“Love one another without any expectations. Then there is no need to go anywhere in search of heaven.”

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Have you ever experienced tragedy which leaves a scar so deep and unforgettable that it somehow makes you no longer afraid of death? Death becomes inconsequential because some part of the personality has already died through the sadness of the terrible trauma that can never be erased. The cascade of nightmarish events can never be made right again. So there is no longer a need to fear death even while knowing, more than ever before, that death can come at any moment. And for this reason, there is also no longer any fear to live a passionate life on one’s own terms. Every second and every breath is a chance to live more fully. There isn’t a moment to waste on procrastination or self-pity. We have to jump into the raging fire of life, welcoming the burn and the ecstasy equally because they are both a means to the same end.

There is always hope after a person’s dreams have been smashed to pieces.  When there is nothing left to lose, there is a seed for rebirth.  Rumi said, “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure,” and “The wound is the place where the light enters you”.  As that light illuminates through the wound, everything ordinary becomes extraordinary again. Nothing in this world is mundane.  The simplest thing is the grandest miracle.  Each day of life becomes sacred like a meditation in motion.  There is no time to lose.   For one who knows this, the daily activities are no longer just simple routine.  They can be yet another manifestation of divine opportunity; a doorway to merge in universal love; a moment to be seized and a phenomenal pleasure to be enjoyed.

Everything can be taken away from any one of us.  And having lost everything that truly matters, it becomes clear that all we are and all we truly have is love.  And love is ultimately the only thing worth having anyway. When the window of the heart has been opened to the value of love, and the inner eye can see through that window, then everything can be a form of worship. Even one’s work can be an invitation for the devotee to immerse into the river of this love.  Every relationship, and each friend is a beloved character in an ongoing love story.  There is nothing else to strive for because love is all there is.  This need not be a personal, conditional kind of love bound by attachment or limitation.  It’s an unconditional love; transcendent and dependent on nothing. Whether or not it is experienced it is a matter of each person’s own perception.  With openness, sensitivity, awareness, and deep appreciation for life, beauty can be seen everywhere. Every person we meet becomes another face of the divine play.

Love of this caliber requires total surrender in order to attain the bliss.  And it’s impossible to surrender without trust.   Trust happens by accepting life, not taking anything personally and by letting go of expectation and attachment (which often leads to pain).  By letting go,  it is easier to trust that we are safe because there is no longer anything to defend oneself from.  And we surrender to the knowing that all of life is in synchronicity. There is always perfection, even when life does not appear that way.  Letting go of worry and fear is faithful trust.  Having freed ourselves of negative judgments towards life, we are much freer to be carried away by love.  This can free us to fully appreciate the people in our lives on a deeper level because we don’t judge them.  Rather, we see them for who they really are:  The spark of love.  And by projecting this love, we awaken the same in another.  There is no greater gift we can give to another human being and there is no greater gift we can receive.

The essence of love is like a river that carves a deep canyon in the Earth.  It can be felt as a current of soft, pure, phenomenal energy that has the remarkable power to eventually push through all rigidity.  It can soothe us like a balm, or force us into transformational change.  This love is experienced through feeling, not thinking.   It exists in the wisdom of the heart.  Thoughts in the mind need to be set aside in order to merge in the oneness.  Everything we think we know is nothing compared to love.   So the mind is the only prison that blocks the perception of it.  And the key out of this prison is by way of rebellion.  This means: To circumvent the ego-mind by consciously sinking down into the knowledge of the heart and seeing and feeling the world from there.  This is the most beautiful and rewarding rebellion imaginable.

Practicing this kind of rebellion in one’s life takes a bit of courage. But the reward is unmatched because nothing is more fulfilling than surrendering to love, over and over again.  Whenever possible, regard each person as divine, let go, and see how fast you merge in oneness. Even the physical density disappears into infinity.  Be in love with the archetypal beloved and be in love with love.   In the quietude of the heart, see and feel each person you know and each person you meet.  Find your own stealthy ways to selflessly reveal and share the magic of who you really are.  Do not walk this Earth dragging your feet through the mud and dirt.   Take each step as though you are soaring across a galaxy of stars. Let yourself be transported into a realm where life is pure magic. Travel fearlessly and gracefully on this sublime journey.  It is the kind of adventure that can only be created when we co-mingle in an otherworldly dance of heart-centered love.

