so you can move on to another Indian city. A man from Sri Lanka says his car and chauffeur are taking him, and offers to have you ride along with him. You gratefully accept. As you wait for the chauffeur to pack his car with his belongings, you discuss your time at the ashram. You answer him honestly that it is not for you, because you prefer to follow your inner guidance from moment to moment instead of having your every move scripted by someone else. He says that he sees that in you and that you are right. He smiles. He speaks of how happy he is to meet you and how grateful for the opportunity to give you a ride.

In the town, as you make your arrangements for your train ride on, you meet incredibly friendly people, who watch your bags while you get money. More beaming faces when you go to get food. There is love all around you, and it is smiling at you broadly.

*****
You buy a 2nd class ticket on the train because it is less expensive but still an air conditioned car. The conductor insists that since you are a westerner you must buy a 1st class ticket, charges you three times as much and puts you in a different car. You are seated in a booth seat with two other westerners, a man and woman traveling separately from England. They too were forced to buy the more expensive ticket than they wanted, and then sat with you against their will. You make the best of it by befriending one another.

The train trip that is supposed to be 8 hours winds up being 18 hours. Another train broke down, so they stopped your train on the tracks and took the engine to move the other train, then came back for yours! The kitchen runs out of food. Inside you whisper, "Do you love me?"

The train stops at a station with food and the English man you are traveling with, who used to be a British police officer (no guns, just a night stick for protection) gets out to get food for the group. The men fight over the food. He comes back cradling an arm full for the three of you, insisting you eat whether you are hungry or not after all the kicks and punches he had to take to get it for you.

*****
Time and time again, we ask ourselves, "Does life love me? Does this world want me in it? Is this world basically good or fundamentally bad?"  In truth, there is both great tragedy and great beauty in life. There are disappointments galore, challenges, losses, cruelty, rejection, and savage indifference. And there is extraordinary kindness that comes for no apparent reason, if you let it in. Life loves you. If you aren't smiling, you aren't noticing.

Spiritual Banking: Are you spending or investing?

What do you value? Love? Freedom? Money? Social acceptance within some community, whether large or small? Beauty?  Truth? Wisdom? Kindness? Compassion?  Intimacy? Power? Youth?

Though thankfully some things come to us through grace, most things of value will not simply be yours for the asking. You will have to work to achieve it, even if that is simply the work of undoing all the mental conditioning that has kept you separate from it, as is the case with enlightenment. 

In general it seems that people have difficulty investing their time and effort in ways that will pay off in the long run. People want immediate satisfaction, so they settle for goals that are easily achieved.

It is a lot easier to want a beer and the instant merriment and relaxation the chemical reaction it causes in your body will create, than it is to want to build a house for a poor family that sleeps on the streets. But which truly pays off the most for you? I would argue the latter does, and so would your higher self. 

If we sometimes spend our time and energy in frivolous ways that only bring us short-term entertainments, there is nothing wrong with that. But if life never amounts to anything other than that, we will find that we eventually run out of energy. The old activities will simply not bring us joy anymore. We will have to become excessive in what was once a harmless dalliance. That excessiveness will lead to compulsion and loss of freedom. And it will lead to energetic bankruptcy, where nothing we do seems to have any real energy behind it and we find it increasingly difficult to truly find joy in anything.

You can think of it as starting life with a piggybank full of spiritual energy. Some things you do spend that energy and some things you do invest it. When you invest, you spend the energy in ways that pay you back with more energy than you spent. Benefiting others is such an investment. There are others too, such as calming one's mind, clarifying the connection to one's spiritual awareness, and exercising the body to foster health and vitality.  The more you expend energy in bringing true benefit to yourself and to those around you, the more you will find your energy restored, with account balances ever increasing.

Don't just let the days run away from you. You won't even remember so much of the entertainments and pleasures that can soak up a great deal of free time.  But there are choices you can make that will enhance your life both now and later.

What is one thing you could do right now that would take time, energy and/or mental or physical effort, and  lead to your having a greater sense of vitality, whether in the short run or long run? How about getting some fresh fruit and making a smoothie? How about calling a friend who has been down lately to offer to make dinner for him/her? Or cleaning the house? Or visiting a volunteering website and finding an organization who's mission resonates with you, then committing the time to get involved in their efforts? Or making a donation to support the work of others if you work too much in your salaried position to be able to possibly do any volunteering? Or how about sitting for meditation for even 10 minutes? Just watch your mind and your emotions, as thoughts and feelings come and go. Notice that which is watching, and call it "me." Train yourself to identify with the peaceful clarity of your innermost self instead of the incessant chatter of your conditioned mind.

As often as you can each day, notice whether you are spending or investing, then consciously decide which you really wish to do, then do it. 

Your Ego "Self" will Never be Satisfied

Your ego will never be satisfied with what it can’t convince itself it created itself. All it wants is to be affirmed. “I exist. I’m valuable. I’m cool.” That’s all it wants, and it wants it constantly, in an endless variety of ways.