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“This is love: to fly towards a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” -Rumi

“The minute I heard my first love story,

“Through love burning fire is pleasing light. You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck”! -Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”-Rumi

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Isn’t the ultimate Tantra one where we merge completely with the Beloved?  Don’t we spend our entire life searching for the ultimate love, even when we are not conscious of our burning desire to find it?   It still happens because the most fundamental, primary thing we all crave is this immersion in pure love.  When we are not aware of what our spirit is truly after we only feel the burning desire as a constant craving.  So we chase a myriad of endless tangents through the material world.  These may come in the form of accumulated possessions, career achievements, addictions, relationships, habits and hundreds of other distractions.  Yet even after chasing and achieving there is still an emptiness deep within the human heart. So we keep trying to fill that void.  We might even know that it is really only love we need.  But we make the mistake of thinking that someone else or something else has to supply that love.  And without that, we are incomplete.  When a relationship fails, we chase a new relationship to replace it so we can become whole again.  This is a mistake.

The Beloved is not a person.  The “Beloved” is an archetype that represents God-Source.   This Source exists deep within us, as ourselves.  That is why it is futile to keep searching for the Beloved solely outside. We need the knowledge of inner alchemy to find our fulfillment.  And this inner, spiritual Beloved is seeking us as much as we are seeking it.  Eternally waiting, the beloved is just behind the veil ready to meet us any moment.  But in our blindness we can’t see the Beloved because we don’t understand its true nature. Yet the beloved burns for us, as much as we burn to merge with it.  And when we refuse to see, the Beloved uses everything in the world to show itself to us so we can.

True to the cosmic mirror, the eternal Beloved will keep appearing in many forms seemingly outside of us.  The Beloved will take on the face of another person.  It can take on the face of nature.  It will visit us in the depths of our dreams.   It will come to us in a vision.   It will touch us as a daydream, a longing, or a fantasy.  The forms are endless.  But the Beloved is relentless. If all we can understand is forms, then the beloved will continue to take on every form possible.   It is not until we learn that the Beloved is formless that we will begin to discover the alchemy of sustaining an ongoing experience of this pure, inner love. And at this stage, access can become easier because we see that the Beloved is both everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Still, after realizing that the beloved is deep within us, we may feel a loss whenever we are not in touch with it.  We will look for every opportunity to dip our hands into the purifying and nourishing water of this sacred oasis.  The merging in oneness with the inner beloved is the ultimate fulfillment to which nothing compares.  And since we know that the beloved appears both within and without, we will continue to look for the beloved everywhere in the cosmic mirror.  And we will continue to find that the beloved is always there looking back at us.

Life itself provides many doorways through which to merge with the inner Beloved any day of the week.   It happens by way of ordinary events, circumstances and people.  But it requires a fully open heart and a willingness to see the face of the Beloved smiling back at you from the world.  At first, we might only see the Beloved in certain people, or through certain spiritual practices.  But over time, it is entirely possible to broaden your scope.  This is an intentional choice.  The intention takes conscious effort.  But the actual experience will be entirely spontaneous.   Developing this kind of perception might require meditation or another type of spiritual / mind / body practice in order to facilitate inner contact.  Most importantly, we need to be able to perceive through the window of our heart.   There might be wounds or blocks there.  So some healing work on the heart chakra is very helpful.  When we do make contact with the Beloved, we can enjoy the exquisite fulfillment of merging into the bliss of our own true nature.  Having once experienced this, we will crave the sweetness and intoxication of it.   And we may find ourselves with a longing to continuously surrender to it.  There is no greater relief than the feeling of “coming home” that accompanies releasing oneself into the embrace of eternity. So what is it that we are truly passionate about and searching for?  It is only the inner Beloved, found both within and without. As you move through life, be prepared to meet this eternal Beloved any and every moment.  Open your heart and know that the one you are truly meeting is yourself.

Poem by. Jalaladdin Rumi, 13th Century A.D.:

In truth everything and everyone
Is a shadow of the Beloved,
And our seeking is His seeking
And our words are His words…
We search for Him here and there,
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side, we ask:
‘O Beloved, where is the Beloved?’

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”  – Rumi

“Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.”     - Rumi

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Life is like a dance where every person we encounter is a new partnership to be discovered.  In dance, as in life, each partnership is very unique in its own way.  The dynamics we experience with one person are far different from the dynamics we experience with another.  We usually perceive the partner as being someone completely outside of ourselves. But what we don’t consider is the possibility that we might actually be dancing with our own reflection.  If this were the case, it would mean that the partner is not separate from us but is in some sense, a projection.  The beauty of a projection, when we can acknowledge it as such, is that we have the opportunity to honestly look at ourselves.  The inner workings of our mind are exposed and we are shown what we can’t normally see. But when we are willing to view it this way, we can take responsibility for whatever is in that mirror. Once we take responsibility, we gain the power to change the nature of the projection.  Instead of projecting out our “stuff”, we can consciously choose to project our love and joy.

Imagine the whole world as giant mirror where every person we meet and every experience we have is a potential reflection of the thoughts, emotions and beliefs we hold within us. From this perspective everything “out there” is a profound extension of ourselves. It’s a living Hologram, yet the hologram is not all about “us.”  We are in the hologram together with everyone else who is also interacting through the reflective qualities of the mirror. This cosmic mirror is like a giant web of consciousness, where we are all interconnected and the subtle exchange of thought forms and energy is a constant, subtle reality.

In this infinite web of consciousness, our whole life is an opportunity to merge into oneness.  And the oneness is available to everyone at all times.  There is nothing to strive for because we are all already merged and connected in ways we cannot begin to imagine.  All we have to do to see it is simplify the confusion in our minds. It’s a matter of paying attention to the connectedness, and shifting one’s paradigm to learn to experience it on deeper levels. The more we are attuned to silence, the more we will experience the profound subtleties of oneness within the silence. The possible levels of depth from which we can perceive this is infinite.  The best way to begin to notice silence, rather than noise, is through meditation.  Through regular meditation practice, we begin to experience more and more silence.  And eventually, we start to identify with that silence as being our true nature, rather than identifying with the out of control thoughts in our mind.

The worldly veil of Maya often shrouds perception, causing people to feel separate and solitary.  But this is an illusion.  The truth is that in this interconnected web there is nowhere to hide and no one is truly alone.  We are all in this together. The mirror is constantly showing all of us where we are not free, where we need to grow, where we have expanded, how deeply we are connected, and where we have the opportunity to be of service to others.  If everything in the mirror is an extension of ourselves wouldn’t we naturally want to respond to our own reflection with love and compassion? Even a seemingly difficult person is the most amazing opportunity to practice love and compassion.  They are reflecting a hidden shadow, but it is not solely theirs.  It is our shadow too.  It is everyone’s shadow. These are the ego-shadows of humanity; the left over memories from eons of karmic time.  Deep within our cells, deep within our DNA, these shadows are just a part of the memories of the greater collective consciousness.  But we are not the memories. Our pure essence is the spark of supreme, divine love underneath the covering of any shadows. The fastest way to cast transforming light onto a shadow is to shower it with the spark of love.  The shared divine love of one human being has all the potency needed to cut through the shadows and wake up the love in another.

If we want to know where we are out of alignment with truth, all we have to do is look into the cosmic mirror.  The more we interact with others and the more we are in relationships, the more the mirror reflects back to us.  Depending on how much “personal baggage” we are carrying around, some very interesting things can happen when we connect with people.  As two people’s energy fields come into contact, psychological “buttons” can get pushed or magic can happen. The meeting of two people can be so many things:  It might be inconsequential, or a very uncomfortable challenge, or maybe it will be a sublime creation of awesome beauty. It all depends upon what each person brings to the table.

It’s not possible to make every partnership and every experience in life one of perfect harmony or bliss. If we are still in a human body, then each one of us still carries around a certain degree of latent, unstirred karma which can rise to the surface when we least expect it. So if a particular person seems to be mirroring our underlying imbalances in a way that pushes our buttons, consider it a blessing. It’s a chance to liberate old karma and release it. This is a great learning and growth opportunity. Take responsibility for the reflection and you will discover the enormous gifts of wisdom it has to share with you.  Looking into this mirror on a regular basis will enable you to purify your mind, become more authentic, and expand your consciousness.

If you’ve done a lot of work on yourself, and have a high degree of clarity, you will notice more and more that what you see in the reflection is love, and what you reflect back to others is also love. If  someone else happens to be in their “stuff”, and is projecting it onto you, the best response is compassion.  By remaining conscious, you can attempt to change what you reflect back to them and it won’t be what they are expecting. The more you do your due diligence to bring conscious compassion, beauty and joy to each situation, the more you will elevate yourself and others into grace. That which you put out returns to you tenfold.

In this sense, the dance of life can be a wonderful opportunity for two people to intentionally elevate each other out of the normal funk of the world and into a rare moment of exquisiteness. They do this by letting go of the ego and leaving it out of the partnership.  And they come together with conscious intention to create and share in beauty and joy. The dance floor of life is a sacred ceremonial space.  If our hearts and minds are open, it offers the potential for extraordinary moments of personal and mutual transcendence.  We don’t need to travel anywhere special in the world or pay a lot of money to attend retreats with famous teachers in order to evolve.  All we have to do is use our powers of presence and focused intention and approach each moment of life as holy and sacred.

Poem by Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th century A.D.:

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.