Either you surrender to take that endless ride in fantasy land, or you might as well get off now before any more time is lost. Get off while you’ve still got some years left for actually living. If you’re willing to do that, you can stop reading now and just do it. Just let go of all your ideas about what things mean or what they should be or whatever else. Stop trying to satisfy your “self,” since it’s only your false self that has ever felt any dissatisfaction anyway.  Commit now to engage fully with whatever is, just as it is, even as it changes, and love it. Whenever you make that choice, that is when you will know fulfillment. And if you constantly renew that choice, you will know lasting fulfillment.  If you need more convincing, please read on.

I confess that I’m making this up as I go along, but in this moment it seems that we pretty much have a choice between pretending, which is always a very thin cloak thrown over dissatisfaction and depression, or choosing honesty and courage.  I choose to be honest about how much I don’t know, which then requires courage to dare to actually live in such an ambiguous world. It takes a lot of courage, when there are no myths to comfort you, just to leave your house. Just to get out of bed.

If you let yourself see just a little, but don’t have courage or faith or at least reckless insanity, then you’re not going to be able to get out of bed. You’ll only see the horror. You’ll miss all the wonder and beauty.  Who wouldn’t stay in bed, dreaming sweet dreams, instead of going out into that?

So here I am, trying to encourage you to give it a shot. Gamble. Risk. Jump into the river and see where it takes you. I’ve shared lots of stories with you of the miraculous places it has taken me. Read my book, Being Bliss, if you want to read some of those stories. Hopefully my stories will give you some faith that maybe it’s worth a shot.  You will have to be willing to risk losing the fake security you’ve been clinging to, the empty hopes for senseless achievements. That’s harder than it might seem. Ego wants something to hold onto, however flimsy it might be.

But I’m too sick of it to offer you that. I’m just plum tuckered out with that shoring up of ego thing. I can’t even believe myself while it’s spilling out of my mouth. There are lots of people you can get to tell you how great you are. I’m here to tell you that what you call “me” doesn’t even really exist. It’s just make believe, a story about the history of a body. The body was born to these parents. It lived in this place. It went to this school where it was given these grades for memorizing these facts about the histories of other bodies. Woohoo!

What difference does it make? I don’t care whether you’re from the east coast or the west coast. If you need me to ask you that before you’re willing to show me the part of you that comes from nowhere, that was never born and will never die, then fine. Where are you from? Where was that body made? Was your family rich or poor or somewhere in between? Feel better now?

Of course not, because it doesn’t matter. We’re both supposed to pretend it does. Then pretend we had a satisfying social interaction, but really neither of us will if we deal in such falsehood. Don’t ask me to be your partner for that dance. Even if I agree, I won’t be doing you any favors. Ask me to sit with you while you’re lost in not knowing. Ask me to travel the paths of unknowing with you, dancing all the way and seeing what we see. Ask me to remind you to laugh. To wonder. To be open and adventurous and yet wise and discerning.  Ask me to give you permission to give yourself permission to greet the world with one yummy yes after another, until the mirage that is your body fades back into the desert heat.

I do love you, you know. Your body and it’s habits and stories, that I can take or leave. But you, you I really love.  How I wish you’d let me actually spend time with you without all the distractions your false self is always so busy creating and maintaining. I wish you wouldn’t identify with your ego’s boredom when you’re indulging the natural fascination that comes from just being. There is so much joy and wonder and delight available in each moment, yet it comes with no reason other than the decision to notice it. It provides no sense of ego accomplishment, because it’s available with just a decision.

How unsatisfying! That’s the ego’s point of view anyway. And ultimately this does come down to identification with one point of view or another.  If you identify with the stories about your body and the desire to make better stories that more people find impressive, you’re doomed to a life of wavering satisfaction that is sure to end in utter dissatisfaction. If you turn your back on all of that and embrace the infinite unknowable as your “self,” you won’t have much to hold onto, but you won’t need to hold onto anything.

Let’s be practical about this life thing. If we are going to stay alive, we might as well enjoy it. And we might as well live it in a way that when we come to the end of living it we feel good about how we spent the time. We feel good about what we did with the opportunity. So for me this is it. I think I’ll be most satisfied at the end of each day, week, year and lifetime if I can look back and see lots of honest enjoyment.  If I see it wasn’t all just one attempt at pretending something unreal, my ego, was actually real and valuable and really cool, and getting others to go along with that charade in exchange for my helping them pretend their egos were real and valuable and really cool too.

If you want to really do something for others, which you do, then just live a surrendered life. Let your inner wisdom guide you. Listen to what is beneath the endless scheming and begging for affirmation of the personality, the physical appearance, the mental ability, and so on. Listen to the voice that needs nothing but acts with clarity and peace. Rest in it, trust in it, and enjoy it.