We are pain and what cures pain both.

We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

My favorite thing about Tango is how it engages the Heart Chakra.  For me, this topic never gets old.  The more you dance, the more the experience of this dance through the heart grows. I love what Tango demands of both men and women.  First, and foremost, it demands surrender and an open heart.   And I believe this is where the primary connection and communication between partners occurs.   Can there be anything more beautiful than the intimate exchange of pure heart energy between two strangers?  Where else in North American Culture can you do this two or three nights a week in a social setting?   Thank you Argentina for this dance of heart awakening!  If everyone in the world danced Tango, we might all be one step closer to self-realization through the pure heart energies.

The most fulfilling thing for me is the opportunity to experience numerous men in this way.   I love how Tango breaks down all notions of personal space and allows two people who hardly know each other to cut to the chase.  It circumvents the superficial verbal exchanges that rarely show you the soul and beauty of new people you meet.  Tango allows one to quickly sidestep social formalities and get directly to the heart and soul.  It’s real and it’s straightforward. And isn’t this what we all fundamentally crave on some level?  Do we not all seek the wonderful relief of divine, sweet union with other human beings?  Do we not all secretly desire to share who we really are, without defending ourselves?  Don’t we all want to truly see, touch, feel and experience the extraordinary essence of others?

I love how Tango demands that we bring ourselves fully into the present moment where we must be very alert to every subtlety of our partner.   When awareness becomes that highly focused, miracles can happen.   We can transcend into expansions of consciousness that we only ever dreamed about.  I love how Tango demands that we face and let go of our limitations and become our authentic selves.  It demands this whether we bargained for it or not.  It requires us at some point to stop hiding and protecting ourselves.  And it gives us the opportunity for deep intimacy, all in the short time frame of a three minute dance.  I love how Tango allows men to express heart energy freely, thus revealing their emotional selves to their partner.   And it all happens without words.   I love that Tango demands the woman to surrender to the Yin energy which strengthens her intuitive and magical tantra powers.  And I absolutely love how Tango requires the man to embody the Yang energies, grounded in a tender sweetness of care and compassion.   Finally, I love how these exchanges carry over into daily life.   It only takes one or two dances like this to leave one floating on cloud nine for days, or weeks on end.  Once the heart tastes the bliss, it wants to remain open and share this with everyone.

Some people may be wondering how to achieve a deep connection, and how to access the bliss?   I have an answer. The fastest way to experience this in Tango, or in life, is to simply become like a child again.  A very young child or a baby is open, curious, non-judgmental and hasn’t built up a lifetime of illusory fears.  A young child has an adventurous spirit and is free to love and be loved.  A child is pure and innocent.   Many people have been culturally trained by negative experiences of abuse or hurt to build walls around themselves.  In North America, we live in a “mental” culture that has structured itself to support individual isolation and fear.  The culture “out there” values “things” more than people.  A human life is sometimes seen as “cheap”, and particularly in a big city, people sometimes tend to treat each other “cheaply.”  The way many people are forced to move through life and earn a living in this world can be dehumanizing.  It can unplug a person from their very own heart and soul.  In such a situation, a person really has to do some conscious work to stay in touch with what’s real.  And I believe the easiest way to stay in touch is to practice being like a child again.   Practice being free to play and express joy.   Practice being free to love and be loved.   Practice being carefree and unconcerned with the “heaviness” of the world out there.  Just let go and be a child again.  It may take lots of practice, but over time it becomes easy.  Once you do this, it will feel like the most normal and natural thing ever.  There will be a sense of liberation and a feeling of coming home again.  I truly believe this is one of the fastest ways to access joy and resist losing oneself in the karmic heaviness of the world.

If all else fails:   Dance the Argentine Tango!

We live in both paradise and a sea of misery.   It doesn’t matter which end of the spectrum we are in at any given moment.  The other still co-exists.   During one phase of life, we are in bliss. During another phase, there is pain.    Everyone experiences some degree of difficulty in a life filled with both triumphs and sorrows.  Some people seem to have more triumphs. And some have more sorrows.  But there is no such thing as a human being who experiences only ease and bliss.  Even the greatest of Masters throughout history live in the dichotomous tribulations of life on Earth.  Many people don’t know that Mother Theresa was suffering immensely from a torturous “Dark Night of the Soul” for the entire 50 years of her Missionary of Charities.  Or that there is a Tibetan Buddhist figure known as Milarepa who committed murder, then turned his path around and became a saint.  After doing the unspeakable, he still reached enlightenment in a single lifetime.

No human, not even an extraordinary one, can escape the fact that we are all in a human body.   Difficulties are inevitable.  Perception is the only difference.   How we perceive the difficulties of life in a human body can either expand us or contract us. So how can we understand life’s difficulties in a way that expands us into awakening, rather than contracts us into deeper misery?  Here is where an understanding of the Eastern concept of karma is most insightful.  What is karma?   Very simply:  karma is friction, rather than grace.  The friction of karma is everything that resists and goes against the natural flow of grace.   Grace is called dharma.  And this dharma / grace can be thought of as a river of divine harmony that is constantly flowing with purity, nourishment and unconditional love.  This river is always present, underlying all of creation.  But we are usually not in direct perception of it, unless we learn to pay attention.   Karma does not go with the flow of this river of grace.  It is born of the desires, struggles and friction of the ego mind that propel us to act in ignorance.   When we are acting in karma, our thoughts, words and deeds are out of harmony with dharma.  Over time, (the time span of human history actually) the friction and resistance of this mental energy becomes dense.  And the density eventually coagulates into matter.   The ultimate coagulated matter of karma is the human body!

Take a moment to consider the possibility that your body is actually a Mountain of Karma inherited from your ancestors.  From this point of view, karma does not belong to us.  It is the accumulated memories of generations upon generations.  It already existed before we got here and stepped into this body.  The “sins” of the father are indeed passed down to the son.  But it’s really not as personal as we like to imagine it is.   Our body is a vehicle and we are the driver of that vehicle.  But we are not the body.  Do we say that the driver of a Ford is one and the same as the Ford?  No, we do not.   The driver only operates the car.  We are grateful for the automobile, because it helps us travel from one destination to another.  But we do not believe that we are the automobile.   This is one of the biggest mistakes we can make.   Time and culture has taught us to identify with our body.   We think that this body and this personality is the foundation of our true selves.  And this belief leads to great struggle and suffering because the ego cannot let go of the deep-seated attachment to the body.  Yet we are not this body.  We inherited it from our ancestors.  The body should be thought of as Genetic Karma!  It is on temporary loan to us and we won’t be able to keep if forever. It’s perishable and we will be asked to leave at any moment. When we die, we will take nothing of this material world with us.  Our body is not immortal, it does not belong to us, and it is not the essence of our true selves.  This body is rented!

There is a lot of judgment in our culture towards mental & physical suffering.  In the holistic healing world, it is often assumed that people’s thoughts and emotions are usually the direct cause of illness.   But this judgment lacks a deeper understanding of karma.   Karma can be understood as an imbalance of the ego mind that is endemic throughout humanity.  We are all subject to it and some of it is collective.  There are genetic “programs” in each human body that can be activated at any moment due to unique variables of life.   We never know what sleeping dragon will awaken, or when it will awaken.  Pandora can fly out of the box when we least expect it.  No amount of “positive thinking” will keep Pandora stuffed inside the box if a boulder of karma is ready to be released in its natural course of expression.  It can happen when least expected and defy everything we think we have done to escape it.   One moment we are feeling healthy.  The next moment, the functions of our brain, body and nervous system spiral out of control and we do not even recognize ourselves.  Patterns, behaviors, disease and illnesses appear, sometimes with no apparent cure.  We judge and blame ourselves.  We judge and blame other people. We blame the doctors for not being able to help us. We even blame God.  But we never stop and think about the nature of the genetic karma we inherited. And we don’t always have compassion for it, which is what it needs.

The understanding of genetic karma is not an excuse to be fatalistic.  Because to a certain degree we do have control over discomfort that appears.  There are many techniques and therapies that work well to bring us healing and wholeness.   We need to take care of this precious vehicle.  We are here in this vehicle for a reason:  To experience life so we can grow and awaken.  This body is our instrument to do that, which is why we need to respect and honor its limitations.  We need to pay close attention to it, nourishing the body with what it needs to function optimally within its limits. If there are things this body cannot do, then don’t force it.  We are not superhuman.  Driving the body beyond its limitations can have severe health consequences.  Do we drive an automobile forever without changing the oil or filling it up with gas?  What happens if we do?  The car stops running correctly. Our bodies are independent vehicles with their own karmic programs that require a maintenance schedule such as:  Self-care routines, physical, emotional and dietary health routines, meditation, and more.  Maintenance helps manage the effects of the karma, so that even when karma does arise, we can learn to move through it faster and with more grace.