Oh please don’t forget to decide to enjoy it. Enjoyment of course is just a decision. It basically is just an attitude of what I call “yummy yes.” It isn’t just a yes. It’s a yummy yes. It’s a yes that comes with pleasure attached. Similarly to a plain yes, it is basically just a decision. We either decide to resist feeling good or we decide to allow feeling good. We choose to remember feeling good or to forget about feeling good. Remember now.

What does it feel like to feel good? Feel it.

Yes, that’s it. That’s what it feels like. Remember to feel that way often and don’t look for reasons beyond the decision. Any other reason you come up with is just bull. You’re just lying to yourself. Don’t lie. Honesty is required above all else. Be real about what you know, what you believe, and what you are just making up. I don’t know that there is really anything trustworthy about this world. Maybe it’s evil. But I don’t know it’s evil either. So given that I don’t know, and really can’t know, I simply choose to make up the story that it loves me, and then go on from there. Why not? What’s so great about the story that it sucks?

 It doesn’t really protect you from disappointment. It just protects you from the shock of the transition out of false happiness back into the reality of your disappointment, because you’re clinging to illusions that will repeatedly reveal themselves to be just that.

So let’s look at what the choices are that we really face.  What is the desire that we’re deciding to fulfill, and which to ignore?

There’s a desire to be affirmed as useful, special, brilliant, good, desirable, welcome, laudable and so on. There is a desire for positive affirmation. This type of desire comes from ego insecurity. It’s hard being a fragile, make believe, doomed entity. It takes a lot of shoring up, endless actually.

The other desire is to fully experience the potential of this experience, which includes experiencing it with others who are also coming from that depth of truth and clarity. With this comes compassion for the fragile egos of others and the desire to nourish the truth that lies beneath that, so that it can come more fully into expression within the world for our mutual enjoyment.

What nourishes truth, whether in ourselves or in others, is truth. Honesty. Courage. Being willing to simply engage with it and listen. Let it reveal itself within your awareness and within your radiating being. What nourishes it is noticing its point of view and being willing to see from it sometimes, being willing to let it guide you. When we do this for ourselves, it looks like openness and surrender to flow, but with attentiveness not dullness.  With immersion, not detachment. We can be immersed in flow, so that there is neither clinging nor detachment. We just dive in fully then see where the water takes us. What a ride.

There must be trust of course. If we think this is a deadly river carrying us out to a crushing sea that is full of toxic debris that is sure to kill us, well no wonder one would resist such a ride. I wouldn’t want to go either. Get me up on shore where it’s safe. But if there is trust or at least courage to take the chance that maybe this is safe, maybe it loves us and can take care of us adequately. Well then the ride can’t go wrong no matter where it takes us. We can be open to all of it.

There is still discernment. We still know that our hearing isn’t perfect, so sometimes we misunderstand what we’re being told. We make up for those gaps with the fruits of experience.  We keep the body alive.  But there isn’t dogma. We don’t ascribe to any belief system other than trust and honesty and courage and willingness. My dogma is “yes.” That’s it. That’s my entire philosophy. Yes. Okay. I’m willing to see and feel and discover and keep letting go of old thoughts and beliefs, dead moments that can no longer nourish me.

What have you got to lose? What has resistance ever gotten you, except a constantly diminishing life? The box just keeps getting smaller. You don’t have to go everywhere you’re invited. You  don’t have to do everything anyone suggests. Your surrender is not to the world of ego, and egos are quite eager to try to move the other pieces on the board in favor of their own goals. That’s not your responsibility, to help facilitate that.

Your surrender is to your own inner guidance. Let that move you around. Be willing to be a piece on that board. Maybe not of some great plan. Maybe the plan is only for your own life, though I do notice that others seem to be benefited quite frequently by this willingness of any piece to let itself be moved. The flow seems to use us to benefit one another, as well as ourselves. Which is great, because that’s a tremendous source of joy

Spiritual maturity requires stepping up to the plate to make something out of this life. And it all starts with a simple choice -- the choice to stop accepting the ego’s insecurities as your own, stop trying to fulfill something that can’t truly be fulfilled because all it really wants is for a lie to be true, and instead wade out into the river and take the ride with an open heart and open eyes. See what you see and be willing to love it.

That is all anyone can really offer you. Are you willing to let that be enough, or do you choose a comforting lie instead?  Either choice is fine. It is your right. But I hope you make the choice that will bring you joy instead of more sadness and pain, however scary doing so may be. Choose to notice love, all the time, and you will be living in harmony with your true self, which is in fact love itself.

Spirit-led Counseling in Northern CA

I am happy to be sharing my counseling work with the public again. For the last few years I've been focused on getting myself firmly grounded here in CA, particularly within a situation that will really provide my clients with the nature retreat setting I always love doing the work in. I now have a lovely healing room within a garden setting once again.

Take a look at the updated website at www.indigo-ocean.com for more details. I look forward to being a support in your journey of awakening to the lived expression of your true being.