It’s important to remember that as long as there is physical form, there is karma in that physical form.   It doesn’t matter what degree of mastery anyone has attained.  The body is still karma and will continue to deliver karmic experiences.  Even Saints die of cancer and disease or have episodes of chaotic behavior!   The karma that arises might not even have anything to do with the soul operating that body.  But it does serve a purpose.  Because even if karma looks like chaos, it is often on a course to be released, healed, corrected and realigned.   Some people describe karma as “unfinished business” which is accurate because it represents everything within our selves and humanity that has been repressed, ignored, denied and stuffed away for another time.   And everything that has been repressed or resisted must eventually come back to the surface to be seen, felt, released and healed.   Shadows do not remain in a room when we flood that room with light, which is exactly what we need to do to start clearing out the karmic residue.

On an individual level, the “rented” karma of the body provides us with experiences that have the potential to help us grow and wake up.    It gives us a mirror through which to see the truth. It shows us a reflection of how deep in disharmony and ignorance we actually are.  It may be hard to look at, it may even be ugly, but facing it and releasing it is a path to liberation.  We chose this body because we knew it would create opportunities for growth. We knew it would give us specific experiences that would cause us to expand in the ways we need to.    It might be our soul that needed this growth.  Or, we might have volunteered to assist clearing the genetic karma of our ancestors.   We never know.  And we don’t need to figure out the “why” either.  All we need to do is:  See the job, do the work and stay out of the misery!   What this means is: Recognizing karma when it arises, helping / allowing it to release and heal, and also remaining in wise detachment towards the chaos it causes.  We can even learn to recognize and flow with the waves of dharma and grace, whenever possible.  Life in this body is a precious, rare opportunity for growth and awakening.   Even during the difficult times, we can embrace life, become proactive in our healing, honor the reality of what is, and even find graceful enjoyment in the process.

Ultimately, the trick lies not in what is happening to us, but in how we perceive what is happening to us.  The true self is never to be found in the body, mind or emotions.   The true self is found in the silent oneness that permeates all of creation.  We are one and the same with that: the silent, all-pervading consciousness of Source.   If you want to experience the essence of yourself as this peaceful silence, then take action to engage in activities that give you a direct experience of this.  Such activities might include:  Prayer, chanting, meditation, yoga, or something else that works for you. Meditation is particularly powerful for this purpose.  But whatever it is, schedule it into your daily life.  The more you repeat a practice that gives you peace, the more you will identify with yourself as the source of peace. It will become a positive, conditioned habit.  You will create for yourself an open door way through which to repeatedly dive into the river of grace.

copyright 2011

This is not a small question, but the answer is yes.  We don’t always see anything of value in pain and suffering because the intensity of it can be rather blinding.  But who can deny the deeper questions it brings up such as:  Why does it happen? What does it mean? Why is it that when one kind of suffering ends, another reappears? Is suffering inevitable, or is it optional?  And most importantly of all, what can we learn from it?

It is a fact that there is tremendous pain and suffering everywhere. It is happening around the world.  It is happening to friends and neighbors. It is happening in our families. And sometimes, it is happening to us.  Viewed honestly and objectively, it becomes clear that pain is NOT optional.  We all experience it no matter what.  It is a normal part of life.  Pain of some form or another is, in fact, guaranteed.  The ONLY thing that is optional is the degree to which we attach, resist, reject, judge, personalize, cling to or identify with that suffering.   My last statement may push some buttons, but please read on.

We need to consider the fact that suffering is not just a physical, mental, or emotional reality.  Many therapies attempt to deal with these, providing relief, comfort, sometimes even cures. This is a blessing and we should be responsible for ourselves by utilizing any resources available to help us heal.  But as we all know, this is never the permanent end to suffering.  Some other type of suffering always arises at another time in life.  What’s missing?  We often overlook the fact that suffering is also a deeply spiritual dilemma.  And almost every major religion attempts to address it.  Although the perspectives may be different, there is a commonality amongst them.  At least 5 major spiritual traditions (from East to West) basically teach that: “Life is suffering.” And in each case, the solution to suffering involves some type of “death of the ego” either through mental disciplines or through complete surrender to the divine.  Death? Surrender? Sounds scary.

So how do we understand this and get practical results in everyday life? Most people (hopefully) have had an experience of being happy or successful at something, some time in their life. Then a failure, betrayal, loss or devastation occurs.  Naturally, the devastation causes distress and disappointment.  It might trigger sadness, depression, anger or anxiety.  Perhaps it is causing great harm to our bodies or our lives. Maybe we are even facing the limits of our own mortality.   It can be frightening.  And the misery so intense that it is normal for us to want to reject it!  We don’t want to feel this way!  We judge it as wrong, negative and bad. We would rather be happy, whole and feeling good!   Who wouldn’t?  And every cultural message we encounter reinforces this desire.   Whether we are aware of it or not, there are expectations imposed upon us. The messages we receive from every direction tell us that we must achieve beauty and success of some type.  The image of happiness is always portrayed as favorable to the image of suffering.  The very culture we live in is teaching us to reject and judge our own negative feelings.  This is a serious dilemma that further perpetuates misery because:  It is absolutely guaranteed that we will encounter pain in life.  And we are often conditioned to judge, reject, avoid, hide and resist it. This doesn’t sound very solution-oriented does it?

What would it be like if we didn’t push our pain away?  Some of us can’t anyway.  But nevertheless, what would happen if we stopped judging it and just set the intention to allow ourselves to experience it completely with presence?  Presence means being fully aware, willing to be here and now in this moment with your consciousness focused in your body (not letting your mind drift into memory or fantasy, not thinking of past and future). Then set the intention that once you feel it fully, you let it go. Doing this allows something very interesting happen.  The feelings will become even more intense for a short period of time, but the suffering will begin to lose its power over you.  In this way you are actually releasing the energetic charge behind the suffering.  We already know that pain is an impermanent state, just like happiness.  They both come and go like the ocean’s tides.  We may think it will go on forever, but it never does. Pain will eventually cease, in this lifetime or after. Therefore, what is the point of rejecting it?

It is much easier to just feel our pain fully so that the energy behind it can dissipate quickly.  The outer world may stay the same, but the pendulum of our internal state is constantly swinging.  It will swing back to happiness and contentment much faster when we learn to accept and let go of our suffering. This intentional “feeling with presence” and then “letting go” is the first step towards freeing ourselves.   The pain or turbulence that caused the suffering might remain in our lives.  Or some new turbulence will just come along to challenge us again later.  We can’t always prevent it.  But we can dramatically change our relationship to the suffering by not attaching to it, not personalizing or identifying with it.  And this is the second step towards freeing ourselves.

But how do we practice detachment when it all feels so raw, real and intense? The simple answer is:  Don’t take anything personally, not even your own experience of suffering.  There is a witness within us.  And this witness needs to be roused. You can start by using your imagination.  When you find yourself involved in a difficult, emotionally charged situation, imagine yourself mentally stepping back from it.  Imagine that you are watching the whole thing unfolding the same way you would watch a television show.  Imagine everything that is happening is all on a TV screen. You are watching yourself and you are watching the drama.  You are in it, but you are not of it.  You can watch it at the same time that you are experiencing it.  Pretend you are like an actor in a play, but you are also the audience silently observing the play.  The bottom line is this: Your mind is fully capable of objectively observing its own thinking, feeling & experiencing processes.

If you’ve never tried witnessing before, it’s worth a serious attempt.  Once you get the hang of it, you will find that it serves a great purpose.  It allows a radical change in our relationship to the suffering.  Because if you are the one who is observing the process, then you can go through the entire experience, even with all the intense feelings, but you will not be attached to it in the same way as before.   The objective, silent, non-judging observer has no agenda to personalize whatever it is observing. It doesn’t cling, it doesn’t attach, and it doesn’t identify with what is going on.   It doesn’t give more density to an uncomfortable situation.  It just observes.  Suddenly, we see that there are like two minds in there.  There is the one that suffers. And there is the one that observes the suffering.   Which one of those is more useful to identify with when you are trying to get relief from suffering?

While practicing witnessing, you will still experience the intensity of life.   But the suffering it causes will no longer control you or define who you are.   Witnessing like this frees us to take constructive action in a way that was not possible when we were identifying ourselves as “the one who suffers.”  Again, the point of this is not to reject pain and suffering or to judge it.   The point is to open a new perspective. Witnessing is a doorway through which we can access our own higher wisdom.  And when we “become” our higher wisdom we have a new potential to transcend beyond our limitations.  At our very core, we are pure being.  When we set aside the constructs, ideas, expectations and attachments about who think we need to be; and when we identify with the witness and the higher wisdom, all that is left is the simple peace of pure being. We don’t need to be anything more than this. From the deepest level, all we need to “do” is to “be” and enjoy the being, regardless of the outward circumstances of life.  Most of us are Masters of how to trade away simple “being” for the pain and struggle of constant “doing” and striving.  Let us now become Masters of “being” again.

People enter into awakening in different ways.  Sometimes it happens through spiritual or meditative practices.  Sometimes it happens spontaneously for no reason at all.  It even happens spontaneously through the very experience of pain itself.   There are cases where this is enough to trigger a complete awakening.   We never know for certain what will be the catalyst.   But what is absolutely certain is that we can learn a great deal from pain and suffering.   It operates by way of its own intelligence. And it is always communicating with us and presenting profound opportunities to learn about ourselves.   What can we learn?

• We can learn how to live in the moment.  At a certain level of suffering, the past and future become somewhat obsolete and the only thing that matters is the present.  This opens the door to the simple experience of pure being.

• We can learn how to embody compassion. Once we have suffered greatly, judgment towards others becomes difficult.  We increase our ability to feel the pain of others. And we can assist and support them with love, knowing that is all we needed during our own time of suffering.

• We can learn how to embody our higher selves.  By choosing to identify with the witness we can gain clearer access to our inner-wisdom when we need it the most.

• We can learn to become more awakened.

These are just a few potent examples of what can be learned.  Everyone is unique and there is no way to predict what insights are in store for each individual.  However, know that the gift in suffering has to do with what we can learn from it.   If we listen carefully enough, it shows us the way out of suffering.  It is always trying to show us this over and over and over again.  It keeps flashing a message at us in big red lights, but we rarely see it.  This is the wheel of life.  We just need to pay attention to the flashing sign.   Let’s review how:

1) Feel the suffering with presence, accept it and let go.

2) Don’t take it personally.

3) Practice witnessing in order to identify yourself as the observer.  (Take up daily    meditation. This will increase your ability to witness more clearly and for longer periods of time. )

4) Once you are able to observe, listen to your higher wisdom. Allow yourself to become that wisdom. And from that place, take clear, responsible, constructive action.

5) Find out what you can learn from the experience.  What opportunities did it present to you?  What gifts did it leave you with? Take inventory and remind yourself frequently, for as long as needed, until you believe it.

Most importantly of all, embrace life.  Embrace everything about life:  The “good”, the “bad”, the “beautiful” and the “ugly.”  And remember that these are just labels that attempt to carve up the totality of oneness.

Copyright 2011

When trauma strikes, and we enter into deep grieving, it can be very difficult to see any sense or purpose in the grief.  After all, why should something as terrible as suffering make sense, especially when it happens on a personal level?    Usually (at least at first), we only feel the sadness, misery, and pain of it.   It can be so overwhelming sometimes that it is like descending into a kind of private, endless, existential void from which there is no return.    The grief can feel oppressive, overpowering, and crushing as though it were sucking the life and joy right out of us.   Depending on the intensity of the grief, we might even feel that this emotional state is so overwhelming that it could actually kill us.   Luckily, it usually won’t kill us.   But rest assured, it WILL make us stronger.

How exactly does grief make us stronger?  It makes us stronger because it has the potential to bestow numerous gifts upon us.  It is impossible to list every potential gift here, but a few of these gifts might include:

• Deeper awareness
• Awakening to our presence in the here and now
• Deeper compassion for self and others
• Dawning of new wisdom
• Deeper knowledge of the self

Grief as a doorway to deeper compassion is particularly compelling.   Because lets face it, once you’ve been to hell and back, it becomes increasingly difficult to live in a state of judgment towards others.   The experience of suffering at a high level naturally opens consciousness in a way that bestows the gifts of sensitivity and awareness.  With this sensitivity and awareness, we can feel other people’s pain more than before.  And when we can openly feel other people’s pain, we gain understanding. Understanding gives us the ability to take right action (in the form of love and kindness).    Recently, I saw a quote from Deepak Chopra on Twitter proclaiming the following:  “Compassion is the feeling of shared suffering. When you feel someone else’s suffering, there is the birth of understanding.”   I would like to go further and say it is also the birth of expanded consciousness.

Of course, when we are in the midst of any horrendous, tragic experience, we won’t likely see the gift right away.  That comes during the healing process, which could be long or short, depending on the circumstances.  There are many paths of healing, many techniques, many ways to handle a tragedy.  But the main thing to remember is that we can unwillingly fall into hell  (so to speak) and still return fully empowered.   When I say “hell” I am not referencing any religious ideas.   I am speaking of the state of Earthly suffering.   It shouldn’t have the power to destroy us.  But it does have the power and potential to make us stronger, brighter, lighter, wiser, kinder and more what we truly are:  Beacons of Love.

We don’t need to try to stop the mind or emotions.  We don’t need to try to deny, resist or avoid this process of growth.   It was John Gray who said,  “Whatever you resist, persists” and “Whatever you feel, you can heal. “   If you’re not certain this is true, test it out for yourself.    If you are suffering, try to stop /deny/distract the feelings and see what happens.  Alternately, allow yourself to feel them completely while letting go of them at the same time.  See what happens.   I would love to hear results.   And never forget:  Love is the glue, which binds this entire Universe……..

Copyright 2011